The Cocktail Bar

by Isabella May

  ***

  At two pm Alice returned from Fishers Hill park, where she had whiled away an hour, a small box of sushi on the swings, contained in her own frazzled mind behind navy blue Prada sunnies.

  There was much to ponder, her possible new lives all branching out before her like the giant oak whose breadth and beauty she drank in with every soar in the air on the red plastic seat. She counted herself lucky not to have developed those child-rearing hips that most women of her age were now sporting like it was the fashion. How they missed out on great moments like this, only re-enacting them through their offspring, never truly feeling the exhilaration that came from being a five year old girl in a polka dot dress at a birthday party, without a care, agenda, or responsibility in the world.

  Now back in her room that feeling had faded fast. She needed to talk, craved some company. But was she brave enough to get chatting with the woman on reception? Was it even a wise move given that anybody could be loitering about downstairs, waiting for that perfect snap, not to mention the possibility that she might be as broke as Alice, with little choice but to cash in her chips, calling the paps for a game of cat and mouse in return for a few thousand to pay off her overdraft? She threw her expensive Loewe pashmina around her shoulders anyway; the last gift Glenn had bestowed upon her, the lightest memento of their relationship, symbolic in every sense of the word, and crept down the stairs like a child checking whether Santa was in residence. But from the upper steps, instinct told her to peer down on the ever-descending spiral before her, where she caught a glimpse of a brunette, so cocksure of herself that the sentiment reverberated through the building and into the stratosphere. This was no regular guest. In fact, she had Georgina written all over her. Alice tiptoed quickly back to her room, pulled the door to, leaving but a hairline crack through which she could assess her rival.

  Not that she was back to play tug of war over a heart, she reminded herself. It was just sensible, prudent, and wise to know what one was dealing with when it came to the unpredictable affection of the male of the species.

  The flash of confidence strode past her door. It flicked its hair, it stopped for a moment outside the main penthouse door to re-apply its cheap High Street lippy (Alice couldn’t help but notice this girl was no Chanel Mademoiselle), it even caught its breath in its cupped hand, sniffed at it, rifled through its bag for freshener, sprayed minty vapour into its mouth, and then proceeded to douse itself in equally cheap eau de toilette (again, Alice knew this wasn’t sandalwood or Sicilian lemon, for its paint stripping smell had assaulted her nasal passage within seconds), before putting its very own key in the door.

  Just how vulgar could a woman get?

  “Hey babe,” she could hear River greet his ‘friend’, “I’ve missed you.”

  Clunk.

  The door shut and for a moment Alice wondered what had happened to her rank and profile in this world, how had it come to this, that she’d been reduced to rubble, gawping desperately like some pervert of a Peeping Tom?

  But then she assessed not just her outer, but her inner beauty in the bathroom mirror. The real Alice was in there somewhere, she was starting to shine back at her, a glint here and a twinkle there. She just needed time, patience, and understanding, as well as a healthy dose of forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness; for beating up on herself, for disappointing her family. Because if this wasn’t her own life to live, then what the flaming hell was anybody’s birth onto this crazy planet all about?

  Her recent visit to her parents, just a couple of days ago, had backfired badly. Mummy had evidently hidden Daddy away in the study, the muffling of voices and slamming of doors completely dismissed as she air kissed Alice on the front porch.

  “Alice, darling, how simply lovely to see you, yes I did receive your voicemail, Mummy regrets she didn’t have time to return your call.” Alice’s mother had unfathomably never stopped addressing herself in third person. “However, now really isn’t an appropriate time, darling, why I’m about to host a very important Somerset Ladies’ Luncheon in just half an hour… and I’ve yet to even add strawberries to my Pimm’s… or de-crust the cucumber sandwiches. Please excuse me.”

  Clunk.

  Another door shut in her face.

  River had gone out of his way to drive her there before the bar had opened that day, sacrificing pre-slicing of his citrus fruit for what? So she’d get her own heart sliced in two.

