The Intimates (4 page)

That afternoon, watched by Francoise's cool maternal gaze, Georgina and I reclaimed The Fountains. We played tennis on the mossy and overgrown court with battered rackets, ducking and diving over the drooping net and blasting winning shots into the overgrowth of trees that surrounded it. We found abandoned chalets at the end of the grounds, filled with decaying newspapers left by the previous owner, which Francoise had doubtless been too laconic to remove. As we circled a forgotten tree house in a wooded copse Georgina notes that ‘Francoise has probably never even bothered to walk through the grounds. She would have seen a few charming photos of it, in a carefully designed flier, and fallen in love with the hallway'. I had to concede that she was probably right.

The Fountains had its own voice that seemed to breathe from every corner. The more overgrown and neglected it revealed itself to be, the more that voice grew pronounced, steady and assuring. The Fountains was full of secrets, and however hard we tried to see every corner of it, it became increasingly apparent that it was too ephemeral a place to cover. As our time there progressed, more and more of it was alluded to until it seemed bigger than any of us. I would think we had seen every inch of it, just to find out about another corner essential to its essence. Like the feeling of success it evoked, The Fountains was a place where timeless resonance was taken for granted.

Francoise's butler had been looking for us for half an hour before he was able to call us inside to dress for dinner. Georgina and I had taken the iced tea Francoise had offered and lain by an empty swimming pool at the foot of the garden. In the afternoon sun the walls of the pool were coloured by precise maps of algae. Nonetheless, Georgina found it charming and she insisted that we unbutton our shirts and lay on our backs beside it. We looked up at the clouds and played our favourite childhood game, trying to find random shapes within each of them. At first I had resisted relaxing there, thinking there was something tragic and uneasy about the pool.

The same feeling returned to me as Georgina led me into the garden, which was this time cloaked in darkness. I couldn't help feeling uncertain about entering it at night, even following someone that I knew as intimately as her.

Georgina lifts her dress as she steps a few paces in front of me. As we draw nearer I see that each of the seven sculptures have been made to depict one of The Intimates.

“Have you seen this?” she asks. “Only Francoise would think of doing something like this for her guests. Which one is supposed to be me?”

The iced version of James clenches a paint brush, every limb of his elongated to the point of caricature, making him seem made purely of sinew and muscle. The sculpture of Barbara is pressing her hand to the skin above her bosom, her mouth open wide in rapture, as if she is embracing the adulation of an audience. Georgina stares directly into the face of her mothers sculpture. “No, still nothing behind the eyes.”

We weave in and out of the silver steam emanating from each precisely chiselled form, Georgina posing and laughing as she loops her arm through Francoise's model, a picture of Gallic poise, taller than the rest. Graham's statue holds aloft two surgical knives, and appears ready to plummet them back into the prostrate torso of some invisible patient. “Here you are, looking rather handsome, but a little short.” My sculpture has a Kenneth Williams-like look of camp disgust on his face. “I think you're being aloof in this one,” Georgina says, walking towards the statue of herself.

“I don't have a profession I could be attached to, hence the lack of props,” I offer. The model of Georgina stands on the end, clutching what appears to be a wilting bunch of flowers under one arm, holding one out rather desperately. There appears to be a rather pleading look upon her face.

“There I am, touting whatever wares I can give away. Look, there's the summer house.”

At the end of the lawn, only just visible amongst the vegetation covering its decaying façade, is the summer house. Georgina steps towards it, abandoning her heels in the spectral grass that's illuminated by the light from the house. “I can't believe it's still here,” she says, moving to the swings next to it, which I remember her favouring during summer parties. I join her as she slips into one of the seats.

“Do you remember us being unsure about Francoise at first, until we had that party here during the first year?” I ask her.

“I was more uncertain of her than anyone. But at that party she seemed to treat us as though we were the people we one day would be, rather than the snotty students we actually were. There was something insightful about her, and it made me warm to her a little more.”

“I remember her offering expensive bottles of champagne, and us spilling them onto one another on the lawn as we didn't know how to open them. I also remember you and I accidently smashing one of her windows during a game of tennis. But she just waved her hand nonchalantly and said, ‘Try to take out one of the top ones. That would really impress me.'”

“Yes – I remember that. All of us lounging about on the grass in our tight fitting school sports gear, drinking champagne from teacups. And the whole time, me looking so suspiciously at her.”

“I remember
that
,” I laugh.

“I felt she lacked the history the rest of us had. And then I realised during the party that this summer house was an exact copy of the one your mother had made for us as children. It seemed a sign – that perhaps we should allow her into our gang.”

“I remember my mum designing that summer house on a napkin during a garden party, when she couldn't bear to speak to any of the other adults there. I was sitting on her lap and telling her to add more turrets to it, and I remember thinking that my father would never allow it to be made. I was wrong – but then she always was the only one able to convince him to do anything.”

“Your mum was the only parent who would ever play with us children. You remember that time we all went away to the lakes, don't you? Your family, my family, Carina and James' family. Your mum was the only one who spent more time with the children than discussing politics with the elders.”

“I don't blame her for wanting to stay away from them that summer.”

“I know. That was the summer they all decided to take a firm hand with our lives, wasn't it? We didn't know at the time what all those discussions were about, but when we went back to our usual lives we soon found out. They'd agreed to make all of us into child prodigies. I think those discussions cost each of us a rather large portion of our childhoods.”

“My mum was the only one who voiced dissent at that agreement. Who said that it was ridiculous to expect little children to be brilliant when they were only just finding their feet. And after that the other parents shut her out. She was so different to all of the other parents there, she was a
mother
. When my father used to rage at me for being lost in a daydream, she used to tell him that it was a good thing, a sign that I would be as creative as him. But he used to hate hearing that. He always said a man should be focused, pragmatic. That she was far too soft on me, and when she died I think he felt that he now had the chance to compensate for how much I'd been indulged. He became even
more
forthright in his opinions of me. I'm sure he felt a keen sense of responsibility to her, to put me on the right path, even if it was not how she would have done it.

