by Unknown
‘Is that why you like the Little Mermaid?’ she asked. ‘Because it doesn’t have a happy ending?’
‘I was in Denmark with Cirque de Phénomène – the first and last time the troupe will be asked to perform in Tivoli Gardens. I followed the tourist trail and read the little plinth on the statue – she looked funnily like you, with her graffiti tattoos and her bubblegum studs. I just fell in love with her because she blew it so damned sweetly. An innocent scarred by modern life, swimming up to the surface after all those years trapped in a childhood idyll, only to fall in love with a bastard like me.’
Two spectacularly over-elaborate high-rise sausage confections were lowered simultaneously over Ellen and Spurs’ left shoulders and the waiters stepped back in unison, waiting for awed comments, but Ellen and Spurs just gazed at one another.
‘I love you,’ he said urgently. ‘I love you more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my entire life. I love you more than my bloody life. Christ knows, it’s been one long, fuck-up journey from cage to cage so far – totally, mindlessly pointless until I met you. Then I spent two days with you. Two days of freedom with you, and I finally knew what prison really was because I’d already agreed to go back in for life this time and there’s no getting out.’
Ellen stared at him, not understanding, her heart burning its way out of her chest.
‘I just want one more day,’ he went on. ‘I just want one night. Tonight, tomorrow, this moment, today – fucking now. I can’t watch you go without telling you how I feel. I don’t care if one night in heaven makes hell even hotter. I can’t wait any longer and I can’t just walk away.’
She took his hands over the table, wine tipping over, nipples spilling from her dress, chair scraping against the polished floor, not caring about or even noticing the chaos in her wake.
‘I love you.’ He gripped her hands, eyes bubbling with mirth and relief. ‘This cynic’s got quixotic and the devil’s been born again. I believe in soulmates, I believe in love at first sight and in sweet Jesus Christ right now because whatever it was that put you and me together should be worshipped by millions of people around the world and hated and loathed by just as many. I believe,’ he shouted, ‘in Jesus!’
More waiters rushed over, forming a human wall around them like desperate German defenders given a Beckham free kick from the edge of the box.
Ellen was laughing. Laughing and crying and not noticing the frantic activity around her. A pair of sausage casseroles were swept from the table as Spurs made his way across it towards her and took her face in his hands. ‘I married the most beautiful, good, kind, sexy, fucking amazing woman in the world today. I married the love of my life. It will be a short marriage, but they don’t get any finer.’
Fellow diners turned in amazement. Two discreet Japanese women sidled up to take photographs, certain that this had to be two very famous people to look so good and behave so badly. An ageing American beauty demanded to know the name of Ellen’s plastic surgeon because ‘I must have those breasts.’
‘Perhaps,’ the mâitre d’ hustled up urgently, ‘you would like to finish your meal in your room, Mr and Mrs Gardner?’
Ellen reached out to touch Spurs’ face. Her hand traced his high cheekbones, his dimpled chin, his creased, worried forehead and his noble nose down to his beautiful mouth. She slipped her fingers between his lips and touched the smooth teeth beneath. ‘Where are we?’ she asked dreamily.
‘Fuck knows. Together.’
‘Somebody here says we’ve got a room.’
‘Let’s go there.’
The hand-painted Chinese wallpaper in the bridal suite went unnoticed, as did the matching raw-silk-upholstered chaises on either side of the vast floor-to-ceiling bay window overlooking the park, as did the complimentary fruit and champagne chilling in frosted silverware above the antique veneer cabinets housing minibars and a multichannel entertainment centre. The vast fireplace spilling with fresh damask roses was overlooked, the seductive original Klimt sketches went unspotted and the bed – a riotously ornate carved French oak four-poster, acres wide, layered with silk counterpanes and topped with a love heart picked out in orchids – might have been a footstool in the corner of the room.
‘Thanks. Fuck off.’ Spurs thrust a fifty-pound note at the porter.
Kicking the door shut, he and Ellen set about ripping. White silk chiffon frayed, suit buttons popped, knickers tore, a ruptured zip gave way to a splitting seam, cotton shredded and shoes spun in the air. A tatty clog took out several crystals from an antique chandelier.