  Next she’d called Tamara, pointless really, given her parents and sister had always sided with one another, no matter how trivial and banal the issue – from the CDs Tamara ‘hadn’t stolen’ from Alice’s music collection to the hot pants Tamara ‘hadn’t pilfered and dyed British racing green’. This, it seemed, was the moment in life Tamara had always been waiting for. Revenge is, as they quite rightly say, a dish best served cold, and from her sister, it couldn’t have come any icier.

  “Al, sweetheart, I’ve told you, I’m not your bank. Now you made your choice. Daddy gave you the world, the Milky Way and the universe besides on a silver platter but you rejected him – you’ve no idea how deep that cut, his youngest angel shunning his love. Yes, you were twenty-two and naïve, god knows we’ve all been there, but it’s no use running to me now your life’s gone down shit creek without a paddle. I’ve acted as Chief Advisor to you for long enough. I’ve my own family to think about now: Harry and I must put our own children first. If I’m handing out charity to you, why that’s thousands taken from Sienna, Allegra, Margot and Humphrey’s trust funds, something we simply cannot do. If you ever make it to motherhood, something one seriously doubts given the way you’ve wasted your life thus far, you’ll understand that one day.”

  And with that Tamara had put down the phone, an act which had dissolved their bond for eternity. Alice would never make the mistake of calling her a sister again. She’d imagined Tamara happy dancing her squeaky clean chequered hallway in sweet victory, telephone script tossed over her shoulder as Harry and the nannies uncorked the Moët.

  Vain Alice may not have been, but the gift of her physical appearance in contrast with that of her older sister’s, as well as her mother’s fading looks, was definitely not lost on her. Tamara had clearly waited all those long and bitter years to stick the knife in where it would hurt, and generally, in Alice’s family’s posh circles, if you didn’t have a face to grace Vogue, never you mind, sweetie, you had money, nerve, self-importance, and an upturned nose with high cheekbones that gave the world the impression you were the human equivalent of a Faberge egg anyway. Stick a Cartier pendant around your neck and who’d be any the wiser?

  Somebody knocked on her hotel door at six pm Sunday night. She put down her novel, double checked she no longer resembled a panda, cleared the streaky black crumpled tissues from her bed, and hoped that if it was River, it was River on his own. She was not in the mood for making new friends tonight.

  “Have you made any plans for uh… dinner?” he said, all too obviously trying not to get flustered at the sight of her in ivory silk spaghetti strap pyjamas. Once she’d returned from the swings and unpacked her few belongings, all she’d wanted to do was laze on the bed, cry and catch up with the queue of novels on her Kindle. Plus it was hot; heat really did rise in a boutique hotel with non-existent air conditioning, it turned out – as opposed to the instant gratification style suites with remote controls coming out of every orifice that she was more accustomed to.

  “We’re usually closed then, at the uh,” his eyes flitted moth-like, “at the erm… bar, but I want to make sure you’re eating properly. It’s all too easy to turn into a waif.”

  Evidently Georgina had left the building then.

  “I can’t say food is the first thing on my mind at the moment,” her short term memory flashed back to the half-eaten sushi she’d binned at the park’s gates, “but yes please, that would be lovely. I still haven’t seen the inside of this famous bar after all.”

  “It’s hardly that… although yeah, it’s certainly gotten itself int
o the papers a few too many times already. Why don’t I call for you in a couple of hours?”

  “It’s a date.” Oops, she hadn’t meant to say that.

  “It is a date,” he replied.

  “Well, not a date-date… I um, I totally didn’t mean that kind of a rendezvous,” she tried in vain to shake the image of The Vulture in the corridor from earlier out of her head, “you’re a taken man—”

  “No, course not that kind of a date, just friends, good friends and food and equally good cocktails… but I told you before, Georgina isn’t my girlfriend. We’re just, you know, having fun. That’s it. She knows the score too, she wouldn’t tell you any different, but anyway, enough about her. Tonight’s about us, and well, making plans for your future.”

  “That sounds a bit hard core.”

