Love (7 page)

“Amy, thank Christ, we had no idea where you were. Help me with these, we're off to Dorset,” Nathalia yelled. Nathalia was pure Eurotrash. Blond, perma-tan, father
owned Germany or something, and Amy was terrified of her.

“What are we going to Dorset for, I'm supposed to be working on my Council Estate Glamour shoot,” Amy protested, dreading spending the day with this monster who wouldn't know a council estate if it got stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

“I'm styling Orlando Rock and I need you to iron his gear,” she said in her mid-Atlantic drawl. Amy bristled proprietorially, like a tomcat marking out his territory.

“Oh, Olly,” she improvised. “Yeah, he said he'd be down there,
Return of the Native
.”

“You mean you know him?” Incredulous.

“Mmm, we had tea on Sunday, lovely, he's a darling.”

Amy, what are you doing, you'll be caught out, embarrassed. Shut up. But it did the trick. Nathalia was deferential until they reached the motorway and she realized she'd forgotten her lipstick and fell into a sulk.

In the chasm of Nathalia's silence Amy was suddenly struck with fear at the enormity of the situation. She was wearing a cardigan she'd had since sixth form, she was in love with the man she was going to see, he had her down as not-the-marrying kind, to put it mildly, she'd just lied to Nathalia, who would be sure to show her up, and … and Amy glanced at the brief for the session.

“… Orlando Rock … blah … Versace … blah … stylist Nathalia … photographer …” No! It can't be him! She looked again. No! It can't get any worse. A nervous rash crept up her chest and onto her neck … it was worse. Toby Ex, Chelsea's answer to Hugh Hefner, was the photographer and Amy had broken out in spots. Oh my God, what if he says something, what if he mentions
the video, tries to blackmail me. Never mind Christmases, all her nightmares came at once.

By the time they pulled up outside Hardy's cottage Amy's rash had made her look like a giant raspberry. She saw the photographer outside the front door, engrossed in light meters and Polaroids, and braced herself for the inevitable.

“Amy, hello, dearest.” He kissed her fruity cheeks and smiled kindly. Anyone that can come within a mile of me and my rash, let alone kiss me, can't be that bad, she sighed.

“The ubiquitous Toby,” she managed with a grin. They exchanged sympathetic, vows-of-secrecy glances and buried their dubious sexploits beneath a duvet of professionalism. Phew! number one, thought Amy gratefully. Which was of course tempting fate. Nathalia came tearing out of Hardy's garden like
Jude the Obscure
on acid, all maniacal depression and misery.

“Where's the makeup artist! I can't face Orlando without lipstick. Amy, you haven't even begun to unpack those clothes, you're bloody useless.” She spun off again. Amy's tear ducts pricked and she looked heavenward with her eyes wide open in a bid to prevent the tears rolling down her cheeks and spoiling her blusher. I hate her, she chanted, kicking about two thousand pounds' worth of suitcase until it bore the imprint of her shoe. And I hate bloody Orlando Rock, he's just some rich git who'd fall for the fake charms of Nathalia and her crass jet-set friends. Inwardly she gave up, that moment when for self-preservation you know it's better to believe that it will never be. Optimism is not only misplaced but idiotic and masochistic; why hurl yourself
off the cliff of rejection headfirst? We're from different worlds, thought Amy with a hollow pit of misery inside her. Even at the party I knew there was never a chance, I should never even have entertained the thought. She sat on a little bench at the bottom of Hardy's garden, early spring birdsong drifting from woods nearby. She was calmed as she leaned down to stroke a cat curling himself around her feet, and she made a private bid to be more sensible. Life's not like books, she told herself, I'm not Anna Karenina or even Holly Golightly. From here on I'll set my targets in the real world. Maybe Cath and Kate are right. But one small thought peeked through her gloom. Maybe Orlando will come up behind me now, sit down, and in the still garden, we'd laugh and chat. Stop! She pushed the last of the romantic thoughts to the back of her mind and faced grim reality.

