Getting Acquainted

Chapter Twenty-Six

Dave studied it all with a good deal of surprise. Just when Iain had thrown bikini girl in a second time, he was joined by a man named Jack. "What do you make of that? Do you think Iain knows bikini girl?"

Jack looked across the pool. "Why are you asking?" He supposed Iain did by now, since he was talking.

"I suggested that we make her our coach. He didn't feel like a coach in bikini because he's getting married on Friday. Then he walked over and threw her in and he's been frolicking with her ever since. I'm ... really interested in his opening lines. They must be good."

Jack laughed incredulously. "Oh come on now, Dave. He doesn't even have a girlfriend. Getting married? You shouldn't believe everything he says."

"And he's seducing her now because I said he refused to look at them? Jo might know. Jo! Jo! Jo!" Dave called when a woman appeared. "Does Iain have a girlfriend?"

Jo looked slightly taken aback at this greeting. "What's up? Why are you asking me? I don't know. Why?"

Dave pointed at the pool and Jack supplied the words. "Dave spotted bikini girl and Iain got to her first."

"Oh good grief. How old are you two?" Jo groaned. She started rummaging in her bag, while the two men continued to stare because the people on the other side of the pool had climbed out.

Iain rejoined his friends while Margaret looked at Ailsa's dives. "Morning," he said to the new arrivals.

"What about bikini girl?" Dave could not resist asking. "Does she want to be our coach?"

"I forgot to ask."

"Should I ask her?"

"Maybe you shouldn't. You're not at your cleverest today. You might come to regret that move." He suspected that Margaret would have some fun with it, although fun was perhaps not the right word. She might be annoyed.

"Why should I be afraid?" Dave asked. "Iain, you threw her in and you're still alive. I have much better manners with women than you do."

"Don't say I didn't warn him," Iain commented. He watched as Dave sat down next to Margaret and started talking to her. She gave him a rather long and seemingly earnest answer, shook her head and then walked towards Iain. He waited with curiosity.

"Why did you send that idiot to me?" Margaret exclaimed. "I left before I could really embarrass him, but that doesn't mean I wasn't tempted."

"I didn't send him. I warned him."

"But the urge to impress women in bikinis overrules all common sense, doesn't it?" she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. She waved her swimsuit before him. "I'm going to change into this." She shook her head again and walked back to the changing area.

Iain said nothing, but looked at Dave. He was advancing towards them very slowly, with an air of indifference.

"Nice wife, Iain," Dave commented and started to look for his goggles. "But she's wearing the breeches, isn't she? No wonder we'd never seen her before."

Jo had been listening and she nudged Iain. "Oh, but we have seen her before, haven't we? She looks and sounds quite a lot like Thingy. Help me out here. Thingy? Who does that show?"

Chapter Twenty-Seven

"I've never seen Margaret's show, so I have no idea what it's called," Iain said to Jo. "Does she behave like that on it?"

"Right, Margaret. That's it. Is she your wife?" Jo was incredulous. It was rather hard to understand that Iain had never seen the show, in that case. Perhaps she had got it all wrong.

"Not yet, but almost." He feared Jo would now want to know how he had accomplished that. It was a logical question.

"But how..." Her voice trailed off, assuming he would understand.

"Perks of the job." He was not going to explain all the details of the case. "You've never seen me on the society pages, you mean?" He was indeed not the primary candidate to run into television presenters socially.

"Have I seen her on them?" Jo wrinkled her brow. "And that is not your child?" she gestured at Ailsa, who had sat down on the bench where Margaret had been sitting. The two had arrived together, so she assumed they were mother and daughter.

"Biologically that is not her child either. Now, do you know everything?" Iain looked at the water, longing to dive in and leave the questioning behind.

"Not by far! We have often wondered about you, you know." And now Iain turned out to be almost married to Margaret Thingy, who looked surprisingly young and normal and who had a non-biological daughter. How could she stop questioning?

He stared. That was a little scary. "Who?"

"Well, Amy and I."

"Maternal urges, Jo?" Amy and she were at least ten years older than he was.

"Sort of," she grinned. "We wondered because you were always so quiet about it. Unlike types like Dave who inform us of every attempt to impress us with his prowess, but now that I've seen failure in action, I'm tempted to doubt all his stories. You never told any."

"But there was nothing to tell," Iain defended himself.

"And now that there is, you won't tell us. Are we to believe that you ran into someone like that and there was absolutely nothing to tell, but you ended up as almost her husband anyway? She doesn't seem like an easy catch, for some reason. Not easily impressed, I'd say, and that's just a general impression based on two sentences."

