Green Grass (12 page)

Hedley telephones as Laura is preparing to settle down for an hour of work avoidance with the ‘Free Ads'. He is in high spirits because he has just diverted his telephone system to the dilapidated caravan in the farmyard.

‘I'm going to make this my summer office,' he shouts. ‘But listen, I need your advice. Tamsin's trying to persuade me to let her go to an all-night party with no parents this weekend. It's being given by that boy I saw her dancing with. I've already said no, but she thinks if she goes on at me enough I'll give in.'

‘You weren't supposed to see that, so you've got to pretend you don't know about him,' Laura reminds him.

Hedley gives a cackle of pleasure at his own cunning. ‘But now Tamsin doesn't know where I am so she can't get me. And even better, she can't get the telephone.'

‘I don't think you should be treating her like the enemy,' Laura cautions him. ‘She's quite alienated enough already, and things are supposed to have improved now you've given the party she wanted.'

‘Too right she's an alien,' Hedley agrees, mishearing enthusiastically. ‘Now I'm glad you rang, I've got an idea to put to you. It's—'

‘I didn't ring, you did.' Laura eyes the ‘Free Ads' and the almond croissant she is already doing penance for. ‘I've got to go, will you call me later and tell me your idea?' And then, suddenly wondering if she can slip a question in without him noticing, she adds, ‘Does Guy have an office number separate from his home number?'

‘Guy? Oh, Guy Harvey. Of course. Umm. I don't know. Why do you ask?'

Absurdly, Laura finds this question alarming, and pretending there is a fault on the telephone line, starts shouting, ‘Hello, Hedley? Hedley? I can't hear
you? Sorry! Oh well, we'll talk later,' and she clicks the phone down in relief.

It is not until she has scanned every dog-related advertisement, including the ‘Dogs at Stud' section, that Laura galvanises herself to go to the studio. Driving there, she is lost in a reverie of pleasure recalling the ‘Dogs at Stud' section. There is only one entry, but it is fabulous. Cavolo Nero, a black pug of international calibre, is standing at stud. Hips, eyes and pedigree all first class.

Laura cannot get over this, and although she has never even contemplated pug life before, now finds herself longing more than anything to have a winsome female pug to take to meet Cavolo Nero. She recognises that her fantasies about Guy are getting out of hand when she can't help thinking it a sign of some sort that the pug is named after a fashionable vegetable which Guy probably grows on his organic farm.

Reaching the studio she is brought back to reality by six messages from the Royal Park offices about the restrictions on the
Paper in the Park
show. She no longer has any time to waste; fruit nets must be found. Striding in, she uses the momentum of arrival to propel herself over to the telephone, and without stopping to remove her coat, she calls Guy's number. It'll be the answerphone anyway, she tells herself as the number connects and rings.

‘Hello?' It is Guy's voice on the other end, and not the answer machine. Oh God, what now?

‘Hello,' says Laura, and stops. There is a long pause. Guy eventually speaks.

‘Er, who is this, please?'

‘Laura.'

Now the long pause is his. ‘Laura?' He laughs. ‘How wonderful. It was so surprising, so unexpected seeing you in that restaurant. I've been thinking about you since then.' He tails off, clearly feeling he has said too much.

Laura, her ear red hot with the handset pressed against it, does not answer. She wants to get off the topic of meeting and on to the safer ground of fruit nets, but she can't.

Guy coughs. ‘But that was ages ago. It's much milder now, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is, but it's been dreadful for weeks,' Laura says automatically. She has always found talking about the weather soothing. Perhaps Guy has remembered this and is trying to make her relax. ‘Guy?'

‘Mmmm?' She can tell he is smiling by the tone of his voice. How can he smile like that when they haven't seen each other for all those years? And it's impossible not to smile back, so suddenly she is flirting on the telephone, which is exactly what she had been afraid of.

‘I'm not ringing about anything except fruit nets,' she explains. ‘I need to find some for Inigo's installation.'

‘Inigo's what?' Guy sounds utterly blank. Laura suddenly realises she could have rung a farm supply shop and saved herself this pulse-raising conversation. It has all been a mistake. Guy's life is not hers to enter when she feels like it, and anyway he's married and she doesn't know him any more. You don't go around ringing strange men and flirting with them when you are nearly forty and have children and a partner and everything set up around you.

