by Clare Naylor
“Hello, trouble.” Shit. She stopped dead, caught in the act. Turning slowly, she helloed with fake surprise.
“Orlando! We have to stop meeting like this!” Did I really say that?
“I never usually come to such smart places as this, but I have to get a present for someone.”
“Your girlfriend?” Amy spilled out without thinking.
“No, just divorced. For my mother actually.” Expect the unexpected, Amy, isn’t that your perfume’s motto?
“They have some fantastic things, for gifts.” Get a grip, Amy.
“I know, there’s this amazing sofa, come and have a look.” He led her up the stairs by her fingertips and flopped down on a vast, fat leather sofa.
“Veeeryy nice. If you want to get laid,” offered Amy. He laughed.
“No pulling the wool over your eyes, eh?”
“I prefer this one, jewel-colored crushed velvet. Jimi Hendrix would buy it.”
“They should have a sticker saying that on it. In tests eight out of ten dead rock stars would buy this sofa.”
“What about actors?” Amy queried.
“No sense of style at all, just take on board the life wholesale. Y’know, I might just buy this place intact, rhubarb leaves in wineglasses, that kind of thing. No imagination of my own, just method furnishing.”
“I sometimes think that one day I’ll have a magnificent dinner party with all this stylized stuff, serve pebbles in bowls with a few red berries for color, goldfish in the soup tureen,” Amy ventured. They both got the giggles and invented a fantastical life in the day of the Conran Shop shopper.
“Pyramids of oysters and a banana tree,” he offered.
“A bed you could live in, like that Evelyn Waugh character, Sonia Digby Vane Trumpington, who just drank Black Velvet in bed all day, entertained all her gentlemen friends from the bath, and let her pekes keep her feet warm. Darling.” Amy put on her best Noël Coward voice, and they spun through the chic splendor of the shop until they’d constructed a fantasy around every teaspoon and assumed parts of Italian countesses, reclusive starlets, and East End gangsters shacking up on the Costa del Sol.
“What about this one?” Orlando said, hurrying over to a filigree lace hammock.
“I don’t think it would hold me,” said Amy, assessing its delicacy.
“Rubbish, it would hold both of us. It’s for some South Pacific island where you could swim with turtles by day and lie beneath the Southern Cross at night.”
“Tied between two palm trees,” Amy mused, fingering the white lace.
“No, mango trees, then you could pluck them handily for breakfast.”
“I should think if I decided to plant a farm at the foot of the Ngong hills, I’d like one of these.” Amy put on her best Out of Africa voice and patted a large mother-of-pearl-encrusted tea chest.
“But watch out for syphilis,” warned Orlando.
“Why syphilis?” Amy asked.
“Because, my dear, the Happy Valley was positively alive with it, that and elephants and the sound of us all making love to our best friends’ wives. See what I mean, old girl?”
“Absolutely, darling. Neville was the most handsome man I ever had the pleasure of committing adultery with.” Amy smoked an invisible cigarette and tilted her head to one side.
“Almost as good as me in bed?” asked Orlando, holding her gaze and falling silent.
Amy didn’t say anything. For a half second they looked at each other and she held her breath, then a shopper with a large palm tree walked between them. Barely remembering who they were, they collapsed, exhausted, on the sofa where they’d begun.
“I still don’t know what to get for my mother.” Orlando frowned.
“Hyacinths,” said Amy confidently. “Mothers always go on about how divine they smell and ‘what a beautiful blue’ they are.”
“Settled,” he said, heading for a vast terra-cotta tub of bulbs.
They stood in the queue to pay.
“All this talk of grand lifestyles has made me feel like Neanderthal man, never cooking, never entertaining. Why not come round for Sunday lunch tomorrow? I can’t promise olive groves but I can buy some cashews from Sainsbury’s.”
“Love to,” said Amy. They shook hands.
“Done.”
“Here’s my address.” He scribbled on a taxi card and handed it to her. “One-ish.” Amy nodded.
