Chapter Two
RIVER
Two twenty-two am; that had to be a sign. If it wasn’t eleven-eleven it was two twenty-two, whenever and wherever River was, he always seemed to look at a timepiece at either of these precise moments – day or night. Now was decidedly night. He shivered and pulled his soiled denim jacket over his chest, curled as he was in the foetal position on the comfiest drinking couch in the bar.
The late afternoon’s events were a blur, namely because he’d chosen to numb their existence with one and a half cheap bottles of Prosecco. But bit by bit the scene replayed itself, making him shudder and retch, hardly helped along by Blake’s reference to the tacky innuendo cocktails he most definitely wouldn’t be serving up, as well as his audacity to label him a pop star.
Then again he had always been a lightweight when it came to the bubbles.
Thank god Lee had chosen the Drambuie though – which had only been right next to the Mexican tipple – whatever it was the mystical vessel contained. River still hadn’t the foggiest of its alcoholic composition, despite its mission nearing completion. As soon as Blake and Lee had fled, he’d hidden it in a cubbyhole in the backyard’s former skittle alley, swaddled in blankets to keep it at room temperature, then returned to the bar’s sink, studded as it was with broken glass and ethanol in all of its guises, to wash the stench of coffee liquor from his hair.
He rubbed his eyes and scoured the contents of his investment. He was as good as back to square one on the decorating front, but money was no object, he’d soon call in the professionals to set it straight. And hopefully Blake wouldn’t follow through with his threat.
“You haven’t seen the last of me by a long shot,” was his parting gesture.
“No, nor me,” Lee had put in his two pennies worth moments later, clawing at the door Blake had slammed with an almighty bang.
He couldn’t really blame him. He’d had it hard these past few years. River had heard about Blake’s parents’ on-off relationship courtesy of his own mum filling him in on the town’s gossip. And then if he was honest with himself, despite the haze of teenage marijuana-filled days when they used to cycle down to the moors and the secret hideaway under the bridge straddling the River Brue, he did recall the way he used to stare at Alice as they fell about in fits of stoned laughter. But the two of them being an item; he wasn’t sure if that part was lost somewhere in the recesses of his imagination, or a mere figment of Blake’s. Either way, it had to smart if he’d never truly moved on, seeing her date American actor after American actor; the rosebud of his indie rock band – well, former indie rock band, once Avalonia hit the big time, Alice had never looked back at any of her vanilla college boys.
River stretched his arms wide and rose slowly, desperately trying to ignore his sore head. He tiptoed between the piles and lone shards of glass – a kid playing the don’t-step-on-the-cracks-in-the-pavement game. The floor behind the bar was surprisingly clear of Blake’s aftermath, with most of the debris having landed on the counter, making an easy pathway to The Bible. He lodged it under his arm and navigated his way back to the couch. His fingers traced the cover and the echoes of Varadero beach in Cuba beckoned, a rum so pure it rivalled even the best Haiti had to offer, a sand so white that after a spectacularly heavy session, you wondered whether you really had died and gone to heaven.
He had to get some air. The negative energy of Blake’s tirade still permeated the bar. He re-positioned the book under his arm. It was hefty and definitely not inconspicuous. But the chances of anybody loafing around town at this time of night on a Tuesday were slim to say the least, and soon he was powerwalking his way up to Bove Town and beyond, his mind and the rest of his body following his feet.
That was until his phone started to vibrate against his thigh, rudely interrupting his stride. He retrieved it from his pocket without thinking, the innocent looking number momentarily deceiving him.
“Hello?”
“It’s Lennie,” the caller said, adding a chain of heavy breaths. “Don’t hang up. I say don’t hang up. Come on, lad, we really need to talk. You can’t just leave me dangling by a thread like—”
Goddamnit.
River cut him off and shoved the phone back in his pocket. He needed to be sharper than this, one hundred per cent on the ball at all times. He’d change his number tomorrow. That would soon put paid to future conversation with his ex-manager. He was his own boss now. Besides, he’d made a promise to Mercedes. Okay, maybe only in his head, half an hour into that flight back from Guadalajara to Heathrow. But she knew he was committed, of that much he was sure.
