Ian smiled. ‘We’re OK now. And we’ve been OK for a number of years. We just need to get Jimmy on board.’
‘Fucking stubborn, that boy,’ Diego said, but he had a fond look in his eye.
‘Yes, I am fucking stubborn,’ Jimmy said, walking into the room wearing just a pair of shorts, his hair looking like a dog’s breakfast that a fox had a go at first. ‘Did Ian tell you Dad is a Classics professor majoring in Greek History? You’d think he of all people would understand. The Greeks invented the gay stuff – it’s all over their crockery.’
Diego and Ian exchanged looks.
Jimmy ignored them and pointed to the rain. ‘My hangover place doesn’t open in the rain. It’s a beach place.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know if Jimmy would remember kissing me, or what he’d said about Pete before he fell asleep. I found it hard to look him in the eye and I felt the unsaid words between Ian and Diego watching us.
Jimmy scratched at his hair. ‘Want to drink coffee and watch the rain instead?’
Downstairs Jimmy opened the sliding doors to the balcony off his bedroom. The room filled with the sounds of the rain hammering on the sand below and the angry surf beating at the shore. Despite the inhospitable weather the air was still warm. Jimmy pulled Oscar the Couch up to the open doors and sat at one end with a tiny guitar that may have been called a ukulele.
‘Sorry about the rain ruining our plans,’ Jimmy said, twanging at the strings.
I shrugged. ‘I like weather,’ I said, taking a seat at the other end of the shaggy sofa. ‘Rain gives you permission to just be, not do. It reminds me that nature is in control. No matter what I try to organise, the world will do what it wants to do.’
‘For a crazy person that’s a pretty chilled-out view.’
For a while we sat on the sofa and watched the rain make date-sized dents in the golden sand. I sipped an awakening lemon-ginger tea while Jimmy sang Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’ but exchanged Layla for Flora, then moved indiscriminately through his favourite parts of ‘Runaway Train’, ‘Black Hole Sun’, ‘Take Me to Church’, ‘Lola’, ‘House of the Rising Sun’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Wild, Wild, Life’.
‘Pete kissed the gazelle,’ I said between songs.
Jimmy stopped strumming and looked at me with an expression that made my heart break. ‘How do you know?’
I told him about the photo. And about Pete telling me he’d had doubts about us for a while, how I’d been totally blindsided but now that I’d had time to think, realised he was probably right. We had ‘grown apart’.
‘When I met you guys, I know it was only for a few minutes, but you seemed to be really different.’
‘We didn’t used to be. But I guess we are now. We were into all the same things when we were young – running and travel and stuff – but then I got distracted by Annabelle and didn’t realise we’d . . .’ A couple of tears ran down my cheek. I was embarrassed and tried to quell them with my fingertips but they kept leaking.
Flora, who’d been sitting on her silk cushion, trotted over, hopped up on the sofa and curled in my lap.
Jimmy smiled. ‘She does that,’ he said, reaching over and giving her an affectionate tickle behind the ears. ‘It’s the best thing about dogs. They have a reflective nature. If you’re happy they’ll join in, instantly ready to party. “Where? What? Who cares! We’re HAPPY!” But if you want to mope they’ll flop next to you, instantly more depressed than you . . .’ Jimmy frowned. ‘Actually, that part annoys me. I want to own my depression.’
I giggled through my tears.
‘Is there anything I can do . . .?’ Jimmy said, resting a hand on my knee. ‘Or say . . .?’
I shook my head.
‘Or sing?’
I opened my mouth to speak.
‘Just not “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow”, he said with a shudder of distaste.
‘Then no,’ I sniffed.
I smiled at Jimmy. His tactic had worked. My tears had dried. He smiled back and plucked at the ukulele/teeny guitar thing.
‘Well, you turned me down last night and it looks like you needn’t have.’ He gave me a quick sideways glance but otherwise kept his gaze on the rain that was now easing to more of a patter.
‘I didn’t know if you’d remember that.’
Jimmy turned to me. ‘Of course I remember.’
I waited to see if he was going to say anything else but he just kept looking at me.
