Single Stem - Chapter 7

Previously: At the BBC Studios, Maggie flirts with Ciaran while Trevor sends his best friend to lay a bit of groundwork for his own flirtation. He still cannot bring himself to come out and ask her for a date, while Ciaran has a seduction cleverly aligned.

Chapter 7

A charming Victorian row house was Bea’s home, where her upstairs bedroom looked down on the street below, a quiet lane where most of her neighbors kept colorful window boxes full of flowers all summer. The décor of the sitting room was startlingly modern, with loads of creamy whites in the carpet and furniture, in the style of a vibrant woman whose two girls were grown and on their own. Maggie loved the way that the stairs creaked as she climbed up to the second floor; she ran her hand along the crack in the plaster that marred the smoothly finished wall where the stairs turned. The kitchen was straight out of Provence, and the ladies sat at the rugged country table to enjoy fish and chips from the local shop, washed down with glasses of vin ordinaire. Sharing their deepest thoughts about men and love, and sharing two bottles of wine, they passed a delightful evening. Maggie finally admitted that in some ways she was actually much happier without her husband, just like the divorced woman she joined for dinner that evening.

By midnight, Maggie was back in her hotel, feeling as if she had taken out her darkest moods and washed them away into the Thames. It was easier here, in London, to talk openly to a group of women who had no connection to Franco or his extended family. With her newfound confidantes, she could say what she really felt without worrying about some comment getting back to Pino or Tsio Carlo. Bea, Pam, and Cindy were her friends, hers alone, and that made all the difference in the world. These were women that she could confide in as honestly as she unburdened her soul to Kay.

“I have to tell you about this man I met,” Maggie said as the sisters talked on the phone. The call was made the minute that Maggie was back in her room, since she was dying to discuss men with her sister but she also longed to hear Joey’s voice again.

“Of course it will only be one night,” Kay was agreeing. “He’ll see you in the morning and run from the room in terror.”

“Very funny,” Maggie sneered. “Seriously, Kay, what would you do if you had a very good-looking man offering you the use of his body?”

“You know what I would do,” Kay sighed. “But I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night, don’t forget. I didn’t listen to the nuns or Mom’s aunts when they told us it was a sin.”

“And I never had to wait for some guy to call me after, unlike someone I know.”

“Forget about the past,” Kay said. “What about now? Here’s the deal, you’ve got an option on a good lover, not one of those men who finishes and walks out the door. He forgets about his lovers after the affair ends, so you’ll never hear from him again. It’s a perfect arrangement for a chicken like you.”

“It can’t hurt to give him a chance. If it works out, we’ll see,” Maggie said at last, leaving her options open.

“Welcome to the world,” Kay cheered. “Listen, Mags, you’re not going to cave if some guy tries to pressure you into bed. Remember when you dumped Luca? Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out, remember that?”

“But what about the day after?”

“You know, even if they don’t respect you in the morning, it feels good when you’re doing it,” Kay philosophized. “Try it some time and you’ll find out what you’ve been missing all these years.”

“I wasn’t about to cheat on Franco just because he was sick,” Maggie began to argue. “There’s more to sex than two bodies rubbing together.”

They chattered away for nearly an hour, two sisters who talked so often it was a wonder what they found to talk about. Ciaran was trying to get through, but Mrs. Angiolini was on a call to Chicago, and she was on that call for so long that he gave up and went to sleep. Trevor had Nigel at his elbow, egging him to call again, then ring again after ten minutes, and give it another go in fifteen minutes, until Trevor heard the phone jangling at the other end. That was when Nigel quietly said good night and left for home, with Trevor sitting in his study and not knowing what he was going to say.

“Sorry to phone so late,” Trevor began, feeling extremely foolish. “But I wanted to apologize for Nigel’s rather rude remarks today. He can be quite the practical joker, but often his audience doesn’t find the humor in his joke.”

“Do you think it’s a joke to make love to me?” Maggie asked with all seriousness in her voice. He could hear mockery, a tone that implied that he was stiff and stodgy. Try as he might, he could not seem to explain that he was stiffly uncomfortable around her, but not because he saw her as Karl Hofmeier in drag, or some hatchet lady from Chicago.

“Hello? Trevor? Are you there?” she said in reply to the silence. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be nasty, I was only kidding.”

