Slack-Tide Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Elanor Dymott

  Title Page

  Prologue

  December

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘By midsummer the thing between us was finished, and it was as if a storm had torn the roof from over me.’

  It is four years since the loss of a child broke her marriage, and Elizabeth is fiercely protective of her independence. She meets Robert – exuberant, generous, apparently care-free – and they fall in love with breath-taking speed.

  Slack-tide tracks the ebbs and flows of the affair: passionate, coercive, intensely sexual. When you’ve known lasting love and lost it, what price will you pay to find it again?

  About the Author

  Elanor Dymott was born in Chingola, Zambia, in 1973. She was educated in the USA and England and spent parts of her childhood in South East Asia, where she later worked. Her first novel, Every Contact Leaves a Trace, was published in 2012. She lives in London.

  ALSO BY ELANOR DYMOTT

  Every Contact Leaves A Trace

  Silver and Salt

  Prologue

  Slack-Tide is the period of quiet water between flood and ebb currents, when there is no perceptible flow in either direction.

  Chapman Piloting & Seamanship (67th edition)

  From Paris once, he brought me a miniature wind-up music box that played Bizet. His other present, which I’d asked for, was a leaf from the Tuileries Gardens. He slipped it in the pocket of my yellow Moleskin diary, then traced its shape with a red pen and wrote the word ‘INSIDE’.

  Now, if I search for a date or a memory, I am caught by the bold red leaf. Just the tip of its twin emerges, dark green and pressed flat by the year.

  His business was designing cities. He’d started out with houses, though by the time we met he did that only for friends. I liked being able to call him ‘my American architect’, as if I’d hired him to build me a home.

  In the December that we were introduced, by what he termed ‘the accidental agency’ of my friend Susie, I turned forty. He was fifty-two, and had been let go by his wife.

  One evening I left the library early and went to his apartment.

  ‘How much did you miss me?’ I asked.

  ‘This much.’ He held his hands as if in prayer then he moved them away from each other until they were behind his head.

  Making love to me later, he paused.

  ‘These are the parts I will miss most –’ he touched my underarms – ‘when you decide you’re through with me. Here,’ he said, drawing his fingers across my skin, ‘and here.’

  When my broken heart was starting to mend I went for lunch with my brother.

  ‘An architect and a novelist?’ Will said. ‘It was never going to work.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, a big part of his job is drawing plans for buildings that will never be built.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And a big part of yours is dreaming up non-existent people, who you talk about as if they’re real.’

  ‘But they are real to me. When I write them, they are.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ my brother said. ‘All the poor guy ever did was try out some ideas. You took him literally. You fell for everything he said.’

  It’s the pictures I paint that trip me up.

  This time, I sketched a hinterland from the line of a stranger’s back as he stood in a cafe on a winter afternoon. When he turned and held out his hand and said, ‘I’m Robert. And you must be Elizabeth,’ I was unprepared for what was to come. By midsummer the thing between us was finished, and it was as if a storm had torn the roof from over me.

  December

  At a certain minimum altitude, perhaps a few feet above the ground, we must decide if we can see enough ahead of us to make the switch from instruments to visual flight. If we cannot – if we are still in cloud, or snow or heavy rain or fog or whatever incarnation of high water might be impeding our view of the runway – then we abort the landing.

  Mark Vanhoenacker, Skyfaring: A Journey with a Pilot

  I picked up Susie’s message on my way to the library.

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’ She was out of breath. ‘Or can you do a friend of mine a favour? No, actually, make that a guy I know. Can you do a guy I know a favour? We were supposed to go to a movie tonight. Tom is sick, so I have to stay home. So this guy – Can’t explain in a message. I need you to be my stand-in. Call me! He’s lovely. You’d like him. I’m taking Tom to the doc’s, but call.’

  Frowning and smiling together, I phoned.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I asked. ‘Why would I go to the movies with a guy I’d never met?’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘I would, if I hadn’t had a relationship for four years. Sorry. Sorry, Liz! I just meant –’

  She told me he was an architect. Halfway through a divorce. Or a separation, one or the other. A really lovely, polite, clever guy. Came across as quite mysterious, but he always seemed kind, and nice.

  ‘How do you know him?’ I asked. ‘Why are you meeting mystery guys? You’re so married.’

  ‘Book group. Showed up a few months ago. Said he wanted to meet new people. He’s the only guy, it’s quite sweet. He’s obviously lonely. He’s American. We all think he’s really hot. I guess he doesn’t have many friends in London, you know, for going out with.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I said I’d take him to the movies. We’ve never talked much. Just books, and there are always tons of people, and I thought it would be good to be friendly, make him feel welcome. And now Tom is ill.’

  ‘Can’t Ben look after him?’

  ‘Working late.’

  ‘So call your mystery man and cancel. It’s 9 a.m. He’s got all day to find someone else.’

  ‘He hasn’t. That’s the whole point. He’s on a flight from New York right this second. He’ll get off the plane and go straight to the cinema and I’ll just basically have stood him up. It was supposed to be this really nice thing and it’ll just be horrible.’

  ‘Which cinema?’

  ‘The Soho Curzon.’

