Chloe

by Freya North

  ‘Carl,’ rolls Fraser approvingly.

  ‘Mm,’ confirms Chloë, ‘he was lovely – a Kiwi, you know, from New Zealand?’

  ‘Aye! Down there! Fruity!’

  ‘We had a lot of fun!’

  ‘Down there!’ suggests Fraser with a lascivious wink. Chloë can’t help but blush.

  ‘Details?’ Fraser says slyly. ‘Please?’

  ‘He was a “rum ‘un”, as you’d say!’ chuckles Chloë. ‘He provided all the fun that Brett had deemed unnecessary. A healthy mixture of kindness, honesty and lots of sweaty fumblings too!’

  ‘Ooh!’ Fraser writhes.

  ‘Ultimately,’ proclaims Chloë, laying her arm over Fraser’s and giving it a squeeze, ‘a terrific bonk in the back of an orange van!’

  ‘An orange van!’ cries Fraser with awe and respect.

  ‘Very orange!’ confirms Chloë. ‘It was fun – happy sex. I didn’t know you could have such a thing. Brett was silent but for unpleasant grunts and a horrendous phoney American accent which was not funny at all.’

  ‘I’ll bet!’ sympathizes Fraser. ‘So where is he now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, I’ll not give a toss for Brett’s whereabouts,’ Fraser spits before purring, ‘Carl – where’s he?’

  Chloë falls silent and wonders suddenly why she has no idea where he is. How stupid of her. Of them.

  No, not really.

  ‘Somewhere in Europe,’ she says warmly, ‘I don’t know where. I’ll never see him again, you see. We came – and we went.’

  Fraser looks puzzled.

  ‘It was like lining each other’s pockets with gold,’ Chloë says wistfully, ‘giving each other the wherewithal to go forward. To go on.’

  ‘Leaving a lovely taste?’ suggests Fraser.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Suddenly Fraser leaps up and the chair clatters to the floor.

  ‘Oh no!’ he weeps, staggering across the room to the stove. ‘Damnation and buggery!’ he wails, holding aloft the ice-cream tub. Excalibur has disappeared from view. Fraser makes a most funereal procession back to the table, holding out the tub in front of him forlornly, pain etched across his face. Chloë stifles the giggles and pulls a very serious face of condolence. He places the tub on the table and they peer in. Pale buttercup soup slops back at them. Slowly, Chloë dips in a finger and takes it to her mouth. Fraser scans her face, his own as downtrodden as a bloodhound’s. Her eyes light up and she coos while she sucks her finger.

  ‘Gorgeous,’ she whispers, ‘abso-bloody-lutely gor-jesus!’ she says, smacking her lips and dipping the same finger back in.

  Fraser fetches two spoons.

  ‘Och,’ he moans in ecstasy, slurping spoonfuls in quick succession, ‘vanilla velvet mousse!’

  ‘Clouds de Crème Anglaise!’ Chloë elaborates with closed eyes, her spoon clinking on the drowned Excalibur. Eventually it surfaces, as Fraser and Chloë do away with the goop surrounding it. They fight over who shall lick it clean. Chloë pats her thighs and her stomach sensibly and says Fraser must have it.

  ‘These thighs, this stomach,’ Chloë proclaims when he has quite finished, patting them again, ‘have been immortalized!’

  ‘Oh aye?’ says Fraser, licking up a trickle of canary yellow that has coursed its way down the side of his hand to his wrist.

  ‘Ronan!’ whispers Chloë.

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘He be Oy-rush!’

  ‘Begorra be-jayz!’ laughs Fraser. ‘A leprechaun?’

  ‘Pah!’ Chloë exclaims. ‘A strapping lad of statuesque physique!’ Fraser wriggles. ‘Broad shoulders, chiselled jaw,’ she continues while his eyes dance, ‘jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes and,’ she says with a wink, ‘a tight peach of a bum!’

  Fraser slithers down his chair with his tongue lolling and begs her to stop.

  ‘And a dick to die for?’ he conjectures in a hoarse whisper.

  Chloë pauses for dramatic impact before twisting her face and shaking her head quickly, wrinkling her nose. ‘Actually,’ she concedes, ‘not really!’

  ‘Not in Carl’s league?’ asks Fraser, looking sorely disappointed. Chloë shakes her head sadly.

