by Clare Ashton
Her mother put her big soft arm around her shoulder and squeezed her into her bosom. ‘You are such a romantic fool.’
‘No I’m not Mama. I’m not expecting her to change her mind or anything stupid like that.’
‘No, true. But you play the jilted lover like a Hollywood movie star.’
Pia deflated.
‘First you think you have this love at first sight with this woman.’ Her mother threw up her hands. ‘Then she scorns you for someone and you are the wronged woman still holding a flame.’
‘A candle,’
‘Whatever.’
‘I’m not stupid enough to think she’d ever want to be with me,’ Pia muttered. ‘But it’s hard seeing her every day. Sometimes I see glimpses of her, how she was that night. She is a nice person Mama.’
Her mother squeezed her tight. ‘I know mija. Please try to move on though. Don’t mistake this woman being professional and friendly for anything else.’
-
Pia pushed round the revolving doors into the great hall reception of the Savoy and took a tentative step inside. It seemed a different place today. Daylight was harsh and the shoes of guests clipped across the marble floors. She scanned around the sofas trying to find Cate but they were only filled with guests arriving or getting ready for departure.
‘She’s in Kasper’s,’ a deep voice said behind her.
The familiar doorman stood to attention with his hands behind his back, not a muscle moving, not even a twitch of his moustache. He peeped at her out of the corner of his eye and winked.
‘Thank you.’ And Pia shuffled off unnerved in search of Kasper’s Seafood Bar and Grill.
The Art Deco style restaurant shone from every corner. Twisting chandeliers graced the ceilings and Pia was almost afraid to step on the dark marble floor that reflected her rather less polished self. Turquoise leather club chairs around low tables seated a mixed clientele from older couples dressed to the nines to young tourists in awe of their surroundings. In the middle of the room was an elegant oval bar with shards of glass lighting hanging from above. She spotted Cate, refined in a simple slim-fitting linen dress, reaching out a hand to greet an elderly lady sat at the bar.
Cate glanced up as Pia approached, her expression difficult to read. Her companion turned around, following her gaze. The woman was dressed in riding boots, a silk shirt and what Cate had described as slacks. She also wore a gleeful smile of recognition on her face.
It took a moment or two for Pia to recognise the erotica reader from the Tube. ‘Oh my God.’ Pia was unreserved with surprise. ‘It’s Spank My Mistress.’
Pia blushed as several people in the restaurant exclaimed their displeasure and Cate turned away. The woman, however, laughed, threw back her head and clapped her hands together. ‘What a wonderful surprise, and such an unusual greeting.’ The woman bear-hugged her. ‘Ed is a clever woman. What a treat to have you two for lunch.’ And she clasped Pia’s hand with her bony fingers and led her to sit down.
‘You must call me Lottie. “Spank My Mistress” is such a mouthful.’ She grinned. ‘Although simply “mistress” does sound fine, don’t you think?’
Pia sniggered.
‘Should we sit down and make a start.’ Cate frowned and took a notebook from her bag.
‘Oh pish. Plenty of time for work.’ Lottie swiped at her hands. ‘Let’s have a bloody good lunch first.’
They tucked themselves away on a corner bench seat. Lottie sat in the middle, her hands spread across the polished dark-wood table, snug between Pia and Cate.
‘Isn’t this splendid.’ Lottie sighed.
For Pia some of the shine was taken away by the familiar view from the window. The river-side restaurant had the same vista she’d cherished from the hotel room. She blushed at the memory, ashamed of how she’d felt about Cate at the time. The warmth she thought they’d shared contrasted so much with Cate’s indifference now.
Cate sat with her back to the window and busied herself with the menu.
‘Would you like something from the seafood bar to start?’ Cate asked. ‘I don’t think Ed would mind if we stretched to a small amount of caviar.’
Lottie chuckled. ‘That’s more the spirit. Oh, speaking of spirit, where’s the wine list?’ Lottie scanned down the menu and abandoned it with a flick of the wrist. ‘Oh, I’ll have their Sancerre. I don’t have expensive taste.’