‘It wouldn’t have been right. I didn’t know if Pete and I were going to break up when he got back or . . . what was going to happen. As much as I wanted to . . .’ I felt myself blushing. ‘It would have felt like cheating. To me, anyway.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s best to have a clean break before, you know, doing anything else with anyone else.’
Jimmy looked at me for a long moment. ‘Do you always do the right thing?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I do what I want. And what I want is usually the right thing.’
Jimmy emitted a short laugh. ‘What do you want now?’
I looked at Jimmy, waiting for an answer, and then shifted my gaze to the sky, now a pale grey-ish white. A rainbow appeared over the blue-grey ocean. It was a weak, pathetic one that was only a portion of a rainbow. Jimmy strummed his tiny guitar and started to sing ‘The Rainbow Connection’. I looked at his profile. His eyes were always on the verge of crinkling into a smile. A smile he was generous with, a smile that had lifted my day so often recently.
I looked down at Flora. What do you think?
Do it, Bitch, Flora seemed to say. I’d do it but I don’t know how because, as you so kindly pointed out, it’s hard to figure out which end is arse and which end is face in this fluff.
OK. Do you mind fucking off then?
My pleasure. I can’t think of anything I’d rather see less.
Flora jumped off my lap (OK, I helped her with a well-intentioned shove), crossed the room and headed out of the bedroom door. Probably to go upstairs and tell Lucy what a bitch I was. I looked at Jimmy at the far end of the sofa.
When did the sofa become so long?
He was miles away! If I wanted to kiss him I’d have to shuffle along for like, an hour and a half. I might lose the inclination halfway there. Or get hungry and have to leave to make a sandwich.
Maybe it would be better to just look at him with ‘meaning’, then he’d know what I was thinking and we could rush at each other and meet, romantically, halfway across this expanse of shaggy green fabric.
I gave that a go. Jimmy kept strumming and singing, his eyes on the escalating rain.
Why isn’t he noticing that I’m looking at him amorously?
I huffed out a sigh and looked at the rain. Why was it so hard to make the first move? I knew Jimmy wanted it. I was pretty sure he knew I wanted it. Why, then, could I not do the sofa shuffle? Why did Gus and Sam and André and Bryn make such a long sofa? I’d be having words next time I saw them.
‘Jess,’ Jimmy said.
I turned.
He leant forward and put the ukulele/baby guitar on the floor then held out his arm.
‘Come here.’
I shuffled down the sofa, which, in the end, wasn’t nearly as long as I’d thought, and tucked myself under his arm. He shifted so his back was against the armrest and I lay against his chest. He smelt of sleep and yesterday’s suntan lotion and cologne and comfort. His heart was beating fast. It didn’t take long for our fingers to intertwine and then we were kissing, uncertainly at first, and then deeper and more intensely. His hands were at the back of my neck, and on my cheek. I ran my hands down his chest, feeling a thrill as my fingers dipped and rose over each muscle. Within moments we were pulling each other’s clothes off. The sound of the rain pelting at the sand and the waves thrashing against the rocks heightened the atmosphere. With my legs wrapped around his waist, Jimmy put an arm around my back and we moved towards the bed, slamming the bedroom door shut on the way.
‘You know
what you want now?’ Jimmy said, his body pressing down on me, his lips on my neck and his voice deep and hoarse.
‘Yes,’ I said, pulling at the waistband of his boxers. ‘You.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
‘You’re beautiful,’ Jimmy said, brushing my fringe off my face and kissing me delicately on the lips.
I lay next to him, smiling, naked and exhausted. It had been an energetic couple of hours. I was sweaty, hungry, thirsty and completely drunk on Jimmy. We kissed for a little longer, all the restraint we’d shown for the past few days cast off as we ran our hands over each other’s bodies. We could have stayed in bed for the rest of the day but I was starving. And Jimmy was craving hangover food. I jumped in the shower, smiling to myself, and then got dressed into some spare clothes I’d taken to the festival.
‘I’ve hidden some crisps at the very back of the cupboard with all the fancy china,’ Jimmy said from his sitting position in bed, a sheet covering his nakedness, as I sat on top of the covers, nodding. He’d had to hide his emergency snack food from clean-eating Diego and I’d told him that at home I kept my unhealthy treats on Dave’s shelf of the fridge so Pete wouldn’t know I ate Jaffa cakes and cheap eclairs from the Tesco Metro. ‘And there are marshmallows in an unmarked paper bag at the back of the liquor cabinet. And there might still be some ice cream hidden in the bottom of the freezer in a box labelled . . . you know what? It’s probably easier if I come up. It’s hidden everywhere.’
