She woke feeling like she’d landed in the cover of a country home magazine. She’d always tried to avoid glimpsing them on the newsagent’s rack, taking Sugar back to her damp-walled bedroom when she was 13. Now she was Goldilocks in Daddy Bear’s bed, and daylight spilled through the curtains illuminating all that’d been a dark shape when drunk Daddy Bear himself carried her in last night.
Everything was soft sandstone, teal and dusty rose, from the duvet and tassel-trimmed throw all tangled like a pastel tie-dye at her feet, to the floral curtains, square bell lampshades and exposed, milk-washed stone brick. Driven through the delicateness were strong wood lines of shiny French-style bedside tables, walnut wardrobe and dresser, and the cottage’s beams gridding the uneven ceiling like planks of chocolate across rice pudding.
She stretched up her arms at a little Dutch-style chandelier, as her hands fell back upon the cool spindles of a metal head frame; crinkling her forehead to spy upside down, four framed vintage botanical engravings. Neill, either the unlikely sex fiend herbalist, or the last owner left them there.
She didn’t know what time it was nor where her phone was. She slipped on Neill’s navy blue robe, padded down the stairs and creaked open the lounge door. Neill, now striped by morning light, had removed and flung his t-shirt in the night, as she stepped forward to let her sight graze on his bare shoulders; his blonde-brown hair all a mess, his face a replenished calm after the storm.
Putting finger and thumb each to a spiky cheek, she rocked his heavy head till he groaned, his blue irises flashing briefly before his lids closed again.
‘Did you just kiss me?’ came his bass-tone whisper.
‘No,’ she smirked.
‘Why not?’ he murmured. ‘Go away. I was getting up to bring Natalia breakfast in bed.’
‘Aren’t your friends coming shortly?’
‘They’ll be in no rush. They’ll be like this. Urgh—’ His eyes tried to focus on the ceiling. ‘I had more than I thought, I’m sorry…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
He heaved to sit up, as she took a step back. With a series of long grunts, up came his chest into full view, as two emerging hairy legs pushed away the blanket, followed by thighs and feet setting to the floor; knees splayed, head groaning back against the couch.
Her eyes took furtive wanders over the unexpected affront of a limb-sea of golden man hair.
‘Christ,’ he murmured, sipping a glass of water from the table and speaking on the lowest-speed Neill she’d ever heard: ‘You come to mine to get away from your alky mum, and what do I give you? Five more alkies.’
‘Technically four.’
‘Kind of you to exclude me, but—’
‘I meant Monica.’
‘Oh… she’s one too. Bloodline to that baby may as well be Zinfandel. She can’t swap out years of speedball raving with three months of Sanatogen’s folic acid.’
‘But I was more concerned for you. You were quite angry.’
His nose wrinkled. ‘Us lot have had worse debacles. Good chums always take things on the chin.’
‘I can see that, but…’ She went to sit down in the sofa chair opposite. ‘I felt like a nerve was touched. In the man who says to never get embarrassed. Like something new had entered the room.’
‘Yes. You.’
She took in the unwavering gaze of Neill sitting straight on from her now, naked all for a pair of red boxer shorts, body hair going right up his inner thighs. She blinked away.
‘It’s ok,’ he chuckled. ‘Men when they’re hungover get something called brewer’s droop. There’ll be not even a Mr Twitch in sight.’
‘Erm, right.’
‘My head feels like lead,’ he groaned. ‘I need pills.’
‘Do you have any?’
‘Paracetamol. In the bathroom.’
‘I’ll get them—’
She sprung up the stairs, and after two minutes’ rummage, was back down.
‘Ed’s still snoring,’ she reported.
‘Let him for as long as possible. Oh, I so need a fag, but I haven’t got the strength to stand outside. I almost just fell over urinating into the kitchen sink…’
‘Have a fag right there?’ she shrugged. ‘If smoking in your office is ok, then…’
‘Mm. Just one for fun then. Fetch my fags from the countertop with the lighter too—’
She smirked to herself for her secret mischief last night, as she crossed to the kitchen.
‘Switch the kettle on while you’re there!’
A moment later she was placing and lighting a fag between his lips. He took a drag and surveyed her.
‘You’re better than a wife.’
‘Well I am supposed to be your pretend GF.’
‘Ashtray, darling—’
‘Oh, shit…’ She ran back into the kitchen.
‘You’re learning.’
‘Shut up. There’s your pills on the table—’
‘Feed me those too. With the water there.’
She pushed two out of the blister packet and pushed them between his exaggeratedly downturned lips, along with the rim of the glass.
‘I’ll go make the tea.’
‘All this by the pretend girlfriend,’ he murmured. ‘That’s about right.’
She came back in and set down two green mugs, as Neill stared at the steam, enveloped in his own wisp of the life support of his cigarette. She reached for her tea to shield her face and continue gazing at the sight of the hungover Headmaster, stripped from his daily regalia, unapologetically sprawled, yet as mighty as ever, in a feistily fallen way, framed by the beams of his cottage. She wouldn’t mind drawing him right now. What would Miss Patrick say if she opened her sketchbook to see Neill like this?
How apt that he joked about meeting Natalia in a life-drawing class. ‘Fuck off I’m drawing cock,’ or here, portrait of man with brewer’s droop. But how would she etch that shaft of light that now reached his knee, casting a prism up his hirsute inner thigh? He seemed oblivious to his exposure, to any judgement of his body that was neither fat nor athletic; but stocky, taut, manly meat, sitting so… innocently? Can innocent be a word for Neill? No, more like nonchalant, impervious, large as life, unpretentious. Take it or leave it. Absolute, unwaverable confidence… as her lips smiled open to admit the hot tea.
He caught her smile and raised his eyebrow.
‘Marlboro medicine,’ she remarked. ‘So much for Smoking Kills,’ she nodded at the packet. ‘It’s bringing you back to life.’
‘Ah, cigarette! Thou trusted pet!’ he suddenly sighed, gaze glimmering up to the ceiling, as she continued a quietly enthralled spectator to this little candid show he began - as though in a trance, but one she was allowed to be part of - whilst catching her eye every three lines, like an actor in theatre, or rather a befallen one backstage:
‘‘Against all harm, thou hast a charm!’’ he began:
‘‘For heart of peasant, king or vagrant;
‘‘There is a balm, a cheerful calm!
‘‘Within thy cooling breath so fragrant.
‘‘Within my dreams, thou art, meseems,
‘‘Love’s philter, drawn from poppy’s chalice,
‘‘Which, cigarette, makes me forget
‘‘This cold old world, and with it - Alice.’’
On the last word he tapped his fag in the ashtray.
‘Wow. Is that the smoking caterpillar’s song?’
‘Just before Alice comes to kiss him like she did last night.’
She laughed softly, her eyes falling to his undrunk tea. There was no way she had the nerve to do what she did last night to him now. Last night he was a scared child in the dark, floated toward by a cocky ghost. Right now, he was this daylight-shimmering, great golden Herculean ball of body hair that seemed to fill the whole room with smoke rising from his follicles as though she’d accidentally magicked up the most nonchalant genie known to Earth from a bottle of Glenfiddich.
‘What with Ed and everyone’s stories last night, I bet you thought I sounded like a shambles,’ groaned the genie as he reached for his builder’s tea.
‘I’m not sure it’s any worse than everything I know,’ she mused. ‘Did you really try to kiss a 70-year old?’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘Yes, probably a peck on the cheek.’
‘And collapse in front of women who’d take you back to your room and… leave you snoring like a walrus?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, I get the impression your friends are used to humouring your past frolics with you, and it took them a while to get that you weren’t.’
‘Wouldn’t you calm the stories down a bit if I was now sporting a borderline pious 19-year old?’
‘Probably, but I’m not them.’
‘Oh you’re not.’ He swigged his tea.
‘I guess we can’t be too surprised at the clash of personalities.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe a part of me is just tired of all the nonsense.’ He blew out smoke from both corners of his mouth.
‘Well, I for one was disappointed there were no porn mags under your mattress.’
‘Look harder.’
She paused. ‘Is that the name of one?’
They caught each other’s eyes and chuckled.
‘Well, you clearly still enjoy good nonsense,’ she remarked. ‘The bawdiness and—’
‘I said a part of me.’
