Castles Made of Sand (10 page)

Finished?

Yeah, she’s nodding her head, teeth and claws relaxing; the vixen is finished for a while. He slid to the floor, back against a cupboard door, hugging her on top of him. ‘Fiorinda,’ he said, ‘Sweetheart—’ the words coming out slow and spent, his left hand gently massaging her spine, ‘what was wrong with the meadow, hmm? Why did I have to get up and run, an’ be in real danger of putting come stains on my beautiful new trousers, prob’bly ruining them forever?’

‘I hate al fresco sex.’

‘C’mon. You weren’t going to be the one getting rocks in your back. You know that.’

‘All right. I wanted it to be in here, because I love this place.’

‘Ah, she likes my van!… Don’t you like my cottage?’

‘The cottage was different. Anyway, what are you whining about? You’re happy now, aren’t you?’

‘Oh yeah. I’m happy now.’ He sighed. ‘I’m happy, but… I’m not comfortable. How about you let me get up, hm? Lemme get out of these clothes, let’s get to bed.’ He stripped off. Fiorinda, a warm, shadow-girl in the darkness, was having trouble locating her side zip. ‘Oh no. We keep the dress. I
love
it, it’s like fucking a Barbie doll—’

‘Oooh, you shouldn’t have said that! Off with the dress—’

‘Ah, Fiorinda, please. Let me have you in the frilly dress, please please,
please—
’

‘Fucking pervert. Oh, all right. You can have Barbie in her underwear. It’s a very pretty outfit, except, I don’t know what happened to the knickers—’

‘They’re in my pocket. Okay, let’s see this.’

He touched the wall. ATP light rose, pearly-white, and there was Fiorinda, sweat-blackened curls plastered to her brow, smiling up at him, her eyes like stars. He forgot to clock the lingerie because he just had to hold her; it felt as if he was folding something bigger than the whole world into himself, this fragile girl, wriggling like a fish now to get her arms free and fling them round his neck—

‘Let’s get to bed. I want you in my bed, where you belong.’

‘Yes.’

But when they lay together under Sage’s silver-grey quilt, in the room with the walls of hardware, their mood had changed. He’d been showering her face with such kisses as they stumbled through the van, she’d wanted to tell him, I’m
not
a doll, Sage. I can kiss back. I have as much loving as you to fit into this one night. She hadn’t had the heart, because he was crying: tears on thick golden lashes, salt tears on her mouth when she managed to get a kiss in edgeways.

‘Sage,’ she whispered, ‘I want to tell you something.’

He smiled, wiping his eyes. ‘Shoot.’

‘This goes back a long way,’ she said, wiping her own tears with her fingers. ‘Back to the day you and Ax came home from the war in Yorkshire. Do you remember? I met you on the platform at St Pancras, and told you about Pigsty getting arrested.’

‘Yeah. I remember.’

The first Countercultural President had turned out to be a child killer: a revelation that had ended his brutal hippy régime.

‘I was telling that story. You were both terribly shocked that I’d been involved, and I was thinking, you are so wrong, because I’m not the delicate flower you two think I am. I’m just what people say Fiorinda is. I’m hard as nails, and my world is very small. As long as I had you two back safe nothing could hurt me, not poor Pigsty or anyone. But my best mate Sage was looking at me… You were looking at me, I don’t know, in a different way. My eyes were opened. I knew that you were in love with me, and I was in love with you too, and I had been for a long time, only I hadn’t known it. But it was too late. It’s too late, Sage. It didn’t happen. It can’t happen, because I love Ax now. I love him with all my heart, and I could never, ever hurt him.’

‘I think I loved you the first night I met you,’ said Sage. ‘I know I’ve loved you more every night and day since. And I love Ax—oh, differently—as much as I love you. But I can’t do the threesome thing. I need you to be only mine. Nothing else will do.’

She stroked his hair, combing her fingers through the lamb’s fleece. ‘I know, my sweetheart. I understand.’

‘Oh Fiorinda, how can you forgive me?’

‘What’s to forgive? I’m the one who fucked up. I’m the one who ruined—’

‘Ah,
no
—’

He kissed her to silence her and they lay quiet, looking into each other’s eyes, for so long that Fiorinda felt herself slipping into the place or state that she had discovered in the terrible year—when she’d got pregnant, and her baby had been born, and he had died. She had that Escher feeling, the impossible perspective, the world and Fiorinda moving into phase, becoming one. Aeons passed. Then she was back, and nothing had changed, except for a faint, extraordinary smile at the corner of his beautiful mouth. But wherever she had been, and for what immeasurable time, she knew that Sage had been with her there.

