I have to laugh, albeit hollowly. ‘No. He’s an actor. Just a very drunk one, right now.’
‘A drunk actor?’ Grace gasps. ‘Oh, my goodness! Then he must represent Clark in some way … do you think this is my subconscious hoping that Clark was totally broken by ending his affair with me? That he ended up sprawled on some sordid old couch, night after night, drinking to forget the woman he’d allowed to slip through his fingers?’
‘Well,’ I say, because I’m too tired to argue with any of this now, ‘I don’t know about that. But look, Grace, if you’re still this hung up on a man you used to be in love with, are you sure you’re doing the right thing marrying the prince? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the idea of trying to move on, but to actually go as far as marriage … and, let’s face it, you’re not even just marrying a man, you’re inheriting an entire kingdom to go along with him …’
‘But don’t you think that’s precisely what one ought to do? When one has been disappointed in love?’
‘Er – marry a monarch and become the head of state of a small Mediterranean principality? I don’t know that it’s necessary to go quite that far.’
‘That’s not at all what I mean!’ she snaps. ‘I mean that quite obviously it’s just plain good sense, when one has had one’s heart broken, to get right back on the horse. If that isn’t too much a mixing of metaphors …’ She passes a rather tired-looking hand over her face all of a sudden. ‘My parents,’ she goes on, ‘have always taught me that life is for Doers. Not for those who sit by on the sidelines, watching their lives pass by. I suppose what truly frightened me, after it all ended with Clark, was the possibility that I might never feel that way about someone again. Never have what I dreamed about having with him. A great marriage. A home. A family.’
‘So you decided to fall in love with the prince, just so you couldn’t be accused of sitting on the sidelines?’ I ask.
‘Oh, heavens, no, there have been dozens of men since Clark! Or rather, what I mean to say,’ she says, turning rather pink in the cheeks, ‘is that I didn’t decide to fall in love with the prince. I decided not to just meekly accept what I thought Fate had decided for me, and remain alone for ever. After all, isn’t life far too short to squander one’s best years bemoaning the loss of one’s soulmate? … Why are you looking at me like that?’
I realize that I probably am staring at her in a slightly too intense fashion. ‘Sorry … it’s just, what you said about Fate. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Fate myself, lately, and how it’s screwed up everything I’ve ever wanted. And I don’t seem to be doing quite as good a job as you on the whole meek acceptance front. Or rather, I’d like to be able to just forge on ahead, never casting a single glance backwards, I’m just finding it more difficult than that. I mean, I was out with Joel tonight, and I couldn’t stop Olly from popping into my—’
‘All right, all right, let’s just hold on a moment.’ Grace raises an impressively imperious hand. ‘This is all about me, let’s not forget. Before we go much further, I’d really like to try to be clear on who everybody represents. Now, this Joel fellow you say you were out with tonight – you’re really talking about Rainier, right? The man you’re forging ahead with? And then Olly, I suppose, is the representation of … Clark? Or is he just an amalgamation of all the men I’ve ever felt strongly about …?’
There’s a sudden knock on my front door that makes both of us jump.
‘That’ll be Bogdan,’ I say, because I called Bogdan right after Joel left and asked him to come round to help with Dillon. (After all, if I’m going to get the constant refrain from Bogdan that I ought to be sleeping with Dillon, he can bloody well come over and see first hand why that would be a disastrous idea.)
‘Bogdan?’ Grace’s left eyebrow lifts upwards. ‘Don’t tell me there’s another man lurking around the fringes of my subconscious? Golly, I’m glad my mother can’t see inside my head right now! Or Rainier, for that matter.’
‘Oh, I don’t think either your mother or Rainier need have any worries about Bogdan. Anyway, he’s just a friend. I’m sure he doesn’t … represent anything at all.’ I start to head for the stairs. ‘I’ll just nip down and let him in.’
Answering the door to Bogdan is a bit of a shock.
Somehow – since I last saw him almost ten hours ago – he’s managed to grow a moustache.
An entire moustache: not fulsome and luxuriant, perhaps, but far from sparse and rather beautifully groomed.
