One Way or Another: A Novel (18 page)

Martha had tackled her about “it” some time ago.

“I think we should have a talk, Lucy,” she’d said with a meaningful look in her eyes so Lucy knew immediately what she was up to.

“Ohh,” she’d dismissed her loftily. “If you’re talking about sex, I know all about that.”

She’d never forget Martha’s stunned look; her round pale blue eyes had grown even rounder with shock, making Lucy laugh.

“Well, not firsthand experience,” she’d added, for which Martha said thank God and began to breathe again. Lucy was only fifteen at the time, and completely inexperienced. The fact was you didn’t get much of a shot at boys when you went to an all-girl boarding school, as Lucy had for what seemed forever. And all those years, all she had wanted was to get out; she’d felt she was wasting her time, missing out on life. And then, when she graduated and was free at seventeen, she’d immediately wanted back in the safety of knowing where she belonged, somebody to tell her what she was doing every day, where to go, her friends, her support system. Now, the school friends were scattered far and wide, taking a year out in Australia; crewing a yacht in the Bahamas; helping with starving children in Africa; or like Lucy, attempting to be actresses.

The annoying thing about Ahmet was he’d mentioned a movie script that might just be perfect for her, but since then she had heard nothing. Not a word about it after that night at the Italian restaurant; not about the possible movie; not about another date; not even until now about helping Martha do over his house, which was, ridiculously in Lucy’s eyes, called Marshmallows. I mean, didn’t you have to be some kind of jerk to name your house
that,
simply because it was built on marshland, which anyhow seemed like a dumb place to her. Creepy, in fact.

Her phone gave its little tune and she sat up against her in-need-of-a-wash pillows and checked it. Martha. Hah!

“I was just thinking about you,” she said.

“And I you, which is why I called. And which, I have to say, Lucy, is more than you have done recently.”

“Sorry.” Lucy heaved a sigh that ricocheted off the dank bedroom walls. How she hated this flat. She must get her act together, find somewhere better.

“I need to live somewhere more suitable,” she said to Martha.

“If you mean more suited to your circumstances then I think you’re in the right place.”

Martha could be tart when she wanted.

Lucy sighed again.

“What the fuck—”

“Lucy!”

“Aw, I mean, what the hell, oh
buggie-wuggie
!”

Lucy really, normally, was not into cursing. She respected the English language and knew perfectly well how to use it. Even the bad words.

“Lucy, what are we going to do with you?” Martha was picturing her, accurately, amid her scruffy chaos. “At least open the window, get some air into that filthy den of yours.”

“It is not filthy, merely in need of a cleaning lady, which since you know I am not working and have no money, I cannot afford.”

“And I suppose it’s beneath your elevated status in the world as an out-of-work actress to pick up a vacuum and a mop, give the place a good going over.”

“I don’t have a vacuum, something else I can’t afford, and truth is, Marthie, I don’t really give a shit about ‘clean.’ I’d really rather eat.”

Martha was silent, thinking about that. “It is possible to do both, as you will find now you are coming to work for me.”

“Oh, yeah? And when is that event to take place?” It seemed to Lucy at least a month must have gone by since she’d heard about Ahmet’s house makeover, though in fact it was only a week.

“Tomorrow. I’ll come by and get you. Be ready nine fifteen latest.”

Lucy sat up, perked up, became interested. She twirled a blond lock round a finger. “I’m not sure I have anything to wear.”

Martha groaned. “It’s not a cocktail party. We are going to work. Put on jeans, sweatpants, a wooly jumper; it’s bound to be cold. And sneakers, it’ll be damp too, around there, marshy.”

Lucy shuddered. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

In fact, neither did Martha, but a job was a job and this was a big one. Important.

“I’m calling Pizza Express,” she said. “They’ll deliver a sausage and pepper thin crust along with a salad and a Coke, in half an hour. At least eat something. Then take a shower, for God’s sake, and I’m calling Peter Jones and buying you some sheets. Jesus, Lucy! What would Mum say if she could see the state you’re in?”

Lucy fell silent as she thought about her mum. “I’m just hoping she doesn’t know,” she said quietly. Then, “I’ll be ready. Thanks, Marthie.”