As she was leaving she noticed the girl at the till noticing him. She was pouting and fluttering like a drag queen. Never mind, Amy shrugged, I’m sharing roast chicken with him, not her. That-a-girl, Amy!
CHAPTER 13
Amy pulled up on Orlando’s doorstep just a few minutes past one. Ish, she told herself, one-ish, this’ll be fine. She contemplated doing another couple of laps of the street on her bike to waste time but then she’d already done three and might start to perspire, or was it glow? She knew ladies didn’t sweat. A little flummoxed, she checked her already-much-scrutinized piece of paper. She’d done some amateur graphology on the loops on his g’s and was quite pleased with what his capital letters told her about his temperament. Yup, right address. A little run-down, she thought, glancing at the peeling windowsills, but perhaps in that clever south London way its scruffy exterior denoted smart home contents. Probably. She wiped her glowing palms on the jacket she’d borrowed from Lucinda in a fit of panic last night and, after a few yoga breaths, pressed firmly on the doorbell. Clatter clatter down the staircase, fiddle with keys. Help, what am I doing here? Door flung open.
“Amy, hi.” Kiss kiss. Nice Sunday smell drifted down the stairs.
“Something smells good,” she remarked, with all the originality of a seasoned (if dull) houseguest.
“So it should, I’ve been up since dawn scrubbing floors and basting dead animals, look—dishpan hands.” He held his beautiful, long fingers out for scrutiny.
“You’re obviously using the wrong brand of washing-up liquid. Men always do.” She sniggered, he huffed with a camp toss of his head and led her through to the kitchen. Amy noted the bachelor feel to the flat, a tidy but drab kitchen, lots of scrubbed pine but not a vase of flowers or cleverly arranged rug in sight. Behind the house was a tiny veranda leading onto an even tinier lawn. It wasn’t really Mayfair, she thought, feeling sure that actors must get paid enough to live north of the river in somewhere a bit more palatial. Maybe, though, he just hadn’t got round to it since the divorce, maybe his ex-wife had the penthouse.
“Very sweet,” said Amy. “Did you decorate?”
“Nah, I’ve only lived here for about six months. I try not to invite anyone round because they think I should have some hell pad with shiny floorboards and revolving statues of nudes.”
“And black satin sheets and a water bed.” Amy perched on the edge of the worktop, getting into the swing.
“Oh, I’ve got those. My only indulgence though, I find money’s never wasted where good taste is concerned.” He handed her a glass of red wine. Amy looked up from his hand to his eyes. Shit. Reality check. Looking straight at her was Orlando Rock. God of stage and screen with all the sex appeal but minus the poniard. Her mind flickered to Orlando in the woods, the superstar surrounded by admirers. Then her stomach flickered. Her hand almost didn’t grasp the stem of the glass, and for a second it wavered between their two hands.
“Do you think we’re destined to talk about interior decoration forever?” said Amy, finally managing to secure her red wine.
“Yes, ’fraid so. I made a pact with the devil: I can be famous and successful but in my private life am condemned to talk about home furnishings for all eternity.”
“Shit. Well, I think I’d better be off, perhaps you can have the chicken in sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, I wasn’t terribly hungry anyway.” Amy made to leave the room, picking up her coat on the way out. Half of her longing to really leave so she would have time to adjust to this peculiar twist in her life.
“Stop, you’re my only hope, I need the blood o
f a beautiful virgin and some eye of newt for a potion I was planning. Only then can I break Satan’s hold over me.”
“No can do. I’m sure you can get eye of newt in Sainsbury’s but you’re about six years too late for the virgin’s blood.”
“Bugger. And you look so innocent, too. Mind you, so does Lily.”
Amy was plucked back to reality. I can’t go on letting him think that Lily and I are an item, it’s not fair to him, she told herself, when what she really meant was: if he wants to kiss me later, which he won’t, he has to know that I’m straight, or bi, or whatever.
“Orlando?”
“Amy, there’s no need to be embarrassed, it’s cool about you and Lily, really.”
“No, you see, well, that was my first time, with a woman. I’ve never really felt attracted to them before and, really I think I prefer men, but it was nice, and …”
“There’s a first time for everything,” he interrupted sympathetically, ready to counsel his pretty young guest that “if it feels good—do it.”