Grim reality was ironing shirts for most of the afternoon. Amy presented a curious sight beside her ironing board among the trees. She solemnly eased out the creases and derived a little therapy from her task. Within earshot the photographer coaxed steely glances and heroic stances from Orlando Rock. Amy had thus far avoided him as though it were he and not she who had a rash. She watched the scene through a break in the trees, Orlando sitting on a log, a shaft of sunlight highlighting his beauty, singling him out like some Olympian god of long ago that had just wandered into this modern-day forest by accident. He was like a sad and lonely sculpture, a breed apart from the men surrounding him, and untouchably beautiful. She caught a flicker of muscle in his thigh as he changed position and a broad boyish smile at the pretty makeup artist who puffed powder
onto his cheekbones. She could just stand and watch all day, hear his distant chuckles and easy banter. So ordinary and affable, but, my God, so special. She felt safe just watching and dreaming of the night she would be the one to meet him with a kiss after a performance or accompany him to a dazzling premiere. But she had to stop daydreaming, the time had come for her to dole out tea from her flasks and supply the troops with ham sandwiches. She wandered around gazing at her feet, avoiding everyone's glance.

“I wanted vegetarian, Amy, not pig,” snapped Nathalia. Amy winced at the mention of her name and delved back into her lunch box for an alternative.

“Amy, hello, Lily's friend. It is, isn't it?” asked the god. A smile superglued itself to Amy's lips and her heart sprinted.

“Orlando, I've, er … been ironing,” she floundered, trying not to seem impolite for not saying hello earlier.

“I had supper with Lily on Wednesday, she's very well.” He winked. Amy's mortification was concealed behind her grin.

“Good, that's nice.” Jesus, I'm so boring, why on earth is he wasting his breath? Get a grip, Amy.

“How's the filming going?” Amy attempted, trying to resuscitate her brain, but she was felled by a shriek from Nathalia as she bit into roast beef and horseradish.

“Are you totally stupid?” she shrieked, spitting her sandwich all over the floor. Amy turned away from Orlando and glanced at Toby, looking for some sign of solidarity, but he pretended not to have noticed her and carried on with his lens-fiddling. Amy fled, tears and her
rash competing to make her face as red and blotchy as possible. If she'd stuck around a bit longer, she'd have witnessed Orlando's newly chilly handling of Nathalia. As she stroked his hair into place over the collar of his coat he brushed her hand away; as she fawned he glowered. Nathalia, of course, didn't seem to notice.

T
aking the view that you have to pick yourself up, brush yourself down, etc., Amy faced Saturday morning with a schizophrenic blend of utter misery and eternal optimism. She flicked off the shipping forecast because she wisely knew it would depress her, all those lonely little boats in gales and wives sitting sadly at home. Instead she put on that anthem for female empowerment, “I Will Survive,” and had it blaring from stereo and tonsils. Nine in the morning and she was dusting her room in her pajamas. She flung her arms and duster tunelessly around, feeling better now. Thanks, Gloria, you've done a lot of women, and many a gay man, a great service over the years.

She decided that retail therapy was just what the doctor ordered for this particular brand of nagging pain. The pain of humiliation and professional catastrophe. She burned lavender oil to lift her spirits and slipped her emergency-only credit card into her purse. On the bus to King's Road she read glossy magazines, mentally noting her purchases: new nail polish, a must; shampoo for thicker, fuller hair, could transform my life; fennel tea to kick the demon coffee. She hummed her anthem the length of Sloane Street and felt content in the morning
sunshine. In Harvey Nichols food hall she picked up some black olives in basil, she sniffed a scoop of Chinese green tea, and ran her fingers through a barrel of shiny black coffee beans. She bought a bag of watermelon-flavored jelly beans and meandered her way back downstairs via bed linens and Le Creuset saucepans. This is the life, she smiled to herself.

Pottering down Fulham Road, she popped into the Conran Shop, past the array of flowers and lobsters, stroking rosewood tables and, catching a glimpse of herself in a knotted wood Mexican mirror, looking good for a girl low on love, Amy reassured herself. Self-love is the first step to loving others, she had once read. As she picked up a giant starfish which would look exquisite in her bathroom she saw the familiar profile of Orlando Rock browsing among the potpourri. Oh, no, it can't be. I spend my life not seeing a single famous person and then in the space of two weeks they begin to reproduce asexually all over the place, like those spores I learned about in biology. Except that this was one famous person cloning himself all over her life. She decided to ignore him; he'd hardly be offended that a person whom he'd met for a grand total of an hour in his entire life decided to snub him. She slunk behind the bathrobes and disappeared into candles, surreptitiously glancing in mirrors to make sure he wasn't behind her. Just as she was about to disappear up the stairs and make her exit she felt a hand on her elbow.