‘Mm.’
‘But the thing is this, Natalia,’ he leaned toward her intently, ‘I’ve never felt it before last night.’
‘So… it made a surprise appearance, in the middle of Sexy Truth or Dare?’
‘Yes. Now look. They’ve always been good friends to me, but for the first time, I felt like wringing Claire’s neck, stringing it up together with Ed’s and swinging them into a hammer-throw straight at the other two. This may sound amusing but I also find it somewhat disturbing of myself.’ He drew up his tea.
‘Can’t you just do different things together?’
‘What? Put on Radio 4 and play chess?’ He stubbed out, frowning.
‘Why not? And less drink? You’re all growing up. I mean, Monica’s going to be a mum…’
‘I pray for the day Claire gestates a foetus, as that would be the only way to get her off the booze. Although the day a man puts his unsheathed dick anywhere near her cervix is the day I stop smoking.’
‘You think you’ll introduce them to Joan next time? Someone who would take to the bona-fide, boozy banter better?
‘Nice alliteration. No, I can’t have her hearing repeated quips about my sordid past.’
‘But I can?’
‘Yes, because you’re a pretend girlfriend.’
‘That’s funny. You’re scared Joan won’t let Phil give you a million when she hears you stole a packet of Millions from Sainsbury’s Local in 1997?’
He nearly spat out his tea. ‘No, because I fear that Joan would never be able to make jokes like that.’
‘So why do you want her?’
‘You already know why. Because every choke she makes on my dick is practically a nudge up the league tables for Thornwood.’
‘Oh, we’re back to the terrible obscenities…’
‘Tell me more. Tell me more obscenities,’ he downed the rest of the tea in one gulp, set down the mug and reclined. ‘Might even cure dick droop,’ spreading his spider legs further, shuffling his crotch as though putting it forward for observation.
‘Er… it’s a bit early…’
‘Brutal truths then. Tell me what you really think of my friends.’
‘Well, er—’
‘First light me another cigarette. I quite like you to do it, and if you were really my girlfriend, you’d do it every time.’
‘Ah, haa…’ She bit her lip.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re supposed to be worshipful this weekend. Which means before you put the fag in my mouth, you’ll kiss me like last night.’
She smiled, reached to pluck a cigarette from the box, and then standing like a child poking a piece of apple into an ostrich’s beak from a safe enough distance, the ostrich frowned at her as it sucked the apple to glowing fire, and she backed away, retying her robe girdle like a protective sign of the cross.
‘Won’t you smoke with me then?’
‘I pretty much am,’ she mock-coughed.
‘Open the window a little,’ he motioned. ‘Else I’ll smoke you and this poor cottage right out.’
She walked over to unlatch it. ‘Well, if you want brutal truths,’ as she sat back down with a shudder from the cold air, ‘I see a similarity between Claire and Joan. I think you keep these women in your life so you can continually enjoy shutting them up.’
‘Hmm. I’d have to think about it,’ he continued, the waft from the window not seeming to affect him, as though he was kept warm by his cigarette. ‘What about the others?’
‘Ed? Ed’s a continuous babel of derogatory euphemisms worse than you,’ lowering her voice as she glanced to the ceiling, as though he might be listening through it. ‘Do you have him in your life to take the focus off your depravity? Make you look borderline pious by comparison?’
He chuckled, lips pursed around his cigarette. ‘He’s not as bad as you might think. At least, when you get him alone without the circus. And Monica?’
‘Monica… makes everything feel ok,’ she mused. ‘Like a glossy poster of sunshine in a doctor’s office. But under all the Mediterranean allure… there’s the same neurotic foppishness of Claire, no more interesting than anyone else. Well, maybe. I don’t know her well enough,’ she blinked hastily.
‘Nah, you do.’ He flicked his fag ash. ‘I think subconsciously that’s why I wanted you here last night. Not just because it was high time I began squeezing your bottom, and let me say, you have the most wonderful, pert, beautiful bottom I could well, and will damn well, glue my hands to for the entire day—’
She managed a cocky blink back.
‘But you,’ he continued on smoothly, as though her truthbombs were a better medicine than the fags, pills and tea combined, ‘last night showed to me, partly because you weren’t intoxicated by alcohol - not all due to your age but your choice - how you’re one of those people whose words don’t effuse on autopilot. The listener must work for them. And when they are delivered, or perhaps pulled, nudged, like a long multicoloured string from a magician’s pocket, reeling endlessly, I, the listener, just stand there in awe, wanting more.’ He put his cigarette wistfully to his lips.
‘Same to you, and I… guess that’s why we talk rather a lot,’ she smiled.
‘You silenced them all like Joan in the canteen,’ he stared. ‘You fucked the whole lot of them verbally. Like a bukkake, but in reverse,’ he frowned. ‘Do you know what a bukkake is?’
‘Er, no?’ she replied as though someone had asked if the bus seat next to her was taken.
‘A woman kneels down and multiple men ejaculate over her.’
‘Oh,’ she nodded, as if she’d just been told the bus had arrived at her stop.
‘And yet with me, despite how often I shower you with bumptious ribaldry, you give me the hope of something by the look in your eye, how you barely ever look shocked…’
‘Well I’m not sure about that,’ she laughed.
‘Yes, yes, maybe a few blushes,’ he waved. ‘But talking to you, if you want another analogy,’ he looked up now in liturgical fervour - ‘is like being pulled in by the tentacles of some sea creature, no no… not even tentacles but tendrons, softly, lightly… brushing you in like those little hairs that live inside your nose’ - she watched him with bewilderment now - ‘trapping the dirt and the germs and arresting them, promising it will keep the innards safe, alive; the organism whole and protected. It’s like being in a confessional, where there’s some wanker talking, and some kind of ethereal Raphaelic imprint of goodness on the other side, who stores what is confessed to bestow on it some kind of alchemy, and which doesn’t enrage her, nor incur her judgement.’
He dragged and blew a sizeable cloud of smoke that they both watched rise to the ceiling.
‘Well. You don’t have diction droop.’
‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘You cure it. You cure it all.’ He stubbed out his fag, sighed and gathered up his teacup, and his ashtray which was almost under his thigh.
She jumped up. ‘I’ll take those—’
‘Thank you.’
As she turned to set them down on the table, she found her wrist loosely hooped by his hand.
‘Now you will kiss me like last night,’ he said earnestly - as she turned nervously - ‘or will you deny me three times?’ Like Jesus, she thought, as he continued with eyes like his: ‘Lean into me like you did last night,’ he loop-stroked her wrist up and down, as she stared down into the swirls of man hair whirling like a snake pit below. ‘Like the visitation of a sweet angel apparition,’ he crowed, ‘the light notes of a sweet melody upon the ears of some deaf old curmudgeon.’
Her eyes shot cynically to his, but he’d sighed them closed either out of exhaustion or expectation, as she blinked now in tendresse of him, and leant toward his parted lips. His eyes were opening a chink like the Sphinx Gates in The Neverending Story, but she kept going forward like brave child warrior Atreyu, and as her lips touched his, his other hand came behind her head, pulling her into him, as her hand landed in his thigh, and her bum landed on his knee, and then he was scooping her right into him, wriggling in Neill’s bear-skin, bare skin… oh god, his manhood a thin layer of fabric away, as she pulled to untangle herself and looked down at him now grinning smugly, squirming his body and spreading out even wider on the couch.
‘That was not like last night,’ she pouted and half-smiled as she went to sit down.
‘But you’ve cured my hangover…’
‘That was the Panadol ActiFast.’
‘They don’t Acti that fast. Oh, Jesus—’ he glanced down, as she followed his eyes to his pants. ‘But something else does. Good Lord, he’s here…’
She watched as the red cotton between his legs shifted, and with the thinnest stage curtain Mr Twitch had ever afforded in her presence, the snake pit was living up to the term, as a bulge began to protrude at one side of his boxers.
‘He know it’s you. He knows you’ve been in his bed! I’ll have to get rid of him—’
She wavered in a look of panic as if a policeman had entered the room, trying not to ping-pong her eyes too much between his face and some inferred monster between his legs that was growing, shifting around like a fat compass trying to bear north. And he had, as expected, zero shame about it, no desire to cover it, in fact he seemed encouraged by her surprise; he stared at her staring, a prick of pride rising his smile now too, Priapus on one corner of his lips and Narcissus on the other, watching her eyes grow like the two saucers on the table.