30

Of course, it was that very same night that Lucy fell in love.

She’d fiddled with the TV channels while awaiting the pizza delivery, finding nothing but the usual grim news and game shows; she’d cleaned up the flat, something she was to be thankful for later when she asked “him” home. Well, by home she meant “the flat”; obviously her real home was Patrons, though she rarely went there anymore, not since Mum had gone.

A short while later, she found herself eyeing the gorgeous blond young man on her doorstep. Parked behind him was a small car with a pizza delivery sign on top. Despite his good looks and his smile Lucy couldn’t help wondering who would go out with a guy with a pizza sign atop his car for everybody to see. She wondered what the parking valet might think, or her friends. Except he was so good-looking her heart was making little jumps in her chest, and not her stomach, because she had suddenly lost all hunger.

“Are you really a pizza delivery guy?” she asked as he held out the flat box, still smiling that white smile. “I mean, like
in ‘real life’
?”

“This is ‘real life,’ baby,” he said, sounding like an American movie star, which he certainly looked.

“You mean you can’t get a better job than this? With your looks, and all?”

“
And all
is where it’s at. I need two more college credits before I can graduate.”

“Where from?” She took the box, still looking into his eyes.

“Oxford.”

“Ohh.” Lucy thought quickly of her own shamefully misused education. “How wonderful,” she said brightly. “Would you like to come in, have a Coke or something?”

“Well…” He hovered uncertainly on the top step, faded jeans propped on his hipbones, ancient T-shirt clinging to his abs. “I really should get back.”

“Just a Coke,” she persuaded. “It’s diet, so it’s okay, like, y’know what I mean?”

“I guess I do.”

Lucy knew for certain she was getting into uncharted waters and was absolutely loving it. This, she thought as he finally stepped over the threshold and she closed the door behind him, was what true love felt like.

Standing close, he made her shabby basement room look even smaller, with his wide shoulders, his over-six-foot height, his shock of blond hair falling so sexily over eyes that might be blue but she hadn’t had time to check before he put his arms round her and kissed her with a kind of hunger she had never felt before, tongue and all, then he licked her face, her eyebrows, kissed her closed eyes.

“You are beautiful,” he said, and for the first time Lucy thought it might even be true.

Tempted though she was, after ten minutes of passionate kissing and fondling she sent him on his way, knees atremble, heart thumping, with a promise to call the next day since he was working late that night, but maybe he could call her later.…

He did not call later, and then the next morning Lucy had to go with Martha and so she didn’t know what had happened. She tried to put him out of her mind, temporarily at least, so she could become a proper working girl, Martha’s helper, helping Ahmet Ghulbian change his bloody awful house, which could only be for the better. She would call him tomorrow.

You know what? she told herself, shocked. You don’t even have his number. You don’t even know his name. And that was the truth.

She wished her mum were here to ask what to do.

Lucy often wondered exactly where her mum and her dad had “gone.” Death baffled her and she’d even gone to church to contemplate it, something she had not done since attending school chapel every morning for all those years, when the girls’ straw boaters with the striped-school-colors hatbands fell off with a clatter every time they bent their heads to pray. But, oh God, how she missed her. Why oh why, Mum and Dad, she asked herself as she had so many times since the accident, did you have to take that road, on that day, at that hour, at that moment? Martha had done her best to console her, though she herself was distraught, taking emotional responsibility for her young sister, promising she would never leave her, never be in an accident, never get killed or something awful like that, like what had just happened to their parents.

In all her life, however long, however short—and Lucy recognized now there was a time limit, a sort of sell-by date on mortality, each different, each unknown—anyhow, in all her life, she would never forget how Martha had consoled her, helped her, held her in her arms, told her she would take care of her. Forever, Martha had said, though even then Lucy recognized that forever was a meaningless word, that there was no “forever.” There was only what you had, what you were given at birth, absolutely no longer and no shorter than destiny allowed. Unless somebody killed you first, of course. That could happen to almost anybody, given the right circumstances, though not to people like her; other sorts of people who got involved in bad stuff or with men or drugs and suchlike.

