He nodded.
‘And then there are things. I’m really, really interested in things. The lines of things, you see? The forms.’
All that talk, but done side by side, never front-to-front. The first time they sat down at a table, a year had passed. Hortensia had gone back to Brighton, completed her second year and then returned again to London for the summer and to work at Croydon. Peter had turned down his father’s contact and had interviewed for a job at Unilever; he’d been working for almost six months. While apart, they had spoken on the telephone a few times and a letter each had passed between them. The idea to sit down for a tea was his. He’d given her directions to his office. When she arrived, she found that she was out of breath.
‘Hortensia,’ he said, entering the reception area.
He looked composed.
‘Hello, Peter.’
They shook hands and she detected in his face some small pleasure at seeing her. He watched her for a few seconds and she liked this.
The desk-lady went back to her seat, but Hortensia could tell her presence was a kind of disturbance, a wobble in the balance of things.
‘It’s so good to see you.’
She smiled, dropped her head to the side. This was a youthful habit that in only a few years she would lose.
‘Am I too early?’
‘Not at all. I have a break, now. After you.’
They walked along the Embankment. There was a building site nearby and the noise of drills, post-war efforts of remaking, gave a good excuse not to talk; Hortensia had nothing to say. People watched them walk, many turned around, and she decided that was because they looked handsome together. She moved closer to him and toyed with hooking her arm into his. Decided against.
‘You look … lovely,’ Peter said.
‘Pardon? Oh. Thank you.’ She checked the ground, watched her feet, watched the paving. She wondered where her courage had gone.
There was a tea room at nearby Charing Cross, Peter mentioned, and they turned a corner and walked towards the station.
He asked for coffee with milk and she said she wanted black tea. They sat in the corner of the cafeteria away from the window, from the stares of passing commuters. There were sconces along the cream-coloured walls and Hortensia fingered the cheesecloth on the table, the soft fuzzy skin of it on the tips of her fingers. It was warm in the corner, but she still rubbed her hands together as she sat. Finding her courage again, she started,
‘You look so … like a proper working man. It’s good.’
His eyes were a very grey-blue and sometimes, if he looked at you in a particular way, you could be fooled into thinking there was something green there too.
‘It’s not the best money yet, but there are prospects. Maybe they’ll send me to Africa.’
‘Goodness!’
The time they’d been apart seemed to have done something to them. She felt a woman and, finally sitting down together, across a table, he seemed a man who didn’t just happen to be wherever she was; it had been planned and arranged – on purpose.
‘How are the lines. The forms?’
‘Two more years.’
The conversation found its stride. It seemed easy to tell Peter that she had been cheated of a mark because she was black and a woman. He nodded, frowned and apologised as if he’d committed the slight. He knitted his eyebrows, which were a darker brown than his hair. She’d thought he would ask her to prove it, ask for a clear explanation. In fact she’d been afraid he’d do that, not only because it would mean he didn’t understand, but because she had no proof. She had only a feeling that she trusted and it meant something to her that he trusted it too.
They sipped their beverages, both warming their hands against the mugs.
‘And your parents?’ She was asking after their health, but inside she was asking: what are we doing and, if we do it, how will it all go?
‘The same.’ He smiled into his cup, took a gulp, set the mug down, looked around the teashop.
She walked him back to his office.
‘So, have you ever thought about travelling around. The world, I mean?’
Hortensia frowned. ‘Not really.’
‘For instance, going really far, somewhere like Africa, for instance.’
She smiled.
‘Well?’
‘It would be like going home. For the first time.’
He nodded. ‘True,’ he said, a little pink with embarrassment. He scuffed the underside of his shoe back and forth along the pavement. They stood to the side as his colleagues walked by. ‘I have to get back,’ he finally said and bent to land a kiss on her cheek.
It took her by surprise. Later she would tease him about taking a year to make up his mind.