relationship with Billy because he was off to university soon; besides, she felt it had been tainted with trauma. She packaged up his shirt, leather coat, socks and boots, and got a courier to deliver them to his house with a short but loving note of regret. Like most teenage boys in similar circumstances, he was depressed for about a week, then started using his new skills on new women, some of them being several years older than him.
Billy reminded Linda a little of Richard, although in what way she was hard-pressed to identify, and she felt she needed to spend some time just being herself and getting Richard out of her head. So she got a job in New York, took a succession of new lovers, and enjoyed herself tremendously, although she did not marry again. She returned to England for good in 2002. At this time she felt she wanted to be home, because the mood in the U.S. was depressed and angry. Like many people she no longer felt safe anywhere. The British were – as Richard would say – grumblebums as usual, but they were her grumblebums, and home was home.
* * *
By April of 2002, condominium prices in New York were stabilising, and Linda was able to offload her apartment without the price slashing she had anticipated. It was a good time to be going back to England, having a holiday in the countryside and making plans.
By the time Linda actually arrived at her holiday cottage in Cumbria, she was worn out and in need of about a hundred years of sleep, and she really didn’t care if a handsome prince was going to be around to wake her up. But the human body being what it is, robust and self-repairing if fed well, she woke up next morning to the sound of birds and the smell of, what was that strange smell … oh yes, fresh air. Wrapped in an eiderdown, she absorbed the scene before her: grass, bright green, several acres, flowing into woodland which in turn bordered Coniston Water. When she went for a walk later, she found that Cumbria Way was nearby and she could walk until she dropped, if she wanted. Few people were in evidence as Easter was over by this time, and she felt her vitality start to return.
But with remoteness and solitude comes thinking. The Curse of Homo sapiens sapiens (cogito ergo sum really miserable), which most of us try to avoid unless it is happy thinking. She thought of Richard. No-one she had been with in the U.S., nice as they were, sexy as they could be, had come close to him. Was that because she couldn’t have him? Linda didn’t regret her reaction to his misguided proposal, but she was starting to feel she needed to see him again, or at least find out what he was doing. So she found herself at the local library, online, and trying, somewhat guiltily, to spy on his life.
She tried a biography: nothing there except the more recent additions and the information that he was back in Australia. She found some photos, and her heart started thumping uncomfortably. Then she thought of his teaching work, and tried NIDA, and the universities which ran drama-related courses, and there he was, included on the staff listings of one of the universities, and with a departmental phone number and email. There might be someone on the end of it who was disposed to pass a message onto him. She logged out quickly before she did something stupid. Her heart by now was beating in her throat and threatening to jump out on the floor and run off and find him itself. Eventually, once she had caught her heart and returned it to her chest with a stern admonition to behave itself in future, the following email was forwarded onto Richard’s private email address by the Departmental Administrative Officer.
Subject: Just Hello to Richard MacLean
Thank you for forwarding this message.
Hi Richard
This is from Linda. You know, reddish hair, bad temper, arty? I hope the kind person forwarding this on doesn’t think I am a fan. Well, I am, but not that sort of fan.
I am writing this from Ulverstone. I’m having a two week break in Cumbria. I have recently returned from a six year stint in New York and I must say I’m strangely glad to be back with the grumbly old British.
I would love to know what you are up to, I won’t write any more now but if you want to email you have the address, and if you want to phone me here is the number.
Cheers Linda
Richard sat with the email for a while, and then quickly turned off the mail program. Then just as quickly he turned it on again and read the email again. Like Miss Elizabeth Bennett with her letter from Darcy, he had to keep reading it, over and over. He eventually started writing.
Dear Linda
It was great to hear from you. I don’t know what to write to you. I start typing stilted, formal phrases and thank god for the backspace key. Can you imagine writing letters with quill and parchment? The frustration of knowing you could have phrased it better but had run out of time, paper or ink.
You know I’m not into bullshit. And that I am, naturally, a bit of a drama queen. So I have questions for you.
1. Are you writing because you are married and bored? Because if so I have to tell you I’m still not so blasé about you that I want to buy into that.
2. Are you writing because you are single and lonely?
3. Or are you writing because you miss me, and us, and you find yourself wishing that we could start again, sedately, and see where it leads us this time?
Sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t feel I have the time to fart around, these days, hence I am coming to the point.
I’ve grown up a bit in the last few years. Eliza is now eighteen and spends her time playing fiddle in a band, Bluegrass and Irish, if you can believe it, and studying Psychology. Oh, and going out with young men. One begins to feel rather de trop. But Eliza has given me a bit of instruction in how to be a modern male. She says I’m still a bit MCP, and that women are not going to put up with that anymore. I could have told her that nine years ago once I had the leisure to think about my stupidity.
If you are writing because of Possibility Number Two, I would suggest you find yourself a new lover.
But if you are writing because of Number Three, I would feel like hopping on a plane and joining you in Cumbria. Or, at the very least, talking to you on the phone.
Richard
Linda opened her emails and read Richard’s, smiling at his familiar honesty. Her mouth twisted a little, and tears ran down her cheeks. Was this sentiment, or love? she wondered, and decided she didn’t really care which, so she wrote back immediately with what was in her heart. She confirmed that number three was her motivation, that going to the library to get her emails involved an unwelcome delay, and that she would be waiting for his call.
He called her at some ungodly hour London time, without reference to the World Clock, because he couldn’t wait, and she was awake and ready for his call, despite the hour, because she couldn’t sleep.
Chapter 6 ~ MacLeans in Love
In which Eliza finds a new love and Richard finds one he had mislaid.
Eliza, now eighteen, fended off the eager young med student at the door, telling him her father was extremely protective and would release the hounds at the slightest provocation.
“Come on, Eliza,” he begged, his speech only a little slurred. “He won’t know. Let me climb up the ivy, clamber in your window. Make mad passionate love to you.”
She became alarmingly Aspergery, having found many uses for this role over the years. The lads from her Tuesday lab class didn’t call her Hottie MacNerd
