by Wendy Reakes
Mark had never married. He hadn’t even come close to the word betrothed, let alone promising to walk down aisle to the altar. He’d had a high school sweetheart. Who hadn’t? But Betty Baxley had never turned his head the way the vision in front of him had.
Of course, there had been Joan.
Joan, or Mrs. Cartwright as she was widely known, was the woman who had taken his virginity at the tender age of seventeen. She’d taught him everything. Even down to how he could get rid of his widespread acne and how to shift his adolescent gait to a more masculine and mature strut. She taught him how to dress and how to tie shoelaces, of all things. But more important, she'd taught him how to treat a woman. “Not like a delicate rose,” she’d instructed, “but respectfully and tenderly with a hint of a masterful edge. And a bucket full of good old American dry wit. Not dry rot, Mark,” she would add. “Dry wit!”
“Yeah, I get it!” he’d say. And as he strutted through the door, leaving her satisfied between her silk sheets, he’d mutter. “Wit…not rot…WIT not rot!”
“Hello,” he said now to the girl in the brown dress. He grinned, stupidly, in his opinion. He could feel how stupid it was by the revealing of too much teeth, but when he wanted to smile like that, he couldn’t hold back. “Do you come here often?” he joked. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. That was dumb.
“Yes.” She hadn’t taken him literally.
He stepped closer to her. “I bet you meet guys like me here all the time, too.” There he goes, Buzzard-insecure-dot-com.
“No.” She had eyes of emeralds. “I’ve never met anyone here before.”
She moved forward a little, getting closer to him. Was it possible she as crazy about him as he felt about her? Could he, Mark Buzzard of the Bluegrass state of Kentucky, be that lucky? He doubted it. Lucky wasn’t exactly his middle name.
He wondered if there was a bench nearby where they could sit and talk. “Can I buy you a coffee?”
“What is that?”
“What is what?”
“What you just said. Coffee.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She frowned. There was a tiny little crease on the white skin of her forehead, in-between where her eyebrows parted. It disappeared when her expression changed, leaving her skin as smooth as white silk. She was exquisite.
“We can go over there, if you’d like to sit with me.” She pointed to a set of stone steps cut into a verge of grass, next to an archangel with its wings spread open behind it.
“Sure.” He reached for her hand, but the action startled her. She was looking at his outstretched fingers. “I would never hurt you,” he said.
A small dimple formed in the corner of her mouth. There was only one and he briefly wondered if she had another. She reached out and accepted his hand and he knew, just at that moment, he never wanted to let her go. Her small hand seemed lost in his. She was like a precious rose. He remembered Mrs. Cartwright’s words: “No woman wants to be likened to a rose. For one, it’s a cliché, secondly, a rose has thorns, and thirdly no woman wants a man to think of her as a handful of pink petals.”
He tugged her towards him in a playful gentle way. “Mind your step and don’t pull me over if you fall.”
She chuckled. Mrs. Cartwright was always right.
He looked at her tiny white hand, nestled in his. Against his deeply tanned wrist, it seemed as if he were holding a china doll. He glanced at his watch, suddenly anxious about time moving on. The watch had been an impulse purchase. It was a gold, second-hand Rolex, one he’d picked up from a flea market in Notting hill. It had a numbered certificate which testified its authenticity, but there had been no box. Bernie at the hotel had looked it over, and he’d made a call to authorize the serial number to confirm it was genuine and not stolen. Bernie knew about these things.
They reached the stone staircase. Mark wondered what she would do if he tried to kiss her. Slap his face he guessed. He watched her tuck her skirt around her ankles, as she lowered herself onto the third step. The structure was covered with autumn leaves so she brushed them away to make room for him at her side. He looked up to the darkening sky. The light was fading fast. “Aren’t you cold?” he said, as he sat down next to her.
She pulled her knees up to her chest. He noticed the swell of her bosom rising above her bodice. He quickly averted his eyes. “Yes, I am a little cold. But where I come from, it is always hot…” She was watching him unzip his jacket. “When I am here, I like to feel the cold. It's refreshing.”
Mark went to drape the jacket over her shoulders, but he hesitated as he looked for an expression of approval from her. He wanted her to know she could trust him. “It’s okay,” he murmured. He pulled it tighter around her small form so that she looked buried in it. “Where do you come from, Wren?”
She tucked her hands in the folds of her skirts. “It is a place you do not know.”
“Try me.” He grabbed a blade of grass and put it between his teeth. It was something to focus on.
She seemed to be wondering about him. He wasn’t completely surprised. Most people wondered about him. “It is a city called Sous Llyndum.”
He shook his head. “Nope, you’ve got me there. And I majored in geography too.” A stray lock of red hair was caught on the side of her mouth. He wanted to brush it back, but dared not touch her. Instead, he used the blade of grass to brush it away. “What country is it in?”
“England.”
