Bold as Love (2 page)

‘Is it old?’

‘No, it’s new. I had someone make it for you, one of my associates. It’s for your future. You must take it with you, when you set out to seek your fortune.’ She closed the child’s hands over the box, covering them with her own. ‘You are the salt of the earth, that’s what you are. I’ve seen it. And the world will love you as meat loves salt. Now put it away, Frances dear, and don’t let your mother know.’

The child was used to being told, by her gran, that she mustn’t let her mother know. Most of gran’s secrets were pointless: either things Mum knew already (like gin and sherry taken from Mum’s sideboard, like probably—stolen goods accepted in barter for magical services); or things she wouldn’t care about, like spells that didn’t work, or scraps of highly flavoured gossip. The salt box seemed different. She hid it carefully. In time she would come to see it as a double symbol, a threat and a promise. The promise was that she would escape: that winds of change would blow away the chill, hateful tedium of her childhood. The threat was that she would never free herself from an embarrassing set of old fashioned values. She would be in the new age but not of it.

When she was eleven her periods began, and she decided to call herself Fiorinda. This was the year in which her mother was operated on for breast cancer. It was while Mum was in hospital that Fiorinda’s aunt Carly turned up. Fiorinda had a step—father, her mother’s ex—husband. She had two grown—up half—sisters and a half—brother, and there was Gran of course. But she’d never known that her mother had a sister until Carly appeared on the doorstep, with a besotted taxi driver carrying her suitcases. She looked young, incredibly much younger than Mum, and she was dressed in the height of fashion. She moved in and switched on the central heating, although it was only November. She brought with her a regime of hot showers, scented foam, music videos and channel hopping, takeaway food and glossy magazines. Gran stayed in the basement. She didn’t seem to like her younger daughter much. Probably she was thinking of how angry Mum would be when she saw the bills for all this. But Fiorinda, who lived for the moment, was thrilled.

Carly explained that there had been a big family quarrel, years ago, and that was why she hadn’t been in touch. She said she’d last visited this house for Fiorinda’s third birthday party. ‘You don’t remember, but I was here. You were a very bossy, precocious little girl, do you remember that? I gave you a pink wooden horse.’

Fiorinda wished she could remember, or that any sign of the pink horse remained. The cancer was defeated, at least temporarily. Mum came home from hospital. Once she came into the kitchen, (actually warm, under Carly’s regime) and found Fiorinda resplendent in her aunt’s expensive cosmetics. She stared for a moment, and Fio braced herself for the storm, but all Mum said was, ‘I’m going to turn the heating down’. She left the room, without a glance at her sister: head lowered, arms wrapped around her changed and vulnerable body.

Carly was blushing, Fiorinda was surprised to see. ‘She thinks I’m a child stealer.’

‘Is that why she hates you?’

‘No… It’s because of things that happened long, long ago. Why don’t you have lodgers, Fio? She can’t maintain this place on her salary.’

Fio’s Mum was a university lecturer. ‘We did have. But they either didn’t pay the rent; or they were junkies and trashed their rooms; or they had dogs that shitted everywhere; or they had babies that screamed. I don’t think it would work, whoever they were. My mother hates people, any people.’

‘Poor Sue.’

‘What was she like? I mean, years ago?’

‘She was a journalist. She was chic and sexy, she was demanding, she had tons of style—’

‘I can’t imagine it. What kind of journalist?’

‘Mainly music… Rock music. Didn’t you know? What does she teach, now?’

‘Contemporary Culture,’ said Fio, with a grimace: contemporary meant something for old people. ‘What happened? Why did she give it all up?’

‘She didn’t, it gave her up. She fell from grace, it happens. Sue took it hard.’

‘I can imagine that. Oh. I suppose that’s why she hates me to play—’

‘What—?’

Fiorinda was forced to play the piano. In secret she had taught herself to play acoustic guitar and to sing, a little (the secondhand guitar came from Gran, and the basement black market). She wasn’t ready to tell Carly about this. ‘Oh, you know: she hates any kind of music but Beethoven, that sort of thing.’ Until Carly came, Fiorinda’s only access to non—Classical music had been through her ancient radio alarm, on which she had listened to chart shows, secretly, late at night.