‘You’ve seen more than this before, Natalia?’ he smirked.
‘Er, yeah, I guess…’ she frowned, for what was in front of her was incomparable to Ryan’s dick pic; it was a wildlife programme starring her favourite predator, single of its species. It was rude to stare, but who was being ruder? She had lifted brewer’s droop, she’d beaten alcohol, changed wine to water, damn it! …and she was half surprised at her inner urge to rub her face over his pants in time with its pulses, and say, there there, I cure it all.
‘Wait,’ his eyes narrowed. ‘Were you down here last night?’
‘Down… there?’
‘Next to me? …Here?’ His head cocked, as though receiving a message transmitted from the cushions, and suddenly she felt like she’d been copped on Couch-Cock-TV.
She couldn’t stop a telltale smile springing up. ‘Yeah I came. Down,’ she hastened to add. ‘Briefly.’
‘Briefly?’
She couldn’t contain herself now, as girls seldom could, feeling busted either because she was hooked to the polygraph machine of his waggling penis or because she found Neill’s puzzled expression, and comically ruffled hair at this moment, hilariously reminiscent of last night when he smacked his sleeping lips in oblivion of her orgasm.
‘I… wank-raped you,’ she blurted out with a gleeful laugh.
His eyebrows lifted and stayed there.
‘Wank-raped?’
‘Has Mr Neill ever been wank-raped before?’ she grinned.
He stared. ‘You… disobeyed me?’
‘Well… you said one for fun,’ she wondered at the absurdity of answering to Neill’s arbitrary rules. ‘And it was with you. You were my one and own-Lee.’ She squealed in laughter again. ‘Then I… stroked your back and squeezed your hand goodnight.’
Her eyes fell - as her smile did too - back to his pants where an angry aubergine was trying to escape like Houdini from a red net of cotton.
‘Come sit,’ he patted the couch.
She arose hastily. ‘I’ll go take a shower now…’
‘You can have one here. Sit, facing the window, and I’ll wreak a perfect revenge—’
‘No way!’ she squealed, bolting for the door as he lunged at her gown - managing to rip off the girdle as she ran laughing upstairs - and bumped into another cock on the prowl.
‘Oh… morning!’
Ed was at the bathroom door, rubbing his spectacles on the end of his white vest.
‘Everything ok? Rich alive then?’ he muttered, replacing his glasses.
‘Well and truly.’
He frowned down at her gown she held closed by her hands. ‘Hmm. Well, I’m paying for last night. I’ve been sick twice, sorry about the, er… bilious waft in there.’
‘Oh dear…’
‘I also want to apologise for my uncouth behaviour last night, and… my general uncouthness all round.’
‘We don’t have all day for that,’ she smiled.
‘I guess we do!’
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*
Ed and Neill were at the kitchen table halfway through plates of bacon and eggs on blackened toast. Neill whistled softly at Natalia.
‘You always look so fucking elegant! Where’s the dress from this time, the Spastics’ Society?’
‘It’s now called Scope, so technically you’re correct—’
‘That is from a charity shop?’ peered Ed.
‘Should be the uniform in my school,’ Neill sighed.
She smiled, enjoying four male eyes on the debut of her grey blouse-dress with rounded white lapels, indented tracks in the soft, synthetic material cinched from shoulders to waist, looped by a dainty caramel belt, and flaring out at the knee.
‘We saved some bacon for you, unless Lady Grey prefers Cheerios?’ Neill nodded.
‘Thanks,’ as she put bread into the toaster and turned down the dial. ‘So, what are we doing today? When do the others come?’
She realised she should have talked to Neill about this when they were alone, instead of fag poetry, nose hairs and wank rape.
‘Monica texted and they’re still waiting on Claire for breakfast. She reckons they’ll do the shops tomorrow anyway,’ Neill furtively eyed Natalia, ‘so we won’t need to trawl town with them. She says they fancy a nice refreshing walk instead.’
‘Sounds good,’ nodded Natalia, glad they could avoid the centre. ‘Where are we going to walk?’
‘How about we head over to them at Oulton?’ suggested Ed. ‘We can walk around there and I can check out the golf course.’
‘It’s a stately home, right?’ as Neill drew out his phone to text Monica.
‘It is - but private,’ spoke Ed with his mouth full. ‘Doesn’t take visitors like Harewood House. Mostly people from out of town visiting Leeds.’
‘Sounds perfect,’ winked Neill to Natalia.
‘Not frequented by… Headmistresses, for you to ogle?’ she hinted back.
‘Oh no, they’re all away in Norwich at this time,’ he exhaled, as she raised her eyebrows back in comprehension. ‘How’s your bacon sarnie, Ed! Did my posh ketchup do the trick?’
‘Just about,’ he grunted. ‘Might even manage a small one on the tiles tonight.’
‘You’re drinking again?’ Natalia blinked at Neill. ‘After I’ve nursed you like a war veteran?’
‘You got a good one here, Rich,’ Ed chuckled.
‘Nah, I’ll be taking it easy. What’s wrong with these crusts and rinds?’ as he took Natalia’s plate.
‘I don’t like those parts,’ as she bent her bottom over leaning into the cupboard for the Cheerios.
‘Oh but I do—’ He promptly stood up and groped her bum, as a chortle from Ed was heard.
She stood up in pink-faced amusement. ‘Oh, but you like Cheerios, I see!’ as she pulled out the half-consumed bag.
‘Turns out I do. So… we’ll take a walk at Oulton then find a nice, remote country pub. Looks overcast and a bit drizzly,’ he peered out the kitchen window, ‘which means it’ll be perfect for you to borrow my large hooded coat and be completely protected from it.’
‘Sounds foolproof,’ she chirped.
‘Can’t beat it.’
‘Is that what you came to Leeds for, Ed? To vomit in Rich’s toilet before an overcast, drizzly walk?’
‘And after,’ Ed croaked.
‘Let’s go in ten. Eddie, go get washed! Don’t miss behind your ears, under your knob - and your entire mouth, this time!’
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*
There were no abandoned shopping trolleys here in Neill’s country corner. In her fur coat spritzed with perfume, walking with two men to the doors of a shiny Merc, Natalia felt lightyears from Gipton.
‘You sit in the front, Ed,’ motioned Natalia, preferring the safer option.
‘Honestly, you deserve to—’
‘No, honestly, please—’
‘Honestly, you two! Do you realise how different you sound from last night?’ chuckled Neill, as Natalia finally convinced Ed, and clambered into the back.
‘Right, which way the fuck’s Oulton?’ Neill tapped into his phone. ‘Ol-ton? Oooo-lton?’ before jerking them all off on their way. Twenty minutes later, listening to Ed talk of woman woes with Andrea, Neill’s grunting response was at the car ahead.
‘Shouldn’t have let them go, I knew they’d be a slow fuck!’
‘Quite the relationship advice. Are we here?’
They were turning through a large gate, and rocketing along a tree-lined path toward a palatial beige building that stood on the horizon like a vintage postcard.
‘Slow down mate, this is the driveway,’ chortled Ed. ‘We don’t want a dead deer on our hands when we reach the door!’
‘They’re all in Norwich,’ piped up Natalia, as she watched Neill’s smile curl in the rear mirror.
In a few moments they were pulling up into the car park of Oulton Hall, a great sandy limestone 18th-century house. Its three front fascias were each set with six sash windows. Two sets of limestone steps led to its four-pillared entrance, past a dry stone fountain from where a small speckled bird flapped away as their car doors slammed.
‘Wow,’ whispered Natalia. She’d only ever seen Temple Newsam House and this was far grander. She admired how these ostentatious buildings sprung out from the land as though they were part of nature. Her feet in their brogues wiggled to go inside.
‘This place was once an abandoned wreck,’ commented Ed to Neill. ‘Got rescued and became the first five-star hotel of the North back in the nineties.’
‘Let’s see how downhill it’s gone since.’
‘Monica texted. Says they’re in the coffee lounge—’
‘They have a Starbucks bar in here already? I knew it.’
