‘Oh no, Peter. No, I’m sorry, I couldn’t do that.’
He looked hurt at my rapid answer, and I hastened to explain.
‘Marry you? I like you, Peter. You’re nice to be with, and to do things with, but... well... you’re so much older than I am. And we have different tastes in music. And we don’t know each other so well. And... well... I never realised you thought of me in that way. I didn’t know.’
With hindsight, I might have been more tactful.
‘Well, you know now,’ he said with a queer laugh.
‘I wasn’t trying to lead you on,’ I said, still fumbling for something to say.
‘I know you weren’t. It doesn’t matter. I asked. You turned me down. I was a fool to think it might ever be different, but I had to ask. Otherwise I would never have known.’
I left shortly afterwards, and spent three miserable days before coming to the conclusion that even if he was so much older, there was no reason why we couldn’t continue to be friends. There wasn’t, of course, but I know now what I hadn’t realised on that day, that there was no going back. Life is not that sort of game where you can start again and do things in a different way in the hope that you get what you really want. I went back just the same, and found the cottage empty, devoid of all life, as though it had never been occupied, and I knew we would never meet again.
That was the third time he showed sensitivity.
* * *
As I have grown older, I have learned many things I was ignorant of when only just eighteen. I know that our bee tree was a lime. I know the names of a good many wild flowers, including the small scarlet variety I had once wondered about. I also know that age differences are not as important as a young girl might think. Above all, I know that once you