Their lips talk of misch.., p.13
Their Lips Talk of Mischief, page 13
‘Lou. Whisky is so expensive in Indian restaurants. Everyone knows that.’
‘Shut up,’ he snarled at Abby. ‘I’ve only got a few years left and you grudge me everything.’
That was the first time I’d heard him lay out his Doomed excuse, and I knew it wasn’t true. I’d talked for a long time with Aoife about Lou’s health and learned the specifics. He was only at serious risk before his operation, but when he got drunk, he often seemed to get the linearity confused and he genuinely thought himself back in that year when he was in danger of losing his young life.
Bored with me, Abby had moved round to sit up against Aoife and she had taken the bride’s fingers in her own. She was glaring down upon the wedding ring.
Lou tried to drag over a chair next to me but dropped it onto its side. He simply kneeled down on the carpeted floor close to me.
I snapped, ‘Get up. You look like you’re proposing to me and you’re already married.’
The girls laughed as he rounded the table on his knees the other way and I had to right the chair.
We toasted with the whisky. He jammed his thumb back over his shoulder and looked genuinely concerned. ‘Think there are elephants or tigers somewhere out there?’
When food came Lou had two cigarettes going in two different ashtrays. And he ordered two bottles of expensive white wine. I soon had four glasses: pink champagne, whisky, beer and wine, all active and demanding before me. He hardly touched his many plates. I struggled after a plate of prawns. I did observe Lou, quietly shifting some food into the jacket pockets of his beautiful suit, but I said nothing. Let him suffer in Brighton tomorrow with crushed monkfish pieces in his empty wallet.
The girls were ordered desserts but I was not. A bowl of smelling cognac was placed before me, sloshing greasily. Lou and I sat staring at each other, fumigating across the wide table, long pauses in our disconnected utterances. Sometimes I got the feeling he’d physically lost sight of me in the gloom and I made deliberate movements to help him navigate to my location. Tobias Hanson now came in for a sudden and late barrage of flak for walking too quickly; Lou waved his pointed finger at me – or in my general direction. ‘Doesn’t he respect that I’m bloody ill? I could be dead soon.’ He lit another cigarette – achieving a hat-trick. There was some talk of Malayan dialects, the rubber industry, Tagalog: the language of the Philippines, then speculative and uncomplimentary talk on the Prince and Princess of Wales’ sex life.
The waiter came to ask if all was well. Lou informed him that it wasn’t in the Prince and Princess of Wales’ sex life, but it was at this table. The posse of earlier waiters now rushed the table edges once more. A complimentary bottle of bad Spanish cava had been presented to us. With foresight, the waiter asked if it might be opened now or perhaps later. Even Lou submitted, nodded that later would be best and he rudely grabbed the black bottle round the neck and held it to him, implying it might be taken back.
As soon as the waiters were gone, Lou turned to the girls and said, ‘Take off your shoes.’
I thought things had just got more interesting.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Take off your shoes, we’re all doing a runner.’
‘Lou. Lou. No. Please. That’s stupid. Besides, the girls can’t ruin their good stockings.’
‘Take off your stockings as well, then. We can’t pay for all this.’
‘But what about the money your gran gave you?’
‘She didn’t give me a bloody penny, boyo. It’s hundreds here by now. I’ve cased the dump. Perfect. Two exits and we’ll take them by surprise. Split into two teams, meet up at the Victoria Station Hotel. Farewell, my lovely.’
Though he had absolutely no need to, with startling litheness drunken Llewellyn Smith leaped upon the table like a novice surfer. Glass and cutlery protested. Aoife seriously screamed. Sure enough, that re-established stream of talk at the far table snapped off into silence again.
Lou crossed our table in two crashing steps with bottles tipping; my unfinished drinks rolled on their sides then the whole table dipped as he launched himself off the edge, hit the ground on his feet and began running through the dark like a rugby player, with the cheap cava bottle cradled into his bulk like a ball.
A waiter had appeared in the nocturnal ambience. I was about to try to explain; we would be forced to leave some deposit. The police could be called. I thought I’d have to beg my parents for money and pay it off somehow.
