by Lucy Lord
‘With friends like her …’ I mutter under my breath.
‘The door was open, so I let myself in,’ the newcomer is saying, as Mum ushers her into the garden.
‘Bella’s come down for the weekend with some of her chums. We’re going to have quite a full house.’
‘How divine,’ says Jilly. Then, as her gaze falls on Ben (and, to a lesser degree, Damian), ‘How di-viiiine.’
Jilly Templeton lives in Chelsea. Five to ten years younger than my mother, she has been married three times and is permanently on the lookout for her fourth victim. Absurdly well-connected, she works in what she refers to as ‘networking, darling’. Mum met her when they were both involved in that pyramid-selling craze for well-spoken women that swept SW3 and the Home Counties a few years ago. Until it ran its inevitable course, and a lot of irate ladies lost rather a lot of money. Mum and Jilly, by virtue of being in it from the beginning, actually made rather a lot of money, and, after giving me and Max £500 each to ‘spend on something totally frivolous’, blew the lot on a month in the south of France. There the friendship was forged.
Jilly strides across the lawn towards us. Naturally slim and athletic, she works very hard at keeping herself trim, and likes to show off the results in tight jeans, high-heeled boots, little T-shirts and fitted leather jackets. Mutton dressed as mutton, if you will, so ubiquitous has the look become amongst women of a certain age and type. Her expensively blonde hair is short and artfully messy. A loyal disciple of Dr Sebagh, her face has seen more knives than the victim in Murder on the Orient Express, though she really should have laid off the collagen lip-job, I think as I look at her now. She looks as if she’s been punched in the mouth.
‘Hi Bella darling,’ she says, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to these perfectly yummy young men?’
‘Hands off, Jilly, they’re taken,’ I say, laughing. ‘This is my boyfriend Ben …’ How proud I feel when I say these words, even if he is a no-good, lecherous tosser, just like my dad. Jilly looks at me with something akin to respect. ‘And this is Damian, my friend Poppy’s boyfriend. And this is Poppy,’ I finish, thinking but you don’t really care about that. ‘This is Jilly, everyone.’
‘Hi Jilly,’ they all say as she does the rounds. Ben embarks on his second-nature routine flirting, then stops abruptly when he sees the look I give him.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I ask, reaching for a glass.
‘No offence, darling, but I’ve brought my own,’ says Jilly, producing half a bottle of Scotch from her handbag. ‘You’d be better off drinking your own piss for all the kick you’ll get from a Pimm’s.’
‘I’m pretty sure Mum spikes it with gin,’ I start, but Jilly isn’t listening.
‘Can I cadge a ciggie, please? Thanks, darling girl,’ as I give her a Marlboro Light. ‘I’ll get some from the village later.’ Of course you will.
‘How was your journey?’ asks Poppy.
‘Bloody nightmare,’ drawls Jilly. ‘Pigs tried to do me for speeding, but I outran them.’
‘You gave the police the slip?’ asks Damian, laughing. ‘Excellent.’
‘You don’t know the half of it, young man,’ says Jilly archly, winking and stroking his knee.
‘Where did Mum get to?’ I ask, looking around. I haven’t had enough to drink to cope with Jilly without her quite yet.
‘I’m here, darling,’ Mum calls from the kitchen. ‘Our next guest has arrived.’
‘Fresh blood – I hope he’s fit,’ says Jilly, and we all laugh.
My mother floats across the lawn, followed by a very tall, large man. His balding head has been shaved to domed, egg-like splendour and his eyes are hidden by a pair of expensive-looking shades. A tropical print short-sleeved shirt hangs, tent-like, over his belly. His lower flanks look uncomfortably cramped, in tight white jeans and Italian loafers over which his fattish feet clearly long to spill. A flashy, diamond-encrusted Rolex completes the ensemble. He is sweating profusely.
‘Everyone, this is Bernie Bradshaw,’ says Mum. ‘Bernie, meet my daughter Bella.’
Bernie lowers his shades to take a better look at me on introduction. His eyes are small, sparkly and very humorous. ‘Lovely girl,’ he rasps. ‘Nearly as beautiful as your mother.’ He’s a dead ringer, aurally, for Frank Butcher in EastEnders (RIP).