Pia glimpsed the price of the wine and kept her amusement to herself. Several meals could be bought for the same price as that vintage.
‘What about an oyster as an entrée?’ Cate suggested.
‘Oh dear no.’ Lottie wrinkled her nose. ‘You know, I heard a top seafood chef describe them once as “a quintessential mouthful of the sea”. Well my dear, I had a mouthful of the sea at Brighton once. This was in the days before anyone worried about sewage. And I didn’t like it one bit. I’ll go for the old sturgeon ova.’
Cate nodded. A smile couldn’t be further from her lips. Pia was torn between laughing with Lottie and wanting to hide under the table to avoid Cate’s frostiness.
‘Do you know,’ Lottie said, ‘I fancy the seafood platter. Would you gals like to order one with me? They’re such a frightful faff to cook at home.’
Pia grinned and nodded eager to fill her growling tummy. Cate folded away her menu with acquiescence.
-
‘Now.’ Lottie reached out to hold their hands on each side. ‘You must tell me all about it.’
‘About what?’ Pia said.
‘How you finally got together. Was it that night I saw you on the Tube?’
‘Oh.’ Pia blushed. Cate had twitched her hand clean away off the table. ‘No. No. We’re not together.’
‘Is that so?’ Lottie sat back.
She opened her mouth for further enquiry but the arrival of the waiter with the seafood platter interrupted her. Pia breathed out with relief and paid great attention to the food, fearing what Cate’s expression might be.
The shining oval dish presented all shapes and sizes of lobster, crab, mussels, some shells Pia guessed might have been clams and then other creatures that she had to group under the heading of a-bit-like-a-snails but she hoped weren’t. It was accompanied by a set of cutlery that would make a gynaecologist envious.
The waiter distributed a nutcracker, skewer and other implements of torture, which clinked together in front of Pia. He served a sample of each species and left with no hint as to how to defend oneself with the weaponry provided.
‘Gosh. What a spread,’ Lottie enthused. Delight shone on her face and she brandished her cutlery with zeal.
With a simple flick of a knife, Cate extracted the cooked insides from a crustacean that Pia couldn’t further identify. She squeezed on a drop of lemon juice and ate it with a dainty fork.
Pia stared at her plate with terror. What on earth was the etiquette for eating such a dish? She picked what she recognised as a fish knife and tried to serve herself a prawn that, although cooked, still managed to evade capture.
‘So why the devil are you two not an item?’ Lottie took a sip of her wine and regarded Cate and Pia. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more suited couple.’
Pia blushed at the return of the conversation to their non-existent relationship. Cate frowned into her lunch and Pia was left to stutter ‘No, Cate’s nothing, not anything, really nothing like me. Rich. Talented. Elegant.’ Pia struggled. ‘And married,’ she said relieved to find the words that would end Lottie’s interest. ‘She’s very, very married.’
‘Well are you my dear?’ Lottie said surprised. Cate nodded in solemn response and Lottie raised her eyebrows with puzzlement.
They all turned to their plates: Lottie with gusto, Cate with cool finesse and Pia with trepidation. She took a fork and something like her mother’s crochet needle and prodded at her food.
‘But you found you liked each other so much that you decided to work together?’
Pia jumped at Lottie’s return to the
awkward subject matter. Still Cate did not respond.
‘Erm no.’ Pia shuffled. ‘We both started new jobs, which happened to be for the same magazine.’
‘Hmm. What a coincidence.’
Pia managed to mumble some kind of agreement and continued to push shellfish around her plate.
‘If that isn’t the universe trying to tell you something, I don’t know what is.’ Lottie said it to no-one in particular, and Pia couldn’t bear to see Cate’s reaction.
‘You do realise we’re here to interview you?’
Pia looked up, shocked to hear Cate speak. She was even more surprised to see the beginnings of a smile on her lips.
Lottie dropped her cutlery with a crash and burst out laughing. ‘Indeed. You must forgive an old lady’s obstinacy. The trouble is, the older you get the less time and patience you have. So when you see a couple so right for each other you think why the Dickens don’t they just get on with it?’
