by Jilly Cooper
Nugent went beserk, tunnelling his snapping snout through the snow, leaping in ecstasy, emerging with a white-powdered wig on his furry black head. Having sent him hurtling across the park after a snowball, Viking scooped up more snow, hardened it into another ball and closed Flora’s hands round it.
‘Josst feel it melting like my heart,’ he whispered, then turning to Marcus, said, ‘Sorry, mate, I can’t control myself any longer.’
Looking up, Flora was amazed to see the amused tenderness softening his thin face and narrowed eyes. His hair gleamed as gold as Mars in the moonlight. As he took her hot flushed face in his long Jack Frost fingers, she could smell the faint apple blossom of Giuseppe’s shampoo, taste toothpaste and feel the snowball clutched in her hands melting like her entrails.
Then he kissed her, first very slowly, his tongue flickering over hers, then harder and harder, a mixture of deliberation and such passion that Flora, arching against him, felt like a bonfire bursting into sudden spontaneous flame in the middle of the Antarctic.
Not having the superior breath control of a brass player, she had to pull away first but kept her eyes shut.
‘Is it really you?’
‘Really.’
‘Oh Viking.’
‘I am otterly, otterly hooked,’ he murmured into her hair.
Flora jumped as, like a rug suddenly laid over her knees, she felt Nugent leaning against her, gazing up with shining eyes, his tail sweeping out a black fan on the white path.
‘I’m enjoying watching Gone with the Wind,’ called out Marcus through blue lips, ‘but I’m about to freeze to death.’
‘Oh Jesus, I’m sorry,’ said Viking.
As his BMW slid round the Close, icicles were glittering from the red roofs of the Queen Anne houses, magnolias and ceanothus in the front gardens buckled under their burdens of snow.
‘God knows how they got a licence for this place,’ said Viking, as he pulled up beside a club called Close Encounters which was pounding out reggae music. ‘Someone must have greased Planning Officer Cardew’s palm again.’
Inside, through the gloom, the Celtic Mafia, Cherub, Noriko, Clare, Candy and Nellie could be seen getting plastered, drinking half-pints of wine out of little jugs, coughing in unison and collapsing in laughter at their own jokes.
Once Viking and Marcus had sat down beside them, Dixie started acting up; he had taken a great shine to Marcus, and had them all in stitches offering to turn the pages of his menu for him, then handing it to him upside-down.
‘He’s Sonny’s Valentine, sweet Sonny’s Valentine,’ sang Randy.
Everyone howled again.
‘We have got some catching up to do,’ sighed Viking, looking sympathetically at Marcus.
Returning from the Ladies, Flora took a slug of wine and nearly spat it out.
‘Ugh, it’s corked.’
‘That’s because you’ve just cleaned your te-heeth,’ said Clare slyly. ‘Even Krug tastes vile after Colgate.’
‘We ought to invent a drink mixing them,’ said Marcus, ‘and call it Buck Teeth.’
‘And Gwynneth could do the ads,’ said Flora.
So everyone stuck out their teeth like Gwynneth and giggled hysterically.
‘To stop arguments, I’ve ordered lasagne for everyone,’ said Blue.
When the band took a break, the RSO, to the other diners’ amazement, took over. Randy seized a trumpet, Nellie and Noriko picked up guitars, Cherub sat down at the drums, Marcus was persuaded to play the piano, as they swung into Boléro.
Blue didn’t want to dance, so Dixie got up with Candy and Clare, Viking and Flora followed them.
Viking was a wonderful dancer, he had the endless legs, and narrow rubber hips that slide into any rhythm.
‘Dum, de-de, dum, de-de, de-de, de-de, dum de-de-dum,’ sang Flora, writhing like a charmed snake in front of him, her hips occasionally grazing his body, her black skirt and red hair flying.
‘Marvellous beat to fock to,’ Viking drew her against him, rotating his pelvis against hers.
‘OK, Marcus?’ gasped Flora as she emerged from his embrace two minutes later with buckling knees.
What would she have done if I’d said I wasn’t, wondered Marcus, as he idly picked out the first subject of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto — moody, mysterious, impossibly difficult music. He wished he could go home and look at the score, which he had only two months to learn. It would be like taming a dragon.
