by Judy Waite
She laughs too, a thrill skimming her. They are laughing together.
She sips more sweet strawberry and wonders if she should put her hand on his leg. And then she thinks it might be too soon. He's got his arm along the back of the bench but he's not actually touching her. She risks leaning into him slightly, noticing that he doesn't move away. 'I love those glass sculptures – those lilies or whatever they are. They're lovely – but strange.' She sips more cocktail and squints towards a small pond, where organic-shaped ornaments are lit by a dance of coloured lights.
'Surreal,' he says.
She's not sure what the word means so she stays quiet, finding the courage to rest her head on his shoulder. It feels so natural. So right. She wants to find a way to tell him he could kiss her. Wisps of music thread down through the garden behind them. She thinks of the music as strings of colour, crisscrossing the night. Disembodied voices pass, murmuring. Someone – a woman – shrieks, then giggles.
They've been quiet for too long. She needs to get him talking again. Shifting slightly, so that she is facing him, she asks brightly, 'What university is it that you're at?'
'Sussex.' He doesn't look back at her, but stays staring out across the pond where a small fountain is showering silver into the silky water. 'Near Brighton.'
Fern has heard of Brighton and in her head she sees pictures of beaches. A pier. 'That's by the sea, isn't it?'
'Yeah.'
Sussex Sussex Sussex. She'll have to remember.
'I love the sea. The river. Even though water scares me sometimes, I still can't bear to be away from it for long.'
'Scares you?' He does look at her now, asking gently, 'How does it scare you?'
She worries that he'll think she's stupid if she starts going on about her dog dreams and the mud figures all sucked down by the undertow. 'Oh – just because I can't swim. I tried to learn once but I panicked and after that it just didn't happen.'
She knows he can swim because Alix talked about them racing in the pool at her mum's villa the other week, and she waits for him to say something else, but he doesn't.
'Are . . . are you going back to . . . to Surrey tomorrow, do you think?' She has tried to make this sound like nothing, a light shower of empty words, but it comes out weighted. A dropped stone.
He grins at her. 'It's Sussex. And I don't know yet.'
Fern feels herself tense up, almost jolt. This could be it. He might be going to make a move on her now – maybe that's why he doesn't know what he's doing. He needs to know what she's going to say. Her hand strays to the silk fringe of the pashmina, plucking at the tassles.
The moment ripples outwards. She could lose it. It might ebb away. 'What would you do if you didn't go? Back. Tomorrow, I mean.'
He grins again. 'Annoy Alix. Sleep on in the morning. No one should surface before lunch time on a Sunday unless there's some pressing need, like football practice.'
'Don't you sleep on when you're at university then?' Fern realises she is gabbling about nothing but she can't help it. She's scared that he will ask to see her, and scared that he won't.
He makes an odd noise – a humph. 'Sadly I don't get the chance. It's the girls. They get all heated about things like their best bra going missing or whatever, and they seem to think the whole house should hear about it.'
'The girls?' Fern makes herself focus on a collection of glass sculptures that edge the pond, graceful green stems washed in a fan of light. Girls. He lives with girls.
'There's four of us – three girls and me.'
'Oh – right.' Three girls. Three girls living with Aaron.
A waiter approaches, seeming to glide along the grass towards them. 'Madam?' he bows slightly, the tray held immobile. Fern realises her strawberry cocktail is finished. She hands him the glass, and takes a fresh one. Is it orange this time? She isn't sure. Colours always look different in the dark.
'Sir?' The waiter turns to Aaron, bowing again.
Aaron waves him away with the hand that isn't stretched behind Fern's back. 'Thank you, but no. I'm driving,' he says.
The waiter glides away again.
Fern sips the cocktail. It's more lemony than orange. She sips it again; for courage, she thinks. 'Are they pretty?' Bits of tassle have been pulled away from the pashmina and she brushes them down from her lap.
'Sorry?'
'The girls you live with. Are they pretty?'
Her mouth is fixed in a small growling smile and she struggles to soften it.
