Love Falls (19 page)

The main course was cleared away, ice cream was served, and as soon as it was safe to do so Nettle and Willow slipped away and with their departure the table was freed. Places were swapped, coffees topped up with spirits and Lara, May and Tabitha retreated to the pool, dipping their legs in, lighting up cigarettes while Tabitha sucked hungrily at the wisps of smoke.

Kip ambled over. Lara looked up at him and he reached down and clasped her hand.

‘Come with me,' he said, and his sisters watched her as she struggled up. ‘And you,' he said to them, grinning, ‘come on. Roland's got an idea.'

May jumped up, but Tabitha stayed where she was. ‘I think I can resist.' She yawned, and reaching out she whipped the cigarette from between May's fingers.

They followed Kip through the dark of the gardens, round the corner of the main house, across the car-park yard to where a stable block had been converted to make more bedrooms for guests. There were lights on here and when they knocked Roland opened the door and put his finger to his lips. He came out, and tiptoeing elaborately he led them along the length of the block to a door at the far end. Then very formally he knocked.

‘Your entertainment, madame.' Roland bowed when Nettle looked out and he pushed open the door.

The girls were both wearing pyjamas – sprigs of pale-blue flowers and girlish white collars. They looked appalled to see their visitors, and as if she was naked Nettle crossed her arms over her chest.

‘Lights out!' Roland ordered and nervously Willow started to giggle. Roland snatched up several sheets of paper and began scrawling the alphabet around the outside. ‘Get a glass,' he told Piers who'd just arrived, and everyone was urged to sit cross-legged on the floor as he spread out the square of paper and set the tumbler in the centre. ‘It's time for the séance to begin.'

At first it seemed too dark to make out anything, but the curtains were open, the moon was bright, and once they'd become accustomed to it, the room was alive with shafts of light and shadow. Everyone put out their hands and touched the top of the glass.

‘It's not me,' Roland promised when after a still minute the glass began to move.

‘Someone must be pushing it,' Kip murmured, and they all looked suspiciously at each other.

Lara rested her hands even more lightly than she had before, but even so the glass moved away from her, sometimes slow, sometimes faster, from one letter to the next. P. Z. H. B.

‘It's not working,' May complained.

‘Shhhh.' Roland shifted. ‘It may be warming up.' He set the glass back in the centre. ‘You have to concentrate. Give it your power.'

‘Shut up, you idiot,' Piers said, but he put his hand on the glass all the same.

Slowly it began to move. M. U. It stopped for a moment, and then, as if it was unsure, it set off again very slowly until it stopped at T.

‘Mut?' Willow suggested.

But it raced on, swirling round the board, settling back on T.

‘Mutt!' Nettle flashed her sister a smile but before she'd finished speaking it had moved to I.

They all craned forward to stare.

‘
Mutti
?' Piers sighed. ‘What does that mean?'

‘It could be German,' May offered. ‘If it were a German séance it might be saying Mummy.'

‘
Donner und Blitzen
. Ve have a German spirit visiting us.' Roland picked the glass up and blew into it. ‘English, please,' he ordered and even Nettle and Willow laughed.

Once again they waited, their arms outstretched, their eyes pinned to each other's lightly hovering hands. I'll be able to tell from the pressure of the fingers, Lara thought, vowing not to let her eyes drift away from the glass, but after a while she couldn't resist stealing a quick glance round the circle, hoping for clues as to who was and wasn't pushing. It wasn't her. That was all she could be sure of, and then there was a rustle, and the glass was moving – sliding away across the paper, taking their fingers with it, losing some as it reached the letter S. It stopped there for a moment and then more slowly moved to I. Lara felt her skin grow tight and the silence in the air was stifling. D, the glass was travelling towards D, and then without pausing it moved to V.

‘Sid V . . . Sid Vicious!' Kip shouted and at that moment the window, which had been shut, slammed open and a vase crashed to the floor.

Everyone screamed, at least the girls screamed so loudly it was impossible to know if Kip, Piers or Roland had uttered a sound. May flicked on a light, and with the rush of brightness the screams turned into laughter.

‘Let's do it again,' one of them suggested but the light stayed on and no one moved to play.

 

 

It was after midnight when Lara got home to Caroline's. Roland had driven her, and Kip had come too, squashed in beside her in the front seat of the jeep. She'd closed her eyes as they'd roared through the dark night and she'd felt so happy she didn't even mind that Roland was risking all their lives. The porch light was on.

‘See you tomorrow,' Kip called, and without asking where or when, she darted inside.

The stairs were dark, but her head was too full of shrieks and love and laughter to give in to fear. She lay in her bed and imagined the weight of Kip's body squeezing the breath out of her. She twisted and turned and then to still herself she slid her hand between her legs. ‘You've got to practise in case you ever meet someone you actually like.'

She thought of Sorrel and her theory of virginity, and how eventually when she was almost sixteen she'd spent the night with a friend of Sorrel's boyfriend, in that flat in Turnpike Lane so filthy she was sure she would catch an incurable disease just by lying on his bed. He'd groped and prodded for what seemed like hours, and when it was over he'd lain back and lit a cigarette.

‘So,' he'd asked after an awkward silence. ‘How many orgasms did you have?'

Lara was so embarrassed she could hardly speak. ‘I don't know,' she'd muttered, her eyes still tightly shut. ‘I can't remember.'

When he got up, shortly after, to put on his mustard-coloured briefs, she realised she'd got through the whole thing without seeing his willy. Willy! Was that what she'd called it? But what else was there? Cock and dick were pornographic somehow, and prick too close to an insult she didn't intend. Penis was a foreign word. As ugly as vagina and all wrong. Fanny. That's what she and her mother had called hers, but so long ago, and for years now it had gone unnamed.

