Wildwood (3 page)

‘Find me?’ I was starting to feel dazed.

‘Information is what I deal in. Don’t fret, you’ll be quite easy to get hold of.’ He started back up the slope.

‘I’m sorry … You haven’t …’ I stuttered at his retreating
figure
, and he paused to flash me a coruscating smile of enquiry that simultaneously made me want to grab him and to give him a slap. ‘What’s your name?’ I finished weakly.

‘Michael Deverick.’ He said it as if he expected me to know exactly who that was, and strode off without another word.

Nor, I noted, had he offered me
his
business card.

‘You could have just asked for my phone number,’ I muttered under my breath. But I had the distinct feeling that he was not the sort of man who bothered to ask for anything.

Taking an ambling route between the gravestones I returned to the wedding party, which was still waiting around for the photographer to finish. Emma seemed tireless as she alternated posing and chivvying others into position, but Chester’s smile was beginning to look forced and most of the guests had broken off into weary little knots of gossip, wondering how long it would be before they’d get a glass of champagne or something to eat. A number of those lucky enough not to be related to the bridal couple had already left to make their way to the reception at the Waters Hotel. I was jumped by Chester’s sister Miranda, who worked in an academic publishing house and had distinguished herself at the hen party by removing the stripper’s jockstrap with her teeth. I liked her a lot.

‘Avril! How are you?’

‘Hungry.’

‘I could kill for a drink,’ Miranda admitted. ‘You know they’re going to do this all over again when we get to the hotel?’

‘Oh God,’ I said in quiet despair. ‘I know Emma hasn’t eaten anything in six months, but she should have mercy on the rest of us. Why has it got to be such a marathon?’

‘Weddings always are. That’s why I want to get hitched in the Maldives, on a beach, me in a white bikini and a veil, and all the guests can go swimming while they wait.’

‘I’ll get married in a hot-air balloon,’ I said. ‘And we’ll bungee
jump
after saying our vows. That should cut things nice and short.’

‘Hmm.’ Miranda’s smirk grew teasing. ‘And was that Michael Deverick I saw you talking to? Isn’t he gorgeous?’

‘Do you know him?’

‘Oh yes. Chester started off working for him when he first went into the City.’

‘He doesn’t look that old.’

‘He isn’t old, just talented. He’s made an absolute killing on the stock market – he’s worth a not-very-small fortune. They say he’s got an almost uncanny ability to predict the markets.’

‘You mean he’s a crook?’

‘Avril!’ She smacked her lips. ‘So what were you two talking about?’

‘Trees.’ It was the only thing I was prepared to admit to. In retrospect, I was fairly sure the man had been mocking me.

‘Oh come on! Was he checking you out?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not his type, Miranda.’

‘But I bet he’s yours! Couldn’t you just eat him up?’

The phrase brought rather stirring pictures to mind and I couldn’t help giggling. Admittedly I’d already wondered whether his cock was of the same superior quality as the suit it was kept in. ‘Don’t start! Blokes like that aren’t interested in chicks with chainsaws. His type is …’ I looked around for inspiration and found it walking across the grass in teetering heels: no one I knew, but then there were a lot of guests at this wedding. The blonde wore a slashed lime-coloured dress that made the most of her slender frame and her hair was swept up into an elegant twist to display the line of her neck. Her sculpted collarbones were visible and her shoulders were so fine that they came to points. ‘Her: the anorexic one. Two grapefruit on a skeleton.’

Miranda, curvy and brunette like her brother, sighed in sympathy. ‘She is a very pretty skeleton.’

‘Lovely. I expect she lives on white wine and appetite suppressants. That’s the sort that men with money want.’

As if to prove me right Michael Deverick appeared round the corner of the church, his path converging with the blonde’s, and as he held out his arm she took his elbow and draped herself gratefully over him.

I rolled my eyes. ‘See? She’s too weak to stand up unaided.’

‘Jealous?’ Miranda asked slyly.

‘No!’

Miranda pulled a face. ‘I bloody am.’

By the end of the evening I was a little the worse for wear. I’d danced for hours and I’d done the rounds of the relatives and eaten at the buffet too, so by the time the bar closed I was still steady on my feet, but perhaps not as wary as I should have been. My first clash with Simon, earlier in the evening, should have been a warning of what was to come.