'I'm not sure. I don't really look at them in that way.' She senses a slight movement of his shoulder, a shrug. She thinks, relieved, that he doesn't sound interested in them. He doesn't sound as if he's even thought about it.
And then he says, 'In fact, you can decide for yourself. Here's one of them now. Oh hey, Daisy – what's up?'
Fern looks round as a slim girl, porcelain pale and in a long red dress, weaves unsteadily towards them. Or at least she thinks the dress is red. Colours look different in the dark.
'Aaron. Thank God I've found you.' Daisy drops – collapses – onto the bench bedside him.
'Hey now – what's happened? Come on. Talk to me.'
Fern feels his arm move away from the back of the bench, his body turned from her now, focusing on Daisy. She shifts position, moving forward and tilting her head to see round his back, her small growling smile forcing out a sympathy that no one is even noticing.
Daisy has her fists clenched and is pressing them up against her eyes. Aaron reaches forward, taking both hands and drawing them down gently into her lap.
'Come on. Tell me. Tell me.'
His voice is so tender. Fern feels the wrench of very word.
She stays smiling.
Stays sympathetic.
'He isn't interested. I thought he was at first – but then he just seemed to drop me. I think he fancies someone else.'
Aaron pulls her towards him, cradling her. 'Then he's nothing but a rat. A skunk. A disgusting slur on the face of all mankind.'
Daisy giggles, opening her eyes and sniffing up at Aaron. 'A cesspit in the stagnant pond of life.'
Aaron hugs her tighter. 'A foul gush of slime in the sewer of time.'
They are both laughing now, rocking together.
Fern feels shrivelled. She could never play these games of words.
'Look – I've got an idea. You don't have to risk his boiled blisters for eyes seeing you like this. We could head off somewhere – drive through this dark and velvet night, and find an enchanted land where all the Princes will be lined up waiting for you.' He turns to Fern, as if he has suddenly remembered she is there. 'I've got to get Daisy away, and I don't know if I'll make it back to pick you ladies up. So use this for a taxi . . . ' He wrestles in his back pocket and pulls out a wad of notes. 'Alix must be around somewhere. And the other girl. See if you can find them – and tell Alix I'm sorry. I'll call her tomorrow.'
He is already standing, Daisy swaying against him. She doesn't even look at Fern.
Together they melt away into the evening.
Fern stays slumped on the bench, the pashmina lopsided now, swigging back the orange that-is-probably-lemon cocktail. She stares at the pond with its lit-up glass ornament lilies. Insects flicker round them, hovering and buzzing. She thinks that is the second time in her life that a bloke has given her money to get rid of her.
'Another drink, madam?' The voice at her shoulder makes her look round, the waiter hovering like an apparition. She forces herself to move, stretching out the empty orange but-probably-lemon glass, wobbling it down onto the tray. The waiter steadies it. She takes another. Who knows what colour it is? And who cares?
* * *
Courtney is sitting in the garden at a small painted table, pressed up in a corner under a tangle of honeysuckle. She hopes no one will find her.
She has had a few drinks – she's on her third now – but this fruited cocktail rubbish doesn't seem to be touching her. A couple of blokes have come over but she's s
hrugged them away. She can't face the idea of empty conversation. Small talk. Pointless chatter.
Wafts of music drift from up near the house. There are lights everywhere, small-eyed fairy lights that squint down from the branches of the trees.
Courtney thinks it's all so shallow and crass.
She wishes she hadn't agreed to come. Alix had a big idea about them all getting dolled up and having a good time being gorgeous together.
Except Courtney doesn't feel gorgeous. The black sequined dress she is squeezed into cost a fortune, and she can't believe she let Alix persuade her to waste her money on it.
It's not 'her'. This world isn't hers. The world where she feels happiest is Elroy's world.