"That's right." He smiled to indicate that he was not being rude and then dove in.

Margaret returned to find all men swimming. Only the woman was still standing on the side with a new woman and Ailsa. While she had been changing, the group had grown and other people had arrived. Apart from the new woman, there were more men now too and the women were obviously talking about her -- or to Ailsa, which would mean they already knew everything by now.

"Can I swim too, Mum? Can I?" Ailsa cried.

Margaret waited to answer until she would no longer have to raise her voice. "Swim? At a swimming pool?" That was really an odd notion. What sort of answer could she possibly give?

Ailsa looked exasperated. She wanted to swim with these people, not jump in to play. "Do you think you're clever or something? Can I?"

Margaret grinned. Yes, she was clever. "Sure."

"Will you come?"

"It's cold." Margaret shivered as she looked at the water. "I've been in already." She was not exactly looking forward to going in again.

"But you can swim now that you have a proper swimsuit. You couldn't swim in a bikini. That was just for being pretty."

She sighed. She should not forget that there were two strangers listening in. It was best to ignore the subject of prettiness, lest Ailsa should mention that a pretty Margaret made Iain nervous. He might not like that. "Why don't you start swimming?"

"But what will you do?"

"I don't know yet. I'll just put my bikini back into my bag and then decide if I can stand the cold again. All right?"

"All right." Ailsa jumped in with a large splash. "See? It's not cold!" she cried, before paddling off to the other side.

"Oh, she's not bad!" One of the women commented in surprise. "Such a young thing. She could become quite good."

Margaret smiled at the praise, but she had her reservations all the same. "Unfortunately people have said that about every sport she's tried so far. We'll just have to see which one she likes best. Let's hope she has only talent without ambition, like me, so that we can avoid those moral dilemmas."

"Wasn't it your sister who was really good?" the same woman asked hesitantly.

Obviously one of the women had recognised her and she was a bit smarter than Dave. Margaret never minded that. "Her mother. Yes. I don't want a repeat of history, but suppose she inherited something and she turns out to be really good at a particular sport...I really don't want to become a pushy parent." If there was one thing she wanted to avoid it was turning into her mother.

Since the women had children too, they started talking about this and other matters until they remembered they would not be eligible for coffee if they did not swim just a little. Margaret went in as well, which of course distracted Iain so much that he stopped.

"You can swim?" he asked, is this had never occurred to him.

"You threw me in without knowing if I could?" she shot back. "But go on. I don't want to interrupt your programme."

"What did Amy and Jo ask you?" he asked, referring to her lengthy chat with them. "Did they ask you for the whole story?"

"Oh, the one that you obviously didn't tell? The one that explains why you were in the water when I got back?" she teased. "No. It wasn't about you. We were talking about children and sports and parents. It was very interesting."

Chapter Twenty-Eight

On Sunday they went swimming again, but Margaret did not wear her bikini anymore. When they came home on Sunday afternoon she mused that it was telling that they had had such an interesting conversation on Saturday, but that they had never referred to it again the rest of the day or the day after.

By now, Margaret had manoeuvred herself into a construction in which her clothes stayed at Iain's house, but she did not. If she wanted to change, she had to do it there. If she wanted to pick out a dress for Friday, she had to do it there too.

She called for Iain's help in choosing one. She had hung the prettiest over the doors of his closet and sat on the bed staring at them, wondering which one would be best.

However, when Iain came in response to her call, he did not see any of the dresses. All he said was, "are you crazy? No!" And he disappeared.

It left Margaret rather puzzled, until she realised that she was obviously a danger to herself and to her environment, enlisting his help while she was in between dresses. "Prude!" she exclaimed, trying to get into one of the dresses. "Fine, I'll do it alone." It would be difficult to zip them up, but that was her punishment for being thoughtless.

"Are you talking to me?" Ailsa stuck her head around the door. "I didn't hear what you said."

"No, I'm not talking to you," Margaret snapped because she was annoyed with herself. "I was talking to the prude."

Ailsa was glad she had not done anything. "What's that?"

"It's a man who doesn't want to help women to get dressed because obviously before they get dressed they aren't wearing much, which is the whole point of getting dressed!" She thought it had been abundantly clear what she was doing. There were dresses all over the room.

"Do you need help? Should I call him?"

"He needs help. And don't call him."

