The Great Gatenby (6 page)

The house was what you'd expect, something like a cross between Windsor Castle and the Taj Mahal, with a white terrace all around it. The drive swept around some truly beautiful tree — I don't know what kind it was but it sure was beautiful — and came to rest by the front door. I felt like we should knock or ring — I still couldn't get used to the idea that Melanie lived here — but she just opened it up and went right on in. There was a vestibule and then we were in this massive entrance hall with a floor of tiles or something, I don't know, and stretching away to the right and left were reception rooms that looked like they were out of a museum, because they were filled with antique furniture and paintings and big tapestries hanging on the walls. In front of us was a huge staircase that split in two different directions half way up. But Melanie went straight ahead, through a little door beside the staircase.

‘I think this is where you'll be,' she said. ‘It looks like it's all made up.'

‘What time's Inspection?' I asked, cracking jokes to cover how nervous I really felt. The thing was, this wasn't a bedroom I was sleeping in, this was a suite. There was a bedroom, sure, but there was also a little sitting room and a bathroom. The shower, for some reason, was off the bedroom, separate from the bathroom. ‘Where do I ring for Room Service?' I asked her. I wouldn't have been surprised to be shown a bell above the bed.

‘Come on, leave your stuff here,' Mel said, ‘and come and see my room.'

‘Oh good, yeah, I'll need to know where that is,' I smirked.

‘Don't be disgusting,' she said, wrinkling her nose at me.

We went up the main staircase and along a corridor. What got me was that everything was so perfect. You just knew that every room was going to be laid out like it was a work of art — there wasn't going to be some old junk room, filled with rubbish, or a rumpus room with toys and pyjamas scattered all over it. ‘How can you actually live in a place like this?' I wondered, but not out loud. I was beginning to understand Melanie a bit better. Mel's room was good though, the only one in the place that I would have felt comfortable with. It wasn't anything special, I mean, not something out of
Vogue Living
; it was just a messy kind of kid's room, with stuff stuck on the walls and a patchwork quilt and a big black stuffed gorilla and a fantastic view across the gardens to the city.

‘I'll bet they shut the door when they bring visitors through this part of the house,' I said, trying to flop down in an armchair that wasn't really made for flopping down in.

‘You better believe it,' said Mel.

I jumped up and started looking at what she had on the walls. There were some pictures of wind-surfers, a drawing of a ‘Smile' face, a banner with a statement on it that she'd written out from somewhere: ‘WHATEVER YOU CAN DO, OR DREAM YOU CAN, BEGIN IT. BOLDNESS HAS GENIUS, POWER AND MAGIC IN IT.' There was a newspaper picture of some sleeping bats, a photo of a woman rock-climber hanging out over nothing, a calendar, a Do Not Disturb sign, a cartoon of a man trying to hide a hole in a wall by putting a bigger hole over the top of it, another saying: ‘ALWAYS BE TRUE TO YOUR TEETH AND THEY'LL NEVER BE FALSE TO YOU', and a whole lot of photos.

I took a good long look at the photos, despite Melanie getting all embarrassed. There were a couple of old ones from her last school, Ainsworth — class photos and sports teams. It was easy to pick Mel; she was the only kid in year three with a punk haircut. Then there were some family shots, and some taken of her and her friends up at the snow, and finally a stunning large photo of her diving: a beautiful colour shot that caught her in mid-air.

‘Who took that?'

‘My mother . . . she's a photographer.'

‘What does your father do?'

‘Uh, runs department stores or something . . . '

‘Oh, right, yeah, should have guessed.'

‘They'll be back in about an hour,' she added, looking out the window.

‘What are we going to do tonight?' I asked.

‘I don't know, get a video maybe, go to a movie, just rage around town, find a party, go to a disco, what do you wanna do?'

‘How slack are your parents?' I asked. ‘Like, will they want you back at a certain time, or what? Will they care if we go out?'

‘They're slack,' she said, and her voice sounded kind of bitter to me. ‘They'll probably say midnight, but it won't matter.'

We eventually figured out that a party was definitely the way to go, and Melanie got on the phone and sleazed an invitation, after a few false starts. Seemed like an ole school pal from Ainsworth was opening up her mansion for a pool party.

‘Great,' I said, ‘I'll be able to do a few more laps.'

By then Mr and Mrs Tozer were home. I saw them from the window arriving in a car and this time they definitely weren't in no Toyota hatchback. We went down the grand staircase to meet them. By then I'd been in Melanie's room long enough to forget what the rest of the house was like, so it struck me with a new sense of shock. But Mr and Mrs Tozer gushed away, asking about the CCS Carnival and all that. They were friendly enough. There was a housekeeper there too, whom they all called ‘Lil'. Melanie gave her a big hug, which was more than she did for her parents. It seemed like Mel really liked her, and Lil sure struck me as being warmer and more sincere than the people who paid her salary.

