TV.
Exercise madly to exhaustion.
Indulge in auto eroticism.
Buy clothes and boots.
Bake.
The fact was, though, she was sitting in the right-hand side of a 747, at the moment in the window seat, and, although there was a large expanse of ocean beneath her, she was not in a position to allow its depths to enfold her in a final, chill embrace. She was surrounded by people, particularly her father, and not all of her strategies for avoiding her feelings were available. She had read as many books as she cared to and the inflight movies were the sort of thing which, really, provided no competition to the alternative of cutting your own throat. If she could just sleep away the trip, perhaps arriving in Sydney would then be distraction enough.
She did surreptitiously cross her legs, trying to get an orgasm going, very very quietly, but it was more to see if she could do it than a response to an urge. Eliza had been most impressed by a woman seen recently on a TV documentary who could induce an orgasm just by contracting her vaginal muscles. At any rate, Eliza’s faint, rhythmic movement must have attracted Richard’s attention, and he brought his book down sharply on her leg.
“God, you must be bored! Do that again and I swear I will take you to the vet.” He opened the book again with a snap and a flourish, and continued reading. Eliza subsided in a sulk; although not believing Richard for a minute, she wondered if that was the answer. Perhaps she could get herself desexed, because as sure as hell her libido was causing her nothing but anguish.
If she had no libido, she would not have these continual images of kissing Billy, touching Billy, and she wouldn’t be feeling a sinking, dragging sensation like all the goodness was draining out of her, leaving her like a shrivelled piece of beef jerky. Had Richard decided to go back to Australia to keep her out of mischief? Surely not! Mischief was readily available in Australia, she was certain. For the first time, she felt she was leaving important things behind in London. Even her mother and sister – whom she saw only occasionally, and who often annoyed the bejesus out of her – represented a stable base of connectedness.
The thought of leaving her cat was, for some reason, almost as bad as leaving Billy. Richard referred to Mehitabel as her familiar, but Eliza knew she was her own furry soulmate, who had been with her since she was three, and now, in her twilight years, she was being left behind. She must be thinking that nobody wanted her, which was a horrible thing to happen. Actually Mehitabel, with feline ESP, had taken herself off to the Sylvesters’ house about six weeks previously, and had slept on Billy’s bed since then, occasionally visiting Eliza if she wanted some extra food or cuddles. Had Mehitabel sensed that Eliza was going away and wanted to avoid Auntie Danni’s place? Did she regard Billy as part of her Pride and therefore an obvious alternative source of food, affection and shelter? Cats’ minds are difficult to read, even for an Omniscient Narrator, but think about the last time you tried to get away with packing to go on holidays, prior to scooping up the cat and taking it to the boarding kennels. Did not said cat, despite your attempts to pretend it was an ordinary sort of day with nothing going on, glare suspiciously at you and hide in next door’s potting shed?
Eliza gave a sniff accompanied by a tiny, tiny whimper, so eloquent in its wretchedness that Richard abandoned his book and put his arm around her. She leaned into his shoulder and sniffed a little more, with some satisfaction at being cuddled. Eventually she went to sleep and was gently resettled into the corner of her seat, with a pillow behind her. The sense of absolute dejection would have wrung the withers of a more callous man than Richard. But she’s young, she’ll get over it, he told himself, though doubtfully.
Richard remembered the angst of being young and in love. He had a sudden masochistic urge to be beaten to a pulp by love again. It’s a sweet kind of pain, he thought, when you get a bit of perspective, but from the inside, my god, the depths, the heights, the sheer unmitigated mindless passion.
* * *
Richard could remember being really in love only three times in his life. The first love was the sort of grand passion in which young men of artistic temperament are particularly adept at losing themselves.
In the mid-1970s, Richard had lived in a huge Victorian house in Hampstead with his family, the whole shebang: his parents, himself, his sister, and both sets of grandparents. They were obscenely well-off, although he’d been discouraged from enquiring too closely into the origins of this wealth.
His grandfather had entertained many well-dressed visitors in those days. They patronised the arts with great gusto, his early stage performances being attended by the sort of people who would take you outside and give you a talking to if you didn’t applaud their favourite actor with sufficient enthusiasm. Ah well, it’s a cut-throat business!
He was nineteen, and reading English at Oxford. Naturally, coming from a family whose money was thought to derive from having, in the past, been somewhat Vigorously in Business in the East End, his background was discreetly held against him in certain quarters. Having been warned by his father of what to expect, Richard was able to use this experience to build extra layers upon an already thick hide. Money did not really compensate for his inherited chequered background, however it served to augment his natural advantages – outstanding intellect, sporting ability, good looks and charming arrogance – ensuring that he found his niche, even at Oxford in the seventies.
He was learning and practising his craft however he could, and made as many trips to Stratford-Upon-Avon as he could manage. However, in this case it was not for the theatre itself but because he had an insane crush on a Shakespearean actress who was thirty and married to a doctor, or was it a lawyer? He couldn’t remember. He only knew she was brilliant, beautiful, Junoesque. She was a goddess.
* * *
It was October 1975 and Miranda, a.k.a. Maureen Erskine, was sitting at her mirror in a tiny dressing room in a tiny theatre, preparing to remove the makeup which she had applied with a trowel earlier in the evening. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” she said tersely, as someone knocked on the door. She had already warded off a cluster of admirers and was not in the mood to be admired any more tonight. “Please God,” she said to herself, though not a devout woman, “let it be an Adonis, with wit and intelligence. Let him have black hair and blue eyes. Let him be over six feet tall and under thirty years old.” And she invited the knock to come in, so it did. The knock was the embodiment of her prayers, and held a single rose, apricot-coloured in homage to her titian hair.
He looked at her for a long moment. The smile hovering on his lips was pretending out of politeness to be uncertain.
“Hello,” she said, in a way that suggested she was not displeased to see him.
He did not speak, but held out the rose, thoughtfully de-thorned and tastefully bound with a ribbon, and he smiled, properly this time. I feel it is entirely possible that a group of concerned parents had, at some stage, considered taking out a court injunction prohibiting him from smiling within fifty yards of their daughters. Maureen, certainly, was not immune to that smile, and found herself wondering if it was time she had a toy boy, only the phrase wouldn’t be coined for another decade or so.
“Let me find you a chair,” she said, and went to rise, but he shook his head and very gently kept her in her seat, his hand on her bare shoulder and his long fingers, without any perceptible movement on her skin, seeming to caress her.
Richard:
No, precious creature;
I had rather crack my sinews, break my