‘I love you,’ Spurs breathed into her mouth, body slamming against hers as they backed up against the door. ‘I thought I’d die if I let you go without doing this,’ they spun round again, ‘without tasting you, without—’
‘I love you too.’ She shut him up with a kiss and jumped, knowing he would catch her. She could jump from the highest cliff and he would catch her.
Dilly and Rory shared another cigarette and another long kiss, and scratched their mosquito bites distractedly as Keith shambled up to refill their glasses with ‘charity’ rum. Lips not leaving Dilly’s, Rory dropped another fiver into the good-causes bucket and gave him the thumbs-up.
‘No sign of your lift, I’m afraid,’ Keith told them cheerfully, looking at his watch. ‘Ten past midnight. Stay as long as you like. Mary and I will lock up at half past, but the key’s under the lupin tub.’
Dilly and Rory kissed on, legs tangling under the picnic table as candles guttered and midges gathered around them.
Fat on untouched chops and chips, Twitch the Jack Russell let out a contented burp and curled up between their feet, snapping at moths.
‘When does Dilly get home?’
‘Oh, she’ll be tucked up in bed soon.’ Pheely pressed her cheek indulgently to the pile of clothes she was lying on as her right nipple was sucked into a frothy peak. ‘She’s not coming back here tonight.’
‘Good.’
She gurgled approvingly as Oddlode’s greatest law-suitor pressed her breasts together and took both nipples into his mouth at once, chewing playfully with his very white, very expensive veneers. The bristling hair on his lip made the soft, puckered skin around them burn sensationally. ‘Can I take a cast of your cock tonight?’
‘No.’ He kissed on.
‘But you are so magnificent.’
‘I keep telling you,’ he let her breasts slide back under her armpits and reached for his glass of Cheap White Wine, ‘I am allergic to plaster-of-paris. I got a terrible rash when I had to have my ankle set after I tore a ligament playing cricket at school.’
‘In that case I’ll have to sculpt it from memory.’
‘What are you doing?’ he asked in alarm, as she started to wriggle beneath him.
‘Memorising it.’
‘Where are we?’ Ellen asked, as she stretched across a silk-soft woven rug to a magical luminous doorway that housed all manner of treats including the small cold bottle of water she grabbed now.
‘Home.’ Spurs ran his cheek up her thigh and sank his face between her legs.
The water bottle rolled on the woven rug.
‘No, no, no, no!’ she howled, as the circles rippled inwards from her fingers and toes to his beautiful, ever-kissing, ever-tasting mouth, plunging down between his lips and tongue to a never-ending, bubbling stream of pleasure.
Later, he walked a sat in trail of kisses to her throat and she rolled over to grip him beneath her.
‘Why do you say that when you come?’ He looked up at her, reaching back for the water and handing it up to her.
‘Say what?’ She opened it with her teeth.
‘No. You say no.’
Ellen took a long draught and handed the bottle to him to drain. ‘Because I know this is make-believe,’ she said. ‘It’s not real. That’s why it’s so lovely. So easy.’
He crumpled the empty water bottle in his hand and threw it angrily at the wall. ‘It is real. Tonight it’s real. Feel.’
>
She howled with indignation as he pinched her hard on the thigh. ‘Okay,’ she grabbed his wrist, ‘I believe you. Cut that out.’
‘Not unless you say yes when you come.’ He teased, using the other hand to slap her arse. ‘Say yes, Spurs! Yes, I love you!’ He smacked her again, ‘Yes, I want to spend my life with you!’ Slap. ‘Say, yes, yes, yes!’
Shrieking with laughter, she slapped him back and they wrestled over and over on the rug until he had her pinned beneath the heavy curtains at the window – impromptu covers for another delicious coupling.
‘Yes,’ Ellen gasped. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yesssssirrreeeeeeeee!’
Spurs cupped her breasts in his hands and arched up to kiss one, then the other as he finally exploded inside her. ‘We have to stop coming together like this.’
‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’ She shifted as she felt him stiffen again almost immediately.
‘It’s you who’s making me hard on you.’
