by Clare Naylor
“What?” asked Amy.
“You see that guy who’s just walked in with the seventeen-year-old on his arm?”
“Yes,” they chorused.
“It’s my father.”
“Bloody hell,” whispered Amy. They sat huddled, their heads almost touching, all staring in the direction of the leather-jacketed man who had his back to them and was helping some honey-thighed beauty into her seat. He turned toward the maitre d’ and they all turned away, pretending not to be looking.
“Don’t I recognize him?” Amy asked.
“Very probably, he used to be quite famous.”
“Quite famous, he was my total idol when I was seventeen,” said Orlando, stunned with admiration.
“Luce, you didn’t tell me it was him! I can’t believe your father is so amazingly famous. I thought it might be Bill Wyman but I never thought it would be him,” said Amy.
Four are flabbergasted in a restaurant, as Enid Blyton would have it. Except it was only two. Benjy, of course, was the only other party to this secret on the face of the planet, but even he was having trouble dealing with the idea as it was standing there in the flesh. Lucinda was mildly amused by their reactions to her errant father and quite proud, too. There, one glass of wine and her secret was out. The idol slid into the seat and looked every inch the jaded star. Amy could just see Anita falling for those famously colored eyes. Yes indeedy, who wouldn’t travel to the ends of the world for a night in bed with him. Men and women alike had. Good old Anita, thought Amy. Cool, cool Lucinda. Amy silently wished her father were a rock star but try as she might all she could envisage was a Cliff Richard and the Shadows-type figure; she cringed at: “Orlando Rock, meet my father,” and a figure in a leather jacket and Buddy Holly glasses stepped forward.
“Do you think I should say hello?” asked Lucinda hesitantly.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“When I was about fourteen and he bought me a pony.”
“Did you call him dad?”
“No, course not!”
“Wild.” The others were awestruck and Lucinda, as if realizing for the first time what a big deal it was to have such a father, began to feel rather nervous.
“Let’s just forget it,” said Lucinda, nervously returning to her green curry. “It’s all a bit of a head-fry.”
So they tried to forget it but kept sneaking glances at snake hips and honey thighs in the corner.
“And I thought Orlando was supposed to be the famous party here tonight,” said Amy.
“Do you suppose he’s sleeping with that child?” asked Lucinda, obviously distracted by the paternal presence.
“That would be too disgusting,” Amy said.
“Sounds like a wonderful thought to me,” said Benjy. Lucinda kicked him under the table and stored the comment up for argument later. Orlando refrained from agreeing. He didn’t have the security of a three-year-old relationship from which to make outrageous remarks like that.
“Why do men think that they have to be clever and handsome to sleep with young nubile girls?” asked Amy. “Don’t they realize that any idiot with half a Ferrari can pull?”
“It’s because they’re witless; whereas women wouldn’t want to spend the evening listening to a seventeen-year-old boy talk about skateboards just so she could press his pecs later, men don’t care, conversation is not a priority,” Lucinda replied bitterly. Bitter with her lothario father and cross with Benjy for being nothing short of a pervert.
“You only have to look at her breasts to answer that question,” said Benjy. Boy, was he heading for trouble later on, and he just kept on courting it. Next time they go out to dinner Benjy will have to give the wine a wider berth, it seems.
From the breasts of an adolescent the conversation cannot stoop much lower. They chitchatted and lapped up the remains of the soft mango ice cream and dripped the last of the wine into their glasses and the time came to leave. Benjy and Lucinda were straining for a fight in a pointed, veteran-relationship way and Orlando and Amy were straining for each other. Amy slid off her shoe and wriggled her toes over Orlando’s ankle. Amy watched Orlando’s lips seek out the last droplets of red liquid from his glass and stroked her toes up his leg toward his knee. He winked at her, and courage taken, she slipped her foot up further, replicating a thousand seduction scenes, feeling her way between Orlando’s thighs. His head moved instinctively back and eyes closed for a fraction of a second, long enough for the maitre d’ to note the untowardness and look away. Amy bit her lower lip and wiggled her toes. Delicious, she thought. Orlando contemplated the logistics of a quickie in the Ladies but they had company, so ever the gentleman (not that he had much choice), he allowed himself to be ushered into a cab with the others. Libido responds to danger as much as to audience, or perhaps it’s the very fact that you always want what you can’t have. So, when constrained by decorum into sitting and chatting with friends, all you can think of is heady sex on the dinner table and hot kisses on your neck.
