It was not from looking at him. Her love came instead from looking inside herself at what he made her feel. He was lanky and had a good physique not yet turned to fat. Perhaps he looked after his body. She imagined him in the gym, weights in his hands, or running on that relentless conveyor belt thing with music pounding a rhythm in his ear buds. But he was not hunky handsome. It was two weeks ago when he had come down from his office he shared with one of those power-dressing executive chickens. The junior office girls called them that, and were jealous and confident that they could out-preen those female executives. Sylvia looked at the young man in his trim suit and genuine leather shoes tapping briskly on the stairs as he descended.
In the reception area there were a number of girls at their computers, maybe as many as twenty and he looked around. Sylvia looked up at him and he noticed, so he came over immediately, to ask her help to locate an ancient cardboard file. Nice to be distracted away from the boringly unamusing keyboard she had as a companion all day. She led him briskly down the corridor to the old file store, the files she and the girls had not yet copied onto hard-discs. As she inserted her key, she turned to him, “What is your name, love?” He did not answer. But he came to an abrupt halt as she had suddenly stood in front of the locked door. With her sudden stop, his hand went out to touch her shoulder as he stopped himself. She felt herself shiver. And yet she thought immediately that his hand was not cold. Nor was he one of the more creepy executives. The door opened outwards, and she moved back against his body. She almost gasped at the contact as she looked in his eyes and excused herself. His apologetic smile had its impact, too. Oh, she thought, was she going to get slapped into another of those cheap romances in some impossible role as an office tart, again. He was new, and probably had not heard about the pathetic little drama that Bernhard had dragged her through last year. This one was new since then and office gossip replenished itself quickly.
But perhaps he had heard and might try something in this dark quiet space, shrouded by ancient files. He seemed confident but efficient and directed. Yet his smile said something. She moved into the filing room, and again asked his name. He told her, Jonathon, but modified it to Jon as he looked around at the surprisingly large array of shelves and boxes and folders. “So, you are all getting this lot typed in, are you?” he said impressed by the task.
“Can I help you find something, Jon?” And added, “I’m Sylvie.”
“I know,” he said, “you’re Sylvie. “And, no; I’ll have to dig out what I need. It is a letter from a long-ago author. Someone who’s just died and they want to write an obituary about him.” He was looking round the shelves and seemed to be locating what he wanted. “The more they write about him, the more books we sell.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds a bit commercial, doesn’t it?” He seemed a bit apologetic and smiled at her again, and looked towards her in the shadowy room. He gave her his engaging smile. She was leaning against the doorpost looking at him, wondering how he knew her name. What did he know about her. And her indiscretions, if that is what you would call them. And, of course, the gossip would have made something out of her indiscretion last year. As he turned his smile on her, he hesitated, “No, I don’t know much about you.” And then added surprisingly shyly, “I have just noticed you behind your computer screen, sometimes.” She felt embarrassed; or was she a bit anxious in this dark room with a young man who had been noticing her?
He turned back to a shelf that he seemed to have quickly located and in a moment took down a box. Turned back towards the door and towards Sylvie, he passed close as he left the room. “I’ll take this to the canteen and look through it,” he said. She nodded, locking the door. “Come and have a cup of tea,” he invited.
She looked down embarrassed at her shoes, “OK.” It was not actually the time for her tea break, but she could be excused for granting the wishes of an executive of the company. Oh, she thought, is this another discretion coming up.
There was no one serving tea in the canteen, only a line of four machines along part of one wall - coffee, tea, snacks. They sat together at a table, with no-one else in the large room. He rummaged through the box of papers seeking the facts about the deceased author and sipped his tea. She looked at his calm, quiet, well-dressed presence. What was she doing here with him? Was he just being friendly, or polite; were there vibrations between them? She excused herself to go to the toilet, and he grunted an acknowledgement.
She locked the door. And she took some deep breathes. She began to tell herself that this means nothing. She could go down to the disco and find some stranger to make friends with for the evening. But somehow this seemed different. It was their workplace, so, was there a different and more serious bond to be established. Actually, she told herself, this means nothing; what was she looking for. She must, she thought, be a lonely woman and searching. It wasn’t the way she saw herself. She wandered back to the table. “Do you need me anymore? Shall I go back to my jolly computer,” she said, sightly cheekily.