Shoulder-shrugging her coat around her, Natalia walked between the two men like a celebrity flanked by bodyguards toward a red carpet peeking out like a little tongue from the mouth of a towering ebony door. It was opened for them by a smiling concierge with pockmarked cheeks.
‘Welcome!’ he barked, as Natalia half-hid behind Neill’s arm in the hope of being considered his daughter, niece, or invisible altogether.
‘Morning! Coffee lounge? We’re meeting friends,’ Ed nodded.
‘Ah! You mean the library!’ he declared, leading them across a gleaming white and black chequered floor of ‘the Great Hall!’ and through the central of three white arches.
A lounge area was set with a grand piano and numerous plush wingback chairs, presided over by a proud painted lady, and a colossal ivory sculpture of a brooding man. Doorways bordered with magnificently detailed architraves sized them for giants, sequenced with Gothic wall sconces which would have felt like walking back in time, if it weren’t for the glowing green Fire Exit signs and the somewhat garish geometrical triangles on the carpet.
‘Someone didn’t have enough money for their 21st but they’ve saved up and gone all out for their 25th,’ remarked Neill as they passed by bright balloons and steel cases of decorations.
‘Ha! It’s our 25th anniversary. Sorry about the hullabaloo!—’
They were now led into the library, set with dark panels, a huge crystal chandelier, glass-topped tables and a bar where a bun-haired lady polished glasses.
‘You can hang your coats up just here, folks…’
Jumping up from a table was Monica, silver drop earrings dancing as she kissed aromatic hellos on their cheeks, and they de-jacketed whilst kissing the others, before seating themselves thigh to thigh on a sofa to hear the three guests extoll what a great sleep they’d had, and hearty hangover breakfast that had put the world right again.
‘You both look well,’ grinned Justin, ‘after Bonfire Night. All recovered Rich?’
‘Just about,’ said Neill. ‘You fancy taking in some healing nature today?’
‘Is that to conserve the energy to do it all again later?’ chuckled Justin, as Natalia’s eyes wandered to a gilt-framed painting of a military gentleman, with a face as cynical as she felt about their preoccupation with booze. Were they any different from her mum, just with a few more brains and designer handbags?
‘So how’s the hotel?’
‘Not bad staying in a Grade II listed mansion with spa,’ chirped Claire - looking and sounding like she’d had a new liver installed since last night - ‘that would cost three times the price in the City.’
‘Leeds City or London?’ replied Neill.
‘Either,’ remarked Justin.
‘Except you’re in the peasant block, Claire,’ added Ed.
‘How’s your suite, Mon? Fit for a Queen?’ asked Neill, politely waving off at the barista lady who was offering coffee.
‘Oh, yes! Do you want to see?’
There were hums of eagerness from Neill, Natalia and Claire, whereas Ed and Justin favoured going straight to the golf club. The barista gave them directions.
‘We’ll see you in a bit then, chaps,’ as Neill and the women began up the wide grand staircase boasting tall coves set with spotlit busts. Natalia stared up, her bowels jolting with a childlike thrill to be ascending a storey only privy to the handsomely-paying guests, along a banister as wide as Neill’s thigh, as their feet padded so silently upon the carpet that she felt invincible from recognition by anyone, slipping her hand into his as he squeezed it back.
‘You can always tell which are the posh rooms by the door,’ remarked Neill as they arrived at Monica’s room.
‘Soon it’ll be the only door my belly fits through!’ Monica laughed, fumbling for her card.
The door swung open to the ample suite, lavishly decked with couches and tables, yet another chandelier twinkling above them, and a vast Turkish rug at their feet. But what drew them like moths to the light was a towering four-poster bed in rustic maple wood, whispering their wows whilst Monica stood proudly as though she’d made it herself.
Natalia perched on the cushion-topped ottoman at the foot of the bed, gazing at wall corbels carved with angel faces. There was something holy in the air about a stately home, she thought, as she laid back completely, gaping now as she noticed the bed’s inner drapes. These buildings seemed to emanate a scent calming to the mind, to the soul even, like a church with sofas instead of statues, and travel magazines in place of bibles.
She caught Neill by the window, gazing at her.
‘Oh! Oulton’s back garden!’ She bounded up beside him.
‘One hell of a back garden, and not so secret,’ he chuckled, as their eyes wandered the panorama of the manicured gardens, a maze of hedges gridded with fountains and bird tables, possibly more charming in its winter sleep, with a whisper of mist across the distant deer land.
‘Aye up!’ came a greeting behind them as thick as the lichen on the window frame.
They turned to see a bald man in a black suit and tie, smiling through the propped open door, as Natalia wondered that such a phrase could ever come from someone so impeccably dressed.
‘Hello, Mr Quinn! The manager, guys—’
‘Tempting your Southern friends to the Swaledale, madam?’ he winked. ‘How are you likin’ it?’
‘Oh, it’s absolutely lovely! Although may I just ask you something quickly? It’s to do with the shower—’
‘Certainly, ok to come in?’
‘Now that’s a swanky bed,’ nodded Neill to Natalia.
‘S-wanky?’ she whispered.
‘You just need to press that down to make it run hot, love—’ Quinn’s voice was heard.
‘Oh, thank you so much!’
Neill turned to Quinn as he reappeared from the bathroom. ‘Is the four-poster original?’
‘Aye, much of the furniture goes back to 1855, although I can’t say if the beds have lasted,’ he chuckled.
‘You mean, it’s not a reproduction, but it’s taken a pounding from it?’
Quinn guffawed. ‘Ha! Sad fact is that unruly guests and drunk weddings slowly hammer the history out of places like this. I’ve been here a decade now, watching the erosion.’
‘What do you do if they break?’ Monica gazed up at the canopy, whilst Natalia stroked the smooth bedpost as though they were querying a sick cat on a vet table.
‘They’ll be sold off as antique scrap and their replacement will have no more soul than the Premier Inn,’ Quinn frowned. ‘I’ve seen it already happening. We were taken over on ownership last year, you see. These beds can only take so many besotted couples on them, and then—’
‘Oh, well I’d say the bed’s done by this weekend,’ Neill eyed Monica, who blushed.
‘Oulton were once a farmhouse in the 1700s,’ Quinn stepped and gestured across the window view, ‘Capability Brown, he did so many of England’s parklands. Used to belong to the Calverley family. That’s William’s portrait there’ - he pointed, as four heads turned to an oil painting hanging beside the bed, of a disproportionately large-headed baby stroking a puppy. ‘I’ve no idea how that portrait’s lasted so long hanging in this room with all the rich louts we get staying here. Present company excepted!’
They laughed politely.
‘It’s so sweet as a mum-to-be, having a room with this painting!’ Monica smoothed her hand down her bump.
‘We’re hoping for an award for the Richmond Suite this year, our finest room. We’ve just had an early check-out, care to see?’ Quinn jangled his keys.
‘Oh, yes!’
They followed him out. ‘It’s the most spacious and the most modern design,’ as they entered an even larger room sprinkled with a cocktail of colour: red leopard-back chairs, a beast-sized but conventional bed with three padded head columns, and an angular chaise in dazzling lime green. One would only know it was a period room from the high ceiling’s beaded cornices and cast iron radiators.
‘Nice, but close to tacky. Swankdale beats it hands down,’ bluntly concluded Neill as they turned to leave, thanking Quinn.
‘You mean that one’s swanky and this one’s wanky?’ laughed Natalia.
‘Hmm. Not sure. Can I borrow your key, Monica, I think I left my phone in there—’
‘Sure,’ she handed it over.
‘I’ll see you downstairs,’ Neill took Natalia’s wrist, pulling with that distinct Headmaster urgency, setting off a giggle of excited nerves as he led her back to the foot of the bed and the door clicked closed.
His mouth brushed right up to hers.
‘I could ‘av this ‘istoric bed broken in a flash, and you up the duff like the Southern lass—’
‘Ooh, aye,’ she giggled, thoroughly enjoying mocking Yorkshire folk as though she wasn’t one herself.
‘Now let me show ya how yer fucking hot shower works…’
Her shins backed up against the ottoman, he clamped her head and began kissing her; lips, then tongue, and her first thought is that this feels divine, as though their breaths had been anointed in stately airs since being here… and now his hands ran down her shoulders, fingers rippling across her breasts, and his new license makes her heart flip, for she feels like she’s in one of those raunchy TV scenes, and the flip is now a thud, as his hands are gripping her buttocks. Both of them.