Once the introductions are over, Mum says, in a ridiculously girly voice for a woman who used to tell me to despise women who act differently in front of men, ‘Oh! I’ve forgotten to light the barbecue! I’ve made a few salads, but I thought the men should be in charge of the meat!’
Bernie, Ben and Damian puff out their chests in suitably hunter-gatherer fashion. Bernie looks as if he wants to drag my mum by her hair to the nearest cave and give her a good seeing-to.
‘I’ll do the sausages,’ says Damian. ‘Sausages are my speciality.’
Mum winks at me.
‘The sausages are in the fridge, Damian love. There’s also some lamb and a couple of poussins.’ Thus the boys are dispatched to bring meat from the kitchen while Bernie sets about lighting the barbecue, down by the apple tree, out of earshot.
‘Mum!’ I say, excited for her. ‘Who is he? How did you meet him?’
‘At a dinner party a few weeks ago up at the manor. I think he’s rather nice.’ She’s blushing. Bless.
‘Bernie Bradshaw …’ Jilly is musing. ‘Where do I know that name from?’
‘You haven’t screwed him, have you?’ asks Mum, looking anxious.
‘No no, darling heart, far too fat for me. And too common. But … oh yes, I’ve just remembered – he was on the Sunday Times Rich List last year. Well, Liv, he may be fat and vulgar, but he is absolutely loaded. You go girl!’ This last bit delivered in the manner of the feisty African American momma Jilly patently isn’t.
‘Shhh,’ says Mum, putting her finger to her lips and laughing. ‘Please don’t refer to him like that. Not all of us think only about body shape and wealth. He makes me laugh.’
‘Laughing all the way to the bank,’ says Jilly.
‘So how did he make his money?’ asks Poppy.
‘Oh I don’t know,’ says Mum vaguely, as Jilly chimes in, ‘Bit of this, bit of that. Officially import and export, but the word from people in the know …’ She taps her nose and leaves a dramatic pause. ‘… is ARMS AND DRUGS. Or possibly professional malpractice. You know, FRAUD.’ I don’t imagine she intended the bathos.
‘Just shut up, for once, please Jill.’ Mum looks pissed off.
Blithely Jilly changes the subject. ‘So how is that gorgeous boy of yours? I’ve always had a soft spot for Maxy. Are you sure there’s no way I can convert him?’
‘It’s not a lifestyle choice …’ I start defensively, then laugh. She’s taking the piss, and her heart is in the right place.
‘He’s wonderful as ever,’ says Mum. ‘My boy …’ She drifts off into an irritating trance. ‘He’s doing frightfully well, you know. There was an article in Vogue describing him as one of the young movers and shakers on the London party scene. Just like his father used to be.’ Grrrrrr. It’s only with reference to Max that Mum can be nice about Dad.
‘Anyway, enough about my lot,’ says Mum. ‘What’s new with you, Jill? Any men on the horizon?’
‘Actually, there is one,’ she says coyly. ‘He can’t get enough of me – keeps taking me away on terribly stylish trips. Cape Town last week, Buenos Aires next month. And he buys me the most divine underwear from Myla. He says I have the body of a twenty-five-year-old.’
‘Maybe she wants it back,’ Poppy whispers to me and I try not to giggle.
‘He’s married, isn’t he?’ says Mum. ‘You’ve got that guilty look about you. How many times have I told you that’s a one-way ticket to Nowheresville?’ Where does she pick these expressions up?
‘Yes, but his wife is dark and I’m blonde, so I have a distinct advantage over her,’ says Jilly, bloody rudely in my opinion, considering the current c
ompany. ‘You and I are so lucky to be blondes, aren’t we Poppy?’
Poppy just looks at her, not knowing what to say, and my mother kicks me under the table. ‘Don’t think luck had anything to do with it, do you?’ says Bernie, who has returned from his barbecue-lighting exertions. ‘Spot peroxide a mile off, I can.’
A few hours later, The Mamas & the Papas have been succeeded by Carole King, Carly Simon and Creedence Clearwater Revival, and we’ve all been fed like sultans. Mum’s ‘few salads’ were couscous with pistachios, rosewater and mint, some courgettes she chargrilled yesterday with a lemon, garlic and thyme dressing, and a fabulous, smoky baba ghanoush. She shot herself in the foot, in the ‘oh, I’m so unprepared’ schtick by having spatchcocked the poussins and dry-marinated the lamb with garlic, chilli, cumin and coriander. She dragged me and Max round many a souk in Marrakesh when we were little. We moaned at the time but have certainly reaped the culinary benefits over the years.
