The summer wedding, p.46
The Summer Wedding, page 46
Nodding, Griff stared at her, suddenly finding the olive incredibly difficult to swallow, furious with himself for his inability to keep his eyes from her body. Eventually he said, ‘You probably wouldn’t understand a word my da says. He has a very strong accent.’
‘Which bit are you from?’ She picked out another chip and sucked the salt from it as she gazed out of the window at a stray dog.
‘A little town in Gwent where everyone knows everyone,’ Griff muttered. ‘It’s very insular. I couldn’t wait to get out. Tadcu – that’s my grandfather – insisted Da and my uncles spoke only Welsh at home when they were growing up. He only allowed a television in the house after S4C started broadcasting, and even then he kept it in a locked cabinet so they couldn’t watch British profanities.’
‘Do you speak Welsh too?’
‘The first time I spoke it was at his funeral twelve years ago. I got my da to translate something I’d written, but I wasn’t allowed to say hunanladdiad. It’s a word nobody uses in our family.’
‘What does it mean?’
Debating whether to tell her, he watched her pretty face, so familiar from the Ptolemy movies. He much preferred her with the prosthetic pointy ears, he decided. They made her seem like she might actually listen to answers instead of tilting her exquisite head and adopting the correct expression.
‘It means “suicide”.’
‘You grandfather killed himself?’
‘My da always says that Thatcher killed him; but she didn’t kick away the chair.’
Her green eyes stretched wide, tears already forming in perfectly framed close-up, and Griff felt as though he’d just shot a kitten after mistaking it for a wildcat. ‘Why did he do it?’
‘He became very depressed when the colliery closed,’ he said flatly. ‘He’d been a miner all his life, the head of a big family, a local “character” – he sang bass in the choir. Not that I ever knew him like that. He was never in work during my lifetime and only left the house to go to church, walk the dog or buy a paper. When I was thirteen, he hanged himself. I found him when I came home from school.’ He looked away, ashamed now for trying to inflict his pain on her.
But she took him totally by surprise, arms as light as wings closing around him, careful not to hurt his shoulder as she pressed the gentlest kiss into his hair. ‘It must have been the most awful thing for you all to go through. You were so young. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like.’
He tried not to breathe in the scent of her skin, so close to him, intoxicatingly warm, the tiny moles on her throat close enough for him to kiss. She was still wearing the dusty vest and tattered old denim shorts from riding, he noticed. It struck him now as far sexier than an armoured bikini.
‘I might not have spoken Welsh, but I knew dianc means “escape”.’ He watched her sit down and tuck her spilling hair in a neat twist beneath one shoulder strap, as he’d seen her do many times when tackling food at Sueño.
‘And you dianc-ed?’ She reached for a pimento.
He laughed at the made-up word. ‘I was already determined to leave, and Tadcu’s death drove me on. Dad wanted me to be a boxer, but I was a bright kid and I knew the best way out was to get good enough grades for a university place.’
‘I had you all wrong.’ Her eyes were apologetic. ‘I thought you were a rugby-playing meathead who went to Cambridge on a military ticket and got his kicks playing out some modern-day Hemingway fantasy.’
‘Sums me up perfectly. You must help me redraft my CV.’
Worried she’d offended him, she went on, ‘Acting out every sci-fi geek’s fantasy on screen is a far less noble profession.’
‘How old were you when you got the part?’
‘Thirteen,’ she mumbled, making the connection with downcast eyes, ‘fourteen when the movie came out. I used to spend mornings fighting the forces of evil with a flaming sword and afternoons writing essays about the rise of Communism in the twentieth century.’
‘Strange childhood.’
‘It was already strange before the Purple thing happened.’ She pulled a free chair across to prop her bad leg on. ‘But it was good strange. I can hardly complain. Thousands of girls dream of having my sort of luck, and Purple was kind of useful to hide behind through adolescence. She has a lot more guts than me. She’d follow poachers into the Congolese jungle armed with nothing but a microphone boom too.’
‘Actually, I was pretty scared that day.’
‘And when you were kidnapped?’
‘Seriously scared.’
‘So why d’you keep doing it?’
‘Because I’m too bloody nosy. I have to find out what’s behind the myths and secrets and guns and bravura, and then I get too angry not to tell people when I do find out. I’m really not this intrepid, chest-beating idiot in safari shorts with a crocodile tooth hanging round his neck the media want me to be. I’d be dead long ago if I were.’
‘What are you then?’
‘An “anthropologist” is the technical term, but I prefer “observer”. The more I’ve been in these situations, the more I see the fear in everyone. We all have it. Harnessing it is the secret. Once you learn to use it, there’s no shame in admitting to its existence, and it might just give you the advantage over others that enables you to survive.’
