‘Should be ashamed,’ he says.
‘What?’ says Ellen with a snort.
‘You are young woman,’ he says. ‘Educated young woman. Not whore.’
‘Hey,’ says David. ‘You can’t say that.’
‘Yeah!’ shouts Ellen. ‘You’re not in Iran here, mate.’
‘Ellen!’ says David, pulling her away.
‘I am from Turkey,’ says the taxi driver. ‘Lived here now for twenty years. Longer than you’ve been alive, miss.’
‘Who cares?’ says Ellen. ‘Iran, Turkey. You’re in Britain now. If you don’t like how we live then –’
‘Ellen,’ says David. ‘Jesus.’
‘What?’ she says.
The cab driver turns his music up a little and they drive on in silence, Ellen scowling out of the window. David is aware of the cab driver trying to make eye contact with him in the mirror but he avoids his gaze.
‘Here!’ says Ellen. ‘Just here.’
The taxi stops and Ellen springs out, standing on the roadside staring darkly into the distance. David goes to the boot to collect their bags and pays the driver, refusing the change.
‘I should report you!’ she yells as the cab pulls away.
David picks up their bags.
‘Don’t you ever try and tell me what to do either,’ says Ellen, turning on him.
‘I wasn’t,’ says David. ‘You just sounded a bit …’
‘What?’ she says.
‘Racist,’ says David.
‘What?’ says Ellen. ‘Rubbish!’
David shrugs.
‘I’m not racist.’
‘OK,’ says David.
‘I’m not.’
‘You said.’
‘Oh, fuck you,’ says Ellen, snatching her bag from him and striding off up the drive.
David seriously considers turning round there and then and heading back off in the direction of the station. Instead of which he sighs and follows Ellen up the drive.
Chapter 30
Like a Jelly Tower Block
The driveway is long, gravelled and shaded by a group of tall trees that partially block the view of the house, which David now sees is Georgian – a style he knows well because it had been his father’s stated aim to one day live in a Georgian rectory very like this. He takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell. Tilly opens the door.
‘Wow,’ says David, walking in. ‘This place is amazing.’
Tilly smiles – the first genuine smile she’s given David all day.
‘I like it,’ she says. ‘My parents have had it ever since I was a little kid. They rent it out mostly, but sometimes they let me or my sister use it for the odd weekend. We don’t normally get the summer, but they had a cancellation.’
David looks round as they enter the hall, a big wooden staircase right in front of them.
‘My dad was an architect,’ says David. ‘He loved Georgian houses. He kind of passed it on.’
Tilly nods. They hear Ellen’s voice upstairs.
‘Ellen …’ begins Tilly quietly. ‘She can be a bit … you know.’
David smiles.
‘There was a bit of a thing with the cab driver …’
Ellen appears on the stairs.
‘There you are,’ she says as though nothing had happened. ‘I thought you’d run off.’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ she says. ‘Bring your bag up.’
Tilly smiles and David picks up his bag and follows after Ellen.
‘This is our room,’ she says, opening the door.
It is a bigger room – far bigger – than the bedroom he has in his own house – the ceilings are high and there is a huge sash window looking out onto the drive and to the lane beyond.
‘It’s great, isn’t it?’
‘I know,’ says Ellen. ‘It’s bloody lovely. I’d like to live here. If it wasn’t in such a dump, that is.’
David bristles a little at the familiarity Ellen seems to have with this room. How often had she been here with Matt? With how many others? He looks at the bed. He has to put his bag down. It suddenly seems to weigh a ton.
‘I’m sorry about before – about the cab,’ he says.
Although he isn’t really. Ellen was out of order. But people expected you to say sorry, even though you weren’t. It was a way of drawing a line under it and moving on.
‘I’m not racist.’
‘I know,’ says David. ‘Of course you’re not.’
For some reason, even as he says this, he sees Matt about to call Joe a black something or other. But Ellen isn’t Matt.
‘He called me a whore,’ says Ellen. ‘I’m not having that.’
