Looking For Lucy

by Julie Houston

  Pleased with herself, she ran her fingers through her long, still-dark hair, decided a lick of lipstick wouldn’t go amiss and, within minutes was sitting on the pavement outside a bar called Bourbon sipping a wine spritzer.

  Don’t pretend, Sarah scolded her reflection in the shiny metal paper napkin holder, that it wasn’t your intention to come back to the spot where it all started. She sat back, trying to relax, shoving firmly out of her mind the sudden recollection that she’d expressly promised Mrs Lindop, one of the church wardens, she’d make herself available for a spot of church pew dusting and polishing that afternoon. She tried to assume an ‘I regularly sit outside bars in Leeds on a Monday afternoon’ pose, and glanced around at the surrounding pubs, offices and shops that made up this area around the college. The early Eighties pubs that she had frequented, before having to return each evening to her family home in suburban Harrogate, might have become gentrified, and quite shockingly unrecognisable to Sarah, thirty years or more on, but she knew this was the very bar. It was previously The Red Lion, where Johnny Lipton had first exploded into her existence, her life, her dreams.

  Two months after returning home from almost six years of school in Leicestershire and, despite Anne Sykes’s hollow insistence that her younger daughter be ‘finished’ at Villa Pierrefeu in Switzerland, the Hon. Sarah had uncharacteristically braved her mother’s wrath, enrolling at Leeds College of Art on a one-year foundation course that she intended would then pave the way for London, or even the dizzy heights of Paris. It wasn’t just the fact that she was eighteen, or her mother’s realisation that Sarah was technically an adult and, as such, out of her parents’ jurisdiction, that were on her side. For the previous ten years or more, her father, ostrich-like, had buried his head—as well as pickling his liver in an excess of consoling whisky—over the demise of his Bradford-based woollen mill and, as a result, money was tight.

  In the Sykes family since the days of Lister’s mill in Manningham, as well as the philanthropic Salt’s mill in what became known as Saltaire, it was Sarah’s grandfather, Albert Sykes who had first seen the commercial possibilities of the Tibetan goat hair used in the making of Kashmir shawls. By the early 1930s, Sykes Mill had a commanding lead over many of its Yorkshire competitors and, with the need for cloth to put in uniform the huge number of soldiers during the Second World War, the wily old Albert had pulled in favours, as well as metaphorical strings with the government, amassing not only a fortune for the Sykes dynasty but also becoming Tory MP for the area.

  The Hon. Anne Gardener, meeting the young Gerald Sykes at one of her ‘coming out’ parties in Knightsbridge, had informed her parents there was no way she could entertain even an evening’s invitation to dinner with ‘that red-faced yokel from ‘oop north.’ She had no intention of marrying anyone in ‘northern trade’ and such an evening would be a waste of time when she could be out with more suitable men of her own ilk from London and the Home Counties in the pursuit of a future husband. Nevertheless, as was often the way with families who could trace their heritage back to William the Conqueror as well as their diminishing fortune to the bankruptcy courts, Lord and Lady Charles Gardener encouraged the wealthy Gerald’s dogged pursuance of their beautiful daughter, and Anne finally succumbed to his proposal with the proviso that the young couple should live in fashionable Harrogate rather than among the dark satanic mills of industrial Bradford.

  In the early Eighties, Bradford began to be known for its curries rather than its woollen fabric and Sykes Mill had gone the way of the majority of those mills still clinging to the illusion of the grandeur of their former glory, and been divided into myriad industrial units housing everything from spray-paint outlets to children’s play gyms. Sarah’s brother, Edward, having taken over as MD from an increasingly morose—and inebriated Gerald—showed not a scrap of familial loyalty and, by the mid-Eighties had stripped Sykes Mill of its assets, feathering his own nest which, it seemed, was not to be built in the north but in the comfort and wealth of Surrey, with his London-born wife, Melissa.

