Chloe (31 page)

‘I neither denied nor confirmed – and I never gave them aught, of that I was right careful. Och, but the gossip! “Ho
mo
! I've left my
homo-work
behind!”' he mimicked in falsetto, ‘“and my pencil's
bent
, sir!”'

‘I need to go to the sickbay, I feel queer!' Chloë interrupted merrily in plausible Glaswegian. ‘I think it was the faggots at lunch-time, sir.'

‘“It's such a gay day, Mr Buchanan, can we not pick us some pansies?”' cried Fraser, enjoying the last laugh.

They take a day-trip over to Mull and Chloë spends the ferry crossing explaining to Fraser the pointless intricacies of working with students at an inner-city college.

‘Sorry, have I been bending your ear?' she asks when he interrupts to point out Duart Castle on the headland of the isle.

‘Och, I wouldn't fret,' he assures her, ‘it was bent already!'

Taking photos of Fraser by the candy-coloured buildings of Tobermory harbour with a disposable camera, Chloë knows she will never return to that job, or to one remotely similar. As Fraser photographs her on the return crossing, the light still more than adequate though it is nearing ten o'clock, she knows too that she will never return to the city. Any city. She knows now what she does
not
want; but realizes as well that she still has no idea what it is that she actually does want to do. Jocelyn's money will not last forever. And it occurs to Chloë now, that she would not have wanted it to anyway.

Fraser and Chloë walked through Glencoe but it was far too awesome for anything but reverential silence and the occasional stunned gasp at the sheer beauty and enduring melancholy that permeated.

‘What do you want?' Chloë asks Fraser as they sit in the kitchen scalding their tongues on piping hot flapjacks. ‘Fraser?'

‘A blob of ice-cream?' he suggests. Chloë pulls a face at him that says ‘No! but really?' Fraser goes to the freezer and returns with a tub of vanilla ice-cream. It is very yellow and glistens with tiny shards of ice. It is also frozen solid. Fraser hammers a spoon down into it but it takes a stance like Excalibur. Dejected, he takes the tub by the spoon over to the stove.

‘I don't know, my Chlo,' he says with honesty, ‘a good life, a loving partner?'

‘Has there ever been one?' she asks. ‘Someone?'

Fraser returns to the table and munches on a now pleasingly chewy flapjack.

‘Only lust,' he bemoans, contorting his lips to dislodge oat flakes from his gums, ‘and a fair bit of it,' he sighs and seems to chide himself, ‘I always initially mistake it for the love that it invariably never turns into!'

Chloë understands without actually being able to share the sentiment or predicament. They chew on.

‘But no,' Fraser rues, ‘never a someone.'

‘Not yet,' Chloë says warmly. Fraser nods. ‘But that's what you'd like,' she clarifies. Fraser nods.

‘You?' he demands.

‘Me?' Chloë responds.

‘Aye,' he says sternly, ‘and you?'

‘Well,' Chloë starts while her finger is in her mouth, searching out clogs of flapjack from her molars, ‘there was Brett who was a selfish, sexist pig but it took me an age and a half, and Jocelyn's death, to realize! And then, in Wales, there was this darling boy called Carl.'

‘Carl,' rolls Fraser approvingly.

‘Mm,' confirms Chloë, ‘he was lovely – a Kiwi, you know, from New Zealand?'

‘Aye! Down there! Fruity!'

‘We had a lot of fun!'

‘Down
there
!' suggests Fraser with a lascivious wink. Chloë can't help but blush.

‘Details?' Fraser says slyly. ‘Please?'

‘He was a “rum ‘un”, as you'd say!' chuckles Chloë. ‘He provided all the fun that Brett had deemed unnecessary. A healthy mixture of kindness, honesty and lots of sweaty fumblings too!'

‘Ooh!' Fraser writhes.

‘Ultimately,' proclaims Chloë, laying her arm over Fraser's and giving it a squeeze, ‘a terrific bonk in the back of an orange van!'

‘An orange van!' cries Fraser with awe and respect.

‘Very orange!' confirms Chloë. ‘It was fun – happy sex. I didn't know you could have such a thing. Brett was silent but for unpleasant grunts and a horrendous phoney American accent which was not funny at all.'

‘I'll bet!' sympathizes Fraser. ‘So where is he now?'

‘Who?'

‘Well, I'll not give a toss for Brett's whereabouts,' Fraser spits before purring, ‘Carl – where's he?'