His steps soon became meditative and purposeful again, brushing aside the internal chatter. And within an hour he was sat atop the Ancient Isle of Avalon, a solitary figure in the archway of Glastonbury Tor waiting for sunrise.
***
River woke to fingers of light dancing on his cheek and the warble and crimson flash of a pair of male robins flitting overhead in May’s cool morning air. He unpeeled the layers of his sleeping bag – he’d been crashing out at the bar during the renovations and had instinctively stuffed it into his backpack to keep him warm, wherever he should end up laying his head – but strangely he’d no recollection of drifting off to sleep.
And shit. Where had he put the book?
No sooner had the fear of a decade and a bit of lost cocktail recipes clutched at his breath, than he pulled back the hood of his sleeping bag to see he’d been using it as a pillow.
He exhaled and watched as his clouds of relief filtered through the archway like smoke from a beacon, as the Tor was sometimes used for special ceremonies. Something dug into his side and he pulled out his mobile once more from his trouser pocket, half tempted to fling it down the hillside while he was at it. There were a string of missed calls and messages from Heather, his mum, who would insist that he use her first name once he turned sixteen, as if it were some kind of spiritual coming of age ritual. He remembered to acquiesce when he could, especially when he needed a favour.
“Paps have been hanging around outside on the street all night, Riv. I don’t feel safe to leave the house. I told you I have a transcendental meditation class to teach at 11am!”
Hadn’t they anything better to do? At this rate he was going to have to live up here on this mound to avoid the madness that had become his life. He wasn’t in the limelight any more. It was high time they respected that.
He randomly opened the book, making a mental note to reimburse Heather for today’s lost earnings. The page was littered with scribbles and sketches from his discoveries in New York: The Manhattan, too obvious a choice perhaps, but it was River’s cocktail bar and he couldn’t think of a better entrée for his yet to be created menu; bold bracing Bourbon, Sweet Vermouth and a dash of Angostura bitters. A theatrical performance going off with a bang, the stage curtain lifted on a procession of liquid masterpieces. In fact, he’d put the whole thing together like this, by intuitively opening up his Bible and choosing between left page and right. Heather would definitely approve.
He knew he’d upset Blake, and Lee besides, but his quest was more important than that. He’d been entrusted in a way the unenlightened simply couldn’t understand. And anyway, he could make it up to him, if he could somehow get Blake to be one of the three, although he knew that tampering with destiny was strictly off the cards, and other than another episode of destruction, he had no idea how he would physically get him into the bar in a social capacity.
A whirr of activity snapped him out of his daydream. A black and white terrier yapped and bounded, streaking comet-like around his former sanctuary. The robins scarpered in protest. And the dog growled at the foot of River’s sleeping bag, deeply disturbed at what it had uncovered in a territory it clearly knew as its own at six am.
“Do you always have this effect on women?”
A vision of red cheeks, bobble hat, and wild brown hair came to the fore. The dog, taking its attempt at conversation as a green light, jumped on River’s lap and sniffed somewhat embarrassingly at his groin.
“Oh my god, get out of here, it’s you!” she said.
“Excuse me? Do I know you?”
River rubbed his eyes with his fists, breaking the terrier’s new fascination with licking his face.
“It’s me, Georgina. Well, George. But I’m Georgina nowadays. Reinvented myself, like Lady Gaga,” she said with a wink.
“George? Georgie George? As in Blake’s little sister, Georgie George?”
“Georgina,” she shouted with a massive grin, so there was no doubt as to her new identity as it reverberated inside the tower, spilling out and rolling down the Tor’s dewy slopes and onto the patchwork quilt of the Somerset Levels beyond.
“Crikey, I should think you have reinvented yourself.” River couldn’t help but whistle as he looked her up and down. She was about as far removed from the shell suit-betrothed teen with the bob, dot-to-dot acne, and tram track braces to match, as could be. How had this transformation happened?
