by Clare Naylor
“A Cartier watch,” pledged Amy confidently.
“You’re joking. I’m an impoverished actor.”
“Liar. OK then, whoever loses is the other’s sex slave for a week.”
“Can’t wait,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a dirty old man.
Heaven on earth. Orlando and Amy were the only souls on a vast white stretch of beach; tattered palm trees and turquoise water were all the horizon had to offer. Orlando watched Amy prod sea cucumbers with a stick and felt a surge of unprecedented happiness. If Amy thinks she’s a cynic, wait till she finds out about Orlando. Sitting here in his faded blue board shorts, his tanned legs stretched out in front of him, one hand on a cold beer, peering over his sunglasses at this woman in a bikini who at his bidding will stroll over and kiss him, in fact do anything he wishes. Men have killed for less. Except of course that Amy won’t do anything he wishes. He has to try, he has to amuse her. His life was usually a case of too many chocolates in the box to choose from. And not just one box, the whole bloody factory. But really what he felt like was an olive. Yes, he likes that image, Amy is more of an olive. A different ballpark. She wouldn’t call him if he didn’t call her, she wouldn’t thrust her phone number into the pocket of his jeans. In short she was real, a bit more like himself. She was a great restorative. Somehow she transcended most of the women he knew, in beauty and in her funny ways. And he wanted to hang on to her. Yup, we’re looking at a very happy young man.
Their final two days in Sydney were spent getting fatter and fatter. They ate their way through roast peppers and goat cheese salads, barbecued shrimp in garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and cumin bread, fricassees and soufflés, sorbets and meringues. They moved only when necessary, that was leaving and arriving at restaurants and the continuing sexual tour of every room in the house.
“My continuity person will shoot me,” moaned Orlando, looking in the mirror. “I’m six times larger than when I was last on set.”
“You’ll have to buy another plane ticket for my stomach,” said Amy.
“Billy and Bessie Bunter,” announced Orlando as he and Amy stood side by side. Amy suddenly started to cry.
“This is so lovely, I don’t want to go back.” He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head as her body shook with sobs against his.
“Darling, it’s OK, we can come back soon.”
“No, I’ve got a feeling about it, we’ll never come back here.”
“I’ll teach you an old African trick. Kiss all four walls of the house and then you’ll be sure to come back one day.” They ran around the house interspersing kisses to the walls with snogging each other, and Amy seemed soothed, for the time being, but Orlando knew that goodbye this time would be hellish.
It was hellish. They clung to one another in the airport, each waiting for their separate plane to carry them back to real life. Amy wasn’t upgraded; she looked like a package holiday maker with her patchy pink skin and too-tight trousers. She didn’t care, she’d probably overdose on the remainder of her Valium on the plane home, she told Orlando morbidly.
“Then I shall die, too,” he pronounced in impeccable Shakespearean tones. They reeled off a list of dead lovers: Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet, Hero and Leander.
“Sid and Nancy,” he put in.
“Oh, you have to spoil everything,” she rebuked him. “Junkie punks aren’t really in the same league, are they?”
“As a onetime punk myself I’m inclined to disagree.” Amy looked incredulous and then curious.
“Were you really?” That meant that while I was still dressing my Sindy doll Orlando was out chasing women in leather miniskirts; she had a brief moment of concern for the added six years of living and lusting he had over her.
“Yup, turned my nose septic with a safety pin,” he said proudly.
Amy fell about laughing and tried to find the scar, then stopped.
“There’s so much I want to know about you. In fact, I don’t know anything.”
“When we get back we’ll make a concerted effort to get to know each other better, and then who knows, we might even feel we know each other well enough to sleep together.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Amy gravely, “I like to wait at least three years and make sure the man in question is accepted by my priest and the other members of the sect.” So they went out laughing instead of crying and in the general hilarity didn’t really get to say anything “meaningful.” Amy lamented this for most of the way home and for the next two weeks.
CHAPTER 20
“He was a punk and I didn’t even know it,” said Amy sadly to Lucinda one lunchtime shortly after her return. They were packing shoes away in boxes in the fashion cupboard.