“Is this your first time in London?” he said stupidly. He cursed himself for asking such an inane question. Having made a poor start, he fumbled around, trying to come up with something that did not make him appear to be an enormous idiot. “There’s so much to see, and I was wondering, if you had any time to walk about and, well, if there’s any place in particular that you wanted to go, the tube is really a marvelous way to get all over the city.”

“I’ve been to Paris. The Metro was very easy to use, is the London Underground anything like that?” she asked. Her reply was stilted, as if she was straining under a yoke of good manners. Yes, he was about to ask her to go sightseeing around London, but just as abruptly he gave every indication that he was dropping her in the subway on her own. The words were not lining up in the proper order to make sentences that were only half-formed in his head.

“Better, actually, because everyone speaks English. If you lose your way, you can ask just about anyone for help.” He liked that sentence because it sounded much better and it was a definite improvement over the first line. He fancied that he was being witty now, the epitome of Britannic charm. “Before you go home, you should try a ride on one of our famous buses. If it is not too wet it’s great fun to sit on the upper level.”

“Thanks for the suggestions,” she said, and Trevor cringed at the tone of her voice. He wanted to ask her to dinner but he could not seem to find the words, and now he was digging his grave a little deeper.

Trevor cleared his throat nervously, and then he wiped his sweating palm on the leg of his pants. “We film that last scene on Friday, I mean tomorrow. I can’t believe it’s Thursday already. Please come to the set, Maggie, I need you there.”

“I have to be there, in case some clever Englishman takes it into his head to make unauthorized changes,” she replied, but her voice was quite kind and engaging as she gently warned him against any funny business with Hofmeier’s script.

“It’ll be a relief to finish this up, I must admit,” he went on. “Of course you’ll be at the wrap party next week.”

“Are you inviting me, after all the problems that I caused?” she asked. Trevor could listen to that lovely voice all night, with its awful midwestern accent that made her sound like every newsreader all across the United States.

“Not an invitation, but a summons. I am making a demand that you come,” he said with a light air, “and it’s a custom to be elegantly attired. Not that I’m trying to tell you what to wear, but I have learned that ladies are devastated when they arrive at a party in trousers when everyone else is wearing a cocktail dress.”

“Well, if I can find something suitable, I shall consider your demands,” she said, pausing at the end as if she wanted him to go on, his lips forming every word with care, caressing the English language as he would caress her hair.

“But wait, I have something else that will attract you. My house is almost two hundred years old, and if you come to my party I’d like to show you the beams in the garret. I was told that they were hand sawn, and it’s quite possible that they came from a salvaged American sailing ship. Did you know that our Royal Navy used to capture pirate ships and then bring them back to England? The ships were broken into pieces and the lumber was sold at auction. They say that part of my garret used to smuggle sugar to France for Napoleon’s table.”

For the next hour, Trevor and Maggie talked about London and Chicago, about history and books, so many topics that neither one could remember where the conversation had begun. She finally had to say goodbye, reminding Trevor that he was supposed to be at work at six and that meant he was down to about three hours of sleep time.

His alarm rang at five, waking him from the best dream he had ever had. Of course Maggie was in his thoughts as he drifted off to sleep early on Thursday morning and she was still on his mind when he woke up. Her pleasured moaning slowly gave way and became the strident buzzing of his alarm clock, but just before he woke up, she looked up at him in his dreams with her hips pushing against him, and she told him he was the best lover she had ever had. “Don’t stop, more, don’t stop, oh yes, Trevor,” she sighed. And when he opened his eyes, he was furiously humping his mattress.

“I’m in love,” he shouted happily at the ceiling. “I love Maggie Griffith Angiolini, and she’s not married any more.”

For some reason, Maggie could not sleep that night, tossing and turning until she gave up at seven. She showered and dressed, and then said her rosary as she stood by the window and looked out on the river. There was a manuscript to be read, but first she was going to walk to the Thames and stroll along the quay, from Waterloo Bridge to Parliament if her legs held out. She had stood in her window every morning, feeling rather like a little girl peering at the displays of the toy store. It was impossible to resist all the historical delights that winked at her, and she decided then and there that she was not going back home without seeing at least a small part of the city.