Nothing was spoken. There was nothing to be said. Such a moment just is.

He moved closer.

‘Hey. Want some more?’

Shortly before dawn three Heads came in quietly, deposited Fiorinda’s shoes and her bag, and stood looking at their boss and the babe. ‘If the length of courtship is related to the length of his sexual relationships,’ remarked Bill, ‘they should be together for about a thousand years.’

‘I told him to do that
five years ago
,’ sighed George. ‘The kid’s wearing the yellow ribbon, so she’s not interested in sex, which does not stop other blokes doing her. He says he can wait, she’s too young and too hurt. I say don’t be a fuckin’ idiot. Be nice to her, romance her a bit and take ’er down. Do it now or you’ll miss your chance. You’ll be forgiven, any fool can see. But would he lissen? He never lissens.’

‘Hell to pay when Ax finds out,’ said Bill.

‘Yeah. Well, at least they had their big night out. Can’t honestly grudge ’im that.’

‘Sometimes the cards aren’t worth a dime,’ said Peter, ‘If you don’t lay them down.’

The other Heads groaned softly and hauled him away.

Fiorinda didn’t mind them coming in. If things had turned out the way maybe they should have turned out, no doubt she’d often have opened her eyes in this bed, in these arms, to find three brother Heads looking kindly down. She pressed herself closer against Sage’s side: so happy in this moment, so completely, hopelessly without any solution for the morning, that really, now would be a good time to go to sleep and never wake up.

But if you have to wake up, in a disaster movie on the wrong side of the end of the world, and with a bone-crushing hangover, it helps,
it certainly helps
if you can arrange to do so with the Minister for Gigs wrapped around your back, his lovely mouth nuzzling your spine. Eyes closed, without leaving the soft chemistry of sleep, she turned in his arms, skin warm against skin (she’d been allowed to take off her underwear eventually), and slid her knees up his ribs, so she could take his cock inside in one smooth rush—

The spurt of a struck match.

Ax was sitting on the end of the bed.

‘How did you get in here?’ gasped Sage.

‘Talked to George. He wasn’t happy about it, but I persuaded him.’

‘Oh bugger,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We forgot you would be able to do that.’

She had grasped in one icy, drowning instant that the only possible way to handle this was to see the funny side. But no. Not a chance. The two men stared at each other, sheer murder on the one side, sheer horror on the other.

‘I suppose I have only myself to blame,’ said Ax. He stubbed out his newly lit cigarette, in the ashtray he had carefully provided for himself, jumped off the bed and slammed out of the room.

Sage was dressed in twenty seconds, and about to fly out of the door before he spun around. Fiorinda was hunting for her clothes, set mouth and averted eyes saying she’d always known it would be like this. Always known it, and now she’s finally been added to Aoxomoxoa’s
mille e tre
of course he’s going to leap up and run. No big deal.

‘Ah,
shit
.’ He flew back, grabbed her, hugged her tight, ‘
God
. Fee, darling, it’ll be all right. Stay here.
Don’t
be frightened. I’ll talk to him, I will sort it. I
will
.’

It was raining. When Sage caught up, Ax was storming along a staybehinds’ footpath through the fields that bordered Travellers’ Meadow, head down, hair flying in dark wings around his jaw. He gave Sage one savage, naked glance and kept going.

‘Ax, hey
Ax
, listen to me. Look, we were drunk, these things happen—’

‘Fuck off.’

‘
Please
, Ax. It was a drunken night, nothing serious.
Talk
to me—’

‘
Talk to you?
Where the fuck have you been since March, you bastard?’

The path led through pasture where cows were grazing, indifferent to the weather, among the unburied corpses of cars that had been trashed in Dissolution Summer, awash now in grass and flowers, and then swerved into the back of a scrapyard on Richfield Avenue, where indigestible lumps of the old Leisure Centre were lying about waiting to be reused. Nowhere further to go except onto the road. Betrayed, Ax turned in fury and sat on a chunk of concrete, staring ahead of him.

‘I couldn’t help that.’