“That’s OK, babe, there’s lots of stuff he doesn’t know about you either.”
“No, I think he knows everything. He knows I’m ordinary, work in fashion, want to achieve greater things, have two parents and a brother.”
“Darling, everyone’s ordinary underneath,” consoled Lucinda.
“No, I’m just not glamorous enough. I have no world-renowned talent, look average, and am as poor as a church mouse. You see, Luce, at least you have your slightly unusual home life, your mother and stuff.”
“Yeah, and you’ve got a father, which is something I’ve never had. Why do you think I cling to Benjy so much? I have no idea what men are supposed to be like, apart from the odd itinerant pop star who stayed for a few months before leaving us again.”
“Luce, I’m sorry, but Anita’s so lovely. I really envy you that … eccentricity. Do you know who your father is?” she ventured.
“Yup, but he doesn’t, so we have to be terribly hush-hush about it. That’s not eccentric, that’s just horrible.”
As she and Lucinda shared their worries Amy suddenly felt incredibly selfish.
“Luce, I’m sorry, I’m such a crap friend sometimes,” she said.
“You’re not at all, it’s gorgeous having you around. That’s why Orlando likes you, you’re as mad as a snake in a jar,” said Lucinda, squeezing her feet into a pair of butter-soft tangerine loafers she’d found in the pile.
“I’m not, I’m useless. I never realized you felt so bad about your father.”
“I don’t. I’ve lived with it all my life. It’s fine, really. Promise. Now what’s all this problem-with-Orlando business?”
“I don’t know, it’s just that we had such a laugh, which is lovely, but … but we always seemed to be playacting, role-playing, maybe he just spends his life acting, it must be so easy for actors to pretend.”
“Yes, but why get you out to Sydney? He must like you.”
“I’m sure he does, a bit, but I don’t know anything about him, and I’ve never seen him as he is when he’s famous, y’know, in public. Maybe he’s ashamed of me.”
“Maybe he’s just a very private person.”
The phone rang in the office and Lucinda went off to answer it, leaving Amy in that interminable pit of angst popularly known as the salad days.
Now she was back, the familiar worries started to rack her brain. Now, when she walked down the street, he wasn’t there holding her hand. When she woke up he didn’t kiss her neck. The lack of his physical presence made her wonder all over again. Could he resist Tiffany Swann? Surely all he had to do was snap his fingers. For once Amy was right. Would the only thing he couldn’t resist be temptation? And what about the acting? What about a man who makes his living playing great lovers? Maybe emotion doesn’t even register on his scale of important things. If only he’d given more away … if only he’d said he loved me.
Amy talked constantly about Orlando. She dusted her face with bronzing powder to prompt the question, “Oooh, been on holiday, have we? Anywhere nice?” Which was her cue to reveal all, to people at dinner parties, the lady in Marks and Spencers, her aerobics teachers. Any excuse. The development of the photos turned into a momentous cause for celebration. She’d persuaded Orlando to let her take the films with her b
ecause you couldn’t beat Boots’s one-hour service, and certainly not in some New Zealand backwater. Thus at the first available opportunity she took her precious cartridges, parting with them only after she’d insisted that the man took not only her name but her phone number, address, and postcode, too. Then she loitered outside the automatic doors for about an hour. The women at the No. 7 counter became very distracted as Amy to’ed and fro’ed, sending the automatic doors into paroxysms of indecision. Finally she arrived at the photo counter to claim her inheritance. By the time she’d insisted on checking all the photos individually and laying the ones of Orlando carefully out on the top of the till for less fortunate Tampax-purchasing customers to inspect, even she was surprised that someone hadn’t pointed her in the direction of Prescriptions and her obviously uncollected Prozac supplies.
At home that evening she showed Cath and Kate her photos, cooing over each one and then falling about laughing as she found the one of the shark.
“Oh my God, now I have to be his sex slave for a week,” she informed them. They purred a catcall of do tell alls. Amy elaborated and they laughed hollowly.
