Desperately Seeking - By Evelyn Cosgrave Page 0,77
a window and a radiator) I decided to let my original judgement lie. They weren’t bad people; they just weren’t my sort of people. Whatever my sort was.
Of course, I’d had one or two allies – Denise was always good for a laugh even though she got on my nerves most of the time, and there was an older woman who proffered advice when it was most needed – but the truth was that I wouldn’t be seeing any of them again. It was a sad thought that such a huge part of my life would close so finally, but I was moving on.
Facing the closed doors of the building now (it was Saturday), I sighed and continued walking. The only place to go was to the shops, and for once I wasn’t in the mood for that. I was in the mood to get the car packed and moving. Passing a flower shop I decided to buy Keith a button-hole; it had struck me as the sort of thing he would appreciate. The florist was all chat about weddings and where the one I was going to would take place. She made a lovely buttonhole and charged me very little. ‘Enjoy your day,’ she called, as I went out of the door.
By the time I got back to the car, parked on the street outside my building, Keith had it piled with our luggage, including my enormous hat placed carefully on the back seat. Before I had a chance to say anything, he apologized. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was my fault. I was being a bollocks. Your hat’s lovely.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Just wait till you see it when I’m wearing my new outfit. Or, better still, wait till you see it when I’m wearing nothing at all…’
Somehow the image of me naked except for my hat didn’t have the desired effect.
‘Come on, let’s get going,’ he said. ‘We have to drive some of the worst roads in the country and it’s in the middle of bloody nowhere.’ His relations lived in the heart of rural Clare.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Just don’t drive too fast. My hair’s in a state of ruffled perfection and I don’t want to ruin it.’
‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Isn’t the bloody hat going to cover your hair anyway?’
I couldn’t argue with that.
The drive was probably the most pleasant part of the trip. He seemed a bit more relaxed, the weather was good, the roads were surprisingly quiet and Steely Dan were excellent company. I sat back and allowed my mind to wander but not too far. I had decided recently that it was possible to spend too much of your life daydreaming. If you want to make a success of your present and have a hope of a future, you have to live fully in your present. Keith was my present and he was going to be my future. He was real and solid and wonderful, and it was about time I appreciated that. I wanted to talk to him about college, but he never seemed keen to sit down and hammer it out with me. I was excited about all that was to come but also quite apprehensive and I needed to feel he would be there to guide me through it. He had assured me that work would quieten down soon and that we might take a holiday, even go back to Los Almiras where everything had seemed so simple. But weren’t patience and understanding part of a grown-up relationship? If he was going through a rough time I should support him by not making demands on him, by thinking of him and not myself for once. Then he would do the same for me. I hoped he’d get sorted out before I went headlong into something I knew would freak me out, even if it was in a good way.
I worried about what happened to couples when both parties were needy at the same time. In my innocence, I had always presumed it was only the woman who needed looking after because that had been my experience, but now I had discovered that men needed just as much care. They might be a lot less obvious about it but they could have their mini-crises, just as we did. Keith wasn’t throwing any wobblies at me, but it was clear that he needed something from me – and mainly for me to give him space.