Simon was an old boyfriend from back when I lived in the village. In those days he’d been merely the sporting darling of the parish and was the lad to whom I’d eagerly surrendered my virginity in the bowling alley at the back of the pub. Nowadays, big, blond and beefy, he looked exactly like what he was: a county cricketer. We’d parted badly, and he’s always been a bit snide whenever I’ve met him since.

Simon had cornered me as I was going with Miranda to the toilets. As we turned into the downstairs corridor we found Simon there, lounging against an occasional table with a drink in his hand.

‘Avril!’ he said brightly. His face was ruddy from the spirits and his bow tie hung loose around his neck. ‘Nice dress.’

I stopped. It was a nice dress, now that I’d taken the jacket
off
. It had spaghetti straps at the shoulder and was made of soft, rather clingy cotton. ‘Thanks.’

‘’Scuse,’ Miranda said, making a bolt for the ladies’.

‘Didn’t think you’d be in dress,’ he continued. ‘Thought it’d be dungarees or something. For, you know, your gardening.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, some of us are advanced enough to have a change of clothes, Simon. And I even washed my hands after work.’

He put his hand on my waist. I should have pulled away right then but I’d had enough alcohol to take the edge off my caution. And it wasn’t as if I really disliked Simon after all those years, or as though he were physically unattractive. ‘Nice dress,’ he repeated, looking down my front. ‘But looks as if you’re a little cold.’

He was referring to the way my nipples were sticking out through the fabric, hard little points of fuchsia pink. I wasn’t wearing a bra. I giggled.

‘Remember that time,’ he said, dropping his voice to a murmur, ‘we went out in the snow looking for squirrels?’

I did, and my body did too, my flesh warming instantly to the memory, which was why I didn’t stop him when he put his hand to my left breast and brushed the nipple very gently with his fingertips. My skin tightened, shivering.

We’d gone out across his father’s fields from spinney to spinney, looking for squirrels on the pretext that they ate pheasant eggs and chicks. Simon had carried an air rifle. At the time I had no particular grudge against grey squirrels and didn’t match his eagerness for the hunt – they weren’t my pheasants – although ironically nowadays I know the damage they can do stripping tree bark and I’m far less sentimental. I remember the spots of blood bright against the snow under the bare black trees, like the start of a fairy tale:
Skin as white as snow
… I remember how Simon had laughed at the disgusted
faces
I’d pulled when he flipped over the little corpses with his toe. I’d got so grumpy that he’d broken off, still laughing, and backed me against a sycamore sapling to kiss me into a better mood. As I melted into compliance he’d slipped out of my embrace and round the back of the tree, drawing my arms out behind me. I didn’t struggle as he lashed my wrists with his leather belt, pinning me to the tree, though I’d laughed and scolded him. When he’d finished trussing me he’d returned to face me and slowly unzipped my coat.

‘Simon!’ I’d yelped, but he’d ignored my protests and peeled open my fleece liner and my cardigan and finally, button by button, the blouse beneath to reveal my bra. It was a still day, but it was the middle of winter and there’d been an inch of snow on the ground. ‘Simon, it’s cold!’ I’d protested, wriggling against my bonds but weak with laughter.

‘So I see.’ He’d eased my breasts gently from their lacy cups, exposing them to the chill air. My nipples were as hard and cold as bullets, but they’d radiated fire through my body as he pinched them. ‘Bet I can get them colder, though.’

He’d bent to scoop some snow and I’d realised then how exposed I was. The farm was private land and there shouldn’t have been anybody wandering around, but the spinney provided no cover from prying eyes should anyone have been out checking on the stock. My tits were there for the entire world to see. When Simon rose with a lump of compacted snow in either hand I’d squealed, for fear of the cold and for shame, but there’d been nothing I could do to stop him rubbing each pinky-brown nipple with ice until I was gasping.

‘Someone might see!’ I’d moaned, rocking my head back against the trunk, my tits jiggling helplessly. The snow was melting from the heat of my flesh and the ice-water ran down my breasts and ribs.

‘Good,’ he’d said brutally. ‘I’d like that. You’re beautiful.’ And so
saying
he’d wiped his last melting clots of snow down my skin and opened the front of my jeans, kneeling to drag them down over my bum cheeks, knickers and all in one swoop. Then he’d thrust his face into my bush and begun to eat me out in great hot licks. ‘Nothing cold down here!’ was his one comment.