  “I mean getting you out of here at some point soon, as glam for Glastonbury as it is, The Guinevere is hardly anyone’s definition of a long-term home, mine included.”

  His words circled her head as she showered, spritzed herself – sparingly - in the slightly more upmarket Guerlain, ever mindful of the fact that less was more, mystique everything when it came to captivating a man. Not that she was attempting to do that this evening, of course. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how the conversation would flow, especially after a couple of drinks. They’d never spent much time alone since the mayhem of the music world. They were about to enter brand new territory.

  ***

  Precisely two hours after his earlier rap at her door, he chaperoned her down the High Street to his bar, unlocked the door, pulled down the blinds, and dimmed the lights to reveal a table sparkling with candles, fairy lights, and just about everything that stereotypically encapsulated the Danish – and now British borrowed – word hygge, plus a couple of takeaway pizza boxes.

  “Wow, is all this for me?”

  “Yes for you, you deserve it. Take a seat.” He patted down the fluffy cushions on the pew Alice had slithered herself onto. “Look, I know that it’s pizza again, but it’s Cagnola’s Special Margarita… not a carnivorous morsel in sight… plus I don’t have an oven here… but I do have one of these,” he said excitedly, passing her the cocktail menu.

  “Oh my god, where to start?” she said, turning the pages as if she were regarding a treasure in a museum wearing her finest kid gloves. “This is mind blowing, and you’ve put it together so beautifully… I’m no cocktail connoisseur but in all my travels, even in the likes of Hollywood, I’ve never seen a menu quite as fancy as this.”

  “I like to think I’ve given things a twist.”

  “That you have,” she said. “It really is up there with the masters.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say that. I mean I’m self-taught after all, no formal credentials other than absorbing the methods of many a bartender, but hopefully it’s not your bog standard excuse for a cocktail bar either, if I’ve pulled that much off I’ll be happy.”

  “Why all these blank pages at the end though?” Alice threw him an equally blank expression.

  He raised his head behind the bar, looking more than a little unsure of himself.

  “Oh, you know, it’s kind of a trend nowadays.” The bottles he was moving from station to station clinked like church bells interrupting his flow. “Especially in the London bars… I guess… I guess it’s my attempt at re-creating the mystery, the evocative nature of the speakeasy… people used to pen one another messages over a cocktail, did you know that?”

  “No, I can’t say I—”

  “Either at the same table,” he cut her off, “or to a stranger who had caught their eye across the hazy bar. Maybe they’ll use my blank pages in a similar way.” Her stomach flipped then, was it just her or did it feel like his eyes had an agenda of their very own as he muttered those words? “I did think of laying out Post-It notes as coasters,” he continued, unaware that Alice had floated off with her imagination, “but sometimes you can take the whole concept of minimalist a little too far, don’t you think?”

  She said nothing, he’d rendered her spellbound, and she didn’t even know it.

  “Alice?”

  “Oh yes, it’s a cute idea, a bit like those cafés with blackboards in London… in everywhere… where small children can entertain themselves with chalks and pastels.” Alice thumbed through the empty pages again in a bid to come back down to Earth and stay there, wondering who would end up getting together in this place.

  River seemed inexplicably nervous again, keen to take her order.

  “It’s going to have to be a White Russian,” she said, second-guessing his eagerness to change the subject, “a little heavy with a pizza maybe, and totally un-Italian, but I’m curious as to whether you’ll make it like the guy in that bar in—”

  “Sammy’s in New Orleans,” he finished her sentence and slapped at the counter in recognition of the blast from the past. “Ah, we did have some awesome times on tour, didn’t we? Saw some right eye-opening sights.”

  “Yeah, not all of them of the good eye-opening variety either.”

  They both laughed, the movie reel of yesteryear felt so tangible amidst this atmosphere, she just wanted to stay here forever, soaking up the best bits, like a competitor in The Great British Bake Off before their eviction from the tent, conveniently skipping over the near-misses, collapses, downright disasters, and Paul Hollywood’s condescending turquoise-eyed glares.

