Meanwhile Gardens (11 page)

Rion spent the early morning exploring the cemetery. She was particularly fascinated by the grand graves in front of the Anglican chapel. Families of people who hadn’t been loved during their lifetimes hoped to hide their neglect with elaborate funerary arrangements. Enormous stone caskets sat on solid bases, raised biers proclaimed superiority whilst the occupants’ social standing had long since crumbled to dust.

It was only when she played around the tomb of Princess Sophia that Gorby saw her for the second time. The guard pulled his phone from his pocket, quickly set it to video and filmed Rion as she chased her shadow around the enormous raised sarcophagus.

The English weather put an end to these games. What started off as mid-morning drizzle had by lunchtime turned into steady rain. Rion returned to Old George’s chamber. She felt secure in Heron Point but, more importantly, she felt dry. Although the wet weather made the chamber feel damp, Rion noticed with satisfaction that there wasn’t a drop of water inside at all.

Outside was another matter.

From time to time Rion pulled the blanket back and peered out. The clearing had taken on an increasingly soggy appearance. By six o’clock it lay under nearly two inches of water.

By seven o’clock Rion was starting to feel fed up. And very bored.

She had read the self-help book again. That made five times she had read
Face the Fear and Eat It
since Tanya had given it to her some months before.

Rion had faced the fear and eaten as much as she could. She knew she had. She was here in London but doing what exactly?

She had finished the crosswords in all the magazines, read
and re-read articles, even attempted Sudoku, but now her eyes were tired – and so were the batteries in the torch.

She couldn’t write by candlelight and it was best not to use the torch unless she had to.

The food Jake had brought the night before was nearly finished and, she realised unhappily, he wouldn’t be back until much later.

Hoping to God she was wrong Rion felt the familiar ache in her shoulders that normally foreshadowed a bout of illness.

She curled up in the sleeping bag and dreamt of her new life in London, of working for Glamourista, of expensive make-up and beauty treatments, of friends, of feathered gowns by Hitherto Williams….

Rion felt the rumbling grow and grow from deep inside her. Her breath constricted in ever shorter wheezes, her lungs expanded to their full capacity until, unable to contain the pressure any longer, she let out a magnificent, yelping sneeze.

Outside it continued to rain.

It was still raining when Ollie turned into the drive of Johnson Ogle’s large house on Heath Road. For an interior decorator, or ‘lifestyle enhancer’ as Johnson insisted on calling himself, he had done incredibly well. Although his many critics complained that the only lifestyle he had enhanced was his own, Johnson nevertheless had a following of loyal, and very rich, clients from Moscow to Mustique who required their various houses ‘doing’.

Often once or twice a year.

He had now reached the enviable stage of being in the same financial bracket as a lot of his clients, a fact represented by the beautiful corner house, with half-a-dozen winding red brick chimneys, that backed onto Hampstead Heath.

A houseboy Ollie didn’t recognise showed him into the hall where Johnson awaited.

“Coffee in the conservatory please,” the lifestyle enhancer ordered before kissing Ollie on both cheeks. “I was so sorry to hear about James.” He took Ollie by the arm, leading him through to the rear of the elegant house, “You got the chocs?”

Ollie nodded. He had never seen such an enormous box of chocolates as the ones that had arrived from Godiva the week of the funeral.

“I thought you would find them more comforting than flowers which are just too
deadly
at such a time.”

The conservatory, a Victorian affair Johnson had snapped up at a Scottish country house sale and had transported down, “at vast expense,” he always said proudly, lined the entire back of the building.

Johnson gestured to the orchids that filled the room. “Cate gave me one when she was here and I’ve since gone
completely
mad for them. Of course you know Meryl has nothing else in her Manhattan bedroom, apparently they do wonderful things with ionisation – no more plugging in ugly little boxes ‘cos these babies,” Johnson surveyed the plants, “do it naturally.”