“Ah! So it’s one of those remote little towns the British call a city, right?” She squinted, making her nostrils flare, prettily. “Urm…where I come from, you could fit England into my back yard.” She wasn’t getting it. “The States,” he said. “You know the good ol’ US of A.”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it.”
“You have, huh?”
She nodded. “Yes. It is much bigger than this country.”
“Uh, huh.” She was so cute.
“I read about it in one of my books. I’ve got two I keep hidden under my bed. I bartered for them with my brother. I had to serve him breakfast in his room for one whole week, but I would have given anything to have them.”
“Two?” She was kidding, right.
“One is a dictionary of English and I pick two words at random every day. My rule is to use them within that day or throw them back.”
“Throw them back?”
“Yes, back into the book. Until one day I may take them out again.”
“What are your two words for today?”
“One is holiday. I still haven’t been able to use it, but there is still time.”
“Well, you’ve just used it, haven’t you?”
She laughed the sweetest laugh. “Oh no. That would be cheating.”
An owl hooted in the distance and a flutter of birds took flight from a tree behind them.
“Where I come from we call holiday, vacation. Where are you going on holiday this year?”
“I never go on holiday.”
“Ta-da” He pointed at her mouth. “There, you’ve just said it.” He watched her smile an enigmatic smile. Then he realised what she’d just said. “Wait! You never go on holiday!?”
Mark looked up to the sky. It was darker now. He considered taking the small flashlight from his pocket, but he didn’t want to remind her how late it was getting. “You know, I don’t understand a lot of what you say, but it doesn’t matter. You make me happy.” He gazed into her eyes as if he was spellbound. He just knew she felt the same.
Then the pain hit him. “Argh!”
Mark twisted around and saw a snake with black and white stripes, slink off into the brambles next to the old worn steps. “I’ve just been bitten.”
Wren held onto the jacket draped over her shoulders and stepped over his legs to the other side. He jerked his sweater up at the back and with his other hand he pulled down the waistband of his jeans. “Let me see.” She crouched down and leaned into his body like a mother would her son.
He could
feel a bump. It felt like the size of a baseball. “Is it bad?”
“It’s very red and it is a little swollen. The bite of an adder is not deadly, but you must have the venom removed. The point of entry may become infected.”
“Is there a hospital near here?” He pulled his sweater down. Man! Bitten on the ass on the best date of his life!
“I don’t know. I’ve never been outside the cemetery.” She helped him up, which, considering her size, was like David helping Goliath.
Mark was distracted, as his fingers searched for the lump on his lower back. “Huh? How can you not have been out of the cemetery?” His eyes swept the terrain, and the mausoleums, and the giant statues of gothic angels. “You don’t live here do you?” He was still in a mood for a joke, even though the pain from the bite was shooting across his back.
“Not here, but I live…” She grabbed some leaves from the ground next to the steps, pulled his sweater up again, spat saliva on the leaves and then placed the compress against his wound. “Come on…You can come with me.”
She placed her tiny white hand into his, but before they walked down the steps, she said something, which he couldn’t understand…yet it was something she meant with all her heart.
“My home is of this land, but it is not of this plane. My home is underground in a place called Sous Llyndum and I live in a palace called Atlantia.” She was talking fast. “Our people live in their thousands and my father, the king, rules."
He could feel his eyes widening with every word she uttered. She had a sincere look on her face, but he couldn't digest her words. She was kidding him, right?
"I trust you, Mark Buzzard. I will show you where I live because I think…no, I am certain...you will be my husband.”
The creases on his forehead were beginning to numb his brow. They seemed to be permanently elevated. He exaggeratingly shook his head to bring him back to reality, or alter-reality as he was beginning to refer to it.
“Wren!' I have no idea what you just said…but Husband is your other word of the day isn’t it?”
She smiled a beautiful smile. She did have two dimples. “Come, Mark Buzzard. I will take you home.”
Chapter 8
“Son of a bitch,” Ben Mason cursed as he punch-stabbed the green button of the elevator with his thumb. The doors began to close as he skulked in the corner with his arms folded over his chest, but then they parted again when a red-manicured hand jammed it open.
“Did someone say bitch?” She stepped inside. She was blonde, her straight, long hair hanging strategically over her shoulders in golden strands, dipping at the two sides and the back as if it had been cut that way. She was five-ten. A perfect ten, Ben always called it. With his own six-foot-two, women of that height seemed to fit him just right. It was a strategic thing and a neck thing. Meaning, when he bent his head to kiss a five-foot tenner, he didn’t have to hunch-over too much, thus preserving the muscles in his neck. These days it helped to play things close to his chest, seeing as he was a casualty of war from his almost-to-be last marriage, when she caught him snuggling-up to an apprentice backbencher.
“Ah, talk of the devil and lo and behold she arrives,” he mumbled. He contemplated for a moment just how bitter he sounded. He should work on that. He leaned forward and pushed the button once more as she stood her ground in the centre.