  ‘But way out of Brett’s,’ nods Fraser. Chloë pulls a grimace in reply. She tells him about the ensuing sculpture and he asks her to describe it, to draw it. She tells him to use his imagination. He says he can’t. She says that’s his bad luck. He asks Chloë if she thinks there’s any chance he’d be able to entice Ronan to do a piece called Him. Chloë’s reply sorely disappoints him. They sit awhile, quiet, quite still, lest the melted ice-cream should curdle within. Fraser is tinged green. The cuckoo chirps out that it is eleven o’clock and Chloë yawns spontaneously. Fraser sighs, cups his head in his hands and then throws Chloë an exasperated expression.

  ‘We have to find you a man!’ he declares, grabbing her hand and squeezing it.

  ‘Pardon?’ Chloë replies, fighting to have her hand back.

  ‘I can’t be outdone by Wales, by the Oy-rush!’ Fraser explains, gripping her wrist. ‘And as I am unable to assist personally in such matters, God only knows what might befall you in England!’

  Chloë laughs and says that he’s daft. He hisses ‘Sassenachs’ very seriously.

  ‘The interludes in the other two countries were merely by the by,’ she says lightly, ‘anyway, I’m in love with Scotland utterly and no earth-moving, multiple orgasm can possibly improve on that!’

  Fraser regards her suspiciously and pokes her in the ribs.

  ‘I’m not looking!’ she laughs. ‘Nothing is lacking!’ she assures. ‘I’m happy enough as I am,’ she concludes confidently and very loudly, suddenly wondering very quietly to herself if she’ll ever have sex again.

  And if so, when. And with whom, for heaven’s sake!

  Fraser puts his head back into his hands and sighs even more sonorously. The face he then turns to Chloë is criss-crossed with theatrical angst and his eyes flicker with carefully contrived despair. He swipes his brow in an enormous gesture.

  ‘Well then,’ he wails, ‘I have to find me a man!’

  THIRTY-THREE

  August was drawing to a close and Chloë was delighted when Fraser suggested a few days in Edinburgh to catch the last of the city’s famous Festival. Only he went manhunting with a verve and vigour that quite threatened to come between him and Chloë. When his ulterior motives surfaced, she was both irritated and hurt, and a little lonely too. Mr and Mrs Andrews were guarding Braer and Chloë missed them supremely.

  The search for a bed-and-breakfast was hampered by Fraser’s new-found ability to pivot his head through three hundred and sixty degrees. No reasonably good-looking man escaped his attention, even if he had his arms about a woman or was dressed in a traffic warden’s uniform. Fraser sought Chloë’s response and approval constantly.

  ‘Him! Did you see? Chlo?’

  ‘Yes, dear, very nice – but he was with his wife and two children!’

  ‘Aye, but he may be latent – he may not know what he’s missing! Och, but would you look at the arse on that now!’

  ‘Fray-zer!’

  ‘What I’d give for a man in uniform! What I’d pay!’

  ‘Fray!’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry – but it’s like being let loose in a sweetie shop. So much to lick and gobble!’

  ‘Zer! You’ll get ill.’

  ‘I’d die happy!’

  Eventually, once Fraser had had mental sex with at least thirty passers-by (most of them unwitting, all of them unsuitable) they found themselves strolling past Murrayfield stadium. Fraser was fantasizing out loud about being reincarnated as the soap in the communal bath for the First Fifteen when Chloë saw a street to the right with bed-and-breakfast signs strung along its length like bunting. She grabbed his hand and held on tight with both of hers, dragging him down the street while he cooed about lather and cauliflower ears.

  ‘I could be the scrum’s hooker!’

  ‘Frr!�
��

  ‘OK, OK. Spoilsport!’

  She was still holding on tight when, four houses later, they came across the first ‘vacancies’ sign.

  ‘Knock!’ she hissed, not daring to let go. ‘Ring!’ With his free hand, Fraser did both, pouting all the while.

  Mrs MacAdam saw a very nice young couple standing, hand in hand, on her doorstep and welcomed them in. They saw a lounge bedecked in every conceivable shade of pink in fabrics of every possible synthetic persuasion. She had only the one vacancy, she explained, a last-minute cancellation for which she had kept the deposit.

  ‘Do you think that unreasonable?’ she asked, twitching fussy net curtains to check on goings-on outside.

  ‘Och no,’ said Chloë in a very passable Scots accent that made Fraser raise his eyebrows, ‘you can’t be having that. Well within your rights, I’d say!’

