As we were having tea, Anthony came to talk to us. He stood there, slightly awkward, rubbing the back of his hand with his fingers. He was already dressed for dinner in dinner jacket and bow tie. Gradually the chatter dwindled and Anthony had our attention.
‘I’m afraid that somebody has been stealing some of the wages from my office,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that it’s none of you. But, in the unlikely event that it is, could you kindly desist, otherwise there will be some general unpleasantness which will almost certainly involve the police.’ His face lapsed into a smile; that was his natural default. ‘Thank you. I know it won’t be any of you, but seeing as I’ve discussed it with the rest of the staff, I could hardly avoid mentioning it to you lot.’
Anthony walked away, and there was a momentary lull before we all started talking at the same time.
‘So that’s why you’re always so flush with money,’ I said to Oliver.
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘My little secret is out.’
‘No more buying drinks for the entire pub, then?’
‘There may have to be some cost cutting’
‘And no more going off to Swanage for dinner with Annette?’
‘Ah,’ he said. He tried to prong a roast potato. It shot off his plate and onto the floor. He picked up the potato and, without even looking, ate it with his fingers. ‘I do not mind not paying for your drinks. But Annette will still have to be taken out for dinner.’
‘She’ll love you whatever you do.’
‘I am sure she will. But a woman like Annette deserves the very best,’ he said. ‘I am not prepared to compromise on either flowers or dinners.’
‘Where are you going to get the money if you don’t nick it?’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I will not steal from Anthony any more. I will just take it straight out of your wallet.’
‘My door is always open.’
‘That is kind of you.’
Michelle and Tracy had been listening to our conversation. They both looked thoroughly bemused.
‘So it was you who stole the money?’ Michelle said to Oliver.
‘No, no, no!’ I said. ‘It wasn’t Oliver, it was me!’
Roland joined in. ‘It was neither of you two clowns. I was the thief!’
Janeen piped up, ‘I stole the money!’
It was not long before everyone was at it. ‘I was the thief!’ ‘No, I was the thief!’ ‘No, I stole the money!’ Oliver was louder by far than anybody else. ‘I stole the money!’ he shouted.
Anthony popped his head round and stared at the madness. He was about to speak but thought better of it and with a shake of his head he left us to it. I had not realised how, over the previous two or three months, our tight-knit team had developed the most incredible esprit de corps.
It was early on in the evening and I was loafing around with Michelle and Tracy when I saw a young couple come in. Anthony gave them his usual effusive welcome, they chatted, and then the couple looked over at the cluster of waiters and waitresses. They peered at us, sizing us up, before the woman smiled. She seemed to point at me. More banter from Anthony; they were led to one of my tables.
As I walked over to their table, I was quite sure that I had never served them before, but there was something oddly familiar about the couple; I had this tingle, the slightest shake of a rattlesnake’s tail, that told me to tread warily.
They were a youngish couple, just a little bit older than me; he was clean cut, in a blazer and tie, and she was a blonde, with big hair, Margaret Thatcher hair, perhaps even a little Sloaney. Her pearls and silk shirt made her look older than she was. They were married and she had a large diamond solitaire.
But I just couldn’t place them. Where had I met them before? Was it London? It didn’t seem likely that I’d met them in the local pub.
‘Good evening,’ I said, menus in hand. ‘Welcome to the Knoll House.’
The woman smiled at me. Scarlet lipstick and not a line on her face. But the look on her face was that she had the cards; she knew something that I did not.
‘Good evening, Kim,’ she said. That was fair enough. I had my dog tag on. ‘How are you?’
‘Just great, thank you.’
The woman’s smile got wider. She’s got me, I thought, scanning through memories of places and parties, and lunches and pubs, but it still wasn’t coming through. I’ve definitely seen her before somewhere.
‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ she said.
I gave the standard riposte. ‘Of course I do.’
There was no let up.
‘Well, tell us then, Kim,’ she said. ‘Where did we meet and who are we?’