  ‘If it was any other day I’d say yes. I’m doing two hours at the library, tops, then I’m going Christmas shopping. I can’t just drop everything because of some guy from your book group.’

  ‘Oh, Liz. All you have to do is show up, see a nice movie with a nice guy, end of story. Say yes, I’ll love you forever. Even if you don’t get on, it’ll be good for you to meet someone new. And he’s pretty gorgeous.’

  ‘You’re setting me up!’

  ‘I am not. Well, I sort of am. Don’t think of it like that. Think of it as doing me a favour.’

  ‘What if we don’t get on?

  ‘What if you do? Look. He’s interesting. And if he isn’t your kind of guy, you know.’

  ‘You know, what?

  ‘Introductions lead to introductions. He’s an architect. He’ll know other architects.’

  ‘What’s so great about architects?’

  ‘Just try it out. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  I found Robert online. In a talk called ‘Urban Utopias’, he moved his hands a lot. I zoomed in. His fingers were long and slender. He spoke in a careful voice, enunciating each word. He was tall, with broad shoulders and big arms, and a shock of thick, dark hair. I imagined what it would be like to be held by him.

  He wore a dark blue suit in velvet or moleskin, which hung loosely. His shirt was c
risp and white, and his tie pencil-thin. He had a short beard, and his glasses hailed from another era; I’d seen ones like them only a handful of times, in American movies or style magazines.

  Watching the talk again, the man I saw had a sharp mind, a past played out in university campuses, a spacious apartment done in a Nordic style, a habit of spending his leisure time in old libraries, Viennese coffee houses and European concert halls, and was capable of providing intense sexual satisfaction with just his fingertips.

  If none of those things were true, I reasoned, there was always Susie’s qualifier: ‘Introductions lead to introductions.’

  OK, I texted her. I’ve never met an architect, apart from the one in Strangers on a Train, which doesn’t really count. But don’t get your hopes up. I’m going to one movie, that’s all.

  In bed with Robert a month later, I drew a hand across his face.

  ‘Was it soft?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your beard.’

  ‘You never saw it! How d’you know?’

  ‘Your “Urban Utopias” talk.’

  ‘The talk? You found it online?’

  ‘I loved it.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Your beard. I loved your beard.’

  ‘I did it for a bet. Lasted a week. My wife hated it. My son hated it.’

  ‘And you?

  He brought a book of photographs over and showed me a family scene. Everyone was seated in armchairs. He was alone in a corner, slumped low in his seat. He had his beard, and was reading a book. Lena and Philippe, sitting apart from him, watched.

  Susie told me later that the movie, Nebraska, had been his choice. She told me too that he had asked for the six o’clock showing because he would be jet-lagged. ‘Like he really had to talk me out of the nine o’clock. As if.’

  She had received my text, and sent him my contact details. When he’d cleared passport control, he texted.

  Would you like tea first? At 5?

  Switching to email, I replied that I’d be coming from Christmas shopping so tea would be great. I was unsure I could spend an hour talking to a man I’d never met, so I said I’d prefer 5.30. I told him to call if there was a problem, and that it would be fine to reschedule. Or, if he wanted to hold out for Susie, I wouldn’t mind if he cancelled altogether.

  In Soho at 5.20 my phone rang.

  ‘Now?’ I said out loud when I saw his number. ‘You’re cancelling now?’

  I was almost there so I let it go to answerphone.

  ‘Hi, Elizabeth,’ his message said. ‘It’s Robert. Checking in for our evening.’

  I smiled: he’d joked in his email that he was grateful to Susie for finding an understudy, but that he was new to going out with women he’d never met, so I’d have to forgive him if he was shy. Listening to the rest, I smiled again, but then I frowned. ‘Just letting you know I’m here, hoping you’re heading this way.’

  ‘Is that how he is?’ I asked myself out loud. ‘On my case before I’ve even arrived?’

  I played the message a second time, then I pressed delete.

  The front of the Curzon is floor-to-ceiling glass. He was standing at one of the tall tables, facing to the side: sharp suit, slim-fitted, a straight broad back. His thick, dark hair fell slightly over his face. I stared, wondering if he knew I was there. He shrugged his shoulders up, then down, slowly. Staring at his back, I realised I was turned on. ‘Oh no,’ I whispered as I opened the door. ‘That wasn’t the plan.’

  At the table, he held out his hand and said his name, asking, ‘Will you have some ginger tea?’

  He passed a cup, and his hand touched mine.

  ‘That’s a lot of bags,’ he said, taking them. I took them back. Is this guy for real? I wondered. Who orders tea for someone before they’ve arrived? Who takes a person’s bags when they’ve just that second met?

  For the next half-hour, he spoke like a chat-show host. Like a younger David Letterman or a college professor, he asked his questions rapid-fire, in a series of non sequiturs.

  One of them was, ‘What’s your comfort food?’ Before I answered, he was telling me, ‘Mine’s a rotisserie chicken, takeout, with a side of gratin dauphinois. My dad was French. He died when I was a kid but my mom talked about him all the time. That was his comfort food, too. She’s a New Yorker, just like me. So,’ he smiled, and took a breath. ‘What’d you buy?’

