by Robert Ward
Sally dropped dollops of cream onto her cream blouse and choked when bubbles from the sparkling wine went up her nose. Inhaling smoke from her later cigarette also proved difficult and she had a coughing fit.
“I’m sorry,” she said, both hands filled with crumpled Kleenex. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight.”
“It’s called being pissed, dear,” Richard said.
“I am not. And why are you being so rotten to me?” she said. “I ain’t never done you no ’arm,” she added in a cockney accent.
“She’s an adorable little strumpet, don’t you think?” Richard said.
“Owww,” she wailed.
“You’re so lovely,” Charmian said. “I knew we’d meet lovely people in the Rat tonight. I said so, didn’t I darling? And now I’ve got a confession to make. I spilled my drink over you sort of on purpose, Richard. Aren’t I awful? Please forgive me? But it wasn’t quite on purpose. I mean I had knocked the glass over, that was quite by accident, but I took the opportunity of directing it towards you in the split second after. Do you know what I mean? It was an easy introduction, you see? Clumsy and cowardly I know. But please say you forgive me?”
“Of course,” Richard said, smiling. “But what on earth for?”
“We’d been watching the two of you for a little while,” David said. “And we thought we might like to talk to you. That’s why we sat next to you when the seats were vacated. I didn’t know of Charmian’s little ruse though. I’m sure we’d have broached an introduction somehow.”
“Darling,” Charmian said. “You make me sound so oafish.”
“Sorry, darling. Kissy-kissy little Bunnykins.”
Sally and Richard shot each other a quick glance. It was a mixture of amusement and the slightest trace of wariness. David and Charmian stopped kissing.
David stretched out his long legs and rested them on a round black leather pouf. He was wearing expensive looking soft leather boots.
“You’ll stay the night of course,” he said, before lighting a long thin cigar.
“We wouldn’t like to put you to any trouble,” Richard replied quickly. “We can get a taxi. Thanks anyway.”
“Oh, do please stay,” Charmian said. “We’d love to have you stay. It’s no trouble at all and it’s getting late and you know what taxis are like, always late and costing the earth, and David can run you back tomorrow, or whenever.”
It seemed silly to refuse and so it was decided that they should stay, and with that, a strange anxiety left them, perhaps the subconscious one of not being at home and feeling that you should be and that you can’t relax until you are. Perhaps not.
They moved to another room which David had made into a mini-cinema with seating and screen and projector. Sally wondered if Mireille acted as usherette and ice cream lady at the interval. David showed them a short but fascinating animation from Canada but refused to show them anything of his own, protesting that he would be forcing himself on a captive audience but that he would at another time if they really wanted to see something.
“Haven’t you got any movies?” Sally asked. “I’m just in the mood for something really good.”
“I’ve got hundreds of movies. What would you like?”
“Erm, have you got Pandora’s Box by Pabst?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, wow. Can we see it? I didn’t think for a moment you’d have it. I was just being facetious. I’ve heard so much about it though. Louise Brooks is supposed to be a vision.”
Louise Brooks was a vision and they all enjoyed the film which was a late silent German gothic story of decay, quite beautifully made. Mireille did not appear between reels with choc-ices and Kia-Ora however.
“How do you get these films?” Richard asked. “Not just on DVD, I mean?”
“They were available in this format long before DVD,” said David. “Many people have them.”
“There’s something about projected films. They seem more exciting, more real.”
“I think so too, Richard. That’s why I have them. I am, after all, in some way connected to the business.”
“Yes, of course you are.”
When the film was over it was deep into the early hours and they went back to the drawing room and drank brandy.
“But I wouldn’t have thought, even so, that such an obscure film would have been available,” Richard slurred.
“As you have just seen,” said David. “They are. It’s surprising what you can get if you really want it. There are thousands of prints of thousands of films around. Think of all the films that have ever been made and all of the prints that were made of them to show in cinemas around the world. What do you think happened to them? They still exist. And if you know how to get hold of them, you can.”
“Wow,” Sally said.
“I really love you, Sal,” Charmian said suddenly after a large gulp of brandy. “Sal. You’re so young and free and you’ve got a lovely boy. Make hay while the sun shines and heaven take the hindmost, and… and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Charmian curled up into a little ball and settled herself into David’s lap. She made comfort noises and then seemed to go to sleep.
“My darling is being tired and emotional I’m afraid,” David said. “But she isn’t done yet. A third wind will fill her sails. She loves company you see. I’m not enough for her. And she is so beautiful, as you see.”
The lights still illuminated the garden, which seemed darker and greener and more beautiful in the stillness of the night, with an almost full moon in the inky blackness above it, and Richard and Sally and David, with the sleeping Charmian with them, lost themselves for a moment in the silence, and it was only the chiming of the previously unnoticed or rather unheard reproduction Jacobean grandfather clock that woke them out of their trance.
The sleeping Charmian was indeed so beautiful, as David had said, with her pale long blonde hair and classical nose and eyes and mouth and everything. Everything in fact in perfect order.
