by Frank Coates
She decided she should know more about her country of birth. The dancers and their music had sparked something within her that needed to be explored.
CHAPTER 46
On Thursday, Peter and Michael arrived from Oxford. They were staying in a guest house rented by the rowing club, but Fiona and Emerald had invited them to dinner. The cook had done most of the work and gone home, and Laurence was out with his friends, leaving the house to the two girls.
They took the boys, who had brought two bottles of lager and a bottle of Riesling for the occasion, into the sitting room. The drinks were opened and Fiona passed the glasses around.
‘Are you sure you won’t have a glass of wine, Em?’ Fiona asked her. ‘It’s really quite refreshing.’
‘Go on,’ Michael said. ‘You only live once.’
‘Just a half then,’ Emerald conceded.
Fiona poured. It tasted awful, but she said it was nice.
Over dinner, talk turned to the boat races. The two young men would be in training on the following day, but the girls said they would go to watch them in their race on Saturday.
The dinner proceeded well. While the men drank the beer, Fiona poured herself a third glass of wine. Emerald sat on her half-glass and declined any refills.
Michael and Fiona, who had begun to giggle, went searching for a bottle of port, while Peter suggested he and Emerald go out into the garden.
The evening was warm. They strolled to the little vine-covered rotunda at the bottom of the garden. She still had most of the half-glass of Riesling in her hand. A cricket chirped from the shrubbery.
‘Are you still angry with me?’ he asked when they’d taken a seat.
The night air was still and the half-moon ambled among the drifting clouds. She placed her glass on the seat beside her.
‘No.’
‘I’m pleased,’ he said, and turned towards her to slide an arm over her shoulders. His breath was warm and beery on her cheek.
Another cricket chimed in.
He shifted his position and slipped his arm further around her shoulders until his hand rested gently on her breast. ‘You’re a wonderful girl, Emma,’ he whispered. ‘A beautiful girl.’
After an initial rush of alarm at his incursion, she examined her feelings more calmly. It was a curious and pleasant sensation. There was something flattering about his interest in her, quite aside from the warm glow emanating from the pit of her stomach to where his hand now lay more resolutely on her breast. She could no longer pretend not to notice.
‘Emerald,’ he whispered. His fingers fumbled with the buttons on her cotton blouse.
He covered her mouth with his and thrust his tongue between her lips. The beer taste flooded into her mouth; she pushed him away. She had an almost unbearable urge to spit.
‘Stop that!’ she said.
‘But you say I don’t show you how I feel, and now, when I do —’
All she wanted was a tumbler of water to freshen her mouth. ‘I think we should go in.’
‘But Emma …’
‘I just want to go,’ she said.
Emerald got to her feet and walked briskly to the back door. Peter followed.
‘Emma,’ he said. ‘I think we should wait.’
Fiona was not in the kitchen where she’d left her.
‘Fiona?’
They were not in the sitting room either.
She heard a loud thud from their shared bedroom. Alarmed, she went to the door and flung it open.
‘Fiona!’ Emerald said, looking from her to Michael and back again. The blood rushed to her face.
Fiona was in one of the single beds, the covers drawn up to her nose. Michael was sitting on the side of the bed, searching on the floor for his trousers.
‘Emma,’ Peter said, touching her on the arm. ‘Come on. Let’s wait outside.’
Outside in the kitchen, Emerald sat, stunned. She and Fiona had often talked about what they wanted to do with their boyfriends, but it had always been just talk. She had no idea Fiona was prepared to go all the way.
Peter tried to calm her by taking her hand and patting it, but she withdrew it. She wanted nothing to do with him or anyone else at that moment. She was mortified.
Fiona came into the kitchen, but Michael stayed in the doorway.
‘C’mon, Pete,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Peter looked helplessly at Emerald. ‘See you Saturday?’ he asked.
Emerald didn’t answer, and he followed Michael to the door.
Tears welled in Emerald’s eyes. She didn’t know why — surely her mother couldn’t be right about her not being old enough to handle sex. But she certainly felt a ludicrously childish longing for her own room and her own bed.
After a few minutes Fiona asked if there was anything she needed.
‘I’m quite all right,’ she said, and took the glasses to the sink and began washing them.
‘Em,’ Fiona said. ‘I thought you wanted to do it too. I thought that was why you went out into the garden with Peter.’
In spite of her discomfort, Emerald had an urge to know what had happened, but she couldn’t form the question without appearing voyeuristic. It wasn’t the details she needed, but the process of seduction that interested her. How did Fiona get to the situation where she could allow Michael to do … that?
She turned from the sink. ‘What happened, Fiona?’ she asked.
‘Oh, that Michael. He’s never satisfied.’ Her voice was harsh, but she was smiling.
‘Did he … Did you do it?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Em,’ she said. ‘There’s more than one way to please a boy.’
Several thoughts ran through Emerald’s mind. She’d heard things whispered among her friends about what boys liked. She felt a guilty fascination. ‘I don’t understand.’
Fiona sighed. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘At first we’d play around a little and I used my hand, and it was all done. But that time when we left you at the flower show, he wanted to go all the way.’ She shrugged. ‘So it’s been like that.’