‘Oh, it doesn't matter. I just need some fruit nets. But I think I know where I can find them. Goodbye, Guy, I—'

‘No! Stop! I mean wait, don't go for a minute, Laura!' Guy is shouting.

‘I'm still here.' She can only just whisper. She is making such a mountain out of this conversation, it's absurd. Her heart thuds in her throat.

‘I'd like to see you. We've years of catching up to do. When will you next come to Norfolk? Why don't you bring your family over?'

‘I don't know. I've got to go. Thanks, Guy.' Laura rushes the words out and puts the phone down. She is breathless and glowing, shaking even. It is absurd to be suffering this teenage agony over a man she
no longer knows. She is shocked by her reaction to him, and by her sense of peeled-back years. It suddenly feels as if it was yesterday that they were last together.

The day before she left home to go to America and university, Laura caught the train to Norfolk to spend her last night with Guy. They had been together for a while now, all through Laura's A levels and her year working in the press office of a Cambridge-based theatre company. Her parents would have liked her to have done something more stimulating, but she was stubborn, and they knew she was leaving for NYU, so it didn't matter if she wanted to spend one last summer at Crumbly.

Laura and Guy both knew she would be going one day, but neither of them could really believe that the day would arrive. When it did, they were alone at the house. Uncle Peter was away birdwatching in Scotland, and no one knew they were there; not a soul telephoned and nobody came to invade their parting. Laura had made a picnic and they ate outside as the sun went down, flooding golden light up all the panes in the windows of the house behind them. Laura's bare feet felt the first dampness of night on the grass as a skein of ducks billowed overhead. Guy saw her shifting her feet on the ground and pulled her up.

‘Come on, let's go for a walk.'

The soles of Laura's feet were hard from a summer of walking barefoot. She strolled easily beside Guy. Neither of them spoke. They reached the sea as the sun began to slip beneath the horizon, turning the flat surface of the water purple and pink. Guy pulled Laura closer to him, her ribs hard against his side, her hip bumping his when they walked. They followed the shoreline for a bit then paused again to listen to the sea.

Laura pulled away from Guy. ‘Let's swim,' she said, and before she had finished speaking, she was unzipping her jeans, shaking them off and running straight into the sea in black lace knickers and her red T-shirt, twisting her hair high on her head as she jumped the breakers, laughing, and shouting back, ‘Come on, Guy! It isn't cold, you know.'

Guy followed, kicking their clothes further up the beach, throwing his shirt up on to dry ground before diving under a swelling wave, his breath snatched by the shock as it broke. He caught up with her and they laughed, treading water, moving languorously now they had adjusted to the temperature.

Without taking her eyes from his face, Laura wriggled out of her knickers and her T-shirt, waving them
above her head. ‘Catch them if you can!' she cried, and threw them back towards the shore.

Guy laughed and wolf-whistled. ‘I like the prim touch,' he teased. ‘And I'm sure you're right to keep your kit on until you're underwater – you never know who, or what, might be watching.' And he lunged at her.

Laura squealed and splashed him back. ‘Now yours,' she grinned, and dived down into the clear water, her hair spilling from its knot and smudging red-gold in the fading light, her arm and hands snaking out to yank at his shorts. Both naked, they stood on tiptoe in the water, floating, wrapped around one another, his body solid against hers, their skin hot where it touched and lapped with cold silk water.

‘This is a good memory to take away,' whispered Laura, and Guy groaned suddenly, turning her face to his and kissing her gently at first, but harder, then harder still.

‘I want more than a memory to keep,' he murmured, holding her head, stroking her wet hair, and pressing his mouth on her eyelids, her shoulders, her earlobe, licking the salt taste in the dip of her throat. He pulled Laura out of the water and lay down with her on the shirt on the sand, propping himself on his elbows to look at her. Laura laughed and hugged him, her arms around his ribs, fingers raking his
back, drawing him closer all the time. A wave broke beyond them, lapping near their feet, as the last slice of the sun slipped below the horizon. Laura's breath was shallow, faster now, her eyes half-open, focusing on his face above hers. She bit her lip and shifted beneath him, gasping, tightening her arms around his neck. Guy ran the tip of his tongue along her neck and rolled his hips, unable to stop anything now she was so close. Laura gasped and arched her back, locking her legs around him, shuddering and kissing him, pulling him to her as he held her close, his heart thumping, his arms around her in the sand.

