Love and Robotics (43 page)

“Sod ‘em,” Alfred said. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

              All very well for him to say. He liked putting other people’s noses out of joint, but it seemed an antagonistic and lonely way to live. She was sick of fighting.

She hadn’t been able to confide in her parents. Gussy was a shimmering, elusive presence, flitting in and out of her childhood. Gwyn had never been on the receiving end of her rare smiles. To be fair, neither was Lucas, but you couldn’t blame her. While Gussy was “Mummy”, he was never “Daddy”.

One afternoon she was sitting in the hall, playing with toy trains. She must have been six. The door opened furtively. Her father came in, pulling a simpering woman by the hand. When he saw Gwyn he let go.

“What are you doing in here, Gwyneth?” He insisted upon calling her Gwyneth, which she never saw as her name.

“It’s raining.”

“Go and play somewhere else.”

The woman tinkled, “What a funny girl! Why is she wearing boy’s clothes?” 

Lucas sighed. “She’s mentally deficient like her uncle. I don’t even think she’s mine.”

It couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes, from her father sneaking his scrubber in to his betrayal. When she grew up and learned what those dreadful words meant, she hated him. If there was any justice in the world her feelings would kill him. She had never told Alfred.

As fate would have it, it was Gussy who died, leaving her and Marcus with a father who didn’t want them. Marcus moulded himself into a facsimile of Lucas, convinced that way lay love. Gwyn ran away to Chimera whenever she had the chance. It was the only place she could be herself.

At sixteen she was sure she liked girls and told her handful of friends. They shrugged it off: “How do you know when you haven’t slept with a boy?” Though the idea turned her stomach, she decided she would lose her virginity before the year was out.

It wasn’t easy. None of the boys on the estate were her class. She’d been friends with them for too long to find them erotic. Perhaps she could go to the club in the village, but they were in awe of her too. How can you make love if your partner’s tugging his forelock?

Just as she was going to give it up as a bad job, a boy called Niall came to work on the farm. He was well spoken and had been to boarding school. In some lights his slender build and wavy hair were like a girl’s. He spoke boastfully of the places he’d been. The boys listened, entranced. Only Estelle, Gwyn’s oldest ally, was unimpressed.

“Got a right gob on him, that one. If Lux is so marvellous, why doesn’t he bugger off back there?”

Gwyn saw what she meant, but he was the one boy who came close to making her feel normal. Her friends had listed the symptoms: “He kisses me and I go weak,” “He looks at me and my tummy backflips.” Maybe it was indigestion.

Niall watched her confusion, flattered and amused, and took to following her about. “Your stalker’s here,” Estelle would say acidly. Gwyn let him fall into step beside her. Estelle left by the next gate, curls bouncing angrily, and Niall carried on talking.

After a week he reached for her hand while they were feeding the pigs. She blinked, stammered “Thanks,” and agreed to meet him at the Hanged Man that evening.

Unsurprisingly her first time was a disaster. She arrived twenty minutes late, making Niall grumble - he’d only booked the room for two hours. They kissed on the bed. She was a head taller so he kept missing and bumping his forehead on her chin. It reminded her of a mother bird retching down her chick’s throat. How could anyone find this pleasurable?

He started to take his clothes off, making no move to touch her or help her undress. When she saw
it
, it was difficult to keep a straight face. It had the girth and potency of a pencil. She reached over to touch it. It was cold and squishy, the same texture as mushy peas. However inept her fumblings were, they worked. He pushed inside her and made a few lunges.

This was her initiation into womanhood? It was
boring
.

After what could only have been five minutes, he groaned and collapsed on top of her. She pulled herself out from underneath him. Blood ran down her legs. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Home.”

“Do you want to -”

“I don’t think so.”

Perhaps she should have considered his feelings. He clearly wasn’t as experienced as he made out, and leaving him to foot the bill must have hurt his pride. At the time she was disillusioned, angry and sore. The blood flowing between her thighs refused to stop. Though it proved one thing: she was definitely gay.

The next morning she rose early, determined to speak to Niall before the others got up. She’d make it clear it had only been a one off. There was no reason why they couldn’t be friends.

She went down to the lake. Niall liked to go there first thing; watching the ducks in flight helped him to think. Instead of a lone figure there was a gang of rough boys from the pub, sharing a bottle of hooch. Niall was in the centre, talking at the top of his voice.

“I could hardly say no, could I, her being Lord Rusty’s niece? She pins me against the wall, gets her tits out. Ginger pubes, I kid you not!”

“Ugh!”

“Get away!”

“Even worse, her flaps hang out! But, you know, first time I’ve taken a girl’s v-plates. ‘Course, she’s a bit simple, so she thinks I love her -”

She approached him from behind, fury swelling.
Simple
. Her father’s favourite descriptive. She tapped Niall on the shoulder.

“Yes?”

She punched him in the face, giving him a black eye. When he whined, “It was only a bit of fun,” she gave him another to match, and booted him into the lake.

“Are you going to tell your cronies you only lasted five seconds?”

“She’s a bleedin’ firebrand,” one of the boys muttered. She shoved him into the water as well. The rest took to their heels.

