Love

by Clare Naylor

  She’d read most of cinema and a bit of the television guide when the doorbell finally rang.

  “Sorry I’m late, terrible traffic coming over the bridge.” A vision in pale lilac cotton, damp hair, and a shy smile stood on her doorstep. Ohmigod.

  “That’s fine, come in.” She sprinted up the stairs before him, careful not to let his eyes dwell too long on her bottom, which followed her at what felt like fifty paces. They retrieved a dial-a-curry menu from the wastepaper basket and ordered enough kormas and nan bread to satisfy a maharaja. When it arrived they laid it out on the living room floor and sat cross-legged with their plates on their knees. Amy watched Orlando as he helped himself to more rice, mesmerized by his hands. They were large and slim with the merest dusting of blond hairs, and his watch, a brown leather strap and solid face. But it wasn’t the watch that held her transfixed, it was the way it sat on his wrist bone, the tanned and powerful wrist, the forearms and gentle curve of muscle beneath the creased rolled-up cotton of his shirt. She’d never seen anything more suggestive of good sex in her life. She shifted in her seat with anticipation and distraction. Get on with it, Orlando, I’m losing patience.

  “How’s the Hardy?” she asked, trying to suppress her urge to jump on him.

  “Good. I can’t say I’m having the time of my life, but I think it’s working well.”

  “What about the rest of the cast?” Amy attempted to extract salient information about his luscious costar.

  “They’re fine, we all get on pretty well.”

  “And your leading lady?”

  “Fine, she’s a great Eustacia.” He had women a little wrong in this respect. While Amy longed to hear how dull Tiffany was and he longed to tell her, he thought it would just make him seem crass and misogynistic. Oh, crossed wires.

  “Actually, that’s part of the reason why I came round.”

  Oh God, he’s having an affair with her. He’s perfectly entitled to, of course. It’s not as though we have anything going on, but …

  “I have to go away to finish the filming.” Amy’s heart sank like a stone into her stomach and she felt nauseous.

  “Really?”

  “Not for very long, just a month. We’re going to New Zealand. The light in Dorset’s really bad so the producer thought we should go to Auckland.”

  “Excuse me for pointing this out, but Auckland and Dorset aren’t awfully similar.” Amy came over all acerbic.

  “It’s a popular ploy among crews who feel like a trip. Pretend the light’s better on the other side of the world and heigh-ho, off we all go. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I mean, not to me. It’s not as though anything’s going on, is it?” There. She’d done it. Voiced her paranoia and made herself sound like a bitter spinster.

  “Amy, I don’t know what to say. I thought things were going well. I thought that when I get back from New Zealand we could see a bit more of each other, if you still want to.”

  Amy was unconvinced. I’ve heard some elaborate brush-offs in my time but heading for the Antipodes at the first sign of trouble seems insane. But then all actors were insane. Professional weirdos. Amy’s warmth plummeted to room temperature and below. Icy spells.

  “You don’t owe me some debt of gratitude, Orlando. You’re a free man, you can go to the other side of the world whenever you wish.” Poor bloke, and he thought it was all going so well.

  “Amy, I’m not asking your permission to leave, I’m just asking if we can see each other again when I get back.”

  “Just as long as you don’t ask if you can kiss me.” In her general hysteria Amy got uncontrollable giggles and couldn’t believe what she’d just said. He smiled in bewilderment, not getting the joke.

  “It’s just something Lucinda and I were laughing about the other day, men who ask you if they can kiss you. We weren’t sure if they existed anymore.” She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes before erupting again. Orlando sat still, smiling benevolently and waiting for her to calm down.

  “I take it I don’t have to ask then,” he said, leaning over and taking her wrist. She fell silent and they kissed.