  Sending Sarah to follow the traditional route taken at eighteen by the then Hon. Anne Gardener in the 1950s was now no longer a viable option. While regretting daily that neither of her daughters would be a part of that, now dying, tradition of introducing young ladies of a certain class to English Society via The Season, Anne Sykes had also thanked God that there was no longer the expectation, as well as the prohibitive cost involved, in doing just that. As such, Sarah was allowed to enrol on her art course on the one proviso that she live at home and not get involved with any arty types who presumably were only there to take drugs, become a part of student sit-ins, love-ins, try to Ban the Bomb (Anne did have a tendency to harp back to the Fifties and Sixties) or because of their inability to land a place to study PPE at Oxford.

  *

  An early Saturday evening more than thirty years ago: Sarah, nineteen and deliriously happy, if not a little drunk on sweet cider and life itself. She and April, her friend from college, sitting on the pavement outside The Red Lion while Duran Duran’s ‘Wild Boys’ belted out from the gloomy depths of the ridiculously large speakers wired up to the huge TV, brought in by the landlord specifically for some money-raising charity event.

  ‘Could you shift a bit over that way?’ Alice shouted to the back of a dark head in their line of vision, poking him rather rudely as she spoke. ‘We can’t see the TV.’

  He turned, smiling, obligingly moving slightly to the left as he did so. And Sarah knew, knew that she would remember forever her first glimpse of that wickedly beautiful face.

  He had fashionably long black hair curling almost to his collar, and decadent brown eyes. He was divine, and Sarah felt almost faint with longing, knowing that in a few more minutes tiny, blonde, gorgeous April would have made yet another conquest to add to her rapidly increasing portfolio of men.

  The boy took Sarah’s arm and, unable to speak over the heavy beat, simply, but expertly, moved her in front of him, pinning her against his chest with one brown arm, his chin resting on her head. She wanted the moment to go on forever, wanted to stay pulled against his white T-shirt, melting seamlessly into the muscled warmth of his chest so that she wasn’t quite sure where she ended and he began.

  As Frankie Goes to Hollywood exhorted the UK’s young to ‘Relax,’ the mainly student pub crowd hollered, as much in approval at the sentiment expressed as the sheer joy of being young and intoxicated on alcohol, loud music and, from the pungent smell emanating from the pub’s dark corners, pot.

  ‘That’s right,’ the boy yelled, both arms now firmly clamped around Sarah’s upper chest, ‘Relax, don’t do it,’ and then, pulling her round, so that she was facing him, kissed her very thoroughly. He tasted of French cigarettes and danger and Sarah, suddenly recalling her A-level English text of Sons and Lovers now knew irrevocably what D. H. Lawrence meant about swooning. She was swooning, kissing the boy back, her eyes closing as she swooned. She was Miriam, cleaving to Paul Morrell—swooning in his very presence. When she opened her eyes, he was laughing down at her, the corners of his brown eyes crinkling with amusement, enjoying the effect he was having upon her.

  Sarah would never again hear ‘Relax’ without remembering that first kiss: that first step taken down the path that would change her young life forever.

  15

  I was eating an over-ripe peach fresh from the market in Jerusalem, the fruit so heavy with juice I couldn’t contain its sticky sweetness and it dripped from my mouth, oozing down my chin and on to his neck, tanned from the day on the beach. He moved a hand sleepily to the sudden wetness and I reached down, lifting it to my mouth, tasting the sweetness of the peach rather shockingly—wonderfully—mixed with the taste of myself on his fingers. Awake now, he smiled that slow, leisurely smile—white even teeth, skin the colour of melted caramel—and shifted his legs from the tangle of cotton sheet, moving his mouth to circle a nipple with his tongue …

  ‘Are you awake, darling?’ Peter ask
ed cheerfully, his blond curls bobbing dizzyingly from the bottom of the hotel bed as he neared the end of some strange convoluted stretching exercise. ‘Just a couple more of these—need to be as fit as I possibly can for the Newcastle muster next Sunday.’ He snatched an imaginary pikestaff, bracing himself before lunging, presumably, at one of King Charles’s phantom Cavaliers.

  Brace. Lunge. Bob. Lunge again. Now you see him, now you don’t. Brace. Lunge. Bob…

  ‘Ten more, Clementine, just ten more and then I’ll make us a cup of tea. I managed to sort that Teasmade eventually; wasn’t going to let it disappoint my beautiful bride on the first day of her honeymoon.’ Peter was being particularly jolly, yet seemingly unable to meet my eyes across the beige polyester throw of the Holiday Best Inn bed.