David resists the impulse to correct her or defend the taxi driver. He had been rude, whatever he’d actually said. It was a misunderstanding mostly. Let it go.
Ellen lunges at him, grabbing hold of him and squeezing him against her body. She grins lasciviously and raises an eyebrow.
‘Mmmmm,’ she says. ‘Shall we just stay up here?’
‘Erm … I … They might think it’s a bit weird.’
Ellen laughs.
‘You are such a hoot,’ she says.
Is he? Is he a hoot? He’s never thought of himself as a hoot. He is pretty sure he is the opposite of a hoot. Whatever that is. What the hell is he doing here?
They kiss and then go downstairs to join the others, who are all gathered in the kitchen, doing a passable job of pretending they haven’t been talking about them.
‘Pasta OK with everyone?’ says Tilly.
‘Absolutely,’ says Ellen. ‘I’m bloody starving. Tilly’s a great cook, David.’
‘Tilly is not a great cook,’ says Tilly. ‘She’s just better than Ellen – who refuses to cook at all.’
‘That’s not true!’ says Ellen in mock outrage. ‘No, wait – it kind of is.’
She laughs.
‘Thought we’d have a tomatoey-saucy kind of thing.’
‘Kate’s a veggie,’ says Ellen. ‘That’s why she’s so skinny and sickly-looking.’
Kate – who is an Amazon, tall, lithe and toned – smiles wearily at what is clearly a very old joke.
‘Shall we get some booze in?’ says Dylan.
‘Sounds good to me,’ says Finn.
Dylan and Finn head off. They don’t ask David if he wants to come and he doesn’t offer to go.
Ellen is right about Tilly’s cooking. The food is great, and somehow the eating of it makes David feel included in a way he hadn’t before. He starts to forget that he doesn’t belong here and he feels the others forget too. Or at least give the appearance of forgetting. And that is good enough for starters.
David is quiet as they eat but that does not hamper the conversation, which becomes louder and louder with each drink. Every now and again, Ellen touches his arm, his leg, his hand – turns and kisses his face. These little oases nurture him through the desert of the evening and conjure up mirages of the soon-to-be-naked Ellen – the Ellen whom he would soon embrace.
David drinks more than he had wanted to, for fear of looking uncool. He wants to have his wits about him but they are becoming fogged. This may be an everyday experience for the others, but it is momentous for David. He needs to concentrate on looking like it isn’t momentous.
Tilly offers to make tea for everyone. No sooner have they all collapsed onto sofas and armchairs though, than Finn nods his head towards the door and he and Dylan get up and head off.
Ellen turns to David and says they are going for a smoke and does he want to come. He shakes his head, she kisses him and follows Finn and Dylan outside. Tilly brings a mug of tea over and puts it on the table in front of David.
‘I’m going to kill Dylan,’ says Kate, staring off at the door.
‘You don’t smoke then, David?’ says Tilly sitting down.
‘I didn’t even know that Ellen did,’ he says.
‘Only dope,’ says Tilly.
Da
vid nods, trying to look as though he knew they’d been talking about dope from the start, but can’t stop himself glancing over at the door.
While he thought they were smoking cigarettes he hadn’t minded opting out, but now he worries that he looks a prude or that he is taking sides with Kate in an argument he hadn’t even known was taking place.
He has a sudden urge to get up and go outside to join them but it is smothered completely by his fear of looking like an idiot and that fear itself is smothered entirely by a bigger panic about drugs in general.
He has never smoked anything in his life. He has never had the remotest desire to. And yet he still feels lame sitting inside with these two girls he barely knows, resenting the fact he has clearly gone up in their estimation as they shake their heads disparagingly at the shouts and laughter coming from outside.
David forgets his tea and lets it go cold, but drinks it anyway, not knowing what else to do. When Kate and Tilly say they are bored with waiting for the others to come back in, David meekly follows them upstairs.
