Perfectly Correct Read online

  He woke at once and moved on top of her in the darkness, kissing her face and neck and breasts with gentle sleepy tenderness. ‘OK,’ he said agreeably.

  ‘I didn’t mean …’ Louise started.

  ‘I love you,’ he said, and slid inside her. ‘You are absolutely the most perfect woman in the world and I love you.’

  Friday

  LOUISE WOKE AT DAWN to kisses and more loving. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered telling Miriam that lovemaking four times in twenty-four hours was a ridiculous Lawrentian fiction. She giggled at the thought and Andrew Miles, always responsive to her desires, obligingly tickled her. The subsequent play – as wanton as kittens and as hysterical as schoolchildren – left them amorously entwined on the floor amid Andrew’s clothes and Louise’s supper tray.

  Finally they separated. ‘I have to go to the farm,’ Andrew said. ‘Pigs want feeding. Shall I bring back anything for breakfast?’

  Louise blinked at his assumption that he would be returning for breakfast. ‘I was going to work this morning,’ she said firmly.

  ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But I suppose we’ll have breakfast.’

  Louise opened her mouth to argue and then checked herself. He wanted to come back for breakfast, and she wanted him in her house. For the first time in nine years she glimpsed the possibility of a life with a man who spent his time with her, who was not always obliged to be elsewhere, whose primary loyalty was not always to another woman.

  ‘What do you eat for breakfast?’ she asked cautiously. It was like a whole new world slowly extending before her. She had a feeling that croissants and coffee were not enough for a man who made love all night and then got up at six to feed pigs.

  ‘Bacon,’ he said. ‘Eggs, toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread. Cereal to start and toast and marmalade to finish. Lots and lots of tea. Nothing special.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything like that,’ Louise confessed, rather dashed. ‘I have a baguette in my freezer.’

  Andrew, pulling on baggy corduroy trousers, chuckled. ‘It sounds positively obscene. Come up to the farm with me, and let’s eat.’

  Louise suddenly found that she was hugely hungry. ‘I’ll have a shower and come up,’ she said. ‘Don’t wait for me. I’ll be up in half an hour.’

  Andrew, shrugging himself into a tartan shirt which woefully clashed with the trousers, shook his head. ‘No. I want you with me. I’m sick of you being here and me being up the hill. I want you with me all day and I want you in my bed tonight.’

  Louise held the bedcovers up to her naked shoulders. ‘I have things to do,’ she said. ‘I have a book to review and essays to mark. Just because we … just because you … just because … doesn’t mean that we have to make any big commitment to each other. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘God in heaven!’ Andrew swore, abruptly sitting down on the corner of the bed. ‘What do I have to do to stop you tarting around? I love you, I want to make love with you, probably as soon as I have had some breakfast. Moreover I want you to cook my breakfast while I feed the pigs. And then I want us to have dinner together. I want us to have tea together. I want to go down to the Holly Bush and get drunk together. And then tonight,’ he raised his voice and brought his fist down on to the bed with each word as a hammering emphasis, ‘tonight I want you in my bed!’

  Louise paused for no more than a moment. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said with what she feared was a simper. ‘All right by me.’

  A broad grin spread across Andrew’s face and he gathered her naked warmth into his arms and dragged her out of bed and on to his lap.

  ‘What about the pigs?’ Louise asked as they rolled lazily back into the shambles of the duvet and the pillows.

  ‘They’ll understand,’ Andrew said.

  Louise sat in the warmth of the Land-Rover while Andrew picked up pieces of broken hurdle and fence post and stacked them tidily against the orchard fence. The grass in the orchard was starry with dew, each blade of grass drenched in a string of droplets. Andrew lifted a pile of small pieces of wood and trudged with them down through the orchard to Rose’s van and threw them down at her doorstep. His big boots left bold dark tracks through the luminous grass. Louise found herself watching him in a way she had never watched any other man, appraising the broadness of his back and the strength of his shoulders; looking at him not only as a lover, but also as a potential husband who would care for her, a man who would father her children.

  He was generous, she thought. He was thoughtful. He did not have to carry the kindling to Rose’s door, he could have left it stacked in the orchard and Rose would have helped herself. Louise put her head on one side and watched Andrew make a second trip with another armful of wood. He was a good man, kindly. He would make a good husband, she thought. If he was so considerate of the comfort of an old lady he would be a pleasant man to live with. He would be patient with small children, he would make a good father.

  Louise checked her own thoughts with a guilty start. Liberated feminist women do not assess men as husbands, they do not plan marriage the moment they climb out of bed. But then she shrugged. She had never felt like this about any man before. She had seen Toby through a haze of envy when she wished he had chosen her instead of Miriam. She had never analysed his behaviour and wondered if he were indeed the most desirable man she knew. She had accepted her old judgement, the judgement of a girl of twenty, that he was the man she wanted. She knew now, at twenty-nine, that he was not.

  She looked at Andrew Miles with a clearer vision, thinking of her needs, of her future, and whether they could indeed make a relationship which would last for them both. She thought of the little Elizabethan manor farm and the fields around it, and the common stretching away from it and thought she would like to live there, as Rose had suggested, in the big farm bed with a baby on the way.

  He came to the Land-Rover and opened the door. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked as he started the engine and backed the vehicle carefully into the lane away from the wreckage of Louise’s fence.

  ‘I was thinking that you would make a nice husband,’ Louise said with rare honesty, breaking every rule of appropriate social behaviour between new lovers, and every rule of politically correct behaviour for liberated women.

  He turned his head and gave her a swift happy grin. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would. I will. I will make a wonderful husband to you. Let’s get married at once.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that!’ Louise protested immediately. ‘I was thinking theoretically.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ he said. ‘Of course we should get married.’

  Louise said nothing for a moment as he drove carefully up the lane and then turned in the gateway to his farm. He stopped the Land-Rover, switched off the engine and turned to look at her, resting his hand gently on her shoulder and then turning her face towards him. ‘I’m not joking,’ he said. ‘And I’m not theorising. I want to marry you and bring you here as my wife. I want children in the farmhouse again and a girl or a boy to have the farm when I’m dead. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted and I want you very much. Will you marry me, Louise?’

  ‘It’s so quick …’

  ‘I’ve known you and I’ve been caring for you for nearly a year,’ he said. ‘Anything that’s ever been a problem for you and I’ve been there. Septic tank, snow, gutters, chimneys. I’ve never stopped thinking about you and doing things for you. For nearly a year, Louise. That’s long enough.’

  ‘But I always paid you!’ Louise exclaimed.

  ‘Well, go on paying me!’ he said irritably. ‘But for God’s sake let’s get married and live in my house. You can pay me all you like.’

  Louise giggled irresistibly and Andrew pulled her gently into his arms. ‘Say yes,’ he whispered into her hair.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Louise had thought that Andrew had been joking about spending the entire day with her but she found that he meant precisely and simply what he said. She therefore spent the morning