Hunting Unicorns

by Bella Pollen

  For the last three weeks we’d been filming our various aristocrats without the hindrance of guests and, as with any small group of people, you establish a familiarity that everyone becomes comfortable with. Now surrounded by these interlopers with their expensive bohemian clothes, jobs in theatre, art and fashion, it struck me again how little I belonged here. They were Wonder Women and I was Danger Mouse.

  Looking at these girls and myself, we were different creatures altogether. Stella, for instance, was stick thin, I’m skinny too, but it was as though her limbs had been carved from a different category of tree to mine. I couldn’t stop looking at her, so I could hardly blame Rory for doing the same. I hid behind Wolf and Dwight, shrubs from my own forest, until a gong proclaimed dinner. I worked on automatic pilot, Wolf and Dwight moved about the table with the camera, I asked questions, listened to answers, but all the time aware that I was watching Stella watching Rory.

  Ever since the moment at the train crossing, things had changed. I felt knocked off centre, no longer sure how to look at Rory, unable to remember how I’d treated him the day before or even two hours earlier. This unwelcome feeling of unease and desire had crept up on me, self-inflated in my head and like a sleeping bag I couldn’t roll it up tightly enough to stow it away. I don’t know if he was aware of it, but I was. Very aware. Much too aware.

  After dinner, the men drank port and the women congregated in the drawing room. All the girls smoked, but Stella was the one I sought out to ask for a light.

  ‘Of course,’ she said politely.

  I told her I’d once heard this great urban myth. Some girl from LA had gone to stay with her fiancé in England in an incredibly grand house party like this one. The girl had been nervous and lit up a cigarette before dessert. The Duchess or whoever it was stood up abruptly and rung the bell for the servants.

  ‘“The American appears to believe the meal is at an end,” the Duchess had said and remained standing. Everybody was forced to stop eating and leave the room. Unreal huh?’

  ‘That was my mother,’ Stella said quietly.

  * * *

  We had been warned there would be after-dinner games. ‘Kick the pot’ was to be played in the pitch dark – which meant we wouldn’t be able to film. We reached a compromise. There would be just enough light to film but not enough to ruin the tension. That tension could exist in a game of hide and seek played by adults was news to me but I kept quiet and listened while the guests downed brandies and rules were explained.

  ‘The point of the game is for HE to catch and identify all the players. HE may identify players by touch, or trick players into identifying themselves. If HE identifies a player wrongly, that player is free to go.’

  I went into a huddle with Wolf to work out shots. I hadn’t yet figured out this English obsession with games, but my best guess was that it was their way of opting out of talking to each other so when Rory passed I chirruped, ‘The lengths you people go to to avoid intimacy.’

  ‘You think so?’ he grabbed my hand and pulled me into the circle of guests. ‘Then time you came in from the sidelines for a change.’

  * * *

  Straws were drawn for He and it was Rory who pulled the short one out. He began counting and we all scurried off. Within seconds the house was silent except for a stealthy footstep or creak of a door as hiding places were found and abandoned. ‘One hundred,’ Rory yelled, ‘ready or not, here I come.’

  Soon the game was being played in earnest. Behind a curtain, curled up on a wide window sill in an upstairs room I waited, feeling more than a little foolish. I thought of Jay and of what an absurd parallel we were making. He was in a country where people were playing their own after-dark games of hide and seek for real. I tried to imagine what he was doing at that moment. Having a beer with a NATO rep in some motel, or discussing fundamentalism with an over-eager first-time journalist. At a pinch he could be playing bridge – a game he loved and claimed an addict could find a fix for in any country – but one thing was for sure, he would not be playing ‘kick the pot’ in the middle of the English countryside with a bunch of junked-up ex-public schoolboys. It was almost shaming, then, how much I was enjoying it.

  The stillness in the house was punctuated by the occasional scuffle as someone was cornered, and ongoing wails from imprisoned Hoorays. Good-natured warnings were howled from the prisoners’ den. ‘Do not attempt rescue. HE is sitting on the pot. Get off the bloody pot you filthy cheat.’