Ailsa was a bit confused, but she skipped downstairs humming to herself. She saw Iain in the living room. "What's a prude?" Margaret's explanation had been too odd.

"Who mentioned that word?" he asked suspiciously, but it could only be Margaret and it could only have referred to him.

"Mummy did."

"In which context?"

"Huh?"

"What did she mean?"

"Oh, you should have helped her, I think, but don't go now," Ailsa advised. "Stay out of her way. She's annoyed." Margaret in certain tempers, infrequent though they were, should not be antagonised.

"With me?" Iain could not imagine it. He had not done anything worthy of reproach -- on the contrary. "Why?" He got up.

"Sit down! Sit down! Don't go! She'll be angry with me if you do, because she told me not to call you." She pushed him back.

He would not want Margaret to become angry for Ailsa for no reason, so he obeyed. He would much rather have her vent to him. "What did she want me to do?"

"Zip up her dress. I think."

He stared. "She wasn't wearing any dress." He tried to remember if any dresses had been in sight, but he had not looked for that at all.

"Du-u-uh! That's why she needed help."

Iain sagged back onto the couch. "Women!" One could never really figure them out, yet they managed to be annoyed if one drew the wrong conclusion.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Margaret appeared in a very pretty strapless dress with high splits, but with a much less pretty expression in her eyes. "Does. It. Look. All. Right. Or. Is. This. Too. Revealing. For. You," she said in clipped tones.

The dress was more than all right, but her tone was not. "Exactly who are you upset with?" Iain asked before he would give his opinion.

She opened her mouth and closed it. She was upset with herself, but maybe also with him. He had run away, after all, which was alternately good and bad. "Does that make this dress any less attractive?"

"Yes."

"No, it doesn't. I'm not trying to seduce you, you prude; I'm trying to pick a dress for the ball," she hissed, leaning over him.

Ailsa rolled her eyes and fled before it could come to the disgusting stuff.

"That's the pot calling the kettle black," Iain said curtly. He did not want to budge, but he did not have much room to do that literally anyway. With her hands on either side of his shoulders she was almost pinning him to the couch. He eyed the strapless cleavage with some trepidation.

"Talk to my face?" Margaret requested. The splits in the dress were great. They allowed her to place her knees on either side of him so he could not run away unless he lifted her up, but that was fine too. "Now if you always acted like a predictable man, we wouldn't have to go through this." She had not decided what that was going to be precisely.

He looked up. "What are you doing?"

"I'm taking up a more comfortable position." Sitting was always more comfortable than leaning.

"I'm not sure I find this comfortable."

"That is all too clear." She looked at him pensively and took his hand to kiss his fingers. "So yesterday was all bluff?"

"Can I watch television with you?" Ailsa asked Mr. Scott, who was watching sports. "Mummy and Iain are being stupid." She had not wanted to stay with them. Luckily she had this option. What if they started fighting? She would still hear them if she was in the house.

"To you?"

"No, to each other. That is worse."

Although he wondered what being stupid involved, he did not ask and simply pushed a dog off the couch so she could sit.

"What are you doing? This has very little to do with picking out a dress," Iain commented. He did not say whether he had been bluffing the day before.

Margaret felt a bit guilty. She had indeed picked her most revealing dress just to get a reaction from him. It had indeed very little to do with picking out a dress for the ball. This one might not even be suitable, but that was something one could never admit if one had come with another purpose in mind. "I can judge your response to it. So far it seems to be favourable."

He looked at her chest again in concern. How was the dress held up? Tentatively he put a finger behind the fabric and pulled softly. If she could defy him, he could do the same to her. "But any drunk policeman can rip it off you if it has no straps."

"But I won't allow just any drunk policeman to do that," she said, her eyebrows raised at the touch. It was also quite obvious to her that he would not allow just anyone to do that. Perhaps he would want her to choose another dress. She did not know how bad drunk policemen were.

"Would you allow someone to do it then?" Iain was still a little confused as to who was in his lap at this moment. It looked liked Margaret, but it spoke like someone completely different.

"Gently -- he shouldn't be drunk and he should use the zipper at the back." She did not think it worked any other way.

He gave her a questioning look. "That's why you called me upstairs."

She looked at him indulgently, as if he did not quite understand it yet. "I called you to pick out a dress for me to wear, not to rip off a dress I was wearing."

He winced at how she phrased the difference so accurately. "I know. Sorry. I thought...I don't know."