  Postcoital tristesse. Amy couldn’t understand who’d coined this term. La petite mort? No, don’t get that either. The French are so morose about sex, take it far too seriously, she thought, experimenting with little kisses on Orlando Rock’s shoulder. It was definitely a turn-on having a sex symbol in your bed. But he was Orlando, too, kind Orlando, gauche Orlando who’d looked so hurt when she pretended not to care. Cute. She kissed his chocolaty dark nipple and wished it were chocolate. Forget the old joke about women turning into pizzas after sex; if men turned into chocolate, she could die a happy, very fat woman. Forget petite mort. Fat mort, more like. She bit his nipple to test if he was awake. He groaned a bit and ruffled her hair with his hand. Amy remembered a saying she’d heard about men thinking women didn’t masturbate and that they had to be kidding, God only made men fall asleep after sex so women could get on with it. Well, I’m not complaining about this man’s ability to deliver, she purred. After she’d looked at his lips from all angles, their almost indecently large, succulent form, she decided she wanted him to kiss her again. She slipped her hand around his bottom and pinched it lightly. His eyes flickered open and Orlando Rock, sex god, woke from his slumber. He bit her lips and she raked her nails across his back, they shook the house to its foundations and Amy bumped her head on the wall. He screwed his face up tightly and her neck stretched out, her muscles tensing. Mmmm, better than a Cadbury’s flake, she declared to herself, and sucked his earlobe.

  CHAPTER 17

  Her mood wasn’t so sassy, though, a week later. She’d been there, had the hormones to prove it, basked in them, and was now officially “missing him.” Orlando Rock’s flight from the country had been detailed in the tabloids, Tiffany Swann not far away in the background. Bollocks, she thought. If only, she thought. But he was now firmly ensconced in the land that invented bungee jumping, had lots of sheep, and who knows what else? Who cares, frankly. He was there and she was here. And she could just see it in that tart’s eyes, she was hankering after him, would probably get him in a month, too. No man can wait that long till he has sex again. Amy knew about such things. Or so she thought.

  She dragged her feet around the house and refused to wash her hair.

  “It’s good for it, after six weeks it’ll start to wash itself anyway, and I’ll never have to waste money on shampoo again,” she justified it to Lucinda.

  “You’ll stink.”

  “Natural oils, they’re very pleasant, I could probably market them, they’re full of pheromones.”

  “You’ll smell like a sheep,” Lucinda protested. Amy took herself into hibernation mode. The girls at work tried to prize her from her moribund state, come out with us to this new bar, they chorused.

  “I’m making coleslaw tonight, I can’t.”

  She stayed at home and wrote letters to long-forgotten aunts, except she never really started one, let alone finished and posted one. Instead she drew flowers in the corner of the paper and, chewing her pen, gazed over at her bed. He’s been here, in this room. He’s kissed me. He’s on the cover of Esquire. We’ve had sex. But the facts didn’t stick. Maybe he’s an impostor, some bloke who looks like Orlando Rock and hangs around bars picking up women. But I didn’t meet him in a bar, did I? And Lily knows who he is. So he’s real. She felt sick at the thought of how amazingly handsome, in fact, just how amazing, Orlando was. Was, because she knew that she would never see him again. She was just one of those bints who these guys could have all the time, anytime they wanted. She still wasn’t convinced as to why her number had come up in the lottery rather than one of those ravishing creatures you see on Friday nights on Fulham Road. Maybe I remind him of his mother? Amy nearly chipped a tooth, she was chewing her pen so hard. Shit. I guess it happens all the time, famous person sleeps with normal person and they never set eyes on them again, except on the cover of a magazi
ne or on the rare occasion that the fortunate bint gets pregnant during her encounter and she can establish a link, albeit via the tabloids, with the man she’ll never forget. Never forget even after she’s married an investment banker and now lives in a very nice house thank you very much in Virginia Water. God, I’m pathetic, thought Amy, finally giving up the fight with the pen and paper and wandering downstairs to watch telly instead.

  In her exile she even tried to mend fences with the flat monsters, who grilled her incessantly about Orlando and provided her with an excuse to talk about him.

  “What did you talk about?” queried Cath.

  “Oooh, all sorts,” said Amy, reeling off the little jokes they’d shared and not shutting up when she should have known better. But at least they were interested; everyone else she knew tried to make her forget it, take her out of herself, and enjoy herself.

