Kissing Toads

by Jemma Harvey

  ‘No thanks.’ I was equally determined not to have Dorian. ‘I’m sure he’d rather spend time with his computer.’

  ‘You can take Fenny,’ Delphi offered, still convinced her fluffy pup was a cross between a Rottweiler and a bloodhound. ‘He’ll look after you – and the exercise would be good for him.’

  And then Ash entered, right on cue.

  ‘Good,’ HG said, arranging matters with the careless authority of uncrowned kingship. ‘You can go with Ruth. She’s decided she wants to walk to the village to check on some sinister strangers at the pub. They’re probably just unsuspecting tourists caught up in the scrimmage, but you never know.’

  Rather surprisingly, when the situation was explained to him, Ash agreed.

  I took Fenny, promising Delphi faithfully that I would return before Harry could ravish her again, and we set off.

  Initially, neither of us said anything. It was a beautiful day for a walk: the sunlight on the loch sparkled like a sheet of diamonds, the woods were green with early summer and rippling with birdsong, cloud-shadows came chasing down the mountainsides, swooping across the landscape on a light breeze. Ash and I strode along side by side, playing a sort of conversational chicken, waiting to see who would crack and break the silence first. I knew it was going to be me. I may be more patient than Delphi (mayflies are more patient than Delphi), but I hate those kinds of games.

  Only I couldn’t ask the big question in my head – Are you gay? – because that would betray my own feelings. If he was gay, that would be merely embarrassing, but if he wasn’t – if he didn’t have similar feelings for me – I would be shamed and humiliated as well. That’s what comes of living in a liberated society. Communication between the sexes becomes a total minefield.

  I compromised with banality. ‘Lovely weather we’re having.’

  Ash smiled, but not much.

  ‘It’s very beautiful here, don’t you think?’ I persisted.

  ‘What’s this? Pride of prospective possession?’ Ash said in a flat voice.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You and our host seem to be on such good terms, I thought—’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ He sounded piqued. I should have been relieved, but whatever relief I felt was swallowed up in sudden anger. Not blazing anger but the sort of dagger-edged irritation which can be far more dangerous: it doesn’t explode, it just saws away at you until you’re in shreds. ‘Yes, we’re on good terms. I like him; he likes me. He kissed me. Once. That hardly constitutes a serious relationship. But, just for the record, I enjoyed it. Nobody’s kissed me in ages.’ (Dorian’s face-eating attempt didn’t count.) You didn’t kiss me, I thought. I didn’t say it, but I thought it so loudly he could probably hear.

  ‘And now his wife wants a divorce,’ Ash said. His tone was as bland as mine was edged. ‘That was some kiss.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Their divorce has been on the cards for ages. He’s had private detectives watching her for evidence. The kiss was nothing . . . but I’m not going to apologise for it. You’re acting like I owe you an apology. Well, I don’t.’ There was a silence – except for the beat of our footsteps, the birdsong spilling from the trees, Fenny scuffling excitedly in a clump of nettles.

  ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ Ash said.

  For the first time since we had started walking I turned to look at him. He seemed too pale for the summer noon, a night creature caught in the daylight – pale and somehow bruised, overstrained, underslept. His eyes were narrowed against the sun, but ice-green gleamed in the narrows, cool as a glacier. My dagger-mood softened briefly because he looked so deadly tired . . . so defenceless. But I flinched from that glimmer of utter coldness.

  ‘I liked you,’ he went on unexpectedly. Past tense. ‘Actually, I was getting to like you a lot. But that’s my problem.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said sharply. The dagger was back, twisting in my heart, sawing at my nervous system. It was unfair to imply I’d rejected Something Valuable when Something had never been offered. ‘While I was kissing – being kissed – by HG, you were dancing with Cedric. Who is nuts about you. Only he didn’t have a Basilisa to demand a divorce because of it.’

  ‘Cedric?’ Faint bewilderment furrowed Ash’s brow. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Cedric! You danced with him, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . you don’t think I’m gay?’ His coolth was punctured; he looked, not indignant, but astonished.

  ‘Why not? Everyone else does.’