Speaking of drugs, she had tried a joint or two, found it didn’t do much for her except make her giggle and she didn’t need drugs for that; then the odd sniff of cocaine, smuggled into some party by one of those types you really should avoid who only wanted to get you interested, then hooked, then take you for as much money as he could get, or, in fact, “she” could get: it wasn’t only men who were evil; women counted in that department too. Lucy had known a girl like that at school, well, she had only been there a few weeks and that was because no other school would take her, her reputation was so bad, but her father was so filthy rich he thought he could buy everything, until one day she bopped him on the head with a hammer and that was that. Jail for life, no more grass, no more hammers, no more dad. The shock had reverberated through Lucy’s chain of school friends, causing them to pause for a moment and think about their own families and be grateful for what they’d got. Especially in Lucy’s case, grateful for Martha, who right now was expecting her to be clean and presentable, or, at least in jeans and a sweatshirt and decent sneakers, at nine fifteen, which was in exactly five minutes.

She was a whiz at the quick shower, learned necessarily at boarding school, and was waiting, hair still wet, cleanish sneakers properly tied, ripped jeans and all, when Martha honked the horn outside her door. Lucy galloped up the cement steps from the basement flat, forgetting as always to lock the door behind her, waved a jolly hand, beaming a good-morning smile as she climbed in beside Martha and they edged off into the traffic.

“So, what’s it like, this house?” Lucy asked, taking the Danish pastry Martha offered because she had known Lucy would not have had breakfast.

“Heavy.”

“Jesus!” Lucy took a bite of the Danish. “Sounds terrible.”

“Which is exactly why we—by that I mean you and I, Lucy—are about to turn things around, make it light, summery, gorgeous, filled with atmosphere and beauty.”

“I expect you mean ‘good taste.’” Lucy had already finished the Danish and was riffling through the paper bag on the console between her and Martha for a second. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Apple.”

“Get your own next time.” Lucy always had the ability to rattle Martha. “Selfish bitch,” she added.

“Marthie! Really!” Lucy grinned at her. “Selfish, maybe, but certainly not a bitch.”

“Okay, I’ll allow you that.”

“Buggie-wuggie, I hate apple.” Lucy rejected the pastry with a sigh. “We could always stop at McDonald’s for breakfast; eggs, chips, y’know.”

“I’m sure there’ll be coffee waiting at Marshmallows.”

“And buns, I hope.”

“And antiques, which, my dear sister, you and I must as tactfully as possible get rid of and replace with a whole new look. My idea is white and light and touches of bright, a twenties kind of vibe…”

“Like that Maugham woman, you mean.”

Martha threw Lucy a surprised glance. “I shouldn’t have thought you knew about Syrie Maugham, other than maybe as the author Somerset’s wife.”

“Oh, everybody knows about her, she was quite a girl, wasn’t she? I mean, the rumor is she got around a bit as well as tarting up people’s houses. Not that we know it’s true, of course, since she’s been dead forever and it seems nobody cares anymore after you’re dead, or not for much longer anyway. I mean, Marthie, who do you ever think of that’s dead, legends in their lifetime, actors and actresses, like oh, well, Rita Hayworth, I suppose, and Frank Sinatra? Before my time of course, so I would never think of
them
. Maybe I only think of Mum and Dad like that anyway,” she added in a suddenly small voice.

Martha threw her a quick glance again and reached out and squeezed her hand.

“It’s okay, Lucy, we’ll always remember them.”

They sat in silence for a long time after that, Lucy with her eyes shut, feigning sleep, opening them only when Martha told her they were there.

They passed through a pair of ornate iron gates set between stone pillars with recumbent oversized lions, which Martha decided she would need to get rid of immediately. They drove slowly between an avenue of stunted trees, loose gravel spitting from the tires, until they came to the house. Martha stopped, switched off the engine, and the two sat and looked silently at it: gray, pressed into the ground by a lowering gray tile roof, marshland a disturbingly bright green behind it; on top a spiky bird’s nest over which a white heron hovered as though daring them to come near. The bird was, thought Martha, her heart sinking, the only thing that brought the place to life.

“Buggie-wuggie,”
Lucy whispered, staring, horrified. “It’s the Hammer House of Horror.”