A giggle of nervous delight from this accosting, breaks his kiss to say:
‘You did say two hands was very rude…’
‘I’ll let you off your bad manners last night,’ he muttered, ‘if you show some to me now—’
He pushed her tumbling back over the ottoman, her head and shoulders at the foot of the bed and her brown hair splayed over Monica’s dishevelled white sheets, whilst he loomed between her ankles.
‘Wank.’
The word shoots through her like a dirty thought. Her hands shutter her face in disbelief, then open up again:
‘I can’t believe you!’
‘One for fun, right there,’ his eyes glinted. ‘Look at you. You’re the picture of beauty and filth. Your hair’s spilling out like melted chocolate on a bed that looks made from it. You are literally Wonka Wanker.’
She wasn’t sure she was grinning more from his absurdity or titillation. This time she didn’t even have the duvet to hide behind. Plunge her hand down her tights ungracefully whilst he stands there like an inspector in a trenchcoat?
‘Come, on your back, before they come knocking,’ he goaded, ‘or I will turn you round and knock out my come on your back.’
The new threat hits her pelvis like an effervescent tablet in water, as he added:
‘Or I might misfire, and paint that painting of poor William with something even tackier than what it gets replaced with.’
A laugh hangs on her face, as his absolute irreverence leapfrogs her self-consciousness to send her hand sliding down her tights, and now, pushing her shoes off - she didn’t want to wank in her charity shop brogues - she began bobbing her hand, circulating that place until her lips parted and breaths panted.
To do ithere, flattered by the vintage room, having him watch her cheeks grow pink like a hand-tinted spot of a sepia photograph, her thighs tense now in urgency; somewhat stagefright.
‘I… I don’t know if I can do it,’ her hand slowing.
She felt him step forward so his thighs pushed her knees apart another inch, as she pant-smiles at this, straining her neck up, eyes on their deepest stretch of muscle, to notice the snake stirring in the grass of his hunter green trousers, and she softly gasps, surprised by how it turns her on, to see Jack growing a beanstalk because of her magic bean, and it vanquished the shame of her bobbing hand, for his crotch was bobbing too! There she was lay flanked by the bedposts; three stiff poles before her, like the three men of this trip - like a boo-khaki, or whatever was the word he taught her earlier - five if you count all of them surrounding her.
‘Grab my ankles,’ she whispers. ‘Squeeze my ankles…’
A vocal admission now, of the pleasure she seeks from him, lights up the naughtiness of a sexual transaction now - as the clamp of his fingers squeezing her ankles triggers something outrageous, a pouring out of sap from the wood itself - and she throws her trust into her spectator, a heckler who once made her cringe with awkwardness just to mention masturbation, who now has her toppled and threatened in a stick-up with five cocked guns. How had it come, how had it come to this… she is panting out her private self in rapid-fire, allowing him to witness the woodpecker of her hand on full shameful speed - and her body jerks in three places, and her mouth truly gapes at the bed’s inner drapes now - as then comes the involuntary after-smile, that she gifts to him, running the toe seam of her tights across his tumescence as if to say thank you.
Satisfaction is in his face; faint red blemishes on his forehead as he puts out his hand to pull her up. But she had returned her hand to the same spot, and within two confused blinks of his, brought herself to another, quicker, more gleeful climax, as he grins and slides her off the bed.
‘Who said you could have two?’
‘Oh the second one is easy…’
‘Goodness, it will really look like you’re the one who’s lost something in here…’
He pummels down her back-ruffled hair almost beating her face into his crotch. She laughed and lunged at a heavy-backed Victorian hairbrush on the dresser, admiring her glowing cheeks in the polished mirror, as though she really had lost something in here - but not her shoes, she hoped - recovering one like Cinderella from under the bed drape, whilst her Prince waited to sail her down the stairs, holding her wank-hand aloft, beaming at each other all the way back down to the library where their friends’ surprised faces glinted off an assembly of silver teapots.
‘A pot for you there, guys. So, did you find it?’
‘Oh, yes.’
There was a bemused look from Monica that they’d been ten minutes too long, but then a nod possibly on the thought that they-don’t-too-that, as Natalia hastily composed the euphoric giggle on her face with the careful pouring of hot water. Watching the brown leaves bloom against white china, she grinned all over again - which Claire caught, just as Neill and Monica halted their chat about English architecture.
‘I’m just glad that the coffee up North is so bad you’ve taken to ordering tea,’ quipped Natalia.
They all laughed, finished up and thanked the lady. ‘That’s alright!’ came that distinctly brusque, almost surprised Northern response to Southern effusion of gratitude, as she collected up the wank-fingered milk jug.
‘Where can we walk around here, please?’ Claire asked the lady.
‘There’s nowhere on’t grounds themselves,’ she frowned. ‘You’re best off parking up at Springhead Park and doing the perimeter. It’s 5km and signposted well, and won’t be too muddy as we an’t had much rain!’
‘Sounds good. Let’s collect our coats and find the fellas!’
Justin was wandering back through the Grand Hall.
‘Ed’s with some chaps on the golf course like he’s found his long lost friends,’ as he turned with them and filed outside. ‘I left him to it, to come find where you lads and lasses were at.’
‘Ooh chuck! That’s love-leh, I’m glad he feels at ‘ome!’ joined in Neill, leaning against the entrance pillar, pulling out his fags and resuming his own voice with a screwed nose: ‘Is he actually playing golf?’
‘Just chinwagging. I’ll text him to come up to the car,’ as they all moved down the steps.
‘He never looks at his phone,’ Neill sighed, cupping his hand as he lit up. ‘I’d better jog down and get him. We want to get off on the walk, and we’ll be famished before long.’
‘He’s quite far down. Are you really going to jog with that fag in your mouth?’
Neill gazed back at Justin, leaning on his bonnet and puffing the first big cloud.
Natalia sighed. ‘I’ll get him—’
‘Ah yes!’ Neill pointed. ‘Allow nimble youth to retrieve the malingerer!’
‘Wait!’ Natalia skidded on her heels back to Neill, struck with a sudden thought. ‘What if the men are…’ she began, eyeing Justin in earshot, ‘…also web whizzes?’
Justin looked blank - as did Neill too, momentarily - till the confusion fell from his face like water. ‘Ah, no! They’re shooting deer!’
‘Oh!’ She bolted off.
‘That way, up the slope!’ added Justin.
Natalia darted across the golf course, hair rushing out behind her, feeling like a smuttier version of Alice who’d crossed Oulton’s black and white chequered floor to spread her legs in the dollhouse, half expecting to find Ed wielding a flamingo by the neck. Ah, there was Tweedledum’s bald head, standing with another man who could be a shorter, shrivelled Tweedledee in a golfing cap - as she squinted at his face to check she didn’t know him, then at another man fiddling with clubs on his cart.
Ed and his companion turned bemused at the breathless Natalia.
‘Natalia! You flew the green faster than the ball!’
‘I’ve been sent to hurry you up—’
‘Oh! Of course. Rich getting busy?’
‘Bossy.’
‘Same thing.’
The other man walked over. ‘By the way Ed, this is Tony,’ gestured the short man to the taller one, who had evidently been out of their conversation until now. ‘I would say he’s more the golfing champion than I am, but I’ve beaten him so far today.’
‘The par-4s on this nine are tricky with the fairways and doglegs as you know, Dean,’ grumbled Tony. ‘27 holes on this course and we pick the Calverley to ruin my scorecard.’
There were chuckles amongst them as all three men’s eyes went to Natalia, who stood looking blank at their golfing jargon.
‘Natalia, Dean; Dean, Natalia. And Tony, nice to meet you too,’ Ed nodded his head. ‘Well, Rich and the others are back waiting for me, so we’d better head off—’
‘When you come back to see your friends,’ Tony added, eyes fixed on Natalia, ‘call us up for a game. 18th here is a fine finishing hole then we’re headed up for a cold one at the Claret Jug.’
‘Definitely. I’ll send you the contact for the publisher, Dean. Take care chaps.’
As they walked back, Natalia looked back, muttering:
‘The taller man was looking at me weird. Still is,’ she groaned.