“She never pushed me; she wanted to leave me the space to find my own way. When she passed away there was no longer someone telling me that it was alright to feel as lost as this, that one day I would find my place in the world. That I didn't have to carry this enormous burden on my shoulders; that everything would eventually work itself out. I've tried so hard to remember her voice, but over the years it has gradually faded into the past. Always drowned out by louder voices, voices less distinct than hers.”

“She was a wonderful woman Vincent. A single voice of sanity, particularly during that holiday. There was a lot going on behind the scenes that summer, wasn't there?”

“There was. I won't forget that in a hurry. That was the holiday when your mum fell out spectacularly with my Dad, and the atmosphere – ”

“It was awful. I remember thinking that this must be what a divorce feels like – they were just so bitter and hateful towards each other. What was so sad about it was that the two of them went back further than anyone, they are the reason our little group actually exists today. Your mum acted in the first play he ever wrote, didn't she? And yet on that holiday your mum was so scared of him – hysterically, ridiculously scared. And all the parents took sides, and had to fall into one camp or the other. The start of that summer was all about diving in rivers, learning to catch fish, making snorkels out of the hollow branches of trees. The other half was like being on a daytime chat show.”

“I don't think all our parents ever sat down at the same table again after that holiday.”

“What was their argument even about?”

She swings for a minute, reaching down to brush a streak of mud from her naked leg as she points her toes at the house, straining to make the swing go higher. “Do you not remember? Did you not work it out?”

“There wasn't anything to work out,” I answer. “They never told us anything, we were just kids.”

“Did you not do any detective work? Were you really that wrapped up in your little action figures Vincent?”

“What did you find out?” I counter, stopping the swing and watching her pass me by, before she slows and eases herself to my side. “I thought it was just some needless argument that got out of hand.”

“No, it wasn't that. My mother tried to seduce your father. At least, that's what I heard. I listened in at the parents' chalet, during one of those long drawn out arguments. A lot of the terms I heard at the time I didn't understand, but I thought about it again only the other day. I think your parents' marriage might have been going through a rough patch, and my mum of course saw an opportunity and pounced. And being my mother, she did not take rejection well. We all know your father's temper, and how quickly things escalated after that.”

“I never knew.”

“That surprises me. But then it shouldn't, knowing you as well as I do. You were so lost in your own world back then. Anything in reality that could possibly cause you pain just made you retreat. You had an imagination more fertile than any other child I knew.”

“I remember those arguments. I remember my Dad detailing, with absolute precision, some of the things your mother shouted at him that summer. It amazes me that we are still friends, given what happened next.”

“Yes, your father was pretty brutal.”

I pull the swing back, before throwing my body towards the house on it. The silhouettes on the balcony are gold shapes passing amongst each other, floating inches above the lights on the pond. The figures look angelic, as if they're from a world separate to ours. I feel as though I am watching them in a film.

“I don't think we'd still be friends were it not for this little tribe of ours. It was them that insisted we remain close.”

“They even tried to match make the two of us at one point, didn't they? Graham in particular was always saying, ‘Think what a gesture it would be to both of your parents, to all of our parents, if the two of you started to date'. I can almost picture him rubbing his hands together as he said it. It's a shame we never did learn how to be in love with one another.”

“I know,” I say, smiling. She looks at me for a second, the twist of her mouth suggesting faint amusement, before she transfers her attentions to her feet. “They couldn't bear to see us fall out, could they? Graham was always reminding me during those early days, when we found we were in the same halls at university, of how the three of us had once put on little theatre productions in your garden.”

“We were acting out your plays, little Vincent, don't you remember? You must have had some affection for your father then, because you were determined to be the little playwright of our group.”

“It wasn't affection; it was a sense of competition. It makes me cringe to think. What plays did I write – the adventures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, episodes 1-14? With you as Marian every time, no doubt.”

“Sometimes Graham was Marian, Vincent. Those days were just wonderful, I remember them well. I loved acting out the lines you'd written, they seemed to always have a seam of magic running through them. Your mind was so agile, so alive. Even in our makeshift little theatre, made from cardboard boxes and abandoned slates of woodchip, I felt like a little star. I remember wanting to stay being the characters you'd written, wanting to embody those damsels in distress and live out every feature of their lives. My love for theatre came from those early plays of yours Vincent, there's no doubt about it.”

“I like to think that you still have a love of theatre, that is hasn't been entirely lost.”

“I'd like to say the same thing,” she says, leaning against the chain of her swing. “The moment I was old enough she put me into auditions – for amateur productions and then for competitions as well, some at the other end of the country. Trying to make me into a little starlet. Her career had ended with a definitive slam of the door, and after a period convalescence she was funnelling all of that ambition, all of that hunger, into this little girl who was still unable to ride a bike.”

“I remember. That haunted look in your eyes, with you always falling pale at the thought of not winning the next rosette for your mother.”

“And the pressure built. I'd win one rosette, and the school would applaud me in assembly, and though I'd blush as I got up to collect it, inside I would feel magnificent. I thought I'd learnt what real happiness felt like – it was seeing the colour in her cheeks when I came off the stage after a victory, when she picked me up and swung me around her.

“But then I made some mistakes. I came second and third a few times, and initially though her encouragement remained, her optimism began to dim. And then one day, after months of feeling drawn and weak, I messed up the opening lines of a piece in a regional competition. She'd brought my grandma along to watch me, wheeled her out of her home for the first time in centuries, and I blew it spectacularly.