Love (12 page)

“That's really kind but, well, I have to work and …”

“I know, it was a ridiculous idea, never mind,” he floundered sadly. Morocco. The Rolling Stones. For God's sake, woman,
carpe diem
 … he wants to take you away. But what if I don't have time to have a bikini wax? He might take bitch Tiffany instead. That sealed it.

“But I suppose I'm owed some holiday. What would I do all day?”

He perked up. “I've given it a bit of thought,” (a lot of
thought, Olly, confess!) “and if you like, we could just skip Auckland and meet in Sydney. I'm not needed on set for a couple of weeks …” Cor blimey guv, ooo-er matron, thought Amy in her best chirpy Cockney Sid James voice. Try stopping me. Bikini wax or no bikini wax.

Amy begged, borrowed, and mostly stole the relevant goodies for her sojourn in Sydney. She swiped some sun cream from the beauty cupboard at work, sewed a zip into her canary yellow hot pants, and cadged most of Lucinda's summer wardrobe. Vaguely hot was her impression of the weather of Australia at this time of year. She'd never been to Australia, but as an erstwhile
Neighbors
fan, thought she pretty much knew her stuff. She was automatically upgraded because of her Vuitton luggage (albeit dented and courtesy of
Vogue
) and sipped Perrier in the posh VIP lounge before the flight. She mistook the olives that businessmen like to have in their martinis for nibbles and caused a minor olive shortage among the airline, but on the whole could have passed, if not for a very important person, at least for a vaguely important person.

The flight was deeply glamorous to begin with. She followed all Lucinda's advice and changed into casual wear, used a cashmere wrap as a blanket, and drank only mineral water. She slathered her face in moisturizer until she resembled an oily salad and sat back and watched the films. It was only after the stop at Bangkok airport (horrid place, couldn't buy chocolate for love nor money, just pointless pink orchids) that the travel sickness began to kick in. She scoffed ginger tablets as
though they were going out of fashion and when the herbal option didn't work took some emergency Valium Luce had kindly given her. Thus she slept the remaining twelve hours. Thus she arrived in Sydney looking like a used handkerchief.

Orlando didn't seem to notice her crumpled state, or the watch strap imprinted onto the side of her face where she'd fallen asleep, but just gave her a huge hug and carried her bags. The heat was rising from the ground in the way it only does in deliciously hot countries, all wavy lines and blinding sunlight. She screwed up the cashmere number, thinking it a little excessive. In the daze of brightness and chemical comedown of Valium Amy was a bit too woozy to take in much of what was going on around her; Orlando was still handsome and looked hot in his beard, he was driving fast and talking a lot about heaven knows what.

“Orlando, I'm sorry but I feel a bit giddy.”

“Probably jet lag, sweetheart.” Hmm, that was nice, she liked being called sweetheart, even if she couldn't really see straight.

They pulled up outside a white house, which Amy thought must be a petrol station or a shop, merely a temporary stalling point, because she knew that they'd be staying in a white marble palace of a hotel. One that shimmered on the harbor front. But then Orlando started to get her bags out of the boot and opened her door, expecting her to get out, too, she supposed. No can do, she thought, her head flopping forward onto the dashboard. The last thing she could remember slurring was, “But, Olly darling, we can't stay here, Lucinda said we absolutely
must stay at the Regency Hotel.” Then she passed out. For twenty-four hours.

“I will never touch Valium again as long as I live,” Amy vowed, sipping her orange juice and slicing into a mango. They were sitting on the veranda of the most divine house imaginable, she'd been quite wrong about the petrol-station part. The front lawn was shaded by frangipani, and it was filled with white flowers and exotic fruit; the rooms were light and airy, and if you stood in the garden, you could see the Harbor Bridge. She leaned over and kissed him.

“Thank you. It's so gorgeous, I can't begin to tell you.”

“You already have told me, now would you like some more orange juice? Are you sure you're feeling better?”

“Yup, no more drugs for me.”

“I'll get you some melatonin next time I'm in LA. Much better for jet lag.” Orlando put his feet up on a chair and reclined in the early morning sun. Next time you're in LA. My God, a future. We have a future!

