Chapter Twenty
RIVER
“Nah ah, cheapest ingredient first, if you build it wrong you’ve cost me less money.”
River winked playfully, although he was semi-serious. This was the third time they’d had to start from scratch on Lord Rigby-Chandler‘s order. How hard could it honestly be to make The Smoking Geisha? Okay, it was as barbaric as it got to even contemplate drinking said cocktail outside of autumn, but constructing this tipple was hardly rocket science.
The wink was not reciprocated. In fact he noticed something about Georgina’s demeanour sharpen right then; a bond unravelled, the disappointing taste of flat Champagne, whose cork would never recapture the bubbles.
He was training her up, slowly, patiently to help him out behind the bar. He’d thought Georgina’s not-so-distant future title of mixologist (she was off to London that very weekend) could only ease Alice’s much needed transition into their lives.
It was funny really how she had appeared at just the right moment, business had more than tripled and an extra pair of hands was essential now. He’d even increased Georgina’s salary in a bid to soften the apparent but mystifying blow that was his friend. Sure, Alice possessed a beauty that was simply mesmerising, sure, they were sharing a caravan (although it was eight birth, in many ways giving them more distance at night than The Guinevere had ever done), but beneath all of that, her inner beauty was even more compelling. So why couldn’t Georgina at least try to like her? What was it with women and their competitive, cat-like nature?
Maybe it turned some men on, but the way Georgina was carrying on lately had really gotten his back up. So much so that he’d feigned exhaustion since last weekend, preferring to return to his childhood box room, giving Alice some space at the campsite too. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t given The Love Shack a go. But for him it no longer worked, his libido frozen, locked in a time warp since the move to Aunt Sheba’s. No matter how much Georgina tried to resurrect it, the inescapable fact remained that Alice was in the same ‘house’ now. It changed everything, mainly because it felt inexplicably natural to be living with Alice. And try as he might, he couldn’t keep those visions of bare-footed children – their children – running around a marshmallow-toasting campfire at bay, much less the nagging sensation that he was cheating on her under their very own roof.
And then last night Alice had rung on the doorbell at his mum’s, completely taking him by surprise to return a batch of his old CDs, many of which he’d clean forgotten he’d lent her eight summers ago in Berlin when they’d toured around Europe. It was unbelievable to think she’d prioritised them in her rather limited L.A. to London luggage. But with Heather away at her convention which had now dropped in on the lucky destination of Avebury, he more than welcomed not only the company but the surprisingly successful, and moreish filo pastry stuffed with feta, chickpeas, green olives and bell peppers that Alice rustled them up for supper; giving him the opportunity to knock up a kick-ass Kaffir Lime Sour; cocktail pairing perfection. It opened his eyes to a brand new side of Alice, a dimension that he’d never had chance to get to know. They chatted for hours about their very individual experiences with the band, awestruck at how different their two perspectives had been, despite their physical proximity both onstage and off it. And then he began to understand the real reason she’d fled from Avalonia, something which sparked a rage within that went beyond the level in the hotel reception, taking him to a brand new threshold he didn’t even realise was possible.
“I know it sounds like the very stereotypical claim of a very stereotypical woman,” she said.
“Lennie.”
She remained silent.
“I might have guessed it. Please tell me he hasn’t—”
“Not exactly, no.” She switched from her cocktail to water, as if detoxing herself of every trace of bad memories.
“Look, I believe you already. You don’t need to explain anything to me, or go into details if it’s too lecherous to repeat.” She laid her head on his shoulder and he wrapped her in a warm but big brotherly embrace. They stayed like that a while, comfortable in the stillness of conversation, the beats of Portishead taking the edge off the desire to scratch at the itch until the track faded and River got up to change the CD.
“I wish you’d been there the day we filmed the drinks commercial, you know… in Guadalajara.” She sighed. “That’s when it all started getting a little too out of hand.”
“Go on.” His stomach tightened into one of those unending sailor’s knots. He’d kind of hoped that would be the last of the lowlife’s name pervading the house.
She sat upright, clutching at her glass, baggy cardigan sleeves covering her hands like a pair of mittens. How childlike she looked. How he wished he had been there to protect her.
“I mean it didn’t exactly begin then, he’d been knocking on my door at night for several weeks… and then I guess if I’m really honest about it, ever since day one when Bear and Alex invited us up to Soho to meet him in the recording studio, he’d always had his eye on me… in a slightly unsavoury way. There was this one time when the three of you were late for rehearsals, and he’d propositioned me, you know, kind of like Robert Redford did in that film to Demi Moore… I forget the name of it, but our age gap would have been similar. Anyway, it wasn’t quite a million dollars on the table, but a couple of hundred thousand.” She laughed morosely.