  I flushed, remembering not only the dream that had woken me, but Peter’s embarrassment at my attempts, the previous night, to subtly initiate rather more different moves than the ones that had become the norm—his norm—since the first time we’d slept together on the night of his proposal.

  After the excitement of The Big Proposal, after the huge diamond ring had been placed on my finger, Allegra had finally drooped like an overblown peony and I’d carried her up to the girly pink boudoir where, after hugging me fiercely, she’d instantly fallen asleep, totally at home in her new bedroom.

  When I’d re-joined the guests there’d been a total shift in atmosphere, an almost end-of-term jollity as more champagne was opened, poured and consumed and, as my own glass was refilled, stories of their own proposals and other, just as exciting proposals as the one tonight, were being swapped and mulled over across the detritus of the pudding dishes.

  I knew I was in some sort of shock. I felt as though I were watching a play unravel and where, instead of being the main character in Peter’s proposal, I was actually in the audience, taking in every nuance, every aspect as the drama unfolded in front of my eyes, the dark-haired girl in the stunning black dress playing the lead as the other guests acted out their parts.

  Oliver Cromwell and his lady wife had left shortly after the grand proposal, driven back to Harrogate by Hilary who had drunk nothing but ginger beer all evening. ‘Good show, my dear,’ he’d enthused, lifting my hand to his rather wet mouth. ‘Jolly good show, all round. Just what young Peter needs—some stability in his home life—if he is to make Musketeer sooner rather than later. I wouldn’t be surprised, my dear, if this doesn’t go down very well, very well indeed, especially if we are to see rather more of you down on the field on Sundays? Hmm? A chap needs support, you see, needs to know there’s someone keeping the home fires burning when he’s about to do battle.’

  Home fires burning? Wasn’t that to do with the Second World War, rather than the Civil one? ‘Right,’ I’d said, extracting my hand from his moist paw and, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, repeated, ‘Right, right, yes, Oliver, I’m sure you’re right.’

  As the guests had begun to leave, gathering up bags, phones, jackets, searching for kicked-off heels under the dining table, swapping dates and arranging times for events yet to come, I was hugged and congratulated, gathered up as a new member of this little clan. Izzy, however, usually the more vocal and outrageous of any group, had appeared uncharacteristically subdued. Despite, or perhaps because of, the rather large amounts of alcohol she’d downed over the course of the evening, she’d said nothing until it came to actually kissing me goodnight.

  ‘I’ll speak to you tomorrow,’ she’d whispered as the metronome-ticking of the taxi ordered for her and Declan, Mel and Julian was heard in the drive. ‘You don’t have to do this, Clem,’ she’d added almost fiercely, giving her a hug. ‘Do you hear me? You do not.’

  And David Henderson who had charmed everyone—male and female—with his apparent gift for making them feel interesting if not downright special, had not said a word about the proposal until he and his wife, Mandy, were on the point of leaving.

  ‘Come on, David,’ Nick Westmoreland had shouted, about to jump into another waiting cab. ‘Get in. We’ll give you a lift home—save you walking across the fields.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ David shouted back but instead of leaving he’d turned to me and, with his hand resting lightly on my arm, said, ‘Be careful, Clementine.’

  ‘Careful?’ I’d asked in surprise. Thinking, not for the first time—and surely what a newly engaged woman should not—what a handsome man David Henderson was, my heart did a little flip as he held my eyes with his own shrewd, knowing ones. Dropping a chaste kiss on my cheek, he’d thanked me formally for the evening and gone down the garden to join his wife and the Westmorelands, leaving me wondering if I’d actually misheard his last comment.

  Peter had waved off these, the last of the guests, and returned to the house where I’d begun the marathon task of clearing up. Anything, anything to try to bring back a semblance of normality to my senses. Because surely, I’d thought, panic mounting, telling a man I didn’t love that I’d marry him, in front of all those people, was not normal.