Chloë falls silent and wonders suddenly why she has no idea where he is. How stupid of her. Of them.

No, not really.

‘Somewhere in Europe,' she says warmly, ‘I don't know where. I'll never see him again, you see. We came – and we went.'

Fraser looks puzzled.

‘It was like lining each other's pockets with gold,' Chloë says wistfully, ‘giving each other the wherewithal to go forward. To go on.'

‘Leaving a lovely taste?' suggests Fraser.

‘Indeed.'

Suddenly Fraser leaps up and the chair clatters to the floor.

‘Oh no!' he weeps, staggering across the room to the stove. ‘Damnation and buggery!' he wails, holding aloft the ice-cream tub. Excalibur has disappeared from view. Fraser makes a most funereal procession back to the table, holding out the tub in front of him forlornly, pain etched across his face. Chloë stifles the giggles and pulls a very serious face of condolence. He places the tub on the table and they peer in. Pale buttercup soup slops back at them. Slowly, Chloë dips in a finger and takes it to her mouth. Fraser scans her face, his own as downtrodden as a bloodhound's. Her eyes light up and she coos while she sucks her finger.

‘Gorgeous,' she whispers, ‘abso-bloody-lutely gor-jesus!' she says, smacking her lips and dipping the same finger back in.

Fraser fetches two spoons.

‘Och,' he moans in ecstasy, slurping spoonfuls in quick succession, ‘vanilla velvet mousse!'

‘Clouds
de Crème Anglaise
!' Chloë elaborates with closed eyes, her spoon clinking on the drowned Excalibur. Eventually it surfaces, as Fraser and Chloë do away with the goop surrounding it. They fight over who shall lick it clean. Chloë pats her thighs and her stomach sensibly and says Fraser must have it.

‘These thighs, this stomach,' Chloë proclaims when he has quite finished, patting them again, ‘have been immortalized!'

‘Oh aye?' says Fraser, licking up a trickle of canary yellow that has coursed its way down the side of his hand to his wrist.

‘Ronan!' whispers Chloë.

‘Who he?'

‘He be Oy-rush!'

‘Begorra be-jayz!' laughs Fraser. ‘A leprechaun?'

‘Pah!' Chloë exclaims. ‘A strapping lad of statuesque physique!' Fraser wriggles. ‘Broad shoulders, chiselled jaw,' she continues while his eyes dance, ‘jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes and,' she says with a wink, ‘a tight peach of a bum!'

Fraser slithers down his chair with his tongue lolling and begs her to stop.

‘And a dick to die for?' he conjectures in a hoarse whisper.

Chloë pauses for dramatic impact before twisting her face and shaking her head quickly, wrinkling her nose. ‘Actually,' she concedes, ‘not really!'

‘Not in Carl's league?' asks Fraser, looking sorely disappointed. Chloë shakes her head sadly.

‘But way out of Brett's,' nods Fraser. Chloë pulls a grimace in reply. She tells him about the ensuing sculpture and he asks her to describe it, to draw it. She tells him to use his imagination. He says he can't. She says that's his bad luck. He asks Chloë if she thinks there's any chance he'd be able to entice Ronan to do a piece called
Him
. Chloë's reply sorely disappoints him. They sit awhile, quiet, quite still, lest the melted ice-cream should curdle within. Fraser is tinged green. The cuckoo chirps out that it is eleven o'clock and Chloë yawns spontaneously. Fraser sighs, cups his head in his hands and then throws Chloë an exasperated expression.

‘We have to find you a man!' he declares, grabbing her hand and squeezing it.

‘Pardon?' Chloë replies, fighting to have her hand back.

‘I can't be outdone by Wales, by the Oy-rush!' Fraser explains, gripping her wrist. ‘And as I am unable to assist personally in such matters, God only knows what might befall you in England!'

Chloë laughs and says that he's daft. He hisses ‘Sassenachs' very seriously.

‘The interludes in the other two countries were merely by the by,' she says lightly, ‘anyway, I'm in love with Scotland utterly and no earth-moving, multiple orgasm can possibly improve on that!'

Fraser regards her suspiciously and pokes her in the ribs.

‘I'm not
looking
!' she laughs. ‘Nothing is
lacking
!' she assures. ‘I'm happy enough as I am,' she concludes confidently and very loudly, suddenly wondering very quietly to herself if she'll ever have sex again.

