A Date in London

The woman greeted him with a smile that was simply indescribable. It was like walking into a warm, dry cabin after trudging an entire day through the coldest winter storm. It was like finding a well of the purest, crystal clear water in the middle of the most blisteringly hostile desert. He had been very unsure about offering the invitation.

Seeing that smile, though, cleansed him of any doubts he ever had.

She appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties, with short, golden hair that fell just above her shoulders, slicked back over her head and pinned in place by a soft, midnight black hairband with a small, silver crown ornament on the bridge. Upon her shoulders was draped a soft, dark mink fur, and she wore a cream evening dress with a modest cut that left everything above her collar exposed, with a ruffled skirt embroidered with what the man thought were meant to be white roses.

“You’re on time,” she told him as he approached her.

“I did say that I would be,” he replied demurely, deciding that he wouldn’t mention the many, many bouts of indecision he had regarding their meeting.

/Oh, grow some backbone, Roy, this is a/ date /and no two ways about it,/ he chided himself. A mere meeting wouldn’t have called for him to drag out one of his old suits for the occasion. He had been out and about with the woman before—many times, in fact—but none had warranted either of them dressing up. Not too much, anyway.

“Mm, you did,” she nodded. The woman paused, looking at Roy Faulkner as if studying him, and a slow smile spread across her face. He liked that smile, but it also unnerved him a little. She stared right into his eyes with her own steely blue-greys whenever she wore that expression, and Roy could never shake the feeling that she was staring straight through him and taking a note all of his little insecurities.

After a few heart-quickening seconds under her gaze, she turned and offered him her left arm.

“Shall we?”

Roy nodded and slipped his arm through the gap. As soon as he did so, he felt her press against him and at the same moment his throat dried up like all the moisture had been sucked through his flesh. The sensation caught him off-guard. He’d done this with her several times before and never had a reaction such as this.

Exhaling softly, he watched his breath mist in the cool winter air and quickly fell into step with his partner. Together, they sauntered through the damp streets of the West End of London. Every so often, the lady at his side would crane her head around to take in the sights. She had been out into the city on at least a couple dozen times that Roy could count, and yet she never seemed to tire of it. Truthfully, Roy didn’t share her quiet enthusiasm. He’d never liked London. It was always so bloody crowded and everyone seemed to be in some kind of rush no matter the time.

Thankfully, the cold seemed to have driven away the usual bustling crowds and for that, Roy was grateful. They stopped at a traffic light and as they waited to cross, a young couple came to a halt beside them. Roy figured them for early twenties at the very oldest—students, probably. The man wore an inexpensive looking dark grey coat and jeans while the young woman had a similarly grey winter coat and a snow-white scarf wrapped around her neck with a colourful woollen beanie hat pulled over her head. Auburn hair spilled out from underneath the headwear in waves and as they waited to cross, the two of them chattered and laughed amongst themselves.

It was almost a half-minute before Roy realised that his own date was observing the other couple, a curious expression on her face. He gave her arm a squeeze and when she turned to face him, he subtly nodded to the still-laughing pair next to them before giving her a quizzical look.

“It’s nothing,” she told him with a gentle smile. Roy didn’t make any mention of the abnormally long pause she had made before answering him, or the fact that the smile that was so obviously meant to assuage him did not reach her eyes. She broke the eye contact and glanced across the road, where the pedestrian light had switched to green, indicating they could cross.

The rest of their journey was spent in a mutual silence, arm in arm. They passed shops and stores of all manner, eateries and restaurants of every flavour until, finally, they reached their destination: the Prince Edward Theatre. Roy had been here once before when he had been a young, bright-faced boy of eight, almost thirty years ago, though the show he had gone to see with his parents escaped him.

They collected their tickets from the box office and made their way up a staircase to the Dress Circle seating above the Stalls and below the Grand Circle. Roy had managed to get them seated in the front row and after reserving some drinks for the interval they took their place and waited for the show to start.

“I remember…” his partner murmured as she looked about the theatre and its vast, expansive and lavishly decorated interior.

“You remember what?” he asked, genuinely curious.

She fixed him with a stare that quickly and very uncharacteristically wavered. “I know this place. I remember people talking about it. My—” she swallowed and looked away. “It’s… strange. I’ve never been here or anywhere like it before, but if I close my eyes, it’s… there are fragments—echoes of memories that aren’t my own.”

“I get it,” Roy nodded, understanding her meaning if not what she was going through, and he laid a comforting hand across her own and squeezed gently. “Don’t worry; I’ve heard this is normal for… for women like you.”