I temporised. ‘You don’t think I know, do you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t. And to think you’ve forgotten us so soon.’ She was enjoying herself. Was a silent slithering hiss of sexuality in the air? I don’t know, but there was definitely an edge. We had certainly gone way, way beyond a normal waiter–guest relationship.
The man edged into the conversation. ‘I don’t think you’re being strictly fair, Ju, dear.’
I seized on the name. Ju? It had to be short for Julie, or Juliet, or Julia, but none of those names were quite right. And then, even as I was talking, it all came back to me.
‘I know exactly who you are, Julienne,’ I said. ‘You and Mark very kindly gave me a lift to this hotel just before Easter—’
‘You’re good,’ she said.
‘Just a humble waiter going about his business,’ I said. ‘And how is your little boy, James?’
Very lightly, Mark clapped his hands. ‘I think that’s checkmate, darling.’
She smiled. I noticed her eyes sizing me, raking me from top to toe. ‘You’re wasted on a place like this,’ she said.
‘That’s exactly what my stepmother says.’
I gave them the menus and got them some wine, but apart from the usual civilities we didn’t really talk again until I was clearing away the main course.
‘You’ll be after some of the pudding, won’t you now?’ I said. ‘I remember how you were raving about the hotel’s puddings. But perhaps I could tempt you to a half-bottle of chilled Sauterne – I am told it is delicious with chocolate.’
Julienne did a double take. ‘You’re up-selling!’ she said.
‘Up-selling?’
‘Selling us more stuff.’
‘Is that terribly naughty?’
‘You must meet my sister.’
‘You said that the last time we met. So what’s your sister’s name and when am I going to meet her?’
‘Her name is Louise. She’s just finished her finals.’ Julienne primped her hair. I quite liked her, though her make-up, her hairspray, her pearls and earrings were too much for a woman in her twenties. She didn’t need any of it; all this artifice was merely gilding the lily.
‘Well, if Louise can’t think of anything better to do, then send her to the Knoll House,’ I said. ‘We’re always on the look out for bright young things.’
‘You never know,’ said Julienne. ‘She’s coming to stay soon. I’ll bring her here.’
‘And has Louise lined herself up some fancy job in the City?’
‘Perhaps. She wants to be a lawyer.’
I staged a very elaborate yawn, fluttering my fingers over my mouth.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ Julienne said. ‘Do you think you might be able to dissuade her?’
She looked at me. She played with her earring. As I watched her, I caught myself wondering whether there just a part of her that yearned to be nothing but a carefree young woman, with no house, no husband, no career, and with nothing whatsoever to prevent her from kissing just exactly who she pleased.
CHAPTER 10
By now, the hotel was in full swing. It was early June and still term time, so it was going to be a month or so before the real action started with the mums in their designer gear, and the dads with their tums and their newspapers and the precocious teenagers in s
earch of drink and love and sex and adventure. How little our tastes change over the decades.
I shaved before breakfast, and I shaved again three hours later. I’d been thinking about what to take Cally; obviously not anything that could be bought, so instead I wandered into the woods and started collecting a posy of wild flowers. My stepmother Edie would have known the names of every single one of them, and probably the Latin too, but beyond the dandelions and the buttercups and the honeysuckle, I knew the names of none of them. They looked pretty though. I was going for the most colourful flowers that I could find, snatching up bulrushes and marsh herbs and slender twigs from trees as accents.
‘What are you doing?’
It was Michelle out for a walk with Tracy. I was trying to snap off some heather, but the gnarly shrubs were much tougher than I’d expected.
‘Just picking some heather,’ I said.
The girls came over to have a look and saw the other flowers that I had already picked.
‘Sweet,’ Michelle said. ‘Getting some flowers for your girlfriend.’
‘Not really,’ I said.
‘Come on,’ Tracy said. ‘He’s shy. He doesn’t want to tell us.’
‘I wish I had a boyfriend who picked me flowers.’
‘Why don’t you just tell him?’ I asked.
‘It’d be even nicer if I didn’t have to ask.’