And if so, when. And with whom, for heaven's sake!

Fraser puts his head back into his hands and sighs even more sonorously. The face he then turns to Chloë is criss-crossed with theatrical angst and his eyes flicker with carefully contrived despair. He swipes his brow in an enormous gesture.

‘Well then,' he wails, ‘I have to find
me
a man!'

A
ugust was drawing to a close and Chloë was delighted when Fraser suggested a few days in Edinburgh to catch the last of the city's famous Festival. Only he went manhunting with a verve and vigour that quite threatened to come between him and Chloë. When his ulterior motives surfaced, she was both irritated and hurt, and a little lonely too. Mr and Mrs Andrews were guarding Braer and Chloë missed them supremely.

The search for a bed-and-breakfast was hampered by Fraser's new-found ability to pivot his head through three hundred and sixty degrees. No reasonably good-looking man escaped his attention, even if he had his arms about a woman or was dressed in a traffic warden's uniform. Fraser sought Chloë's response and approval constantly.

‘Him! Did you see? Chlo?'

‘Yes, dear, very nice – but he was with his wife and two children!'

‘Aye, but he may be
latent
– he may not know what he's missing! Och, but would you look at the arse on that now!'

‘Fray-
zer
!'

‘What I'd give for a man in uniform! What I'd
pay
!'

‘Fray!'

‘I know, I'm sorry – but it's like being let loose in a sweetie shop. So much to lick and gobble!'

‘Zer! You'll get ill.'

‘I'd die happy!'

Eventually, once Fraser had had mental sex with at least thirty passers-by (most of them unwitting, all of them unsuitable) they found themselves strolling past Murrayfield stadium. Fraser was fantasizing out loud about being reincarnated as the soap in the communal bath for the First Fifteen when Chloë saw a street to the right with bed-and-breakfast signs strung along its length like bunting. She grabbed his hand and held on tight with both of hers, dragging him down the street while he cooed about lather and cauliflower ears.

‘I could be the scrum's hooker!'

‘Frr!'

‘OK, OK. Spoilsport!'

She was still holding on tight when, four houses later, they came across the first ‘vacancies' sign.

‘Knock!' she hissed, not daring to let go. ‘Ring!' With his free hand, Fraser did both, pouting all the while.

Mrs MacAdam saw a very nice young couple standing, hand in hand, on her doorstep and welcomed them in. They saw a lounge bedecked in every conceivable shade of pink in fabrics of every possible synthetic persuasion. She had only the one vacancy, she explained, a last-minute cancellation for which she had kept the deposit.

‘Do you think that unreasonable?' she asked, twitching fussy net curtains to check on goings-on outside.

‘Och no,' said Chloë in a very passable Scots accent that made Fraser raise his eyebrows, ‘you can't be having that. Well within your rights, I'd say!'

Mrs MacAdam offered them humbugs from a dish that formed the skirts (pink) of a china figurine of Cinderella. Fraser and Chloë tried not to notice the dust caught stickily in the creases of cellophane, nor that the sweets had a certain mustiness that overpowered any vestige of mintiness. After lengthy calculations which involved much muttering, eyes scrunched shut and the pummelling of her pudgy fingers into her pink tracksuit-clad thighs, Mrs MacAdam arrived at a four-night rate for them. This they accepted and were offered another humbug to seal the deal. The three of them sat and sucked in silence for a while, smiling awkwardly every now and then.

‘Deary deary dear!' Mrs MacAdam exclaimed once she'd crunched the last of her sweet, her cheeks flushing the same shade as her tracksuit. She shook her head and slapped each of her own wrists in turn. ‘You'll want to be seeing your room, silly me. Come!'

Fraser and Chloë exchanged raised eyebrows as the landlady bustled them out. Their room. Singular. Or, rather, double. They hadn't thought of that.

Decorated in every possible hue of gold and yellow, the room would have been huge had not the most enormous bed taken up most of it. It was swamped by a very shiny satin-look eiderdown and a mound of frilled cushions in various tones of poor gold.

‘This is your side,' dictated Mrs MacAdam to Chloë, patting the left side of the bed, above which a painting of a gypsy girl with disproportionately large eyes and a sorrowful kitten hung. ‘And this side is for you!' she proclaimed to Fraser, circumnavigating the bed and plumping the cushions on the right side of the bed which lay under the gaze of a bug-eyed gypsy boy with a forlorn puppy at his heels.