Read Online Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty - Free Book Online
Authors: Louise Doughty
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Truly there was nothing better: the moments when this man that I wanted so badly wanted me even more badly in return.
*
He didn’t ring me for a fortnight and during that fortnight I came to the conclusion, quite naturally, that I had been dumped. I resisted ringing him myself more out of pride than judgement. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t even have the courage to call me and tell me he had finished with me – I was furious and, in my fury, certain that my mourning for him was as good as done. When he eventually rang, I would be able to be suitably cool.
It was a Saturday morning. I knew it was him calling as soon as my mobile vibrated in the pocket of my jeans. There was no one else who would ring me on a Saturday morning. I contemplated screening his call even as I slipped the phone out of my pocket and raised it to my ear. ‘Dodgson, hey Dodgson, it’s me…’ He liked to call me by my surname, a legacy of the boys’ grammar school he had attended, where, after he had stood up to the boys who tried to punch him for his accent, he had thrived. He liked to use my initials too. LD. Disbelievingly, I heard myself say, ‘Hi…’ in a seductive, luxurious tone, as if I was languishing on my sofa dressed in a negligee and furry mules, twisting a string of pearls between my fingers.
‘Fancy a walk on the cliffs, Dodgson?’ I glanced outside the window, where a wild wind shook at the fragile panes of glass. I had just come back from a trip to the newsagents and was planning a cup of coffee and three biscuits with the weekend newspaper and the gas fire on maximum. I was still wearing my hooded fleece and parka. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Yeah, okay.’
*
We met at the end of the esplanade where the cliffs took a rash swoop upwards, away from town, at an incline sharp enough to discourage both the very young and very old – on a day like this we would have the cliffs to ourselves. David was there first. He was wearing his big old suede jacket and a beanie hat. The middle button on the jacket was dangling by a thread, about to fall. It had been like that for as long as I had known him. He looked pale and handsome, a little tired – there were slight bags beneath his eyes. We stared at each other as we approached and I had time to appreciate, consciously and openly, what I loved about him, this man – the opacity of him, a mercurial mixture of pride and insecurity, a capacity for hiding things twinned with a terror of not being found. Here he was, this man, and that was all he was, and his life had collided with mine when we could so easily have never met, and I knew then that I loved him because of his faults, not in spite of them, and that I would no more change an ounce of him than sew that middle button back on his coat. It came to me that he had been involved with someone else when he and I met – I remembered those phone calls in the pub – and that he had not been open with me, and that he had discarded her, perhaps only recently, and that a similar fate would probably be mine, and that I didn’t care: I felt the swoop and fall of all this and knew I was in bigger trouble than I had ever been in my life.
He smiled as I neared him. My stomach folded. All the reproaches I had been saving up for the last fortnight seemed childish and petulant. He held out his hand as I drew close and I extended mine. He took my hand firmly in his and pulled me after him as we turned to walk up the steep incline. We took wide strides, panting, layered in clothing and beaten by the wind. When I opened my mouth, the cold air snatched the breath from it. The sky above was hard white.
At the top of the incline, the walk was open to the elements. There was no fence between the path and the cliff and occasionally a tourist took a tumble from it; sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. Our coastal stretch was not picturesque but we were widely acknowledged as the best place for miles to come and top yourself. As David and
*
He didn’t ring me for a fortnight and during that fortnight I came to the conclusion, quite naturally, that I had been dumped. I resisted ringing him myself more out of pride than judgement. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t even have the courage to call me and tell me he had finished with me – I was furious and, in my fury, certain that my mourning for him was as good as done. When he eventually rang, I would be able to be suitably cool.
It was a Saturday morning. I knew it was him calling as soon as my mobile vibrated in the pocket of my jeans. There was no one else who would ring me on a Saturday morning. I contemplated screening his call even as I slipped the phone out of my pocket and raised it to my ear. ‘Dodgson, hey Dodgson, it’s me…’ He liked to call me by my surname, a legacy of the boys’ grammar school he had attended, where, after he had stood up to the boys who tried to punch him for his accent, he had thrived. He liked to use my initials too. LD. Disbelievingly, I heard myself say, ‘Hi…’ in a seductive, luxurious tone, as if I was languishing on my sofa dressed in a negligee and furry mules, twisting a string of pearls between my fingers.
‘Fancy a walk on the cliffs, Dodgson?’ I glanced outside the window, where a wild wind shook at the fragile panes of glass. I had just come back from a trip to the newsagents and was planning a cup of coffee and three biscuits with the weekend newspaper and the gas fire on maximum. I was still wearing my hooded fleece and parka. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Yeah, okay.’
*
We met at the end of the esplanade where the cliffs took a rash swoop upwards, away from town, at an incline sharp enough to discourage both the very young and very old – on a day like this we would have the cliffs to ourselves. David was there first. He was wearing his big old suede jacket and a beanie hat. The middle button on the jacket was dangling by a thread, about to fall. It had been like that for as long as I had known him. He looked pale and handsome, a little tired – there were slight bags beneath his eyes. We stared at each other as we approached and I had time to appreciate, consciously and openly, what I loved about him, this man – the opacity of him, a mercurial mixture of pride and insecurity, a capacity for hiding things twinned with a terror of not being found. Here he was, this man, and that was all he was, and his life had collided with mine when we could so easily have never met, and I knew then that I loved him because of his faults, not in spite of them, and that I would no more change an ounce of him than sew that middle button back on his coat. It came to me that he had been involved with someone else when he and I met – I remembered those phone calls in the pub – and that he had not been open with me, and that he had discarded her, perhaps only recently, and that a similar fate would probably be mine, and that I didn’t care: I felt the swoop and fall of all this and knew I was in bigger trouble than I had ever been in my life.
He smiled as I neared him. My stomach folded. All the reproaches I had been saving up for the last fortnight seemed childish and petulant. He held out his hand as I drew close and I extended mine. He took my hand firmly in his and pulled me after him as we turned to walk up the steep incline. We took wide strides, panting, layered in clothing and beaten by the wind. When I opened my mouth, the cold air snatched the breath from it. The sky above was hard white.
At the top of the incline, the walk was open to the elements. There was no fence between the path and the cliff and occasionally a tourist took a tumble from it; sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. Our coastal stretch was not picturesque but we were widely acknowledged as the best place for miles to come and top yourself. As David and
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