‘A flower in the hand is worth two in the bush.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Guys don’t know a thing,’ I said. ‘They know nothing. The only time they know what a woman wants is when she tells them.’
They waved as they went on their giggling way. Tracy peeked at me over her shoulder. Now there was a woman who was destined to make someone a wonderful wife.
I found an old piece of bailer’s twine on some barbed wire and tied up my flowers. It was now more of a bouquet than a posy, with the bulrushes in the middle and the more delicate flowers on the outside. The flowers were pleasingly rustic, all set off by the orange twine.
I had wondered about putting on aftershave, but then decided against it. I guessed that Cally was an au naturel woman.
And then: to the beach. It was about a fifteen-minute walk from the hotel and meanwhile my guts were concertinaing at the very prospect of seeing Cally again and what exactly, if anything, would happen between us. Maybe we’d kiss. I hope we’d kiss. But I was all too aware that, in a fledgling relationship, twenty-four hours is an absolute aeon. Cally might well have come to her senses.
I was certain that I wouldn’t be able to eat. New love seems to shrink my stomach to the size of a walnut. I can’t even eat a mouthful of bread. I can still drink, but the alcohol just goes straight to my head, making me burble the most absurd inanities.
I got to the beach and looked for the tell-tale trail of smoke that would lead, rainbow-like, to my pot of fairy gold. I could not see the fire itself, but I could see the smoke, and I grinned when I saw it, because it meant that Cally was waiting for me. The fire was about half a mile away, in the dunes behind some beach huts.
I walked along the wet sand, the surf sighing in and licking over my boots. I didn’t dawdle, but I was not in a hurry either. Now that I knew that Cally was waiting for me in the marram grass, these delicious waves of anticipation washed over me and I wanted to eke it out for as long as I possibly could. How could the reality ever match up to my ridiculous expectations? It was turning into a lovely day.
I put some Vaseline on my lips. I like to have moist lips; I also like to kiss moist mouths.
Cally was some way in to the dunes, at the bottom of a large crater-like hollow, and her fire was well out of the wind. She saw me the very moment that I appeared over the top of the dune, and waved enthusiastically.
I coasted down the dune. She was sitting on a tartan rug and had obviously been there for some time, because the fire was at least an hour old. Cally was wearing tight jeans and a paint-spattered Musto fleece. She had a notepad in hand and was drawing the fire itself. She had turned it into a Hieronymus Bosch-style picture of hell, packed with tortured souls and demons; tucked over in the corner was a wanton posing as the very she-devil herself.
I stooped down to kiss her. I had intended to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her face and we kissed on the lips. Her fingers cupped my smooth-shaven cheek. I sat down next to her on the rug.
She looked very demure with her legs tucked almost underneath her. I gave her the flowers.
‘Thank you, I love them.’ She put them by her side and for a while she just gazed at them with a huge smile on her face. ‘Like a beer?’
‘I’d love one.’
She flicked the tops off two bottles of Dos Equis. The beer was beautifully cold. We chinked and sipped. I looked at her picture.
‘It looks hellish,’ I said.
She smirked. We sipped again and stared at each other, and ever more slowly, but now synchronised, we took another sip from our bottles, our eyes never once leaving each other, and then as one, we leaned in and kissed each other.
We kissed and we kissed. Most of the time my eyes were closed as I wallowed in the texture of her lips and the light dab of Cally’s tongue, but sometimes I would open my eyes and I would look, just for the sheer joy of seeing Cally’s cheek next to mine and her lips working languidly against my own.
I was very careful to follow Cally’s lead. It was a type of kiss that was new to me, for although our lips were parted and tongues occasionally touching, there was none of this open-mouthed plunging; it was a much more delicate type of kiss than I had ever known before. I liked it. I liked it a lot.
When we broke off, Cally stared at me with this smile on her face before throwing her arm around my neck and kissing me on the cheek.
‘That,’ she said, ‘was a kiss.’
‘It was a wonderful kiss.’
‘I’m glad I experienced it before I died. What a miss that would have been.’