  When I’d heard his phone message, I’d thought his voice so-so. Playing it the second time I’d asked myself, could I sleep with this guy? Could I wake up to that voice? Could I listen to him speak for more than a half-hour without bailing? Now, with the lights of Shaftesbury Avenue streaking the Curzon glass, his honeyed East Coast rhythms floored me.

  ‘What’d you buy?’ he asked again, looking under the table at my bags.

  ‘Books, mainly. Books and CDs.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s what people asked for!’

  ‘How do you order your books?’

  The bags were clearly marked: Foyles, and Daunt Books. Susie had told me he’d lived in London eight years. He must know those are bookshops. ‘Do you mean, how do I choose them?’

  ‘No, I mean order them. How d’you order them?’

  ‘I didn’t. I went to the shop and bought them.’

  He frowned as though it was me who was being slow. ‘On the shelves,’ he said, and ‘How do you decide where to put –’

  ‘Oh! How do I arrange them? By the writer’s country. Or genre. Fiction, non-fiction. You know.’

  ‘Really?’ he said, as if I’d just told him I was made of moon dust. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously,’ I said.

  ‘Not alphabetically? Or by colour? Some people do it by size. I met a guy once –’

  After this initial stumble there were further questions. They came quickly and grew funnier and stranger. There were so many we missed the opening credits of the movie. Weeks later, when we were lovers, he told me he hadn’t really minded whether we’d watched it or not.

  He’d assumed I hadn’t either, and that my initial protestation at his choice of film was simply a way of playing, flirting, teasing. When he said that, I thought back to what else the Curzon had been screening that night, and reminded him that I’d pointed out two I’d rather see.

  ‘You were going through the motions,’ he said. ‘Once we’d met, and started to talk, you didn’t care what we watched. The movie was a pretext.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For the date. Pretty soon it was obvious we were on a date.’

  ‘But the movie was the date.’

  ‘We didn’t have to see it! It was just a cover.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For this. It was a pretext for this. Come here.’ He pulled me across the bed. ‘Do what you did to me this morning. Slowly, though. I want to watch.’

  ‘But –’ I paused.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You’d already bought the tickets. So you must’ve known we’d watch it.’

  ‘Oh, honey.’ He placed both hands on my upper back. ‘Please. Do that thing again.’

  After Nebraska we’d found a noodle bar on Wardour Street. We ordered, then he explained his approach to securing the affections of a woman in whom he was interested.

  ‘She looks over her shoulder, I’m there. I put myself in her way.’

  ‘If that doesn’t work?’

  ‘I track her. Chase her. Hunt her down.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘When she’s worn out, I bring her to the ground and tear her to pieces.’

  He’d reached behind my neck and touched a finger lightly to my skin. ‘This is where I start. This is the spot. Just here.’

  I’d felt a flicker pass over my whole body, like a tongue.

  He asked for the bill, then he pulled a yellow Selfridges bag from his satchel. ‘I went Christmas shopping too.’

  I didn’t understand. He pushed it towards me, and when still I didn’t, h
e opened the bag himself and took out a tissue-wrapped parcel which he placed in my hands. Inside was a thick, soft, black scarf, made from a kind of crinkled crêpe with deep-cut folds.

  ‘But we’ve hardly even met. Why are you giving me a gift?’

  ‘It’s a nice thing to do. Susie told me you’ve just had an important birthday. It’s nearly Christmas. I had time after my flight.’

  ‘What if I hadn’t liked it?’

  ‘I took a chance. So, do you?’

  ‘Yes! But why would you give me –? Oh.’

  ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘I’ve heard about guys who do that on dates! It’s funny.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘They always get the woman a present.’

  ‘I don’t go on dates. I mean I haven’t, not for twenty years.’

  ‘Gosh.’ I held the scarf to my face. It was soft, and thicker than it looked.

  ‘You look good in it.’

  ‘I haven’t put it on yet.’

  ‘You will, I mean.’

  ‘Quite a chance to take.’

  ‘I could have returned it, if you’d flung it back at me.’

  I looked at him, and took a deep breath.

  I was thirty-six when I left my husband. We’d met when I was very young, and before him, I’d had only one boyfriend, at school. A couple of years on from my divorce, I was in Clerkenwell with my French friend Magali. The trio that evening played straight-ahead jazz. By the end of the opening number she was thinking of booking them for her club, and suggested we stay for the whole set. After the break, just before they started up again, she told me she’d seen me at the bar with the bassist, and had seen him offer me a drink.

  ‘Why did you say no?’ she whispered. ‘You like him, right?’

  ‘He’s cute,’ I agreed.

  ‘So why not let him buy you a drink?’

  ‘Because I can buy my own.’

  ‘Sheez.’ She shook her head. ‘What are you scared of? Promise me, next time a guy does that, see how it feels to say yes.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then drink it. And talk with him a bit. Saying yes to a drink doesn’t mean you have to marry him. Talk for five minutes. If you don’t like him, then say thank you and walk away. It’s what people do. It’s normal. Now let me listen to these guys. Some of us have work to do.’