The Boy Who Fell to Earth (29 page)

‘I don’t know, Merlin.’ Archie took me by the waist and looked deeply into my eyes. ‘You are seriously lettin’ that dip shit influence you? Who the hell have you turned into, Lou?’ When I said nothing, he added, ‘Why don’t you get back to me when you’ve talked it over with all of your personalities.’

Archie then let out a chuff of laughter; it was the most tired laughter I’d ever heard. He lowered his head, his eyes vanishing from view beneath the brim of his conniving black hat, and then he and his backpack, guitar case and amp were gone, with just a cartoon plume of exhaust smoke left behind in his wake.

I felt suddenly, miraculously, absolved of all responsibility. I sank into Jeremy’s arms with the exhausted relief of a cross-Channel swimmer flopping on to the shore.

Part Four: Merlin and Me

20

Sexual Politics

IT SEEMS TO
me that people only attend political meetings because it’s illegal to masturbate in public. When I’d told Jeremy that only one thing had heard more inane comments than a political meeting – a painting in a museum – he’d laughed.

‘Artists, writers, journalists seek to interpret the world. But politicians change it,’ he replied, before promising to prove me wrong … Which is how I’d ended up at his local town hall on election night, one crisp November evening.

In a far corner of the castellated structure of sooty Victorian brick, with paint-clogged woodwork and flowery plaster ceiling decorations, the candidates and their tellers watched the vote-counting. The mayor then called the three candidates together and whispered the results. I tried to ascertain the outcome from Jeremy’s expression, but his handsome face remained impassive. The candidates then followed the mayor up on to the stage. When the returning officer announced the voters’ verdict, a hearty cheer surged
up
through the onlookers. When Jeremy was declared the duly elected member for Wiltshire North, the first Liberal Democrat ever to win in this Tory stronghold, I remembered what it was I had loved about him. The man gave off a rich, dark glow that made others seem pale and faded by comparison. He glittered in public, he shone. And not just because of his 100-watt smile, a smile so dazzling it made you reach for your Polaroids.

Jeremy graciously acknowledged the attributes of his competitors. But before he could launch into his victory speech, a dissenter’s voice demanded to know if we’d ‘all soon be carrying the contents of our desks out into the street in cardboard boxes, like all you wanker bankers?’

Jeremy became quieter than Sarah Palin after a question on European geography. Then he responded, with thoughtful calm, ‘You’re right. I was a wanker banker. I thought I had complete control over the world. I was arrogant and opportunistic. But it’s never too late to turn into the person you might have been. And, even more joyous than winning this by-election tonight is that the love of my life is here to share it with me. Lucy not only allows me to be myself, she enables me to be a little bit nicer as well. There’s been a lot of interest from my constituents and the media about my private life. I’m not saying my phones are hacked, but I don’t recall buying that white van that’s parked in my drive and I have noticed that my new paperboy looks a lot like Michael Moore. Plus, men sporting headphones and Sky News jackets keep emerging from the shrubs asking to use my loo …’ He waited for the appreciative laughter to fade. ‘So let me announce right here and now that I lost my … appetite for life in America,’ he hinted, in a subtle reference to the domestic goddess. ‘And I’d like to renew my marriage vows
with
the mother of my child, if she could ever forgive me.’

I flushed with embarrassment as people swivelled and craned their necks to locate the lucky woman. But their attention was quickly drawn back to the stage because Jeremy had started speaking with passion about all the ways he wanted to make the world better, including helping children with special needs.

‘Disabled people are of equal worth. They may not contribute in conventional terms but that doesn’t make them less valuable people, and it’s up to us to help them flourish.’ His voice played up and down the diplomat’s scales: reassuringly deep and then flirtatiously light and coruscating. ‘Working out a child with special needs is like trying to put together a huge jigsaw puzzle without the benefit of having a coloured picture on the box. But that just makes the challenge more exciting!’

It was then I found myself looking at my ex-husband with new, warmer eyes, as though I had borrowed Merlin’s vision. Listening to his mellifluous tones, licentious feelings crept up on me, like fish twining through seaweed. I felt myself moving towards my ex, as if drawn by the inexorable pull of a thread.