  “That’s what I want now, to hold on to the good stuff,” she swore he could read her mind, “the parts that have enriched my life,” said River, jug of ice cold milk in hand.

  “You’re doing a great job of that so far.” Alice smiled.

  Tonight was definitely not an opportune moment to break the bad news she was bearer of, well, as far as news went, she was pretty damn sure River wouldn’t take it too well anyway.

  “I’ve got something to show you while you’re waiting… look beneath the cushions to your right.”

  She didn’t look there straightaway but at him, quizzically instead.

  “Go on. Haven’t you ever wondered where and how I got the inspiration for this place?”

  “What is this? It’s exquisite.” She lifted a heavy book onto her lap and felt the smooth cover, embellished in parts with a mishmash of materials and textures from who knew where, but evidently from River’s travels.

  “Look inside, it gets better,” he shouted over his receptacle shaking.

  “This is magic. Just magic,” she said. “So everywhere you went, you either nabbed a recipe, or drank something and memorised the taste so you could recreate it? And these sketches… I always knew you were a bit arty-farty at school, but these are like illustrations in a proper book. I’m so impressed. It was a no-brainer for you to turn your back on Avalonia when this has been for ever stirring in your soul. You were born to do this, it’s your calling.”

  “Just go careful when you get to the back, there’s a pocket with an envelope in it.”

  “Oh, okay, no worries,” she said continuing to soak up every detail as if she was reading the plaques in a museum, something that used to infuriate Tamara on their annual trip to London when they’d be hauled around the Tate or The V and A, but never Alice who’d always revelled in the finer detail.

  “Here you go.” He placed her drink in front of her. “And don’t let the pizza get too cold either, these were delivered about half an hour ago… in which case they probably are stone cold already.”

  Alice laughed. “Luckily I adore cold pizza.”

  River held her there then, the undoubted object of his attention. It was a moment she wanted to frame, to sneak into his penthouse suite and hang it at the foot of his bed so he couldn’t, wouldn’t waste any more time with that despicable Money Grabber of a Gold Digger. Yes, that’s what she was. It was totally unfair to be so judgmental, perhaps, but Alice had sussed Georgina out already. And she was more than prepared to harbour her River with the same fierceness with which he was protecting her.

/>   “So I’ve been thinking… and you don’t have to give me your answer right away, just hear me out, sleep on it, perhaps.”

  Please ask me to move into a house share with you; please ask me to, please…

  “How about working with me?”

  Oh.

  “Not for me… that’s what Georgina does, with me. It would be a great way to get you back on your feet again, out of the hotel, mingling with people, taking your mind off the band and your parents… and that sister of yours.”

  “No offence, River.”

  “Oh okay then, I see, none taken.” His face fell, expressing itself in a way she couldn’t recall that it ever had.

  “It’s just not really what I had in mind,” she said, swallowing hard on the urge to take him in her arms and kiss him passionately to make up for upsetting him. “Waitressing, playing barmaid, it would feel ever so slightly like I’d taken several hundred steps backwards. I mean yes, I’m back, and I don’t want the celebrity lifestyle any more than you do, but if life takes on any proper meaning now, then that meaning has to be following my passion too. And that’s horses. I know my parents sold mine, but there are so many villages and riding centres surrounding us here that for sure I have to be able to find something, even if that’s a stable hand, or a live-in position on a farm. I’m not fussy. All I want is not so much a foot up the ladder as a foot in the saddle. I’m young, I’m fit and active, and the time is now. If not now, when?” She raised the cold glass to her lips and took her first sip of creamy vodka coffee goodness. “Oh god this is incredible. Way better than New Orleans, way better… How do you do it, River?”

  “I see, and I totally support you,” he ignored her praise, evidently still more than a little disappointed that she hadn’t snapped his arm off for the opportunity. “That’s the way I felt about the bar, it’s a good sign when it sets you on fire like that. Well, you know I’m here to help you in any way I can, even if it’s just driving you to an interview. We’ll get you riding again. Before you know it, you’ll be competing again too, just like you used to.”