“If you need to.” He seemed to be stashing the papers back in the box, “I think I’ve got as much as is necessary.” So, she sat down again, opposite him. “How long have you been here, in this place.” And he looked at the wall and the ceiling as if he needed to indicate the building and the company they worked for.
“Oh, since I left school,” she said, almost as if she were in an interview. Was he awkward with her, she wondered. She was feeling awkward with him. “And that was quite a while ago,” she added.
He was looking at the floor on the other side of the canteen. “Here’s the office cat,” he pointed out inconsequentially, and there it was stalking elegantly and slowly across the room, taking no notice of them.
“Do you like cats,” she asked inanely. It was not an exciting conversation. So far.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I live alone and I’ve been told to get a cat to keep me company.”
“Well, that’s an option.” And then she said cheekily, as there was nothing to lose, and as he was moving his chair back to go. “Why don’t you get a girl-friend to keep you company?”
His chair stopped moving back. But he stayed with his head looking down and his arms on the table. Then he looked up and said, equally cheekily “Is this an offer.” And he gave her his winning smile again as he began to stand up.
....o.000000.o….
She went home wondering about Jon. He certainly dressed well, but his conversation was dire. But at least there was no feverish and sweaty indiscretion for the office to laugh about. He made no appearance for a week or two, and she had to assume that all her anxious wondering for those twenty minutes or so, had been completely made up in her mind. Good, at least there were decent blokes about. Good that there were even decent executives around, who didn’t assume they owned you.
She didn’t often go to the disco to pick up strangers, and certainly not on her own. But on the Saturday three days later she seriously wondered if she was a lonely girl. A sad thought that. In the end she did not go. On the Monday a letter came. She had enquired about a course at the Open University, in philosophy. She wondered, ironically, which would make her less lonely – a stranger at the disco or a course on philosophy. That is, if she was lonely. She would have a talk with Amelia. Sylvie had known Amelia since school. They were those best of friends who listened well to each other, but always thought the other one was getting a better deal in life. Amelia was certainly not lonely. She had boyfriends all the time, though a different one every time Sylvie heard about them. Perhaps, that was just as lonely. They needed to chat about what they each wanted in their not-so-young lives now.
So, they arranged for a pub drink later in the week. Amelia had always been against that ‘indiscretion’ last year. Even before it became one. But to Sylvie’s surprise she was all for Jon. It was impossible to convince Amelia that there was absolutely and completely nothing there; they’d had tea together, that’s all, and he had not said a word, just looked at the papers in his box, and pointed out the cat. And of course, when it came to discussing the purpose of life, Amelia was all for forgetting about university and philosophy – and to go for Jon. “Much better for the hormones,” she advised. And she stuck to it.
Philosophy had been her father’s interest, besides his union activities. He had died five years ago, and she had heard about Emmanuel Kant, and Freud, and Wittgenstein drove her father mad with incomprehension. She had been good at arty things, she liked pottery. But she had also begun to notice that if she saw a young baby in a pram in the street, she found herself looking longingly. Her Mum had always been adamant – do... not... be… a… one… parent… family. And she could not agree more.
Amelia had said she would take Sylvie out shopping. The important thing is to wear something striking, “What you must wear are clothes that make men want you to take them off. So, they don’t have to be beautiful clothes in themselves. They just need to hint at what is underneath.” Amelia, no doubt, knew exactly what sort of clothes they were. From what she always related, she was always taking her clothes off. Do, I want to go through all that, Sylvie wondered, just to get a baby perhaps. She thought that, really, she wanted someone who wanted her for what she was. And to be fair, for all Amelia’s adventurous dress-sense and clothes stripping, she had not got much further than Sylvie.
It was weeks and weeks, literally weeks before she even caught a glimpse of Jon again. And he had obviously not been snooping around looking over the girls typing all day. He just was not around. It was not exactly that he was a good-dresser, nor that he was an executive, he was only an average good-looker; nor even that she knew he had his sex organs, just as she herself did; they had only had tea-time fun momentarily cheeking each other, and that was… fun, it counted for something. It was his honest decent smile she kept seeing in her mind. And that could win anyone, and it probably did. He lived alone and with, or without a cat, but she bet in her sinking heart he had an address book of girls he could choose from. Her mind was becoming silly; perhaps she should take to drink. And she bought herself a bottle of wine for a Saturday evening. It became weekly, but not more. She knew how her brother had got into that for a year or so in his teens. She did sign up for a course at the University, distance-learning and part-time. It was on business studies, and the first thing she learned on the course was its boredom. But quickly a tutor got her interested in co-operative ownership structures. She didn’t know what they were till she was enthused about such co-ownership. Just right for the daughter of a philosophical Union man!