“No, really, I fancy men. Lily was lovely, but it was more of an erotic thing, a backlash against crap men.”
He nodded and refilled her glass.
“Well, if you say so. I’m sure the male population will launch a collective cheer at that news.”
Phew! number two, thought Amy. Better late than never.
They chatted late into the afternoon. He told her about his recent divorce and a bit about “the pressures of acting.” Amy was surprised to find he didn’t sound like an actor at all, even though he told her he missed his wife but they’d both changed a lot and, really, actresses weren’t his cup of tea. Amy was almost convinced that he didn’t fancy the raven-locked temptress in Return of the Native, but when she slipped off to the loo and pondered this thought in a moment of relative sobriety she decided he was just deceiving himself. Who wouldn’t be in love with her, especially as she got to wear a jet-black velvet cape. As she pondered the Hogarths on the wall of his downstairs bathroom she was suddenly beset by panic. She’d been too nervous to have breakfast and the wine had gone straight to her head and she thought she must be making a total fool of herself. There is just no way in a month of Sundays that he’d invite me here because he fancies me, or even likes me vaguely. Maybe he thinks I’m the editor of Vogue and can get him a good review for his next play? No, that’s it, he needs a new cleaner, the place is looking a bit grubby, someone probably told him I need the money. At this thought Amy almost stayed in the loo. She didn’t want to go out there and be ritually humiliated. Then she realized that she’d probably been gone for much too long, so after scrubbing the red-winey flaky purple bits off her lips she ventured out.
Orlando was stretched out on the sofa cradling his glass in the palm of his hand, watching the liquid swirl around. When Amy appeared at the door he looked up but didn’t speak.
“Nice Hogarths,” she said, taking care to perch herself on the chair furthest away from Orlando where he couldn’t possibly imagine that she’d misconstrued his motives. Still he didn’t speak but just looked at her.
“Could do with a bit of a dust though.” She smiled cheerfully. This broke his concentration and brooding look. He frowned.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said, breaking into a smile. Amy kicked off her shoes and stretched her legs out in front of her. The wine lulled them into a haze, and they made a bet as to who could eat the most roast potatoes.
“Loser does the washing-up, how’s that?” he bargained.
“And the drying,” added Amy, confident of her ability to demolish an inordinate number of spuds.
“I don’t have Irish blood for nothing,” she warned. “All those years of famine are in the genes, you know. I see a potato and eat it.”
And she did. She ate nine, he managed seven.
“You wouldn’t have let me do the washing-up anyway, you’re too much of a gentleman.”
“Don’t you believe it, you’ve yet to see the dark side of my soul.”
“Oh, I read about that in the Tatler: the demonic actor. It convinced me of your serious, scary nature. I’m truly stunned you even eat roast dinners, you sounded as though you just ate Derrida for breakfast and Sartre for dessert. Can this be true?”
“Don’t wind me up, you saucy young thing. What about you?”
“I’m a much misunderstood and oftentimes maligned personage.”
“And verbose,” he nipped in.
Amy slapped his arm and continued, “You have no idea what it’s like working on fashion shoots all week. I just want to re-create beautiful scenarios from Keats poems, full of velvet and pre-Raphaelite lovelies, and instead I have to be hip and have models who look like heroin addicts in bondage gear.”
“Sounds good to me, can you introduce me?” he teased. She slapped him again and in a mock sulk refused to utter another word.
“Come on, tell me, what do you really want to do?”
“I want to write.” Amy confided her deepest darkest secret. It was loosened from her by a good deal of vin rouge but more by trust. She was quite shocked and unprepared for her disclosure and tried to backtrack.
“Tell me more.”
“No, I’m not sure. I just want to create beautiful worlds. Nothing clever, just kind of Enid Blyton for grown-ups, lots of imagination.”
“Bit like acting really,” he pondered. It was getting much darker outside, and Amy realized with misery that she’d come on her bike and her lights didn’t work. Orlando stood up to light the fire, and she sank her head back into the cushions on the sofa, closing her eyes, all heavy and soporific.
