Читать книгу Love Tastes Like Strawberries - Rosamund Haden - Страница 16

Stella stares at the painting on the therapist’s wall. A road winds along a mountainside above an azure sea. The slopes of the mountain are covered in olive trees. Small white boats bob on the shimmering water at the foot of cliffs.

Stella is lost in the painting. She can smell the herbs in the bushes – wild thyme and something sweeter. She is running down a steep path to a cove below. On holiday in Greece. Thirteen. Awkward, in between everything. Filled with lonely longing and stricken with intense embarrassment. She is disapproving and envious of her mother’s childish abandon as she runs down the path in front of Stella, her breasts and bottom bouncing in her pink bikini, her tie-dyed beach bag swinging from her arm. Stella is envious of her golden tan because her own skin is blotchy, white and lobster red where she has burned.

“You can’t catch me. I am a mountain goat.” Her mom laughs.

Stella is convinced her mother says these awful things on purpose. She prays there is no one else on the beach. But of course there are people dotted everywhere. There is the normal English family – the mother in a one-piece, the girl reading a book. They are staying in the next door kaliva. There are two tanned young men playing frisbee.

Stella’s mother reaches the beach, throws down her bag that contains her sketchbook and pencils and shouts back to Stella. “I’m going in!” Then she does something even more unspeakable. She pulls the string of her bikini top and her breasts are released. Stella stares at her feet.

Walking quickly across the sand, Stella clambers over boulders to the next cove. And then stops.

A couple are kissing in the sea right in front of her. They don’t notice her they are so engrossed; their tongues weave together. Later, when they are gone, Stella will stick her tongue out in the salty water and imagine what it feels like to be kissed.

But now she is interrupted by her mother calling her from one of the rocks between the coves. She turns and shields her eyes against the light. Her mom waves. She waves back. Thank God, she has put her bikini top back on. Her sketchbook is on her lap. She is trying to capture the scene of the small bay and the sparkling water and the olive trees on the hill above.

Stella climbs up to her.

“What do you think?”

“It’s good,” Stella says and she means it. Her mom smiles, delighted. She squeezes Stella’s hand and Stella squeezes it back. Perhaps they can go and drink a cooldrink in the taverna on the far side of the beach. Stella is thirsty. But her mom wants to sketch and tan some more.

“You don’t mind, darling? Why don’t you go and swim?”

Stella climbs back down on to the sand. The couple has gone. She wades back into the water in her school swimming costume. She dives under. Her hair floats out around her. When she breaks the surface of the water she hears someone laughing.

“You look like a mermaid.” It’s one of the frisbee players. His frisbee had come spinning over into the next cove. He has the body of a swimmer. She can’t help staring. She has never seen such a perfect body. His dark hair is wet from the sea. She is surprised that he speaks English, that he looks so at ease, so unforeign in this place. But she recognises his accent. He is from Cape Town, he tells her. On holiday. He’s an art student, travelling with a friend.

She watches as he sculpts a mermaid out of sand.

“It’s really good.” She puts two pebbles on the sand face for eyes.

“Not as pretty as you.” He makes her flush bright red. The sand is hot. The student sees that she is burning. “Here, I’ll bury you,” he says. “It will cool you down.” She watches as he scoops out sand to make a hollow. “Now lie down.”

He pushes the sand against her legs and arms. His fingers touch her skin. “Don’t move.” He laughs. The sand tickles and she squirms. “Are you staying here much longer?” he asks her.

“Ten days.”

“You should come and visit. My friend is leaving in a few days. I’ll need someone fun around.”

She is infatuated.

“Stella.” She looks up. Her mom waves. Stella’s heart plummets as she sees the student wave back.

“Your sister?”

“My mother,” Stella says quietly.

“What are you drawing?” he shouts up to her mom.

“Why don’t you come and see for yourself?” she calls back flirtatiously.

“I will,” he says and leaps up. And he is gone. Away from Stella, up the rocks. She watches as he admires her mother’s sketches. In that moment she doesn’t exist.

There he is, gaining a firm foothold in her memory, filling up the space. Laughing at her mother’s jokes, pouring wine, cooking. He was twenty-one and her mother thirty-five. She tried not to stare at him as he sat staring at her mom, but she couldn’t help it. He was so handsome. But it was her mother who went down the hill at night to visit him, not Stella. His friend had gone on to the next island. Stella tried to engross herself in playing card games with the English girl, Polly.

“He looks like a charming devil – you know, if the devil could be good in any way,” Polly said as she dealt a hand of cards. “Isn’t he a bit young for your mother. I mean . . .”