Such an enthusiasm tweaked a lot of hormones in her. But then what? One Friday midday, Jon came wandering into the digitising room of girls. He was looking around. He sauntered over casually and stopped by Brenda, patted her on the shoulder and gave her one of his very-decent-bloke smiles. It was exactly what she had not wanted, as all that from a couple of months ago was fading fast. Now, it leapt again, a captive animal trapped inside her, leaping about with eager frustration. Lucky Brenda, but she said she didn’t care, and may have even said it out loud to herself. Astonishingly, more than astonishingly, he moved on from Brenda and headed for Sylvie. It was exactly what she didn’t want to have to deal with again. There was just nothing about him really…
But he stopped by her desk as she insisted on finishing the sentence she was keying in. There was nothing she could do. And she just looked up at him. It seemed the whole room must be looking at her. This was seriously bad, and she choked back her will to live. And said, “Do you want the filing room again? Someone else died?” She thought it might have been amusing. But he was not smiling and in fact looked tense.
“No,” he said, “come up to the canteen for a cup of tea.”
After the last wordless teatime with him, this did not seem a particularly thrilling invitation. But she found herself getting up from her keyboard and saying, “Yes.”
She was feeling nervous but telling herself she was not. On the way to the door. she managed to trip on someone’s litter bin, and he had to put out his hand to hold her steady. Now, definitely, all the girls must be looking at them.
....o.000000.o….
They sat down opposite each other. And she looked at him silently. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps quite a lot.” He looked awkward. “It is not really about work. I wondered if we would like to be…. Friends.”
“Friends, “she spluttered without thinking. “I need to know what you are thinking of.”
“I just thought we might get to know each other better.”
Sylvie was finding it hard to process this. It was not like the approach of a stranger at the disco! She sat back and took a deep breath which calmed her – a little. “Look, Jon. I might like to be friends with you,” she started, but shook her head, “No, I’d like to be more than friends.” It seemed, rightly or wrongly, that something straight needed to be laid out between them. “I need to get clear what you are suggesting or thinking. You know, this is a standard company, executives often thinking the admin girls on the computers are there to play with.” He winced slightly. “Sorry, but I’m nervous and not being good at this. It is not that I am suspicious of you. Definitely not you Jon. You are as decent a man as I have come across, I think. And that may be why I am nervous, simply that you are decent that makes me want more than friendship.”
He put out his hand as if to say that she did not need to say all this. But she did need to, which is why it came out all in a rush and clumsily. She tried to explain all this. He looked her in the eye. There had been no smile from him yet, “I am nervous, too. Perhaps what we both want could mean a lot to us both. A great deal to us both.” There was a question in his eyes, and in his tone of voice.” She sat back. Was she reassured. She left her hand where he had put his hand on hers. There were people on another table watching them. Perhaps listening in.
She said more quietly, almost without thinking at all, “If you are free perhaps you could come back to my place and we could talk about this. We need to be more relaxed.”
“Yes, we do,” he squeezed her hand very, very gently. “I am a cautious man, perhaps. I think we need to learn more about each other. I will be working till six…”
She quickly said, “I will wait behind till you are free.” Without saying any more, she stood up to go back to her station. She looked at the couple of women on the other table. One of them smiled at her.
....o.000000.o….
She stayed on after her usual time of 5 pm. She had her arrangement with him. It could be important, massive. But he is cautious. It is not, she knew, a question of making him like me, but of whether he will like me as I am. When they left at 6, it was raining. Neither had umbrellas. He decided they should take a taxi. She knew she should have said ‘no’. She did not trust her judgement. Despite her knowing he was a decent man, she could not trust her judgement.
But true to her judgement, he got the taxi to take them straight to the address she gave. Her conflict though had not relaxed, but still she let him in and they settled in her flat. He expected her to offer him some coffee, tea, perhaps something more relaxing. They were silent for two or three minutes. “We have to relax,” she said, feeling her turmoil.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “I can go round the corner to that convenience store and get a bottle of wine. Would you like that?”