“Hello, trouble.” Shit. She stopped dead, caught in the act. Turning slowly, she helloed with fake surprise.

“Orlando! We have to stop meeting like this!” Did I really say that?

“I never usually come to such smart places as this, but I have to get a present for someone.”

“Your girlfriend?” Amy spilled out without thinking.

“No, just divorced. For my mother actually.” Expect the unexpected, Amy, isn't that your perfume's motto?

“They have some fantastic things, for gifts.” Get a grip, Amy.

“I know, there's this amazing sofa, come and have a look.” He led her up the stairs by her fingertips and flopped down on a vast, fat leather sofa.

“Veeeryy nice. If you want to get laid,” offered Amy. He laughed.

“No pulling the wool over your eyes, eh?”

“I prefer this one, jewel-colored crushed velvet. Jimi Hendrix would buy it.”

“They should have a sticker saying that on it. In tests eight out of ten dead rock stars would buy this sofa.”

“What about actors?” Amy queried.

“No sense of style at all, just take on board the life wholesale. Y'know, I might just buy this place intact, rhubarb leaves in wineglasses, that kind of thing. No imagination of my own, just method furnishing.”

“I sometimes think that one day I'll have a magnificent dinner party with all this stylized stuff, serve pebbles in bowls with a few red berries for color, goldfish in the soup tureen,” Amy ventured. They both got the giggles and invented a fantastical life in the day of the Conran Shop shopper.

“Pyramids of oysters and a banana tree,” he offered.

“A bed you could live in, like that Evelyn Waugh character, Sonia Digby Vane Trumpington, who just drank Black Velvet in bed all day, entertained all her gentlemen
friends from the bath, and let her pekes keep her feet warm. Darling.” Amy put on her best Noël Coward voice, and they spun through the chic splendor of the shop until they'd constructed a fantasy around every teaspoon and assumed parts of Italian countesses, reclusive starlets, and East End gangsters shacking up on the Costa del Sol.

“What about this one?” Orlando said, hurrying over to a filigree lace hammock.

“I don't think it would hold me,” said Amy, assessing its delicacy.

“Rubbish, it would hold both of us. It's for some South Pacific island where you could swim with turtles by day and lie beneath the Southern Cross at night.”

“Tied between two palm trees,” Amy mused, fingering the white lace.

“No, mango trees, then you could pluck them handily for breakfast.”

“I should think if I decided to plant a farm at the foot of the Ngong hills, I'd like one of these.” Amy put on her best
Out of Africa
voice and patted a large mother-of-pearl-encrusted tea chest.

“But watch out for syphilis,” warned Orlando.

“Why syphilis?” Amy asked.

“Because, my dear, the Happy Valley was positively alive with it, that and elephants and the sound of us all making love to our best friends' wives. See what I mean, old girl?”

“Absolutely, darling. Neville was the most handsome man I ever had the pleasure of committing adultery with.” Amy smoked an invisible cigarette and tilted her head to one side.

“Almost as good as me in bed?” asked Orlando, holding her gaze and falling silent.

Amy didn't say anything. For a half second they looked at each other and she held her breath, then a shopper with a large palm tree walked between them. Barely remembering who they were, they collapsed, exhausted, on the sofa where they'd begun.

“I still don't know what to get for my mother.” Orlando frowned.

“Hyacinths,” said Amy confidently. “Mothers always go on about how divine they smell and ‘what a beautiful blue' they are.”

“Settled,” he said, heading for a vast terra-cotta tub of bulbs.

They stood in the queue to pay.

“All this talk of grand lifestyles has made me feel like Neanderthal man, never cooking, never entertaining. Why not come round for Sunday lunch tomorrow? I can't promise olive groves but I can buy some cashews from Sainsbury's.”

“Love to,” said Amy. They shook hands.

“Done.”

“Here's my address.” He scribbled on a taxi card and handed it to her. “One-ish.” Amy nodded.