“So what will he ask you to do?” said Cath, tilting her head interestedly to one side.
“Yes, we’re all ears,” mewed Kate. They made Amy think of two Siamese cats, all sly and smug, but she’d started so she thought she’d better carry on.
“Oh, just something peculiar, he’s quite an unusual person,” she dismissed as vaguely as possible.
“He must be a bit unusual, I suppose, being an actor and all. We all know that they don’t have any emotions of their own,” Cath mumbled. Amy suddenly felt like she was in a kangaroo court but dismissed her misgivings as paranoia due to love.
“I think that’s a bit strong, he’s a very original person, quite into little fantasies, y’know, just stories. He’s got a great imagination, we just go off on a tangent together and there’s no stopping us.”
“Sounds great,” sang Kate, her voice reedy and thin.
Amy excused herself and went to phone her mother, who was dying to know what Australia was like and whether Amy had had time to visit Aunt Melinda in Victoria.
“Mom, it’s a really long way away, I just didn’t get a chance.”
“Oh dear, and Melinda was so good to us when she went to stay with Uncle Henry in Birmingham. She came all the way down to Hampshire for tea.” Amy’s mom was laying on the guilt trip, without intending to.
“Mom, Victoria’s a thirteen-hour drive from Sydney.”
“Nooo, I think you must be mistaken, darling, even Scotland doesn’t take that long to get to.”
Amy left her mother disbelieving the size of the Australian continent and went to her room to unpack the rest of her things.
She plagued herself so incessantly with her views on the state of Amy and Orlando that even she, with her degree in fantasy, dissection, and analysis, was feeling quite worn out. But it’s just that she was so confused. There was a stream of problems coursing through her head. She took out a piece of paper and decided to list them, a time-honored way of sorting your life out, she’d heard, but it had never seemed to work before. She once tried it on a boyfriend she was going to chuck, fors and againsts. The thing was she knew before she put pen to paper that she wanted to chuck him, she just couldn’t think of an excuse, so pen and paper didn’t really help.
But Orlando was a trifle different, she did fancy him, so she listed them:
NAGGING WORRIES ABOUT ORLANDO
1. Too much fun—sounds disingenuous but we didn’t ever talk seriously about “us.”
2. His divorce—I’ve never been out with a divorced man before but can’t imagine the ex-wife factor would be much fun. Ex-wives are also supposed to be weathered—her absence of wrinkles is disturbing.
3. His current leading lady—have bad feelings about her and she’s very beautiful.
4. Celebrity Squares—can I play this game? How does he feel about being famous? Why hasn’t he taken me out “properly,” i.e., to a premiere yet?
5. Do I just like the Hotspur/Rochester side of him, am I in love with “the real Orlando”?
Amy pondered her piece of paper, doodling little flowers around the edge and realizing that they weren’t really “worries,” not like famine and the homeless, so feeling self-indulgent and rotten vowed to buy the Big Issue tomorrow.
Orlando Rock was in his hotel suite, lying back in his chair and flicking over the sports channels. He was meant to be learning his lines for tomorrow but was too exhaused; the heat was suffocating and he’d spent all day acting out a furze-cutting scene. He knew Amy would probably have some highly romanticized notions about the physicality and raw sexuality of furze cutting but he thought that to earn a crust he preferred acting. There was a knock on his door.
“C’m in,” he said, not being bothered to move.
“Orlando, it’s me.” The syrupy voice came over and sat on the table in front of him, obscuring his view of the rugby.
“Tiffany, I can’t see the telly,” he moaned. She giggled.
“You can’t watch telly, there’s a great party tonight at the gallery down the road.” Her baby blue satin slip dress made it quite clear to anyone who chose to notice that she wasn’t wearing a sliver of underwear and that she had remarkably pert breasts, thank you very much. Orlando craned his head round her to watch the game and refused to notice her even perter nipples straining their way through the fabric like a line in a Jackie Collins novel.
“I don’t think so, Tiffany, I’m shattered and still have to learn my lines.”