‘Nah, he’s good. You’re just quite young and cute to be turning up on a golf course.’
‘Might they be wondering why I’m hanging round with an old bald guy like you?’
He chortled. ‘Nah. Dean already told me he’s got a girlfriend twenty years younger. They’re not shocked by that kind of thing. Next thing we know, Rich’ll pop you the question!’ Ed nudged her.
‘Very funny,’ she nudged him back, deciding Ed was more likeable today, as they trod the car park gravel back to the others.
‘Chatting up blokes now, Eddie boy?’ as Neill scooped Natalia into an affectionate stranglehold. ‘I knew it all along.’
‘Those guys are hot - for golf. I’ve got a date if I ever come back up. Dean knows all the best courses and clubs in the county.’
‘The best ones are all up North. Should come more than once,’ as Neill squeezed Natalia harder, choking her laugh. ‘Country walk then pub? We have to drive five minutes—’
‘Hang on, we can’t all fit in your car?’ Claire laughed.
‘We’re all fitting into my car,’ replied Neill. ‘Just means we all get to know each other better. In particular, Natalia and Ed. Sorry Natalia—’
She stuck out her tongue.
‘You’re having Natalia sit on his knee or something?’ laughed Justin.
‘I’m hoping it’s knee and not something,’ added Natalia.
‘Better than forking out for multiple taxis. Get in.’
Neill put Claire in the front, the others in the back, then Natalia gingerly put herself up on Ed, with visions of paramedics and police all at once.
‘Ooh, this is awkward… ooh, sorry Ed—’ as she rummaged to find a position whilst Ed tried to support her whilst avoiding overtly touching her.
‘That ok?’
‘Yeah yeah, that’s fine. Sorry Monica,’ as Natalia almost kicked her bump, guilty that what she did on her bed earlier was enough discourtesy for the day.
‘Good job I’m only five months else we wouldn’t fit!’ Monica laughed back.
‘Right everyone, seatbelts if you can manage to stick them in them. Ed, just remember she’s mine—’
‘—Teen.’
‘Funny. —Natalia! You’ll soon be back on daddy’s knee!’ as they jerked off down the long driveway and pulled up shortly at Springhead.
‘‘Dementia Friendly Garden!’’ Neill read off the signpost, as they slammed the doors. ‘I think we’ve all gladly lost our memory of last night, so shall we go there?’
‘Or do the perimeter walk?’ gazed Monica.
‘I’d say do the perimeter walk—’ A voice came behind Neill as he turned startled by a plump woman zipped to the chin, in a bobble hat. ‘You’ll see all’t woodland and lakes. After you pass the new housing estate on your right, keep right on the path that runs with Royds Lane. After the cottage keep left. Watch out for golf players!’
She promptly disappeared.
‘What the hell was that?’ frowned Neill.
‘Anyone write that down?’
Natalia fastened her coat collar, looking at the girls’ boots and wondering if her thin brogues would fare as undesirable a choice for woodland and lake banks as they had done for impromptu stately leg-spreading.
‘Come, come,’ Neill took her arm as the others traipsed on. ‘Actually, you’ve done enough of that.’ He nodded toward a Gothic church with a dramatically pointed steeple and turrets as it came into view. ‘You can go confess in there.’
‘Mind worse than mine, so after you.’
The six of them strolled through the woodland, topic-hopping with long, pleasant silences that Natalia particularly appreciated after the lairy evening, as though she were on one of her lone walks but fashionably in company - even if her pretend-lover should not, could not be seen by anyone - they walked on boldly hand-in-hand for most of the time.
‘This place will be teeming with bluebells soon,’ remarked Neill.
‘Looks lovely as it is. Good to get out of the big smoke,’ sighed Justin.
‘You’re still in Shoreditch?’
‘Yeah, but we want to make the move to Hampstead. Got our eye on a semi by the station.’
‘That’ll be the flasher on the Heath.’
‘Thought he’d moved to Leeds?’
Neill chuckled back. ‘Hampstead will be a fine place to raise your little one, just as I was there—’
‘So you were the flasher then?’
They trailed into chuckles as Natalia broke from Neill to skip ahead over tree roots and ditches.
Neill bellowed to the others behind.
‘Girls, including you Ed, keep up! —Walk, don’t skip,’ he admonished Natalia, grabbing her hand. ‘You know you’re going to learn to do as I say.’
‘This isn’t your class on a school trip, Headmaster,’ she laughed.
‘Did you stick your tongue out at me earlier?’ he muttered. ‘Can you imagine what I might do if you do that again? No?… My tongue, which is bigger and stronger than yours, will find it, and give it altogether a good thrashing…’
‘Well, sir, that’s as big a motivation there ever was, to continue with bad manners…’
‘No, because you’ll need to lie down for a week afterwards.’
‘Oh I repeat the last answer sir…’
Claire and Monica were behind, catching the last of their smutty exchange with a shared raised eyebrow, just as the golf course came into view, and shortly, the two men from earlier in the distance, were striking sweeps in the air.
‘Mind the balls of your new lovers, Ed!’ Natalia laughed, as Ed hollered and waved.
‘Definitely not web whizzes,’ Neill peered. ‘That man’s taller than Oulton Hall itself.’
‘We’re not walking all five kilometres, or I’ll kill and eat all five of you,’ grumbled Ed.
‘Let’s circle back and find a pub then, folks?’
There was a chorus of agreement as they turned and trudged back, and soon were squeezing back into the car, Natalia back on Ed’s knee trying not wipe mud sprigs on his trousers.
In ten minutes they were pulling up at the Three Horse Shoes’ pub, an elfin building adorned in hanging baskets and horseshoes, pulling off their coats at a large vacant table. Neill and Ed were checking out the ales; Monica retrieved menus, Claire pulled out chairs and Natalia nipped to the toilet, slipping through an archway.
She did a double-take upon the sight of a recognisable head. The back of a head that tumbled memories into her stomach like a netball into a hoop, sinking her heart with it.
They couldn’t eat here. Forget the loo!
She fast-paced straight back to Neill who was in the middle of testing ales. He caught sight of Natalia’s face and almost spat over the counter.
‘What is it?!’ he gulped.
‘We’ve got to get out of here—’
‘Why, what’ve you seen?!’
‘Luxton.’
‘Fuck! Fuxton! Did it see you?’
‘I just saw its neck…’
‘Come,’ he seized her arm, ‘I’m not having the first bastard we busted big time, big time busting us…’ He shifted to the table and announced in a low voice, just as Monica was breezing back from the toilet making an obligatory remark about her pregnancy bladder:
‘Guys, girls - we’ve got to go. I mean, I don’t want to eat here.’
‘What? Why’s that?’ Ed frowned, who’d already set down a full pint of Askrigg. Neill groaned.
‘This place is no good,’ after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I’ve just seen the terrible reviews on Trip Advisor.’
Silence.
‘Apparently the hollandaise sauce is called the chef’s personal best for good reason. Now can we just fucking go!’
He pumped the air for everyone to get up, Ed whining about his beer as Neill tossed a tenner on the table, grabbed the pint, sipped it, remarked: ‘Mmm! Hoppy,’ and slipped it under his coat, then filed everyone outside and into the car, slurping the glass of beer again then passing it to Ed, as Natalia turned in disbelief at anyone who might be witnessing this drink-drive debacle. Justin hollered, ‘watch out, Rich! Lady behind us!’ as Neill harshly reversed, causing an almighty splash of beer on Natalia’s fur, making her think it was fate that somehow she was inundated in this life by drinks and drunks.
‘Shit,’ Neill moaned. ‘Where am I going?’
‘I’m looking for somewhere,’ Natalia had pulled out her phone and was googling pubs with a wet arm whilst rocking about perched up on Ed. The others were tapping on theirs like eyes-down bingo.
‘Can’t get signal here—’
‘So where are the bad reviews on that one?’
‘How about this one? …No, too far…’
Neill pulled out his phone. ‘Can’t get a fucking signal either.’ His eyes widened as a huddle of people emerged from the door, before he shot the car off down the road, as everyone exclaimed in unison and Natalia’s head bumped hard against the ceiling.
‘Steady on Rich!’ piped up Ed. ‘The chef’s not wanking his way after you. What the fuck was all that about anyway?’