“Fuck off! I’ll set my uncle on you!”

She shut herself up in her room for the rest of the day. At nineteen ten there was a knock at the door. “Go away!”

“Gwynnie, I’m worried about you.”

She let Alfred in. He hovered by the door, taking his hat off and balancing it on his hand.

“Any reason why you’ve given Niall Perrin two black eyes?”

She told him everything, including the conversation by the lake. His expression darkened. As she finished he planted his hat back on his head.

“So I don’t have to let him out of the animal trap? Good.” He went whistling down the landing, gun under his arm.

After two hours’ penance in the trap, Alfred juggling a scold’s bridle and reading aloud punishments for rumour mongering, Niall was banished from the estate. They never heard from him again.

Chances were Alfred knew. When Lucas died - about time - she moved in, and he became her guardian. She was convinced he’d asked Vita to show her a good time on her eighteenth. Although their affair burned out within six months, they remained friends.

She wished she could say the same for her other exes. She’d be looking for love, they’d want an adventure before marriage beckoned. She was a lovely girl, she’d make some lucky woman very happy, it couldn’t be them because they weren’t
like that.
She knew the script. Which was why Pip bowled her sideways.

She’d been reading a blood book, wondering if this do at the Palace would ever end, when she saw a girl grinding a cigarette out against the wall. The iconoclasm of the action appealed to her. “You okay there?” she called out of the window.

The girl looked up. She was wearing an extraordinary dress, woven from gold pieces of string, and her hair was shocking pink. Yet she had brilliant hazel eyes, a pert friendly face and a cracking figure.
Hmm
, Gwyn thought.

The girl liked what she saw too. “What’re y’ doin’ out here?” she asked. “Are y’ somebody’s bodyguard?”

“Hardly,” Gwyn laughed. “Minding my uncle’s pride and joy. He’ll go ballistic if someone nicks it.”

The girl leant in the window. “What if I’m a bandit?”

“I’d be sorry to turn you in.”

Lots of straight women hit on Gwyn. But she sensed this girl’s interest was more than academic. “What’s your name?”

“Pippa Profitt. One fs, two ts. My ma remembers it as one fanny, two tits.”

Gwyn wished she hadn’t said that, it made her wet. “Gwyn Wilding.”

“Oh. Your unc’s -”

“Uh-huh. Go on, I’ve heard them all. ‘You seem so normal’, etc.”

“Wasn’t sayin’ that. Y’ look like him.”

“No beard, let’s hope.”

“Dunno, y’d suit a nice muzzy.”

By the time Alfred and Josh came over, they had been talking an hour. “Won’t they miss you in there?” she asked.

              “Doubt it. I’m just makin’ up numbers. This is much more fun.”

              She’d scribbled her number in eye pencil and stuck it in the window. Gwyn’s gaze kept drifting to it as she drove back. She ignored her Auntie Elaine’s mantra about calling the next day - just as, three days later, she had gone down on Pip in the old picture house in Lux.

              She was used to girls sneaking around like they didn’t want to be seen with her. Pip kissed her and held her hand on a crowded street. She was used to doing all the work in bed. Pip conducted a symphony with her fingers and tongue. Four months into the relationship, she couldn’t deny it: she, Gwyn Wilding, was besotted. She was considering moving out and starting up her own garage.

Pip was practical as always. “Y’ can’t just set up shop. Y’ need a business degree, backers.”

After an afternoon poring over every brochure in existence, Gwyn opted for Lowe University. Not only did it boast the best business school in the country, it was decidedly liberal. It was the first university with a robot professor.

“Don’t tell Grizzly, he’ll have kittens,” she said. Pip didn’t seem convinced.

Lowe was everything she could have asked for. Bar the odd prat with a chip on her shoulder, nobody made fun of her background. In fact, she had a bustling industry in sending Alfred things to autograph. Half her classmates fancied him, which was weird. She divided her time between work and play, earning a good Second. Best of all, Lowe was halfway between Langton and Lux, so if she wasn’t running up to Chimera, she was going down to see Pip. She missed Alfred horribly when he was travelling, but enjoyed receiving silly postcards from wherever he happened to be that day.

She was young and in love, and wanted the world to share her good fortune. She was about to have a very rude awakening.

The worst day of her life started with a bang. She’d always been sensitive to noises; the sound of an immaculately kept vehicle was her favourite. She would know Trudy, Alfred’s vix, anywhere. Her low purr made Gwyn think of a chain smoking temptress.

As it pulled into the college forecourt, her heart raced. She went to the window. Even before she’d checked she knew Glover couldn’t be driving. Grit confettied the kitchen windows. The flower bed had been totalled.

“Nanny!”  She hurried downstairs before the porters had her arrested.

Nanny was Nanny: unrepentant and affectionate, decked in mouldering furs. “Somebody else wants you,” she said, once she’d laid off smothering her in lipstick.

Of course she knew about Nick. Cora’s confession had made international headlines. Still, she wasn’t prepared to find Alfred gaunt and yellow in a wheelchair. Looking down at him, a novelty in itself, she realised for the first time he was mortal.