“That’s OK, we can just make the love scene last all day and then you won’t have to say a word.” Tiffany and her slip slipped all over the table, her legs crossed and uncrossed, and she turned into a parody of a seduction scene. Too long in the business, thought Orlando to himself as she wound a stray raven lock around her finger.
“Olly, I’m your leading lady and you haven’t paid a bit of attention to me off set since filming started,” she pouted, as if he would suddenly see sense and make frantic love to her.
“I’m going to crash early, Tiffany. You go. There’ll be loads of men there dying to mark your dance card.” She looked puzzled at the dance-card bit and in an enormous flick of hair and satin slunk out of the room without a word. He rolled his eyes and leaned forward to watch a particularly exciting try.
The phone rang. Bollocks.
“Yup?”
“Olly, what the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at, upsetting Tiff? We’ve all gotta work together on this, and if she’s unhappy, we’re all unhappy.” It was the director.
“Sod the amateur psychology, Bill, I’ve got lines to learn.” Blast, another try missed.
“Olly, I’m warning you, we need prepublicity. You go to that party, get in the papers, and make this film work.” Orlando was too pissed off to argue. He finished his beer and, tying a sweater around his waist, went to the party.
The party was hideous; not since the magazine editor’s party in Holland Park had he witnessed such a spectacular display of vulgarity. Women in turbans sauntered round pointing at pictures of what looked to him like flowers but must instead have been genitalia or no one would have given them gallery space. The men wore dinner jackets, and Orlando with his beard and jeans looked like he’d taken the wrong turning for the pub. He half expected to be asked to leave but to his dismay everyone present knew who he was, along with his birth sign and favorite color. The only consolation of fame was that when he asked for a beer rather than champagne the entire kitchen staff ran to find one. Cameras popped and he stood on the periphery not knowing a soul. Not even any twiglets to keep him company, as all the nibbles rotated on the arms of waiters, so he couldn’t even stare soulfully into the guacamole.
“Orlando Rock, you sly sausage,” treacled Tiffany, slinking up beside him, slipping her wrist through his arm. “I thought you said you were staying at the hotel. I knew you couldn’t really resist.”
“Yeah, well,” he blustered, wishing she’d take her hand away. The eyes of the room were on them, and Tiffany was very well aware of this fact. She popped an olive between her cherubic lips and whispered in his ear, “We could be the next Bogart and Bacall.”
A camera flashed at the other side of the room, and Orlando saw boxes of light dancing before his eyes. Extricating himself from her, he said, “Tiffany, I’ve really got to go, no offense but I don’t feel too great.”
“Poor baby,” she lisped, kissing him on the cheek as he put his sweater on and left.
CHAPTER 21
Amy, like most of us, had never before woken up to find her boyfriend’s infidelity on the front cover of the newspapers, and we can’t pretend she found out this particularly nasty piece of information in a gentle, cushioned manner, because she didn’t.
The Siamese pawed their way around her bedroom door at eight o’clock on Sunday morning and perched on the end of her bed. Cath carried a cup of coffee and Kate the newspapers.
“We brought you these,” said Cath, placing the coffee on Amy’s dressing table.
“And this …,” said Kate, passing a bleary-eyed Amy a copy of the News of the World and the Mail on Sunday. Amy rubbed her eyes, thinking maybe it was her birthday and to wake her at an ungodly hour was their idea of a treat. No such luck, Amy.
“I think you’d better read this,” said Kate gravely, pushing the rolled-up paper under Amy’s nose.
“Thanks,” Amy croaked, trying to sound grateful for this unprecedented “treat.”
They sat in deafening silence, watching as Amy pulled her pillows up behind her and, yawning, looked at the front page. There, clear as day and twice as vicious, was Orlando Rock, and a woman was kissing his cheek. Not quite comprehending, Amy looked again, half catching the caption: “Top Actor … Rock … Tiffany Swann … On the Town.” The flat monsters sat there ogling her, waiting for a response. Amy turned white and her coffee cup shook in her hand, but she didn’t say anything. She read and reread the short caption but it made no sense. Eventually the flat monsters went away purring with satisfaction at their triumph.