"I know what you thought and the answer is no. Now, does that make this position a little more comfortable already?" she coaxed. Her mood had softened when he turned out to see his error. She had already seen her own, so there was no need to continue.

He focused on her collarbone. "Yes. Freckles." It occurred to him that Margaret was a bit complicated -- or perhaps not -- employing ulterior motives to indicate she did not have an ulterior motive.

"Actually," Margaret decided after a few seconds. "As long as you listen I don't care what you look at."

Iain raised his eyes. She appeared quite content just sitting and staring, so he wondered what she wanted to say.

"Argh," she sighed dramatically. "A predictable man lowers his eyes."

But she had a pretty face too, he thought, and she was especially attractive if she was having fun with something. "If we start on predictable men, can I bring up predictable women?"

"I'm not predictable?" she asked, full of surprise.

It was Iain's turn to sigh, since he could not quite tell if she was genuinely surprised. "I have no problems doing what a predictable man would do." It took amazingly little effort to lay Margaret on the couch, so little that he wondered if she was cooperating or paralysed. "These moves come naturally to us men. But I don't think you'd like that."

"Actually," Margaret began. For all his speed and determination he had not been rough at all. The uncertainty about the outcome was bad, but not the move itself.

"Your eyes don't lie. You may want to like it, but you don't," Iain observed, supporting himself on his elbows. "You prefer to be in control of the situation as much as I do. Now you want to regain control by throwing me off balance by pretending you like it."

She stared up into his eyes, a doubtful twist around the mouth. "Are you projecting your self-analysis on me?"

Iain grinned. "Yes. Am I too heavy?"

Margaret thought she could bear his weight for another while and then a while longer. "Not yet. So, how do we split control?" Splitting it seemed better than taking turns at having it.

"I think that's why they invented that dreadful thing called talking." He sounded properly wary of the idea.

She smiled at his tone. "Most people would say something else, although to be honest I would never ask them anything about this subject, since they would all be normal and maybe we are not. I thought you'd think talking was invented for the sole purpose of questioning suspects."

"Yes. But, if I suspect you of having certain intentions..." He should have asked her a question upstairs.

"Such as?" she was quick to ask.

"The ones a predictable woman might have." He was loath to go into detail, since he did not really know.

"You throw me on the couch and analyse my brain. How does this help you?" It seemed to her that he could never progress much with this vagueness, with all these supposed and undefined intentions.

"I get the best of everything. It's a good mix."

Margaret closed her eyes. "You know, I'm really comfy. Blast control. I could doze off like this, completely uncontrolled." She felt very comfortable and warm. "Just go on with your analysis. It's just vague enough that I can suffice with random replies now and then without listening, while I slowly fall asleep. You have a nice voice. Use it. I'm very happy with you."

Mrs. Scott woke them a long time later. "Excuse me! We are taking Ailsa out to dinner." She had been sent over to check, because Ailsa had not wanted to go, afraid as she was that she might find them being stupid. Perhaps Ailsa had been right.

"Dinner?" Iain asked. He had no idea what time it was.

Margaret pushed him up a little. "We fell asleep!" She sounded thrilled by the discovery.

Mrs. Scott clasped her hands behind her back when there was no further movement. "Nice dress."

"Oh. I was trying it on," Margaret said vaguely. "I was supposed to try several of them on, but if it's dinner time, maybe not now..."

"As soon as you've sorted out where you are and what time it is, maybe you could spare a thought to the dinner question," Mrs. Scott suggested. "Perhaps you'd like to come? It's not my business to interfere in whatever you're doing, but Ailsa was afraid to disturb you, yet you might want to be informed before we take her out for dinner. If I had not seen you here I would have left a note."

Chapter Thirty

The days before the wedding passed slowly. Margaret thought it would never turn Thursday, but after a night of agony, it did. She felt as if she had just fallen asleep when her alarm went off, so she turned it off to enjoy another minute under the covers.

When she woke again, it was no longer seven o'clock, but close to ten o'clock. What was more surprising was that Iain was sitting on her bed with a book. "Morning," he said.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. As far as she remembered they had parted as usual around ten o'clock the night before and she had come here. He had not come with her.

"I was waiting for you to wake up. We've already been running. We've already had breakfast too." He had had two hours after running and could have done even more.

"And you let me sleep?"

"Yes, we let you sleep. We checked on you before we left, though, when you didn't appear, but I couldn't wake you." He had assumed there was a very good reason why she had ignored her alarm. The morning run was not so important that he should wake her, so he had let her sleep. "When I checked after breakfast, you were still asleep, so I thought I'd sit with you."