“No,” she said abruptly. “Let’s be cautious, as you say. No alcohol tonight.” She felt she was being pedantic, perhaps tedious.
“OK, that’s fine. This is the getting-to-know-each-other phase, Right? And he took off his expensive jacket.
“If you say so.” She agreed, wondering how she could explain the things she had to.
“I don’t know how to say this. People talk, don’t they, and I heard about some story from last year that involved you.”
“So you know about me? Is that what you meant about getting to know each other.”
“No, not at all,” and he stopped, “Well yes. I can see it must take a while to get over it.”
“Is that why it took so long for you to come back to speak to me? I have been churning inside for months, Jon.” She was protesting.
“As I say, I am a cautious…” But she suddenly interrupted.
Something was building up inside her - Oh, stop being cautious; stop being cautious – she silently screamed to herself. And suddenly tears began to spill. “I’m sorry but let’s get on and talk about this.”
“Yes, let’s get that over with if you can talk to me about it. I have some things to say as well.” He leaned forward and seemed earnest and sympathetic. “The chap who did it was sacked, Wasn’t he?”
There was then a long pause. Her tears flowed silently and she had her hand over her mouth, as if she could not bear to speak it out. Eventually, she blurted out, “But it was all my fault.”
He looked surprised, and he sat back in the armchair. “But, he should not have done it?”
“I don’t know, don’t know. I was drunk. If you want to know. I touched him, we were in a taxi and he was supposed to be taking me home. But I wouldn’t tell him my address. And he couldn’t take me home to his wife and family. I touched him, you know I was drunk and I worked him up in the taxi.so he told the driver to take us to a road by some woods. I was thinking it would be fun. I was so drink. He took me into the woods…. It had been a beautiful summer evening” She was sobbing. “Do you want to know all this?” But as he was going to speak she went on. “He took me into the woods and… he was brutal to me. You know… raped me.”
“Yes, that’s what I heard, Sylvie. I am so sorry, sorry. What an experience.”
“I didn’t cry out, I should have yelled. Everyone says so. I should have. But I was the one… who started it. In the taxi I was kind of raping him. You know.” She was calming as she could see he was listening, was interested.
“I can see you could be too desirable to resist, but it didn’t have to be rape did it. Not brutal.”
“No, he shouldn’t have been brutal, of course not. But when I started pushing him away, he couldn’t hold back and he forced me and hit me. So it was me, you see. I keep thinking how I worked him up, I thought it would be fun, then I changed my mind and he couldn’t stop.”
“No, Sylvie. Whatever you did, he should have kept enough control of himself.”
She quite quickly began to recover herself. “I should never have got so drunk. That is what started it. But yes, however other people behave we always have to control ourselves. I know. Everyone has told me that.” And she looked down shamefacedly. He wanted to comfort her, hold her, but she was on the other side of the room. He got up slowly, not to frighten her, perched on the arm of her chair and put his arm around her. He felt fatherly, a long way from being a lover.
“What a way to get to know each other, Jon. I’m sorry. My brother overused drink, for a while. I too was just getting back to it a little in the last few weeks.”
He stroked her back to comfort her. But wanted to clasp her to his chest. He wanted to unite his sadness for her with her own sadness. “Do you want to lie on your bed and let me cuddle and hold you?”
“Do you want to? To go to bed with me?”
“No, I am not saying sex. Though sex with you has been on my mind for a long time. No, I mean there are other things partners need from each other.”
“Hmm,” she looked at him curiously, “You don’t want sex with me – a man of caution and control, eh?” She smiled for the first time since he had wandered past Brenda to her station in the office.
He did not smile; he was feeling perplexed. “If we decide it, we can have many years of sex together. We can take it cautiously.”
She laughed at this point, “Don’t you see, I am someone who will charge in. I would go for sex when my hormones are high.”
“Oh, I do indeed, I see it. But I think for tonight we will not jump without looking. Tonight, we have the powerful experience of last year. I think I should stay with you tonight. I think I should lie with you in bed. I think we should see tomorrow how we feel.”
“Oh, now you worry me. By tomorrow you may have decided - on what you know of me – that we will not become lovers.”
“We both do want it. We are charging in that direction.”
“So, you are teaching me caution! Looks like we could have plenty of clashes on that score, maybe?”
And, at that moment he smiled his cautious male, decent smile. In that moment she knew he was in love. Properly.
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