River’s head began to spin and now he wasn’t sure which part of his anatomy felt worse.
“He’d clearly no idea of my roots,” Alice continued, “that I’d come to inherit ten times that amount one day… well, that I always thought I’d come to inherit ten times that amount. I didn’t take him up on his offer, of course. Just ridiculed him, and so did he, but it left me in no doubt that if I’d have given an inch he’d had taken a mile. That should have started the ringing of the alarm bells, shouldn’t it?” She put her fingers to her temple. “If ever there was a time to get out and run back to the countryside and equestrian life, it was then. How could I have been so stupid?”
“I need a cigarette.” River cradled his head. This was all getting way too much.
“I thought you’d given—?”
“Yeah, I had quit, but just for tonight,” he stood, “just for one night,” and grabbed his coat. “I will literally be five minutes, that’s all. The corner shop at the end of the street should still be open.”
Alice curled herself up like a cat, her soft features highlighted by the flickers of the candle on the wooden trunk which served as their dining table. He stole a glimpse of her as he left the room; his hands seemed to stroke the frame of the door in the same way he wanted to caress her body right then. Yes, it was definitely time for fresh air and nicotine before stupidity had its way with him.
***
He lit up his cigarette, parkoured over the bench outside the shop – forgetting his age – and sat there awhile, letting the rush fill his lungs, so bad but so good. A total one off, he promised himself. The streetlights flickered, as if displaying their disapproval, but he puffed on heavily anyway, as if that might somehow help him make sense of his lack of intuition. How could he have been so in tune with Mercedes and the blessed bottle, and yet at the same time, so out of the vibrational range of his friend, the one who needed him to protect her?
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, or what Lennie was making him do to his body after two years smoke-free. Heather would go bananas. Just as well she was away levitating, or meditating around ancient stones and painting mandalas, as bananas as that was anyway. And then he shook his head at the cheek of his ego.
Hypocrite!
Were they ever so very different after all when here he was, infusing drinks with unknown substances: One Chosen One down and two more to go?
***
“There’s more,” Alice started and then paused, deep in thought, when he returned to see her seated, suddenly looking more awake, more radiant than ever. He noticed she’d opened the bottle of red that she’d brought as a sorry-for-hoarding-your-music present, and now she was gesturing to his glass, clearly unsure as to whether she should carry on with her next revelation.
“Fill me up then, why not?” he said. He wouldn’t normally dream of being so uncouth as to mix cocktails with wine, especially considering the headiness of an oaky red after the citrusy punch of their recent tipple, but he knew now wasn’t the time for being uppity. “I thought you implied earlier that he hadn’t touched you physically?”
“No, he didn’t,” she said, passing him his glass which he shunned momentarily to the mahogany chest. “He would have taken his chances one of these days I’m sure, but thankfully I wizened up to it. Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about.” She tore her eyes from him, took a gulp of her drink and then returned her attention to him again. “What I mean is I’ll give you the backstory later, but it’s water under the bridge now anyway, I escaped. This is a totally different subject.”
River sat on the futon, his second cigarette in one hand, shaking slightly, and Heather’s favourite artisanal lavender-stuffed beaded cushion in the other, if only that might shield him from what was to come.
“God, I don’t even know how to break this to you and the chances are it’s complete and utter nonsense but he claims to be,” she took a deep breath and moved next to him, placing an arm around his neck as if that might offer some comfort, “he says he’s your father.”
River felt his body numb then from head to toe, a trickle at first and then an overall state of momentary paralysis. Finally he broke away from Alice, stood very slowly, both hands covering his face at the very suggestion, hair flopping forward, desperately in need of a cut.
“I know, I know,” she said. “How could that possibly be? I’m just telling you because I think you have a right to know the kind of poison that’s inside his head.”
“Shit,” said River finally, flicking the wavy strands out of his eyes. “Shit… that explains everything. How could I have been so blind to it; the constant referral to me as ‘son’? And the other night when he was chatting with Mum through the… and she slammed it down… and then, oh, hell no…”
Lennie, in three very different ways, had tricked them all like the sweet vermouth in a well-made Cheshire Cat. But in actual fact, he was a Gypsy’s Warning. Why, oh why, had it taken River this long to suss him out, and more to the point, why had Heather kept this dark secret hidden from him his entire life?