‘Lucy, dear!’ A voice that was all smiles and cinnamon buns interrupted. ‘Isn’t it thrilling! Lib Dem headquarters have already called to say they’re going to fast-track Jeremy. He’ll be PUS, Parliamentary Under-Sec level, at first. That’s just two rungs below Cabinet. But, as they’re in coalition government, a Cabinet promotion isn’t far off. They’re talking about slotting him in at DCMS,’ Veronica continued in her political patois. ‘Culture Media and Sport, or whatever they call it now,’ she decoded. ‘In no time at all he’ll be sharing podiums with Nobel Prize winners, shaking hands with Obama,
playing
charity tennis matches with Nadal and kissing Angelina Jolie. You wait and see!’ And right then, I could see it. I really could.

Acolytes and admirers washed back like a tide to make way for Jeremy to leave the stage. Constituents were bowing before him as though about to ask him to dance. Later, when all the well-wishers had pumped his hand, Jeremy made his way to my side. The warmth of his fingers on my arm spread across the surface of my skin, pulsing downwards. I felt myself sink and inwardly fold in his direction. I watched his mouth move as he thanked me for coming and told me about his most recent trip to Paris a few days earlier. His appearance at a conference a month or so earlier on ‘The Future of Politics – British and French approaches’ had gone so well, he’d been invited back for media appearances. I tried to listen, but all I could think of was how much I wanted to slide my tongue over those sensuous lips.

When I did so, he kissed me back, with grave tenderness. And he didn’t stop kissing me all the way back to his family mansion. The tornado that was Jeremy’s life had whirled me around and deposited me once more in the Jacobean four-poster bed where we’d first lain down together all those years ago. He took my face in his hands.

‘I’ve waited thirteen years to make love to you once more and I’m not going to let you go again,’ he said.

Whereas Archie was reckless and hungry, all muscle and sinew and frolicking, rollicking fun, when Jeremy caressed me it was as though he were laying fine silk threads across my skin. In my dreamy state, my body fell back into old rhythms, rocking against him. He was like slipping back into a favourite pair of jeans.

*

‘You’re too old for jeans,’ my mother said when I rang to explain why I needed her to stay the night with Merlin.

‘If you’d heard Jeremy’s speech, Mum. It was inspirational.’

‘How can you
fall
for what a Tory
stands
for?’ she punned. ‘And what about poor Archie?’

I couldn’t bring myself to think about Archie, so sidestepped the question. ‘Jeremy’s not a Tory, Mum,’ I repeated wearily. ‘He’s a Lib Dem.’

‘Same thing.’

‘I keep telling you, the man’s reborn.’

‘I used to believe in reincarnation, dear, but that was in a past life. You need to come home. I’m seriously worried about Merlin. His behaviour’s deteriorating. He’s obsessed with not hitting his head. When I asked him why, he said it’s because he wants to be able to think for ever. When I enquired why he wanted to be able to think for ever, he explained that he’s got to keep in perfect condition. “
I want to be perfect, for my father
,” he keeps saying. “
I don’t want anything to happen to me before I see him again. I need to be perfect
.” ’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said, “Why? Your father’s not perfect. He’s a perfect bastard, actually.” ’

‘Oh, that’s helpful! Mum, he hates change. Merlin’s behaviour’s a little erratic right now because of his new school … Jeremy’s being so kind to him. You should see all the presents he’s brought him back from Paris this time. For you, too. A new translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s love letters, a Chanel lipstick … Although, Jeremy says the way to really annoy a French person is to only kiss one cheek,’ I giggled.

But my mother didn’t laugh along. ‘Going back to your
ex-husband
is like having your tonsils put back in. It’s just wrong, dear. And I’m not happy about it.’

‘But
I
am happy, Mother.’ And I really was, I thought, climbing back into bed and curling into Jeremy’s warm back. Sure, it wasn’t the kind of euphoric, serendipitous bliss I’d experienced when I’d accidentally fallen in lust with Archie. But it felt comforting and safe. Everyone’s aiming to land on cloud nine, but cloud eight has just as good a view and is so much less further to fall.

But I was soon to find out that, either way, I just didn’t have a head for heights.

21

BitchesRUs

BEAUTY MAY BE
in the eye of the beholder, but so is conjunctivitis. That’s what I told myself when I got home a day later to find Tawdry Hepburn perched prettily on the doorstep.