‘Bogdan, how … is that stick-on?’
‘Is no such thing!’ He looks offended. ‘Why on earth would I be going about with stick-on moustache?’
‘Why on earth would you be going about with a real moustache?’
‘Because conversation earlier is reminding me that am always wanting to experiment with Clark Gable look. And if am going to be meeting Grace Kelly any time soon, what is wrong with wanting to look little bit like Clark Gable? Will be making her feel at home.’
‘But how did you even … did you just grow that this afternoon?’
He shrugs. ‘Am usually needing to be shaving two times per day. Sometimes even three. So this afternoon am just skipping usual four o’clock shave.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Do not be making me feel bad about this, Libby,’ he tells me, primly. ‘Or you will be no better than school bullies back home in Chis¸ina˘u.’
‘All right, all right, I’m sorry …’
‘She is here right now?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, she is here right now, but that’s not why I called you over. Dillon’s had a relapse, he—’
But Bogdan isn’t listening. Instead, he’s hurtling up the stairs, taking them two at a time like some sort of matinee-idol-impersonating homing pigeon.
‘Oh!’ Grace’s gasp is audible even halfway down the stairs. ‘Good heavens! But you said,’ she goes on, as I reach the top of the stairs, ‘that this new fellow didn’t represent anyone!’
‘Yes, look, he’s not Clark Gable, I absolutely promise you that …’
Grace is clasping her hands to her swan-like throat. ‘But he looks … so very like him!’
‘You are thinking I am looking like Clark Gable?’ Bogdan looks dazed for a moment. ‘This is true, true compliment for me, Miss Kelly. Am whelmed over. Am smacked in gob.’
‘Oh, my, your accent … it’s just so wonderful,’ breathes Grace. She’s changed, before my very eyes, from majestic ice princess to smouldering sex kitten: to be fair, the very thing that, according to Hitchcock, made her so appealing on the silver screen. ‘Is it Russian? Yugoslavian? Greek?’
‘Am from Moldova.’
Grace Kelly lets out one of her peals of crystalline laughter. ‘A made-up country! How amusing! You’re reminding me that I thought Monaco was a made-up country when I first heard of it!
‘Moldova is not made-up country.’ Bogdan takes a few steps closer to Grace Kelly, and I can see – for heaven’s sake – that she actually goes a little bit weak at the knees for a moment. ‘Is actual place. Is bordered in west by Romania and in east, north and south by Ukraine.’
‘Oh, please,’ Grace shudders with pleasure, ‘keep talking. I could listen to your accent for ever and never, ever want to wake up.’
‘We are fortunate enough to be enjoying presence of two major rivers,’ Bogdan croons on, clearly recognizing that, with his expert knowledge of Moldovan topography, he seems to have Grace Kelly in the palm of his hand. ‘Dniester in east and Prut in west. Climate is warm in summer, cold in winter. Major exports are—’
‘Bogdan!’ I interrupt. ‘I actually called you over here because I need your help with this.’
Bogdan gazes over at Dillon, still prone on the sofa.
‘Dillon,’ I say, pointedly. ‘One of your closest friends. I don’t know if you’ve noticed the scent of vodka in the air …?’
‘But am assuming this is because of you, Libby. Dillon is no longer drinking.’
‘But this is great tragedy.’
‘Well, it’s not great, no, but can we try to keep a little bit of perspective, just for the moment, and concentrate on getting him cleaned up? Can you maybe get him up the stairs to the bathroom so I can … I don’t know, hose him down with the shower?’
‘This is true.’ Bogdan turns back to Grace Kelly. ‘Will you be excusing me for a moment, Miss Kelly?’
‘Oh, but of course!’ As he leans down and scoops Dillon up with even more ease than Joel managed it earlier, Grace sidles over to me and grabs my hand. ‘Look,’ she hisses at me, back to her single-minded self, after all the doe-eyed looks and the tinkling laughter, ‘I’ve no idea how this all works – I mean, obviously you’re my alter ego, and all that, so it might not even be viable – but is there any way you could sort of … get out of the way for a while?’
‘Get out of the way?’
