“I do love you, Lolly,” he whispered, his breath hot in my ear.
“I love you, too,” I told him as our breathing slowed.
I thought about Leggy Blonde and wondered how things had finally ended between them, whether she had walked out or whether he had told her it wasn’t going to work. I was desperately curious, actually, and longed to ask what had happened to Sally, but I didn’t. I had obviously been right all along about Richard’s feelings toward her. She hadn’t really mattered to him after all.
The heavens opened and for the rest of the night a thunderstorm raged. The rain slicing diagonally down, belted against the window, muffling Richard’s slight snore.
sixteen
After the death of his father, Edward came into a small inheritance. Though by no means enough to make him a rich man, it seems for a period at least this money enabled him to pay off his debts and he was once more welcomed back into polite society. Unbeknownst to Henrietta, though, during this time he not only continued his gambling but became addicted to opium. Henrietta either chose to ignore his addiction or bore it as she had his gambling. However, in many ways, it was the beginning of the end, as his debts soon once more went unhonored.
Secret Passage to the Past:
A Biography of Lady Henrietta Posche
by Michael Carpendum
Despite our concerns following the heavy late-night rains, the sun was as bright and strong as if it were August. Richard and Martin had set off early to assist with setting up the fete. By ten-thirty, when Kitty and I arrived, the green was buzzing with local villagers and Aunt Camilla’s friends and family. There were children’s rides, face painting, Morris dancers and stores offering food such as fairy floss, hot dogs, toffee apples and soft drinks, all for free.
Being in my aunt’s village, I was reminded of all the times I’d walked across this green with her, chatting about life and fashion and men. Richard had been helping to set up the fete since first light with Martin, while Kitty and I had come along later. Walking through the crowd to search for him, I couldn’t help imagining that I’d caught a glimpse of my Camilla in the crowd.
I saw Richard by the bungee-jumping ride and watched as he helped the smaller children into the rubber bungee seat. He was wearing a pair of threadbare blue jeans I’d once bought him and his green Converse All-Stars. My heart melted.
“Bunjee jump, miss?” he inquired in an East End accent as I slipped my arms around him and kissed his neck. Next minute he was strapping me into the seat and bouncing me up on the cushions. I felt as if I was flying as my body bounced twenty feet into the air. I somersaulted on my second bounce and Richard whistled through his teeth and clapped.
When he finally grabbed me, I ran my fingers through his hair and mucked it up, and even though his eyes were hidden behind his Ray•Bans I knew they were smiling at me. Afterward, he brought me a toffee apple, which we licked together, our tongues occasionally touching in a tantalizing tease, until he eventually kissed me full on the mouth.
“I’d better get back to work,” he said, breaking the kiss. I watched his tall, lean frame as he headed back to the stand. I felt connected to him in the way I’d wanted to feel connected to him since I first saw him that night with Leggy Blonde at Posh House. Martin joined him, and the two of them helped an older lady into the bunjee seat. They looked so sweet together, just like a father and son-in-law.
Even though Aunt Camilla had always carefully avoided the subject of Richard after our divorce, I felt certain she would have supported my decision to remarry him now if she were here. On the subject of remarriage, I hadn’t had a chance to tell Kitty and Martin about Richard’s proposal, as we’d had such an early start, but I knew they’d be delighted. They were the king and queen of romance, the poster children for remarriage, after all!
Elizabeth, Josie and Clemmie, well, that was another matter. As for Charlie, given his behavior recently, I really didn’t care what he thought. In fact, I’d more or less decided to tender my resignation, partly because of his feelings toward Richard but mostly I’d decided it was time for me to take the plunge in terms of setting up the PR company I’d always dreamed of owning.
With my inheritance I could finally make my dream a reality. Once the tax man had taken his chunk, I’d still have enough to pay off my mortgage, have a bit of a blowout on Bond Street and enough left over to set up Lola PR.
