Tickled Pink

by Christina Jones

  Nigel had never accompanied her on underwear-buying trips – or on many other shopping expeditions, come to that. They’d had to be so discreet. But at the beginning of their relationship he had bought her underwear: proper mistresses’ underwear – gorgeous lace and silk froth from La Perla and Janet Reger, all in pale boxes with ribbon bows and acres of pink or lilac tissue paper . . . All long gone.

  Slowly, she moved towards the front of the queue.

  Ellis was waiting at the check-out exit, still turning heads. ‘I’m glad you bought all the glam stuff. Am I allowed to have a sneak preview when we get back to Sunny Dene?’

  ‘Not a chance. But you can carry the bags.’

  ‘Bugger, and you didn’t get the suspenders. Boring of you. Where are we going next?’

  They made their way back out into Queen Street. ‘Promise you won’t laugh.’

  ‘Nope. But if I laugh it won’t be at you. Will that do?’

  ‘Probably. Okay then, I want to buy a pair of jeans.’

  Ellis stopped walking. ‘Why would I laugh at that?’

  ‘Because I’ve never had a pair of jeans in my life.’ ‘Wow, really? Well, now you come to mention it, I suppose you do always look very Miss PA. Mind you, I like that. It’s sort of authoritarian which reminds me of, er, well, no perhaps now’s not the time. Come on, then, let’s go shopping in some proper shops. No more mumsy stuff.’

  They spent the next hour diving in and out of the sort of shops Lola had only ever scuttled past. Dark, intimate shops, with loud rock music, teenage customers and size six assistants. Ellis, naturally a jeans expert, advised on make and length and width and colour, and she eventually emerged with three pairs of Levis in various shades, all of which seemed to shrink her bum and make her legs look endless.

  ‘You looked really cool in them. Dead sexy,’ Ellis beamed at her as they forced their way through the crowds again. ‘But they won’t look right with buttoned-up blouses and court shoes. You need the right tops and some boots.’

  ‘Do I?’ Lola frowned, picturing Posy. Posy always looked so gorgeous and pert and pretty in her jeans . . . Sort of tumbled and casual. Not structured or strictured. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. After all, you’re the expert and I’m in your hands –’

  ‘I wish,’ Ellis grinned cheerfully.

  Another hour, another clutch of shops filled with tiny girls and body-pierced boys and thundering music, and Lola was the proud owner of two pairs of boots – one leather, one canvas – and half a dozen tops that Ellis said would look unbelievably horny with tight jeans.

  The words mutton and lamb were beginning to form an unpleasant cliché in her head.

  ‘Don’t know about you,’ Ellis said, as they wandered pleasantly through the Westgate, ‘but all this shopping has given me a heck of an appetite. Shall we find somewhere to eat?’

  ‘Can you cope with carrying more bags?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but can’t we eat first?’

  ‘I had a bit of a whim,’ Lola said, moving off at a determined angle towards Sainsbury’s, ‘that we might go al fresco. Buy some finger food. Have a picnic . . .’

  Ellis, she found, was as enthusiastic about buying food as he seemed to be about everything else in his life. By the time they struggled back into the Westgate a mere fifteen minutes later, they had bread, butter, cheese, fruit, wine, salad, and a whole pack of disgustingly glorious calorie-laden cream cakes.

  ‘Does your whim involve eating out here on these seats?’ Ellis surveyed the benches’ bedraggled incumbents with compassion. ‘Because if so, I don’t think we’ve got anywhere near enough wine.’

  ‘I thought we’d look at the city guide and find a park.’

  ‘Sounds nice. But don’t let’s bother with the guide. Oxford has tons of parks, I’ve seen them on Inspector Morse. Let’s just wander and see what we find.’

  They wandered and found Christ Church Meadows.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lola reckoned she had never, ever, seen anywhere quite so wonderful. In the warm spring sunshine, with the ancient golden-brick spread of Christ Church College on one side and the sparkle of the silent Isis as it undulated its way under rustic bridges and beneath willow fronds on the other, it was like something from another time.

  The addition of wide gravelled pathways, huge expanses of meadows with grazing deer, and the blur of acid green and yellow as trees and flowers burgeoned into new life, made her want to turn cartwheels of sheer joy.

