by Clare Naylor
“Orlando, darling!” She did kiss both cheeks. My God, he looked sexy, crisp clean white shirt, black tie, beardless and tanned. He smelled of lemons and musk and soft dark leather, and as she was about to squeeze his bottom Amy noticed a hefty man in a dinner jacket sitting in the backseat, too.
“Amy, this is Bill Ballantyne.
“Bill, Amy.”
“Pleased to meet you.” He reached a hairy paw out and Amy shook it.
“You, too,” she lied. I’d rather shag senseless in the backseat, she thought cheerfully.
“So how was Los Angeles?” She offered her conversational opener and sat back to watch Orlando’s mouth as the two men exchanged anecdotes and jokes, made for eating oysters and women, an interview had once said of his mouth. Perfect description, she agreed.
“So, Amy, are you looking forward to seeing your young man’s crack at Thomas Hardy?” Not as much as I’m looking forward to seeing the crack of his bottom.
“Oh, yes, I can’t wait.”
“And have you read the book?” Which book? Why was this Scottish voice bothering her every five seconds, couldn’t a girl fantasize in peace?
“I studied it for A Level actually,” she replied. Now shut up and let me think about his pulsating manhood. Finally they arrived at the cinema, and Amy was unprepared for the long red carpet she had to trail down with her consort. This wasn’t fun, this was terrifying, why on earth she’d wasted her days wanting to shunt up and down vile colored carpets she couldn’t begin to understand. Help!
Orlando did help; he took her hand and led her from the taxi, whispering softly, “If you get through this, I’ll do anything you want me to do to you later.” Amy’s face lit up in a smile and she felt totally desirable and confident and fabulous.
“Anything?” she asked. He nodded and smiled in just the right direction and with just the right amount of starriness. She hadn’t a bloody clue where to look, she was either grinning like the village idiot or looking like her goldfish had just died. Her face flickered from one expression to the other like a broken television set. Smile grimace, grimace grimace smile. Help. She was consumed by admiration for Orlando’s easy manner and when they finally got inside the doors was sweating and shivering.
“God, that was horrible,” she said.
“Don’t worry, darling, you were beautiful,” he reassured her, and oh, what perfect timing, there behind them to hear his adoration were the heaving bosoms and expanses of flesh that denoted Tiffany Swann. Amy looked closely at her face as she talked to Bill. She’s a babe really, isn’t she? she thought, examining her thinly arched brows. Well, bugger that then, I couldn’t compete if I tried, and neither could she. Amy’s head was swimming with faces and shining gowns and the whir of chatter and laughter and it was an enormous relief when finally they were shown to their seats and sat down to watch the film. She gripped the inside of Orlando’s thigh as the credits rolled and only when she saw his name did she realize the enormity of his penis … no, of his fame.… Stop it, Amy, put those hormones away. There are words for women like you, she chided herself.
Then she was suddenly transported to the wilds of Egdon Heath, to windswept heather and bleak titanic skies. To interweaving fates and sorrows and missed opportunities, to Eustacia’s love first for Wildeve and then Clym Yeobright, Orlando. There he was, ohmigod, there he was with his striking eyes and breathtaking body, he was wearing first a smart Parisian outfit and later some dashing thigh-high boots and trousers, his chest bare and broad, he was sensitive and in love with Eustacia but she treated him so badly, such a wronged man, such a handsome man. There was no way she’d treat him like that if she were Eustacia, she thought, as her eyes pricked with tears at the thwarted love, and his mother hindering his happiness by forbidding the banns in church, how could she? Amy melted into the celluloid and made the characters’ emotions her own. She pricked with pain and oppression as they did and was struck by love for the weak but well-meaning Clym, for after all here was a man who understood daydreams, who knew that life was more perfect in the imagination. Here was a man who understood her, Amy, sitting in her cramped red velvet seat with a tissue drying her eyes. She was desperate for the film to stay there, not to finish but to wind on beyond the end to engulf her in it. God, how tragic. Clym, I’d never have treated you so badly, she thought.
As they all filed out of the cinema and the buzz filled her head, the night air was as cool and reassuring as the breeze across the heath, the soft enveloping carpet a floor of heather. Amy could think only of Clym; she wanted to live on Egdon Heath with him in his furze cutter’s cottage and tend to his failing eyesight like an angel of mercy. She’d make him broth and help him take faltering steps from his dark room onto the lichen steps of their cottage. She wouldn’t desert him by cruelly drowning herself. No, she’d stand by her man to the death, she’d kiss him tenderly on his full, sad mouth and restore happiness to his life, they could have children and maypole dancing on the heath each spring, she’d …
“So what did you think, my love?” Clym asked, oh, but not Clym, it was Orlando.
“I think I’m in love,” she said as the cameras popped in their direction, and they walked out into Leicester Square and the midnight blue sky overhead flickered with flashes of stars. She was dazzled and saw only the moon over Egdon and a distant bonfire beside which she and Clym could stand and talk long into the night.
“I love you, too, darling,” he said, kissing her forehead, not caring about the cameras or the paparazzi yelling, “Give ’er anovver one, Olly!”
Amy blinked in all the light and thought, yes, Clym, I love you, too. But what about Orlando, Amy? Well, yes, I love Orlando as well, but then that’s the more glorious thing about all this, I get to have my cake and eat it. For once I get to sleep with my hero and my boyfriend, interchangeable romance and reality in the same bed. Just the thing for me, thought Amy.
FOR ADA AND ARTHUR STEPHENSON