‘OK,’ I said, relieved. I’d already forgotten the location of the pretzels, the caramel waffles and something Afrikaans that sounded like ‘coke sisters’; I didn’t know if I was looking for a girl band CD, a food item or cocaine for ladies.
‘I should probably have a shower,’ Jimmy said, reaching for his shorts on the floor. ‘But that can wait—’
We were interrupted by the door banging open and Diego holding up a clutch of paper bags stamped with the name of a café, his eyebrows raised in the universal eyebrow-language of ‘look what I’ve got!’
‘—because there’s crescent shaped GLUTEN TO BE HAD!’ Jimmy shot out of bed, dragging the sheet with him.
‘Yoh! I don’t need to see that!’ Diego said, shielding his eyes from a flash of Jimmy’s nakedness. ‘And neither does our sweet girl here!’
From behind his hand shield, Diego’s brow lowered and his eyes flicked from me, looking innocently back at him, to Jimmy, struggling with a pair of shorts, his bare butt white in comparison to the tanned rest of him. Diego gave one final side-eye look of suspicion before turning on his heel and leaving the room.
I leapt off the bed and followed him up the stairs, while Jimmy hopped about on one foot trying to put on his shorts and panicking in case the gluten got eaten before he was dressed.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Diego said, climbing the stairs on his toes, his smooth calf muscles tensing with each step. ‘But Jimmy gets very excited about gluten day.’
‘Diego is very pedantic about when gluten can enter the home. Fridays only,’ Jimmy said, catching up with us and trying to pass Diego, who was purposefully making his already large frame take up all the stairs.
After our heavenly gluten lunch of abundantly filled croissants followed by glazed handmade doughnuts, which Jimmy had devoured without uttering a single word, he and Diego sat at the kitchen island fighting over a crossword. Pamela pottered around the kitchen making bone broth, intermittently offering up possible answers, and I received a phone call from Pete.
I hopped off my stool, headed out onto the balcony and stood under the open brolly, sheltering from the rain. ‘Hello,’ I said coolly, catching Jimmy’s brief glance of curiosity.
‘I’m at the apartment, where are you?’ Pete said.
‘At a friend’s.’
‘What friend?’
‘Just a friend.’
‘Oh,’ he said, sounding put out. ‘When are you coming back? Soon?’
I looked inside through the open balcony door. Jimmy and Diego were stuck and Diego was googling. Jimmy was getting angry about the googling because googling is cheating. Diego was saying there was no disclaimer on the crossword that said it needed to be completed without Google. Jimmy was saying there should be and that it takes a while for society to catch up with all the corrections to laws the advance of technology necessitates. Diego was giving him a ‘you’re a dick’ look and they were embarking on an adult squabble over the pen. Pamela was walking past with a bunch of carrots, laughing.
‘No,’ I said down the phone with a smile. ‘No, I’m staying here.’
‘Staying where?’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’
‘But we fly out—’
‘I’ll be back after breakfast.’
I hung up, flicked the phone to silent and watched Diego and Pamela congratulate themselves for figuring out that seven down was ‘Guadeloupe’ and Jimmy sulk because googling was not ‘figuring it out’.
I trotted back inside and stood next to Jimmy. ‘Can I stay one more night?’ I said in his ear, while Diego read out the next clue.
Jimmy grinned and slipped an arm around my waist. ‘Of course you can,’ he said, his lips close to my ear making all the tiny hairs on my neck stand up. ‘I’ll get my shift covered at work.’
‘Seven down is fourteen letters for a 1974 comedy western and Google says it’s something called Blazing Saddles but I think it’s—’ Diego looked up and saw Jimmy and me mid-kiss. ‘Heeeeeeeeeeeeey?’ he said, making the word last as long as Django Unchained.