"This is the last day before the wedding. I couldn't sleep. Why are you here?"

"Because I like it." It was a very nice place to read his book -- no interruptions and always a lovely sight right next to him.

She stretched out her hand. "I like it too."

"Why did you sleep badly? Are you nervous about tomorrow?" Iain asked.

"Of course. A bit. Why aren't you?"

"Because I've been sitting here for an hour and I've already realised that all I will have to fear will be that I'll be sitting -- or lying -- here every day and that isn't such a frightening prospect." He stretched himself out as he spoke, so that he lay next to her. "See?"

"Hmm," said Margaret. "Really? Do I snore? Drool? Do I make strange sounds when I sleep?" It felt rather uncomfortable to have been watched, unless she did none of those things.

"No, you don't." He regretted the fact that he had said that before realising it was a good opportunity to tease her.

"I was afraid I might have been lusting after you in my sleep," she confessed.

"Oh, you were," Iain said immediately, grabbing his second chance. "But I didn't think that a strange sound."

Margaret shrieked in horror and hid herself under the covers. When nothing happened she showed her face again after a few minutes. Iain seemed to have been waiting patiently. "What did I do?" she asked, resigning herself to embarrassment.

"I wonder why it would be a bad thing. It would only be bad if you were lusting after someone else."

"This is awful. What did I do?" she wailed, imagining how she might have murmured his name -- or worse.

"Probably no more than I do every night." Iain smiled. "But er, Maggie. Are you concerned about the noticeable manifestation of the lusting, or the mere fact that you might have been lusting in the first place?" The first would be interesting, because the second was what one would expect from her.

"I know I was. I only want to know how bad I was."

"Completely unnoticeable," he assured her with a wide grin, not feeling too cruel. She would never have admitted it any other way. "But this has been a very interesting chat anyway." He shut his book and got off the bed.

Margaret pulled the covers over her head to recover. Then she appeared again. "Are you saying you didn't notice any lusting?"

Iain pulled the door open to leave the room. "Not on your side, darling." For some reason he thought it wisest to go downstairs to make her some breakfast.

She groaned. "He knows when to leave, doesn't he?" she said to the closed door. Then she rolled onto her side and planned the day. There was not much left to do. Everything had been arranged. Her only task was to get through the day without breaking any limbs -- or promises -- and tiring herself out just enough to be able to sleep.

Surprisingly, the Thursday passed much faster than the preceding days and before Margaret realised it, it was bedtime. Well, it was nine o'clock, but she had wanted to go to bed early. She got up and Iain gave her a hug.

"Do you realise this is the last time we say goodnight?" he whispered. "Unless you want to, of course."

Margaret felt that he would not want to and suspected that she might not either. "We'll see about that tomorrow," she murmured. She should not keep herself awake with thoughts of tomorrow. "I still have to sleep."

"Well, now you know which thoughts to avoid. They're bound to disturb your sleep."

"I wasn't going to think of that, but now you are making me. Iain, you are horrible."

"That thought may disturb your sleep too," he remarked. "Marrying the horrible man. You won't see me again until we're on the verge of being married, when there's no turning back because I'll be all dressed up and therefore irresistible."

Margaret did not doubt that, but she could not help another thought. "Iain! You don't have to be dressed to -- argh." Perhaps she should not have voiced that.

He took a step back and clasped his hands behind his back. "Twelve hours before the wedding -- I think I should be resistible. Go to bed. I won't give you a goodnight kiss." Of course he only said so because he was rather tempted.

"You never do."

"And now is not a good time to start. I'll kiss you tomorrow from 9:15 to...9...er..." He looked reflective.

"9:16?" Margaret said faintly.

"I was thinking more of 9 ... er..." Iain said with a mischievous twinkle. "A bit later than 9:16, anyway."

"Not 10?"

"We'll have my parents to consider, Maggie. Now, don't start worrying about all this. I think I get to kiss the bride, not the other way around." He feared she would think about it too much. Of course he was only bringing this up because he was thinking about it too much himself and by -- perhaps unnecessarily -- reassuring Margaret he might benefit from his own words.

"And the bride, passive creature that she is..." Margaret said sarcastically. Women always had to undergo these things, as if they might not want to participate. Whatever she might do in practice, in principle she advocated equal opportunities.

"The bride, passionate creature that she is..."

She snorted. "Let's not find out about that till tomorrow. I think I'd better go to bed. Good night."

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