‘Oh, fuck. Not the fucking giant toddler line. You knew what you were doing. You had it all calculated. You let me give you the spiel, you pretend to go along, because you’ll get to sleep with her, and then you’re off. King of the one night stand, and I don’t care about me, but
how could you do that to her—
’

‘I did not! That’s not! That is NOT what happened!’

‘If you didn’t plan to leave the next morning, what was your bike doing there?’

‘
What?
Ax, that is fucking
paranoid
.
Look
, the bike was there because I rode it down when we did the Unmasked filming, and I came back in George’s car.
Fuck’s sake—
’

Ax refused to look at him. The rain fell fine and straight. Sage walked around in a caged circle, wanting to leave, unable to leave: finally sat on another chunk of concrete.

‘Oh God. Ax, listen. When I said yes to you, I meant it. I desperately wanted that to work, but I… I love her too much. I couldn’t stand it. I DID NOT plan to leave like that. I didn’t plan to behave the way I’ve been behaving. I thought I’d be okay. But it was so fucking…painful. I’ve been
trying
to get back to being normal… Fuck, last night I—’

He didn’t know why he’d come chasing after the guy. This wasn’t going to help Fiorinda. The only way he could truly help Fiorinda was by bowing out, leaving them both the fuck alone. Unfortunately that’s impossible,
we’re the Triumvirate
.

‘Shit. I don’t feel like getting into this discussion; you don’t want to know, it’s useless, it leads nowhere.’ He doubled over, head propped on his hands to hide the tears. ‘I can’t talk to you. I don’t know why the fuck I’m trying.’

Ax had come to Reading, straight from a very tough night, to find the whole site buzzing with the exploits of the nation’s wild-cat glamour puss and the amazingly transformed Aoxomoxoa. With Ax cast, in their flashy piece of MTV, as the dull, controlling, workaholic cat who has to be away so these fabulous creatures can play. He was cruelly wounded, mortified, furious, and in no mood to be merciful.

‘I suppose I should be grateful the show you put on last night wasn’t being
televised
. At least I was only publicly humiliated in front of every single person I know.’

Sage’s head came up, indignant. ‘Publicly humiliated? You what? By me dancing with Fiorinda? Oh, fuck that—!’

‘Yeah. When you’ve hardly spoken to me for six weeks. You can say what you like. Nobody who was there last night was in any doubts about what was going on.’

Sage glared at him. ‘Ax, if you were even wondering, let me assure you it was a one-off. She made that very clear. The way you found out was rough, and I’m sorry for that. We were pissed, we didn’t think. But don’t talk to me about… Oh,
I know she’s your property
. I’ve had that well shoved in my face. You tell me I can play with her sometimes, you let me get into bed with you, but I have to kiss her, this girl I love more than my life,
for the first time
, under your supervision. I can’t say a word to her of my own. I have to, to m-make love to her, for the first time,
with you looking on
. What was that about humiliation? Tell me again?’

‘
One off?
’ Ax curled his lip. ‘Oh give it up. I know how she feels about you. Of course I know, you stupid fuck. That’s not an issue. What d’you take me for? D’you think I’d have ever
suggested
the fucking threesome if I hadn’t known she loves you? And don’t tell me that night was no good, you destructive shit.
I was there
.’

‘It felt like playing golf with the boss.’

These words sank into Ax like poison darts. He tried to tell himself Sage would say
any nasty thing
right at this moment, as long as it would hurt Ax. But all he could hear was the awful pain in Sage’s voice, and all he could see was himself on that morning after, crouched under the frozen thorn hedge crying his eyes out, because he knew he had to share his darling and he couldn’t bear it—

‘Anyway,’ said Sage, viciously pursuing the advantage, ‘I don’t know why this is all about me. What about the way
your property
was behaving? The Dictator’s girlfriend, wife of the Muslim prince, surely must not act like that. Why aren’t you blaming Fiorinda?’

‘Because
Fiorinda is never to blame
,’ said Ax, in a terrible voice.

Sage’s turn to back down, defeated by the self-evident truth. ‘Ah, fuck it. Last night was nothing. It’s you she loves, first and last. I’m just a bit of rough trade.’

‘Don’t whine, Sage. It doesn’t suit you.’

They fell silent. Fiorinda, in her peacock mandala frock, was coming across the field, barefoot through the rain, looking like a somewhat bedraggled fairy of the Christmas Decorations Plant. She came up, and saw the tears on both their faces.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘At least you’re not fighting.’

‘That’d be a short contest,’ said Ax bitterly.