  ‘Brilliant place,’ Ellis agreed, sprawling on the clipped grass beside her and rummaging eagerly through the carrier bags. ‘You’d never think we were only moments away from the city centre, would you? And I hate to get back to basics, but can I dish this food up now before I drop dead from starvation?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but while we were clever enough to buy a corkscrew, we didn’t remember paper cups, so we’ll have to drink from the bottle.’

  ‘Should have stayed with the old boys in the shopping centre, then,’ Ellis said happily. ‘We’d have fitted in nicely. Mind you, you’ll have to drink most of it as I’m driving. And now can I ask you a question that’s been bugging me for ages?’

  ‘As long as I can ask you one in return.’

  ‘Yeah, course, anything you like. Me first, though – oh, could you pass that piece of Camembert? What I want to know is, why don’t you have a car? You’re so together, so professional. I can’t believe you need to rely on public transport or my white van. Is it an ecology issue or can’t you drive?’

  Lola chewed slowly on a piece of cheese. If she told Ellis about what had happened to the car, then she’d have to tell him everything that had preceded it, wouldn’t she? And how pathetic and tarty would that make her sound? She suddenly realized that she didn’t want him to think her either pathetic or tarty. It truly mattered what he thought of her. She really didn’t want him to react in the same way as Posy had.

  Still, she’d confided in Flynn and he’d been fine. But then Flynn was different from Ellis. Very different indeed.

  She swallowed the cheese and broke off a hunk of bread. ‘Yes, I can drive. Until the day I arrived at Sunny Dene I’d had a car since I was seventeen, and it’s one of my main aims to earn enough money to buy another, but . . .’

  By the time she’d finished talking they’d eaten all the bread and cheese, most of the salad, some of the fruit, and had passed the bottle of wine backwards and forwards between them like merry inebriates with no inhibitions at all.

  ‘Christ,’ Ellis said eventually. ‘How romantic.’

  ‘Are you mocking me?’

  ‘No way. I just think it’s a beautiful story, and I’m so sorry that you’re not still together and that his bitch of a wife had to screw things up for you after he’d died. And,’ he reached for an apple, ‘I’m amazed that you’re as okay as you are. You must have felt so lonely, so bloody devastated. I mean, not only having to cope with the loss and the grief, but having to start everything all over again without any security. And having the car clamped and taken away must truly have seemed like the bottom of the pit. I really, really admire you for climbing out of it.’

  She sat in silence for a moment, unwilling to speak in case she suddenly sobbed or did something equally crass. It was wonderfully liberating to have been able to tell the whole truth at last.

  ‘Thank you. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard some of the story from Posy, and maybe even bits from Flynn, but now you know as much as there is to tell.’

  Ellis grinned. ‘Posy gave me the expurgated girlie version, and Flynn is discreet to the point of boring when it comes to giving away secrets, either his own or other people’s. I don’t think Flynn is a kisser-and-teller, do you?’

  ‘Probably not.’ She smiled at him. ‘And although it’s possibly not the image you wish to portray, neither are you. In fact, you’re not at all as I first imagined you would be.’

  ‘Aren’t I? Bugger.’ Ellis smiled back. ‘Have to work on the old sex-crazed, chauvinis
tic, good-time bloke stuff a bit more then, won’t I? Can’t have people thinking I’m halfway decent. Are we having the cakes now?’

  ‘Yes, although we should have saved some of the wine to wash them down with. Still, help yourself. And can I ask my question?’

  Ellis dug into the box and bit into layers of choux pastry and goo with relish. ‘Yeah, sure, but if I offer to be packhorse, shall we walk and talk?’

  Lola weighed up the dynamics of wandering along the riverbank with a fist full of squishy cake. ‘I’d love to, if you think we can manage it without getting cream everywhere.’

  ‘Well, if we do,’ Ellis beamed, ‘we can always lick it off one another, can’t we?’

  Quickly pushing away all manner of highly inappropriate mental pictures, Lola stood up, thrusting the last of the shopping bags into Ellis’s arms the way she remembered Eamon Andrews doing on Crackerjack’s Double or Drop many moons ago.

