Drowning Rose (21 page)

‘Jesus, Sandra,’ Portia shouted. ‘What has that poor piano ever done to you?’

Everyone laughed. But he, Julian, said, ‘You’re only jealous because you haven’t got past grade three.’ And then everything changed and now they were laughing at Portia. I didn’t speak or look up, I just stayed where I was, playing, thinking if he told me to jump off a roof I would. I wouldn’t even stop and ask why. I’d just do it.

‘I need a ciggie,’ Portia said, getting up from the saggy armchair. My mother would have a fit if she saw that chair. Its covers were filthy; I mean, you could only guess at some of the stains. The princesses never seemed to worry, though. Actually, they were quite unhygienic.

‘I haven’t got any left,’ Rose said, but she too had got to her feet.

‘Me neither,’ Eliza said.

‘Julian?’

Now I looked round. He shook his head. ‘Nup.’

I swung round completely. ‘I’ve got some. They’re menthols, though.’

‘That’s fine,’ Portia said. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.’

We went to the back of the tennis courts, behind the changing rooms. I pulled out the packet of cigarettes. As she took one Portia turned to the others and said, ‘Sandra’s the only person I know who has enough money to buy twenty.’ The way she said it made me feel as if I’d stuffed up.

‘I don’t always,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you buy Philip Morris, for Christ’s sake. In fact I clearly remember you buying a pack of twenty Philip Morris.’

Portia shrugged. ‘Like it’s important.’

‘You started it,’ I muttered.

Eliza smiled at me. ‘Either way, thanks for sharing.’

I smiled back at her. We smoked for a while. I kept looking at Julian. I was reading this book where the heroine did that with the hero; just kept looking straight at him, not trying to get his attention in any other way, just this thing of calmly gazing at him until he got completely intrigued by her and asked her out.

Portia had smoked her cigarette right down to the filter and now she stubbed it out on the sole of her shoe before putting it in her pocket. No one was stupid enough to leave cigarette butts lying around to be found by members of staff. She looked at Julian then she looked at Rose. She had this little smile on her face and she said, ‘Damn, I forgot, but I have to finish this essay.’

‘Right, yeah, me too,’ Eliza said. ‘I have to finish a drawing for Grandmother Eva. Are you coming, Cassandra?’

I was still looking at Julian.

‘Cassandra?’

I turned round slowly. ‘No. No, you go.’

‘And off we go,’ Eliza said, and she took me by the arm and pulled me with her.

I looked behind me. Julian was saying something to Rose, who laughed.

‘What about Rose?’ I said to Eliza. ‘Isn’t Rose coming?’

Eliza gave my arm a little squeeze. ‘For someone so bright you can be a bit dense sometimes.’ She said it in a friendly way.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ That’s all I said.

About an hour later, as I lay on my bed, writing my diary, I heard Rose scream.

Miss Philips said it was no laughing matter. It didn’t stop everyone from thinking it was quite funny, though, Rose coming back to her cubicle to find her teddy hanged by her dressing-gown cord, a black plastic bag over his head.

Twenty-two

Because of the end of term play the boys were over at least once a week for rehearsals. And guess who got the part of Little Dorrit? Rose, of course. Then when Portia said she had persuaded Julian to audition for the part of Arthur I got really worried. But I ended up having the last laugh because he fluffed up his lines, twice apparently, and we both ended up working backstage; him on lighting and me on sound effects. Then I saw him in town. He was at the counter at Wimpy digging around in his pockets for enough money for the Coke he had ordered. I’d seen him through the window. Now I walked right up to him and just handed the cashier a pound. ‘I’ll take care of that,’ I said.

He had smiled up at me under his long fringe. I thought he was actually quite shy. Portia thought she knew everything about him just because she was his sister but she didn’t really. None of them did.

We had walked back towards the bus stop together. ‘Why are you always staring at me?’ he asked suddenly.