“Darling, there you are, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Jeremy panted. I cringed as I checked out the white bony legs that appeared from his shorts. They were the most horridly lurid checked shorts, the sort a golfing surfer might wear. Had I actually had sex with those legs? Sometimes I really do despair of myself, but more to the point, what on earth was Jeremy doing here? My aunt had a lot to answer for.
“Oh, Jeremy, darling, how lovely to see you.” I kissed his cheeks, my stomach knotted with fear that Richard would now discover I’d recently shagged him. Oh no, everything was going to go wrong now. I had an awful queasy feeling, which I was pretty sure was a premonition of impending disaster.
“Yes, what an extraordinary thing,” he exclaimed, looking around the noise and carnival atmosphere of the fete. “I received this invitation in the post, I didn’t really know what to make of it,” he explained, brandishing his invitation. “I left you several messages but I guess you’ve had a lot on.” He snaked his arm around my waist just as I noticed Richard coming toward us.
Ever the quick thinker, I took swift action and threw myself into a small puddle. I hadn’t actually meant to land in the actual puddle, of course, merely to fall lightly near it so that Richard wouldn’t catch Jeremy with his arm around me. But Jeremy wasn’t prepared to let me fall, and as I struggled to disengage from his arm around my waist, he tried to grab me back. I pushed him away and lost my footing, which landed me slap bang in the middle of the puddle, covered in mud. Jeremy looked befuddled as he helped me up. “I tried to catch you, Lola, but you threw me off.”
“Lolly!” Richard called out, racing over. He’d taken his glasses off and looked madly concerned.
“Don’t know what happened there,” said Jeremy, dabbing at my face with a handkerchief. So typical of him to carry a fresh white handkerchief, I thought irritably. “One minute she was as upright as you like, and the next…splat!”
“What the hell do you think you were doing, man? I saw you with my own eyes, she tried to fight you off.”
“What?”
“You pushed her straight into that puddle!”
Jeremy looked horrified. “I was just trying to help. I was putting my arm around her, just being affectionate, and then—”
“Bloody funny way of showing affection, pushing a girl into a pond like that. What the hell is wrong with you?” Richard demanded, looking as if he was about to hit poor Jeremy.
“What would I push her into a bloody pond for, Richard?” Jeremy reasoned, clearly beginning to get a bit hot under the collar as well. “Besides, it was a puddle not a pond.”
“She looks like a drowned rat, you idiot!”
Thank God, Kitty arrived on the scene in her chiffon-flowing glory. “Lola, what on earth is going on?” she asked, brandishing a giant swirl of pink fairy floss—as a fashion accessory, I suspected. “Why on earth did you jump into that puddle? You silly, silly girl.”
“I didn’t jump,” I remonstrated as Kitty shook her head and tutted and brandished her fairy floss.
Richard, the darling that he is, stood up to Kitty for me. “She was bloody well pushed by Jeremy here. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“I was trying to catch her, only she fought me off,” remonstrated Jeremy.
Kitty shook her head. “Stop all this showing off, now, Lola, and come and help with the rides. Charlie’s running the coconut shy single-handedly.” She gave Richard an accusatory look as if to say “and you?”
Jeremy slipped his hand in my right hand and Richard slipped his hand in my left. This was becoming farcical, only not in a funny wa
y.
Josie approached me next; she had Jean on her little diamante leash, and owing to the damp ground, the rabbit’s fur was all muddied. “Couldn’t you have held her?” I scolded.
“I tried to, Lola, but she keeps humping me. In fact, I’m sure she’s a he, not a she at all. I mean, it’s not normal for a girl to hump everything like that.”
I pulled my hands away from Richard and Jeremy, picked up my muddy rabbit and clasped her to my chest while Jeremy and Richard slipped their arms back around my waist.
Richard asked Jeremy what he was up to. Jeremy put the same question to Richard and immediately they were head-to-head, virtually circling each other like gladiators.
Josie looked at me, mystified. “What an earth is going on?”
Kitty suddenly reappeared, grabbed my arm and dragged me off, leaving Richard and Jeremy unsupervised. “Will you stop behaving like a lost infant and give Charlie a hand, Lola!” she ordered, propelling me forward toward the Ferris wheel. “He seems to be the only one with any sense of community spirit here today!”