She looked like a real tourist now, casually attired in jeans and cross-trainers, striding down Strand Lane at a brisk pace. Faster than she anticipated she arrived at Victoria Embankment along the Thames, and she was taken aback by the ancient grace of Cleopatra’s Needle as it popped into view. Up ahead, she could see Parliament and the Gothic tower that housed the mighty bell called Big Ben. Maggie picked up the pace, and without a thought to the appropriateness of gawking she looked at the faces that she passed. One of her favorite television programs at home was the Prime Minister’s question and answer session in the House of Commons, because the M.P.’s ruthlessly peppered Her Majesty’s representative with pointed queries that sometimes drew blood. As if she were searching for famous people, Maggie tried to catch a glimpse of Great Britain’s elected delegates while they strolled around the center of the Kingdom’s government. One glance at her watch put an end to the fun, since she wanted to swing through the shops on Charing Cross Road for an hour or so. Checking her guide map, she took note of the route that would carry her to the biggest collection of used books that she was ever likely to find.

Trevor was not enjoying his day, in part because he had not slept much the night before, but largely because he was not with Maggie. They were filming a large group scene that featured Ken Simpson and his former wife Sara Larimer, along with her new husband Richard McLeish. The relationship between Sara and Richard had begun well before the end of her marriage, and that left Ken less than comfortable around Richard. Thrown into the bubbling stew was Ciaran Doyle, the man who had helped Sara out the door. Richard was sniping at his nemesis, who in turn was threatening to renew his old love affair with Sara if Richard could not get the job done. Things were not running smoothly at all, and even Nigel had managed to aggravate Bea. Their feud flared up again after Nigel sidled up to his ex-wife and tried his ‘fancy a tumble, lovie’ line. In the middle of it all was Bob Hurleburt, trying to restore order to the madhouse and get everyone back to work.

“Roger, have you seen my mobile?” Trevor asked his assistant, who was holding the phone in his hand in full view of Mr. Harwood. The young man silently handed it to his boss, ready to tell him the number of Strand House since that was bound to be the next question.

“Mrs. Angiolini has gone for a walk, Mr. Harwood,” the desk clerk said. “Is there any message?”

Of course there was a message, a long rambling message that would take page after page to write down fully. “I think about you constantly, Maggie,” he would want to tell her. “My mind is filled with thoughts of you; even now I wonder what you are doing. I want to see what you are seeing, at this very moment, to hold your hand and look into your eyes. Those beautiful brown eyes, they see into my thoughts. Can you see what I am thinking, Maggie? If you did, you would probably slap my face, but I haven’t even thought about sex for a long time and now that’s all I think about.”

If he could leave a message, he would say that he desperately wanted to make love to her. He would admit openly that he loved her with his heart, with his soul, or with anything else he had if heart and soul did not cover everything. If he could leave a short message, if he could compress his emotions into one sentence he would simply say, “Tell Maggie that Trevor Harwood loves her.” That was all that was needed, he concluded, just one sentence that was to the point and spot on. And then he could read it in some cheap tabloid, reprinted as the headline under a grainy picture of Trevor and Maggie that would be snapped by some vulture of a photographer.
“Tell her that I called, if you would. And tell her that I,” he paused, trying to force himself to not be so reticent and reserved. “Just say that I called.”

“Is there a number where you can be reached, Mr. Harwood?” the clerk offered.

Trevor should have left his mobile phone number, but that would have required clear thinking, and he was not thinking clearly at the moment. He stumbled over his home number, half-forgetting the sequence and having to ask the clerk to read it back so that there were no mistakes. Never once realizing that he had botched it, he spent the rest of the day rehearsing his line in anticipation of her cheery reply. Already he could imagine her charming voice sweetly coo, “I was returning your call.” That sounded too cold for Maggie’s warm voice, as Trevor analyzed her mind, and he decided it was more likely that she would start with “‘I am so happy that you called, I was thinking about you.” Without dwelling on his delivery or proper enunciation, using a phrase or incomplete sentence, he planned to immediately ask her out to dinner.

“Will you join me for dinner?” he said to the make-up mirror in his dressing room, waiting to be called back to the set. “Are you free for dinner, Maggie?”

“Do you fancy a tumble, Maggie?” Nigel yelled into the trailer door as he passed by. “For God’s sake, Trevor, she’s too much of a lady to ask you herself. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“How about Maggie in Ciaran’s bed, laughing at the old wrinkled prune who thought he was appealing to a very beautiful woman.”