I thought I’d get all flustered and red in the face but I remained really calm. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

He shrugged and it was he who turned red. It was two stops to LAGs and three to the boys’ school. As I got off I turned and gave him a little wave. ‘See you,’ I said. I felt really light as I jumped down on to the verge. Not like me at all.

Then it was the First Night party and the boys had smuggled in some raw spirit from the biology lab, adding it to the fruit punch.

Julian was sick in the bushes at the far end of the car park and because I had followed him out I was there to help him clean up. That was when he kissed me. It was a bit gross because he tasted of sick but that wasn’t important. He’d kissed me; that was what was important. I walked with him to the minibus and as he was about to board I said, ‘If you want more you just have to ask.’

It was easy to keep Julian and me a secret from the princesses because it simply would not occur to them in a million years that someone like him would be interested in someone like me. It was hilarious, actually. I would find them in one of their usual huddles talking all about the big romance between Rose and Julian. Only there wasn’t one.

That didn’t stop them banging on about it, though, especially not Eliza. She herself fancied Julian’s friend David but actually she seemed far more interested in matching up Rose with Julian, analysing every look or word from the poor boy. My poor boy. Of course, Portia, being his sister, was the guru. She pronounced on her brother’s state of mind and how close he was to making a move. Rose simpered prettily and Eliza came up with suggestions as how to speed things up, typical Eliza ideas: ‘How about if you go riding and your horse bolts just as he walks past . . . Why don’t you go walking and when you get to LABs you fall and pretend to have hurt your ankle . . .’

So although it was kind of funny it was also getting quite annoying. I wasn’t angry with Eliza, though, as obviously she couldn’t know that I liked him. But enough was enough. I decided I would have to talk to her. Tell her to stop trying to push Rose on Julian.

We, Julian and I, did it in the meadowy bit behind the disused stables. I had told him to bring a picnic. I’d worked out exactly how it was going to be the first time. It would be perfect, like a dream or a film. We’d be sitting on a rug and he’d kneel in front of me and unpack the basket. There would be strawberries, of course, and cheese and bread and maybe some cold chicken and hardboiled eggs. No, maybe not the eggs. And some white wine. I would have loved it to be champagne but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. And napkins of course, real ones, not paper.

In the event he arrived holding a rumpled paper bag. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, pulling my outstretched legs up under me.

He grinned. ‘You said you wanted me to bring something to eat.’ He opened the bag and flopped down next to me opening the bag. ‘Danish. I got two.’ He gave me a look as if expecting praise.

I had a split second to decide how I wanted the afternoon to go. I could smile sweetly and stretch back down on the rug or I could complain. If I complained he’d leave. I thought of Miss Philips and Miss Gower forever preaching about the importance of us ‘gals’ valuing ourselves and of not selling ourselves cheap. Well, that was fine for the princesses, for Portia with her endless honey-coloured legs and her easy sense of entitlement. And for quirky-cute Eliza with her auburn curls and showy artistic talent. And it was absolutely fine for Rose, who looked like a Snow White who’d just lost her dwarfs. But for a me, when it came to someone like Julian, it was selling myself cheap or not at all.

‘What?’ Julian was looking at me from under that dark fringe. God, I loved his hair, loved the way it curled behind his ears and into the nape of his tanned neck.

‘Oh nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Yeah, of course it is.’ He reached out and then his hand pushed down inside my blouse, grabbing at my left breast. He was tweaking my nipple like it was the on button on my radio and it hurt. I tried not to but I couldn’t help flinching.

‘What?’ he said again but now his gaze was cloudy under half-closed lids.

‘What about our . . . our picnic?’ I felt close to tears suddenly. If we were actors we’d be in different films.

His gaze cleared and he frowned. Then he said, ‘Sure. If you’re hungry?’ He picked up the crumpled greasy bag and chucked it in my lap. ‘Here.’

I wanted to get up and run away. ‘C’mon. Have one,’ he said, and now his voice and his eyes were kind. ‘They’re really nice. And you don’t need to worry about calories. I like you the way you are.’