Emerald swallowed: her kiss with Peter had been such an innocent act in comparison. She felt foolishly juvenile. Even his fumbling in the rotunda tonight had hardly been seductive. She tried to imagine what might have happened if she had allowed things to progress. She had enjoyed his hand on her for a time before the smell and taste of the beer spoiled it. She wondered how she might feel about Peter doing it at another time. Or how would she feel if it happened with someone else? Someone more interesting, and without beer breath.
Someone like Raph.
It was Friday.
Emerald hadn’t really forgotten Raph’s promise to take her to the photographic exhibition, but when he arrived just after four, she feigned surprise and indifference.
He looked at her, sucked the inside of his cheek and nodded.
‘You’re not going to go on with all that nonsense, are you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she countered.
‘All that bullshit where you pretend to be disinterested, but at the same time you’ve put on a sexy dress and done your hair.’
‘I do wish you wouldn’t swear so. It’s very crude.’
‘It’s the only way you Regent’s Park types can get a real education.’
She was about to correct him and say Mayfair, but held it back.
‘Well, I’m sure I don’t need that kind of education, thank you very much.’
He laughed. It was quite disarming.
‘Have it your way, Emerald with the beautiful green eyes. Now … are you coming, or not?’
She could see herself spinning on her heel and slamming the door in his face, but she suddenly wanted to go with him very much.
‘What is this exhibition all about?’ she sniffed.
‘You’ll have to come along to find out, won’t you? But if you do come, I promise it will change your perception of art. You can have your van Goghs and Turners: Ivanof is a real-
world artist. When you see something that is real, unlike your paintings, where everything is intended to trick the eye, you’ll be amazed at what you’ve missed in real life. Until a brilliant photographer makes you see the world — really see it — you don’t have a clue. And after he shows you, you can never see that object in the same way ever again.’
As he spoke she watched his expression change. His piercing eyes softened and the tight line of his jaw relaxed, adding a fullness to his mouth she’d previously not noticed. Even his voice, which had appeared strident at their first meeting, had become more rounded and expressive. He was still intense, but now she could see the passion that impelled him.
‘So what are you going to do, Miss Emerald Eyes? Do you want to remain stuck with your views of the world, or are you brave enough to let me challenge them?’
At that moment she thought Raph could have convinced her the fiery depths of hell were worth a visit. She took a breath. ‘Very well,’ she said, and followed him to the front gate.
‘I didn’t know the exhibition was in Oxford,’ Emerald said above the wind that had almost torn her hat out of her hand, and now flung her hair in every direction.
‘Would it have made any difference?’ he said, his voice raised to be heard over the wind.
‘Well, for one thing, I would have worn a hat more suitable for a spin in a … a … What did you say it’s called?’
‘It’s an MG TA. Made right here near Oxford. And in case you’re interested, it’s nearly 1300cc, overhead cams, and fifty horsepower.’ He turned to her and smiled. ‘Are you impressed?’
‘I’ll say,’ she said, grinning.
Raph was a different person when he wasn’t baiting her.
‘How long have you owned it?’ she called.
‘I don’t. Not yet. It’s my brother Kelvin’s. I’m paying it off. He left it with me when he went away to America.’
‘I see.’
She couldn’t imagine not immediately owning something that she wanted. All her life, even after her parents’ divorce and before her mother’s remarriage, she’d never wanted for anything. She was starting to realise the world was a more complex place than what she’d seen. Until she heard Goran Papasov’s story, she’d had no idea of the prejudices levelled at the gypsies, nor the horrors of their life on the continent during the war. And until she met Raph, and he challenged her about it, she’d never given a thought to the poor in her own country.
She wondered about being the wife of a working-class man. She would have to be careful of her spending. No spontaneous trips to Harrods for a new outfit; no traipsing off to the Cotswolds for the summer.
She looked at Raph hunched over the wheel, the wind tearing at his rakish tartan scarf and flinging his untamed blond hair here and there, and wondered what it would be like to live in his world.
Raph led Emerald into the temporarily rearranged dining room of the Oxford Hounds hotel, where a small group of enthusiasts, some sipping champagne, strolled from one large photograph to another.
Emerald wondered aloud whether all the cultural events west of London were confined to pubs: surely there were ample proper exhibition spaces elsewhere in that part of England to accommodate them.
‘It saves on costs,’ was Raph’s explanation. ‘And Alexi can’t be too choosy. It’s not easy being a Russian in the west these days; but the publican’s sympathetic.’
‘Sympathetic to what?’
‘To the cause.’
‘What cause?’
‘The socialist cause, of course,’ he said.
‘Socialist? You mean communism?’ Her stepfather had often been apoplectic upon reading any reference to communism in The Times. ‘Bloody reds!’ he’d say. ‘We should have let Hitler wipe them all out in the war.’
‘No,’ he said, patiently. ‘I mean socialism. There is a difference, you know.’
She had expected derision, so his only slightly patronising words disarmed her. Now she wanted to know more, but they were interrupted by a huge man who came to Raph and swept him into a bearhug.
‘Raphael!’ he boomed. ‘My friend. It is good to see you again.’