“Oh purlease,” Georgina’s cheeks were ever so slightly more berry-stained than they’d appeared on her arrival.
“I heard you were back,” she said, pausing briefly to summon new breath. “Rumour mill’s hard to escape in this town. Here, girl.” She called the dog back to her side and clipped on its lead. “Sorry about that, she’s always been a bit of a case, and well, at this time of day we rarely bump into anybody else up here.”
“You used to be more of a night owl as I recall. What happened?”
“Reality bit some of us. We weren’t all as lucky as you,” she said removing her hat to further reveal the extent of her beauty, despite a trace of contempt in her watery green eyes.
“Yeah, I was sorry to hear about your parents finally calling it a day,” River lowered his head. “Must have hit you both hard.” He rubbed a couple of loose stones together, unsure whether it was safe to resume eye contact with the Tom Boy turned Vixen. “And um, I kind of bumped into your brother last night too.”
“Really? Where? He never mentioned it.” Her reply came in one quick and breathless succession.
“Oh, he just popped his head into the bar to say hello, as you do. Lee came too, always good to catch up with old friends.” He cursed himself silently for letting out a nervous laugh.
“Hmm, yes, well I did hear about you buying up Dad’s drinking and skittles den. Tut tut. Not exactly the subtlest move in the book.”
“Maybe not but it spares you all from another shop full of crystals and crap.”
Nice one, River. Despite the lack of sleep and the mother of all hangovers, you’re on surprisingly good form this morning.
“Touché,” she said, clearly agreeing with him whilst rubbing and bending the double jointed tips of her digits into the warmth of her fingerless gloves, “but in all honesty it’s hit Dad hard. The pub was his haven, not just for the ale and the opportunity to knock down a few pins twice a week. It’s the company he misses, the friendships. Men of his generation, they don’t do the coffee and cake thing like the women.” She paused to study River with the kind of just-got-out-of-bed-hair that makes a man want to bury his face in it, taking in the remnants of last night’s perfume before a quick round of second helpings.
He pushed the very idea to the back of his mind and pondered his defence, but she was simply too fast to keep up with, her youth giving her quick quips an unfair advantage.
“So that’s what you’ve effectively done, you see, ripped a community apart at its very heart,” she carried on with her crusade.
“Oh come on, surely that’s a tad extreme,” he said, trying to soften the lead of those words, “nothing stays the same forever.”
He clocked those utterly kissable lips beginning to curve into the slightest of smiles. She was damn well enjoying this, bordering on flirting with him. He’d even go as far as to say the challenge was beginning to turn him on, too.
“Okay, I get it, I get it. I’ve put my foot in things good and proper. But don’t knock me down before you’ve given the bar a try.”
Will you just give it up already with the flaming skittles references!
“Even your dad might find he likes it.”
“Ha, so sure of yourself, aren’t you? All those years of stardom have clearly inflated your ego to some wuthering heights. But these are cider drinkers we’re talking about, loyal only to purveyors of the finest Scrumpy. No amount of ‘Sex on the Beach’ is going to lead them astray.”
Why was everyone so hell-bent on stereotyping a mixologist’s repertoire? This conversation was in dire need of a change of direction.
“So, how is life treating you? And why in the heck are you up here of all places so early?”
“I could ask the same of you? Haven’t you got a bed to sleep in?” Her cheekiness batted back her reply.
“I uh, I had a late one decorating the bar last night… yeah. And Mum, Heather, she needed her kip… got some kind of meditation class to give today at that new centre near the Chalice Well.”
“I see.” She raised her eyebrows, and if River wasn’t mistaken, he could detect – just for a fleeting moment – that quirky little Blake’s sibling trait of hers: calculation. And then like a puff of smoke it was gone, as if it had never been.