  Finally, after a prolonged silence, I heard footsteps powering down the stairs and a blood-curdling scream of, ‘Pot’s Out!’ There was a roar from freed prisoners. A fellow guest burst by me, panting heavily. I could dimly make out his shape as he squeezed himself into an oversized umbrella stand. My legs were badly cramped, I had to move, it was now or never. I crept stealthily along the corridor. ‘Pot’s in,’ someone shouted. Feet again thundered up the stairs like HVO troops on the rampage. More shouting. Chaos, then it was all quiet on the western front. I was out in the open – sorely in need of a hiding place. I dropped to my knees by the wall. Ha! I would fight and die a soldier’s death but the wall I was leaning against gave way. I reached out with my hand. It wasn’t a wall, but a tall heavy screen. Perfect. I slipped behind and forced my breathing under control. Enveloped by the darkness and silence, I soon lost track of time and place. My ears tuned to every noise, however insignificant, analysing it for danger. It was really unnerving just how real the game felt. The sense of being hunted was genuinely creepy. I could have been the last Christian on the run from Islamic killers. The hairs on my arm rose as I heard a creak. I froze then felt a stab of real fear. I peered between the hinges of the screen, but through the blackness saw nothing. I relaxed but then moments later, there it was again. Somebody was heading my way. My heart drummed. I shrank against the wall, trying not to breathe. It was hot. My shirt was damp with sweat – with a terrible jolt I realized that the screen was being peeled back, panel by panel.

  ‘Aha,’ said a voice softly.

  The pads of Rory’s fingertips touched the side of my head, moved slowly down my face then round the back of my neck. I said nothing, I would not talk and give myself away but the game Rory was playing was breaching every rule in the Geneva Convention. His fingers found the edge of my T-shirt, brushed against my rib cage. I was barely breathing, running out of oxygen, running out of resolve. My face was burning. When he kissed me it was like a ghost kissing a ghost because I couldn’t see him and I certainly couldn’t recognize myself. I slid down the wall, his grip tightened on my shoulders then let go – and suddenly, abruptly – I was alone.

  * * *

  Stella needed a lift to London. We’d finished packing the equipment into the van after breakfast when she came down the steps with her suede bag and threw it into the trunk of the Rover.

  ‘You don’t mind do you, Rory?’

  Rory glanced at me.

  ‘No problem,’ I said mechanically, ‘there’s plenty of room with the crew.’

  And suddenly it was all over. There Rory was, shaking Wolf’s hand. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be around over the weekend,’ and it was only then I remembered he’d warned us – right at the start – of another commitment. ‘Parents’ anniversary,’ he now explained, and gave Wolf a pained look.

  ‘No problem, man,’ Wolf clapped him on the back. ‘Come to New York sometime. Anytime. I’ll take you to a Rangers game.’

  I stood a short distance away, eyes itchy from the dust of a sleepless night. After ‘kick the pot’ had petered out everyone had drifted around, talking, swilling brandy round glasses. Stella had ensnared Rory on a couch built for two. She kicked off her kitten heels and curled her legs up underneath her. She twirled her hair around her little finger as she meowed.

  I went to bed.

  Rory caught my arm halfway up the stairs. ‘Maggie … don’t go … the night is still young … we could, er, let’s see … do a thousand-piece puzzle … read War and Peace out loud, alternatively…’ />
  ‘Rory. I don’t think I should.’

  ‘Should…’ he said carefully, ‘for such a small and uninspiring word, “should” has so many tiresome implications.’

  ‘Yes it does.’

  ‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘Because you’re a lefty liberal New York feminist and I’m a sexist, emotionally castrated Englishman?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Minor problems.’

  ‘Rory?’ We both turned.

  Stella was at the foot of the stairs smoking a cigarette. Property rights were printed all over her face.

  * * *

  And now it was too late. The morning after the night that never was.

  ‘Call me of course if you need anything urgently, otherwise…’ Rory was standing in front of me, ‘otherwise, good luck … and, er, send me a tape, if you remember.’

  ‘Sure.’ I stuck out my hand and, painfully aware of Dwight and Wolf hovering, said my professional thank yous. Rory climbed into his car. I busied myself with equipment shuffling as the engine of the Rover fired up. He hooted the horn.

  ‘Bye,’ I said and gave a mock salute of sorts.

