Chapter 23
‘What is this rubbish?’ Tom stuck his head around the doorway of the kitchen into the living room.
‘Oh, darling,’ said Celia, sprawled on her front, hands on her chin, watching the small television (a rare and surprising purchase by Jenny, as Henry wouldn’t have one in the house in London) in rapt attention.
‘They’re sending up the new Doctor in Distress film – you know, Dirk Bogarde.
Isn’t he dreamy?’ Her pale, heart-shaped face was flushed. ‘Isn’t he?’
‘I haven’t the faintest,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t like Dirk Bogarde. I like you.’ He bent down and dropped a kiss on her head; she rolled over and pulled him down.
‘Stop being boring,’ she said, kissing him, wrapping her arms around his neck. ‘Come here for a bit.’
‘I can’t,’ said Tom, in a panic, for he had planned out everything, and the part he had control over was that he was going to cook her an amazing meal first. ‘The potatoes are boiling.’
‘Boiling potatoes.’ Celia gave a yelp of amusement. ‘Oh, gosh.’ She turned back on to her front, gently pushing him away, and he stood up, trying to hide his discomfort. ‘Go back to your potatoes, awful boy. How dreadful if they boiled too long.’
It reminded Tom of that evening with Antoine and Guy a couple of years ago, and he smiled, blinking in disbelief that this was here and now …
this was Guy’s sister, his best friend’s sister, and no one had any idea she was here.
He swallowed, nerves getting the better of him.
‘Just wait. You’ll be dreadfully sorry. I’m making a meal of utter subliminini …
’ Tom petered out, but she was watching TV again.
He turned back to the kitchen, glad she wasn’t paying attention.
Celia Mannering was a year older than Guy.
She was about to start at Edinburgh University, but she had agreed to come to Sevenstones for one night.
Tom and Jenny had arranged as usual that they would go that summer but that she would leave him there for two days, as she had to go back to London to help the Reverend Bryant at her Spiritualist Church with a laying-on of hands.
‘He needs me,’ she’d told Tom, delighted, and Tom did not say anything, for he was glad she was happy, but also glad he’d be alone for a while.
Celia and Guy’s family holidayed in Cornwall, on the Roseland, every summer.
Tom had joined them the previous year at their white Arts and Crafts house overlooking St Mawes, the harbour and the peninsula towards the Helford River.
Tom had not enjoyed himself much, since Guy was withdrawn and strange, as he often was with his parents, unable to play his beloved trumpet, and Celia was with her current boyfriend, a family friend named Toby whom Tom considered to be an idiot, but he had enjoyed Celia, especially the sight of her diving off a boat in her two-piece bathing suit.
He thought about her all the time, but really he had done since they’d first met.
Tom was seventeen now. He felt as though his life were divided into three separate parts.
Life at home with Jenny and Henry which remained the same, year in, year out.
Then there was his time at school, and after school, with Guy and Antoine.
And there was being with Gordon in London, which was what he actually thought of as London now Gordon, as with everything else, was extremely particular about good places to go versus those not worthy of his attention.
They sat in the Warwick Avenue Station staff room having cups of tea, or went to Totobags, a café off Ladbroke Grove, or they wandered through the city, taking in the sights and sounds of Oxford Street, Soho and the fabric stalls of Berwick Street – Gordon’s father had been a tailor – and the royal parks. He loved the parks, Gordon did.
Celia fitted into none of these parts. She was posh, like Guy, terrifyingly clever – Roedean – and deliciously liberated, more so than any other girl he knew, not that he knew many girls, but often they seemed awfully silly, giggly or tongue-tied; or, on television, utterly unrealistic.
She was older, and had travelled around America on a Greyhound bus the summer before university with three friends, and thus could report first-hand on segregation and seeing Dr King, in person, in Albany, Georgia.
They had watched Bob Dylan play in Greenwich Village, tried marijuana, swum in the Pacific Ocean.
She’d had an Italian boyfriend, studied in Florence for a bit, was going to study law, then after that go to live in Rome.
