The Man Who Understood Women by Rosemary Friedman

Author:Rosemary Friedman [Rosemary Friedman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781909807266
Publisher: Arcadia Books Limited
Published: 2013-02-08T16:00:00+00:00

All my Love

1967

It was the telegram in the Post Office that threw Iris off balance – not that it took very much to do that these days – the telegram that led her into the piped-music-washed womb of the coffee bar.

It was a very ordinary telegram clipped to the top of a pile of them on the clerk’s side of the counter. It was upside down and she read it through the glass partition. The coding at the top and the time of despatch were of no interest. It was the message that sent her into the valley of despair, hurrying to the solace of coffee and cheesecake and the acquisition of goodness knew how many undesirable calories. ‘All my love, Roy’. Four words.

She turned from the counter without buying her stamps, walked agitatedly down the street, sat down at the nearest table in the nearest coffee bar.

‘Yes, dear?’

The waitress, no more than nineteen, had black-ringed eyes with lashes so heavy it was a wonder to Iris she could see.

‘Coffee, please.’

‘Anythinktereat?’

Iris followed her gaze to the trolley laden with over-creamy cakes in papers, chocolate layer cake, humpbacked shiny éclairs, cartwheels of Danish pastry.

‘I’ll have some cheesecake.’

The girl scribbled on her pad, tore off the sheet, folded it and slipped it under the glass of paper serviettes. As she did so the man came in. They both saw him together, became linked, the nubile girl and the middle-aged woman, with a common bond of desire.

He walked like a panther, light and boneless, carrying his six feet like a feather, broad chest narrowing to slim hips, elegant suit following his every move. An actor, Iris thought, or could have been, more probably, an executive: authority radiated from him. He wore a red carnation in his buttonhole as if by right.

The waitress, rooted to the spot, sighed. ‘They always sit at Jean’s table. There’s no justice.’

‘Coffee and cheesecake,’ Iris said. She was used to dealing with daydreaming juniors.

‘Not one of our regulars. Wouldn’t mind taking him home.’

‘I am in rather a rush,’ Iris said.

He had sat down and was studying the menu while the sharp-nosed Jean waited patiently by his side.

‘I’ll have a Welsh rarebit, and coffee.’ He smiled dazzlingly at Jean, then, to her utter amazement, he smiled at Iris.

All my love, Roy. All her life, more often of late, she had longed to receive and, even more, to send so simple a message, so few words in which were implicit so infinite a meaning. All my love. She had so much to give, so very much. Sometimes it overflowed and engulfed her, reducing her to tears. She’d look in the mirror then, to dry her eyes and see what they all saw, a stout woman of middle age whom love had passed by.

It seemed incredible to Iris, incredible and indescribably painful, that no one realised that inside the fat and ugly body were thoughts, deeds, hopes and fears identical with those beneath the bosoms of the slim and beautiful. There was

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