She smiled. ‘A good actor would say much the same thing. You have to acknowledge it to overcome and disguise it. That’s why you have the chest-beating-idiot act.’
‘I do not do that!’
‘You just don’t realise you do it. My mother’s the same with the Princess Grace of Monaco number, as you’ve probably noticed, or on a bad day Princess Diana on Panorama.’
‘I’ve never met your mother,’ he reminded her.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ She rolled her eyes disbelievingly, stretching forwards to check her phone, causing the chair she was resting her leg on to tilt so he had to grab it with his free hand. ‘She’s flying to LA today, as you also no doubt know. I’m so mad at her. She promised she’d look after my dogs personally, and now she’s leaving them with Nacho, who treats them all with the sensitivity of a hunt kennel-man.’
He tipped the chair upright very carefully so as not to jolt her knee, disappointed that she was behaving like a brat again. ‘Hunt hounds are among the happiest creatures I’ve ever met.’
‘Just goes to show how much you know.’ She typed a message into her phone with lightning-fast fingers, finishing with a flurry of Xs. ‘My mother’s stallion still isn’t sound after the balloon crash. I’ve told Vicente the groom to get the Lightning Man in while Mum’s away. He has magic hands.’
‘Why is she going to LA?’
She kept fiddling with her phone, clearly uncomfortable. ‘Probably an awards ceremony. They always wheel her out when Dad’s up for a bit of silverware – it helps with the PR.’
‘Marriage not good?’
‘Put it this way: I always wanted to marry for love. What’s the Welsh word for it?’
‘Cariad.’
‘How funny. Dougie has a horse called that. She’s a cow, actually – she’d flatten anybody for a Polo – but you can shoot bows and arrows from her back so she earns her keep.’ She angrily blinked away an emerging tear. ‘I miss the stunt horses so much. Harvey’s my favourite, the old hunter – Dougie worships him. He’s so clever he can wash himself off with the hosepipe clenched in his teeth.’
Still holding the chair, he could now see up the frayed shorts to the hollow at the top of her thigh and an enticing flash of pink knickers. He looked quickly away. ‘Dougie’s passionate about fox-hunting, isn’t he?’
She swept her hair away from one shoulder. ‘The Pelham want to give him a mastership – get a bit of Otis Ferry glamour into the pink-coat PR – but he thinks it will tie him down. His father was MFH with the Wolds for years. The Everetts take their hunting very seriously.’
‘And you?’
‘Not my scene.’ She swept her hair the other way, a move guaranteed to bring a heel down sharply on his libido’s kick-start. ‘I prefer dressage.’
‘So, let me get this right,’ he watched her mouth as she ate another olive, oil glistening on her lips, ‘you don’t much like hunting and you don’t want to carry on acting, both of which are Dougie’s great passions – a man who doesn’t want to be tied down. Just what do you two have in common?’
‘Sex.’ She lifted her chin angrily. ‘And we love travel and horses and… What exactly are you looking at?’
He’d been gazing at the flash of pink knickers again. He looked up sharply and winced as his collarbone twinged. ‘Sex, horses and travel. How very Don Quixote.’
‘Not a lot of sex in Cervantes.’ She straightened her shorts. ‘I studied it for Spanish A level. Some think Dulcinea’s a figment of Don Quixote’s imagination.’
‘Romantic love’s a figment of anyone’s imagination.’
‘You are such a cynic!’
‘All those girls who dream of being you; they just want to kiss Con O’Mara and—’
‘Actually Ptolemy and Purple can never kiss because he’d forfeit his immortality.’
‘It’s all daydream, isn’t it? Like you and your handsome cavalier. Now he is a chest-beating idiot – in breeches.’
‘How dare you? I love Dougie!’
‘He’s a total bastard from what I can tell.’
‘That’s just what my mother’s told you.’
He laughed. ‘What do I have to do to convince you that I’m not in cahoots with your mother? I saw that tabloid exclusive. It was carpeting the corridor outside your hospital room. I know how much it must have hurt you. And I know you’re hiding here in Spain to try to get your head round it.’
‘So why are you being so nasty to me about it? Haven’t you done enough damage?’
He was brought up short, asking himself the same question. He already knew the answer, but was far too ashamed to admit it. He was vile about Dougie Everett because he was jealous of him. Iris had worshipped Dougie, who had swept her off her feet in the most old-fashioned, romantic way possible – in a suit of armour with a noble charger beneath him – and who still seemed to own her heart. Griff now longed to step into the breach, not just into her bed but into her clever head and kind heart, but he had made the worst of all starts.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with feeling. ‘I had no right to say those things.’