She sighed heavily and leaned back in her seat. “I feel like a thief,” she confided in a hushed, whisper-thin voice, “rummaging through images that aren’t mine to see, recalling conversations that aren’t mine to hear.”

“Hey,” Roy murmured in an equally hushed tone, and gave her hand another, firmer squeeze, “you can’t help any of that. It might be different if you could, but you can’t so…” he trailed off, realising that he’d been leaning toward her and now had probably the closest view he’d ever had of her face since the day they had met. He found his words dying in his throat as he beheld her. Whatever being had fashioned her had been more than generous when he set to work on the lovely creature before him.

She appeared older than others like her by some degree, true, but strangely enough, Roy found that only added to her allure. Her cheeks were rosy and smooth. Her eyes glimmered like sapphires in the dimming light of the theatre and her lips were full and oh so inviting. Every contour and every line that made up the woman before him was set to perfection. He had felt as much before, but the feeling was even stronger now as they locked eyes in this theatre in the middle of London.

He flushed, realising that he’d been staring and broke eye contact, swallowing nervously. He cursed his behaviour—he was an officer of the Royal Air Force, not a stuttering, stammering teenager on his first date.

He heard her giggle and felt his face burn even hotter. Frowning, he turned away from her, only for the movement to be halted by a hand that took a deceptively firm hold of his chin. Roy allowed her to pull him back to face her. She wore a smile now, appreciative and, yes, still warm enough to melt ice.

“Thank you. For trying, at least,” she said to him, gratitude along with something else that Roy didn’t recognise swimming in those storm-blue orbs of hers.

Then she pulled his face close before leaning in and pressing her lips against his.

The contact was too sadistically brief for Roy’s own mind, and even as she drew back from the chaste kiss, gently, slowly, so as to assure him that it was no spur-of-the-moment decision, he felt himself longing for her taste again. She watched him as she sat back into her seat, curiosity as to his reaction written across her face, but also a glimmer of mischief evident by the glint in her eyes and the way the corner of her lips quirked as if struggling to suppress a grin.

“Wendy…” Roy breathed, feeling like all the air had been sucked from his lungs in the instant their lips had connected.

She placed a finger to his lips, the glimmer of mischief now becoming a sparkle as she shook her head. “Wendelin,” she corrected. “You told me to pick out a name for these outings of ours and I would have you use it correctly.”

“Of course,” Roy replied once he felt he had regained the use of his senses, but by then the play had begun and his voice was drowned out by the polite opening applause.

The Sound of Music—a fairly typical choice for the West End, but all the same, Roy enjoyed it. All the more once he caught Wendelin’s face light up at all the right moments. She was enraptured by the performance, and the way her expression shifted in response to what was happening onstage was, in a word, exquisite. She had so much knowledge of the world, but had never truly experienced any of it until now.

And he got to be a part of that.

The show was good. Not fantastic, but good, and as the audience began to filter out of the theatre, he felt Wendelin slip her arm back through his own and pull herself close.

“That was marvellous,” she said with a contented sigh. “Seeing it all in person, it’s…”

“Yeah.”

“So, what’s next for us?” she asked him, her eyes glinting with that mischievous spark again.

“Dinner,” Roy answered. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked up a bit of an appetite.”

“Dinner?” Wendelin hummed, paused, and then added, “That sounds like a splendid idea.”

“Glad you agree.”

They made their way out once more into the chilly streets, arm-in-arm, through the crowd milling outside chattering or waiting. The sight relaxed him—made him feel as though the events that had played out a month ago were but the faintest echoes of a bad dream.

Together, the pair walked through a thriving city with an equally thriving night life. They passed people young and old of all colours and sizes; so different and yet all united in the common cause of pleasure: whether that was catching a show, hitting up a club, or simply taking in the sights.

They walked for just under a half hour before Roy declared that they had reached their destination. He noted with no small amount of satisfaction the way Wendelin craned her head up to look upon the hotel building. When her gaze returned to him, she appeared sceptical, with one arched eyebrow and pursed lips.

“I didn’t believe you’d taken me for that sort of woman,” she told him bluntly.

For a moment, Roy was flabbergasted, but then he caught that glint in her eyes and shook his head in exasperation, “There’s a restaurant in this hotel called the Montagu,” he explained. “This is where we’re dining.”

“Really, now?” she said, glancing up at the hotel again. “It seems expensive.”

“It is.”

Wendelin gave him a curious look and, after a moment’s pause, asked: “Are you sure?”

“I wouldn’t have reserved us a table if I hadn’t been,” he replied simply.

“Why?”

It took him a moment before he could answer her.