So, cool and fruity as mango sorbet, they toyed with one another in the back of the cab, Amy’s hand easing up the inside of Orlando’s thigh; Orlando slipped his hand up her blouse and stroked and teased her nipple, running his fingers over the satin-soft skin of her breasts. They kissed whenever Lucinda and Benjy fell into conversation with one another, and ached to be home.
“Your place or mine?” Orlando whispered as he kissed her behind the ear.
“Mine?”
“Fine,” he agreed willingly.
“OK, guys, we’re out of here. If we leave you a fiver, that should cover the fare,” said Benjy, bursting into their erotic reverie.
“See you, darlings, thanks for a lovely evening.” Lucinda kissed them both good-bye.
“I’ll tell Nathalia that you’ve got food poisoning. Take Monday off,” she told Amy. Amy was too heady to appreciate the act of kindness, but Lucinda will undoubtedly get her reward in heaven. Just as surely as the poor inherit the earth and the meek are happy because the kingdom of heaven is theirs, there must be a clause for those who help the course of true love on the way. Blind Cupid. Kind Lucinda. Kindred spirits really. The arrow-struck couple took their taxi as far as home and thence Nirvana.
CHAPTER 26
They slept fitfully, mirroring one another’s movements around the bed with the slight unease of new lovers. As they drifted off they tried to make their breathing patterns coincide, so fearful were they of slipping from their reverie. Amy was careful to keep her hair out of his mouth when her back was turned to him and he gently held his hand across her breasts. Like wood nymphs curled in some beechen haven, thought Amy as she lapsed into her dreams.
The next morning they woke to a sky of deepest azure and had no choice but to spend the day outside in the sunshine. Kew Gardens was decided on as the picnic venue, and they made a trip to the supermarket, where they cavorted among the aisles, having lightsaber fights with baguettes and filling their baskets with every variety of kitsch food ever invented: Jaffa cakes, Nutella, mini rum babas with green cherries on top, and fake cream.
“God, I love fake cream,” said Amy, cherishing a can with its plastic whipped peak.
Orlando thought he’d probably be able to find an erotic use for it later, I mean, with its hard nozzle and frothy contents, it was practically begging to be squirted over Amy. “Let’s get some of those plastic cheese slices, too,” said Orlando, heading for the dairy products.
“And Pringles,” added Amy, remembering with joyous irony the night she’d binged on two whole cans to suppress her misery. She grabbed his hand and kissed it hastily.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Just because.”
Just because she was relieved that it had all sorted itself out, that here they were, enjoying each other’s company and getting along like oldest friends, bed was a treat and they laughed easily together. What more could a girl ask for? (Premieres cartwheeled through her mind but she dismissed these with a
“they can wait.”)
They made their way to the drinks and picked out green cream soda and little bottles of cherry-flavored pop with polar bears on the label.
“You do realize that we’ll be high as kites for a month with all this tartrazine and sunset yellow stuff,” said Amy.
“Yeah, who needs drugs when you can overdose on food coloring?”
They stopped off at an old-fashioned sweetshop on the way to the park and bought lemon bonbons, sherbet pips by the quarter, and some pear drops. As they were about to pay, Amy dropped in a walnut whip for good measure.
“Whatever happened to Spangles?” they wondered as the door creaked shut behind them.
They paid their entrance to the gardens and, as it was almost twelve o’clock, felt that they must have lunch, if only to relieve them of the burden of several carrier bags full of food.
“Let’s go over by these bushes.” Amy led the way to a spot she’d singled out but on closer inspection the ground was wet. Instead they found a bench and, sitting at either corner, like a pair of bookends, spread the garishly colored feast out between them.
“It’s so beautiful with all the spring flowers around and the birds—like a morning out of Chaucer.”
“And pray tell what is a Chaucer morning like?” Orlando asked, taking a teeth-marked bite out of a slice of orange cheese.