Upon hearing a gentle rattling Johnson turned to Ollie, “Tell me what you think of the new ‘boy’ although, as you can see,” Johnson smiled, “I use the term loosely.”

The houseboy entered wheeling a trolley upon which was an elegant silver coffee service. Ollie studied the young man in the crisp black uniform of the Ogle household. With his fresh face and tightly cropped hair he was no different from a thousand other personable young men.

Johnson waved the boy away. “We’ll do it ourselves thank you – ” he winked at Ollie, “ – Leila.” Johnson, in that drawl
so favoured by the English who travel constantly, made the name sound like ‘Lyle-a.’

Ollie assumed it must be some pet name, either that or he had misheard. He looked after the departing houseboy. “Apart from the fact that he’s not called Gerardo and is not Latin American – ?”

“Lesbians,” Johnson hissed, “they’re the way forward.”

Ollie tried to digest the sentence.

“They don’t want to mother you like straight women do and you don’t want to sleep with them like – ” Johnson fluttered his hand in the air, “Gerardo.”

“Or Eduardo, Rodolfo, Diego ….” Ollie added.

“Exactly. It always ends in tears. Just too much trouble. And so – ” Johnson fluttered his hand again as he tried to find the right word, “ – temperamental,” he said finally.

Yes, Ollie thought, all of your lovers had tempers and all tended to be mental.

“But lesbians – they’re perfect, they love to wear uniform and they’re reassuringly dependable which, of course, fits in perfectly with my own modus operandum.”

Ollie had heard Johnson’s philosophy spiel before. He made the decorator stew for a few seconds before asking, “Which is?”

“Well,” the decorator began, happy to tell his story again, “you know the secret of my success is to be reassuring and dependable. I can always be relied on to find something ‘just so’ for a library or guest suite, and I’m always there to walk them to the opera or some ghastly ball and they
know
I’ll make them enjoy it.”

Listening to Johnson Ollie could see what his clients saw in him. Everything about him was reassuring, his voice was calm and rich, his looks were ruggedly Harrison Ford – albeit Harrison Ford on a bad day as Johnson always said.

“Or Harrison Ford on a fag day,” Ollie joked.

“Harrison doesn’t have fag days,” Johnson smiled at his guest, revelling in the ease with which he dropped the star’s first name. “But Harrison on a bad day is better than 98% of men on their best days.”

Ah, that ever-elusive 2% of men – wherever were they? Lulled by Johnson’s warm manner Ollie looked at the rain outside and wondered how Rion was coping. With Jake’s experience he was sure she was doing just fine.

“And of course I’m gay, which the wives find reassuring – they know that with me they’re not going to get some minimalist crap pressed on them by some devoutly hetero family man with an obnoxious puritanical streak, no, with me they can swag and tassell with handmade Venetian fabrics until they drop.”

Ollie looked around him. Apart from a riot of gilt, some dubious trompe l’oeil columns and the odd tiger print cushion, Johnson’s house betrayed more of the minimalism his clients hated than the swagging they loved.

“And the husbands find it reassuring ‘cos they know that I’m not going to jump their wives and that, whilst with me, their wives are not going to jump the lithe surfer poolboy or the studly stable manager with the sexy Gloucestershire burr – Lady Chatterley is still an inspiration to
many
of these women.”

Ollie’s thoughts wandered once more to the wellbuilt guy in Meanwhile Gardens. Did what he said really classify as small talk? Ollie was brought back to the conservatory in Hampstead by the clapping of hands. He looked up to find Johnson beaming at him.

“But let’s see this table shall we?”

Ignoring Hum’s reproachful look from the passenger seat
Ollie opened the back of the van. He observed the new house‘boy’ as she helped carry the two carved wooden pedestals, and the blanket-wrapped plate of glass that fitted securely on top, into the morning room.

The only thing Ollie noticed was the complete lack of spots or the beginnings of stubble that the seventeen-year-old boy she looked like would have. But then being twenty-two and female her hormones would be entirely different.

Johnson looked at the pedestals, “Do I know the model?”