She'd read once in a magazine that you were meant to stand naked in front of a mirror and examine yourself. Your thighs, your breasts. Your vagina. Lift one leg and peer inside. Or better, turn around, swing your head down and take a look. ‘Meet and Greet', the article was called. It must have been an American magazine. But they had no full-length mirror in their house and it was impossible to stand on the edge of the bath and keep your balance.

Lara flicked on the light. There was a mirror here built into the wardrobe. Tentative, blushing even, she pulled off her nightdress and bent over. There was so much more of it than seemed polite. A long gash of hair and flesh, a maze of pink leading to a pinpoint at the centre, and at each side two small pendulums like tonsils hanging down. Is it beautiful? Are you? she asked. Remembering not just to meet, but greet. Could something be beautiful if it didn't have a name? Pussy, minge, cunt. The blood was beginning to throb in her head. I'll name it, she thought, quick, then I can stand up, and in a flash it came to her. She'd call it Iris. Iris. She pulled her nightdress back on and pleased with herself, feeling somehow different, she climbed into bed.

 

 

Lara woke late, and when she got up she saw a white car parked in the driveway. She ran to the other window that looked over the pool but there was no one there. She dressed and went downstairs. It couldn't be Kip, could it, already? But instead of Kip, Isabelle was sitting on the sofa, turned towards Lambert, talking quietly, the fingers of one hand trailing over his.

‘Hello!' Lara said, and then remembering she was only meant to have met Isabelle once, she stepped back a little even though Caroline wasn't there. ‘Is Andrew here . . . I mean, I thought . . .' she said in her confusion, realising she associated the white car with the layby, and then seeing in a flash her mistake, recognising in that instant the fall of Isabelle's hair, she sat down and told them, much too fast and without waiting for any sign that they were interested, the moment by moment events of the séance.

‘How terrifying,' Isabelle said, her eyes kind, her cheeks red, but Lambert said nothing.

‘Is that right, Dad?' she asked him. ‘Is it German for Mummy?'

He looked at her as if there was no earthly reason why he should know. ‘Yes,' he said then. ‘
Mutti
.' The word sounded different when he said it. As gentle as a stroke.

‘I think I'll get some breakfast.' Lara swallowed, and she tiptoed out.

She poured a glass of apricot juice and cut a slice of bread, so springy it squashed almost flat under the knife. She peered into the fridge, her stomach hollow with hunger. She took out cheese, and peeled away a wafer-thin slice of ham which she crammed into her mouth. She put the kettle on and once she had her tea she went outside and sat at the far end of the terrace with her back to them. Much as she wanted to she resisted looking round. Was there a row? She chewed as quietly as she could, straining for raised voices, half expecting Isabelle to storm out in tears, but instead she was disturbed by Caroline.

‘You left the porch light on again.' Her voice was acid, her face white. ‘Mightn't it just be more convenient if you stayed out all night?'

Lara almost choked. ‘You could switch it off,' she stammered. ‘Please switch it off when you go to bed.'

But Caroline was walking away, ramrod straight, around the corner of the house.

Lara retreated to the kitchen where she cut herself another slice of bread, spooned it high with blueberry jam, but when she carried it out to the terrace she glanced, without meaning to, in through the windows and saw her father and Isabelle standing by the bookshelves, their faces so close their noses touched. Quickly she sat down at the table, and realising there was nowhere for her safely to go she turned to the crossword in a three-day-old paper and stared at the impossible clues until she was saved by Ginny coming back from the local market laden down with food.

 

 

Lara lay on a lounger and thought about the boy from Turnpike Lane. She regretted now, more than anything, that she hadn't looked. Sorrel had seen men naked. Any number of them. She'd described their ‘tackle', as she called it, thick, thin, curved, once even square. Square? Yes, I promise. Short and stubby. Horrible it was, like a box. Lara had been with her the first time. Waiting for a train at Edgware Road. She'd just put money into the vending machine and, although she knew it never actually worked, she was tugging at the metal drawer, trying to get at the bar of chocolate that was rightfully hers. Bastard, she hissed, punching it with the side of her fist, when Sorrel rushed towards her, eyes wide, face flushed.

‘It was out, all huge and red.' She pointed to a man stumbling away along the platform.

‘What was?' Lara asked, although she knew.

‘His Thing,' Sorrel said and she shook her hands as if she'd touched it. ‘Arrrhhhh.'

‘Should we tell someone?' Lara looked round, but just then their train pulled in and they couldn't resist it, they got on.

‘You were so lucky!' Sorrel turned to her. ‘He didn't flash at you.'

But once they were home, Sorrel's mother made such a fuss of Sorrel, that Lara began to feel as if it was she who had missed out. If only she'd seen it, she thought. If only the man had flashed at her, and then it occurred to her that maybe he had and she'd just been too busy hammering on the vending machine to notice. ‘It happened to me too once, well almost . . .' she wanted to tell them, but she resisted disclosing the promise she'd made to the Tibetan monk.

It was in India on the way home from the cinema. They'd seen a film about two lovers, divided by caste, who could only meet in secret. They attempted to kiss through doorways, windows, holes in walls, even once through bars when he was wrongly imprisoned for another man's crime. The audience was in a frenzy. Just to have them embrace. Please let that happen! But they were kept in suspense until the very end when it was discovered the man was from a high caste after all and they were married in a blaze of red saris and dancing.

On the way home the monk, who was from the Purawala refugee camp where Cathy and Lara were visiting His Holiness, said he wanted to show her something. They stopped on a deserted path.

‘Can I?' he said, so serious and polite that she couldn't possibly have said no.

‘Yes,' she answered, and once she'd promised solemnly not to tell, he slowly lifted up his orange robes and there, below them, billowing out, was a pair of boxer shorts made from the American flag.