“What’ll we play now?” Sally asked, herself almost asleep.
“I think we should play going to bed,” David answered.
“Good idea,” Richard said. “I can’t keep my eyes open. Sorry for being such a bore, but needs must you know? Whatever that means.”
David showed them to their room which was large and again beautifully decorated but this time in blue, and Richard and Sally lay down on the soft bed on top of the covers and began to fall into the deep sleep of the drunken.
“Richard,” Sally said in the middle of the night.
“What?”
“Cuddle me close.”
“I am.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Funny. I don’t feel it.”
“You wouldn’t. Not in your state.”
He pulled the covers over them and held her as close as he could to himself. She felt good to him, as she always did, with her smooth cool skin and lovely curves and in a moment he thought he had stroked her to sleep.
Just when he thought he had done so, a strange noise began to emanate from the depths of the house and in a moment it was outside their door. Charmian had brought with her a portable CD player and was playing some manic harpsichord music on it. She burst into their room totally naked and declared her love for them both once again.
They allowed Charmian to climb into bed with them as a matter of expediency, preferring that to a scene excluding her, and she nestled into Richard and put her arms around Sally. A moment later, David entered their room, saying he was looking for Charmian. He too ended up in their bed.
As dawn broke, they all fell asleep, and in the late morning it didn’t seem unnatural at all that they should be where they were. After breakfast, David ran Richard and Sally back home. Later that day they lay on their bed, staring at the grimy ceiling. Music was playing on the radio.
“So
mething did happen then,” Sally said suddenly without looking at him.
“Yes, I suppose it did,” he answered.
“Boring though, wasn’t it, really?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER SIX
Drew’s family owned a cottage by the sea. It stood on a cliff above a white sand beach with a winding track down to it. Facing west, the sunsets were spectacular. Elizabeth and Drew were staying for a fortnight. It was late summer.
“I can’t get it to work,” Elizabeth said to him. “This bloody aga thing.”
“I’ll do it,” Drew said. “It doesn’t respond well to people it doesn’t know.”
“But it does know me.”
“Maybe that’s the problem then.”
“Charming.”
Elizabeth had brought tins of stew with them as she wanted to heat it in the big black pot on top of the aga.
“You’re supposed to make the stew from fresh country ingredients you know?” he said.
“Well I’m not killing and skinning any rabbits if that’s what you mean. One can take things too far you know. And look, I’ve even got my scarf round my head so I look like a peasant woman.”
Drew stood behind her, head and shoulders above her, and squeezed her. She put a hand on his and patted it.
“I’ll ladle it into bowls and we’ll eat it with wooden spoons,” she said. “I’ve brought an unsliced loaf. It said it was a farmhouse loaf on the wrapper. We can tear it with our fingers and dip it into the stew. You can call me, Rosie and I’ll call you, Master, and I’ll say things like, yes, Master, tis meet for you to chide me.”
Drew smiled and looked at the top of her head adoringly.
“We’ll go for a walk along the beach later if you like,” he said.
“Yes. I’d like to.”
They wore sandals for the beach. They had it completely to themselves. The tide was a little way out but coming in and their sense of being on the edge of the two elements was keen. The wind was light and refreshing and smelled healthy. Elizabeth stepped over a little crab as it scurried across her path.
“Where does it all end?” she asked.
“The beach you mean?”
“Yes.”
“See the headland in the distance? It falls directly into the sea and there’s no way around it. You have to climb up and over.”
“What about the other way?” she asked, turning her head to look back as they walked.
“There’s another headland but smaller and there are miles of dunes. There’s a little place there for the tourists. They never come up this far though.”
“Good. We can’t be mixing with the hoi polloi can we?”
The sea sounded, rhythmically and gently lapping, and seabirds swirled and cried high above. Green and brown and yellow seaweed in weird growths lay strewn on some parts of the beach, and there were little pools of water left in the hollows in the sand by the tide. Closer to the sea the sand was wet and rippled. Where they walked it was dry and powdery.
A stronger sea breeze suddenly hit them but it was cool rather than cold and it carried with it a more intense smell of the sea, reminding them that it was a living thing. Elizabeth took a deep breath and sighed.
“Mmn, it is lovely here though, Drew. I’m glad we came. I think we needed a break, don’t you?”
“That’s why I persuaded you to come, remember?”
“Yes,” she said, quietly.
Drew strode off a little, ahead of her, and she watched him as he looked up at the cloudless but slightly grey blue sky. His walk was what is described as a loping gait she thought and he was slightly stooped about the shoulders. He usually wore glasses, but not today. He had his contacts in. She found that endearing somehow. A little human frailty. She did love him. His trousers were slightly too short she noticed.
“Drew! Drew!” she shouted.
He stopped and turned to face her with his hands in his pockets. She ran to catch him up.