The huge windows had been thrown open, the heavy tapestry curtains dancing awkwardly to either side like a pair of foot-shuffling wallflowers at a disco, watching the best-looking couple kissing on the dance-floor. Despite the night air, the room was only just cool enough to be bearable.
Ellen watched his fingers move around her body as he familiarised himself with every curve and crease and crevice, like Pheely working with her beloved clay. He tilted his head this way and that as he traced her contours, his hair brushing softly against her skin as he examined her in minute detail, telling her how beautiful she was, that he’d never forget her.
Then, suddenly, that skin started to change, making him smile. ‘You’ve got goosepimples. Are you cold?’
‘No. Just frightened.’
‘Frightened?’
Ellen couldn’t explain. She stood up and headed into the cool, marbled bathroom, not bothering with the lights because its huge window already let in so much of the luminous moon that it already felt too bright. Her skin was jumping with fear now, crawling anxiously closer to her muscles, tweaking at her belly stud and twitching between her legs where Spurs had fitted so perfectly minutes earlier and propelled her to such crazy, uncharted heights.
It was the biggest bathroom she had ever seen. A double-sized claw-footed bath sat beneath a mullioned window looking out to Oddlode, the church spire gleaming in its lottery-funded floodlights. At the end of the room there was a blue- and white-tiled walk-in shower that could have taken a football team, with vast nozzles at either end, and even a tiled bench against one wall.
Ellen set the hot tap running in the bath, feeling the steam hit her face as she tipped in the contents of every glass bottle lined up on the window-sill and fought to breathe.
‘I’m having a piss, okay.’
Jolted, she looked round to see Spurs standing beside the lavatory; Michelangelo’s David in an upmarket water-closet.
In thirteen years with Richard, she had never seen him urinate. The very idea would have creeped her out. Yet suddenly she wanted to stick around while Spurs took a pee.
‘Sure.’
As the hard flow hit the porcelain, she turned back to the bath, blushing despite herself, dipping her hand into the scalding water.
‘Why are you frightened?’ he asked, over his shoulder.
Ellen watched the foam rise up in the bath, enchanted cloud castles full of dreams that fizzled away. ‘Because this isn’t real.’
‘It feels real to me.’
‘It does while you’re pissing in the same room, yes.’ She scooped up a frothy beard and popped it onto her chin. ‘But it can’t last.’
‘Because it’s make-believe?’ He flushed the lavatory and walked across to her, stepping straight into the bath.
‘I haven’t put any cold in yet!’ she yelped.
But Spurs sat in the scalding water, taking her face in his hands. ‘This isn’t make-believe, Ellen. We haven’t been making believe at all.’
‘What have we been making, then? Merry? Hay while the sun shines?’
He leaned towards her and bit her lower lip, the sweat that was already forming on his upper lip touching saltily against her teeth. ‘I love you.’
Ellen pulled back, staring at him. ‘Do we love each other?’
‘Oh, we do.’
‘If this is love, I didn’t love Richard.’ She started to cry.
He reared out of the bath and took her into his hot, wet, slippery arms.
‘If this is love I’ve never done it before either. Ssh, baby. Ssh.’
They hugged tightly, consumed by steam and terror.
Suddenly Spurs pulled back, staring at her intently. ‘We’re not making believe at all.’ He started to laugh. ‘We’re making love. Don’t you see? We’re making love! Two fucking virgins.’
Ellen found herself laughing too, dancing around the tiles, her face wet with steam and tears.
‘Will you come to the bower o’er the free boundless ocean?’ Spurs sang the jig he and Rory had played earlier.
‘Where the stupendous waves roll in thundering motion
Where the mermaids are seen and the fierce tempest gathers,
To love Ellen the queen,’ he bastardised, ‘the dear love of our lathers.
Will you come, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?’
The boilers in Eastlode Park chugged and rattled in overtime that night as the bath in the bridal en suite was topped up with hot water again and again. Then the shower powered out its hot flow for hours.
When they finally fell back into the bedroom, Spurs and Ellen were as wrinkled as raisins.