‘You’re not just the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, Princess,’ says Bernie. ‘But you cook like an angel too.’
‘You did the meat,’ says Mum, ‘which was perfect.’ She catches me looking at her, then says, ‘Can you help me clear the table, darling?’
Inside, I start to expostulate: ‘Mum! What’s up? I can see he’s a very nice man, but you don’t have to lose your personality completely, you know. You haven’t mentioned your poetry all day.’
‘Truth is, I’m stuck. The only thing I can think of to rhyme with pudenda is agenda, which sounds horribly business-like. Also, the English language is in dire need of more words with which to express the ultimate delight. “Come” is pretty workaday – ghastly if you spell it “cum” – and orgasm’s just too clinical.’
‘Rhymes with spasm though,’ I laugh. ‘But come on Mummy, you’re prevaricating …’
Mum gives me a look. ‘All right Belle, I’m enjoying a man’s company for the first time in God-knows-how-long, and I’m doing what they taught me at Lucie Clayton. Being an independent-minded free spirit never got me anywhere with your father, after all.’
Back outside, the mood is raucous. We finished the Pimm’s hours ago and have got through several bottles of wine since then.
‘I’m feeling quite pissed, Olivia,’ says Damian, whose shades are looking ever so slightly wonky. ‘What did you put in that Pimm’s?’
‘Oh just a bit of gin,’ says Mum, wafting her hands about.
Bernie looks sheepish.
‘I put some in too. Sorry, Princess, I thought a posh bird like you wouldn’t know how to make a proper drink.’ Instead of being cross, my mum simpers. Wow.
The gin-spiked Pimm’s and blazing sunshine seem to have gone to all our heads as the conversation becomes increasingly silly. Jilly has been flirting outrageously with Ben and Damian all afternoon, having received very short shrift when she tried it on with Bernie, who seems absolutely besotted with my mum. It’s turning into one of those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer that Nat King Cole sang about.
I’m feeling much happier than I have for ages. Ben has been wonderful company all day, warm and loving towards me, charmingly polite to Mum, blokily pally-wally with Bernie. Even his flirting with Jilly I can live with, as it takes a brave man to snub her constant stream of innuendo. I look around contentedly. On a day like today it’s heavenly here. At the top of the garden the mill stream cascades over the rocks, evening out as the lawn gets flatter into a fairly sizeable pool. On less perfect days than this, the old weeping willow provides shelter for the family of ducks that resides there. Today, it gives an intensely green shade, almost unbearably picturesque.
‘The water’s starting to look mightily inviting,’ I announce. ‘I think I fancy a swim. Anyone going to join me?’
Damian, Ben and Poppy are all up for it, so we stagger upstairs, laughing and talking nonsense, to change into our cossies.
‘This really is turning into the most blissful day,’ says Ben, in Brideshead mode, as we reach the first-floor landing. ‘Your mother’s a star, Bella. And her new chap is priceless!’
‘I think he’s great. And he seems to genuinely adore her.’
‘Like I genuinely adore you,’ says Ben, taking my face in his hands and kissing me. ‘Am I forgiven yet?’
‘Of course you are,’ I smile back at him, so happy I think I might explode. ‘Come on, let’s get changed. The stream is beckoning loudly.’
We go into my old bedroom to find Poppy chopping out four hefty lines of coke on the kidney-shaped dressing table Dad bought for my eleventh birthday. Its pink lacy skirt has seen better days.
Jesus, Pops. Do you ever let up?
I’m about to protest – this is my mother’s house, for crying out loud – when Ben cries exultantly,
‘A girl after my own heart! Good thinking, Pops.’ She hands him a straw and he takes a hearty sniff.
‘For fuck’s sake, Poppy,’ says Damian, pushing his shades off his face and into his black hair. ‘I thought we were having a weekend off.’
‘Oh don’t be such a bloody killjoy,’ says Poppy. ‘You’re no fun any more.’ She makes to cuff him on the shoulder and he grabs her little fist. She shakes him off testily, blowing on her hand as if he’s hurt her. Damian stares at her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have to have coke for every fucking occasion, you know. It’s quite possible to enjoy ourselves without it.’ He looks angry and genuinely concerned. ‘Or isn’t it these days?’