I turned to appeal to the girls for rationality. But as if they were about to indulge in a bout of skinny dipping, Aoife and Abby were bent over, their long arms reaching for their shoes, and they were rapidly unbuckling or twisting them off.
‘Eh?’
‘What goes on here?’ A suited man I hadn’t seen before was striding across towards us. The manager. The restaurant was so enormous, though, he was a long time coming. The girls screamed, loud, delighted giggles, and Aoife ran one way and Abby another.
A tiny waiter walked towards me very uncertainly. Without a second’s hesitation I turned and ran.
I remember Aoife playful, circling a huge planted urn and taunting the pursuing waiter by quickly parting the reeds which came between them, making a rude face through the space while she laughed.
Far across the huge floor I saw Abby, chased between the pink discs of empty tables by two waiters, and I even glimpsed the distant table of diners whom I’d heard talking: hypnotised and in silence, their heads swung this way and then that in unison, following the girl in her wedding dress, carrying her silver high heels as she danced between the ivy screens then pulled free of the shy waiter when he tried to grab her bare arm.
I trotted half-heartedly to the door. I now realised the majority of the waiters had actually gone out through the far main entrance, chasing Lou up the street, which is why so few men remained. I stood at the unguarded door where through the glass I witnessed Aoife – the buckles of both shoes flapping in one hand, her silver clutch bag in the other, feet smacking down the pavement. She was pursued by no one. I heard her soles slap the cold pavement and she turned her head with a querulous look as to why I was standing there unguarded.
She was gone. She was fit. I recalled she once told me she had excelled at swimming underwater in secondary school. I looked down and thought: a wedding present. I kneeled and began rolling up one of the small, bright carpets at my feet, until it formed a tube of about five feet in length. With the carpet roll under my arm, I ran out through the front doors and up the pavement after Lou’s wife.
That long street was quiet behind me and I could see the assembled white shirts of a group of waiters morosely ambling back up both pavements, arms dropped, shouting across the street to each other. They spotted me and suddenly gave chase.
Running carrying a roll of carpet while in a kilt wasn’t easy. I turned a corner and jousted the end of the tube along the sides of various cars, but I gained speed. At one point I almost jettisoned the carpet but even without it I was so recognisable in a kilt there would be no sure escape. I passed the end of a quiet, shorter cross street. Squinting down it, I could distinguish mainly sixties office blocks and concrete steps. It was darker as well, with no pedestrians. I ran there. Though my brogues needed re-heeling they were making frightful clicking patterns on the pavement. Suddenly as a ghost crosses the line of vision in a movie, Aoife in her white dress floated shoeless across the opposite mouth of the street.
‘Hoi.’
She recognised my kilted figure and waved a pale arm busily towards me.
To my left was a wide concrete stairway which turned round on itself and seemed to lead to a first-floor terrace and the entrance to some glass-fronted office block. Everything appeared locked up and was in darkness. The concrete stairs had moulded balustrades marbled in tiny pebbles, polished smooth by wearied human palms through the sixties and seventies.
Aoife Smith was running straight toward me – utterly silent – her hair still up, vibrating lightly like a framework, both high heels held in one hand. I saw a joy in her eyes never there before and I thought that it was Lou’s madness alone that could put it there, yet her amazed look had settled on the pipe of carpet under my arm.
‘Another little wedding present. Told you we’d lay some carpet in the corridor.’ I grabbed her hand with my free one and led her up the stairway.
She laughed loud and completely. ‘Did you just?’
‘Rolled it up and ran. I think it’s called looting.’
I would have testified that she had put on fresh lipstick in the short time since we did the runner. ‘We got away together, you and me. We’re lost,’ she declared in a worryingly dreamy manner, looking about us. ‘Let’s run for it and find Abby.’
‘No. Aoife, listen. I think they might have telephoned the police. A guy in a kilt with a carpet under his arm and a tall girl in a wedding dress. We’re not hard to spot on the pavements. The rozzers will lift us on your wedding night.’