“But, Kitty, you don’t understand, Richard’s been here since dawn setting up, and doing the bunjee jumps…”
She totally ignored me, pushing me toward Charlie as village children ran past clutching their fairy floss and toffee apples, squealing with delight. I felt like a small child myself. “He’s asked me to marry him,” I blurted, deciding this was an emergency and I should play my trump card.
But Kitty didn’t seem in the least bit fazed. She continued to push me toward the coconut shy, where I could see Charlie lifting a small girl up so that she could have a reasonable shot. “And I really need to go back to him, because I slept with Jeremy to make him jealous, only Jeremy doesn’t know that’s why I slept with him and I never got round to telling Richard and now he’s asked me to marry him and if he finds out about Jeremy now, he’ll think I’m a total slut and won’t want to marry me and…” My voice trailed off because we’d arrived at the coconut shy and Charlie was facing me and had clearly heard the last bit of my rant.
“You’re marrying him, then?” Charlie asked. He was holding the hand of the most adorable little girl with beautiful doe-brown eyes and a head of chaotic black curls. Kitty crouched in a pool of chiffon and chatted to the little girl as if she wasn’t eavesdropping on our conversation.
I held Jean to my chest more tightly as if facing up to the Big Bad Wolf. “Yes, are you surprised?” I huffed.
“Yes, as it happens…although horrified might be a better word.”
Talk about the arrogance of the man. “Actually, congratulations is more traditional,” I pointed out.
“What about his girlfriend?”
“Commiserations?” I suggested brightly. I wasn’t going to have him rain on my parade.
“Admirable sense of sisterhood, Lola,” he chastised.
The little girl looked at me and pointed at me. “Sister!” she repeated happily.
“She’s not my sister and I don’t know what your problem is,” I pointed out. “What’s Leggy Blonde got to do with me?” I shrugged, like a philosophical Frenchman. “Richard and she had a fling before we hooked up again. I’m not responsible for every girl in the world!”
“Who is this Leggy Blonde?” Kitty asked, standing up to rejoin the conversation.
“Leggy Blonde,” the little girl repeated, pointing her finger right at me.
“Forget about Leggy Blonde,” I snapped a little harshly. “She’s not the issue.”
The little girl looked hurt and I felt ashamed as Charlie picked her up.
Kitty gave me a wide-eyed look of incomprehension, patting a sweep of blond hair from her face.
“Leggy Blonde,” the little girl in Charlie’s arms repeated, but Charlie ignored her, adding, “Well, what about Jeremy, then? What’s he going to think when he finds out you only slept with him to make Richard jealous?”
“I didn’t tell Richard,” I replied, blushing at being called on my shameful attempt at making Richard jealous. I couldn’t bear that Charlie had guessed what I’d been up to. My duplicity seemed so much worse when I imagined it through someone else’s eyes. I looked searchingly through the crowd for Richard and Jeremy but saw only a sea of villagers. Jean was wriggling, so I placed her back on the ground.
“Lola!” Kitty scolded. “You’re sounding like a total slut, darling!”
“What’s a slut?” the little girl inquired, bending her head down in order to look up earnestly into Charlie’s eyes.
Kitty took her from Charlie and placed her on the ground, crouching and looking into her wide dark eyes. “A slut is a girl of very loose morals,” she explained earnestly.
The little girl turned to me and pointed. “You’re a slut,” she announced loudly enough for everyone in a thousand-mile radius to hear.
“Can I have a go on the slut?” asked a small boy of about four years of age whose mother looked at me as if I was a witch that needed burning. She picked her boy up and carried him off while I stood there clutching my muddy rabbit in my muddy clothes. Charlie looked at me as if he didn’t know me, while the little boy’s voice echoed in the distance—“I want a go on the slut. I want a go on the slut!”
“Right, then, who wants to win a prize on the coconut shy?” called Charlie, and all the children around forgot about the slut and started jumping all over him with cries of “Me! Me! Me!”