“She is thirty-nine years old, old prune. I snuck a peak at her passport yesterday, and it cost me twenty pounds to bribe one of the secretaries to lift it out of her handbag.”

“Spare me the fairy tales, Nigel,” Trevor sighed, feeling depressed at the thought of Ciaran Doyle beating him in this race.

“Am I not your most loyal best mate?” Nigel went on, savoring every morsel of information that he was about to share with Harwood. “I know where she lives, if you’re still interested.”

“Chicago, I know already,” he replied curtly.

“In general terms, that is correct. To be precise, she lives in a charming suburb to the north of the city. Have you ever heard of River Oaks?”

“I don’t know, why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Teddy and Agnes Constable? Sound familiar now, or can you think of nothing except Maggie?”

“We’ve known Teddy since Cambridge, you fool. I talk to him at least once a month.”

“I talked to him last night. Had a lovely chat with Agnes, all about Mrs. Angiolini who worked with Agnes at some church function last October. Did you know that Mrs. Angiolini is utterly engaging? Delightful to work with, so generous with her time, and she made the most delicious biscotti for the church’s little tea party. Sorry, am I boring you with this gossip?”

“So, she’s thirty-nine,” Trevor said, a grin on his face and his eyes glazed over. “That’s too old for Doyle, isn’t it?”

“You, if you recall, have recently turned fifty. Who is too old for whom?”

“Should I forget about her, is that it? What kind of friend are you, Nigel?”

“The kind of friend, you love-besotted moron, who is trying to tell you that this woman is perfect for you, but if you don’t make a move she will be back in River Oaks baking biscuits and you will be in London with your dick in your hand.”

Maggie was sipping a cup of tea while sitting in a bookshop, thumbing through a treatise dealing with the native tribes and the conditions of the frontier regions of the American colonies, a book that had been written around the time of the French and Indian Wars. It was a frighteningly expensive tome, but then Mr. Hofmeier had spent a small fortune in sending Maggie to London in the first place. It would be the best sort of gift to give in return, something that dealt with military history at the time that George Washington was learning how to command and Hofmeier’s current interest. For Joey, there was an original edition of A Tale of Two Cities, which he would read most unwillingly as a freshman in high school next year.

Aware that someone had taken the seat across from her, Maggie’s heart thumped wildly in her throat. A pudgy finger reached up to the bridge of the man’s nose and pushed at a set of horn-rimmed glasses. Not wanting to meet his eyes, she gazed at his khaki pants, professorially rumpled. Every minute of the night from hell came back, mocking her foolish notions of returning to the dating world. She prayed more fervently than she had ever prayed before that she was not being stalked from overseas.

On the night of her first social outing at Gideon’s, she had felt positively radiant as she walked in and followed the maitre d’ to the table. All expectations were shattered when she saw Bill Goebel sitting there, drooling with nervous lust. She was polite; she was always polite, even though she was furious that he had injected himself into her personal life. A night on the town with Kay and Fabrizio was spoiled because Bill could not take a hint.

“I didn’t invite him,” Kay said in the privacy of the ladies’ room. “He talked Fabrizio into it, and I had no idea the guy was such a loser.”

“Forget it,” Maggie said. Applying another dab of lipstick, she determined to make the best of a bad evening. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s another client who’s sharp and knows his material. The problem is, he’s stuck in 1825. Compliments and sweet words are nice, but, after a while, I’d like to have an intelligent conversation and that’s not possible when Bill sees a pretty ornament and not an educated female.”

“Can you imagine him in bed,” Kay said, sticking out her tongue.

Laughing like fools, they went back to the table and ordered a bottle of champagne, to drink their dinner as they had as young and carefree college co-eds on a trip through France. Behind a light haze of alcohol, Maggie regained her position as single gal on the town, elegant in her black dress with a simple strand of pearls glowing in the soft light of the restaurant. Even so, she could not avoid the preening figure of Mr. Goebel, who craned his neck and viewed the room as if he wanted to call attention to his companion. His posture was that of a man who wanted everyone to think that he was with Maggie, a man capable of prodigious sexual gymnastics that kept the lovely lady glued to his frumpy side.