The intercom buzzes and Laura starts, pulled back from the Norfolk beach with Guy to now and the Whitechapel Road. Guiltily, she picks up the intercom. ‘Hello?'

‘It's me – Cally. Let me in, can you? I haven't seen you for ages.'

Cally is in Whitechapel for her health; she has been attending a Chinese herbalist who is meant to be helping her give up smoking. It is not working. She bustles into the room and her vigour swamps Laura's guilty thoughts.

Laura slides her papers into a drawer and slams it, then bursting to confess, pulls it open agains, waving the papers at her friend.

‘Look, Cally, I've just hidden the number of the man I used to go out with. I've hidden it from you, because I shouldn't be telephoning him. It's absurd.' She presses her hands to her hot face.

‘For God's sake, Laura,' says Cally, delving in her bag for her tobacco and papers, pushing to the depths of the cavernous holdall her newly prescribed and very expensive packet of sinister black-leafed Chinese herb. ‘You're inventing a drama for yourself. What's the big deal? I can't believe you're getting so het up about it.' Cally drags keenly on her roll-up, her kind eyes narrowing with pleasure as nicotine thrums through her veins. ‘Christ, that is such a relief. Do you know, I haven't smoked since Thursday because I was so worried that Mr Ming would notice tobacco in my aura or somewhere and refuse to treat me.'

Laura raises her eyebrows at Cally's roll-up. ‘But what's the point of him treating you if this is what you do straight afterwards? You may as well save yourself the money and the journey and just get on with smoking at home.'

Cally, coughing now because she has smoked almost the whole cigarette in three greedy drags, shakes her head. ‘No,' she gasps. ‘No, I need to go because the fear stops me smoking until I've been, so if I go on Tuesdays, I only smoke until Friday at the latest then I stop for fear of Mr Ming.'

Laura stops herself saying she doesn't think that this is a very mature way to deal with addiction. Smoking is part of Cally; without it she is somehow diminished. The clanking bracelets as she delves into her bag, the hiss of the lighter, always a different one, embellished with feathers or cartoon stickers, glitter or tiny mosaics, and the trail of narrow half-smoked cigarettes which follow her through life are as much a part of her as her ready laughter and her flamboyant clothes. Today she is wearing a long fuchsia-pink velvet skirt and a lime-green and yellow striped jersey, between which a quantity of her midriff is visible. She grabs some of this exposed flesh, rolling it between her fingers.

‘I'm on my way to the gym. Look at this, I've got to do something about all this. Will you come with me?'

Laura shakes her head. ‘No. I've got too much work, and I hate the gym. I'd rather just go for a walk than be chained to a treadmill.'

Cally hadn't expected her to come anyway. ‘Fine, fine,' she breezes, ‘but I wondered if you and Inigo could come to supper next week. I want you to meet my cousin Gina. She's divorced and predatory, and I love her.'

‘Yes, we'd like to,' says Laura. ‘Inigo always loves a predatory female to flirt with.' She breaks off, distracted by a telephone ringing.

‘I'm going, healthy living beckons.' Cally waves, stubbing her cigarette out and departing with a clatter of bangles and maximum door banging.

Laura swings around on her chair to the phone. It is Hedley.

‘I thought I'd catch you at the office, Laura, to put this idea to you.'

‘Oh, hi Hedley.' Half-listening, Laura turns on the computer to check her e-mail; loud squawking sounds suggest that Hedley is in the hen run, and that he is upsetting the residents there. ‘Ow, get off you sodding bird,' confirms this.

Laura is distracted from her screen.

‘Hedley, why can't you ever ring me from anywhere normal?'

‘I was going to, but Tamsin took the day off school saying she has an upset stomach and now she's on the Internet looking for porn, and she knows much more than me about it, so she can bar me from sites I know she shouldn't be looking at.'