The two wooden bases, both exactly the same, showed a male form on his knees, his muscled back flat over his body. His head and neck were straight as if looking at something on the floor in front of him. The figure’s arms were curled behind him, his hands demurely covering his backside.

“Not unless you’re 2000 years old.”

Johnson looked in one of a pair of gilt Louis XV mirrors. “That reminds me,” he put his hands beneath his temples and lifted them up to make the already smooth skin on his face even smoother, “it’s about time I saw Dr Richardson.”

“Dr – ?” Ollie gave Johnson an enquiring look.

Johnson lightly slapped his temples. “Fillers,” he explained.

Ollie lifted the sheet of glass, easily slotting it into the two prepared grooves at the base of the man’s neck. The table was now in place.

“Bit modest isn’t he?” Johnson sniffed. “I was expecting something more fully frontal.”

“But it’s not for you is it Johnson?”

Johnson hummed and hawed, certain if Ollie knew they were for someone else he would raise the price, “Weeeell...”

Ollie took out his ever-present notepad and pen.

“Is this more what you had in mind?” He quickly sketched an upside down man in the crab position. “I could make a
pair of mainly decorative tables which, by making the stomach really flat, you could put a mug on – ”

“It’s a cup and saucer in this house.”

“ – but perhaps little else, or,” Ollie gestured to the table he had just assembled, “I could make them bigger, more of the coffee table size – ”

“Hmmmmm,” Johnson examined Ollie’s sketch. “Let’s go for the decorative tables for the time being but,” Johnson took Ollie’s pen and drew in a more bulging crotch, “make them more like this ok?”

Johnson looked at the rain pouring down outside and gave an oversized sigh. “Such a shame the weather’s so foul. I was hoping to go for my exercise.”

Ollie knew this was a cue for a compliment. Johnson looked at him with big eyes, waiting.

“I thought you looked well Johnson.”

Johnson smiled. “Well I’ve been going for regular aerobic exercise, what we in Hampstead call, – ” he paused then whispered conspiratorially, “ – blow-jogs.”

Ollie hadn’t heard the term before but the words were self-explanatory. Just in case he had missed the meaning Johnson explained, “Everybody’s at it this time of day. All the City boys and dealers come back from work, jog up to the Heath and – ”

“I get it. I get it.”

“There must be a lot of spouses mystified as to why their partners are still as unfit as they were before. It’s taken over from walking the dog as the favourite excuse and not a moment too soon. There’s nothing more offputting than having someone go down on you only to have Fido come sniffing round….”

Unwilling to hear any more of the sex lives of Hampstead denizens Ollie got up, “I have to go Johnson. I’ll let you know about the tables.”

By nine o’clock Rion was ready to move out. Water had started trickling over the high first step about half an hour before. In the flickering candlelight she could see several large pools on the chamber floor – several large pools getting larger, she realised unhappily.

It was time for action.

Wriggling out of the snug sleeping bag Rion was surprised at how cold it was. With her throat beginning to burn and her limbs feeling suddenly heavy, Rion struggled into her black and white checked trousers, pulled on her fleece and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.

The first disappointment was finding her trainers, an island of shoe in one of the large pools beneath the bed. She shivered. There could be nothing worse than squeezing cold feet into already wet sneakers.

Rion felt she was starring in her own Gothic horror film as the guttering candle threw uncomfortable shapes over the ceiling and walls. She grabbed the pencil-torch from the shelf, pulled on her white pac-a-mac and drew back the now sodden, heavy pink blanket from the doorway. The accompanying breeze blew out the already sputtering candles.

Switching on the torch Rion was dismayed to find its weak beam barely pierced the darkness. “Here we go Rion,” she said to herself, strengthened by the sound of her own voice. “Think of Blondin, think of crossing – ” the next word came surprisingly naturally as Rion took her first step into the pool that had once been the little clearing, “the Niagara,” she said miserably, feeling the cold water slosh into her shoes and around her feet.