“I don’t know,” he answered her, “but I felt like wanted to make tonight special.”

/Not entirely true,/ he thought to himself as he escorted her inside through the hotel reception and to the restaurant, where they were greeted by an impeccably dressed young man.

“Good evening,” the waiter greeted them with a bright expression, “do you have a reservation with us tonight?”

“Yes, we do,” Roy replied. “A table for two under the name of Faulkner.”

The waiter opened a great, thick leather-bound book that was perched on a stand and ran a finger down one of the pages, searching. His face lit up as he swiftly found the desired entry, “Ah, yes! Mr Faulkner and Ms Queen. Follow me, if you would.”

He turned and led them into the sparsely populated restaurant, and to a table that sat by the window overlooking Portman Square. The little plot would have looked distinctly greener in the summer months; the trees and the bushes had lost most of their leaves, and those that remained were brittle and brown and very much dead. Still, it was better than a dismal view of another London street, Roy mused.

Roy ordered two glasses of champagne for them as well as a jug of water, which arrived in short order, followed very swiftly by their choice of starters: a mixed leaf salad for him and Shetland mussels in Provençal sauce for her, much to Roy’s amusement. They ate in silence until their main courses arrived. Roy had opted for a Dedham Vale striploin that had been grilled to perfection, with red onion chutney and roasted cherry tomatoes with rosemary and coriander butter. Wendelin, continuing the trend, had decided upon a seared Scottish salmon with celeriac and citrus purée topped with a thin, runny layer of Tarragon lemon sauce.

It was probably the best meal Roy ever had.

Looking over the table, he could well imagine what his partner thought of it. Her eyes spoke of pure bliss as she tucked in, carving modest chunks of salmon with her cutlery before smearing some of her purée onto the meat with her knife and raising it to her waiting, eager mouth. She caught him watching her and smiled, needing no words to convey her thoughts to him.

Tragically, however, all things, no matter how good, must end. And so they finished their meal, whereupon Roy asked for the bill, and so they sat and waited, idly sipping the last of their champagne.

“I wasn’t entirely honest with you earlier,” Roy confessed, breaking the comfortable quiet that had settled upon the two of them. She looked up at him, furrowing her brow, confusion all too evident.

“What?”

“I told you I wanted tonight to be special, and that I didn’t know why. I didn’t when I was booking the tickets and making the reservations…”

“…But you do now?” Wendelin surmised.

“Yes,” Roy said, locking eyes with her; as thoughts and emotions he hadn’t ever felt—and believed once that he would /never/ feel—welled up to take control. In that moment, there was nothing but her.

“I do.”
***
The room was larger than he’d thought it would be, and, of course, extravagantly and lavishly furnished. Golden hues were the flavour of the day at the Hyatt Regency London, and he couldn’t honestly say that he didn’t appreciate it. Hyatt hotels had a global reputation, and Roy could see that it was well earned. Everything was soft and pleasurable to the touch; the drapes, the carpet, the sheets of the grand double bed, which Roy stood before as he waited.

There hadn’t been any exchange of words. There had been no leaning across the table for a passionate kiss that would stoke the furnaces. Roy had given her an answer, and she had done the same.

A pair of arms wrapped around him and Roy felt her hug him tight as she pressed her lips against his collar. He sighed in contentment as he reached up and took hold of her hands with his own before turning around…

…and let the sight before him steal his breath away.

She stood before him in only a pair of black, lacy underwear. Her pert, modest bust contained by a devilishly-crafted brassiere that left only enough to the imagination as the designer allowed, held in place by a frontal string, tied in a perfect bow, almost like a present waiting to be unwrapped. Roy swallowed and let his gaze trail down to the pair of tantalisingly black, string panties, and almost collapsed to his knees.

“Am I to take from your reaction that you are sufficiently pleased?” she asked him, amused.

“I don’t think I deserve something as lovely as you,” Roy breathed before he could stop himself.

She took his face in her hands and drew him into a deep, loving kiss.

“You deserve more than I think you know,” she murmured to him when she finally pulled away, and led him to the bed. Manipulating him like a doll, she placed both of his hands on her waist and leaned back, pulling him down with her; letting them fall together onto the mattress whereupon she captured his lips with hers once more.

All the while, as the two of them moved, writhed, pawed and groped; as they inhaled and drank in each other’s very essence, her name ran through Roy Faulkner’s head. It filled his thoughts, so much, so loud that he could hardly stand it. Not the name she had decided for herself.

Her real name.

The name that he now realised had been burned into his brain the moment he had first laid eyes upon her.

/Warspite./