‘Oh. What should we do, then?’
‘Hide up here in this place, let things die down for a bit. No way are the police going to spend long looking for folk doing a runner from a restaurant.’
I led her on up the stairs; the way turned left. It was a type of concrete mezzanine to the main reception on weekdays, but that night it was shut up and dark through the glass doors. Yet both of us tiptoed cautiously, as if we expected humankind to be somewhere. I leaned the carpet against the wall, held my hands to the glass and examined the interior lobby through the doors, looking for the tell-tale low light, where a security guard might slumber with his feet up behind a reception desk. Nothing. The stone balustrade let you look down onto the street, one storey below. I cautiously peeked up and then down the pavement. The only way to find us would have been if our searchers ascended all the way up and round the stairs themselves.
With a dramatic flick of my arms, I rolled out the carpet along the cold concrete floor. She placed her shoes on the ground and we both sat down upon the fabric with folded legs. I had to carefully adjust my kilt, folding the material down on my crossed calves for warmth.
‘Oh God. It’s so, so cold. We won’t die here, will we? On my wedding night?’
I stood up and I took off the black dress jacket.
‘No, Douglas. You’ll freeze. You’ve only a shirt.’ I ignored her, bent down and draped the jacket around her bare shoulders. ‘I’m Scottish. I’m used to it,’ but I tried to suppress the shivers immediately.
Aoife’s face looked along the carpet and she shot her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. Her wedding ring signalled once. She whispered, ‘I just can’t believe you stole this. That’s so cool.’
I smiled and nodded, then I moved my face slightly closer to her small ear, unusually revealed by that construct of pinned-up hair. ‘We must whisper really quiet, cause those waiters are still out and about. I saw them. I think they chased Lou all the way down the street but they didn’t get him. Lou went really crazy in there.’
She nodded quick and whispered back, her breath touching my ear, which was stinging now, ‘I know. I was shocked, but once we started doing it – the running away – I got the most terrible giggles. I was surprised I could run.’
‘I saw you fairly moving.’
‘I won swimming at school once.’
I nodded. ‘You told me.’
She paused and seemed to think about her past. ‘Oh. It’s awful cold, isn’t it?’ Her teeth chattered and she quite violently pulled her stockinged knees right up tight, against her breasts. She dropped her face into the depth created by her knees, so her crown of white flowers almost touched my eyes. I could smell her perfume. I heard her breathing out warm exhalation down into that space.
‘Where’s that great big grey coat you had?’
‘It’s Abby’s. Abby took it off in her big bag. I saw her swinging it at a waiter to shoo him away.’
She lifted her head to look at me and, smiling, we both had to cover our mouths. After a while, when it was clear we wouldn’t laugh out loud, she sighed. I whispered, ‘If we lay down flat, I could fold the carpet back on top of us. Like a makeshift tent, when you’re a kid.’
She looked along the carpet again and frowned. ‘Do you think it would make it warmer?’
‘We could try. And it would cover up your white dress and my white shirt. We’re very white, for folk trying to hide in the dark here.’
She lay on her back then giggled again. She folded her arms over her heart. I stood, got the end edges of the carpet and walking backwards, folded it down on top, then covered her to the neck. She vibrated with suppressed laughter. As if we were in a bed together, I squeezed in next to her. The carpet was narrow so I had to have my shirt sleeve pushed against her arm. We both began to chuckle.
‘This is Horrid Horace. That’s what I sing to Lily.’ And she sang softly, ‘Horrid Horace, pudding and pie. Kissed the girls and— Oh, I’m so drunk. Think of all the people who’ve been walking on this carpet with dirty feet. We’ll need to get it shampooed for Lily to crawl on it. Wonder where Lou and Abby are, eh?’
‘They’ll be okay. They’ll make it to the hotel all right. Another ten or fifteen minutes then we’ll follow.’
In that very dreamy voice, she repeated, ‘Ten or fifteen minutes,’ and up so close next to her, I felt the communicated tremor of coldness travel down her body.