Tom had never dared to hope it might come to anything, his hopeless passion for Celia, but, when he had telephoned Guy on holiday the following year, something astonishing happened.
Celia had answered, Guy being out, and they had talked. She was having a miserable time with her parents, she said, and Tom jokingly said she should come here for a night. Before Tom knew what was happening, they had fixed up for her to visit, to relieve Tom of his virginity.
‘Are you sure you want to come?’ he’d said into the phone.
‘Gosh, yes. Didn’t I say years ago I didn’t want anyone else to break you in? Unless someone’s got there first, darling, and I will be cross.’ She gurgled down the line, a full-throated, caramel chuckle.
‘Oh –’ Tom said, glad no one was there to see his face turn red. ‘Oh. Right, then. I say – thanks.’
‘Don’t tell Guy, will you, darling? Terrific. Swell. See you tomorrow.’
As he put the phone down and the hand holding the receiver started to shake, as if unable to contain the import of what he had just agreed, Tom leaned against the wall in the warm, dark hallway of Sevenstones.
Had he read this right? Was she really coming?
And – for that? Tom, indeed, was not entirely sure that was the deal, but she had definitely said she was coming.
He looked down at the piece of paper with the train times in his hand. He hadn’t dreamed it.
‘You’re awfully quiet,’ Celia said over the pork chop and potatoes a little later, in the warm, sunny kitchen.
Tom took a gulp of the gin he’d found in an old sideboard. It tasted as though it had been there since the war. He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose I wonder if you’re here for the same reason I want you to be here.’
‘To play Mah Jong?’ Celia said, turning her dark eyes on him. ‘Hope so. Shall we get right down to it after supper?’ Tom swallowed. She smiled at him and pushed the pork chop away. ‘This is awfully dry.’ She licked her lips.
‘Sorry,’ said Tom. He tried not to stare at her lips, wet where she had licked them. Why were her lips so red? Why were they like that, plump and mobile at the same time, like – like –
‘I like you, Tom. You’re not like other boys.’
‘How so?’
‘Not sure. You’re interesting.’
She speared another small potato with her fork and ate it, and, as he watched her mouth open and close, he blinked, half flattered, half hypnotized, then remembered his role, that of a grateful but world-weary friend.
‘You’re kind, and clever, and you haven’t made your mind up yet.
So many people our age aren’t enlightened, Tom.
They think they are but it’s a kind of cheap version of it.
Something they bought on a market stall in Camden.
Not you.’ She swallowed, put her arms on the table and met his gaze steadily.
‘And, of course, you’re absolutely divine to look at, but you know that. ’
‘Well, of course,’ Tom said, struggling to maintain his composure.
He could not reveal that he had endless dreams about her in the apricot two-piece bathing suit, about rescuing her from the sea, about carrying her to safety, about what her lush, soft naked body would feel like, pressed against his naked body …
‘But the trouble is you’re like all boys: it’s the struggle within that counts, and it’s remarkably uninteresting for the girl.
Rather like sex.’ She ate another potato, eyes sparkling.
‘I don’t want to be tediously attentive to practicalities, but just so we’re clear … This is your first time, isn’t it?’
Tom was so relieved to have it confirmed this was the object of her visit that he nodded too enthusiastically and swallowed a large chunk of potato, nearly choking. It bruised his gullet and he rubbed his throat.
‘Good lord,’ said Celia, watching him. She passed him a glass of water.
‘It’s awfully kind of you,’ Tom said incoherently.
‘What? This trip? Don’t worry. It’s entirely selfish. One of Daddy’s school friends is staying and his son, Edmund, is an absolute creep. So I lied and said an old school friend was staying near Stonehenge. It’s true, anyway. You are an old school friend, of Guy –’
‘But Guy doesn’t know about it, does he?’
‘No, do calm down.’ Celia stood up and walked over to him. ‘When I said it was selfish of me I meant it. I like you. Come on, darling. I’m absolutely not hungry any more.’