As they ascended, they stood side-by-side like an elevator cliché, appearing to be watching their own reflections in the stainless steel doors. Ben’s eyes went upwards to watch the floors pass them by. Her eyes didn’t move. She was a confident beauty, and she held herself tall without any form of doubt in her ability to walk into a room and knock people dead.
“What’s up with you, Mase? Bad day!?”
He offered her a faux smile. He did that a lot. It suited his eternal humourless disposition. Or so she’d told him many times in the past. “You could say that, yes.”
“Ah, what wrong? She blow you wrong?”
He sighed loud enough for her to hear. “Here we go again.” He watched her in the mirrored doors, grinning that damn grin. “Oh, I see. You’re in a mood to wind me up. Well, you know what, babe, bring it on. You’re not even in the same league as the son-of-a-bitch I met today, so give it your best shot.”
“Have you had your blood pressure checked recently? You know what the doctor said.”
The lift slowed and stopped on the fourth floor. “Yes actually, I do know. He said I should keep away from scary bitches who get-off hitting me with a hammer for no bloody reason. What’s your excuse? You seen your doctor lately, babe?”
The doors opened. “I have, actually.” She stepped out of the lift and began to walk down the corridor. “I’m pregnant…Babe!” she called, as the doors closed in front of his perplexed face.
Chapter 9
It was early morning when the driver picked him up from his flat in Knightsbridge. They were heading across town, pausing in rush hour traffic and cutting through back streets, avoiding the congestion on the main drag. They turned left over a roundabout where the famous Kings Road began on the right. The car went left, past Sloane Square tube station and into Sloane Avenue.
Ben still didn’t know where he was going, but judging by the route the driver was taking, he guessed it was Chelsea Barracks. The driver was dressed in the same red and black uniform as the colonel, minus the badges and medals, which Barnes was so proud to display. Not many people outside the government knew it was the uniform of Prince Albert’s Somerset Light Infantry. Before 2007, it had been an independent regiment of the British army, until it amalgamated with other regiments to form The Rifles. At least that was the public’s impression. The truth was the infantry was retained by the Royal Society as a secret army, headed by no other than Colonel Geoffrey Barnes himself. They kept their name, the Jellalabad, and from their headquarters in Taunton they controlled governmental secrets that the British public were blissfully unaware of. It was the army's best kept secret.
Ben’s thoughts went to Charlotte, as he stared out of the car window. Maybe it was the exclusive shops lining Sloan Avenue, which reminded him of her; shops with modern mannequins displaying expensive designer clothes. Yeah, that was Charlotte all right.
Pregnant! He couldn’t help himself groan. He could see the driver checking him out in the rear view mirror. Ben ignored him. For Christ sake! Charlotte pregnant!
He’d married Charlotte Croft two years before, when he'd made marriage a condition of them moving in together. It was she who’d lived in the big fancy apartment in Knightsbridge and it was she who wouldn’t give it up. At the time Ben lived in a bachelor flat in Battersea. It had a great view of the Thames and he had a great aspect of the old powerhouse building from his balcony. He hadn’t given it up lightly, but Charlotte had begged him to move in and he finally agreed, as long as she agreed to marry him. At the time he needed that stability in his life and he didn’t want to be left homeless in London if she changed her mind and threw him out.
Charlotte pregnant! Their relationship had been on a downward slope for the past month and now they had her conditionto deal with. Last night when he’d emerged from the lift and went into their flat, she’d told him she wasn’t going to keep the baby. “Abortions are commonplace now,” she’d said. “It’s as easy as having Botox. No one bats an eyelid these days.”
They’d argued, as they always argued lately, ever since she'd caught him with that pretty back-bencher. Except, there had been nothing going on! The girl had a crush on him and it just so happened that she’d pounced on his mouth just seconds before Charlotte had walked into his office. Timing! When he'd arrived home that evening, Charlotte was banging nails into the wall of the kitchen. She said she wanted to hang up some utensils on the wall and she was fed up with waiting for him to do it. As soon as he criticised her primitive DIY methods, that’s when the hammer caught the back of his shoulder and sent him crashing to the floor amid a sprinkling of discarded two-inch nails and a carton of orange juice
he’d been swigging from. The rest was history.
Any thoughts of Charlotte were suddenly suspended as the car turned into the gates of Chelsea Barracks. Ben could see the Chelsea pensioners parading around in their long-coat uniforms of red. He hadn’t realized he’d raised his chin as he passed them by, born out of respect for them devoting their lives to their country. He thought of them as a British institution, which made him very proud to be a part of. Ben was an extreme royalist and as far as he was concerned, the monarchy was the foundation of society, especially in modern-day Britain. The Queen kept everyone straight!
The car went around the back of the main building and slowed down as they approached a wooden covered structure where Barnes, flanked by two of his men, was standing on a footpath outside. As the car pulled up, Ben unbuckled his seat belt, ready to get out, but he was forced to lean back, when the colonel opened the door and got in.