Anna failed to recognise the number on the screen. At least it had not been ‘withheld’.
‘Hello?’ she answered cautiously, but in a friendly tone. It could so easily be a business call.
‘Anna?’ a male’s voice said brightly. There was the low rumble of traffic noise in the background.
‘Yes…who is it?’
She heard a moment’s pause; the traffic noise all the louder. Maybe she was mistaken to hear a slow intake of breath.
‘It’s Tomas…Tomas Mayer,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I’m sorry to shock you…by calling.’
Anna felt a tightening in her throat. A sudden light-headedness overcame her on hearing that it was him. She felt a rush of emotions that hearing his voice again aroused in her so quickly, along with the flood of memories of all that they had shared in an hour or so of lovemaking on the day that she had last seen him. To hear his voice again confounded what she had thought in the days after their tempestuous loving, the casting aside of any restraint they had each felt before those treasured moments.
‘It was wonderful…it was madness,’ she soon told him.
‘And I couldn’t forget you…and all that we did…all that we shared.’
‘Did you try?’ she whispered.
Anna stood by the window looking out over the garden, in the very place where she had been as she watched him leave her for the last time.
‘Yes…I knew that I’d been selfish. But my feelings went deeper than that. I should have called you afterwards…but I knew of the situation you were in…then.’
‘And now?’ she prompted, but not in a harsher tone. ‘I never thought you were selfish, by the way. It was quite the opposite, in fact.’
She couldn’t help but remember all that they had done together; the physical and emotional tumult aroused by their tryst, the emotional havoc and the pleasure that he had brought to her. She had faced the wrecking consequences of having her eyes opened to all that prevailed in her life with Dan, her husband. A decision had been reached, not long after, to end her marriage and she had pushed away her fears of the future influencing her decision. She had to live through the present and would take the chance and live that out alone, or until someone was met and with whom she could pick up the pieces. She would ‘move on’ and find a time to love again and to be loved; a time that would be so very different from all that had prevailed before and that Tomas had shone a light upon.
Her young lover had even told her of what was there for others to see.
‘And now…’ he said on a sigh of acknowledgment, ‘and now I have reached the point of wanting to speak to you…to know how you are…maybe to see you again.’
‘Where are you?’ she interrupted. ‘Can you talk in this way…now?’
‘I’ve left the office…to get a coffee and some breakfast. My days always start so goddamn early…or it feels that way,’ he laughed and as she remembered so well. The phone trembled in her hand as Anna listened to him. She carried such vivid images of the young man who now engaged her thoughts all over again. ‘I wanted to call you so long ago…should have done that so long ago.’
‘Don’t keep on apologising. I understood it all…then.’ A married woman had been taken out of her ordered world by a young lover. What more was there to say?
‘And now, Anna; do you understand why I’m doing this…now?’ Tomas asked so very directly.
‘No, not quite,’ she said trying to make it sound as if she was in control. ‘But I’m glad that you have. You changed me…what we had changed me. It was our secret…I kept it all hidden away…but…but I couldn’t help but remember.’
‘You…you’ve put my mind at rest, Anna…lovely Anna…the woman with her wavy blonde hair…the beads at your throat…the softness of your skin…all that you brought to my sight and touch. I loved it all…felt that when it was too late.’
‘Don’t…please don’t, Tomas.’ His words aroused every nerve; brought the memory of them being together back into vivid clarity.
‘I want to tell you this all over again. I want to see you. I hope that I may see you…somehow?’
Anna had heard the doubts in his voice; that he had spoken out of hope rather than in certainty of her reply.
‘Did it mean so much to you, then? We each lived for the moment…and…we gave everything to each other for that.’
Seeing him leave her that afternoon had made all that they shared so much harder to bear, the tempestuous nature of their only time together, naked in each other’s arms, too much to close out. She had not felt used but loved and any doubts, or dismay at her wanton behaviour, soon swept away. She had clung ferociously to what she had known of him; a tender and gifted lover…of her.
‘And you don’t want me to spoil that…the memories you have…by meeting me again?’ Tomas asked slowly but in that direct way of his. The man…the young man’s direct and honest ways was what she was so often reminded of.
How could she be upset, or even angry, that his call should be answered and that they were now talking of something that had meant a great deal…at the time of it happening, they had each thought…then.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she chose to say. ‘I’m alone now. The business and the house you stayed in have been sold. The place where…where we…’
‘Where we loved…’
‘Yes. Did it mean that to you also…Tomas?’
‘I felt that the moment I drove away in that taxi to the station. You changed things in me too…crazy as it may sound. The young guy…meets and then loves a beautiful and passionate older woman. They’ll say they each came to it with what they think are open eyes…only what happened changes them. It…it was like that for me, Anna.’
She listened to him.
Tomas was giving voice to what she had kept hidden so very deep. Irreconcilable differences with Dan; her sudden loss of commitment to him and their business, had taken its toll upon her; all of it brought into sharp relief as a consequence of meeting Tomas. She had become engaged by his ways and then, far too late and thus passionately so, taken to bed, his taking of her body arousing more than a shattering fulfilment of her claims upon him. She had felt that she had been delivered from a life that no longer held any appeal, a life of drudgery but one that had served her well, and Dan, in financial ways alone.
Her marriage had run out of road, or whatever cliché suited her circumstances.
‘I couldn’t call you, Tomas…’
‘It’s not done…’
‘I’m too conventional, you mean?’ she said, teasing him on a soft laugh. ‘I…I thought that you found me to be different…that the label didn’t quite apply to me…after all that we did?’
‘True,’ he said and paused. ‘Meet me, Anna? Please meet me. I want that…want to see your face…to see your smile…and…I want to know of your touch and your kisses. You made me feel like that…and that there could be more. It sounds a little crazy, perhaps…no more than an infatuation…but these last few weeks have made me think and hope that it could be more…that we try?’
She didn’t take them to be the words of some feckless guy who had taken a fancy to her and wanted to bed her again. She’d passed through that field of emotions the first time and had known it to be so very different. Now his call confounded her once more. His words had the same effect upon her.
Anna moved to sit down in the window seat.
All that remained of her possessions were boxed up and on the floor around her. Things had moved with bewildering speed but the place would be left to its new owners. She was no longer a transitional manager of it for them.
One door…as another cliché would have it…was closing. Another…with Tomas, and his passionately attentive ways, had suddenly been opened to her. She would live for the day; reality might yet sink in like an unstoppable tide crashing on the shore.
‘Anna…Anna?’
‘Yes, Tomas…I’m here…I’m here for you.’ She wouldn’t put a timescale on it; nor would she dare to raise her expectations too far. She would step out onto a new road; one of restoration and discovery; one that she had learnt of when she had lain naked in his arms and shared in the heat of their bodies and known that there would be no way back from it. ‘We…we weren’t ships that passed in the night, after all, Tomas.’
‘No, and I couldn’t think of it in that way either, crazy as it sounds now and after being with you for such a short time.’
Anna chose to tell him what she had truly thought, then and again now.
‘It’s not crazy, Tomas. It’s wonderful…’
Anna heard a soft and engaging laugh and she knew that she would have to see him to believe in all that was now happening to her…to both of them.
‘So, you don’t mind me calling you?’
‘I’ll show you just how much I mind when I see you, Tomas. You’ll have my answer then.’
She had been touched like never before.