Cate nodded in acknowledgement and returned to her lunch while Pia squirmed next to Lottie.
Pia tried to whisper, ‘She’s really beyond me. Please don’t go on—’
‘Oh don’t be so silly.’ Lottie cut her off with a rasping breath. ‘You’re not so dissimilar at all, and the bits that are different are the spice.’
Lottie gave her a wide, knowing smile. ‘Now eat up.’ She picked up a lobster from the platter and tore off a claw for Pia. ‘Your soul mate is getting twitchy to start work.’
Pia grinned and was grateful to accept a piece of food she could eat with her hands and something as familiar as a fork.
-
‘Well my dears.’ Lottie made herself comfortable in a corner sofa of the Thames foyer. ‘I suppose we should get down to business.’
The low-lit room was almost empty except for a gentleman who read the Financial Times and two more who played chess. Pia searched for the best backdrop for Lottie’s portrait. The centre of the room was dominated by an ornate gazebo. Its iron frame housed a grand piano and Pia trotted over to check the lighting.
‘I don’t know if your readers will be that interested,’ she heard Lottie continue, ‘but do you recall an actress Diana Waters? Long before your time of course.’
‘Yes I do,’ Cate replied. ‘She won an Oscar for The Wild Horses in the sixties didn’t she?’
‘Yes, and about time. Of course, she’d done fabulous work up until then: film noir and screwball comedies, all overlooked by the Academy.’
Cate breathed out a laugh. ‘I loved her in Huntress of the Night. She was exquisite and menacing.’
Pia was unable to keep her interest to herself. ‘Oh I know her.’ She sat down and leaned towards Lottie. ‘She’s one of my favourite black and white film actresses.’
‘Is she?’ Lottie raised a mischievous eyebrow. ‘I’m sure she would have loved you.’
‘Yes, there’s something about her in Huntress of the Night.’ Pia paused in thought. ‘That look she has. You can’t take your eyes off her. I don’t know what it is.’
‘My dear.’ Lottie patted her knee. ‘That will be your gaydar going blip blip blip.’
‘No,’ Pia said wide-eyed. She peeked at Cate for confirmation but Cate looked stunned. ‘The blonde bombshell? She was a lesbian?’
‘Indeed.’ Lottie smirked. ‘She was a lesbian, but she wasn’t a natural blonde, and I should know.’
Pia took a moment to understand what Lottie had insinuated, and when the penny dropped her eyes grew wider still.
‘No!? No way.’
Lottie nodded. ‘I was her bit of fluff. Her bit on the side. For fifty years.’
It took a good few moments for both Cate and Pia to first close their mouths, second regain any capacity for thought before, third, either could speak.
Cate was the first to recover. ‘Wasn’t she married to Ronald Harris?’
‘Yes. He was her first love. They married young when she was still scared of the feelings she had for women.’
‘But they remained married until she died?’ Cate stuttered.
Lottie was amused at their reaction. ‘Their official residence was in Notting Hill. But when Di wasn’t working, she lived with me.’
‘Did he know?’ asked Pia. She struggled to conceive of how everyone could be happy in such an arrangement.
‘Of course. Difficult not to over fifty years. The pretty boy wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but even he would have spotted that.’
‘But was he happy with it?’ Pia wondered at having to share a woman he must have loved for so long. ‘Why didn’t she leave?’
‘Oh dear.’ Lottie cupped Pia’s face in her hands. ‘I see this is troubling you.’ She leaned back in her chair and gazed at the ceiling in thought. ‘It was beneficial to all parties that they stay married. Ron loved her. He loved to be seen and photographed with her. It did his film career no end of good. Di got her beard and to keep her career and I was a kept woman. A very happy lady of leisure.’
‘Money,’ Pia whispered, disappointed.
She saw Cate twitch. Pia couldn’t see her face but Cate sat rigid, her entwined fingers white on her lap.
‘Money?’ Lottie said. ‘Yes, in a way. You have to remember this was a very different era. Homosexuality was illegal, and although it didn’t include lesbians we weren’t popular.’