“I think I have to go,” she said.
“I’ve just lit the fire, you can’t.”
“God, I hate Sundays. When I was younger I used to think it was because I’d never done my homework, but now it’s like real life has to start again tomorrow. Burst bubbles.”
“That pit-of-the-stomach feeling when you know it’s all hanging over you. At least you don’t have to go to the wilds of Dorset away from civilization and reasonable human beings.”
“You’re forgetting that I work in the fashion industry, Orlando.”
They both fell silent, accepting the inevitable. The day was over and Amy had to leave. They exchanged goodbyes on the doorstep, Amy hopping from one foot to the other to keep warm.
“Well, that was lovely, thank you,” she said, not knowing whether to offer to reciprocate the invitation and just a bit too shy to do so.
“No, thank you, I haven’t had such a fun time in ages.”
Kiss kiss. A bit more hopping from foot to foot, fiddling with bicycle lights. Good-bye. Good-bye.
CHAPTER 14
For the next two days the phone lines in London were burned up by Amy. She increased BT’s profit margin single-handedly and developed a crick in her neck. But she didn’t tell a soul about her afternoon with Orlando Rock. She heard her friends’ problems, talked about last night’s episode of Men Behaving Badly, and systematically phoned her way through her Filofax. Somehow, though, she could never find the right words: “Oh, by the way, I’m seeing that hugely successful actor Orlando Rock,” or “Have you seen Henry IV at the Haymarket? Yes, I had a remarkably intimate roast with Hotspur yesterday. Actually.” It just didn’t sound right. And do I really want them to know? To know what, anyway? We just had lunch, gorgeous, but—no, nothing happened. Amy hadn’t really thought the whole thing through, which was why she needed to tell someone, anyone. But not. Oh God, another pickle. So she toyed with her thoughts alone. Until Lucinda phoned her and shrieked, “I hear you have something to tell me!”
“Lucinda, what are you talking about?” Genuinely wondering what she meant. There was no way Lucinda could know.
“Excuse me, I just thought we were friends.”
“Luce, settle down. What are you talking about?”
“Benjy just called to say that you’re going out with Orlando Rock.”
“Benjy? But how? Don’t be stupid, of c
ourse I’m not.”
“He spoke to Lily who’d seen Olly, he said you’d spent Sunday together.”
“Which does not constitute ‘going out with,’ ” rationalized Amy, somewhat out of character.
“I want to hear all about it. I’ll buy you supper in the oyster bar, meet me there at seven.”
Amy pulled on some halfway decent trousers and lip-glossed her mouth into a mini ice rink. Once at the oyster bar, she sat waiting for Lucinda for the customary twenty minutes. She was used to this facet of their friendship. But it left her rewinding her encounter with Orlando, dissecting and analyzing, until she saw his ghost walking through the foyer into the Conran Shop where she’d bumped into him. Serendipity if ever it was, she romanticized. She thought back to him onstage, strutting Hotspur in his thigh-high boots; saw his face on an infinite number of magazine covers; recalled how she’d felt at the party for the magazine editor. He was in another league. Sunday had been a fluke. Maybe it never happened. Lucinda turned up and two glasses of Chablis later they were still chewing over the conundrum.
“You see, I just can’t reconcile his public image with the man I had lunch with. I kind of expected him to be so aloof, so beyond. But he wasn’t, just lovely.”
“Have a ciggy, darling,” proffered Lucinda.
“I’ve given up, Luce, I don’t smoke.”
“I think you probably do tonight.”
So they huffed and puffed, and Lucinda was quite disappointed with the nonevent that Amy had painted. No snogging. No drugs. No sex. And not even Amy’s usual embellishment of the occasion, just roast chicken and red wine. No God, I love hims. No I think this is its, which she was so used to with Amy. Something must have gone wrong. She determined to find out what.
“Nothing, Luce, I just had a lovely time. But y’know, he’s very ordinary, more ordinary even than that accountant friend of Benjy’s with the funny ear.”