He’d prayed for a break like this for so long, but looking across at Viking and Flora, he felt hollow with loneliness and would have given every note of the concerto to be able to wipe Abby out with the same white-hot passion. Marcus sighed. Viking had a terrible reputation. He did hope Flora wouldn’t be hurt again, and Abby was going to be insane with jealousy when she found out. What an awful lot of pieces to pick up.
The band and the lasagne arrived at the same time. Neither Viking nor Flora wanted theirs, so Nugent ate both.
‘It’s such years since anyone put me off my food,’ said Flora happily.
Turning towards her on the bench-seat, blocking out the others’ view with his broad back, Viking removed her mantilla from her left shoulder, examining a row of long scratches.
‘Jack Rodway do that?’
‘No Scriabin — he thinks he’s a witch’s cat, and takes flying leaps onto my bare shoulders.’
‘Locky Scriabin,’ Viking kissed the longest scratch. ‘Why’d d’you go to bed with Jack?’
‘I needed a practice fence.’
‘I was so opset.’
‘You’re so glamorous,’ Flora ran a finger along his jutting lower lip. ‘One can’t imagine you upset about anything except playing badly or not uniting Ireland.’
‘I’ve dreamt for a long time of being united with Flora.’ As insistent as the Boléro beat, his hand was stroking the inside of her arm, her jawline, her earlobes.
Then she told him about Carmine trying to rape her.
‘Jack was the escape route, he had a green Exit sign on his forehead, and a push bar at his waist.’
Viking laughed. Only by his hand tightening on her shoulder did he show his fury.
‘The basstard,’ he said slowly, ‘and he keeps his wife in a veal crate. Cathie didn’t have flu, he broke her jaw.’
‘Omigod, is that why Blue’s so down? They ought to elope, she’s so good, she could easily support herself.’
‘Carmine’s ripped away every thread of her self-esteem.’
The waiters were back with menus offering puddings.
Viking shook his head. ‘I’m having a pause.’
‘You’re going through the male menu-pause,’ said Flora, falling about at her own joke.
‘I’m sorry,’ Viking pulled her to her feet, ‘I have to fock you.’
Outside it had snowed and frozen again.
‘D’you think I’m too dronk to drive?’
‘Frankly yes,’ said Flora swinging round a lamp-post. ‘If you even looked at a Breathalyser it would play “The Drinking Song.”’
‘Why don’t we try one of these bikes?’
Hearing a loud bang outside, the others, who’d started trashing the place, rushed out swinging lavatory chains, to find Nugent barking, Flora giggling in the snow, Viking sitting beside her rubbing her laddered knees and an ancient blue bike on its side with its wheels going round and round.
After that everyone had a go on it, drink insulating them against the cold, their shouts of laughter sending windows shooting up all round the Close. Any grizzled head foolish enough to emerge was pelted with snowballs. Cherub was so drunk he kept climbing into the engine of Dixie’s car. Clare kept patting a black litter-bin, mistaking it for Mr Nugent. As Flora had another go, the seat shot upwards, nearly depositing her on the ground.
‘It’s a Fanny cycle,’ she shrieked, narrowly avoiding a pillar-box. ‘Oh Gilbert, Gilbert, oh fa la, la, la.’
‘Stop that noise,’ said a ringing voice from above.
&nb
sp; ‘Oh fuck off,’ said Randy. ‘It’s my turn now, Flora.’
Vaguely Marcus remembered he had been invited to a wassail party in the Close.
Clambering on board, Randy set off guiding the bike with one hand, swinging a Close Encounter lavatory chain with the other. Shooting across the grass in the centre of the square, straight through a bed of sleeping wallflowers, he hit the fountain where Charles I had refreshed himself during the Civil War with an almighty bang.
The bicycle was a crumpled heap, the fountain in intensive care, the imprint of Randy’s huge body lay etched in the snow, but remounting, the intrepid trumpeter shot off down the path, falling off again, so the bike carried on up a ramp, and disappeared through the door of some ecclesiastical building. This was followed by another loud bang to the accompaniment of police sirens.
‘Quick,’ Viking seized Flora’s hand. ‘They segregate the sexes in police cells.’