Standing in that hotel corridor I remembered the sharp bite of the winter on my breasts and the icy slipperiness of the sycamore bark on my buttocks as Simon’s face ground into my crotch, the chill on my naked thighs contrasting with the boiling of my sex, the gusts of his warm breath through my pubes, the way the juices running down the inside of my legs felt hot enough to scald me.

It’s got smooth, algae-covered bark, has young sycamore. It’s a bugger to climb and leaves you covered in a green stain when you’ve done it. I’d learnt that for the first time that day with Simon, when I went home with a green arse. It was the first thing I learnt about trees.

The experience also left me with a permanent kink for sex in the open air.

I was so hypnotised by memory and by the whisper of his fingers over my breast that I wasn’t thinking what I was doing, there in the hotel. Until the moment he pressed up against me.

‘God, you’ve got lovely little tits,’ he breathed.

I could feel his erection through his trousers, butting me. With a sharp intake of breath I thrust his hand off. ‘Stop it, Simon!’

‘I heard you split up with wossisname, that surfer bloke.’

‘So?’

‘So come on, Av,’ he said, grabbing my arse.

I gave him a shove and he sat back hard on the corridor table, skewing the little tablecloth and sending the vase of dried flowers rocking. ‘I always knew you’d turn into a dyke,’ he growled.

‘Oh grow up!’ I snapped and flounced off into the ladies’. By
the
time I came out with Miranda and we headed back to the wedding marquee there was no sign of him.

Chester’s friends, mostly City types, had long since faded from the scene by the time I headed across the hotel lawn towards Reception and my single room. Only the old country crowd were still resisting every polite attempt by the hotel staff to make them vacate the marquee and let them clean up or, if they’d drifted outside in the warm evening, were now talking and laughing under the stars. There was a group of them hanging out around the fountain. This sat in the centre of the lawn and it wasn’t playing, but it was big enough to be a natural focal point and as I strolled past I could see that several people were sitting on the rim of the lower basin, paddling their feet in the water. Light was provided by submerged lamps and by the moon. From the crowd someone hailed me by name. I turned and saw that it was Simon, dishevelled and clinging to a bottle of champagne.

‘What now?’ I asked with a sigh.

‘Av! You’re a climber, right?’

I tilted my head, waiting.

‘Reckon you could climb that then?’ He gestured at the fountain, and I followed the line of his arm. It was a monstrous construction, built when the Waters Hotel was a private residence and its owners had serious pretensions to grandeur. The round basin was occupied by an enormous bronze triton, reclining in a bronze shell. He held aloft another scallop shell that formed a second basin, and tipped a conch to his lips as if blowing a signal blast. All around him smaller Nereids disported in the water.

‘What for?’ I asked when I’d taken all this in.

‘No but, could you?’

Several of the crowd with him sniggered and I looked warily at their faces. Some were familiar from the village, years back, though none were among those I’d counted as friends. Others
were
strangers, but from the same mould: all young, none sober, with taunting looks upon their faces. I looked again at the fountain. The whole thing was maybe thirty feet high. The metal wasn’t wet but it looked polished smooth. On the other hand there were so many rococo details – foaming waves and cherub heads and the like – that there should be no difficulty finding holds for hand and feet.

I shrugged. ‘No problem. Why?’

There were more sniggers.

‘Well, we’ve got this bet on, like,’ said Simon, grinning with undisguised slyness. ‘What with you being this big-shot lumberjack so you say –’ He broke off to allow space for several derisive snorts from his audience.

‘I’m not a lumberjack,’ I said, wincing at the word.

‘Whatever. An
arborist
then.’ He executed a clumsy, mocking bow of apology. ‘We were wanting to see if you could climb this, to the top shell there.’

Actually almost all tree climbing is done with rope and harness, but I’d done plenty free-climbing on rock faces too. That didn’t worry me. ‘And what would I get for winning the bet for you?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m betting against you.’

‘Really.’

‘But if you win I’ll buy you …’ He pulled a face. ‘A crate of bubbly?’

‘A new climbing rig,’ I countered. ‘With ropes and ascenders.’ That would set him back a bit and was currently beyond my pocket. I don’t exactly earn a fortune.