  He shoved his cream cake in his mouth while manoeuvring the shopping, then removed it again as they headed along the gravelled path towards the river. ‘Okay, all set. Ask the question.’

  ‘Why on earth are you burying yourself alive in Steeple Fritton?’

  ‘Very Lynda Lee-Potter! Straight for the jugular. You missed your vocation. And I don’t see it as being buried. I see it as a challenge. And now I’ve got the White Van Man stuff sussed I’m doing nicely, and I’m very happy in the village, thank you.’

  ‘But your degree . . .’

  ‘The reason I did mechanical engineering is the reason I’m in Steeple Fritton.’

  Lola licked cream from her fingers and wondered if the other riverside strollers were looking at them as a couple and imagining that they were mother and son. Just as people had looked at her and Nigel together, wondering if they were father and daughter. ‘Don’t be obscure.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She watched the college eights skimming along the river beneath Folly Bridge, their blades cutting V-shaped wavelets through the diamond-sprinkled surface. ‘Because I was straight with you. And it intrigues me. You’re so young, surely you want more out of life than being stuck in a Berkshire backwater?’

  Ellis finished his cake. ‘Okay, by the time I was fourteen I was a pub regular and hardened drinker. By sixteen I was into clubbing, raves and recreational drugs. By eighteen I’d backpacked around various bits of the world and lived at least three lifetimes. My A Levels took me years to obtain, my degree was a pain. I was old and jaded by the time I was twenty. What other people look forward to doing – all their letting off steam once they’ve got their education out of the way – I’d done and become bored with even before it was legal.’

  Ouch. Lola winced. ‘Well, that’s certainly straight enough. Sorry, I wasn’t prying. I had no idea. But surely –’

  ‘When my parents finally found a school that would accept me back with my record of exclusion and absconding, I eventually did physics, maths and chemistry at A Level. I enjoyed the theory of engineering, but never wanted to become an engineer. I had a special crammer tutor who lectured in Mech-Eng at uni. He got me through A Levels and then taught me for the three years of my degree. I thanked him by having an affair with his wife for all that time.’

  Lola looked at him. His eyes were fastened on the curve of the river, on the swans doing their stately glide, on the waggle-tailed ducks pestering people for food.

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘Why not?’ He stopped staring at the river. His eyes were sad. ‘If I hadn’t wanted you to know I wouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘Very much. It was first-time love and the real thing for me.’

  ‘So, what happened? Did her husband find out?’

  ‘Yeah. And she wouldn’t leave him for me because she thought I wasn’t old enough . . . that I wasn’t serious . . . that the age difference would mean we had no future. It was a real kick in the teeth to discover that while I really loved her and was happy to spend the rest of my life with her, she just saw me as some sort of toyboy arm candy.’

  ‘A bit of a role reversal, yes.’ Lola pulled a sympathetic face. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘That’s why it suited me and my parents, not to mention my tutor and his reconciled wife, to take up Gran’s offer of a retreat in Steeple Fritton. Out of harm’s way to let the dust settle.’

  ‘And you don’t want to do anything else? Go anywhere else?’

  ‘Not at the moment, no. Why should I? I’ve done it all already and I love the village, I like being my own boss, and I feel liberated for the first time in years.’

  Lola sighed. They were all in the same boat. Well, not Flynn so much, of course, because he’d left Vanessa, but she and Posy and Ellis. And of all unlikely places, Steeple Fritton was offering them sanctuary and the chance of a new life.

  ‘So, the fling with Tatty . . . ?’

  Ellis groaned. ‘Oh, God – was supposed to be just that. The night I arrived in the village I felt so bloody lonely. Gran and the coven were off to the wedding reception at Colworth Manor, the pub then was like something out of the dark ages, and my heart was still fragile. I went along just to be with people and noise and music. Tatty was flirty and fun and it, well, just happened.’

  ‘And it never occurred to you that she might be serious?’

  They’d reached one of the rustic bridges over an opaque emerald Isis tributary. Ellis shook his head. ‘Not for a moment. When Posy said last week that Tatty wanted forever and another baby it scared me to death, but I can’t hurt her, can I? I know what it feels like.’

  Lola leaned her back against the flaking wooden bridge. ‘Poor you. And poor Tatty. But you’ll have to tell her. If you don’t you’ll hurt her even more.’