Very slowly Viking drove back down the middle of the road. Snow on top of hoar frost had fluffed up the trees on either side like cherry orchards in bloom. Huge flakes drifted down soft as butterflies.
‘Your place or mine?’ asked Viking.
‘Oh yours,’ said Flora, remembering the compost heap of her bedroom and that Abby would be home.
Viking kissed one of her hands.
‘So young and soft,’ he said mockingly.
‘Hands that don’t do dishes, I’m afraid. I’m an awful slut.’
‘But the nails are bitten — I noticed that at your audition. You smiled, pretty as a daffodil. You played In the South to tear the heartstrings. But I knew you were sad.’
‘I’m OK,’ squeaked Flora, jumping as the top of the car scraped against some bowed-down branches.
‘Who hurt you?’
‘Oh Christ, a guy called Rannaldini. I was terribly young — I can’t talk about it.’
‘I’ll kill anyone who hurts you.’ Somehow Viking manoeuvred the car into the lane down to the lake, skidding most of the way.
‘I’ll exorcize Carmine, I’ll exorcize Rannaldini,’ he added dismissively.
‘Better buy me an exorcize bicycle,’ said Flora.
Between towering beeches, like ice cliffs, the lake glittered in the moonlight, arctic white along the frozen edges, but with a dark badger stripe of flowing water down the centre.
‘I’ve always wondered what this house looks like inside,’ said Flora, getting out of the car.
The ground floor of The Bordello trebled up as a kitchen, dining-room and drawing-room. Shabby, different coloured armchairs and a dark blue sofa were grouped around an open fireplace with a huge television set on the right. Chucked into a corner were golf clubs, tennis rackets, cricket bats, an old saddle, football and cricket boots. A not-often-scrubbed table by the oven was weighed down with old newspapers, Racing Posts, Sporting Lifes, Clare’s Tatlers, scores, books, shoulder pads, unopened bills.
Flora’s eyes, however, were drawn up to an old-fashioned clothes-horse, from which hung white evening shirts and a rainbow riot of clothes, no doubt belonging to the women in Viking’s life.
‘Why are you so bloody promiscuous?’ She was appalled to hear the petulance in her voice.
Viking, who was getting a key out of a blue teapot, smiled sweetly.
‘Like Marlon Brando, I have to have at least three women a day to prove I’m not gay. I’ve only had two this evening, come here.’
But, overwhelmed with shyness and longing, Flora had fled upstairs to the bathroom to find more dripping tights and exotic underwear. She had seen those French knickers on Candy, and the camisole top trimmed with blue ribbon on Clare, but whose was the black lacey 34D cup bra and the black suspender belt and the fishnet stockings.
Oh hell, hell, hell.
Furiously she cleaned her teeth again, then ripped off her laddered tights and knickers, washing between her legs, then splashing herself over and over again with cold water, in case, as Rannaldini had once grumbled, she tasted of soap. She was just nicking Clare’s body lotion when Nugent barged in, rounded her up and led her back to Viking’s bedroom, curling up on his bean bag with a long sigh.
Flora looked at the huge brass four-poster hiding in its dark red rose-patterned curtains and shivered. The curtains on either side of the window overlooking the lake were drawn, but Viking had opened the ones overlooking the white wilderness of garden so the moonlight flooded the room.
‘Oh please, Nugent,’ begged Flora, ‘give me a few tips, so I can be more exciting than the others.’
Whipping off her dress, she was about to dive under the dark green duvet, when she was distracted by the squares of moonlight on the bare floorboards.
Unzipping his jeans, as he came through the door, Viking found Flora, silver-white as a unicorn, hair and small breasts flying, as she hopscotched back and forth on the moonlit squares.
Her skin was as cool and satiny as new beech leaves, she tasted so sweet and fresh as he kissed her before gathering her up and laying her out on the clean white sheets. Without any hurry, he began to stroke her. Flora tried to be cool as the leisurely caresses crept down her increasingly excited body, but couldn’t help gasping with pleasure as his fingers slid inside her. Viking gasped too.
‘Jesus, sweetheart, you really want me.’
He was still wearing boxer shorts covered in Golden Retrievers carrying the Irish Times.
As he peeled them off, his cock shot upwards.