After the crossword was completed (illegally according to a huffy Jimmy) and Diego had been updated on the fact that Jimmy and I were now ‘people who kissed’, and we’d watched Diego immediately get on the phone to Ian and excitedly (and somewhat like a fourteen-year-old girl) update him that Jimmy and I were now ‘people who kissed’, we looked out at the rain. It was still very much an indoor day.
‘Movies and popcorn on the sofa?’ Jimmy asked, and I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Jimmy’s idea of movie-watching was to bring out three DVD box sets of 1960s TV series: Hogan’s Heroes, The Munsters and Get Smart. Their cardboard sleeves were tatty and well-used.
‘They’re hilarious!’ Jimmy said off the back of my downcast expression.
‘They’re ancient,’ I replied, looking at the back of The Munsters. ‘They’re over fifty years old!’
‘Timeless classics,’ he said, taking it out of my hands and loading it into the DVD player, which was also a relic to my mind. ‘You’ll see.’
‘They’re all his father’s favourite shows,’ Diego said, walking into the room with a gym bag and his keys dangling from his index finger. ‘They used to watch them at the weekend together when Ian and Jimmy were young. Jimmy watches them so he can feel close to his father even though the two of them are estranged.’
‘Would you stop psychoanalysing me?!’ Jimmy said, stalking back towards the sofa and taking his place next to me. ‘I don’t care how much Dr. Phil you watch, you’re a personal trainer, not a psychologist.’
‘You think I don’t need psychology to get those mafutas back on the treadmill after squeezing out four babies and then having their husbands run off with a younger model who is actually a model?’ Diego said, heading to the front door. ‘I psychologise all day, my bru, and you,’ he pointed an outstretched finger at Jimmy, ‘are a poy-key of problems.’
I turned to Jimmy, who was scowling and making a fist-grinding motion in his palm at Diego, who, with a wink in my direction, swished his lycra-clad, muscled butt out of the front door. ‘A poy-key?’
‘Yep,’ he said, turning his attention to the TV remote, his face still arranged in a glower. ‘P-O-T-J-I-E. It’s a cast iron pot you put over coals and cook curry in. It’s delicious.’ The anger seeped away from his features. ‘Diego has the best recipe for Cape Malay chicken.’ He paused to think. ‘Shall we do one tonight? I’ll ask Diego.’ He affected a scowl
but his petulance was being superseded by affection. ‘When I decide to talk to him,’ he said as he typed out a text to Diego about potjie for dinner that night, his eyes gleaming.
Towards the late afternoon, after surprising myself by laughing my head off at a whole season of Get Smart, the rain cleared and in the subsequent calm Diego made his Cape Malay curry in the potjie on the beach while Ian, Jimmy and I took turns to pop back into the house to refresh our drinks. We sat in cream-coloured canvas deck chairs and ate curry from bowls on our laps, our bare feet in the damp sand. Ian brought candles and luxurious blankets outside after dinner and we sat in the fading light watching the sea and sky become similar shades of blue-grey and the diehard surfers paddle across the gentle swells in black wetsuits. When Jimmy went back inside to get a last round of drinks, Ian turned to me.
‘Jimmy really likes you,’ he said.
Diego looked up from packing up the potjie.
I smiled. ‘I really like him.’
‘Maybe you can convince him he needs to be back in England. Maybe you’re enough of a pull.’
I watched Diego put wet sand on the hot coals and thought about Pete and Annabelle and home. I wondered how SA-tanned, smiling Jimmy would fare back in brick-and-rain London. It would be like trying to plant a sunflower in rubble.
‘Things with me are complicated,’ I said.
Ian watched me for a moment then nodded, indicating he would speak no more on the subject.
At the end of the night, once we’d trekked our beach dinner kit back inside and were all heading to our beds, Ian turned to me once more.
‘You’re a very special girl,’ he said, pulling me into a hug. He smelt of Yves Saint Laurent and salt air. ‘I hope things . . .’ he glanced at Jimmy, who was watching us with a mixture of curiosity and fondness. ‘I hope things work out.’
I smiled. I’d known him, Diego and Jimmy for only ten days but for some reason in that time I’d relaxed into their lives like that was where I was supposed to be. Like they’d been waiting for me to come along and I’d fitted in perfectly, like ‘Guadeloupe’ in seven down.
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