  ‘I know. But she’s so lovely. Weird as hell, I mean, but a completely free spirit and totally barking. I really thought she was just up for a bit of fun. There should be some sort of code I reckon, for relationships. Like star ratings or something, to indicate who wants what out of it, and if your stars don’t match then you should run like hell.’ Ellis put the bags down by his feet, then looked at her. ‘Do your stars match Flynn’s?’

  ‘You ask far too many questions.’ Lola didn’t meet his eyes. ‘And, um, from a woman’s point of view I think you should ask Tatty what she wants from your, er, relationship. Could be Posy got hold of the wrong end of a bit of village gossip or something. You’ll probably find that Tatty is only looking for fun, too.’

  ‘You might be right. Hope so. There seems to have been more than enough unhappiness recently.’ He leaned against the bridge beside her and stared across the meadows in companionable silence. ‘You know, all that city of the dreaming spires stuff is pretty accurate, isn’t it?’

  Relieved to be back on neutral ground, Lola nodded. ‘I was just thinking the same thing, seeing all the domes and steeples through the mist of the new leaves it’s, it’s just like Itchycoo Park.’

  Ellis laughed. ‘Christ, I never had you down as a closet Small Faces fan. Were you a teenage Mod? Is that why you don’t share my love of Bubblegum? Why you simply fail to appreciate that Joey Levine and Art Resnick were the Rodgers and Hammerstein of the Sixties?’

  Smiling, Lola shook her head. ‘Not really. And I think Lennon and McCartney might have something to say about that. I suppose, if we’re being honest, all that Levine and Resnick stuff that you play just reminds me of hearing it the first time round. You know, fizzing, happy music which accompanied miserable teenage parties, terrifying school exams, spots and puppy fat, and silly optimistic dreams that you knew would never come true.’

  ‘You should have had my sort of teenage years,’ Ellis grinned. ‘If there was angst in there I sure as hell can’t remember it. Mind you, I can’t remember much of anything . . . Still, I can’t believe that you were a teenager in the sixties. You can’t be –’

  ‘Don’t say it. You don’t mean it. It’s very kind of you but – oh, look, can I tell you something? Some
thing that I wasn’t going to tell anyone. Something that I don’t want you to breathe a word about but might explain things.’

  ‘More guilty secrets?’

  ‘Secrets, yes. Not guilty ones.’

  Lola wondered for a moment about the wisdom of sharing anything more with Ellis. Would he rocket home to Steeple Fritton and tell the entire village? Would he laugh at her? Like Flynn, she hoped not, but she’d risk it. She simply had to tell someone.

  ‘I did all this today, asking Flynn to show me Queen Mab, then the shopping, the jeans, the picnic . . . because it’s my birthday. Today I’m fifty years old.’

  Ellis didn’t speak. Lola wanted the bridge to crumble away and the thick pea-green water to close over her head. He thought she was ancient, and of course he was right. Fifty! How could she be fifty? Dilys, round beach-ball Dilys, was probably fifty. Ellis’s mother was probably fifty. Old people were fifty.

  ‘Happy birthday then.’ He eased himself away from the bridge and grinned. ‘That’s really cool. Although why you don’t want anyone else to know, I have no idea.’

  ‘I’m used to keeping things to myself. I spent very few birthdays with Nigel. He couldn’t really get away that often without an inquisition. For years now my birthdays have been just another day.’

  ‘Sad,’ Ellis said. ‘Very sad. Still, this has to be the start of the rest of your birthday life, then. From now on you’ll have out-of-the-closet birthdays with cakes and ice cream and jelly and balloons . . . Hey, we could have a party in the pub tonight. We could –’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head fiercely. ‘Seriously. I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want any fuss. I don’t want to be bloody fifty!’

  ‘Why on earth not? I’d have thought being fifty was wonderful. Especially looking like you do. No, listen. I’m a connoisseur, I know about these things and I’d’ve said late thirties. You look like Jilly Johnson or Nina Carter. Blonde on Blonde. Elegant, toned, totally gorgeous, definite wow-factor.’

  Immensely flattered, Lola laughed at him. ‘That’s really kind of you, but while I may be in their age group I certainly don’t think I’m in their league.’