  ‘Do they? Look, Cedric’s obviously gay, and Jules and Sandy, but—’

  ‘Jules and Sandy? Really?’ I was diverted for a moment.

  ‘Of course. They’ve been a couple for ages. But why me?’

  ‘Because you didn’t make a pass at Delphi or Brie, you never talk about a girlfriend, you’re always in the kitchen with Cedric.’

  ‘You’re always in the kitchen with Cedric,’ Ash said. ‘If I was given to thinking that way, I might assume you were in love with him. I don’t . . . but I might. As for Brie and Delphi – I’d as soon make a pass at a cobra.’

  ‘Delphi’s my friend. Brie’s shallow and two-faced; Delphi’s not. Don’t lump them together like that.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t seem to be able to say anything right.’ This time, he turned to gaze at me. ‘Look, I’m not gay. I danced with Cedric because he asked me, that’s all. Why not? I get gays coming on to me sometimes. It doesn’t bother me. And I didn’t want to hurt him by refusing. It never occurred to me you’d think . . . Is that why you kissed HG?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I told you, he kissed me. I was there. He finds me sympathetic, that’s all it was. No big deal.’ And then I said it. ‘You didn’t kiss me, after all.’

  The words hung in the air between us – a reproach, a challenge. We were standing face to face; Ash reached out, touched my cheek. But that was all.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ he said in a careful voice, the voice people use when they’re about to tiptoe over the eggshells of self-revelation.

  I waited. For a second, it was as if the sun halted on its arc across the sky, and the birds ceased to sing, and my whole universe held its breath.

  Then Fenny rushed over, and Ash took my arm, and we went on walking.

  ‘I’d been with someone since I was at college,’ he said. ‘Neve and I were like . . . twin souls, or so I thought. So everyone said. We even looked alike.’ My heart flinched at the vision of two elvish faces, side by side in unearthly harmony. Bound with a bond that was more than human. ‘We have a daughter, Caitlin. She’s five . . . next week. After she was born Neve didn’t want to go back to work, but I didn’t earn enough to support both of us. She said I should change my job, stop “messing about with the supernatural”. That’s how she put it. She wanted me to go and work in the City. I had a chance, an uncle of mine . . . Anyway, I wouldn’t. I said we could manage. I suppose I was selfish. I love what I do, whether it’s unravelling people’s own hidden phantoms or tangling with the genuinely paranormal. I’ve always wanted so desperately to find out the truth of it all – if there really is a world beyond this one. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. It was something we all wanted to know. And by the time we’re sure, we’ll have crossed the boundary beyond ever returning.

  But Ash came closer to that boundary on a regular basis.

  ‘Neve didn’t,’ he said. ‘We started to have rows. She got a job as a PA to this merchant banker: she was making good money but sometimes it was long hours. I and a friend looked after Caitlin between us. I got so close to my daughter . . . No use talking of it. I thought Neve and I were working things out. Then, nearly a year ago, I came home from an investigation I’d been doing abroad. Budapest. There was a letter. She’d gone – Neve – she’d gone and taken Caitlin. No warning – just gone.’

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘She was with her boss – her former boss. He’s much older, nea
rly fifty, very well off. She says he makes her feel secure. The thing is, he was offered a new position in the States, four months ago, heading up another company. They’ve gone to live in Boston. I hardly see Caitlin any more. I could have got an injunction, but Neve said if I tried to stop them it would be more selfish than ever, and I knew she was right. Neve doesn’t work now; she can be with her daughter all the time. Caitlin misses me, but she’s happy. She needs her mother most.’ He broke off, squeezing his eyes to slits against the sun. (He really should get dark glasses.) ‘Children forget so quickly. I keep thinking, soon she’ll barely remember what I look like.’

  I took his hand, holding it very tight. ‘She can come and stay, can’t she?’

  ‘Sometimes. In the school holidays. When they’re not off skiing in Vermont, or sunning themselves in Hawaii, or going to Disneyland in Florida. I can’t compete with all that.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I said. ‘You’re her dad. My father wasn’t around much when I was a child – he was an engineer and he was always working abroad – but it was so special when he came home. Like Christmas every time.’

