Sweet Sorrow(90)

By one minute past, we were gone, smiling secretly. At the rival petrol station near the pub, I stopped to buy a bag of ice – I’d never bought ice before, associating an abundance of ice with millionaires – and I stuffed the sack into the top of my rucksack and felt it cooling and melting against my neck as we struggled to cycle back up the hill towards Fawley Manor. Close to the entrance, we stopped, checked both ways like spies behind enemy lines, stashed our bikes behind the high stone wall that bounded the estate.

The sun was low as we cut through the woods so that Bernard and Polly would not spot us when returning from the pub. ‘They’re seeing friends in London tomorrow,’ said Fran, ‘and going to the theatre. Back late and out all day Sunday …’ Approaching the drive, we heard the sound of their car and crouched in the undergrowth like kids playing soldiers. We saw Bernard step out of the old Mercedes to open the wooden gate, sober and straight like the old family chauffeur, while Polly’s head lolled backwards on the passenger seat.

‘We could have just asked her,’ I whispered.

‘This is more exciting,’ said Fran and kissed me, not ten feet from Bernard, and once the car had moved on we climbed the wall and made for the gatehouse. The key was still there on the lintel and Fran placed it in the lock and slowly opened the door. It creaked like a sound effect.

I think we’d both hoped for some miraculous transformation, a low-lit hotel room, but the cottage looked even duller in the fading evening light, a long-abandoned holiday rental, musty and scrappy. There’d be mice here, rats even, and fat spiders lurking in corners. ‘The honeymoon suite,’ said Fran, and I pulled her towards me and kissed her clumsily. ‘Let’s get things ready first,’ she said and we both slipped silently into our chores, moving furniture and sweeping the floor, pausing when we passed each other to kiss or touch, trying not to betray a sense of urgency or nervousness.

The first thing Fran arranged was the music: a Sony Discman, two miraculous mini-speakers and a small stack of CDs in a manila envelope. ‘Music to clean up by,’ she said and pressed play on the Trainspotting soundtrack. In the kitchenette, taps coughed and choked, the water a murky brown, but we wiped the dust off the red Formica kitchen table, and unpacked our supplies.

A Swiss army knife. Bananas, a tube of Pringles, the largest commercially available bag of peanuts, wine gums and own-brand digestives, a torch, four bread rolls, a cucumber and some thin-sliced Yorkshire ham, sachets of instant coffee from some holiday hotel, greasy pats of butter stolen from the pub, favourite T-shirts and underwear and a pot of hummus, tea-bags, two oranges, plasters, roll-on deodorant, candles, nightlights, matches and some basic cosmetics. We’d shared the alcohol provision: I had vodka, a two-litre bottle of Coke and the bag of ice, Fran had cava and some Portuguese red wine. We plugged in the ancient fridge, which shuddered like a generator, and crammed the slushy ice into the tiny freezer compartment. The plan was to spend our daytime reading in the meadow, and I unpacked my chosen books with some pride: Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and the six-hundred-page film tie-in edition of The Name of the Rose. Fran had The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence and a school library edition of Playing Shakespeare by John Barton. I did not unpack the condoms – I’d amassed six of them now, an even more ambitious project than The Name of the Rose – but even so, the provisions laid out on the table were a strange combination of decadence and practicality. ‘We’re sexy explorers,’ said Fran, shining the torch on the Pringles. ‘There’s a party, but it’s in Nepal.’

Fran had also managed to pack two clean sheets. On a hunch, we felt along the bottom edge of the sofa and tugged and tugged again, half expecting it to shear off in our hands until, like a piece of ancient farm machinery, the mechanism gave and the sofa turned into a bed of sorts. We stretched the fitted sheet across and looked at it in silence.

‘Lighting!’ said Fran.

We’d resolved to use a minimum of electric light on the off chance that Polly or Bernard might drive by. Instead we lit candles around the edge of the room so that it began to feel a little like a ritual, as if a chalk pentagram might be next; the great deflowering.

Nerves.

‘I’m just going to …’

The bathroom was airless, dim and smelt of old flannels. Despite our preparations, we’d forgotten soap but I found a shard, pink and cracked with an edge like a flint arrowhead, doused myself with cold, brown water and scraped at my armpits. Next door, the music stopped. ‘Charlie! Where are you?’

‘One minute.’ My heart seemed to be pounding at an improbable rate, I could hear it in my ears, and I placed the heel of my hand on my sternum. A shame now, to have to call an ambulance. I splashed my face with the rusty water, dried it with the edge of my T-shirt and went next door.

The nightlights meant that the room was lit from below like a Victorian music hall, casting high shadows on the wall. Champagne – cava – lay under ice in a green plastic washing-up bowl, along with two chipped mugs. Fran knelt, changing the disc. ‘Marvin Gaye or Elliott Smith? Or are they both too obvious? Marvin, I think.’ She pressed play and stood. In the minutes I’d been next door, regulating my heart, Fran had somehow contrived to change clothes into a dress that I’d not seen before, black with large red roses and thin straps. There was a smear of lipstick too, hastily and unhappily applied because she was already sucking her lips to remove it.