When she thinks about Elroy she thinks of words like 'gentle' and 'clean' and 'honest', and when she thinks about Alix now, she sometimes shudders. At school once, years and years ago, they did Greek mythology, and one of the gods was a woman with her hair full of snakes. Courtney remembers the illustration – the face so innocent and the hair all seething and writhing and forked with small, venomous tongues. Medusa. Alix. A beautiful, dangerous, powerful goddess. Is she being fair?
A breeze whispers in, skimming up and over the garden from the river. Sipping at the cocktail she watches the ripples on the water and thinks about the last three weeks with Elroy.
Sitting on the beach.
Walking from one end of the promenade to the other.
Talking endlessly in the Bluebird.
They've got so much to say to each other, drinking coffee in their favourite shadowed corner. Elroy is brimful of words – he knows about art and God and politics and books, and he opens her up to ideas and questions and each time she meets him, she goes away feeling different. Stronger. But they don't always talk. Sometimes they just sit quietly, looking and looking and looking at each other, drinking each other in while the coffee goes cold and Lofty, the owner, takes it away quietly and gets them some more.
She loves this limbo existence – they haven't even been to each other's homes yet – and in her fantasy she makes it stay that way. No groping and sweating and panting and pawing over each other. Just him liking her as a person. Her liking him.
And there's Mum and Dad too, and the way she knows they'd be, with their thinly masked disapproval. She won't subject him to that. She won't tell him where she lives.
Although she knows it's not exactly the same for him – he is scared of inviting her back to his bedsit – he's already told her that. 'It's not a great area,' he said yesterday, a touch of anxiety behind his beautiful, incredible smile. 'You might go off me if you saw it.'
It amazes her that he doesn't know how she feels.
He could live in a cardboard box for all she cared.
But she didn't press it because being together in his bedsit might change things in a way she won't even let herself think about, and she doesn't want to risk the change.
She sips more of the cocktail and looks back up towards the grotesquely huge house, where the 'have it all' people are laughing and dancing and eyeing each other up. Judging each other. Comparing. Competing.
Babylon.
That's what Elroy would call it.
If he came here now, walking past the bottom of the garden with his easel and his pastels, would he even recognise the glammed-up plastic doll of a girl sitting staring out across the night. And if he did recognise her, would he want to know her anymore?
She's not pretending with him – she's promised herself she will never do that – but not mentioning something isn't pretending. Avoiding. Evading. That's all she's doing. She's got to be careful. The thought of him thinking badly about her coils like a snake in her head. She's got more than a rough area bedsit for him to find out the truth about. She's got a million seething secrets to try and hide.
She stands suddenly, emptying what's left of the drink out onto the grass. Sod it, she's going home. She'll find Fern and Alix and tell them she's getting a taxi back.
She doesn't even know how it was that Alix persuaded her to come.
* * *
Alix is watching Hugh.
She feels as if she knows where he is, even when she can't see him. It's as if she's developed a kind of radar, sensing his position at any point in the room.
He had a different girl with him earlier. The Limpet who clung on to him in The Dress Agency has clearly been prised away. Tonight's one seemed gentler, and nicer. She looked lovely too, all dolled up in a slinky red dress, which was doubly annoying. It's going be a major barrier if Hugh is with someone he genuinely likes.
Alix isn't sure where Little Miss Lovely is now, but no doubt she'll be back. She's not going to leave her catch unattended for long.
She makes murmured conversation with strangers who want to know her name. What she does. Who she knows, and how.
'Cocktail, madam?' She takes a drink from the waiter's tray, and sips it thoughtfully. At least she doesn't have to worry about it being spiked in here.
She thinks it must be fantastic to be able to take a house like this for granted. Rooms draped with velvet and silk, sparkling crystal chandeliers, arched windows and marble statues set in alcoves in the wall.
When she looks up Hugh has slipped from her view. She slides a look round the room – a glimpse is all she'll need. His shoulder. His hair. She finds nothing. He has really gone. Little Miss Lovely must have crept back in and stolen him away.
She nudges through a maze of rooms, passing clusters of guests who smile distractedly and continue their conversations.
'Sorry.'
'Excuse me.'
