Rosie O'Dell (47 page)

Sian had re-emerged. “What did you prophesy for Tom that has vexed him so
much?”

“Ask him.”

Sian looked at me and I said, “I will not sully the pristine ears of a lady
with his gross speculations.”

“Sounds awfully good,” said Sian. “Predict my immediate future too, please,
Morton.”

“Ask Tom, I said. Yours is precisely the same as his.”

“How soon is immediate?”

“Right after I have my coffee and get out of your hair.”

Shaking my head at Morton, I asked Sian if I could use her loo. Inside,
her stirring scent made me look at myself hard in the mirror.
My eyes were preternaturally bright. What was I getting myself into here?
Whatever it was, it felt, as Sian had just said, awfully good. But Rosie was
waiting for me, trusting me. Thank God, Morton was such a nuisance. By nature he
could be counted on to hang around all night, long after the coffee. When I came
out of the bathroom, the lack of said Morton was startling. Sian had placed only
two mugs by the coffee maker.

“Who? Morton?” she answered me with an innocent smile. “Oh. He said he was
knackered and went up to bed.”

The next morning I berated him for leaving me in the lurch last night, and
Morton replied that he’d had no choice whatever in the matter: “As soon as you
went into the loo, Sian told me to shog off. I said to her, ‘What d’ye mean,
shog off? I’ve got to have a coffee and say good night to Tom first, ’ and she
seized me by the collar and said, ‘Look, Mort, piss off now, right this ruddy
minute, before Tom comes out, or I’ll kick you in the ruddy ballocks.’ You can
see what options I had. What happened after I left?”

“Nothing happened. I had my coffee and left.”

“I wish you were an American rather than a Canadian. At least if you were a
Yank, you’d be bragging about it.”

I had lots to brag about. Last night, Sian had sat, legs under her, on one side
of the sofa, leaving a place for me. I perched on the chair five feet away. We
talked for ten minutes and Sian got up and kneeled in front of me with her
forearms and hands on my thighs. She looked up at me with melting brown eyes. “I
hope,” she sighed, “you don’t mean us to stay good friends.”

I laughed. I felt a surge of deep affection, and desire. Sian’s personality,
like everything else about her, was very appealing. I placed my hands on hers.
“Why? Did you want me to do something that might make us bad friends?”

“No, better friends. Best friends. I hope that spot in your heart is not wholly
occupied still.”

“It is, Sian.”

She stood and picked up the coffee mugs and walked over to the sink on her
toes, achieving the impossible, actually improving on the perfection of those
legs. “The bonnie O’Dell far over the sea is lucky in her love,” she
said.

“I think I’m the lucky one.”

Sian came back, pulled me to my feet, and kissed me on the cheek. “Good night,
then, you lucky lovely man.”

EVERY NIGHT ABOUT TEN
o’clock Sian
and Morton and I would get together in one of our sitting rooms for a nightcap.
We’d sit and talk for half an hour about our respective lives in Wales and
England and Newfoundland.

I found out that Morton’s relationship with Angela was the one and only love of
his life, having started when he was in Manchester Grammar School. This
surprised me in light of Morton’s semi-bohemian lifestyle, and Morton explained:
“Most of the other girls and women in my life, including my own mother, have
been artsy-fartsy theatre types, and you have no idea what a comfort it is to
have the love of a down-to-earth, dependable, non-prima donna woman of even mood
and temperament.”

I found out about the proposal Sian said she’d received from a young university
lecturer in Cardiff, which she’d declined before coming to London, because she
was far too young.

Though I knew they’d find it fascinating, I said nothing about the Rothesay
trial or its aftermath. Once, Sian tried to pursue the cause of my girlfriend’s
sister’s death, but I diverted the conversation elsewhere. In truth, the further
I’d come from all that in distance and time, the less I could bear to
contemplate the hideous subject myself.

Sian and I did stay good friends till the weekend Morton went north to visit
Angela. That Friday afternoon Sian asked me if she could take me to a movie that
evening, with dinner in her rooms afterwards. “Just you and me,” she said. “But
don’t panic. I merely want to repay you a little for that expensive ticket to
Jesus Christ Superstar
. I’m very conscious of repaying social
obligations. It’s the burden of my Celtic-fringe, Methodist, Liberal
upbringing.” I said I’d be delighted.

We walked back from the movie,
Last Tango in Paris,
discussing whether
or not the sex scenes were works of art. Sian opined that you can’t have a work
of art where cowardice prevailed, and why were macho actors like Brando so
cowardly when it came to their own frontal nudity? I suggested Brando’s modesty
was in the interest of truth since the ostensible stud was actually inadequately
endowed and didn’t want to give female viewers the false impression that he was
representative of the male sex in the manhood department. Sian laughed and
linked her arm into mine. The movie made her think, she said, that life was not
short, life was long, and there was plenty of time for correcting any bad
consequences of any risks one might take. And if one didn’t take those risks,
life might as well
be short because it would be so boring. I
agreed. The life without exciting exotic events was not worth the living, I
proclaimed. And Sian pulled me closer to her.

At her flat, she placed the Marks and Spencer chicken breasts cordon bleu in
her little oven while I opened the bottle of white wine I’d contributed. By the
time the chicken was ready, the bottle was empty.

“Luckily, I anticipated just such a catastrophe,” said Sian and went to her
little fridge and brought out another bottle. The chicken and the contents of
that bottle disappeared simultaneously. We were now way more than tipsy. Sian
gave me the job of extinguishing the three candles on her table with an
elaborate, antique-looking snuffer. I missed the wicks on two attempts and we
laughed and joined forces to accomplish the task, four hands entwined to guide
the instrument to the flames.

“How did such a fancy candle-snuffer,” I asked, “come to be in your rented
rooms in London?”