‘Yes. Give me a few minutes to be alone with this … magnificent creature.’
‘Oh, well, I think magnificent is pushing it …’
‘I mean, as of tomorrow, I’ll be a married woman … in fact, legally I’m already married! Can’t I at least enjoy one last sensuous dream before I commit myself to my husband in the eyes of God?’
‘Libby?’ Bogdan suddenly calls down the stairs. ‘Can you be upcoming? Dillon is awoken and is requesting for you. Also,’ he adds, ‘is looking as if he is going to be sicking all over place again …’
‘Oh, God …’
I abandon Grace to her naughty thoughts about Bogdan and hurry up the stairs to the bathroom, where Dillon – propped up, in his underpants, with a spray of water coming down on his head from the shower over the bath – is indeed awake.
Well, awake is pushing it a bit, probably: his eyes are open and words are coming out of his mouth, but whether he’s necessarily a hundred per cent sentient … or even fifty per cent sentient … actually, hang on, giving him a closer look I’d be surprised if he’s even twenty-five per cent sentient.
‘Libby, my darling girl,’ he slurs, as soon as he sees me through the plastic shower door. ‘And Boggy, my good fellow. Two of my favourite people in the same room at the same time. How often does that happen, eh? How often do I get to just hang out with two of my very best buds?’
‘I’ll keep showering him,’ I tell Bogdan. ‘Can you pop into the kitchen and make a strong cup of tea?’
‘Of course, but am thinking that Miss Kelly is preferring, perhaps, the champagne—’
‘For Dillon!’
‘Ah. Then yes. Without question, I can be doing this.’
As he lumbers off, I continue hosing Dillon down for a moment or two. He’s got his head leaning against the tiled wall, and barely seems to be noticing the warm water splashing down on him. In just his underpants, his body is as impressively muscled as it ever was: all man, the way Dillon has always been all man. But his face is slack, and his eyes have no light, and – most of all – his expression is that of a very lost, very little boy.
I can’t carry on being angry with him for something so small, in the grand scheme, as ruining my date. Dillon is a friend, and it’s just awful to see him messing up like this.
‘Who’s Miss Kelly?’ he suddenly asks, his words a bit less slurred now that the shower is helping to sober him up a little.
‘Sorry?’
‘Bogdan wanted to give champagne to a Miss Kelly … was that the blonde I saw in your living room?’
‘Oh, God. You saw her?’
‘Well, you were chatting to someone down there, right? I don’t know. I was snoozing, mostly … maybe I was dreaming.’
‘Aren’t you – er – always dreaming about blonde girls?’ I suggest, hopefully.
‘Hey, sweetheart, I don’t have to dream about them.’ The effort of engaging in his usual banter is evidently too much for him. He puts a hand to the side of his head. ‘Fuck me. I feel atrocious.’
‘Good,’ I say, but kindly, as I reach in and switch off the tap before grabbing a towel and holding it out for him to wrap around himself. ‘Hopefully you’ll feel even worse in the morning, too.’
‘Hey! I came here tonight – oh, thanks for the new address update, by the way – because I thought you were my friend!’
‘And as your friend, I hope you’ll feel even worse in the morning. Because we need to get you back to rehab, Dillon,’ I say, gently. ‘You know that, don’t you? I mean, I’m assuming that’s really why you came here. Because you knew that’s what I’d say and, deep down, you want to help yourself.’
He steps, shakily, out of the bath and on to the bath-mat. Wrapped in his towel, he looks even more like a little-boy-lost. Seriously, I’m fighting the urge to give him a big cuddle, brush his teeth, and put some Spiderman pyjamas on him before tucking him into bed with a story and a cuddle.
‘Ah,’ he says, not quite meeting my eye. ‘The psychobabble begins.’
‘It’s not psychobabble. And honestly, Dillon, what do you expect me to say? You turn up outside my front door, throw up all over my date’s shoes …’
‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’ He sits down on the side of the bath. ‘So, tell me about that! I mean, I know I’ve been rubbish about keeping in touch for the past few months, but this guy is a new development, right? I mean, what’s happened to you and Olly Walker?’