Kitty put her arm around my waist and led me away. “So he proposed again, did he?”
“Last night.”
“And how do you feel about it, really feel about it, Lola?” She stopped and looked deeply into my eyes the way only Kitty can (basically because on anyone else it would seem melodramatic!).
But I ignored her piercing gaze—well, actually, I diverted her gaze by looking soulfully into Jean’s eyes and making mad little clucking sounds at her. “What do you mean, how do I feel about it? I thought you’d be pleased.”
“My pleasure in your proposal should be immaterial. I asked how you felt. Do you really think he is your passion, darling, that’s the point.”
“What do you mean is he my passion? What sort of thing is that to ask?” It was exactly the sort of thing Kitty would ask, but I was annoyed with her asking anyway.
“Do you ache when you can’t be with him?”
I flashed back to the aching I did after I saw him with Leggy Blonde, although deep down it had been niggling at me recently that prior to seeing him with Leggy Blonde there hadn’t been a whole lot of aching really. Actually…I’d been quite happy with my life; happy with my job, happy with my friends, happy with my flat, happy with my occasional flings, happy with my rabbit. When I thought about it, I’d been quite the quirky single girl. Independent and happy with it! “Of course I ache when I’m not with him,” I said, though.
“Well, then, that’s all that matters,” she said and walked on as if the matter was settled.
I scuttled after her. Jean’s little ears went back with irritation (she hates it when I scuttle), but I couldn’t help feeling a bit miffed. “You might say congratulations. After all, you’re always going on at me about the tragedy of my life and how I have no passion. You’re the one who’s always despaired of me, saying I ‘wear you out so’ with my lack of passion.”
Kitty stopped and turned. “Yes, I have felt at times that your life was empty, I did worry that you lacked passion or purpose. But then, I used to think Aunt Camilla’s life was empty, too. Maybe I was wrong about both of you.” She smiled at me and put a hand out to stroke Jean’s ears. “One thing I do know is that passion isn’t something you need congratulations for. It’s a painful disorder, an uncontrollable emotion, a purpose, a raison d’être without which I can’t live. If you have the soul of a poet, as I do, you can’t live without the suffering that passion brings.”
“You make it sound like a disease,” I said as Jean subtly rubbed her back end on my arm.
Kitty pulled her hand away and looked soulfully into the middle di
stance as only a woman who has played Juliet a thousand times can. I wouldn’t be able to look into the middle distance soulfully if my life depended on it. Actually, even thinking about it made me have to think of something sad to stop myself falling apart at the seams giggling. “It is a disease, I suppose,” Kitty sighed. “A disease of the soul. And like an addict I can’t live without it.”
“Oh,” I replied, almost bursting with laughter as Kitty put a hand out wistfully. “I don’t know anymore if it’s for everyone, though,” she conceded.
Even though it was Kitty, I was stunned by her speech nonetheless. She’d clearly been madly affected by my aunt’s death, and specifically about the discovery of Aunt Camilla’s secret love, but I hadn’t expected her to question passion. I hadn’t anticipated that she wouldn’t dance with pleasure at the news that Richard and I were to be remarried.
I didn’t have a chance to dwell, though, because a small boy charged into me, sending poor horny little Jean flying. Kitty and I ran to her aid, but she must have been okay because she started hopping away swiftly through the crowds. We gave chase, and when finally I gathered her into my arms, I became aware of a fracas going on at the edge of the green.
Richard and Charlie were yelling at one another.
“Isn’t that Richard?” Kitty asked, pointing to a corner of the green.
I watched with horror as Richard pushed Charlie, then I saw Charlie storm off.
Kitty and I both raced over with Jean. “What’s going on?” I asked Richard when we finally reached him.
“Oh, the guy’s a prick, don’t worry about him,” he replied, seemingly quite casual.
“What were you arguing about?”
“He was at me for the pissy membership subscription. I told him I’d give him a check. I mean, for Christ’s sake, it’s hardly on the top of my agenda today.” Then he put his arm around me. “I’m about to marry the girl of my dreams, that’s all I care about.”
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