“Because I am an incurable romantic.” She pecked me on the lips. “As you would
soon find out if you gave it half a chance.” She kept hold of one of my hands
and led me to the sofa. “There’s a soccer match on the telly. Let’s watch some
of it.”

Sian had recently rented a small television set because she missed watching the
soccer matches. She had played soccer at school and remained a great fan of the
game. “Soccer sculpts men’s legs to the optimal in aesthetics,” she said.

“And girls’ too, by the looks of things. Is that where yours got their
beautiful start?”

“Why thank you.” She ran her hand from below my knee to my groin. “And
competitive swimming, I see, has a similar salubrious effect.”

I kissed her on the neck. Sian drew back her head and looked at me. Then, as if
she’d decided something, she stood up, went to a cupboard, reached in deep, and
brought out a black bottle of Courvoisier. Fetching two snifters, she explained
that her sister in Cardiff had given her this after she’d turned down the
marriage proposal, to be opened only on a very special occasion. Passing the
bottle to me, she sat and leaned against me and murmured, “This is it. The very
special occasion.”

I wondered why her sister would give her a gift of expensive cognac because she
had
turned down
an engagement, but I didn’t ask. Instead I poured, and we
drank and stopped watching the soccer to kiss long and deep. Soon we were out of
our shirts, and when I slipped my hand un
der her panties, she
stroked my erection outside my trousers. Inflamed, I started to undo my belt.
Sian stopped stroking and sat up, closing her thighs. “I’m dying to make love
with you, Tom,” she said, “but not after you’ve—we’ve—had so much to drink. I
need to think this through. I really don’t want to be your casual piece of ass
on the side.”

I didn’t argue. Seductive words would have rung hollow after all I’d said about
my beloved Rosie O’Dell. We rested in each other’s arms for a few minutes and
then she kissed me and said, “Let’s retire to our respective beds for tonight,
collect our thoughts, and regroup when we’re sober.”

A long probing drunken kiss at her door and I crossed the hall to my own flat.
I went to bed aroused. To keep myself from waking up in that state throughout
the night I would have masturbated if I hadn’t immediately passed out… I asked
Nina, in the kitchen preparing supper, where Rosie was and Nina replied with
uncalled-for resentment that she had no idea—that girl was in a fantasy world of
her own. I said with a bravado, which I just knew would embarrass me later, that
I would find her. Pagan took my hand to go with me. I looked in every room
downstairs and went upstairs and walked along the hall. The door to Rosie’s room
was slightly ajar, almost closed, but not quite, and Rosie’s mother, for some
reason behind it, said, “You don’t have to look in there, Joyce is dead.” But I
replied, “I’ve got to look everywhere.” Nina was an adult and I a child, yes,
but I still knew smart from stupid. I pushed the door open. Rosie was lying on
her side on the bed, facing the door with her knees drawn up, pretending to be
asleep. She was alone, naturally, since I wasn’t lying there with her. But a
penis was sliding in and out of her bottom. I couldn’t quite make out which
orifice was being targeted. Dr. Rothesay’s face appeared from behind Rosie’s
head and his eyes pierced mine as he demanded, “What is it that you require, my
lad?” in his most intimidating English accent, like a London shop clerk.
Mortified by my blundering intrusion, I couldn’t speak. Then Rosie opened her
eyes and said, “Oh hi, Tom, here already? I’ll only be a sec,” lessening by her
big smile and her niceness my sense of gaucherie. I made a gentlemanly bow at
the disturbed duet and turned with head held high to go, but as soon as I was
out of their sight, my head dropped in humiliation and I skulked without dignity
down the hall. “God, Tom,” said Pagan, still holding my hand, “what was that
those two were supposed to be doing in there?” I looked down at the
heartbreakingly lovely little girl. I would protect her.
“You
don’t need to mind those two, Pagan,” I said with a grin and a wink that made
her smile back.

The transition from asleep to awake was like a blow from an axe to my chest.
And awake, I felt as if hot lead were being poured onto my heart through the
gaping wound. I was sobbing from the pain. My face and pillow were drenched with
tears. But immediately my sobbing seemed artificial, put on. There was, in
reality, no pain, only a numbness. I dried my eyes on the sheet and turned my
pillow over. My clock said seven o’clock. I lay there exhausted, wanting
desperately to sleep but knowing my pall of depression would keep me awake. I
sat up in bed and my head spun. No wonder I was depressed, I had an appalling
hangover. I could smell the cognac I had downed on top of the wine. I crept to
the bathroom, urinated, and sat on the toilet for ten minutes with my head in my
hands. Then I ran the bathwater, went to the fridge, and drank some orange juice
and two glasses of water. I slipped into the bathtub, and in the almost too-hot
water, my terrible gloom lifted a bit. Now a pleasant engorgement began below
and bright images supplanted black thoughts, images of Sian’s face. I tried to
visualize the breasts I had kissed last night and to recapture the feeling in my
fingertips of touching between her legs, but the brain in my head reproduced
only ill-defined memories. The non-brain below must have retained a more vivid
remembrance, though, because my erection became so intense that every beat of my
heart was registering down there with a discernible swirl on the surface of the
bathwater. The big logy brain above, under orders to act from the urgently
pulsating little automaton below, contrived a stratagem.

I dried off and dressed and wrote a note: “7: 48 a.m., Dear S. (for Splendid
Superb Sumptuous Sian), I’ll be waiting across the hall to serve you breakfast
and coffee whenever you want it. Just come on in. Love, T. (for Tumultuous
Turbulent Tempestuous Tom.)” Feeling not in the least idiotic at what I had just
written, but indeed rather gallant, I went out, slipped the note under her door,
rapped gently, and went back to my room to wait.