‘Trust me. I’ve saved you all from a disaster.’
‘Another one? Did Natalia see scallops on the Specials or something?’
‘I don’t like wasting time where it’s not worthy. Ah, how about this place?’
They screeched to a stop outside a faded red lettered, The New Mason Arms.
‘Any pub board with a font like that tells you exactly what to expect.’
‘Oh, didn’t see that,’ frowned Neill. ‘Thought it was all middle class round here?’
‘Hare & Hounds, four minutes,’ googled Natalia. ‘Take a right - and then, left at the roundabout…’
They eventually reached the pub, signed in a distinctly posher font than the last two.
‘Well done Natalia. Sign says they’re doing food,’ as they parked up at the back.
The others looked at each other bewildered as they unclicked their seatbelts from the rollercoaster.
‘Do you want to check the Trip Advisor on this one?’ Claire mused.
‘No, looks great from here. Bish, bash, posh! —Natalia!’ Neill briskly called, sticking his hand out as she duly trotted to his side.
‘It’ll be fine here,’ he purred in her ear as they approached the doors. ‘If there is any cunt from Thornwood I’ll secrete you in my pocket or go personally demolish them in the toilets.’
‘Right,’ she said sceptically.
They entered and stood looking at plasticky black panels, a muted holographic carpet and stone-effect rabbit garden ornaments on each table.
‘Beer goggles, everyone?’ whispered Justin.
‘Follow the white rabbit,’ Neill observed a slate sign, printed with a bunny ear cocked like an arrow toward the back beer terrace. ‘Onwards to the Dementia Inducing Garden.’
‘Well, I’m one drink ahead of you all,’ hicked Ed, placing down his empty glass from the last pub as they filed through.
‘What’s new?’
Natalia, nervous at first that the spaciousness of this pub might be secreting more surprises than she was able to scope out, had to trust in the conviction of Neill who marched them ahead to the terrace, gregariously greeting the lady clearing glasses there, and ordered a round of drinks from sheer obstinacy that he couldn’t possibly do another group runner, whilst the group seemed happy enough to keep quiet to avoid him doing it again.
Hardback menus were doled out and Specials noted, and soon arriving at the table were lamb shanks, Chilean seabass, two crab linguine, veal steak, and fish and chips.
‘Well this is perfect,’ Monica trilled as they dug in. ‘All deserted, just us. Our VIP area!’
‘Very important pregnancy?’ Justin smiled.
‘Virgin in peril,’ Ed eyed Neill’s hand squeezing Natalia’s hip, as they all wolfed their plates clean with barely a word.
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*
The gaiety resumed as the waitress came out to be enthused with thanks from the group, loudest always from Neill.
‘Would you like dessert? We ‘av lovely strawberry or chocolate sundaes…’
‘Natalia! Do you like Sundaes?’
‘I guess we’ll see tomorrow,’ she blinked.
‘Ooh! Rich has got it coming!’
‘His toilet has.’
‘Yes! Yes! Sundaes all round! Three in each flavour! Blankets for the girls please, and beers for the men!’
The waitress went off smiling, showered again with their pleasantries.
‘You Southerners really like to boo-khaki a waitress with thanks,’ commented Natalia.
Ed and Neill guffawed in surprise.
‘The language this Headmaster has been teaching you!’
‘Well I have no idea how it’s spelt,’ laughed Natalia.
‘Neither does anyone lewd enough to know it,’ smirked Justin.
‘Desserts are here! Pink or brown, Monica?’ called Ed.
The men stifled laughter in presence of the waitress.
‘What?’ Ed whined after she had left. ‘Oh, you think I was referring to nipple changes in pregnancy?’
Justin and Monica shook their heads. ‘No more beer for Ed.’
‘I’ll take it—’ Neill swiped it from the tray.
‘Should you be drinking if you’re driving?’ Natalia frowned.
‘It’s only two. I drive better after a couple. It’s true!’ he insisted, as everyone laughed.
The desserts were demolished and cleared away, as the group groaned like leg amputees.
‘Stuffed—’
‘I could sleep right here,’ laughed Monica.
They lazed around the terrace, the men and Claire lighting up fags.
‘Are we keeping tonight safe? Watch a film like Rich originally suggested?’ Justin asked.
‘We’re going out on the town! We want to see more of Leeds!’ slurred Monica.
‘We can manage a couple bars and boogie. I guess the girls don’t want to leave without it,’ said Justin, to sounds of agreement from Claire and Monica.
‘Are you coming, Nat?’ called Claire.
‘Er—’
‘You know I won’t be drinking either, sweetie!’ added Monica.
Natalia blushed. ‘Well—’
‘She’s bushed,’ Neill interjected. ‘She’ll stay home. I’ll come out for a bit, with my car so I won’t drink. But Natalia won’t miss out on Ed’s dancing. Put on Rasputin, Mon.’
Relieved to have the attention diverted, Natalia watched the girls squeal with laughter as the song began to play from Monica’s phone. Ed took centre-terrace-stage and began vibing his hips, pointing and swaggering, and to Natalia’s surprise, not looking as cringey as she’d feared, but rather magnetised to watch, and was laughing with the company by the time Ed had collapsed from his full stomach a minute later.
‘He really still has it!’
‘What, herpes?’
‘Well this is nice,’ Justin remarked. ‘All friends again.’
Natalia suddenly wondered how her own Rasputin at home was doing - a distant memory, even her mum seemed like a forgotten stray pet - for her phone died last night and she had no urgency to recharge it.
She took her tea and wandered sipping down the patio, turning her eyes to glimpse at these friends Justin inferred were hers. Claire and Monica were rifling through songs on their phones, giggling and reflecting on some unknown anecdote. The men sat three abreast, staring into space, puffing smoke in perusal of penalties and championships.
There was Justin, leaning his elbow into his knees, rather like a timid schoolboy. The most composed, the strongest listener, but least confident of the pack. He was physically looking up to the other two.
Then there was Ed; eyes circling as though he was blinking out a foreign object, almost huffing, fidgeting his foot against the concrete like he was stamping a flea from his shoe, prone to giddy fits of humour that made his whole leg waggle and his face crease with girlish uncertainty.
And in the middle was Neill, sitting straight with his gaze fixed ahead, who would occasionally sweep his hair back with one single steady arm, and on their pockets of small talk he uttered the final word - which may be literally one word - but rained down scepticism and reigned supreme. Like the first time she ever saw him in the office, his ‘really?’ was enough to throw Neary’s face in disarray. His cocky cat blink - cat, that’s what he was. A lion, sitting between a workhorse and… hyena? Was hyena too derogatory for Ed? A bit better than a hyena, maybe. He had Neill’s brazen impertinence, even a surprise allure from his dancing just now. But he had second-down, taking-the orders subservience, apologising to The Headmaster for his misbehaviour last night.
But what was strongest to her was Neill’s look of sex. Justin looked as though sex didn’t matter that much to him. Ed looked as though sex mattered too much to him, as though he needed something to rub his wobbly flea-foot against. But for Neill it seemed, even after all of his slapstick smutty stories, sex seemed more than just an itch to scratch. ‘There’s nothing more important in this life than sex, Natalia.’ If Ed had said that, it would have sounded desperate. If Justin had said it, he wouldn’t have been believable. But Neill had a glint in his eye, a look that seeped into her even whilst keeping his bulge at bay twice today. A look that seemed to excavate her over and over again.
She looked over from where she stood examining a defunct hanging basket. He was doing it now. Ferreting for her virginity, just with his eyes, again and again, like a fuel he needed for some deep alchemical purpose.
‘She green-fingered?’ Workhorse muttered.
‘No, just fingered,’ said Hyena.
‘What are you doing all alone over there, darling?’ now called Lion. ‘Come over here!’ She felt like saying ‘who, me?’ Beckoning his concubine, cub-of-mine into his lap, muttering something to Ed, then whispering in his only-for-Natalia voice as she slung her legs over his:
‘All ok sweetheart? Warm enough? Pull a blanket—’
Whilst the other two men shifted over, Natalia’s and Neill’s faces riveted together, his neck twisted sideways to plant his fume-seeping lips down on hers; she clinging on with her arm hooked round his neck like a travel pillow, and they proceeded in a long, slow, smouldering snog that couldn’t help but astonish their audience.