Even though I was bad at maths, a quick mental calculation told me that the domestic goddess, twenty-two when they met, must now be thirty-five, although she looked years younger. I’d never seen her in the flesh before and was peeved to discover that she was even more beautiful than in photographs. Her honey-blonde hair tumbled over toned shoulders which were starkly outlined in a tight pink cashmere jumper. The woman was wearing so much mascara she looked like a partially sighted lemur. Her long legs, fetchingly crossed beneath a panty-skimming black leather mini concluded in a Himalayan-high pair of Laboutin stiletto boots. Her lips, a slash of glossy crimson, were forming a sentence.

‘You’re Lucy, aren’t you? I need to talk to you.’

‘Why?’ I asked, trying to swallow the sour taste of envy in my mouth.

‘It’s personal,’ she said, her big brown eyes darting up and down the street suspiciously. Like all celebrities, no matter how minor, they feel irritated when you recognize them and furious when you don’t. She was probably paying the paparazzi to prowl after her in a predatory fashion to prove to people that she was A-list material.

On automatic polite pilot I led her into my humble home. ‘Do you have any food?’ she demanded. ‘I totally forgot to eat today.’

I looked at her askance. Now, I’ve forgotten many things – my mobile number, my mother’s maiden name, my car keys. But I’ve never forgotten to eat. You have to be a special kind of stupid to forget to eat. Especially when you’re a chef. I delved in the fridge and retrieved some ham, cheese, butter and bread.

Tawdry shuddered with revulsion at my wares. ‘Oh, I have to keep to this totally strict non-dairy, vegetarian, organic-only diet.’

‘Really? Does it make the Botox work faster?’ Up close and under the harsh kitchen fluorescents I could see the traces of fillers around her mouth, the collagen implants in her rosy cheeks, plus the tiny hairline trace of a brow lift. The woman had a body more preserved than Lenin’s. I was tempted to tell her that it might be faster and less painful just to have a DNA transplant but decided instead to cut straight to the chase. ‘I have thirty-seven essays to mark on the use of language, form and metre in metaphysical poetry, which, as you can imagine, I’m simply
dying
to get back to. So, just tell me, what is it you want?’

‘My boyfriend back.’ She had a high, piping voice, her home counties, Kate Middleton accent contorted a little by Californication.

The melodrama of the situation – the woman who stole my husband turning up thirteen years later to beg for him back – cast my nemesis as a crayoned caricature. Five minutes before I’d been in awe of her pneumatic, gym-toned body, but she now looked to me like an inflatable doll, her curvaceous breasts blancmange-like in their obvious sexuality.

‘It’s a bit late, Audrey, after you traded him in for a wealthier model.’

Her succulent lip trembled. ‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Jeremy gave me the impression that you drove around Hollywood with a casting couch strapped to your roof rack.’

‘He left me! Not the other way round. He was supposed to be helping me make the transition to network TV but came here instead to pursue a political career. I was convinced he’d come crawling back … I am a trophy girlfriend, after all!’ She paused for a moment, to preen and pose. ‘And then I found out that he was seeing you and the boy. And that’s when it hit me that I totally love him. So, basically, that’s what I came to tell you.’ Her voice dropped an octave. ‘
Back off, bitch
.’

I figured ripping out her femoral artery with my teeth would be the most appropriate reaction but said instead, ‘The only reason Jeremy left me all those years ago is that he was too immature to cope with having a handicapped child. The way I see it, he was running away from home when he stubbed his toe on a rock, looked down to see what would crawl out … and it was you.’

‘The only stone I’ve ever been under is Mick,’ she retaliated, pouting provocatively.

I’d always presumed Tawdry to be little more than a predatory blonde from BitchesRUs – a monument to the cartoonish simplicity of male desire. Five minutes earlier, I’d been tempted to ask her if all those word balloons put
pressure
on her head. And if she knew that Khmer Rouge was not a cheek highlighter … But, despite the store-bought boobs and acrylic nails sharp enough to fillet a fish, there was a savvy intelligence to the woman which totally unnerved me. The wide-eyed, moist-lipped flirtation was a front. I suddenly realized that it takes a lot of brains to look that vacuous.

‘He’s over you,’ I said stoutly.

‘Really? Is that so? ’Cause he was under me the day before yesterday.’