She feels a sense of urgency, as if some dangled chance is being whipped from her.
'Excuse me.'
'So sorry.'
In the Victorian conservatory she stands defeated among a fresh thrum of guests. A man with a foghorn voice is telling an endless joke about a goldfish. His audience nods and fixes him with expectant smiles, poised for the moment when they are allowed to laugh. Hugh could be anywhere. The most likely place is in some silken-sheeted bedroom with Little Miss Lovely.
The image of this churns up in her. She wants to rage through the house, flinging open doors and spitting fury at whoever she finds.
All around her, the thrum of guests laugh.
She wants to scream at them to shut up, and to tell them they're all stupid. She wants to force them to go and find him for her.
'I hope you're having a good time.' Alix freezes. She thinks it's fascinating that this voice, heard only once and even then so very casually, can jolt her so powerfully now. It is as if the idea of him has lain somewhere at the edge of her subconscious, waiting to be called back.
He has walked in from outside and he touches her arm as she turns to face him.
'Hi,' she smiles, feeling awkward with her Dress Agency bag and pashmina. She should have got someone to take them for her. There must be a butler around, in a place like this.
'I know you,' he says. It isn't a question or a battle with his memory. It's a statement.
'I know you too.'
He laughs, and the laugh seems to light up in him. He looks almost attractive when he laughs.
He calls the waiter over and gets her another drink but she barely even sips it this time. She is so aware of being near him. The way he asks questions and then watches her answer. Not listens, but watches. She is glad she is beautiful.
'Tell me what you do,' he says.
'Just a student.' She wrinkles her nose. 'I'll be leaving soon. I'm not sure what comes next.'
He laughs again. 'I left Oxford twenty years ago, and I'm still not sure what comes next either.'
She laughs with him. They are so close, their bodies brushing against one another. Guests jostle up and tell him it's a great party and what an excellent location and they hope he can make it out to see them in their place on the Riviera soon. He nods and answers with enthusiasm, but his eyes never quite leave her.
'I've booked fireworks for midnight,' he say
s. 'It's nearly time. Join me.'
Taking her elbow he steers her out into the sweetly scented garden. There is an orchestra playing, people dancing. The garden is as fantastic as the house.
'Champagne, sir?' The waiter gives a small bow and Alix wants to giggle. How amazing to have servants bowing to you. She remembers learning once in history at school that Kings and Queens employed people to wipe their bottoms. Maybe Hugh has an official 'bottom wiper' for himself. She stifles back another giggle.
Hugh takes the bottle and tips it into two slender glasses.
'Let's toast,' he says.
'What to?' She smiles at him, glows for him.
He doesn't smile, just looks at her, his expression almost pained. 'To beauty,' he says at last. 'The sheer bittersweet joy of it.'
She lets herself giggle out loud now, and raises her glass.
A wild fizz and splutter explodes above her.
Looking up, she sees the sky is drenched with pink light. Then green. Then gold. There is a long high swizzle of sound. The air thumps and thuds. Showers of silver stars grow and explode, raining round them like jewels.
She glances at Hugh.
He is not watching the fireworks. He is watching her.
She warms him another smile. His arm comes round her and pulls her close, very gently. They stand together, faces tilted upwards, and a new feeling sparks up in her. A fresh sense of purpose. A clear direction.
The fireworks keep coming. Shushes of pink light. Flashes of green. A golden snowflake spreads and grows, spreads and grows. It fills the sky, hovers, and then explodes. A thousand sparks come sprinkling down. Dripping the garden with gold.
Hugh hugs her very tightly, then lets go of her to clap. Alix claps too, wondering what his next move will be. Wondering how best to play it.
'Alix – I've found you.' Courtney's pale face looms up through the darkness.
'What's up?' She wants to hiss and gesticulate and make Courtney go away, but she can hardly do any of that without Hugh seeing.
'We've got to go.' Courtney sounds jaded. Tired and irritable.
Alix moves away from Hugh, her back to him, trying to block him from the conversation. 'Why?'