Revelry. Lucy Lord

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СКАЧАТЬ I wince, screwing up my eyes and shoving the lemon wedge in my mouth as quickly as I can to get rid of the taste. Once the gagging reflex has stopped, I’m suffused with a warm glow and set about completing the fish stew with renewed vigour.

      ‘I’ll set the table, shall I?’ offers Poppy, heading back outside.

      ‘You’re an angel.’ I really mean it. The first stirrings of pissed sentimentality are creeping up on me, and Poppy certainly looks angelic tonight, with her lovely smile, big almond-shaped green eyes and perfect, straight nose, all framed by that silky, golden mane.

      When Pops and I were at school, we were inseparable and a trifle eccentric, not part of any of the cool bitchy girl gangs. It was just us against the world – and the world of an all girls’ school can be horribly unkind if you don’t conform. Poppy and I existed in our own little world of make-believe. After our Enid Blyton stage, we became obsessed with the 1920s and 1930s and devoured books by Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford, Agatha Christie and P. G. Wodehouse, dressing in homemade flapper dresses, cloche hats and character shoes. My fourteenth birthday present from my mum was an old gramophone player with a horn and a pile of dusty 78s that we played over and over, dancing the Charleston and giggling till we were breathless. We even spoke like characters from the books. Things were either ‘beastly’ or ‘vile’, ‘divine’ or ‘too, too happy-making’. Our catty, boyband-obsessed classmates had no idea what to make of us, but we were absolutely content in our anachronistic, self-contained bubble. We never felt the need to befriend anybody else in that stuck-up girls’ school.

      By the time we’d hit the sixth form and discovered booze and boys, our shared obsession had died down a bit, but we were still both terribly excited at the idea of Poppy going to Oxford, and all the Brideshead-style punting shenanigans that this would entail. But the first time I went to visit her, towards the end of the Michaelmas term, I was in for a shock. Poppy had always had a pretty face, but the mouse-fair shoulder-length bob and old-fashioned clothes that swamped her tiny body meant that up until now her prettiness was very much of the girl-next-door, unthreatening variety.

      The stunning undergraduate holding court in the Christ Church bar, surrounded by sycophants seemingly hanging on her every word, was a different proposition altogether. Her recently highlighted hair had grown, and now flowed – silky, blonde and streaky – down her back and over her shoulders. In keeping with the Britpop look of the time, khaki hipster cargo pants and a black crop top showed off her pert tits, flat brown tummy, narrow hips, and … Good God, she’d had her belly button pierced! And she was smoking! I was in such a state of shock at Poppy’s transformation that I just stood there gawping for a bit, until she noticed me and squealed, running over with her arms outstretched for a hug.

      Pops did her best to make me feel welcome that weekend, but there was a definite change in her. The way she spoke, the way she lit her fags and tossed her hair – it was as if that first term at Oxford had bestowed on her an unshakeable sense of self, a glamorous patina that has not left her to this day. Her fellow students, still high on the glory of having been chosen as the crème de la crème of the country’s intelligentsia, were clearly not impressed by me, a shy, somewhat dumbstruck, London art student. We never did get to go punting.

      Back at Goldsmiths, things were hardly better. I’d been so excited about the prospect of art college, imagining I’d meet all sorts of interesting, like-minded people, my head full of romantic notions of Art, and Beauty, and Love. But once I was there, I couldn’t believe how full of themselves everybody was, how obsessed with being trendy. If I’d thought my all girls’ school was cliquey, this was ten times worse, in its shallow, sniggering, look-at-me arrogance. I was horribly conscious that I’d never be skinny enough to be properly fashionable. Not that I’m fat (a perfectly reasonable size 10–12 for my five foot seven height), but you had to be pretty bloody emaciated to make the outlandish garments favoured by my peers look anything other than downright hideous.

      No doubt, if they’d realized who my father was, things would have been different. But Brown’s a pretty common surname, and I was buggered if I was going to ride on Dad’s coat-tails. Actually, I lie. I’d gladly have ridden on his coat-tails, but couldn’t exactly start saying to all and sundry, ‘Don’t you know who my dad is?’ without looking and sounding like a total dickhead.

      Part of me hated the lot of them; another part, the insecure eighteen-year-old girl part, longed to be accepted. Sometimes I’d drink too much to kill my insecurity and make a complete arse of myself in the college bar. Sniffing out vulnerability the way a shark sniffs blood, my male contemporaries soon realized that I could easily be sweet-talked into bed; pathetically naive, and longing to be loved, I fell for it every time. Disappointment inevitably followed crushing disappointment.

      By the time Poppy returned from her round-the-world travels and came to live in London, I had a pretty low opinion of both myself and the entire opposite sex. I was temping at a post-production house in Soho; the married boss, a loathsome piece of work with a shaved head, goatee and penchant for black polo-neck jumpers, had already tried to shag me. Pops took one look and kindly swept me up in her groovy new life, introducing me to her terrifyingly successful new friends as ‘Bella, my best mate ever’. Slowly I began to be assimilated, to develop my own style and something approaching confidence. I’ve never shaken off the feeling that if it wasn’t for her, I’d still be that twat embarrassing myself in the Goldsmiths bar, desperate to be loved and accepted.

      I owe Poppy a lot, I think now with a huge rush of affection, as I taste the fish stew. It’s sublime. The basic Mediterranean triumvirate of tomatoes, onion and garlic underpins the delicate sweetness of the fish, whose variety yields a beautifully complex balance of textures and flavours. I have elevated my ambrosial mire to heady aromatic heights with saffron, thyme and the aniseedy kick of fennel and Pernod.

      I go out of the door at the back of the kitchen to get some flat-leaf parsley from the herb garden. Away from the floodlights of the pool, the stars are stupidly bright, twinkling their little hearts out against the velvety purple sky. Pulling up great leafy handfuls (I’m a strong believer that more is more when it comes to herbs), I notice a shadowy figure making its way in the direction of the outdoor loo. Having known that figure all my life, I recognize my father instantly. I’m about to say something when I hear a ghastly giggle. Stepping back into the shadows, I watch as Kimberly grabs him from behind, running her long fingers over his crotch and biting the side of his neck.

      ‘Kimberly?’ asks Dad, his voice hoarse with lust. She continues her lewd manoeuvres for what seems like minutes but is probably only thirty seconds or so, until Dad says, ‘You shouldn’t have followed me. It’ll be too obvious what we’re up to.’

      ‘This is just for starters, big boy,’ breathes Kim. ‘We’re going to have a ball later.’

      And she turns on her elegant heel and saunters back to the party.

      I wait until Dad has continued towards the loo before bolting back into the kitchen, feeling deeply queasy. You’d think I’d have become inured to my father’s various peccadilloes over the years, but actually witnessing the full sub-porno horror, and with somebody I hold in such low regard, is unpalatable on every level. And then there’s the little matter of darling, gorgeous, soon-to-be-cuckolded-by-a-much-older-man Ben.

      I chuck the parsley down onto the worktop and start chopping furiously.

      ‘Jesus, what has that poor parsley ever done to you?’ says Poppy, then stops when she sees the look on my face. ‘Christ Bella, what’s up?’

      I tell her and she starts to laugh. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, but you must admit it’s quite funny. I mean, look at Ben. I can tell you with my hand on my heart that this is going to be an entirely new experience for him.’

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