‘I know,’ Pia added. ‘But I would have found it difficult to live a lie like that.’
Lottie smiled indulgently at her. ‘You live in a time of unprecedented rights and freedom. You have the ideals of the young and free. It’s easy to be noble when you can’t be thrown in prison for unzipping your trousers with the wrong sex in the bushes of Hampstead Heath.’
Pia frowned, ‘But I have those privileges because some didn’t hide and were honest and noble.’
‘True.’ Lottie was serious for a moment. ‘I had the privilege of wealth, and it wasn’t one I wanted to give up.’
The tension from Cate was palpable, which made Pia’s irritation worse. She stood up, feeling awkward. ‘I’m sorry. It’s hit a nerve. It’s none of my business.’ Pia couldn’t raise a smile. ‘I’ll let you get on with your interview.’ And she stumbled away from the table.
Pia wandered around the room attempting to walk off her frustration under the pretence of testing for portraits. She was annoyed at herself for upsetting Lottie and she was annoyed with Cate. She didn’t know when she would stop being annoyed with Cate.
The interview seemed to be going well at least. Cate and Lottie sat together in conspiracy. The range of emotions that quivered across Lottie’s face was extraordinary: joy, pride, anger, fear even. Pia began to shoot even though the light was poor. She flicked through the camera screen and the images were coarse in the low light. But it suited Lottie’s story.
An idea flickered in her brain and, with a feeling of romantic justice, she took out her old camera. It contained her last ever roll of Neopan black and white film.
It was thrilling to take a few precious pictures without the ability to reel off a hundred and check the results in an instant. She watched Cate and Lottie through the lens, not daring to blink in case she missed that moment. And then she saw it.
Cate leaned forward and pulled Lottie into an embrace. Cate’s face was out of view but Lottie looked skywards. Her eyes glistened with tears and her expression hovered on a knife edge between despair and elation.
Pia pressed the shutter and pulled the camera away, filled with cold, nervous energy and praying the old film didn’t let her down.
She fumbled backup shots on her digital camera, but she knew she hadn’t captured such a moment with that.
-
Cate and Lottie stood together and Pia joined them, a little sheepish.
‘Good bye my dears.’ Lottie smiled with a tear in her eye. ‘The interview has moved me more than I thought it would and it has stirred old waters.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Pia said. ‘I was rude.’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s made m
e think, and although that’s not something I’m overly fond of, it is necessary sometimes.’ Lottie sniffed. ‘But I am tired now. Until next time. I’m in no doubt that I shall see you two together one day.’ And she waved over her shoulder.
They both watched until she had left the room and was no longer in sight. Pia remained staring after her, dreading what Cate would say. She knew she was watching her. Pia wondered if Cate would berate her for ruining the interview or for being just plain rude. She wondered how much Cate cringed at bringing such an uncouth person to this hotel for a one night stand.
She edged round to brave Cate’s scrutiny. What she found surprised her. Cate flicked her gaze between Pia’s eyes as if afraid of what she thought.
‘I’d like to show you something. It might explain things to you. I doubt it’ll change your opinion of me, but I would like to try all the same.’
Pia was astounded and stared.
Cate reached out and held her hand. ‘Please?’
Chapter 15.
They took the Tube to Holland Park and headed on foot in the direction of Ladbroke Grove.
‘This is the way I walked home from school,’ Cate said.
As they headed further north, the slick veneer of Kensington borough began to peel away. Cars changed from Jaguars in private parking to Minis on the street. All the while, along every street they walked, there loomed a soaring seventies tower block.
‘I went to a private girls’ school. I think I must have been the only one to walk home, and certainly the only one in this direction. I can’t remember where the other scholarship pupils lived.’
They passed yellow-brick terraces and local shops with rusting vans parked outside until all that was left in front of them was the concrete mass of the block of flats.
‘This is where we lived.’ Cate peered up at the thirty-one storeys that dominated the skyline. The huge tower was a formidable grey presence even on a summer’s day. Its striking service tower stood guard over the rows and rows of boxes for people. With a twinge of reluctance, Pia followed Cate through the dark entrance.