Carly started putting the make—up away. The house had become cheerfully untidy under her rule, but she was careful about her own possessions: she left no hostages. ‘You can play Beethoven, wow. What a talented niece I have. But I’d have to introduce you as just a friend if you came to see me, because you look
so grown up
. You’d put ten years on my age.’ She surveyed her handiwork. ‘You’re prettier than Sue. You don’t have ginger eyebrows. She
made
herself beautiful. You won’t have to try.’

Life in the cold house became doubly miserable through that long winter. Mum refused to accept Fiorinda’s new name, which led to pointless friction. Every evening she sat marking papers at one end of the ‘dining table’ that stood in the back of their chill living room, her profile sour in the lamplight. The idea of Fio having a telly of her own that she could use in another room was vetoed, no reason given. She listened to books on tape, at the most muted volume because Mum hated headphone—leak. She never read
printed
books in Mum’s presence, because it would have pleased her. Every time her mother called her ‘Frances’ it was another flick on the raw.

In the night she devoured her mother’s library, relishing the sensual privacy of the old relationship; and wrote songs, both words and music, which she hid inside the split in her mattress.

When Carly invited Fio to visit her, Mum tried to stop that too. Fio heard them arguing on the phone. (There was one, fixed phone in the cold house. It lived in the front hall, at the foot of the stairs, by the living room door, for maximum inconvenience and minimum privacy). ‘She’s a
child,
Caz
.
She’s a
little girl.
Leave her alone—’. But Fio pleaded and Carly persisted and in the end Mum gave way. Fiorinda travelled on the Underground by herself (she had to do this anyway, to get to secondary school) into the centre of London. She ate in a restaurant for the first time in her life, she stayed the night at Carly’s tiny flat in Kensington Church Street. Carly took her shopping, gave her clothes, makeup and a mobile phone. (The phone didn’t work after the first day, because Fiorinda didn’t have any money: but it looked great). True to her word, she introduced Fio to the people in Kensington as ‘the daughter of a friend of mine’.

In the summer Carly invited Fiorinda to stay for a whole week. This brought renewed resistance, but Carly wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘And when you’re tired of this game,’ said Mum, ‘You’ll dump the poor kid and I’ll be left to pick up the pieces. That’s what pisses me off.’ Fio, eavesdropping from the landing, heard the defeat in her mother’s voice and exulted.

Mum would have been furious if she’d known that Carly let Fio smoke dope. But nothing else remotely shocking happened: no stronger drugs, no vice. People came around and chatted, Fio was mostly ignored. She spent much of her time on her visits to the Kensington flat alone, in the cubbyhole Carly called her study, drinking diet coke and playing computer games. She didn’t mind. It was paradise compared to life at home. But this time Carly had been invited to a country house party, and she was taking Fiorinda with her. They were going to stay with Rufus O’Niall, the rock star. Of course this had to be kept secret from Fio’s mother. Rufus O’Niall had been a megastar before Fiorinda was born. He was practically retired. She’d have been more excited if she’d been going to meet Glasswire, or Aoxomoxoa and the Heads.

‘I wasn’t invited,’ she said, uneasily. ‘Won’t that be weird?’

‘Rufus is a billionaire or something, darling. He doesn’t count the spoons. And he’s a very, very private person, but he never goes anywhere without this huge entourage—’ Carly laughed. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be lost in the crowd. But you’ll meet people. You want to be a singer, don’t you?’ Fio had by this time confessed her secret ambition. ‘You’ll need contacts. You can’t start too soon.’

The journey and the arrival passed in a blur. Carly had been right, there was a crowd of people, the kind of people Fio had met in Kensington only more so. She was shown to a room by a servant. The house must be five hundred years old—half timbered, spartan, smelling of beeswax and lavender and dried oranges. The portraits on the walls were not of Rufus O’Niall’s forebears, obviously not, since his skin was chestnut brown, and the pictured faces were as white as Fiorinda’s. But the sense of dynasty was right. Rufus was old money in the world of rock and roll. He and his band The Geese had reached that glorious plateau of truly unassailable fame, and solid wealth. Fiorinda began to feel thrilled. Later, when he took some of his guests on a tour of the manor grounds, she tagged along and tried to get next to the master. What was most incredible was that Carly’s friendship with these celebrities seemed to prove that
Fio’s Mum
had once been on intimate terms with the famous. But she’d been warned not to mention her mother. Whatever Mum had done, apparently it still rankled in the music world.