Of course he was too young. And her mother had acted like an idiot, all giggly and weird around him. Stella hated them and missed her mom. This was meant to be their holiday. The holiday her mother had saved and saved for. A holiday of a lifetime. If anyone was going to have a holiday romance it should have been Stella.

“Mom, what was the name of the village we stayed in?” She would phone her to check . . . No hellos or how are yous? – just straight to the point, like they were in the middle of the conversation already. This is how they spoke on the telephone. Her mom would phone her any time, day or night. “Stella, do you mind if I throw away your old Scrabble set, the mice have got at it?” or “Stella, where is that tortoiseshell hairbrush of mine?”

Now Stella feels sick in her stomach. Her mom will never answer the telephone, ever again. She still had her mom’s phone number on speed dial; she hasn’t been able to delete it yet.

“Do you remember the holiday in Greece?” Of course she would. She had not been able to forget it.

“You look distressed.” The therapist’s voice is soft with concern and Stella has to force herself not to leap from the couch and run out into the fresh air and light of the garden.

“Why don’t you tell me why you came here?” It’s her working voice. Her hair is tied back in a tight blonde French knot. She looks like she will peck the information out of Stella if necessary.

Stella reads the note upside down, on the therapist’s notepad. It is from her GP. It says anticipatory anxiety.

Definition: To be scared of something that hasn’t happened yet, and might never happen.

“My mother took me to a place like that when I was a teenager.” Stella points at the painting. “She painted. I sat for hours waiting for her to finish.”

“You think your mother was selfish?”

“Not selfish. She was an artist, that’s what she did. I was trying to remember about that holiday. She’s in India now,” Stella adds quickly. Suddenly the last thing she wants to talk about is her mother’s death. She can’t. She won’t.

The therapist looks confused for a second. She checks her notes.

“She’s uncontactable. She’s on an ashram in India.” If Stella says it firmly enough perhaps she can leave now. It can all be a mistake, coming here.

There is a terrible awkward silence. A battle of wills begins, one the therapist knows she will win because Stella will be forced to talk.

“I’m going to her house in Ashville this weekend to pack up her studio. I haven’t been able to before. It’s been six months since she left. She wants to rent the house out.”

“Does it feel overwhelming for you, the packing up?”

Stella stares at her.

“She’s on an ashram in India,” she repeats.

The therapist shifts her pad around on her knee. “It says here, in your doctor’s file, that your mother is dead. Is that why you agreed to come?” she asks Stella. “She was killed in a car crash six months ago. Is this the first time you are going back to the house, Stella, after she died?”

She nods.

When Stella gets up to go, she is humiliated and angry. But she finds herself agreeing to another session at the same time the following week.

She leans against the therapist’s white picket fence and tries to breathe deeply. Her head feels dizzy. Then she walks, in a daze, to the bottom of the road and turns left and then right. The street sign says Kingston Road.

That’s when she hears the music and walks towards it. It is coming from No 54. A house behind a high wooden slatted fence.

54: 5 + 4 = 9 and 9 is her number.

She moves closer so that she can see between the slats of wood. It’s a free-standing Victorian with a front room with a bay window. The curtains are open and she can make out what looks like an easel in the centre of the front room. Yes, it’s definitely an easel.

Now she can hear the lyrics of the song clearly. The singer’s voice streams out of the windows into the sunshine. It is deep and full of longing.

Love is fast like pinwheels flying

Love is soft like tears a-crying

Wine and spices interlaced

Love’s got a fresh strawberry taste

She thinks she might faint as she leans against the fence for support. The palms of her hands are clammy with sweat.

She recognises the words of the song and the melody. It is the song her mom played when she was feeling nostalgic, usually in the late afternoon after a glass or three of wine, when melancholy set in, which was often. It was the song they listened to in the hot summer evenings lying in the hammocks on the stoep in Ashville.

But this is a different version. The same song, but a different singer. Not the summer light flirtation of Miriam Makeba and the soaring sax of Hugh Masekela.

This is a darker, heavier, sadder, more seductive version.

And when the peddler cries strawberries . . . then my heart replies strawberries – strawberries. Love tastes like strawberries . . .

“Are you waiting for someone?” Stella spins around. There is a girl, a student, standing far too close to her. She must have come up behind Stella very quickly and quietly and she makes Stella jump. The student has very short dark hair – recently shaved – and is wearing a dress that looks like it is on back to front, a vintage Fifties summer frock with a rosebud pattern. She is very pretty. Her hem is coming undone.

“No, I . . .”

“It’s okay, I’m waiting too.” The girl looks at a huge watch shaped like an apple on her wrist. “My boyfriend – my lover,” she corrects herself, “is in there. They are painting him.” She raises her eyebrows and whispers, “I’m Jude. Are you waiting for a life drawing class? Are you a model?”