He brushes his teeth – then brushes them again – then gets undressed. He does this very speedily so as not to be caught in some embarrassing halfway stage. Holly had already warned him about this.
‘Always take your socks off first,’ he hears her saying. ‘Never last.’
Did he leave something on though? Should he leave his pants on? Would nakedness be making too many assumptions? He decides in the end to take them off. There is nothing coy about Ellen. This is why they are here, isn’t it?
David jumps swiftly into bed, suddenly catching a glimpse of his pale flesh in the mirror and feeling horribly exposed and ridiculous. Two new spots on his neck. He pulls the duvet up to his chin and watches the door.
And watches …
He is almost asleep by the time the door opens and Ellen’s flushed face appears.
‘Sorry!’ she says in a loud stage whisper, stumbling into the room. ‘Lost track of time. Hope you didn’t start without me!’
She comes over to the bed and gives David a long, lingering kiss that smells like the smoke from a pile of damp leaves: musty and fungal and not at all pleasant.
Ellen has none of David’s foibles about undressing. She simply takes her clothes off seemingly without a care in the world or a thought to David’s presence in the room. She stands with her back to him in only a pair of knickers, throws on an oversized black T-shirt and heads for the bathroom.
When she returns she has the knickers in her hand and throws them nonchalantly onto the chair with the rest of her clothes. She stands for a moment, a little unsteadily, hands on hips. The T-shirt, which reaches the top of her thighs, has a picture of the Silver Surfer on the front, arms stretched out across her breasts.
‘Hey,’ says David. ‘I didn’t know you liked comics.’
‘I don’t,’ she says, looking down. ‘This is Matt’s.’
Of course it is. It’s huge on her and why, oh why, did David have to ask and bring Matt into this scene. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.
‘Did you bring … you know – protection?’
She says the word ‘protection’ in a strange warbly voice with wide eyes. David laughs.
‘I did. They are … Fuck – where did I put them?’
‘Them?’ says Ellen, wiggling her eyebrows. ‘Getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?’
‘No … No …’ says David. ‘I just, you know …’
‘I’m messing with you,’ says Ellen, grabbing hold of her T-shirt with both hands and pulling it off. David can’t help but stare as her breasts fall back and tremble to a standstill. She gets onto the bed and under the duvet, and settles back onto the pillow, arms above her head.
David begins to explore her body with his hands. He wonders if his breathing sounds as loud to her as it does in his own ears, where it roars like waves on a shingle beach. He tries to remember what Holly told him, but he is utterly lost to the moment and to the wonder at the end of his fingertips. Ellen’s own breathing sounds heavy now and her voice is dreamy as she urges him on.
‘Here!’ he yells as he remembers he put them in a drawer of the bedside table. ‘They’re here. Look.’
He waves the packet of condoms triumphantly.
‘Very good,’ says Ellen. ‘Well done.’
David opens one of the wrappers and takes the condom out. He had taken the precaution of practising this at home when he was sure his mother was out, and was very pleased he had because he found it far more difficult than the instructions suggested. He puts it on with a practised ease and turns to face Ellen, trying to mask his feelings of triumph.
She is lying on her back, with her head not quite on the pillow. He moves towards her, deliberating where first to rest his hands and gingerly opts for her thigh. She does not move. Leaning further towards her he realises she is fast asleep and beginning to gently snore.
David remains frozen in this attitude for a good thirty seconds before slowly pulling away to sit upright, his back turned to her once more.
He stares mournfully into his lap and watches the condom and its contents collapse in slow motion, like a jelly tower block on demolition day.
Chapter 31
The Sea, Of Course
When David awakes there is a magical re-erection of the tower, but Ellen is lying in precisely the same position as the last time he looked.
Attempts to rouse her – beginning with whispers and ending with increasingly violent flicks of her arm – only bring an angry grunt and Ellen turns away from him onto her front, almost falling out of bed in the process.