“Well, just lots of flowers in bloom, ready for the May queen to make her entrance, and always lots of bird noises. Can you imagine what England was like in Chaucer’s time? So many trees, my God, wolves still roamed the land.”
“I could never get to grips with The Pardoner’s Tale for A level. I just cheated and read the crib notes,” Orlando confessed.
“God, no, Chaucer’s great, the bawdiest stories imaginable. That’s the whole joke, if teenage boys had known that they were all about farting and sex, you’d all have got grade As at A level.”
“But I couldn’t understand it.”
“Just a matter of time. Persevere, he’s worth it.” So Orlando made a mental note to pick up a copy of the Canterbury Tales when he was next in a bookshop. In the way that we’ve all at some time or another, in those early days of love, decided that there was after all some merit in the cinematography of Apocalypse Now or that Hemingway could be enjoyed by women, too. All utter lies, of course, but love is a powerful broadener of horizons for all of five minutes.
They grazed their way through the assembled rainbow of nibbles, a pear drop here and nectarine there. Orlando picked up a strawberry and squirted the foamy cream onto the top of it.
“For you,” he proffered. Amy opened her mouth and he popped it in. Tess of the D’Urbervilles at long last, she thought.
She made up a sandwich of banana and Nutella, promising it was the most heavenly thing Orlando would ever eat.
“No, it sounds revolting,” he protested.
“Trust me, you’ll love it.”
He screwed up his face and opened his mouth, as if preparing for a spoonful of castor oil.
“See, it’s gorgeous,” she said. He remained unconvinced and washed it down with a huge gulp of cherry soda.
Finally, they packed their wrappers away into a plastic bag and rested bloated and groaning against one another.
“Do you think we’re bulimic?” asked Amy.
“No, just greedy.”
“I feel so sick,” she moaned. Orlando prodded her tummy.
“Bleugh! Get off!”
They sat there emitting wailing noises and vowing they’d never eat another sweet as long as they lived, until Amy finally decided that enough was enough and there was a hothouse to visit. She pulled Orlando up from the bench and they strolled into the steamy glasshouse.
“Come on, fatty,” she teased him, patting his stomach.
“People in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones,” he said, relishing the opportunity.
“You are so unoriginal. What am I doing with you?” She shook her head in mock despair.
“We should go to Brazil sometime, see the real rain forest, canoe down the Amazon, and live on sugarcane.”
“I’ve had enough sugar for a lifetime. Rio would be great though, they all wear G-strings all the time, that’s the only problem.” Man rose to the bait.
“Let’s go tomorrow, darling,” he said, squeezing her bottom.
They wandered through green dewy leaves and strange flowering flytraps, breaking off for the odd damp kiss.
“This is so lovely, I usually spend Saturdays doing mundane rubbish, shopping, ironing; it’s so nice not to do anything. But still I have this guilty feeling that I should be doing something.” Amy was delirious and rambling.
“You are, you’re busy falling in love,” said Orlando, taking the back of her head in his hand and easing her fringe behind her ear. Love? Amy was silent inside. A huge word that seemed to fill the greenhouse, fill her head. Was that a casual “love” or the enormous rare variety? If in doubt, play dumb, a clever female adage.
“Am I?”
“I am,” said Orlando, his blue eyes looking so carefully into hers that she lowered her lashes and held her breath. Six feet of darkly beautiful Orlando Rock was standing before her, telling her he was in love with her (at least, she thought that’s what he meant, she was too dithery to think). She felt the full force of his actorly passion, his stage-managed intensity and romantic-hero status. Except this wasn’t film, it wasn’t the cornfield kiss in A Room with a View, it wasn’t the safe page-turning romance of Jane Austen, it was flesh and blood and less than a foot away, no ecstatic embellishments needed.
“Me, too.” But she asked it rather than telling it. She was face-to-face with the most romantic encounter of her life (sex doesn’t really count, that was much easier) and its proximity left her terrified. But just wait until I tell Lucinda, she thought, suddenly happier.