“No, I was just passing. The house – it’s beautiful.”

“Yes. Pity I’m not allowed in. Not when they’re painting him.”

“I have to go,” Stella says.

“Stay, please stay. I want someone to talk to.”

“I’ll be late for work,” says Stella.

“Please,” says Jude.

Stella stays.

They stand on the pavement for ten minutes and in that time Stella learns that Jude is studying politics and philosophy at the university, had met Luke at an art exhibition, had “fucked” Luke two hours later, liked sushi and wanted to join the art class but Luke wouldn’t let her.

“Luke’s not good looking. In fact, he could be quite ordinary. And of course he’s depressed, but there’s something about him that’s so magnetic, so addictive. He should have a warning attached to him.”

“Like toxic waste,” says Stella and Jude laughs and Stella is pleased.

The door opens and a tall lean student runs out, opens the gate, and takes Jude in his arms. He kisses her neck and then he sees Stella.

“Did you talk?” asks Jude, forgetting all about Stella.

“Why are you such a voyeur, Jude?” Luke is talking to her but assessing Stella over her shoulder. Stella blushes.

“So, did he paint the whole of you?”

“No, Jude, he painted my penis. He’s a sad fucker.” They laugh. “Of course he painted the whole of me.”

“Did you talk?” Jude says again. She is looking really intense now. Stella feels she should walk away, but she can’t.

“Of course we talked. What was I supposed to do? Just lie there looking at the fucking ceiling?”

“What did you talk about?”

“Who’s your new friend?” he asks, looking at Stella again. It makes her uneasy. She can see what Jude was talking about when she described her lover.

“Oh, this is Stella,” says Jude nonchalantly. “She’s joining the life drawing class.” Stella opens her mouth to object. “She’s thirty . . . something . . .” says Jude.

“Wow,” says Luke, impressed. “Hello, Stella,” he says softly, staring at her with fresh interest.

“What did you talk about? Tell me, Luke.” Jude’s voice is suddenly urgent.

“About you.”

“Really?”

“What do you think?”

“When are you going again?” Jude chews on her fingernail.

“This afternoon.”

“What?”

“I am the only model and there’re two classes. There’s an advert up for another model – a woman.”

“I can model.”

“Not you, Jude.”

“Why not? If you can do it . . .”

“It’s my thing, Jude. Besides you’re the wrong colour. He’s looking for a black woman.”

Then they had a fight there on the pavement. Luke had promised to take Jude to the gay and lesbian film festival but he had no money. He needed to model to get money. “Remember that’s what this is all about. Making money so we can do stuff. You’re always telling me you want to ‘experience everything’,” he says sarcastically. “Well, how are we going to do that if . . .”

Then he turned to Stella. “I’ve got to take her home now. Nice meeting you, Stella. Doesn’t that mean star? The only thing that will work with Jude now is a good fuck – so if you’ll excuse us.”

Stella arrives back at her desk in the open plan office of Verve magazine, where she recently started work as a features writer. Her head is spinning. She cannot concentrate on her article, or anything in the office for that matter. Her mind is still in Kingston Road with Luke and Jude. Suddenly she feels alive again. Panicky – but alive.

“You will come to the art class. Promise. Bring a friend.” Jude’s parting words.

“I will,” promised Stella.

Luke unzips Jude’s dress and it falls to the floor. For the second time that day he has an erection so hard it is uncomfortable and comes within seconds.

“Do you have to go this afternoon?” Jude asks him.

“You ungrateful little witch,” he teases her, rolling her over and kissing her for a long time. He is good at kissing, and he knows it.

Jude leans across his thigh to reach her cigarettes and Luke winces. She looks down at where the skin is raised in a lump. “What is it?” she asks, pushing her finger against the lump again.

“Fuck,” says Luke, “don’t do that.”

“Did you fall?”

“No. It’s something . . . growing,” says Luke.

“You’re paranoid, Luke, it’s the weed.”

“I’m going to have it seen to,” he says, ignoring her. Then he jumps up. “Shit, I forgot my essay. I have to hand it in.”

“Don’t leave me,” says Jude.

“God, you’re needy.”

He reaches over Jude, takes a pen from the beer crate that is her table and writes something in the middle of her back.

“What is it? What does it say? I haven’t got a mirror. What does it say, Luke?” But he is already halfway out the door, pulling on his jeans. He blows her a kiss and then is gone.

Around the corner Luke stops and feels the lump on his leg. Is he paranoid? What if he is dying? The truth is, he’s too scared to go to the doctor. Shit . . . He fishes in his pocket, brings out the coke he had scored earlier, snorts it and is flying.