‘Jesus, Alexi!’ Raph spluttered as he broke the embrace. ‘At least have a shave if you’re going to kiss me, will you?’
‘And look, you have found yourself a beautiful English rose,’ the big man said, eyeing Emerald.
‘Emerald, this is Alexi Ivanof,’ he said.
‘Wonderful,’ Alexi said. ‘She is beautiful.’ He raised his hand to the waitress. ‘Drinks! Over here, mademoiselle.’
The waitress arrived with a tray of champagne flutes.
Alexi handed them each a glass. ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To the revolution. No … fuck that.’ He laughed — a booming sound that filled the bare room. ‘To the success of my exhibition.’
They clinked glasses.
Alexi drained his in a single gulp and called for another, forcing fresh glasses into their free hands when the tray arrived.
‘Now, to the two of you. A happy couple.’
Raph shrugged and Emerald smiled.
‘Raph tells me you’re from Russia,’ Emerald said.
‘Russia, no. We call it Belarus. But me, I’m from everywhere.’
‘Alexis claims he knows a dozen languages,’ Raph said.
‘That’s me. I can talk bullshit in too many tongues.’
‘Really,’ Emerald said. ‘Then let me test you.’ She tapped her index finger against her bottom lip, trying to recall the word the gypsy used. ‘Let me see, yes: what does recha mean?’
‘Ah! That one too easy. From my home in Belarus. Recha, it means vibrate.’
‘Vibrate?’ Emerald tried to recall the context of the fortune-teller’s message.
Alexi again downed the champagne. ‘No,’ he added. ‘Better I say, echo. Yes, echo.’
He then disappeared to attend to a prospective buyer.
She replayed the gypsy’s words again. She’d talked about black and white babies. Now echoes. It didn’t make sense. She’d simply been swindled out of her two bob.
‘How do you know Alexi?’ she asked Raph, putting the matter from her mind.
‘We spent time together in gaol.’
‘Gaol?’
‘Posing a public nuisance,’ he said. ‘It was a demonstration against the government’s lockout at the mines a few years ago. We were locked up together for a couple of weeks because neither of us could post bail. Well, I could have, if I’d been prepared to ask my family. But it wasn’t worth the heat, so I decided to sit it out. We were both convicted and released on time already served. You can get to know a lot about a person under close confinement like that. I learned he was a photographer, and I had always been interested in it, so we went from there.’
She finished the first glass of champagne and started on the second while Raph further charmed her with his enthusiasm for the art around them.
‘It’s not all about f-stops and depth of field. What Alexi has is creativity. He can see the shot in the landscape or the face or the animal. He can extract the essence of that scene and capture it on film.’
‘Can you do that?’
He paused before answering. ‘I try.’
‘Do you have a collection like Alexi?’ she said, indicating the work on the surrounding walls.
He ran his gaze around the room. ‘Not like this.’
She wanted to ask him to show her what he had, but the moment passed when he asked if she cared to take a tour of the exhibits.
He led her to the nearest of Alexi’s work — a study of windblown trees above a bleak stretch of coastline.
‘Step up to it,’ Raph said.
Emerald moved closer to the black and white photograph until it filled her field of vision.
‘Now … step into it,’ he added.
She glanced at him. He was watching her closely. It was hard to read his expression, but when he nodded encouragement, she tried to imagine herself in the scene.
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nbsp; She studied the picture with the branches of the tree nearest to the camera straining against the wind. Tiny droplets took flight from the leaves in a spray that flew horizontally across the print. Behind the tree, foam came from the sea, whipped into a froth that scuttled across the sand like startled white rabbits, then up into the dunes, where the grass waved and rippled in a vain attempt to resist the onslaught of the driving rain. She felt suddenly chilled and a shiver ran down her spine. When she turned back to Raph he was smiling.
‘You felt it, didn’t you?’
‘It’s amazing! I was actually on that hill, in the wind and rain.’
‘Now, look at this one.’
He took her hand and dragged her across the room to a large photo of a black-maned male lion, its face turned full towards the camera.
‘What do you see?’ he asked.
‘It looks a little quizzical. How did he get this shot?’
‘Look again,’ he insisted. ‘What else do you see?’
She moved closer.
‘It has a scar on its top lip.’
‘Good. What else?’
‘And tiny little flies around its mouth.’
‘Bad breath,’ he said, smiling again.
‘Does Alexi make a living from his photography?’ she asked.
He pointed to the price on the tag.
‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that rather … expensive?’
‘Not for people like you and your parents.’
Her impulse was again to defend herself, but she quickly realised he hadn’t intended the comment as a slight. Since meeting Raph she’d become slightly paranoid about her parents’ privileged position.
‘It’s the self-promotional game,’ he continued. ‘Nobody respects your work if you put a small price on it. Look at all the great masters in art. Many were penniless for most if not all of their lives.’
He paused to take a handful of peanuts from a passing tray.
‘Today’s artists have learned to value their work. Mind you, they have to make a start somewhere, which means for a long time they have to find another way to survive. If they’re lucky, it would be using some of their skills, like doing weddings and portraits.’