  Ash smiled at me. Not really comforted, but trying to be. My heart turned over at the sadness in his face.

  ‘Do you see him much?’ he asked.

  ‘Not enough. He remarried about eight years ago and they live in the West Country. It’s a long way from London.’

  We walked on, but slowly. We were nearly at the gate, where we would have to put Fenny on a lead and run the gauntlet of the besiegers.

  ‘Do you and Neve get along okay now?’ I said. I really wanted to know if he was still in love with her, but I couldn’t ask that.

  ‘Actually, we probably get on better. She’s got what she wants, and I . . .’ He sighed. ‘She used to say I was like a knight on some impossible quest, looking for the Holy Grail or something else irrelevant to the modern world. She said people on quests hadn’t enough time for family.’

  ‘“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

  Alone and palely loitering?”’ I quoted.

  ‘That’s me. A pale loiterer.’ He picked up another line from the poem.

  ‘“I met a lady in the meads,

  Full beautiful – a faery’s child . . .”

  That was Neve. Only her heart was human. She opted for comfort and safety, not the uncertainties of the otherworld.’ He put his arm around my shoulders.

  ‘I’m no “Belle Dame Sans Merci” either,’ I said a little shakily. ‘I’m not pretty enough. And my heart is human too.’

  ‘Your heart is the truest, the most loving . . .’ He was looking at me again and his eyes were green but not cold, green as summer. ‘You’re like what’s-her-name in that ballad, Tam Lin’s girlfriend who saved him from the clutches of the fairy queen even though it put her in great danger. The fairies turned him into all kinds of creatures, from mouse to monster, but she held on to him, and she saved him. Would you save me?’

  ‘As long as you didn’t turn into a snake,’ I said. ‘I’m terrified of snakes.’

  We went on walking. I thought of Elizabeth Bennet near the end of Pride and Prejudice, when Darcy proposes for the second time. Austen says Elizabeth rather knew than felt she was happy. That’s how it was with me. Happiness like that is too big a thing to feel all at once. You have to absorb a little at a time, or it would blow your mind.

  Then we reached the gate and were back in reality – or the bizarre variant on reality that currently obtained at Dunblair. I called Fenny and hooked him on to his lead. The clutch of journalists encamped outside bombarded us with questions, but we said nothing and kept on going and eventually they abandoned us in the hope of more interesting prey. By the time we got to the pub the last of them was left far behind.

  Ash ordered beer for him and lager for me while I whispered to Dirk in a conspiratorial voice, ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Where are who?’

  ‘The strangers you talked about.’

  ‘Oh – ay. I think they popped oot. Ye mun stick around a wee while; they’ll be back. They dinna like tae be too lang awa’ from the bar.’

  So Ash and I sat down in the corner with our drinks and a bowl of water for Fenny and went back to talking about ourselves. He showed me a picture of Caitlin, who looked like a pixie, with a tiny pointy face and huge eyes. Neve, in the background, was almost as beautiful as Ash himself and didn’t seem at all the type to run off with a middle-aged merchant banker. He couldn’t really love me, I thought, not after her – but it was too soon to talk of love. We’d made a start.

  People drifted in and out, but we paid them no attention. Then Dirk was beside me, collecting empties. ‘Theer they are,’ he murmured.

  It was only a small bar, and the three men were leaning on most of it. One was thin and greasy-looking – you itched to drop him in the bath but suspected he would emerge looking just as greasy afterwards and leave the bathtub coated in scum. He had the sort of face that seemed to curve in upon itself as if drawn on the inside of a spoon, and spots that had never known tea tree oil. The second was heavily built with a skinhead haircut that emphasised the smallness of his cranium compared with his largeness everywhere else. But it was the third who bothered me, the moment I set eyes on him. He wore a suit, but he wore it the way a wolf might wear sheep’s clothing, knowing it was good camouflage which would help him to get close to his prey. His hair was carefully styled and gelled into the windswept look at the front. But his face was all wrong. It was the face of a thug who thinks, a yob from the gutter who can use big words and knows how to twist the law every which way. It wasn’t a face you wanted to get close to under any circumstances.

  ‘D’you know their names?’ I asked Dirk very quietly.