‘It’s nothing that’s not been said before.’ She chewed her lower lip hard, gazing across at him. ‘The thing is, I could probably forgive him the indiscretion before the wedding. He pointed out himself that he wouldn’t be the first bridegroom to have a final fling, and at least she was a pro. He’s old-fashioned, red-blooded, blue-blooded and bloody-minded. That’s what I love about him, whatever anybody else thinks. But something happened in LA just before the wedding that he won’t talk to me about. I only know it was really bad.’
‘Is that why your mother’s flying there?’
‘Maybe.’ The idea was clearly new to her.
He watched that angelic face, now caught in a shaft of sunlight that fell at an acute angle through the window, turning her green eyes cat-like as the pupils contracted.
‘The Buniko people of Papua New Guinea revere the acuchea tree,’ he told her, leaning forward so their faces were close together. ‘God only knows why, because it’s no more than a poisonous little shrub, but the fact it’s deciduous makes it very rare over there. They have a saying: “The truth rises like acuchea sap.” You see, if that tree is cut down when it’s dormant, it can be carved into sacred objects or burned in ceremonies without poisonous fumes, but if the sap has risen, it will kill the tribe.
‘Just like romantic love, tribal myths rely a huge amount upon make-believe – a shared fantasy can make a whole community revere a poisonous little tree. The wisest of the Buniko have probably suspected for years it’s a useless piece of vegetation that holds them to ransom, but they’re far too frightened to admit it. Now, I think Dougie’s a useless piece of vegetation too, and I think part of you knows that, but you don’t want to lose your religion just yet. You don’t want to know the truth either, because that truth is rising sap, and you won’t be able to cut down the tree once it’s flowing.’
‘I think I’ll wait for the sap to rise, thanks all the same.’ The vivid green eyes regarded him through the sunlight, unblinking, suddenly so Purple-fierce she could have been wearing an armoured bikini. Griff felt an involuntary and inappropriate spark of lust strike against a petrol splash of anger.
Good intentions abandoned, his red-dragon temper let loose its flames. ‘Face it, Iris, if Dougie Everett really cared about you, he’d be over here right now trying to win you back. Instead he’s out in LA, furthering his career and covering up whatever sexual transgression he committed out there last time. When are you going to wake up?’
Her foot landed back on the floor with a clunk as she stood up and reached for her crutches. ‘I am wide awake, more’s the pity. If I was asleep there’d be an outside chance you’re just a nightmare!’
‘Almost marrying that idiot was your nightmare, not this. You just have to wake up and see what you’ve been wasting your heartache on.’
‘I want to go back to Sueño,’ she said in a small voice, making him feel as though he’d just resuscitated the kitten only to put the gun to its head again. Just as shamefully, the wave of compassion hitting him failed to quash the continuing desire, and he had to battle not to lunge across the table, scattering the last of the olives, to kiss her and apologise. Only his sling and his shame stopped him.
Walking wounded, they headed back to the car in silence, Iris’s crutches clanking angrily against the paving.
‘I’ll drive,’ he insisted when they arrived at the hired Seat, now scorching in direct sunlight.
‘You can’t steer properly with that sling on.’ She opened the driver’s door and posted her crutches through to the rear seat before she clambered in, gasping as her bare skin encountered hot seats.
‘You can’t steer properly without one,’ he muttered, crossing himself and climbing in too, reluctant to fight an injured woman for control of the wheel, particularly one he now wanted to kiss. Physical contact was certainly not a good idea.
As soon as the engine started the radio burst into life with Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’. Griff closed his eyes and decided to pretend to be asleep, a technique that had always proved incredibly effective in dangerous territory.
When Iris’s phone rang, he kept his eyes tightly closed and braced hard, sensing death might be imminent as she yelled into it, ‘I’m driving, Mum, I’ll call you back… I know I haven’t passed yet. It’s cool. I have an experienced licence holder in the car instructing me.’
Griff was forced to hide a smile.
He wasn’t smiling two minutes later when she parked in a lay-by and stepped outside to return the call, standing close enough for him to pick up most of what she was saying, her voice climbing scales: ‘It’s not fair to make you do this. He’s not thinking straight… No, that wasn’t sarcasm, Mum. This is all Abe’s idea, I guarantee – he just wants to preserve his ten per cent in prime-time network TV… Of course I won’t say anything, not even to Chlo… Yes, I promise. If anybody asks me whether you’re terminally ill, I say, “No comment,” but it’ll stick in my throat.’
Hastily feigning sleep again as she got back in, Griff let a small moral war rage in his head as the car got under way again, but he knew he had to say something: ‘Iris, I apologise, but I couldn’t help overhearing what you just said to your mother.’
She carried on bobbing her head, eyes fixed on the road, a white spaghetti thread trailing from each ear, and Griff realised she’d put on her iPod so as not to disturb him with the radio. He also noticed that they were driving on the wrong side of the road again.