  Mrs MacAdam offered them humbugs from a dish that formed the skirts (pink) of a china figurine of Cinderella. Fraser and Chloë tried not to notice the dust caught stickily in the creases of cellophane, nor that the sweets had a certain mustiness that overpowered any vestige of mintiness. After lengthy calculations which involved much muttering, eyes scrunched shut and the pummelling of her pudgy fingers into her pink tracksuit-clad thighs, Mrs MacAdam arrived at a four-night rate for them. This they accepted and were offered another humbug to seal the deal. The three of them sat and sucked in silence for a while, smiling awkwardly every now and then.

  ‘Deary deary dear!’ Mrs MacAdam exclaimed once she’d crunched the last of her sweet, her cheeks flushing the same shade as her tracksuit. She shook her head and slapped each of her own wrists in turn. ‘You’ll want to be seeing your room, silly me. Come!’

  Fraser and Chloë exchanged raised eyebrows as the landlady bustled them out. Their room. Singular. Or, rather, double. They hadn’t thought of that.

  Decorated in every possible hue of gold and yellow, the room would have been huge had not the most enormous bed taken up most of it. It was swamped by a very shiny satin-look eiderdown and a mound of frilled cushions in various tones of poor gold.

  ‘This is your side,’ dictated Mrs MacAdam to Chloë, patting the left side of the bed, above which a painting of a gypsy girl with disproportionately large eyes and a sorrowful kitten hung. ‘And this side is for you!’ she proclaimed to Fraser, circumnavigating the bed and plumping the cushions on the right side of the bed which lay under the gaze of a bug-eyed gypsy boy with a forlorn puppy at his heels.

  ‘Suits me down to the ground!’ announced Fraser, winking at Chloë who stifled giggles by sucking in her cheeks and biting on them.

  ‘Right!’ Mrs MacAdam said with no intention of leaving. It was only after Chloë and Fraser professed ample appreciation and heaped praise that she left, telling them that breakfast was served between seven and nine.

  In the Green Room.

  Chloë and Fraser could hardly wait to launch themselves on to the bed and thrust their faces deep into the cushions so they could release the laughter that had been so hard to keep at bay. Had Mrs MacAdam heard their muffled shrieks and snorts, she would have interpreted them as the effect the Gold Room had on young lovers. The effect on Chloë was a sneezing fit of staggering length which she attributed to the synthetic lavender room spray that had obviously doused all the furnishings. When she had ceased her sneezing and Fraser his sniggers, they lay side by side on the bed, out of breath, enjoying an intermittent titter.

  ‘Bathroom!’ whispered Chloë and they scrambled off the bed to search for it. They found it behind a clapboard partition they had previously presumed to be the end of the room. The suite was yellow plastic and rather stained, the surrounding tiles a mustard colour bedecked every now and then with a marigold motif that proved to be stick-on; most were furling at the edges and Fraser could not resist peeling one off completely. He presented it to Chloë most solemnly and she accepted it graciously, taking it to her nose and finding that even the sticker smelt of lavender. She sneezed accordingly.

  On their way out, they came across Mrs MacAdam twitching her curtains. She had changed into another tracksuit, this time violet and a little too small for her. Just as they were about to leave she called after them.

  ‘Mr and Mrs, er?’ she began with raised eyebrows.

  ‘Buchanan?’ Chloë suggested, not daring to catch Fraser’s eye.

  ‘Aye,’ Mrs MacAdam said with detectable relief, ‘Buchanan! You won’t mind taking your shoes off and leaving them on the mat when you return?’ Chloë and Fraser regarded their shoes automatically. ‘The carpets!’ Mrs MacAdam explained in an unnecessary whisper. ‘I have slippers I can lend you,’ she furthered.

  ‘Slippers won’t be necessary,’ Fraser assured her, imagining something pink and feathery, ‘and it will be no problem to take our shoes off.’

  As Fraser and Chloë walked away, they heard tapping. They turned back and saw the net curtains twitching. More tapping. And then the net curtains were thrown over her head like a bride casting off her veil and Mrs MacAdam stood at the window waving expansively. Chloë and Fraser waved back while Fraser said ‘Mrs MacMad-am!’ between his teeth. They continued. And so did the tapping. If they did not stop, turn and wave every four strides or so, they were challenged by indignant rapping.