  ‘Darling…? Clementine…?’ Peter had said, his face pink, his blond curls bobbing in perfect rhythm with his prominent Adam’s apple, ‘Do you think… I mean… how do you feel…? It’s just that I want you so much…’

  If only he’d taken me out into the garden, I thought, pressed me up against the bark of the huge cedar tree and, with the heady scents of the May evening in my senses, kissed me thoroughly. Instead, Peter had double locked the front door and checked that the chain was on; pulled plugs from TV and lamps—‘don’t want a fire,’ he’d said jovially—plumped a few cushions and straightened a picture in the hallway that was slightly askew before leading the way to his bedroom.

  ‘Erm, which side of the bed do you prefer?’ Peter had asked, obviously nervous. I’d smiled, trying to put him at his ease, not quite able to work out what he had to be worried about. After all, it was me who hadn’t had sex since before Allegra was born, whereas he and Vanessa had only been separated a couple of years. I was, I presumed, lagging behind in the ‘I’ve not had sex recently and might have forgotten where things actually go’ contest. He’d looked so stricken I was actually beginning to wonder if he was having second thoughts, both about inviting me to his bedroom as well as inviting me to be his wife.

  Determined to make this all work, I’d taken a deep breath, walked across to my new fiancé and started to kiss him, not with any great passion—I was yet to feel any passion at all for this gauche man—but slowly, encouragingly, in the hope that a small flame of something, anything, might be kindled somewhere on my person.

  ‘Would you like to use the bathroom first?’ Peter had suddenly whispered.

  ‘Sorry?’ If there had been little, so far, to raise my feet off the ground, to have me on my way down that corridor of desire where I so longed to be heading, this one sentence, like pouring water on a barely fizzing firework, brought me firmly back to ground zero.

  ‘Right. Yes. OK.’ And I’d gone into his beautifully spacious en-suite bathroom, spending a good five minutes marvelling at the expensive tiling, the pile of fluffy towels, the array of designer toiletries on display rather than at Peter’s naked body.

  Once I’d stripped to my underwear I didn’t quite know what else to do apart from squirt a drop of Peter’s ‘Cool Water’ between my breasts and attempt a rictus of a smile at myself in his mirror. Come on, Clem, I’d said to myself, you can do this. I came back out to find Peter already in the bed, the sheets up to his neck. He’d looked rather like a curly-haired Christopher Robin and I had a terrible urge to laugh. Please don’t let him have pyjamas on, I’d thought. Or his pants. Or, God forbid, both.

  I’d pulled back the sheets and slid in beside him whereupon he’d quickly turned out the light and kissed me with a mouth smelling and tasting of a strange combination of alcohol and peppermint. Did he think I was the police, I’d thought almost hysterically, and might arrest him for being drunk in charge of a half-naked woman? Almost immediately, Pet
er had begun the sexual moves that now, habitually, always started with the twirling of my right nipple, then the left, before lurching, almost apologetically on and into me, thudding away, as if on some mission that had to be accomplished at any cost; the prolonged pumping which left him pink-faced and sweating, and me wanting to cry.

  *

  So now, on this, the second day after our wedding at Midhope Register Office, I was feeling desperately homesick for Allegra left, unwillingly I knew by both parties, at my parents for the few days of our honeymoon, and as well, for some reason I couldn’t quite decide, feeling slightly physically sick.

  Whether it was the bobbing up and down of Peter’s blond curls reminding me of so many curls of butter on a swirling patterned sea of carpet; embarrassment at my attempts, last night—together with Peter’s rebuff—to expand his sexual repertoire or the amount of wine I’d knocked back in order to actually make those attempts on his fairly fragile ego, I wasn’t quite sure, but Peter’s enforced jollity was making me feel worse. I didn’t get it: Peter had been married to the strong, feisty Vanessa. Surely to God she hadn’t been happy to put up with what amounted to crap, really crap, sex? Or had I just been incredibly lucky with my few previous lovers who not only knew what they were doing, but revelled in making sure I was enjoying it as much as, if not more than, they did? Surely there was no excuse for bad sex? There were enough manuals and films to put one on the right track if one was unsure how to go about it. But then, there were a hell of a lot of people who made crap food and that, surely was just as inexcusable as offering bad sex?