Once he started making suggestions about what she should order for dinner, like she was too dense to figure out the menu, she was ready to beat him over the head with the empty champagne bottle. Rather than resort to violence, she ordered another bottle, which brought on a lecture from Professor Goebel. He put his hand on her thigh as he warned her of the dangers of alcohol, caressing the garter that held up her stockings. Maggie shifted her leg to get out from under his sweaty grip, wishing that she could make an escape from the flustered fool who sipped on a glass of ice water, his beverage as bland as his personality.

By the end of the evening, she was ready to scream. Even the trip to the valet stand was an ordeal. Standing at the curb, her legs and feet freezing in the below-zero wind chill, Bill launched into a rambling discourse about his feelings and their relationship as editor and writer. Round and round he went, until he reached his point. Without a doubt, he wanted Maggie to continue to edit his books in the future, but in between tomes, their interactions could be more personal. Glancing at him without seeing him, she cursed Franco for not being there, blaming him for leaving her alone to deal with strange men who ruined her dinner with Kay. Feeling tears on her eyelashes, she jumped into her car and sped off, not knowing if she had even said good-bye.

Fighting an urge to identify the man in the other chair, she gazed at the tealeaves in the bottom of her cup, as if her fate were to be found in the dregs. She had gone through the stack of books that the dealer had selected for her. Checking her watch, Maggie realized that she had to get back. Rubbing her eyes to rub out the memory that sapped her confidence, she stole a brief glance at the stranger who was wiping his glasses on a wrinkled handkerchief. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. The rumpled old gentleman was possibly a professor, but he was definitely not Bill Goebel.

By the time that she returned to Strand House, Maggie realized that she had taken a little too long on her excursion, so she ordered from room service for lunch. To compensate, she would have to work straight through the remainder of the day and not spare any time for a relaxed meal. Her reasoning was more of an excuse, because it would have been room service no matter what. Maggie was not about to waltz into a restaurant by herself and eat alone. The manuscript that she chose for that afternoon was a piece of historical fiction that had been thoroughly researched, which made for an easy job that finished quickly. There was plenty of time left at the end of the workday to return her calls.

“Hi, Trevor, it’s Maggie. Sorry I missed your call. Bye, see you tomorrow,” she said to his answering machine. What more did he have to say to her after last night, she wondered. Whatever it was, she hoped that he would call again soon. Trevor Harwood had been so easy to chatter away with, a man of bright intelligence who was quite fascinating. She asked the piece of paper that contained the message, but it had no answers. “Why can’t you be interested in me, you stuffy Brit? I’m interested in you and you can’t even tell.”

Theresa kept her on the phone for a good half hour, going over the projects that she was sending to Maggie later that day. They talked about the current adventure of script watchdog, or Hofmeier’s hatchet lady as Maggie explained the story to her cousin. Finally, Maggie talked to Kay, to be reassured that Joey was doing very well after a week without his mother. “I keep watching those stupid gossip news shows,” Kay told her sister, “in case I see one of my relatives appearing as the mysterious lady in the company of a hot British actor.”

“He is not hot, Kay, he is positively burning,” Maggie said jokingly. “And if my face ever appeared in connection with Ciaran, I would die of embarrassment over that kind of publicity. I had the weirdest call last night, after we hung up. Remember the guy who played the henpecked husband in Paddington’s Kiosk? He talked to me for a good hour straight.”

“Congratulations, Mags,” Kay was laughing at her naïve sister. “You have been single for what, six or seven weeks, and you have two men sniffing around you like you’re in heat.”

“All he did was talk about London, for God’s sake,” Maggie protested. “Unlike Mr. Doyle, who was very direct in his approach.”

“Talk for an hour about London to a woman you barely know, and that means nothing, is that what you think? Come on, Maggie, what man would talk to a woman for more than five minutes unless he wanted to hear her voice?”

On and on the conversation flowed, to encompass an analysis of their mother’s latest mania for collecting espresso cups. They shared more data about Joey along with a brief mention of a little party, which Kay assured her sister would involve just a few friends and Fabrizio was going to make real Italian pizza. As that call ended, another came in, and Maggie was thrilled to make arrangements with her London crew. Tonight, the ladies would show a Chicagoan what Piccadilly Circus was all about.

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