“Aren't you awfully hot in your beard?” A far safer topic than their future.

“No choice, I'm afraid. Don't you like it?”

“I think it's very distinguished but it feels like I'm kissing my father, or at best my art teacher at school,” said Amy.

“The
Sydney Morning Herald
journalist said that I was sex on a stick with a beard.” He laughed self-deprecatingly.

“Probably just wanted to get into your knickers.”

“Very likely,” he said teasingly. She threw her mango stone at him and he caught hold of her, wrestling her to the floor. They had sex alfresco. They'd now had it
indoors, in the shower, beneath the stars, and in about six other variations, and Amy had only been awake for four hours.

“I was right, you just got me out here for the sex.”

“I could have paid a hooker and saved on the airfare.”

“You could have slept with your leading lady.”

“You can always tell whether someone's good in bed by the way they kiss.”

“You've kissed her?” yelled Amy, pulling on her hot pants and jumping to her feet.

“It's called acting, my love, par for the course, you knew that.” Of course Amy knew that. It didn't stop her turning grass green at the mention of it though.

“I know but it's not fair,” she pouted. “I can never see any of your films, I'd freak with jealousy.”

“No, you wouldn't. Anyway, I said she was a hopeless kisser.” Amy took this as an invitation to prove her own oral prowess, so casting all images of her father and her art teacher to the back of her mind, she kissed him again.

And so their baptism of the picturesque little house continued, upstairs, downstairs, in the laundry room, and in the flower beds. Amy came over all remorseful after the flower bed and fed the flowers extra water the next day, but their stems were snapped and they were beyond hope. On the third day the teeming bundle of hormones left the house and made its way down to the beach. Orlando had to wear a hat for fear of being “recognized,” which Amy found highly prima-donnaish, chiding him, “It's not as though you're Michael Jackson or Tom Cruise, you're just being silly.”

“Trust me, it's better to be safe.”

“Well, let's not take any chances then, best change your name. How about something to blend in with the landscape? I know, Bruce.” She still found the notion hysterical and called him Bruce all day, just in case someone heard the name Orlando and mobbed him. They attempted to body surf, but Amy kept getting dumped by the waves. So with more sand than is funny in her bikini bottoms she gave up, sitting on the beach drinking melon juice instead. Periodically, Orlando would rise from the ocean like Botticelli's Venus and torment her by flicking water all over her.

“Bruce, stop it!” she screamed, “I'm warning you!” then settled back into her Emily Brontë.

“You can't read the Brontës on an Australian beach, you turnip,” cried Orlando.

“Well, just what would you suggest then—Jeremy Paxman?”

“Something local. Something Australian, get into the spirit of the place.”

“Bugger off, Bruce.”

She shook her sandy towel onto him and returned to the Yorkshire Moors. They rubbed more oil into one another than was remotely necessary, just so they had an excuse to be touching. As if they needed one.

“Disgusting,” remarked one old lady as she passed by. “They look like a couple of slugs, all over one another. This is a family beach,” she pointedly informed her companion. Amy and Orlando collapsed laughing and started to lick one another's face in an exhibition of mock lewdness. The old lady hurried away.

That evening they took their calamine-encrusted bodies to a lovely seafood restaurant on the harbor front. They
cracked lobster and let oyster after oyster slide down their throats, although Orlando was hesitant at first.

“They just taste like the sea,” Amy reassured him.

“I don't like the taste of the sea.”

“Not like real sea, just essence of sea,” she tried to describe it.

“Watch, just swill it round a bit and chomp once or twice, like this.”

“I thought you weren't meant to bite it?” he said.

“You're not, but if you don't, it's too revolting.”

“So you don't really like them, you're just trying to pretend you're sophisticated.”

“I do like them. Anyway you have to have them, for their special properties.” She winked.

“I don't think I like what you're implying.” Orlando smiled.

“Well, Deirdre, it's just that my partner seems to have lost all interest in me, if you know what I mean.” She put on her best Worried of Tunbridge Wells voice. He squeezed her knee under the table until she yelped. “It's just that we haven't had sex for, ooh, all of three hours.” Orlando purposefully devoured another oyster.