  ‘Bye-bye,’ Stella called out of the window. She waved gaily as Rory drove out of my life.

  daniel

  Talk about spineless. What the hell is he thinking? Actually, that I can tell you. He’s thinking why, oh why does he specialize in flighty foreign girls. He’s thinking hopeless, no future, not even as a temporary refuge because, for certain whacky reasons of principle, Rory believes it’s wrong to use people to stop up the holes in your soul. In other words he’s retreating behind those stuffy Anglo Saxon sensibilities of honour and fairplay. If it had been me, I’d have tossed Stella out of the window and given Maggie a damn good shagging but seduction is an oblique art and Rory has never fully been aware quite how to practise it to its greatest effect. Once I accused him of having an old-fashioned attitude to women. He told me he was sick of having to compensate for my behaviour. It was true, I had a tendency to drop girlfriends at his feet like roadkill, sweet bloodied doves with their feathers all sticky and matted and proudly say, ‘Now look what I’ve done.’

  * * *

  Back in London, Rory mopes on the sofa in Benj’s flat whilst Benj, Pimlico’s resident gastronomic genius, prepares him a ‘snack.’ Carefully positioned on the kitchen worktop stands a jar of sandwich spread, a bottle of salad cream and a pork pie. Benj cuts slices of Mother’s Pride into triangles, spreads them with butter, then places them on the dusty blow heater to harden. Those of you who were sent to that great institution known as the British boarding school will recognize these Red Cross items. The rest of you unfortunate enough to have been kept at home, fed with your mother’s home cooking, unable to experience either the pleasures of pedophiliac gym teachers or the rigorous beatings of assorted sadomasochistic masters will not appreciate why boarding school is to thank for England being a nation reduced to rapture by Marmite on toast.

  ‘God I miss it sometimes,’ Benj says. He smears sandwich spread on the bread and balances a wedge of pork pie on top. ‘Great food, parental escape.’

  He takes a bite. ‘Frankly, school was everything a boy could want.’

  ‘A little short on female company perhaps.’

  ‘You are surely forgetting the twin marvels of matron’s bosoms.’

  ‘Thankfully I am.’

  ‘For years after I left I used to ring sick bay just to imagine those vast mammary glands rubbing against each other as Matron ran to answer the phone.’ Benj looks dreamy.

  ‘No doubt she’s still single,’ Rory says dryly. ‘Why don’t you give her a call.’

  ‘Talking of single women,’ Benj passes over a morsel, ‘how was your jaunt with the fragrant Miss Munroe?’

  ‘It had its moments.’

  ‘She boil anybody else’s rabbit?’

  ‘Actually,’ Rory says, ‘she showed remarkable restraint.’

  ‘Was Miles’s sister in residence?’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Rory nearly chokes on his pork pie.

  ‘Why, what’s wrong? She’s nice, well … when I say nice what I mean is, she’s available, she’s handsome—’

  ‘Quite. I’d be more inclined to feed her a sugar lump than sleep with her.’

  ‘And Stella?’ Benj says slyly.

  ‘Stella.’ Rory sighs. ‘Stella should come with an “emotional vacuum” warning round her neck.’

  Benj snorts. ‘You’re getting ridiculously hard to please in your old age.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Rory says moodily, ‘that’s not strictly true.’

  maggie

  ‘Madrid.’ Wolf reads out loud from a copy of the Week magazine in my bedroom, ‘Jose Astoreka set a new world record by crushing thirty walnuts between his buttocks in fifty-seven seconds.’ He chuckles. ‘Dortmund. A top German surgeon was fined four thousand pounds for making his patients do Hitler salutes. Claims that he was trying to improve their shoulder mobility was thrown out of court.’

  Dwight picked up another reel of film and checked its code against his list. ‘Half of these are labelled wrong, Wolf.’ He scratched out a number and corrected it with a resigned sigh.

  ‘Seattle. Lovelorn woman is accused of eating twenty red roses in a flower shop.’

  ‘Is the Duke of Normouth also Baron Normouth?’ Dwight was poring over the wedge of notes that Massey had provided us with, pedantically checking the spelling and titles against the film’s labels.

  I pressed my knuckles into my temples. The drive to London had been long and snagged with thick traffic. I’d been silent the whole journey nursing a wall-to-wall headache.