‘Oh wow cubed,’ Flora stretched out a hand, ‘and you truly want me. Now I know why Yeats kept banging on about Irish towers.’
‘Shot op,’ Viking’s big grinning mouth stopped hers, and his infinitely delicate caresses continued until Flora was squirming with ecstasy. She was dying to come, yet some tension, some passionate desire not to bore him, prevented her, so she wriggled out of his grasp, down the bed to go down on him.
Instantly he pulled her back, burying his head between her legs, a blond haystack at the end of her white sweep of belly, his fingers stroking her nipples.
‘Go on, angel,’ he mumbled, ‘go for it — we’ve got for ever. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious.’ His tongue rotated languorously.
Flora took several quick breaths and came.
‘God, you sweet little girl,’ Viking bounded up the bed, pressing his mouth on hers.
‘That was bliss,’ sighed Flora. ‘Let me give you pleasure, please.’
‘You are,’ Viking slid his cock inside her and began to move.
‘Aaaaaah,’ moaned Flora, ‘God, that’s wonderful. Clare was quite wrong about Boléro being better than the real thing.’
They made love all night, wallowing in pleasure, constantly changing position. Around quarter to five, Flora discovered why Viking had been nervous of her going down on him. As she parted his legs, and bent her head to kiss her way up the inside of one of his wonderfully hard muscular thighs, she discovered in the moonlight a tattoo saying, ‘I love Juno’, and burst out laughing.
‘That’s a bit arbitrary.’
‘I was pissed,’ said Viking sheepishly.
‘What on earth did Juno think?’
‘She was terrified I’d start flashing it around like an engagement ring.’
‘She’s amazingly pretty, but what made you fall in love with her?’
Viking shrugged.
‘She’s small minded, suburban and terribly cross, but when I held that tiny waist between my hands and watched her ride me, I guess a standing cock has no taste.’
‘Yours tastes lovely,’ Flora crouched over him, her tongue was snaking round the rim, searching out pleasure points, probing the top.
Groaning with pleasure, Viking let her continue until he was about to explode. Then he wriggled out from under her, pointing a long finger at the clock beside the bed, whose red numbers said it was five o’clock.
‘That was one of Rodney’s great sayings.’
‘What?’
‘No sea too rough, no muff too tough, we dive at five.’
>
She could feel his shoulders shaking with laughter.
‘Please come back and fuck me.’
Viking slid back inside her, gently stroking her face with the back of his fingers. ‘You are so lovely.’
‘And you,’ sighed Flora, ‘are a midwinter night’s dream come true.’
At eight, Flora staggered out of bed.
‘I ought to go home, I’ve got to change and have a bath.’
‘Have one here — I’m not letting you out of my sight.’
As she opened the curtains overlooking the lake, a faint band of orange lay along the horizon. Above, out of a pearly grey sky, shone Venus like a huge glittering snowflake.
‘Oh look, the planet of love is smiling at us. Oh Christ!’
At the crunch of passing car wheels, Flora shut the curtains with a snap. ‘It’s Abby, going to work. She’s not going to be very pleased with us.’
FORTY-THREE
Three hours later George barged into the middle of a rehearsal and bawled his musicians out for behaving like hooligans. His fury was fuelled by the sight of Flora, still in last night’s black dress, cowering behind Fat Isobel.
‘You’re a bluddy disgrace,’ he thundered. ‘And I want everyone who was in Close Encounters last night to write a personal letter of apology to Gilbert Greenford from the Arts Council whose push-bike you totalled last night. Gilbert has had that bike, Clara, since he was at university.’
‘Back in the fifteenth century,’ piped up Cherub.
‘Shut ooop,’ roared George, as various musicians started to laugh. Couldn’t the stupid fuckers realize the influence the Arts Council had on their future, and how near the edge they were?
‘The cost of a new bike and seven toilet chains will be docked off your salaries.’
‘Flora will have to consult her lawyer,’ shouted Randy. ‘Whoops, sorry,’ he added as he received a death-ray scowl from George.
Abby was also furious. Any delight that she’d been vindicated by the rescheduling of Rachel’s Requiem was wiped out by her misery and excruciating jealousy that Flora had finally got off with Viking.
