Simply Heaven (36 page)

There’s a puzzled silence. I realise that no-one has ever thought about this before.

‘But the food …’

‘Stick it in the freezer. What were we going to have, anyway?’

‘Beef.’

‘Beef? You haven’t got a turkey?’

‘The traditional English Christmas dinner is beef,’ says Beatrice. ‘Turkey is a colonial affectation.’

‘God, well, I’m sure we can get you some beef if that’s what you want,’ says Dad.

‘I was thinking more a big plate of fat prawns,’ says Mum.

Mmm, I’m thinking. A little spoonful of caviar. Eaten off my husband’s stomach. I can feel the excitement growing. I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s déclassé, I’m new money and I like my luxuries.

‘I must say,’ says Edmund, ‘it
does
sound rather tempting.’

‘I’m not spending Christmas in some flea-pit,’ says Beatrice. ‘We don’t stay in hotels. We stay with
people
. A Wattestone has never had a bed bug.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Granny,’ says Rufus, ‘you used to go to Baden Baden all the time. You never stop going on about it.’

‘Yes, but
everyone
went to Baden Baden. And they didn’t have bed bugs.’

‘Who said anything about bed bugs?’ asks Mum.

says Yaya.

‘I heard that,’ bellows Beatrice.

Yaya smiles at Tilly. ‘So what if she did? What’s she going to do? Come over and hit me with her stick?’

I give her a face like I’m going to come and hit her with a stick myself, and she purses her lips in that way she has, which you’re aware is actually a smile if you know her well.

‘What about the dogs?’

‘We can put some food down and leave them in the stables,’ says Rufus. He’s come on side, thank God. I think he’s thinking the same sort of things I’m thinking. Sex without having to wear a jumper, that sort of thing. ‘Someone can come down and let them out. They won’t know it’s Christmas. I think it’s a lovely idea. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Colleen.’

‘You’re welcome,’ says Ma. ‘Call it a honeymoon.’

Our eyes meet for a split second. I get a flashback to Gozo, to making love by moonlight in a boat off Ramla bay, and shiver. Bite my lip. My Rufus.

‘And there’s the meet,’ says Mary.

‘The what?’

‘The meet. Boxing Day. They’ve had to move it from Chipping Norton because of the antis and we said they could have it here. The whole county will be turning out.’

‘Well, we’re not going to
Australia
,’ says Dad. ‘You can drive over in the morning. What’s the biggie?’

‘I …’ Mary runs out of excuses. ‘Well, I don’t know.’ Then she brightens. ‘Of course, it’s all academic. A lovely idea, but completely impossible.’

‘Why’s that?’ asks Dad.

‘Well, what hotel is going to take us at this sort of notice at Christmas? It may be possible in Australia, but it certainly won’t be here.’

‘Oh, you’d be amazed,’ says Dad, waving his new money credentials about in the fusty old air of Bourton, ‘what a couple of hundred in the manager’s top pocket can do.’

I find myself bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet. ‘You mean you’ve done it already? Dad? Have you?’

‘Quieten down, Princess,’ says Dad. ‘You’ll find my daughter’s quite a little capitalist when you get to know her,’ he tells Edmund. ‘All that alternative therapy nonsense wears off pretty fast if you put her in front of a Jacuzzi and flat-screen telly.’

Soap in little packets. Shampoo in teeny tiny bottles. Pedicures. Remote-control movie channels. Chocolates on the pillows. Oh, wheee!

‘Anyway, yeah, I sorted it already. We went past a place called the Bardmoor Manor while we were trying to find our way to Stow. Big old place, bit like this, only –’ he catches himself, veers away just in time – ‘a hotel, five star, all suites. So I went in and slapped down the old black plastic and it’s all sorted.’

‘Ah, Bardmoor,’ says Beatrice. ‘The Raynesforths. Do you remember, Edmund? Forced out in nineteen seventy-three. Ginny would be turning in her grave at the thought of it being a hotel.’

‘Well, it looks pretty comfortable to me,’ says Dad, blithely ignoring the niggle. ‘So if it’s all right by you, we all check in tomorrow night and come back sometime before New Year.’