Dinner was around a grand table in a grand dining room but the food was just average. We had soup, then some kind of fish in some kind of sauce. I didn't like to ask but I figured there was a cook hidden away in the bowels of the building, as no-one seemed to have to do anything. Lil served the meal and Mrs Tozer waved a few things around like she was being helpful, but she didn't work up a sweat. Mr Tozer didn't say too much — he was probably thinking about how striped socks were moving in the Menswear Department. Melanie popped the question about the party. For slack parents, the Tozers managed to put her through quite an interrogation.

‘I don't know dear,' Mrs Tozer said. ‘We're going over to the Robertsons' later — I'm not sure what time we'll be home. We're only going for a drink but these things do tend to go on and on.' Melanie started her flashing eyes routine but Lil saved the day.

‘I'll be in tonight, Mrs Tozer,' she said, as she served the pudding: ice-cream, with plums that tasted like they'd been soaked in brandy for a week. ‘I'll be happy to wait up, if that would help.'

‘Well, that's very good of you, Lil,' said Mrs Tozer.

‘Thanks Lil, you're a dude,' said Melanie.

‘Now Erle, do your parents let you go to parties? You're sure they won't mind?' Great question. As if I was going to say ‘No, Mrs Tozer, I'd better stay here and do some homework while Melanie goes on her own.' These people might have been rich but they didn't seem like they had too many smarts.

The meal was a bit of an ordeal, and I was glad when it was finished. Nobody seemed interested in hanging around to say grace and Melanie was keen to crack the track. So we split for our separate rooms to get changed, agreeing to meet up in Melanie's room in twenty minutes. I just hoped I'd be able to find it again.

We took a cab to the party. (I paid, Mum, in case you're reading this.) It was raging away in good style by the time we arrived. Although it was a pool party lots of people were inside, but the night was warm and we were young, so we headed out to the lawn as soon as I'd been introduced to the girl whose party it was, and her parents. To this day I can't remember any of their names. The choice of drinks was light beer or wine or punch; we both went for the wine.

The guys all seemed to be from Pelham College and they mostly looked older than me. The girls were mainly Ainsworth. Melanie knew everybody. And then it turned out that they sort of knew me. This might seem unlikely, but I'd more or less forgotten about the afternoon's swimming — too much culture shock since maybe — but some of the Pelham guys recognised me, so for five minutes I was the flavour of the night. Most of them just wanted a chance to get a few one-liners off their sad little chests, but a few guys were genuinely interested, and nice and all. Melanie stood off to the side, watching with a funny smile. I was embarrassed. I was more used to being a black hole than a star.

After a time it got a bit more relaxed. We found ourselves sitting in quite a big group at one end of the pool, drinking and talking. People wandered in and out of the house, joining and leaving our group. A few people were swimming. Inside the house there was dancing, so most of the people who came out were hot and sweaty. Occasionally plates of food were offered around. As people drank more — some of them had smuggled in Southern Comfort — the noise began to build up. The dancing got wilder and a few people got pushed into the pool. Some guy was vomiting behind a tree by the tennis court. It was the usual scene, but not a bad party when it was all said and done.

Mel and I went in and danced for quite a while. God, I saw something then. She was the hottest girl I'd ever danced with. I hate girls who just shuffle their feet and look embarrassed when you try anything different. I like to cut loose when I'm dancing, and so did Melanie, so between us we were sizzling. I mean, I'm not saying it was like one of those old movies where everyone else stops and moves to the edge and watches in admiration, before they all clap at the end. We weren't quite that good. But we whipped up a little action.

And after a while it worked out the way I'd hoped. Some slow songs came along on the tape, starting with an old Presley song that I really liked: ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?' God I loved that old song. I got them to play it over again when it finished the first time. And during all these slow songs Melanie and I danced, but it was like the other extreme from the way it had been before. We held each other very close and hardly moved, kissing a lot of the time, just lost in each other, loving the warm feeling of being so close. Sure, I was turned on; we both were; but more than that I felt caring and loving towards this wild, radical kid, the only person around who saw me as more than a loud-mouthed punk.

Later, a lot later, we went outside again, grabbed a couple of beers and talked to some of Melanie's friends. They were funny, the way girls are. You know the way they talk to you like you've become their brother because you're going out with their friend? But first they check you out. They kind of suss out what you're like, as if they're making sure that you're going to treat their friend right, that you aren't a user. I like that though; I like the way they look after each other.

‘Melanie's changed so much,' one of them, a girl called Chloe, said. ‘You did the right thing leaving Ainsworth, Mel.' And to me she added, ‘The teachers all gave her the worst time, just because she was different.'