  ‘They’re staying along o’ Miss McGonnagal,’ he replied. ‘They told her Brown, Green and White.’

  ‘Calling themselves after colours,’ Ash said. ‘Reservoir Dogs.’

  ‘The one in the middle,’ Dirk went on, meaning the suit, ‘I hearrrd his mates calling him Attila.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ I said.

  When he returned to the bar, Ash followed him to get a couple more drinks. I expected the threesome to leer, jeer and snicker – Ash’s hair was too long and he was far too pretty to meet with their approval. The skinhead duly snickered, but Attila gave Ash a smile which was somehow worse, a civilised, faintly deprecating smile which sat on his face like compassion on the face of an alligator. Ash smiled back, coolly – he was good at that – and returned to our table with the drinks.

  ‘Definitely not journalists,’ I said. ‘We should try and listen to their conversation, but without looking as if we’re listening.’

  ‘Why?’ Ash said. ‘I doubt if it’ll be very interesting. I’d rather listen to you.’

  But in the event, their conversation came to us.

  After a brief word with Dirk, Attila approached our table, wearing an expression that was plainly meant for friendly. It made my skin crawl.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind my interrupting,’ he said, pulling up a stool. He’d left the back-up at the bar. ‘I hear you two are staying at the castle. Part of the visiting TV show.’

  Ash looked aloof. I said guardedly, ‘Yes.’

  Why was Attila the Suit curious about us – or Dunblair?

  ‘Been quite exciting over there, hasn’t it?’ he continued.

  ‘Has it?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m not from the papers. Don’t trust the media: they’ve got their own agenda. They blackout the truth, print whatever lies the government dictate – and the government’s rotten through and through. But I’m sure we all agree on that.’ I’m not a fan of the government, but my instinct was to disagree with Attila even if it meant supporting TB. ‘Still, there are some things the press don’t distort. I read about that rescue – saw you both in the photo. You found those two blokes who went missing on the mountain in the fog. Good work.’

  Good work? He was acting the senior officer
commending bright young recruits. It made the hackles rise on my back – and I don’t even have hackles.

  ‘The papers exaggerated,’ Ash said. ‘They always do. The guys weren’t in any real danger, just cold and cross.’ With deceptive nonchalance, he added: ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘We’re just tourists, passing through.’ He stretched his mouth into a smile again with the air of someone who has been practising. ‘Beautiful country, Scotland. Who needs to go abroad when we’ve got everything right here? Britain’s the best place in the world, if you ask me.’

  Oh, so he was one of those.

  ‘If you don’t go anywhere else,’ I said, ‘how would you know?’

  The smile stretched further, like overstrained elastic. ‘Clever girl, isn’t she?’ he said to Ash as if I was a performing dog. Ignoring the question, he continued: ‘No, I like it here. Actually, we saw a friend of ours in that photo. Working at the castle. Quite a coincidence, seeing as we were visiting these parts already. Thought we’d drop by and see him.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Ash asked. I could sense his wariness under the aloof demeanor. Or maybe it was my own I sensed.

  ‘Harry. Harry . . . Winkworth.’ Was it my imagination that he hesitated for a fraction of a second over the surname? ‘The butler, the paper said. Or did they get that wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I said, doing my best to match Ash’s poker face. ‘He’s the butler.’

  Inwardly, I seethed with unanswered questions. How come someone like Attila the Suit knew Harry? Had Delphi been right when she claimed he was a fraud? Had—

  ‘I see. He wasn’t a butler when we knew him, but that was a while ago. He’s an old friend, Harry. D’you know if he’s likely to pop in here for a jar sometime soon? But of course you don’t. People like you wouldn’t get chummy with the servants.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said, imitating Delphi at her haughtiest. ‘He’s always been very helpful, but naturally I know nothing about his personal life.’

  Apart from the fact that he spent last night shagging Delphinium Dacres . . .

  ‘Of course not,’ Attila repeated, smiling wider and wider, like Lewis Carroll’s crocodile, only with slightly better teeth. ‘But he’s a good bloke. An old friend. We’d like to look him up.’ He pushed back the stool, got to his feet.