  ‘You forgot your Scots!’ reprimanded Fraser when they had turned the corner and he could feast his eyes on Murrayfield stadium and the hidden fantasies it promised him. ‘You said “Buchanan” in English. That’ll not do, girl! If you’re to be my Mrs, you must talk like a Buchanan at all times!’

  ‘Righty ho!’ trilled Chloë, rolling her ‘r’ and sounding not unlike Mrs MacAdam.

  Chloë adored Edinburgh and thanked Jocelyn often, out loud and to herself.

  ‘If it wasn’t for Jocelyn, I’d not be here,’ she said to Fraser, both of them wearing moustaches from their cappuccinos. They raised their cups to her. ‘I’d probably never have seen Edinburgh at Festival time.’

  ‘And you’d have never set up with me,’ Fraser said. Chloë marvelled at her good fortune.

  A whole year. All for me. Treats and surprises. So much to discover, to search for, to find.

  Fleetingly, Chloë even thought that if she had to live in a city, this was one she could tolerate quite happily.

  But do you really want to live in a city?

  Actually, no.

  And what could you do here?

  A job in student welfare at the University?

  I hardly think so.

  Perhaps just a simple waitressing job in New Town?

  You were tired enough at the wedding at Braer. And spilled enough, too. And mightn’t the granite depress you after a while?

  Might it?

  The long, cold and wet winters?

  Spoilsport!

  Just now, though, the city in the summer is treating Chloë very well. And so, at the moment, is Fraser.

  Their first two days have been spent with every possible moment filled and sleep a low priority. They’ve chased the events of the Festival all over the city to watch, listen and be thoroughly entertained. From increasingly inventive mime artists, to acrobats from the Ukraine (Fraser gawped throughout and was speechless for a good hour afterwards); from children’s orchestras to octogenarian one-man-bands; from the obligatory Peruvian pan-pipe ensembles, to tap-dancing Australian scaffolders (Fraser needed to go out for fresh air); from a girl called Kate with a cello that seemed human, to a man called Louis who performed madrigals on a toilet. Some acts made them laugh until it hurt, others were so painful that their toes curled involuntarily. An opera in Russian made them weep but so too did the lamentable efforts of a small Belgian with a flute.

  Their mouths watered as they swooned their way around a sculpture exhibition constructed entirely from chocolate, and their mouths dried at the gut-wrenching but mind-blowing readings by a Bosnian poet. Every street corner, every café, every little passageway leading to the Royal Mile, to Grassmarket, Lawnmarket, Fruitmarket, to
the Gardens – every square inch of Edinburgh – had been appropriated as a stage, and the whole world, it seemed, was represented. Though the Mexican cabaret singer was consistently half a tone out, she sang with such aplomb and with such determination that Fraser and Chloë leapt to their feet in standing ovation with the entire audience. Her passion for her craft, and her pluck, epitomized the spirit of the Festival.

  Best of all were the acts that came out after dark, after midnight. Comedy that scraped the edge of bad taste, satire that made one wince, drag acts that made one blush. It was at Sharon Gri-la’s show (a transvestite whose legs Chloë would quite happily have killed for) that Fraser fell hopelessly, utterly and selfishly in love. Or, rather, his version of it.

  At first, Chloë thought someone was eyeing her up. Absorbed as she was in Sharon’s rendition of ‘How Much is that Doggy in the Window’, she could detect, too, the heat of another’s gaze. She located the eyes but saw that they burned past her and straight at Fraser, just catching her cheek on their way. She nudged Fraser.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he hissed, agitated, ‘don’t go on! Don’t make a scene! Can’t have him getting the wrong idea about me, about us!’

  In the interval, Fraser asked Chloë to excuse him. Chloë sent him on his way with a wink and a grin. He was obviously anxious and excited.

  He never returned.

  Chloë’s cheek remained cold throughout the second half, for there was nobody’s gaze grazing the side of it. The seat next to her was empty and, she believed, conspicuously so. She felt slightly uncomfortable but persuaded herself that it was not because she was prudish, but because she felt a little left out. When the show had finished she made her way, as casually as possible, to the foyer. Neither Fraser nor his mustachioed suitor were to be seen. As the audience dispersed, Chloë hung around wearing a deceptively nonchalant half-smile until only she remained and her facial contortion was unnecessary. She felt uneasy. What was she to do? Wait? Search? She decided to wait on the steps until two-thirty but only a Burns-reciting drunk passed by before passing out on the corner. Chloë’s stomach turned, her spirit was low.