  “I don’t want to bloody well enjoy myself, Lucinda, I’m miserable. I’ve been deserted by sodding Orlando who quite obviously just wants to get into that tart’s knickers and I think my heart’s broken.”

  “You’re not, you’re just being a drama queen and you’ve got to get a grip. You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “Thanks for the support,” Amy snapped, and put down the phone. Right now she didn’t deserve friends, particularly not ones as nice as Lucinda.

  On Saturday afternoon she went to the video shop and bought two cans of Pringles and three videos: Carry On at Your Convenience (the one about the toilet factory), Cyrano de Bergerac, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She cried at all of them—she even cried at the Carry On, because she thought Sid James was lovely and he was dead. She ate her coleslaw out of the tub and munched her way through the Pringles. At six o’clock she was filled with self-loathing and fortified herself for an evening of Cilia Black and Inspector Morse repeats. Not a terrible prospect ordinarily, but with seven hours of viewing under her belt and enough sloth and greed to make the devil himself recoil in horror she thought maybe she should go for a run or something. As she contemplated going to her room to find her trainers the phone rang. In her apathy she let it ring until, answerphone … beeeep:

  “Amy, pick up the phone, I know you’re there.” The strident tones of Lucinda. “Amy, I mean it …” Amy tripped over the mess and lurched toward the phone.

  “Lucinda, what on earth do you want?”

  “I’m coming round in half an hour to pick you up. Pack your case, I’m taking you to my mother’s.”

  “Luce …” Whine, whine.

  “Just shut up and get ready.”

  Half an hour to get ready may be a spur when a famous actor’s coming for a curry, but when it’s your best friend the motivation isn’t quite there, especially when she’s taking you to her mother’s. Amy wondered what on earth Lucinda’s mother could be like. Lucinda’s received pronunciation and sergeant-major qualities should denote an army background, but rumors abounded that life was nothing of the sort chez Luce. Oh well. Amy packed her little suitcase, the one she’d last used for her (in her pining eyes) ill-fated weekend in Dorset. I wish I’d never met bloody Orlando Rock.

  Amy had avoided mirrors for a few days now, but collecting her toothbrush from the bathroom, she was confronted with the horror that was her face. It was the same face she’d always had, she supposed, only today her eyes looked smaller, those lashes a bit more stubby. And her eyebrows didn’t arch in a come-hither fashion as she’d come to imagine. And the lips—nothing rosebud about them, fast-fading geranium, maybe. But she knew what the problem was: she’d spent so long in magazines over the past few days—studying the face of the inhumanly nubile Tiffany Swann, and scouring the visage of Orlando’s ex-wife for something as deeply unattractive as laughter lines (to no avail, I’m afraid)—that she felt that she should be on a par with these divinities, that somehow her own facial misfortunes would vanish under the Midas gaze of Orlando Rock. Not so, babe. She took a step back and was about to examine her body but the Spirit of Self-Preservation spoke up. “You’re not even gonna go there, honey,” she warned. Instead Amy stabbed her toothbrush into her soap bag crossly and balked at the packing of shampoo, but for decency’s sake she thought it better that she did. All Lucinda’s fault, she thought petulantly. Bloody bossy cow.

  The bloody bossy cow rang the doorbell. Trog trog down the stairs.

  “Amy, you look a fright. My mother will wonder who the troll is I’ve brought home.”

  “Fine, then I’ll stay here.”

  Lucinda pulled Amy’s arm.

  “Don’t you dare, come back here.”

  The ill-matched pair squashed into the car, Lucinda looking like a packet of opal fruits in the latest spring colors, all glossy hair and fruity lips. Amy looked like something she’d salvaged from a skip. They sat in silence most of the way … heaven knows where.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To my mother’s.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “Norfolk.”

  “Oh.”

  Scintillating. Eventually, and not a moment too soon for either party, they pulled up along a very muddy lane. Amy stepped out into a puddle—at least, she presumed it was as it was so dark and she couldn’t see. It could very well have been the swimming pool for all she knew. Lucinda carried the bags to the house and they were greeted by two bounding Labradors. Unsurprising so far, thought Amy.