‘Who’s talking about dying?’
‘Where, I wonder, did you learn to do that?’ She looked at me dreamily. ‘Kiss me again. I want you to kiss me again.’
I kissed her again. And again I followed her lead. It was then that I realised that what she wanted was the texture of my mouth, and to bite gently at my lips, to lead slowly and for me to follow. She stretched behind her and put her bottle into the sand and now with both hands about me, she lay back on the rug and drew me on top of her. She worked her hands under my shirt until her fingers were cool against my back. I could feel the dry paint on her hands.
My face was just a few inches above hers. I could see specks of sparkling gold in her eyes. Gradually the rest of our bodies synchronised with our lips and I could feel Cally straining against me.
‘God in heaven,’ she said. ‘I want you so much.’
‘I want you.’
‘Not outside though. At least not yet.’
‘Don’t want to scare the horses.’
‘And they scare very easily.’ She continued to look at me and gave me a peck. ‘Come with me.’
We got up. She tucked the flowers under her arm and took my hand.
‘And the fire?’
‘And the fire and the cooler can take care of themselves for a little while.’
‘We might come back and find that Goldilocks has eaten our sausages.’
Cally led me to the top of the dune, through the fringe of marram, and we scampered down the other side. ‘Goldilocks is welcome!’
I didn’t know where we were going. I assumed we were heading for Cally’s house, but instead we made for the long line of beach huts. Her hut was a lovely, light pastel blue with a tiled roof. Unlike most of the beach huts, she had a small wooden veranda with a couple of deckchairs. On the walls and on the balcony rails were shells and seaweed and bits of gnarled wood that had been sucked by the sea. As she went up the stairs, her fingers caressed a large piece of glass, forest green and pebble-smooth.
She pushed open the door and we went in
side. It was just the one room, small and exquisite, with a window at the back and a much larger window looking out towards the sea. And as she took the flowers over to the sink, I took in this new world. One long wall bristled from floor to ceiling with shelves full of books and games and pictures and a treasure trove of mementoes, driftwood and pebbles and starfish and ocean-worn glass. At the back was a kitchenette of sorts, with a sink and a small cooker and a dainty breakfast table and two wooden chairs. Leaning against the wall was an easel as well as a number of canvases, some blank and some halfway there.
In the middle of the room, looking out towards the sea, were two large pillar-box red leather armchairs. From the ceiling hung a kite and a mobile of seashells, and a landing net and two old cane fishing rods.
Most striking of all was one of Cally’s paintings, which took up almost the entire wall. It was a raging seascape, with white horses on waves and the wind blowing hard through a vivid patchwork of the sky at dusk.
Cally kissed me as her hands stroked my chest.
‘Could you help move these chairs?’ she said. We moved the armchairs right up next to the window. Cally then tugged at a black leather strap at the top of her seascape picture, and as it started coming towards me, I realised that behind the picture was a foldaway bed. It was a massive double bed, with a sumptuous foot-thick mattress, cantilevered so that it glided easily to the ground.
The picture disappeared and in its stead, the bed took up almost half the room, with white pillows and a white down duvet.
‘It’s from Malaysia,’ she explained. ‘I took a fancy to it and had shipped it back home.’ The frame was substantial, each side as thick as a telegraph pole; it was built to last. ‘Centuries from now, that bed will still be being used for sleeping and for loving.’
The wood was very dark, perhaps teak, but what made it so extraordinary was that it was covered with hundreds of words – English, German, French, Spanish, along with other languages that I didn’t recognise. The words had been carved out, to different sizes and depths, all about the bed frame, and had then been underscored with white lime. At the head of the bed, carved deep in formal eight-inch letters, was the word ‘Love’, and this was the Queen Bee to all the other words that sprawled and wandered about the bed. I can still see to this day the most extraordinary mix of words ‘Tenderness’ and ‘Mercy’, through to ‘Grease’ and ‘Canvas Bag’ and towards the bottom, ‘Futility’ and even ‘Todt’, the German word for death.
The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted Page 14