Page 38 of Old Girls Go Greek
I looked down at the menu, not really seeing the words. Never, not once in my life, had anyone told me I was perfect; and anyway, it wasn’t true. I was, it had to be admitted, about a stone overweight, had an unpredictable knee which sometimes gave me trouble, and I needed reading glasses. I had lots of pairs of them too, bought online, which I kept losing. I estimated once that there were eight pairs around the house somewhere and occasionally, I still had to go out to the car and find the pair I kept there.
I took a deep breath. If he thought I was okay, then just for once I wasn’t going to argue. In the past I would have been at pains to point out my flaws. Women were almost programmed to do so, to brush aside compliments and demean themselves. Suddenly, I didn’t want to do that. I’d had a lifetime of thinking I was ordinary and average. If someone wanted to tell me otherwise, then I wasn’t going to argue about it.
He went to the counter to place our order and I watched him, liking what I saw. Tall and lean, a man who could be friendly and yet at the same time he was somehow reserved. Occasionally enthusiastic but then he could suddenly become closed in on himself. A man who liked to wear sunglasses and a concealing hat most of the time, who – the realisation struck me – always chose to sit with his back to other people.
Is that him?
Why would he do that? It was puzzling. He was the complete opposite of most men I had known, who would happily survey a crowded room, take the lead in conversations and push their opinions on everyone. Dennis for one. Malcolm for another.
Will wasn’t like that; it was almost as though he was taking pains not to be seen or noticed. What did I really know about him anyway? He was about my age, maybe slightly more. He was attractive, had been single for years; he seemed a bit familiar to me; he hadn’t been on holiday much recently; and he liked kittens and seafood. It wasn’t much to go on.
He came to sit down, putting his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. And that was another thing; how do men do that? When I tried doing that with my purse, I always ended up either forgetting it was there or sitting on it and bending it out of shape. The same went for my phone. I’d actually cracked the screen of one phone by sitting on it. Of course, men didn’t have the unending curse of a handbag to worry about, and the pockets on women’s clothes were always shallow and almost useless.
‘They do have ordinary tea,’ he said, holding out a paper bag, ‘and I didn’t buy any cake. But I did buy you an ice cream. I thought it might be a nice idea in this heat.’
He handed over a chocolate cone and I ripped the paper off with some enthusiasm.
‘Exactly what I would have chosen,’ I said, delighted, and he grinned.
‘I thought so.’
We sat there quite content eating our ice creams and chatting about what we had seen, and after a while he relaxed enough to start telling me more of the things he knew about the Minoans and their history. He knew a lot too. How they had built up their maritime empire, centred around Crete where they had built the palace of Knossos, and how they had excelled at urban planning, writing and sophisticated art. And all about three thousand years ago.
‘Such a tragedy, what happened to them.’
‘No one can fight back against natural disasters, even now. Volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, the dominance of the Greeks back then. Nothing stays the same forever, and it didn’t for the Minoans.’
‘It doesn’t now either,’ I murmured. ‘I found that out the hard way.’
I could sense him looking at me, his gaze curious and at the same time kind.
‘It’s never easy when a marriage ends, I know that. You sound as though you had a hard time of it.’
‘Oh, no worse than a lot of other people,’ I said, trying to sound offhand. ‘We grew apart. He wanted something else; someoneelse. Someone who could make him feel better about himself, which apparently, I had failed to do, although heaven knows I tried.’
Was it a good thing to drone on to him about how another man had found me unappealing and unsatisfactory? No, probably not.
And what was it about Will that his wife hadn’t liked? To me he seemed attractive, intelligent, well-groomed and polite. A veritable unicorn amongst men. I wondered why their marriage had floundered, and if she, or indeed he, had caused the split. Had she had an affair because he was away so much… doing what exactly?
‘But anyway, that was years ago and luckily our daughter dealt with it very well. Sometimes kids don’t, do they?’ I said, licking a smear of chocolate sauce off my hand.
The unspoken question here was did he have any children?
I waited with unusual reserve and was rewarded for my patience.
‘So I’ve heard. We didn’t have children,’ he said at last, ‘so I don’t know.’
It felt like a small triumph, to have found out something new.
I decided to change the subject, suspecting that if I pressed him for more information he would shy away like a startled pony and I would be back to square one.
I could see Anita and Effie in their matching yellow sunhats walking in the distance, and Effie stopped to do a little dance and pull a funny face at me, which meant I nearly snorted with laughter into the aforementioned tea. I changed it for a slightly wild smile as though I was just a bit overexcited.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And the food too. I enjoyed ourpaellerathe other night. I’m glad you chose it. I wouldn’t normally eat a lot of shellfish. I always worry I’m going to give myself food poisoning.’
‘Oh, exactly! Me too. And when I watch television cooks dealing with fish, they seem to hardly cook it at all.’
He finished his tea, tipping back his head to get the last few drops, and then he put his sunglasses back on.