  ‘What about Bevan?’ Dwight looked up, ‘Seventh or the eighth Earl?’

  ‘Who cares.’ Wolf threw the magazine onto the bed. ‘Let’s go eat.’

  ‘Here we go,’ Dwight flicked the page. ‘Bevan, Eighth Earl of, Alistair Joclyn, Jesus, look at the amount of other names he has, Ramsay, also Danby, Reevesdale, Lytton-Jones. Oh wait, here we go, Viscount Lytton-Jones, Daniel, deceased 1999…’ He squinted at the page. ‘Hang on, Maggie. This is weird, Viscount Lytton-Jones was Alistair Bevan’s father, right?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘But he can’t be.’

  ‘Why not?’ Idly I picked up Wolf’s discarded magazine.

  ‘Because it says here he was born in 1961.’

  ‘Let me see that,’ I snatched the piece of paper from him and scanned down the tiny print, ‘Viscount Lytton-Jones. Daniel, born 1961 … Wolf he’s right…’ The silly poker rhyme I’d invented to remember the hierarchy of titles came back to me. ‘Dwight, when is a viscount not a viscount?’

  ‘When he becomes an earl,’ Dwight said promptly.

  ‘On his father’s death … exactly! That’s it, we’re not looking for a viscount at all.

  ‘But we have an earl – Alistair Bevan is the earl.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you see? That photograph was taken in 1938 when our traitor was still a young man – at that time it’s conceivable his father and grandfather were still alive.’

  ‘She’s babbling,’ Wolf said.

  ‘No, she’s right,’ Dwight’s face was pink with excitement. ‘When one generation dies, everyone inherits the next title up. If the grandfather and father both died after that photo was taken, the viscount would have moved up two rungs – he’d be a marquess or a duke or something—’

  Danby, Marquess of Danby … got it,’ I stabbed at the page with my finger. ‘Issue: Alistair, Con, Dinah, William, Robert.’

  ‘Born 1904.’ Dwight read over my shoulder. ‘I cannot believe we didn’t check this before.’

  ‘And died?’ I hardly dared breathe.

  ‘Not died.’ Dwight stabbed at the spot with his finger.

  ‘Not died as in … not dead?’ Wolf was now peering over my other shoulder.

  ‘Not died as in alive,’ Dwight said.<
br />
  ‘Holy Toledo,’ I turned and stared at them both, ‘a warm body.’

  daniel

  ‘But where did you meet her?’ Benj asks puzzled.

  ‘In the country.’

  ‘Perfect! See? Daniel was naturally attracted to the hare in the race, but you, Rory, will end up with the tortoise – of course a tortoise who’s got enormous style and flair. Just think of the advantages. Country girls are tough, they’re used to the weather, it’s what I’ve always thought you needed – a nice solid English girl.’

  ‘She’s not English.’

  Benj digests this.

  ‘Perhaps Scottish then?’

  Rory shakes his head.

  ‘Er, Welsh would have to be my third choice.’

  Rory just grunts at him.

  Benj clatters the plates into the sink. ‘Tell me it’s not the bloody American.’

  ‘It’s the bloody American.’

  ‘Terrific, Rory. Your brother dies, your fiancée runs screaming when you inherit the coldest house in England, you’ve been in a foul temper ever since, and now,’ he draws breath, ‘now you go falling for the perfectly formed Miss Munroe, whose advantages as far as I can see are…’ he taps off on his fingers, ‘a) not overly fond of this country, b) not overly fond of the people and c) not at all fond of the weather for that matter, so it’s fortunate really that you’re absolutely free from all responsibility to follow her when she leaves on?’

  ‘Monday,’ Rory says sulkily.

  ‘Thank you, yes, Monday, in two days’ time. For?’

  ‘New York,’ Rory mutters.

  ‘Where, by the way, she also lives.’ Benj runs out of steam. ‘Christ, Rory, shag her if you must, but if you had an ounce of feeling for your friends you’d forget all about her.’

  ‘I’ve kissed her.’

  ‘What!’ Outraged, Benj drops his cigarette.

  ‘I’ve kissed her,’ Rory repeats mutinously.

  ‘And what else, might I enquire?’ Benj stamps on the smouldering carpet.