THE SANGRIA

A conversation between Oliver and Teresa

Oliver was more shocked in that moment than he’d ever been before, and he’d had quite a few shocks over the years, one of which had landed him in the kind of coma that some thought might end with him being a hunk of mindless brassica dribbling his life away in a wheel-chair.

“You want me to ask your dad if he’ll let me marry you?” he gasped, every molecule of exhaled air being filled with incredulity.

Teresa smiled at him, and it was a bright, intelligent affectionate smile. He read the first two parts of it, but inexperience blinded him to the third.

“That’s what I said,” she replied quietly, almost whispering which in itself was ridiculously seductive bearing in mind that the same words said aloud wouldn’t be.

“But why?” At last he came out with the right question. Why, indeed, would the beautiful young woman who he barely knew and hadn’t immediately recognised want him to ask her father for permission to get married?

“Because I think we’d make the perfect married couple - and it would piss him off,” she said, her words sounding as bright as her winsome smile looked on that hot summer seaside afternoon.

“Why would you want to…?”

“Piss him off? Because it’s about time he realised he can’t live my life for me, that I’ve got a future and I want to choose it for myself, and right now I want to choose to train as a nurse and not slave away making paper for the rest of my life,” she said, maybe a little sharply, “and, incidentally, because I think I might get to love you, given long enough and a following wind!”

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen...” he began, but she interrupted him.

“Don’t call me a woman! She exclaimed, “I’m only twenty and still want to be thought of as a girl! Why, I’m still a virgin, for goodness’ sake.”

He nodded. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, then,” he said, “and I can’t think of anything I’d like better than to think you’d end up spending your life with me, but we’ve hardly met … and getting married in order to piss your dad off isn’t the best reason for making that decision!”

“I know that, silly! But it would show him a thing or two, don’t you think, because he just can’t get it into his head that daughters are people too … come on, there’s a pub down the road, it’s open and we could both do with a drink, and we need to get reacquainted before one of us drags the other off to bed, or something like that! Where are you staying?”

He picked up his backpack. “I’m not,” he said, “not yet, anyway. I planned to pitch my tent on a camp-site that’s disappeared under rows of plastic caravans since I was here last, so I need to find somewhere else.”

“There’s our back patch of grass, at the holiday cottage! You can pitch it there. I’ll tell dad that I said it’s all right and he’d better not contradict me!”

“Don’t you get on with your dad?” asked Oliver, curiously. He’d never looked on Mr Hunt as anything but the sort of man it was hard to quarrel with, even if he caught you lurking in his offices when the place was shut up. Even then he hadn’t shouted or made a scene, just made it horribly plain that Oliver no longer had employment with him. But then, what else could he expect?

“He’s a darling,” smiled Teresa, “but he’s so set in his ways and the whole world’s a lovely place if it obeys his rules! But I’m girding up for a fight with him over my future. He thinks that just because I’m flesh and blood I must carry on his little paper-mill empire when he’s too old to, and that’s not me. I need to contribute more to the world than that! I might not even want to have children if the idea of a family gets in my way...”

“That’s useful information if you want me to marry you...” grinned Oliver, seeing the humorous side of her convictions.

Her blue eyes opened wide. “So you are considering it?” she asked.

“Well, truth to tell … I think you’re wonderful, really really wonderful, and I’d like to get to know you quite a lot better … but marriage? You need to really love the person you marry.”

“Who says?” asked those big eyes.

“Everyone does,” replied Oliver, uncertainly. Did they? Was love really essential to a happy marriage? After all his mum had told him times many that she had loved his father, but in the end and after only a few years she’d fallen out so badly with the man that … that she’d murdered him!

“Well I think they’re wrong,” Teresa said determinedly. “I think being friends is more important. “Anyway, come to the pub and I’ll have a glass of sangria while you tell me all about love and passion and … stuff like that.”

There were seats outside the pub, and as the afternoon was well under way it was quieter than it might have been so they got seats far enough away from anyone else not to be overheard. The sangria wasn’t to Oliver’s taste, but he had one anyway even though he thought it expensive for what it was.

“When you left the paper-mill you told dad a c**k and bull tale about murder and mayhem,” said Teresa. “He told us, and we laughed, though I don’t think it was particularly funny.”

“What I told him was the absolute truth as I knew it, at the time,” replied Oliver, feeling a little hurt at the notion that the Hunt family had been mocking him behind his back. “My mother went to prison for killing my father, and her excuse was dad didn’t trust her after your father raped her when she was fourteen...”

“Raped her?” Teresa was shocked. “He never explained it that way!”

“And he never did it,” said Oliver, shaking his head. “It was a tale my mother made up after reading a porno novel when she was in her teens and your folks were visiting her folks. She thought it was a fine story, but it wasn’t, and it hurt a lot of people, me included. I’d like to say I wish she’d never been born, but if that had been the case there would be no me, and I rather like being alive!”

“And that’s what you explained to my dad?”

“I didn’t know about her fantasy back then, just the story she told, and that’s why your father caught me in the offices. I’m afraid I was looking for evidence that he was a perv!”

Teresa shook her head. “Daddy would never do anything like that,” she whispered. “Though he might try to be controlling, he’s not at all like that.”

“I know now, and I’m sorry about everything,” muttered Oliver glumly. “I dared say you don’t want me to ask for your hand in marriage any more?” he added when he saw the sadly thoughtful look on the girl’s lovely face.

"We’ll see," said Teresa softly, staring around her at the summer’s day, “and we’ll find out soon enough what daddy says. Look: here he comes now, with mummy!”

© Peter Rogerson 18.01.17