I let out a whoop of joy, and Tilly, bless her, claps her hands together like a little kid.

‘Oh, well,’ says Mary, ever the gracious recipient, ‘perhaps it might have been nice if you’d checked with us first.’

We’ve got a suite. The olds, good as their word, have put us up in the honeymoon suite, where the drapes on the four-poster are purely for decoration rather than warmth. We’ve a suite with three huge French windows that overlook acres of manicured, loved and planted garden, and miles and miles of the Cotswolds, from our hilltop position.

White carpet. Clean white carpet. With a couple of hole-free rugs that don’t crunch under your feet as you cross them. Heating that permits nudity. A couch that doesn’t stab your buttocks when you sit down, a coffee table with a big basket of fruit. An electrical supply that still works when you turn the hairdryer up to hot. A help-yourself honesty bar. A sliding door. Big white fluffy towels and bathrobes. Gold brocade curtains. A fireplace with a huge arrangement of gaudy flowers flown in fresh from the third world. A power shower. A bed that’s – oh, heaven, thank you, God – got four pillows that retain their shape when you put your head on them, rather than vanishing in a pile of dust-mite remains – and a lamp on either side so you don’t have to get out in the middle of the night and run across the room to hit the switch by the door. I’m as blown away as a frog in a windsock.

Oh, but this is bliss. I’d almost forgotten. Nearly two months at Bourton, and this single day of freedom has made me feel like a kid released from the drudgery of term into the endless balmy days of summer. I’d thought that time had stood still on Gozo, but in comparison with the tedium of days at the Big House, our love-bubble was one long whirl of activity. It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful: a fairyland with endless hot water. And best of all, a lock on the door.

Despite my mother-in-law’s image of the frantic, chandelier-swinging couplings with which she knows I trapped her son, we actually celebrate with a long, slow luxuriant session of love-making, the sort of fucking you never get in one-night stands or porn movies: the sort of one-touch-at-a-time, whisper-and-stretch body-worshipping that you imagine sex will be like when you’re a little girl, and it so rarely is.

But that’s it: that’s why I married him. It’s why I knew from the first time, that he was something other, something
real
. It’s not the primal pursuit of pleasure. When we are alone together, when we’re not worrying about roofs, and interruptions, and lies and deceits, we are perfect. We are everything. Rufus and me, we don’t just caress with our handslipsbodies. We caress with our minds.

He goes into me as we lie on our sides, face to face, my legs wrapped around his waist and my hands thrown wantonly behind my head. And once he’s buried, deep as deep, lovely big warm cock matching me pulse for pulse, he stays, stays still, and we wrap each other in an embrace, faces, bellies, breasts pressed as close as close as close, fingers tracing smalls of backs, the curve of upper arms, butterfly kisses on flushed and ardent cheeks. I feel as though, if we pushed a little harder, closed our eyes and held a little tighter, that barriers of skin and flesh would melt, that we would slip without resistance into each other’s bodies and become one.

It’s worn me down, Bourton Allhallows, so quietly and with such resolve that it’s only now that I’m away from it that I see how much it has stolen. No warmth, no privacy, no time – a million demands and worries and tiny disasters going drip, drip, drip between us. It’s no place for lovers, no quiet space to whisper
you, you, you
.

I can barely keep my eyes open. I am shivery and hot, breath deep in my body, his palms on my buttocks, hair meshed together like a Chinese puzzle. He moves, so slightly, and my back arches in an involuntary spasm of pleasure. A starburst: nerve ends tingling, fingers frozen, suddenly, in his hair, heat rolling through my groin, my stomach, my back, my head.

‘I love you,’ he says. ‘You saved me.’

And I cry out,
no, it was you, it was you
.

He reaches down, hooks my knees around his elbows, and we roll together until I am beneath him, head between the pillows, his knees, bent, either side of me. And he stoops, bites softly at my throat, my ears, my shoulders, and I whimper, feel neck-hairs prickle, tell him to fuck me because I’m going to die.

