There was the dark shape of the Wolseley parked at the top of the road. The headlights blinked in welcome at her approach. The passenger door was open; she jumped in beside him and they clasped each other awkwardly across the hand brake.
She was aware of the bristly tweed of his jacket against her cheek and his unique scent—a combination of soap, tobacco and wool and the oily metallic smell of the workshop. Strength and comfort streamed from him like a warm current. She felt, as always in his presence, a deep sense of relief. Now she was perfectly safe.
They disengaged from their somewhat contorted embrace and looked at each other. In the shadows cast by the streetlamp outside his eyes were black and unreadable.
“My friend,” he said in a kind of wonderment, taking her hand and kneading it in his. “You’re here.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come. Waited all night, perhaps.”
“I’m just glad I didn’t miss you.”
“I would have come sooner if I’d known you were by yourself all this time. I’ve been kicking around at home with nothing to do but think of you.”
“Same here.”
“What a waste.” He put her hand up to his lips and kissed it.
At the tap of feet on the pavement they moved apart instinctively, guiltily. The passerby was a stranger to Jean, a commuter, with overcoat and rolled umbrella, returning late from the station. If he had glanced into the car he would have seen a plain middle-aged woman in slippers and an even older man with thinning hair and heavy-rimmed glasses—such unlikely objects of passion, he could hardly have guessed at the longing that flowed between them.
“I wish . . .” Howard began and then stopped.
“What?”
“I was just thinking, I wish I’d found you years ago.”
“You make me sound like a lost glove,” Jean laughed.
“Well that’s a good image. The missing half of a pair.”
She had come running out of the house without a coat and it was cold in the car with the engine stilled and the darkness pressing at the glass. He noticed her shivering.
“We could go somewhere warm. A pub, if you like?”
She shook her head, recalling those evenings spent in the White Swan with Frank while he drank himself into a good mood and then out the other side again.
“We have two empty houses between us,” she said. “Surely there’s no reason for us to skulk in the car? Why should we be lonely?”
And yet the guilt was there between them like an unwanted third person, interfering, spoiling everything.
“No reason at all,” he agreed. “Just say which you prefer.”
Jean imagined Mrs. Bowland stationed at the front room window, observing and judging, and her defiance faltered.
“Yours,” she said.
He nodded. “Mine, then.”
Only a faint yellow glow leaked from the curtained windows in Burdett Road. All was still.
“Everyone’s back in their hutches,” Howard whispered as he let them into the house.
Jean felt a momentary tremor of unease at this act of trespass, but then he switched the lamp on in the hallway and the feeling vanished with the darkness. He led her into the sitting room and turned on the gas fire, which emitted a bluish light and a high-pitched whine and sudden, dramatic heat. She had never seen this room before, with its armchairs and television set; as a guest, she had been ushered into the front parlor, upstairs to the workshop for a dress fitting or into the garden.
They kissed, for a long time, gently at first and then less so. Then Howard pulled away and, holding her face, said, “Will you stay tonight? I don’t think I can bear to take you back home.”
“In Gretchen’s bed?”
“No. In mine.”
She remembered the single divans with their matching bedspreads and the chilly chasm between them.
He mistook her hesitation and said, “Or here,” and before she could correct him, he dashed out of the room and upstairs. Moments later he reappeared dragging a quilted eiderdown and blanket, which he spread out in front of the gas fire.
“All right. Just here,” she said. “Now, kiss me again.”
He knelt down to undress her, his shaking hands fumbling over every button and zip and hook, until she was naked in front of him. Then he stopped and looked up at her with a troubled expression.
“I haven’t done this for seven years. Will you forgive me if it goes badly?”
Jean laughed, amazed at her own boldness in displaying her body while he was still fully clothed. It was the strangest feeling, placing herself in someone else’s power with complete confidence. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.