‘She still gets a hard time,' I said.

‘Yeah, but not as bad as Ainsworth,' Melanie said. Then she explained, ‘It's Chloe who writes me all those crazy letters. She's the one I was on the phone to at midnight when Gilligan caught me.'

‘Oh yeah.' I grinned at Chloe, now that Melanie had created a bond between us.

‘Mel's been talking about you for ages,' Chloe said. ‘She's never been so serious about anyone in her life, except her gorilla maybe.'

Later again Melanie and I sat by a quiet corner of the pool, close together while we talked. The party started fizzling out a bit after midnight, though there were a few very drunk guys who looked like they were settling in forever. We finally closed down and called a cab. Back at Melanie's we went in through a side door, into a flat that seemed like it belonged to Lil. She was dozing in front of the TV, in her sitting room. I thought that the flat looked more comfortable than the main part of the house, but I didn't say that.

‘Now are you two going to be right?' she asked. ‘You've got everything you need? Erle, Melanie's shown you where things are?'

‘Yes, thanks, definitely,' I assured her, not wanting her to get up and start trotting around the house like a chaperone. And when the two of us got away into the main part of the house Mel said, ‘I've got a percolator up in my room. You want a cup of coffee?'

‘Sure,' I said, starting to percolate a little myself.

We headed on up there and I lay back on the bed while Melanie got all the coffee ingredients together. She was well organized; she even had some long-life milk. When the coffee was ready she sat on the desk-chair to drink hers. I stayed on the bed. We were just talking lightly, some jokes, gossip, stuff like that, till she finished her coffee and put the cup down, and sat there, giving me a kind of funny look.

‘Sit here,' I said, patting the bed. She came over and sat down and snuggled in beside me. I was nervous and excited all at once. I felt breathless. I put my arm around her (Mum, I hope you're not reading this) and we started kissing. I was running my hand up and down her back, slowly. I could feel her bra-strap under her top. I put my hand under her T-shirt and began to rub her back, thinking how nice her warm skin felt. Her hand undid a few of my shirt buttons and crept in there and fondled my chest in a way that had me gasping. I'd forgotten how good that could feel. Somehow, without tying myself into a human knot, or breaking my wrist, I managed to get my hand around to her front. My hand slid up inside her shirt again and nestled around her bra.

‘We'd better stop,' said Melanie, but her actions weren't matching her words, and she wasn't going to get my vote. Her bra was annoying me but I didn't know if I could get if off without a lot of clumsy groping around. As always, I didn't want to seem uncool. Suddenly she sat up for a moment and slipped my shirt back over my shoulders and off me, then pulled her T-shirt over her head, undid her bra at the back and threw it across the room. I was awed at her generosity. She came back down beside me, and I found myself with a whole new playground to explore. Her hands were driving me crazy as they slid across my stomach, then occasionally, tantalisingly, inside the waistband of my jeans. I was mentally begging, ‘Go lower, go lower' and at the same time turning her on as much as I could, caressing her beautiful, small, round breasts and strumming the perfect, taut, brown nipples.

She ran a hand up into my armpit and I nearly went through the roof — I hadn't known armpits could be so sexy. Somewhere around that time both our zips seemed to give way. My hand was inside her jeans, pressing the springing curls; hers was getting closer, closer, and yes, that was it, and that, and that again. She was twisting around and making little whimpering noises like something was bothering her in her sleep. The further I pressed in with my fingers the more I loved it, especially the little moist noises. And if one thing was certain, it was the fact that she was loving it herself. Then I was hitting it, jackpot after jackpot, as her body took control and jumped away from her, way away, for what seemed like several minutes, while I held on tight and kept pressing as energy from somewhere kept her gasping and kicking.

God, it was even exhausting for me; I can't imagine how it felt for her. But when she'd finished and got her breath back it was my turn, like I'd been hoping. She turned her attention to me and with giggles and little touches lightly brought me to screaming point and through and beyond it till I was going off like a geyser at Rotorua or Yellowstone or somewhere, and when it was all over and we'd finished laughing and checking each other out we had to spend about ten minutes with tissues, cleaning up. It was amazing all the places it had reached. Then we just lay there for a long time, three-quarters asleep, and that was so nice and warm. At one stage I heard her parents come home. I asked her ‘Will they check?' She stirred and answered, ‘No, they don't care', so I let it be and just relaxed there with her.

Sometime before dawn though she stirred again and said, ‘You'd better go. Dad goes down the beach about seven o'clock and he usually calls in to see if I want to go.'

‘Ok,' I said and gathered my things and kissed her on the forehead and headed out the door.

‘Don't get lost,' she giggled as I closed it softly behind me.