He thrusts. We both gasp. I say,
my darling, you make me feel, you make me feel
… and the words are snatched from my throat and I cry out, instead, to the God I don’t believe in. I can feel myself going, now, grip the bars of the bed head, voice rising, ripping out yelps, sobs, howls, mouth open, the undignified sounds that we can never imagine each-other making when we’re dressed up ready for church.

I love you, I love you, oh GOD
…

And when I open my eyes, close my mouth, feel my spirit return to my body, he is still there. He will always be there, all rough and sweaty, with his hair in his eyes and stroking the hair out of mine, grinning like a shot fox like he always does when he’s made me come, that look-at-me-I-scored-a-goal look that makes me want to hold him for ever. And he stays with me. He stays. Rufus always stays. Wrapped in my legs and my arms, feeling our heartbeats slow together, skins cool, limbs slide into blissful butterscotch languor.

He murmurs: ‘We were right. We were so right. I am never, ever going to let go of you.’ And I say: ‘I know, my darling. You’re mine.’ ‘I always will be,’ he says. ‘And I yours,’ I tell him. Kiss his eyelids, touch his wonderful mouth.

‘We can be OK,’ he says. ‘We can make it be OK.’

‘I know, my love,’ I reassure him. ‘We can be OK.’

I give Costa a bell before we go downstairs on Christmas day. He’s on his cellphone; the house phone rings out. When he picks up it is to a background of raised voices. He goes: ‘G’day?’ then shouts ‘Sis! How’s my little sister? How’s your Crimbo? Is it snowing up your way?’

‘Some bloody chance,’ I tell him. ‘More like a faint drizzle mixed in with the odd hailstone. Sounds like you’re having a good time, anyway.’

‘You know what they say. Cat’s away.’

‘And there was me imagining you sitting all alone at the dinner table in a party hat blowing feebly on a squealer.’

Costa laughs.

‘So all under control over there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Costa. ‘You know. A couple of people getting a bit big for their boots so I had to play the heir apparent while the old man was out of the country. You’re an alibi.’

‘Oh great. And there was me thinking it was a social visit.’

‘They won’t be bothering us again,’ he says.

‘Poor guys.’

‘Poor guys my clacker. They should’ve known better than to try it on in the first place. This ain’t the playground. How are you anyway, Sis? You settling into married life?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, still feeling the glow of lurrve dying on my skin, ‘You know?’

‘He treating you good?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell him he’ll have me to answer to if he steps out of line, yeah?’

‘Sure.’

‘No, I mean it. Tell him I’ll have his guts for garters if I hear anything … literally …’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Costa, don’t start with that ‘bidness is bidness’ stuff, OK?’

‘No, really, Sis. You know I don’t make idle threats.’

And I’m all grown up. I don’t need my family paving the way for me any more. ‘Especially when you’ve been on the sauce,’ I say.

The sound of my brother putting a bottle to his mouth. A schlup and a popping noise as he unsticks the neck from his face. ‘Naah, just the odd stubby or twelve. What about you? You not started yet?’

‘It’s only just gone noon, stupid. We’re just about to go downstairs and have dinner.’

‘Oh, right. Figgy pudding and the works, is it?’

‘I don’t think so. The old man’s booked us into a hotel for the duration. Which is something of a relief, as pretty much everything’s fallen apart back at the house.’

‘I thought these people were meant to be rich?’

‘Rich is a bit different over here,’ I say. ‘Seems like it means not having any money.’

‘Oh, right? So what does being poor mean?’

‘Oh, that’s not having any money, too. Only with a different accent.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘And the middle classes are all poor too, because they’re spending all their money on sending their kids to schools where they’ll learn not to talk like the poor people.’

‘Makes sense,’ says Costa.

‘And it rains all the time.’

‘Sounds like heaven,’ he says. ‘So are the old people behaving themselves?’

‘Not too bad.’

‘Dad splashing his money about much?’

‘God, yes,’ I say. ‘He keeps ordering up those carts with the Napoleon brandy on. And we haven’t even got to presents yet.’

‘You’re going to love yours.’