“Me?” she asked, the cogs in her brain having evidently resumed their usual pattern. “I’m doing a bit of everything at the moment. Dog walking and sitting, hence being up here at this ungodly hour, some waitressing, cleaning and shopping for a few of the elderly neighbours, you know, that sort of thing. Pays the bills, helps Dad out with the mortgage after she ditched us for the fourth time and ran off to Benidorm to be with that utter tosser for ever. At twenty-nine it’s hardly the way I saw my life panning out.” Georgina sighed, “But I’m the woman of the house now, somebody’s got to look after the men.”
“Well you’re looking good on it… really good,” said River with a smile, hoping in futile hindsight that she wouldn’t interpret it as anything more than the hung-over compliment it was; the hung-over compliment he should have kept to himself, for she would always be the younger out-of-bounds sister of his childhood best friend. Some things were simply never meant to be explored.
“And what’s this?” she changed the subject, not before raising those perfect brows once more, then sitting by his side, dog now (thankfully) already in a semi-slumber.
“Nothing, just a scrapbook of junk.” He tried in vain not to sound protective as he attempted to cocoon The Bible in the hood of his sleeping bag.
But she snatched it off him, resuming the role of annoying brat like it was some kind of lifelong prerogative.
“I’d rather you didn’t, Georgie.”
“Georgina,” she corrected him.
“It’s precious actually.”
“Oh, now he says it’s precious all of a sudden,” she smirked.
“Years of notes and stuff.” A trickle of heat began to cover his body as he made a pathetic tackle to grab it back and she childishly tugged it further away. “But they wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “Blue Lagoon,” she softly traced the outline of the highball glass in which River had sketched the liquid swimming pool and its disc of lime, “very tropical.” She leafed through the pages again, a provocative smile, quite different to anything he remembered adorning her teenage face, curled her lips.
“Can you make me one of these?” She looked at him, a coquettish glint in her eyes, something he fast realised was not his mind playing tricks on him since she was now also biting gently at the corner of her lip.
“When the bar’s redecorated, up and running in a few weeks, yeah?”
“I’ve always had a thing for you, you know.” Georgina put the book down slowly as if to back up her declaration with only the most sensual of movements. River swallowed. Despite their banter, he had not been expecting the dialogue to take him quite so far in this direction. Georgina smiled as she removed her gloves, careful not to take her eyes off him. And then she straddled River’s still swaddled legs and to his utter astonishment began to undress. He found he could do no more than swallow yet again as one by one the layers unpeeled themselves, and he let her take his rough hands in hers, directing them to a pair of superbly pert breasts as she sighed deeply.
“I um, I don’t think this is a good idea. Like, what about Blake?”
River forced the memory of the navy and red shell-suited keepy-uppy obsessed Take That fan into his head, willing it to stay put. But the football bounced off, and the George of yesteryear faded fast. There was just no escaping the fact that 2017’s version of Georgina was a vision and a temptress all at once. He knew he shouldn’t. This was the ultimate treason but god he was so horny he didn’t care. And he realised, somehow rolling back the months in his mind as she parted his lips with her tongue and pressed her body urgently against him, that he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d gotten laid. The thrill of getting caught in the act by an early morning passer-by only added to his hunger, but she’d catch her death like this. Spring or not, this was Somerset.
He unzipped the side of his sleeping bag, inviting her in. They fumbled and twisted, slipped and slid, and before common sense got a look in, he was deep inside her, groaning and bucking in pleasure.
“Still want to try that Blue Lagoon?” he found himself whispering into her ear.
“I want you to line up every cocktail on the bar, she stopped to softly bite his lip, “so I can drink it dry before you strip naked and take me… over and over.”
“And over?” he said with a suggestive smile, their eyes locking so that phase two was inevitable.
“But… mmm,” she panted as he grinded, hands possessing her backside, “I get the feeling my favourite tipple will be the Screaming Orgasm.” She kissed him greedily, as if unleashing the pent-up lust of a starved adolescence and the fantasy of bedding a rock star.
“You’ve got yourself a job,” he said, coming up for air, blinking Blake and his warning away, as well as Georgina’s cringe worthy suggestion that he’d serve up anything so seedy and classless. “Just so happens I’m looking for bar staff… and I think you’ll find I pay rather well.”