She was trying to be cool, but feeling very uncomfortable. Used to the modest habits of her North London, mainly Hindu, neighbourhood, she felt terribly exposed in the clothes she was wearing. She was glad Carly had warned her how to dress, but she kept wanting to put her hands over her bum, to fold her arms over the outline of her breasts. And the men were no better. She supposed that if you were rich, walking in your own private grounds was the same as being out at a fancy club.

As they climbed a flight of steps, from the fishponds to a rose terrace, Rufus turned and glanced at Fio: who had managed to reach the centre of the group. He at once resumed his conversation with the fat, florid woman beside him (a movie producer). But a few moments later he turned again, and handed her a sprig of rose leaves. ‘Put that in your pocket, sweet—briar,’ he said, with a tender smile. ‘Keep it for a souvenir.’

She hadn’t known you could have rosebushes with scented leaves. She didn’t have a pocket. She held the sprig in her hand, awkwardly, all the way back to the house. She was deeply flattered and excited. She started trying to think of the names of some of The Geese’s hit singles, so that she’d have something to say if he noticed her again.

In the evening, after dinner, some guests disappeared. The rest sat around with Rufus in the great hall. People had been drinking quite a lot, and sniffing coke, but they were quiet about it. Fio had half expected them to be naked except for jewels and make—up, after the way they dressed in daytime, but they were wearing the same as in the afternoon. Carly was there, but she seemed to have decided to leave Fiorinda to her own devices, which was fine. Fio did not want to be shown off, or looked after like a baby. She had changed into her best scarlet teeshirt and a shiny long pink skirt. The teeshirt was printed over with little naked male figures, labelled jokily things like “French Polish” and “Turkish Delight”, though you couldn’t see much difference between the faces; or the sets of wedding—tackle. She had tried it on in the exclusive shop where Carly bought it for her, baring her tiny budding breasts without shame: they could stand up for themselves. ‘Well,’ the attentive assistant had said, impressed. ‘I thought that colour wouldn’t suit you, dear, but it certainly does.’

Scarlet gave Fiorinda’s creamy skin the pure glow of a candleflame, it made her strongly marked brows and lashes look made—up, which they were not. For some reason, Carly had forbidden her to wear make—up on this visit. There was talk, and silence; someone strummed a guitar. It was oddly like an evening in the cold house, except that the setting was ancient instead of merely old fashioned, and there were more people. Fio felt ignored. She went over to the hearth, where there was a fire of cherry logs because the June night was chill. She gazed into the flames and then sat down, as if by chance, with her back against the couch where he was sitting, the rock—lord in state surrounded by his courtiers. She hoped that she would think of something intelligent to say: somehow contribute to the conversation and get noticed. Instead, Rufus began to stroke her hair. She felt his fingertips on the nape of her neck, and then circling her ear.

She was half stunned at the liberty he was taking. How did he know that he
could do this?
How could he just
stroke
her, as if she was a cat or a dog? But he could do what he liked. For Rufus O’Niall, everything was allowed.

‘Can you do magic?’ he murmured, so that only she could hear. ‘You look as if you could.’

‘My gran’s a witch. Not me. I think it’s a recessive gene. You need two copies.’

Rufus laughed very quietly, like a rumble of soft thunder.

‘What about your parents?’

‘Oh, they’re dead. My gran looks after me.’ Dead parents were simpler.

Someone challenged him to a game of chess, and he left the couch.

Fiorinda’s room was next to Carly’s. When Rufus came to find her in the night she was sitting by the bed, still wearing her scarlet teeshirt and her pink skirt. She hadn’t wanted to take them off. She’d have felt stupid waiting in her pyjamas, especially since she was half convinced that she was imagining the whole thing. But here he was. Rufus said, ‘I thought you’d be tucked up under the covers by now, Sweetbriar.’ He took her in his arms and carried her off to his own room: which was sumptuous, but she didn’t get a chance to take much in.

In the morning she woke in her own bed with no clear idea of how she’d got there. Carly was shaking her gently. ‘I’ve got to go back to London,’ she announced. ‘Right now. I’m sorry sweetheart. Something desperately important’s come up, it means lots of money.’