‘Nothing’s happened to me and Olly Walker. Nothing will. He’s with somebody else, remember? Anyway, we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. Like, when did all this happen? The falling off the wagon, I mean. And, more to the point – why?’
‘Oh, you know.’ He shrugs. ‘Things have gone a bit shit for me since I last saw you, Lib. I’ve … sort of been kicked off Sodom and Gomorrah.’
This may sound like a description of one of Dillon’s average weekends but is, in fact, the name of the new TV show he’s been filming for the last few months, over in Belfast.
‘Kicked off? What on earth for?’
‘The usual stuff.’ He waves a hand. ‘Shagging the makeup artist. Calling the first assistant director something unrepeatable. Shagging the makeup artist’s assistant. Who turned out to be the first assistant director’s girlfriend …’
‘That’s not the usual stuff!’
‘Yeah, well, it is for me.’ He laughs. ‘Oh, come on. Don’t I even get a giggle?’
‘You do not.’
‘A chuckle?’
‘No.’
‘Then how about a mirthless chortle?’
‘Not even that.’
‘Then that proves it. This really isn’t funny.’
‘It’s not, Dillon. It’s really not. But, look, if we get you back to rehab first thing …’
‘So you’re just, what? Giving up on true love?’
I give him a look. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘Hey, I’m just asking! Because you’re surprised that I’ve started drinking again since the last time you saw me. And I’m just surprised you seem to have moved on from Olly so fast.’
‘It’s not so fast! He’s been with Tash for a bloody year! And,’ I go on, suddenly feeling a hint of Grace Kelly’s single-minded steel in my veins, ‘I’m not going to sit around bemoaning the hand dealt me by Fate any longer, if that’s all right with you?’
‘Well, I don’t know about that. Who is this new guy, anyway? I mean, he could be anyone.’
‘He’s not anyone. He’s a personal trainer. And a really lovely guy.’
‘Jack the Ripper was a really lovely guy.’
‘I don’t think he was, actually.’
‘Well, he probably seemed like a really lovely guy, right up to the point that he asphyxiated you.’
‘I think he cut their throats. And I honestly don’t think he did seem like a really lovely guy, Dillon.’
‘Well, all right, maybe he didn’t seem quite such a l
ovely guy as this Joel character …’
‘He carried you all the way upstairs. Even after you were sick on his shoes.’
‘Well, all that proves is that he’s good at carting lifeless bodies about. And there we are, back to Jack the Ripper all over again.’
‘Look. He isn’t Jack the bloody Ripper. And we’re not discussing my love life, Dillon, we’re discussing you, and your relapse, so if you could just stop—’
But Dillon has turned faintly green again and is suddenly lurching towards the loo.
I pat his back for a moment or two and then, when I get the sense he’d just rather be left alone with his embarrassment for a minute, I get to my feet.
‘I’ll go and check on the whereabouts of that cup of tea,’ I say, gently. ‘Back in a minute.’
‘You’re an angel,’ Dillon croaks, his voice echoing a bit from the fact his head is still stuck in the toilet bowl. ‘You deserve the best, you know? You deserve a prince.’
I leave him in privacy, and head next door to the kitchen to see what’s going on with this cup of tea.
But Bogdan, predictably enough, isn’t in there. In fact, the kettle isn’t even warm.
From the living room downstairs, however, I can hear the distinct sound of Grace Kelly’s laughter.
‘So tell me more,’ she’s saying, in a throaty purr that owes more to Mae West than the East Coast, ‘about this funny little made-up country you say you hail from … if this were real life, and not simply a dream, would you take me back there with you and make me its princess?’
‘This is interesting question,’ Bogdan replies, earnestly. ‘History of royalty in Moldova is not being very happy one. And of course, you are knowing what is happening to nearby Russian royal family, all violently murdered in cellar by Bolsheviks who are not even sparing family dog … but is possible that in your case, Miss Kelly, even most ardent of republicans would be dialling back instinct to shut you in cellar and bayonet you to death …’
It’s a good thing Bogdan is (mostly) gay, if this is his best effort at chatting up a woman.
A Night In With Grace Kelly Page 10