The rest of the afternoon was a haze of April drizzle and easy kisses; they held hands and pored over snowdrops and daffodils, hiding under willow trees when the rain poured. Amy was happy to be outside, the hothouse encounter had left her flushed and in need of time to herself, but this was much more relaxed, more fun now he wasn’t quite so intense. Back home later on, when Orlando had gone to sort out a leaky washing machine in his flat, Amy alternated between hopping around her landing and feeling terrified of being in love. Was she? She’d always thought it would take much longer, and Orlando was divine, it was immensely flattering but? But. There had to be one but, things like that didn’t just happen, and, well, he could have been acting, he must be so used to telling women he loved them, practically did it for a living. This thought made Amy a bit happier; he was obviously very fond of her but maybe just a bit dramatic to call it love, yes, that’s it, the words just come easier to him. I’m sure once I’ve spent a bit longer with him I’ll be in love, too.
Orlando was on the phone to Bill.
“See the thing is, Bill, she’s just lovely, so normal, so funny and everything, we can just go to the park, the supermarket, McDonald’s and no one even bothers us.”
“Och, it sounds great but doesn’t the wee lass want to go anywhere more exciting?”
“No, Bill, it’s really exciting just being with her, doing everyday things. After all those years of Hello! interviews it’s like heaven.”
“Take my word for it, she’ll get bored pretty soon if you keep on harping on about being such unexciting things. You’re bloody obsessed with being Mr. Average, Olly.” But Orlando was too in love to heed Bill’s words. And he was in love. He loved the romance of Amy, her spark and imagination; for him it made even the bus journey seem like an Odyssean adventure, her vision was inspiring and refreshing. And he loved the way she bit her lip when she was thinking. Yup, he did love her, he thought, as he scattered tea towels all over the wet kitchen floor.
CHAPTER 27
Amy had been coaxed over to Orlando’s on Saturday night where they’d got a video out and howled with laughter at Roseanne. Sunday morning lay in front o
f them like an unopened present, and Amy filled it with excitement in her imagination, a meander through Camden market and coffee in a café brimming with beautiful young people, all buzzing with gossip and the entrance of a famous actor. Or perhaps lunch at Daphne’s. It was fun when she did it with Lucinda; to share lettuce with the man you were in love with would be even better. And then they could mosey through the cool marble floorspace of Joseph looking for his and hers outfits, a tweedy jacket and soft chenille scarf for him and some ice blue hipsters and a tiny T-shirt for her. Sheer glamour. And she’d even managed to think through her anxieties about the L word. She’d just never said it to anyone before; she could jump willy-nilly (if you’ll pardon the expression) into bed with men she fancied, she could suck throat lozenges out of the belly buttons of any number of adoring beaus, but she’d never really been in love. Read about it? Yes. Fallen in love with love in films? Yes. Longed for Lenny Kravitz to write “My Love Is Gentle as a Rose” for her? Of course. But been there, done that? Not yet. But she was overcoming her fear, trusting Orlando beyond the actor front, and was confidently awaiting the paralyzing blow of Cupid’s arrow.
“You’ve got the most adorable lips,” she told him, confirming her opinion with a kiss. He smiled and seized the opportunity to kiss her and trail his hand across her stomach. Hmmm, they both sighed, and Amy, planting soft lips over his chest, moved down to his stomach, feeling its muscles tighten beneath her, his legs instinctively parted and he reached down and held the back of her head, gently easing her toward him, and then the phone rang … the phone rang, yes, ’fraid so. Orlando struggled to ignore it but they were both distracted and Amy flopped back onto the bed in resignation.
“Better get it, darling.”
“Who the bloody hell’s that?” he spat crossly, stubbing his toe on a chest of drawers as he ran downstairs. No room for cheeky sexy fun here, she lamented. If he had a phone by the bed, he could answer it gruffly and Amy could carry on regardless, licking him as though he were a raspberry cornetto, sucking gently at his tip, and cradling him carefully in her hand, and he could moan and shudder and not be able to think about the person on the phone who would feel piqued and suspicious. Maybe it would be a woman, his ex-wife checking on alimony or something, or just an admirer and all he’d want to do was abandon himself to Amy’s womanly power over him. Oh well, she’d have to save that part of her sexual repertoire for another time when the phone’s beside the bed.