‘If we can’t grow old together,’ he kissed her creased hands, ‘this is the next best thing. This is what you’ll be like old. I’d love to know you old.’
‘Will you come away with me?’ She pressed her crinkly thumb to his lips and watched his silver eyes.
‘To see the World?’ He dipped his face so that the thumb traced his nose and forehead, tangling into the wet curls.
She nodded, goosebumps edging between the wrinkles.
Spurs pressed his face to her belly. ‘You are my world. I don’t care where the fuck I go or where we are. Where are we?’
‘The most expensive hotel in England.’
‘Can we stay here for ever?’
In the early hours, while Spurs napped on a chaise-longue – they still hadn’t got round to using the bed – Ellen dialled an outside line.
‘Hi,’ she whispered. ‘I booked a flight a few days ago in the name of Jamieson . . . BA373 leaving on the twentieth. Yes, thanks . . . That’s right. Is it possible to get another ticket? . . . Yes, I’ll hold.’
She looked out of the window, at a beautiful park emerging slowly from the dawn mist, its ancient fat-trunked trees and metallic lake, which had been the backdrop to ancient hunts, gallant duels and small-waisted damsels giggling beneath silk parasols as they threw scraps at swans. And the huge bedroom – once the master’s chamber in this grand old house – now housed the most beautiful and noble sight it had ever seen. Naked and glorious, lit by the blond morning haze, Spurs slept more soundly than he had in all his life.
Ellen abandoned the piped classical music in her ear to fetch the note that had been thrust beneath their door. It was a polite message from the porter, explaining that when they had fetched the Gardners’ luggage from their car, they had only found the items that were now outside the room.
Ellen opened the door a fraction and dragged in two smart carrier-bags. One contained her surf kite, an ancient jumper that Snorkel slept on when she travelled and a pair of very cracked flip-flops. The other housed her neon pink fins.
She pulled on the fins, flapped back to the phone and gave her credit-card details. Then she flapped to the window and struck a pose.
‘Do you really love me?’
Opening his silver eyes, Spurs smiled a wide, sleepy smile. Then he saw the flippers and laughed so much that he fell at her webbed feet. ‘I love you, Little Mermaid.�
� He looked up at her. ‘I love you.’
‘What are you doing?’ Spurs yawned, watching her over a freckled arm. Behind him, the sun had risen another twenty degrees above the lake and was pouring sharp gold light through his hair.
Ellen blinked in amazement, suddenly seeing the young Spurs with his blond curls and dangerous smile. For a moment, she was too blown away to speak.
‘Am I dreaming?’ He eyed her groggily, still surfacing from sleep.
‘I was the one about to ask that.’
‘Yeah, but I’m the one whose world has just turned upside down.’ He pressed his smiling mouth to his forearm.
‘No.’ She cleared her throat, wishing he hadn’t chosen quite this moment to wake up. ‘I really am doing a hand-stand.’
‘Why?’ He rolled over on the chaise-longue so that his face was upside-down too, and they regarded one another across the vast room, blood rushing to their heads.
‘Because you’re right. The world has turned upside-down. I thought it would make more sense from this angle.’
‘Does it?’
‘No.’ The sides of her mouth turned down, creating a topsy-turvy smile. ‘I still don’t want to wake up – and I haven’t slept a wink all night.’
‘I’m not surprised. Bloody hard to sleep at that angle.’ He raised his eyebrows towards the floor.
Ellen took a deep breath, forcing herself to start breaking the spell. ‘Was this a one-night stand?’ she asked.
‘A one-night hand-stand?’
‘If you like.’
‘Well, we made love standing up.’
‘True.’
‘And I have asked for your hand in marriage.’
‘You didn’t mean it.’
‘You’re wearing my ring,’ he pointed out, head still lolling from the chaise-longue. ‘Do you have any idea how desirable you look right now?’
Ellen looked down at the signet ring on her finger, hair falling across her face. Naked and inverted, she felt a blush steal across her skin. ‘I just need to know where we stand.’ Then, realising how stupid that sounded, she laughed. A moment later, Spurs had rugby-tackled her and they fell to the floor together in a shrieking tangle of legs, arms and hot skin.