‘You’re freezing, huh?’
‘Yes. I am a bit.’
We lay under the carpet beneath the silent office block, under a dark London in this weird and frozen privacy.
‘It’s my wedding night,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah.’
‘Douglas?’
‘What?’
‘Can I ask you something? A couple of things?’
I turned myself on my side and leaned on an elbow, the carpet scraping against my skull, and I looked down at her face as one would do at a partner in bed.
She asked, ‘What do men like?’
A feeling of blood filling my mouth came and I croaked. ‘You’re twenty-one; a mother. You know fine.’
‘I don’t think I’m very good at any of it. Has Lou said?’
‘No. He certainly has not. Don’t think such things.’
‘It’s my wedding night.’
My mouth had gone dry and I could feel my pulse – heavily – in my tongue.
‘He thinks I’m an idiot and I’m dull in bed and he’s only with me cause of Lily.’
‘No.’
‘I got pregnant the second time I slept with him.’
‘He did tell me that.’
‘Did he?’ she chuckled, throatily but self-deprecating. ‘But he didn’t say I was boring in bed?’
‘No. I think he’s very into you, Eeef. Who wouldn’t be? Mmm?’
She moved one foot. ‘My stockings are all black dirt, ruined on the soles now. I suppose you won’t see it in Brighton tomorrow with my shoes on.’
‘No.’
She said, ‘What do men like?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t talk about this with Lou. You talk about everything else.’
‘We just don’t. What?’
‘What?’
‘Do men like?’
‘Positions.’
‘Positions?’
‘Positions. You. To be in positions in bed.’
‘What positions?’
‘Aoife. You know.’
‘What are their names?’
‘Spoon.’
‘Oh, I’ve done that. Like this. Lou and me done that for months, when I was huge, expecting Lily.’
‘Yes. Well there you go, then.’
‘And? Douglas. It’s my wedding night.’
‘Missionary.’
The three lines on her forehead again.
I whispered, ‘That’s normal, just you – the girl – on her back.’
‘Oh right. I’ve heard of that. What others?’
‘Sometimes men like you on the top.’
‘Oh. Right.’
‘Facing the other way.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well you on top but twirled around with your back to the man.’
‘Oh I see. Really? Is that possible? What else?’
‘Doggy.’
‘What’s that? Is it sore?’
‘Aoife.’
‘What?’
‘Hands and knees.’
‘Oh. With Lou behind?’
‘Yes.’
‘And me crawling.’
‘Well, or sort of with your arms down.’
‘Down?’
‘Your rear end is high, and your face is resting on the carpet. Bed.’
But the carpet began to move as she suddenly rolled over. The jacket I’d given her fell aside and with a suction of cold air she lifted the carpet on her rump by rising up on all fours. I nodded mournfully in the affirmative and patiently stated, ‘Yes. Like that. But with your arms down. Down so you face is here.’ I patted the carpet.
‘This?’ She rested her cheek on the carpet.
‘Yes.’
She was so blithe; her thighs like two identical, erect pillars of slim white. The stocking material was pulled taut in the cup behind her knees – an inch height of lifted gauze.
‘This?’
‘Yes. That’s the way.’
‘Is it?’
I let her see my eyes move over her but when I let my eyes go back to her face she seemed asleep.
‘Thanks,’ her voice said quietly, almost bored. She still didn’t shift position, then her teeth chattered and the eyes opened. ‘I’m so very cold.’
I took a long breath; my soul was swinging in the night. ‘Put the jacket back on, then.’ There was a sliver of impatience to my voice but I still watched.
She idly lowered her backside and twisted round on it, sitting up straight, the skirt of her wedding dress now angled and bunched, showing more legs thrown out in front of her but she just didn’t seem interested. ‘It’s my wedding night and I’m sozzled.’
I’d softened my bare voice. ‘Yes. And you sound scared.’ I reached out and put my hand onto the naked shoulder where I let it remain on her skin. I had to take a breath at the stupid joy this touch brought. The skin was so smooth but cold as a corpse.