‘Listen, darling,’ Poppy hisses back. ‘I have spent the last year watching my father lose his mind. If I want to have a bit of fun blowing my own mind, then I bloody well will. You don’t mind us doing it here, do you Belles?’
It’s blatant emotional blackmail, but I feel so guilty about not having been a better friend since hooking up with Ben that I shake my head.
For a moment Damian glares at her, then his sangfroid returns and he shrugs.
‘All right then. Do as you please, my silly little cokehead. You can leave me out though. I’m having a good enough time as it is.’
Poppy laughs and kisses him on the shoulder she’s just tried to punch.
‘All the more for us then! Belles?’
‘Not for me thanks.’ It really does seem seedy when I look at it all chopped out on my old pink-skirted dressing table.
Poppy and Ben hoover up the last two lines, then she and Damian go next door into Max’s old bedroom to get changed. I hope that’s the end of the bickering.
I devour Ben with my eyes as he changes out of his jeans and into his trunks. I cannot imagine ever taking his beauty for granted. I put my arms around his lovely warm brown body from behind. Moving them further down, I feel his cock stiffen.
‘Bella,’ he groans, turning round. He pushes me onto the floor and shoves a cursory couple of fingers inside me. Finding me wet already, he mutters, ‘God, you’re sexy. You always want it, don’t you?’
Only with you, I think (not entirely accurately), but then all thoughts are gone as he thrusts into me. I can feel his cock getting even bigger and harder as he goes deeper and deeper. I start bucking against him, wrapping my legs around him, helpless against the sheer force and momentum of the sensations gathering into an explosive knot inside me. Within less than a minute we have both come. My mother’s right. There should be a better word to ‘express the ultimate delight’.
We collapse in a pile of sweaty limbs, laughing into each other’s eyes.
‘Come on, we’d better get out there,’ says Ben, kissing me for the first time since I instigated the quickie. It’s a while since he paid me the kind of mesmerizing sexual attention he did that first time in Glastonbury, but I try not to dwell on it. I pull my bikini on and, hand-in-hand, we make our way to the garden.
‘Wham bam thank you ma’am!’ shouts Jilly coarsely from the table. She is staggeringly drunk now.
‘I was just showing Ben some of my old drawings,’ I say primly.
‘Showing him your etchings?’ sn
iggers Poppy, who seems to have recovered her good humour. ‘Come on Belles, you can do better than that!’
Everyone laughs at this, me and Ben included.
‘Right,’ says Poppy. ‘Last one in’s a sissy!’ And she runs down the lawn as fast as her dainty little feet will carry her, performing a perfect swallow dive into the mill pool. She’s been here enough times to know exactly where it’s deep enough for diving. Ben takes a run and dive-bombs her. She squeals dramatically. Damian and I follow, leaping into the pool with abandon. The water is cool and delicious against my skin. My friends’ faces are green in the shade of the old willow as we muck about, splashing each other and generally not acting much like grown-ups.
Then, ‘OK chaps, here I come,’ barks Jilly, and before we know it, she has flung off her clothes with a whoop of glee and is running, totally starkers, down the lawn towards us. Her body is very impressive for her age (actually for any age), though as she gets closer you can see the telltale scars on the underside of her tits. Splash!
‘Just another quiet day in the countryside,’ says an amused voice.
‘Maxy darling!’ cries Mum. ‘We weren’t expecting you …’
‘So I see,’ he laughs, taking in the scene. ‘But I was helping Andy and Alison out with wedding planning – you know they’re getting married at Hambledon Hall, Mum? So we thought we’d pop over and say hello.’
From the pond, I see Andy and Skinny Alison walking just behind Max. The three of them look very tall from this angle. The sun is illuminating Max’s curls, so he looks even more be-haloed than ever. My sainted brother. Even from here I can sense Alison’s disapproval. Fuck, I still haven’t replaced her shirt. Still, I can’t imagine she’s losing any sleep over it. Today she’s exuding scowling Parisian chic in stone-coloured Capri pants and a Breton-inspired T-shirt in muted shades of khaki, grey and lavender. She likes her horizontal stripes, does Skinny. A lavender scarf knotted at her thin neck adds a jauntiness entirely at odds with the rest of her miserable demeanour.