They stayed on until all the other guests left and finally managed to lift their seafood-laden carcasses down onto the beach beside the restaurant. They sat in silence on the beach watching the lights in the distance, listening to the boats knock against the jetty. It was the first time since they met that they'd felt a comfortable silence. For Amy it was as soothing as the cool breeze on her sunburn. Accustomed to mulling over all the minutiae of her love life she had been caught breathless by this encounter with Orlando. She couldn't actually believe
that she was sitting on a beach on the other side of the world with a man who made her laugh, someone clever and talented, and someone she fancied the pants off. Not to mention someone that every woman in the Western world wanted to go to bed with. Not bad going. What surprised her even more was that she wasn't more freaked out by the thought. She was actually just taking it in her stride, at least in the way that Amy ever took anything in her stride. A bit of neurosis here, a glimmer of paranoia there, but nothing out of the ordinary, except maybe contentment. He was sitting there with his arm draped lightly over her shoulder and right now everything was fine. She didn't wish they were somewhere else or that he was someone else. If she weren't a cynic, she might say it was perfection.

Their sexual gymnastics were somewhat quelled that night by severe sunburn. Every ooohh and aaah was punctuated by an ooucch, so they sought solace in massaging aloe vera lotion into one another's tender parts.

A
fter a few days in Sydney they flew up to the Barrier Reef for some snorkeling. The reef and its multitude of inhabitants convinced Amy that there must be a God.

“Orlando, how can you see all those amazing fish, with totally pointless markings, purple dots and green stripes and odd shapes, and not believe that God was having fun when he made them?”

“It's just evolution and camouflage, darling.”

“No way, there's nothing orange with yellow zigzags for them to camouflage themselves against. And what about Dalmatians?”

“Can't say I've seen any yet.”

“No, dogs with spots. That has to be God in creative mode, you must agree,” she said, pulling on a T-shirt to stop the midday glare.

“OK, I give up, I believe in God. OK?”

Amy settled back, relishing her victory. They tried every cocktail in the bar and at night were so hot that they lay on top of all the sheets and kept having to take cold showers. Amy ran chilled cans of beer over her arms and chest to cool down, and Orlando finally conceded and shaved off his beard, revealing white skin.

“Oh my God, you're piebald. It'll be like sharing a bed
with a horse,” she squealed as she brushed her hair in front of the mirror.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, darling,” he breathed in her ear, taking her hairbrush from her hand and kissing the back of her neck.

Very early one morning they got up for a walk and saw turtles coming up to lay eggs in the sand. Amy shrieked with delight and sat next to one mother turtle for an hour to encourage her through labor. By day they saw manta rays leaping from the water, and Orlando swore he saw a shark as he swam out on the reef. He snapped it with his underwater camera, and they had another of their bets as to whether, when developed, the photo would prove him wrong or not.

“A Cartier watch,” pledged Amy confidently.

“You're joking. I'm an impoverished actor.”

“Liar. OK then, whoever loses is the other's sex slave for a week.”

“Can't wait,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a dirty old man.

Heaven on earth. Orlando and Amy were the only souls on a vast white stretch of beach; tattered palm trees and turquoise water were all the horizon had to offer. Orlando watched Amy prod sea cucumbers with a stick and felt a surge of unprecedented happiness. If Amy thinks she's a cynic, wait till she finds out about Orlando. Sitting here in his faded blue board shorts, his tanned legs stretched out in front of him, one hand on a cold beer, peering over his sunglasses at this woman in a bikini who at his bidding will stroll over and kiss him,
in fact do anything he wishes. Men have killed for less. Except of course that Amy won't do anything he wishes. He has to try, he has to amuse her. His life was usually a case of too many chocolates in the box to choose from. And not just one box, the whole bloody factory. But really what he felt like was an olive. Yes, he likes that image, Amy is more of an olive. A different ballpark. She wouldn't call him if he didn't call her, she wouldn't thrust her phone number into the pocket of his jeans. In short she was real, a bit more like himself. She was a great restorative. Somehow she transcended most of the women he knew, in beauty and in her funny ways. And he wanted to hang on to her. Yup, we're looking at a very happy young man.