‘Well, they’re stretching out Valentine’s Day,’ remarked Ed.
Monica and Claire glanced over now, and all five of them took in the sight of Neill and Natalia lip-locked and seemingly oblivious to the world, and somehow humbled after last night’s revelation, they took in a display of passion that looked likely to be curtailed only by the falling of a meteor, or the cigarette propped in Neill’s fingers burning into his knuckles, which one might imagine he would withstand for a few extra moments to thoroughly finish his fourth course.
‘Think she prefers him to scallops,’ said Justin.
‘Think he prefers her to his fag.’ Ed filched it from Neill’s fingers.
A second later, they withdrew, Neill grunting. ‘Fag back, Ed.’
Natalia promptly reached for his packet, pulled a new one into his mouth and lit it.
‘Ahh, so you are the worshipful girlfriend,’ he murmured., as she smiled feverishly at him.
‘She ok in all that fag smoke?’ Ed remarked as Neill took a satisfied puff; Natalia still smiling, snuggling into Neill’s neck and closing her eyes as if going to sleep.
‘She’s fine,’ murmured Neill.
‘Till she dies from passive smoking in two years.’
Down there now, under the plaid blanket, Natalia could feel it… hardening against her leg just like she was coming to expect now, and she was in the perfect position to drop the back of her hand down upon it. She marvelled to herself at the rigidness growing through the backs of her knuckles. She held her light touch statically for a moment, as though he wouldn’t notice, whilst he continued to smoke and talk with Ed and Justin. What are they talking about? Cars, now. The new Aston Martin Vantage. She had a new vantage alright. Neill likes the angry look of the bigger front grill - just as it pulsed under her fingers and she sighed, lifted and landed the back of her hand again, just as Neill ranted that the bright green of the car’s launch model was as awful as the chaise in the Richmond Suite earlier.
‘Vile!’— he expounded, right as it pulsed again. She strained her eyes to see down the darkness inside the blanket, like a miner who’s struck gold. She tapped again and to her excitement it spasmed right back, and again, in communion now, good Lord! He knows it’s you! He knows you’ve been in his bed!
‘So what time is your train back tomorrow, guys?’ as Neill made a big groan and re-shifted Natalia, whilst she kept her hand where it was.
‘One o’clock. We’ll get a taxi into town at ten if you want to join us.’
‘Oh yes!’ Monica chimed in. ‘I want to see Victoria Quarter, Grand Arcade, Harvey Nichs!’
‘Yeah, we’ll leave you to it,’ exhaled Neill. ‘We fancy a lazy Sunday.’
Big twitch.
‘Out of the public eye? What happened earlier then? Someone you’d rather not see?’
‘Nothing too interesting or remotely scandalous.’
Bigger twitch.
‘These risqué relationships, eh, Justin,’ chuckled Ed. ‘Weren’t you and Monica on the sly for a bit?’
‘Nothing too interesting or remotely scandalous,’ Justin replied.
They all laughed.
‘The only scandal is the number of times Monica goes to relieve herself.’
A long groan from Neill.
‘Right, let’s make a move. Guess you’ll need to go back home first, Rich. We’ll get a cab back to Oulton from here, then meet you in town at seven?’
‘Sure.’
They all arose, Neill artfully carrying the pile of blankets scooped to his front.
‘I’ll get this!’ Justin requested the bill, as the others enthused their thanks.
‘Card machine’s taking long, sorry sir. No signal—’
They all flumped down at a table waiting for the card issue to be resolved, watching a fresh breeze of guests arriving.
A bronze-faced brunette in her forties suddenly stopped by their table.
‘Oh, hello Mr Neill! Or should I say Neill!’
Neill stared. ‘Oh! Mrs Reynolds!’
Natalia’s heart shot to her throat as she lowered her face. Reynolds? Alana’s mum? Had she recognised her?Was Alana with her? She daren’t even look up.
‘Having a good half-term?’ Mrs Reynolds’ green eyes danced over them. ‘I’m just here with my sister,’ she nodded.
‘Oh, same!’ Neill’s composure recovered in a trice, as Natalia looked up. ‘Mine’s here from London,’ he nodded vaguely at the group, then studied Mrs Reynolds for a moment. ‘I recall you said at Parents’ Evening you were going away so couldn’t make it to the fair - Mauritius, how was it?’
‘Oh, yes! Needed that sun!’
‘Lovely! Well, enjoy your meal. Don’t have the seabass, there’s hardly any meat on it!’
She left and there was silence for a moment.
‘Dare we ask why you want to be related to Claire? Because there’s plenty meat on it?’ asked Ed, to Claire’s whack on his arm.
‘Who said I was referring to Claire?’ Neill leant to stroke Monica’s hair.
‘Incest. Disgusting,’ grimaced Ed.
‘Who was that lady, Rich?’ Claire asked. ‘She had a tan to rival Monica’s!’
‘Whilst you two look pale as a ghost!’ chortled Ed. ‘Got to be scandalous or at least remotely interesting, Rich?’
‘She’s a teacher from Natalia’s college,’ Neill said quietly. ‘Met her at the Open Day. She’s also a parent at my school.’
‘Neill—’ began Natalia quietly, nudging his side.
‘So they call you Neill at school, like Natalia does?’ Ed interrupted.
‘Yep, that’s what everyone in ed circles calls me. Natalia stuck to it.’ He smiled at and turned to Natalia. ‘Why don’t you call me Rich, darling?’
She hesitated. ‘Because Justin’s paying the bill?’
They all laughed.
‘How do you two even go out!’ Ed chuckled.
‘We…’
‘Don’t,’ finished Natalia.
‘Just stay in bed all day?’ laughed Claire, then stopped, as the others’ eyes wandered awkwardly.
‘Give her tongue an altogether good thrashing?’ Ed suggested.
Another moment’s silence, till the five wheezed into laughter, including Neill and Natalia.
‘There’s something you’re not telling us,’ sighed Ed. ‘You still don’t want to be in photos even though we said no social media.’
‘Ooh, secrets abound,’ mocked Neill.
‘Oh yeah! And whatever you two’s secret is, I want it!’ laughed Monica.
Justin returned from the bar. ‘All done, signal reached the North. What have I missed?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’
‘Neill,’ Natalia whispered as they arose. ‘I don’t actually know what indigestion feels like, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got it, waiting this long to talk to you…’
He muttered: ‘I’m holding out hope Mrs Reynolds didn’t recognise you, considering she wasn’t at the fair, and you never go to school events, Parents’ Evenings or, I hope, sports days?’
‘No, and I’ve never seen her before…’
‘Then we’re probably safe.’
Natalia blew out her cheeks. ‘Talk about a cock-up.’
‘And who said you were allowed to touch?’
They began to file out of the pub. ‘Our cab’s on its way,’ Justin nodded to the others, then turned to Neill rummaging in his boot with an unlit fag in his mouth.
‘Is this the last time we’ll see Natalia?’
Neill frowned and yanked Natalia into his chest, looking indignant. ‘Absolutely not, young man!’
‘On this trip,Rich, on this trip…’
‘Oh. Yes. Say your goodbyes now.’ He jerked her forward.
Natalia kissed and cooed with everyone.
‘Bye, sex Ed…’
‘Bye, VIP.’
Finally she and Neill were climbing into the car.
‘What time will you be back tonight?’
‘By midnight, before I become a pumpkin like the rest of them,’ as he wound down the window and clicked his lighter. ‘Will you be ok all alone, in my not-so-swanky cottage?’ he reached and tweaked her chin.
‘Oh your bed is far betterthan Swankdale,’ she sighed. ‘I woke up this morning feeling like I was in…’
‘…A badder manor than Oulton?’
The car leapt forward.
‘Can I… tonight? While you’re…?’
He paused. ‘How many?’
‘Five.’
‘Five?’
‘More than five this weekend, you said—’
‘You already had three. Two of them unpermitted.’
‘So… how do I make up for it?’ she smirked.
‘That’s more like it.’ He took a puff of his cigarette. ‘You can have three while I’m gone. Like a little girly dance rehearsal on Sarah-Sofa. Then when I get back you can show them to the Headmaster and Virginia Bed.’
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