Ellen has thrown off the duvet and David sits looking at her long legs, slightly parted. Tentatively he reaches forward to touch her thigh, but Ellen moves again and he loses his nerve. He gets up after a few muttered curses, throws the duvet over her, gets dressed and goes downstairs.
Tilly is at the stove.
‘David,’ she says. ‘Morning. Eggs? Bacon?’
‘Er … morning. No, not for me, thanks.’
‘Sleep well?’
‘OK.’
‘Do you want some cereal or something? Toast?’
‘I’m OK, thanks.’
Dylan walks into the room. Ignoring David, he leans on the counter looking at the bacon Tilly is cooking.
‘Morning.’
‘Eggs and bacon?’
‘I might just have some toast,’ says Dylan. ‘I don’t feel that great.’
‘You shouldn’t bloody smoke so much then,’ says Tilly.
‘Yeah, well, fuck off.’
Tilly hands David a mug of tea.
‘Quite the little housewife, aren’t we?’ says Dylan.
Tilly ignores him.
‘How’d you get on with Ellen last night?’ says Dylan. ‘It was a bit quiet.’
‘Dylan! Don’t be such an arsehole.’
‘What?’ he says. ‘You know what she’s like. It’s normally World War III in there. It was a bit quiet, that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Well, if you were busy listening to David, I’m guessing your night wasn’t great.’
‘Neither of us could be bothered, to be honest.’
Tilly laughs. David laughs too in the hope that this will hint at a spurious man-of-the-worldliness and end all talk of him and Ellen, but Dylan doesn’t like David laughing, he can tell.
‘So,’ says Dylan, a new ragged edge to his voice, ‘are you and Ellen an item now? Have you sealed the deal?’
David shrugs.
‘Don’t you know?’
‘He’s always like this in the morning,’ says Tilly. ‘Ignore him.’
‘Fuck off,’ says Dylan.
‘See?’
Dylan glares at her but Tilly either does not notice or does not care.
‘I hope someone’s going to eat this,’ she says, turning the bacon over.
‘Always weird though,’ says Dylan. ‘The first time with someone new?’
‘Give it a rest, Dylan,’ says Tilly.
; ‘What is this? Are you his protector all of a sudden? He’s a big boy – aren’t you, David? He knows I’m only messing with him.’
David takes a sip of tea.
‘Rude not to answer,’ says Dylan.
‘It was great, OK?’ says David. ‘She’s still asleep, so …’
Tilly laughs. Finn walks in, looking at David as if he’s forgotten he was staying there.
‘Morning. Have I missed anything?’
‘Nothing at all,’ says Tilly.
He grabs Tilly round the waist and kisses the back of her neck.
‘Mmmmm – bacon,’ he says. ‘Hope I’m not too late.’
‘This is yours if you want it,’ she says. ‘No one but you and me seems up for it this morning.’
‘Really? Dylan?’
Dylan shakes his head. He’s still looking at David, but David ignores him. If he could press a button that would transport him back to his own room he’d press it right now.
Kate then steps in to say that she and Ellen are going for a walk to get some fresh air. Ellen walks forward and leans over to kiss David on the lips.
‘We won’t be long,’ she says before walking away.
The door slams, and after a pause Dylan chuckles to himself.
‘What’s so funny?’ says Finn, sitting down to eat.
Dylan nods at David.
‘Ellen and Kate have gone for a walk.’
Finn slaps his hand down on the table, making Dylan wince and David jump.
‘Man – your ears are going to be burning.’
David smiles and shrugs. Dylan chuckles some more.
‘Don’t let them get to you, David,’ says Tilly, sitting down with them, cradling a mug of tea.
‘He knows we’re only yanking his chain,’ says Finn.
‘Yeah,’ says David, not sure of anything except a vague desire to call it quits and just go home before Ellen comes back.
‘So what’s happening today?’ says Dylan.
‘The sea, of course!’ says Tilly. ‘We can’t stay here and not go down to the sea.’
Dylan yawns, nodding.
‘When?’
‘As soon as Ellen and Kate get back. Which hopefully won’t be too long.’
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