“Let’s stay in tonight? I don’t want to go to the pub. Let’s stay in and listen to the night. It’ll be so quiet and we can leave the big windows open and smell the sea. I’d love to do that.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling. “That’s why we came, isn’t it? We can go to the pub anytime.”
“It’s weird in there anyway,” she said. “They look at you as though you’ve got two heads. When in fact, it is they who have the two heads being inbred yokels.”
The pub she spoke of was, the Lamb, in the nearest village, three miles away. They had been in there a couple of times on a short previous visit but it was very much a locals pub and they only thought of going there out of the habit of going somewhere.
They sat on some rocks, having walked for a mile, nearly to the headland, and looked out to sea. There was a single yellow and white yacht-sail on the horizon. Elizabeth shaded her eyes with her hand.
“Sea air makes you hungry, don’t you find?” she said. “We can have our stew when we get back, Master, after I’ve milked the cow. Have we got a stool with three legs and a pail?”
“Yes, I think we have actually,” Drew said. “But we haven’t got a cow.”
They laughed together and she linked arms with him.
“Well, you should get one. A nice brown one that chews daisies. We’ll call her Tinkerbell. We should get a kite as well. We could fly it from the cliff. A bright red one.”
“Yes, that would be nice. I’d like to watch you run holding a kite,” he said.
“Drew.”
“What?”
She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
“Nothing,” she said.
Although they had been here once before, this seemed like the first time, as on the previous occasion it had only been for two nights and it was in the early spring when the weather was more like winter and they had only been on the beach for what seemed like a moment before they were driven back to the cottage by the cold wind and the rain. That was why they had gone to the Lamb. They hadn’t felt comfortable with the place or with themselves. This time they hoped, and it seemed, that things might possibly be different.
The cottage was white, with a thick black pitch roof that made it look thatched under the outer covering but in fact wasn’t. It was surrounded by a white picket fence and Elizabeth thought it looked like how she imagined Aunt Betsey’s cottage looked in David Copperfield.
It had four bedrooms and was really more like a house than a cottage. It was supplied with both gas and electricity and was equipped with all modern appliances and one could have lived there permanently without feeling any sense of isolation from the civilized world. In another sense, however, it was remote and quiet and everything that a country retreat should be, and so it combined the best of both worlds.
Drew had loved the place since he was a child and now Elizabeth began to be fond of it also, without really knowing why. It provided a place where they could be different she thought, and a place where they could be the same, for him. The same as they had been when they first met.
They ate a little of the stew, which as Drew had expected was rather horrible, and Elizabeth grimaced at the saltiness of it, though she didn’t say anything. The bread was nice though. They drank draught bitter beer and later they sat at the open windows facing the sea. The Sun was sinking into the water and the colours it made were amazing.
“I have a nice life,” she said. “What more could I ask for?”
“But you’re not content.”
“I don’t know. It’s like I want something, but I don’t know what it is.”
“I bore you, don’t I,” he said, staring at the horizon.
She darted a look at him.
“Oh no, Drew. It isn’t you, honestly. But I make you unhappy, don’t I?”
“I can’t imagine being without you. You make me happy every moment I’m with you. You’re one of those people who just can’t help being adored. But I know you’re not happy with me. That’s what makes me unhappy. I kn
ow you’re going to leave me.”
She didn’t say anything but watched a seagull as it swirled about high above.
“It’s warm, isn’t it,” she said after a long moment. “We’ll have to sleep without the covers on tonight I think.”
Drew started to cry.
It had been a strange exchange. Nothing had led up to it, and previously they had both been feeling optimistic. It was perhaps a mood between them which was always there but oftentimes hidden. Elizabeth listened to him but couldn’t think of anything to say.
The next day they went in the other direction along the beach, past the seemingly endless dunes and around the small headland, to the little tourist spot which was accessible from the main road by a track. They found the number of people there shocking after their loneliness.
Koo Koo the Bird Girl splashed and flapped through the water of the rock-pool under the searing heat of a naked afternoon Sun, pursued by a pack of small squealing children.
The clear water around the green and slimy rocks covered her red rubber feet and legs to just below her knees but did not cool her, and she melted beneath her heavy suit of white feathers and she gasped for warm still air through her yellow wooden beak.
As the children gambolled tirelessly about her, she dutifully leaped about and waved her weary arms to flap the covering wings, and when she could dance no longer in the heavy water she staggered out and ran back across the flat white sand of the beach away from the sea, leaving the rock-pool to the crabs, the children running after her in a long line, pursuing a strange dying creature back to the sand dunes and the long grasses where the red and white striped beach huts stood and the ice cream vans dispensed their cool sweet goo.
Seabirds swirled and squawked high above in the thin air of the blinding blue sky, soaring through chalky wisps of misty cloud as the Bird Girl below passed an old battered top hat around the people as they queued for ice creams and candyfloss and doughnuts and fizzy lemonade, and then she trotted along the line of huts and spread-out picnic blankets offering her hat with an exaggerated bow.