He leant forward and put his hand inside the bag, pulling out one of the pastries and biting into it with his even white teeth. I loved his teeth too. He had a gap – like Lauren Hutton – between his two front ones. He held the Danish out to me and I closed my lips around the same crumbling buttery sweetness as his lips had just embraced.

‘Mmm,’ I said giving him a hazy smile. ‘Lovely.’ I looked him straight in the eyes and stuck out the tip of my tongue and licked the crumbs off my lips the way they did in films, then, using my finger, I smoothed away the crumbs from his, that were dry and a little cracked but perfect just the same. I finished by licking the crumbs off my finger all the way, keeping my gaze on his. Everything changed in that moment. Suddenly I was the giver and he was the grateful receiver. I was the princess and he was my servant as I unbuttoned my shirt and slipped out of my skirt.

‘You’re amazing,’ he said, and his voice had gone husky as if he’d got something caught in his throat.

In my moment of victory I felt a second’s impatience. Did he ever say anything over and above the banal and the expected? I shrugged the thought away. I loved him; that was all that mattered.

He pulled his shirt off over his head. His torso was spare and tanned and smooth apart from the armpits and a line of soft fuzz running down from his belly button. I wanted to reach out and push my hand down the front of his boxer shorts but I stayed where I was, quite still, playing at being a goddess, waiting.

‘I really like you,’ he said, and that hazy, stoned look had returned to his beautiful eyes.

I had power. I could get up and leave him there, shirtless and excited. Or I could give him what he most wanted in the world right now and that, miraculously, was me.

He groaned and lunged forward and all at once I was sprawled on the rug with him on top of me.

It was over in seconds. I was disappointed but only for a moment because he stayed in my arms, his face nuzzled against my neck, and he was trembling. I stroked his naked back that was damp with sweat and I started murmuring all kinds of things that made me blush when I thought about them afterwards. Above my head a swallow circled, then a second one joined. They warbled to each other and I smiled up at the sky.

I don’t know for how long we lay like that but my legs were beginning to hurt. I didn’t mind, though. I could have stayed like that with him on top of me, inside me, for ever. But then he pulled out and he raised himself in a one-armed push-up as he pulled his pants and trousers up before rolling off and on to his back. I could feel him trembling again and I was about to pull him towards me when I realised that he was laughing.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘What?’ And I giggled because I expected he was laughing with happiness.

But he kept on laughing and it seemed like an ugly sound all of a sudden, like the rattle of the magpie that had driven away the swallows a few minutes earlier.

‘What?’ I asked again, my voice turning shrill. ‘What’s funny?

‘There,’ he pointed at my left breast. He was giggling now.

My mouth had filled up with saliva and I could barely swallow as I looked down. My left breast and my right looked normal. Smallish but nicely rounded with average-sized nipples.

‘There,’ he pointed again and then I saw it, a curly red hair.

I brushed at it. ‘It’s from my head,’ I said, my voice tight. ‘It’s just a hair from my head.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It just looks as if it’s growing from your tits.’

Twenty-three

Eliza

I rose from the Underground, emerging into the twilight of the high street. It was Friday night and I had been to the ballet with Beatrice and our friend Katherine. My mind was still on poor doomed Giselle, who loved not wisely but too well and ended up a woodland spirit for her troubles. I had wept, as I always did, right through the bit where, turned mad by her lover’s betrayal, she danced herself to death in front of him and I had wept anew when that feckless lover pirouetted before the avenging Queen of the Willies, begging forgiveness, clutching his own breaking heart. As I rode home on the Tube, the music filling my head, I rewrote the ending, changing it to one where Giselle is released from the spell and lives happily ever after with her remorseful prince. It didn’t matter how many times I saw
Giselle
; I still always hoped that was how it would turn out. It was the same with
Romeo and Juliet
. Each and every time I sat there hoping, praying that the Friar’s messenger would reach Romeo in time. I never could figure out how that worked: what spell a story cast to make us think that each time it played out was the first, and that there might, after all, be a different, happier ending.