  Some daughters do ’ave ’em, as the saying goes. But Lucinda’s mother surpassed expectations. Tart with a Heart sprang to Amy’s mind.

  “Now come in, darling.” That’s where Lucinda gets it from. “I’ve made up a bed in the scullery.” Do people have sculleries anymore? What is a scullery? And why put a bed in there? Amy puzzled. But she was more agog at the rest of the scenario. Lucinda’s mother was blond, but not maternal blond, mind you. Slut blond. Teased and lipsticked to the nines. She was beautiful in a survivor kind of way, been there, done that. But warm and lovely, caring and barmaidish. Not a mother though, and not Lucinda’s mother, surely. Meeting parents usually means that the jigsaw begins to fit. This one didn’t, but Amy was so wide-eyed for the next hour that she clean forgot about Mr. Rock and his strumpet in New Zealand.

  The house was a glorious mix of Colonial horrors, things like zebra rugs and ivory ashtrays and Aga paraphernalia, racks of drying clothes and packets of organic cornflakes. And Labradors, called Zeus and Iggy. Wooooh, thought Amy Am I really here, this is too much of a trip to be true. The girls were fed couscous salad and garlic sausage and packed off to bed.

  Amy woke and nearly screamed at the bison head above her campbed. She was brought to her senses and remembered firstly that she was at Lucinda’s mother’s, secondly that she was there in her capacity as a disaster victim and presumably was in for some hefty TLC and counseling. But right now all she wanted was to see Orlando. She seesawed between knowing that she would never see him again and feeling sick with longing. She wanted to relive the afternoon in the gallery, the walk through Covent Garden, the Sunday lunch at his house, all of it. She wanted to go back and appreciate, to be more stunningly beautiful, wittier and lovelier, and now she’d never get the chance. And something smelled strange. She twitched her nostrils and realized to her horror that it was her hair. Amy stood up and cursed cold stone floors. Probably a common feature in sculleries, she told herself. She half remembered the previous night’s directions to the bathroom and after a minor detour into a room that looked like an Edwardian bordello but was probably Lucinda’s mother’s bedroom found herself tackling her dreadlocks.

  “Good lord, darling, I thought you were a Rastafarian last night,” chortled Mrs. Lucinda; Amy couldn’t remember her name, but Lucinda came to her rescue just in time.

  “Anita’s just been telling me that there’s a foal in the paddock. We should go and have a look after breakfast,” said Lucinda. Who’s Anita? thought Amy, some long-lost sister/aunt/neighbor?

  “Yes, I told Lulu that weather permitting we should have a ride, too
.” It all became clear as day. Anita was Mrs. Lucinda. How sixties, thought Amy, in awe of the coolness of calling your mother by her first name.

  “Amy, how about some breakfast?” Amy nodded to toast and vegetarian sausages.

  “Anita loves animals, rescues cats and stuff,” confided Lucinda when Anita had wafted outside in her Gucci caftan. Amy thought it better not to point out the virtual zoo of dead things adorning the house and devoured her very tasty soya inventions instead.

  The three of them donned wellies and hats and slopped around all morning cooing over the foal and picking bluebells. Amy was introduced to an assortment of chickens and rabbits and the village stray cats. She wondered if there was a patriarch lurking somewhere in the family, in an undiscovered study or suitably patriarchal place, but the female spark was just a bit too bright to convince her that there was. Then she remembered the bordello and was sure there was no man about this house.

  They shook the crumbling mud off their wellies and sat down to a lunch of taramasalata and white wine.

  “I remember when I was little I used to long for real teatime,” reminisced Lucinda. “I wanted to come home to baked beans and fish fingers at six o’clock.”

  “Oh, darling, don’t be so hard-bitten, there was always food in the fridge. It was my ploy to make you the wonderful, self-sufficient human being you are today,” laughed Anita, not remotely fazed by the accusations of dysfunctional family life.

  “I hated teatime, it meant I couldn’t move until I’d eaten carrots and peas. Think yourself lucky.”

  “Thank you, Amy. This one wouldn’t know the good life if she won the lottery,” Anita quipped, stroking her daughter’s cheek fondly.