The Kiss (5 page)

I
want to make it clear that the only reason I am heading for the Gaslight on an afternoon when I am supposed to be studying in the Science library is because I remember seeing a couple of jobs advertised there. Theatre jobs are most likely to fit around the twenty-four hours a week I need to put in at college this year, aren’t they? Evenings and weekends? The job is the thing, I say to myself. I need money or I can kiss goodbye to uni and the kind of future I want.

Like chewing gum trying to get off a shoe as it heads towards a cliff, I look desperately in every single window that I pass on my way to the theatre, willing there to be some other part-time job – retail assistant, cleaner, shelf stacker –
anything
that will stop me having to go up those concrete steps at the bottom of the High Street and feel the crunch of that carpet and see Jem smirk at me from behind the bar, thinking that I’ve come running because he is irresistible. There is nothing.

Maybe I’ve got it wrong, I tell myself, wringing my hands at the theatre’s double doors. Maybe I’ve mistaken a VACANCIES board for a FOR SALE one – you know the kind of thing:
red leather sofa £50; boy’s bike £15 o.n.o.

He is polishing glasses behind the bar, his glossy black head bent over his task. I tuck my telltale hair deep down inside the collar of my jacket, flatten myself to the wall, resist the urge to shout ‘Cover me!’ and inch towards the big brown corkboard beside the poster of
Cinderella.

Wanted: bar staff. Evening and weekend work.
Start immediately. See Val, catering manager.

I rest my head against the bit of paper that spells both my doom and my salvation and close my eyes. Just my luck. It’s perfect.

‘All right there, love?’

I peel myself off the board and stare into the mascaraed eyes of yesterday’s blond lady. She smiles in recognition, shifting the crate of wine she’s holding into a more comfortable position.

No choice.

‘Are you Val?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve come about the job,’ I whisper, keeping my back to Jem and the bar.

‘You what?’

‘The job,’ I repeat even more quietly, hunching my head deeper into my parka, haplessly gesturing bar actions like pressing optics and pouring drinks. ‘
The bar job
.’

Val frowns. ‘What is this, Charades?’

There is a chink of glasses being set down on the bar behind me. I stare pleadingly at Val, willing her to take pity and remove me to a quiet room where we can discuss things out of Jem’s eyeline. Sudden understanding flares in her eyes as we both hear his footsteps crunching towards us, but it’s too late. She pats me on the shoulder, like you might pat a frightened horse.

A wide white grin splits his face in two as he clocks me.

‘Tonight not soon enough?’

‘No teatowel today?’ I say, looking into his flecky eyes with resignation. ‘It lent your face distinction. I’ve come about the bar job.’

‘Really?’

I lift my chin. ‘I need part-time work that fits around college hours and I saw the job board last time I was
in here.’

For a moment I think he looks disappointed. ‘You’re too young for bar work,’ he says.

‘My dad runs a pub. I mean,’ I amend, ‘he
used
to run a pub until the brewery closed it last year. I helped out sometimes. It’s OK to be under eighteen if you’re supervised by the licence holder.’

Val’s eyes flick from me to Jem and back again. She looks amused. ‘I can offer five quid an hour plus tips, Friday nights five until midnight and Saturdays twelve noon for the matinée crowd until the first evening interval at nine. When there’s no matinée, it’s five until midnight, same as Friday. When can you start?’

My heart sinks. Surely it isn’t going to be this easy? Jobs are impossible to get these days. How come this one is dropping into my lap like an egg rolling off a table?

‘Whenever you want,’ I mutter, aware that Jem’s eyes are trained on me like blue-grey searchlights.

‘Tonight would be good. Can you be here for five?’

‘No problem,’ I say, dying quietly inside.

Val wags a beringed finger at Jem. ‘We need to train this one up for the Musical in a Month alcoholics next week. Keep your hands off her during work hours and we’ll all get along just fine.’

My embarrassment levels rocket through the ceiling in a blaze of humiliation and roof tiles. Perhaps Val thinks she’s doing me a favour – girl power and all that. She is plainly under the impression that Jem once ate me up and spat me out, and has decided to encourage me back into the gladiatorial arena to even the score. I am too mortified to tell her that I am the one who did the spitting.

Jem blasts me with his best stripping stare as Val hauls her crate of wine behind the bar. ‘See you later, bar girl,’ he says.

The look on his face leaves me in absolutely no doubt that he will ignore Val’s warning the first opportunity he gets. I wonder if maybe I need to go away and practise dodging stuff for a bit.

‘I called your friend’s boyfriend again, by the way,’ he calls after me as I flee. ‘Spoke to him this time and got threatened with a punch on the nose. I’m guessing it didn’t help.’

Poor Tabby. This is going to take more sorting than I thought.

‘Thanks,’ I say, stopping reluctantly at the doors. ‘You didn’t have to.’

‘I said I would.’

‘And your word is law?’

He smiles. My traitorous tummy does a flip.

Perfect job, perfect hours, perfect pain in the neck.

I arrive back at college just in time to witness a virtual replay of Sunday night, minus the kissing.

Tabby and Sam are standing centimetres apart on the college steps, glaring at each other. Sam is pale with anger while Tab is bright red. The pretty girl with long blond hair – Maria – stands close by. I can see the tension in Sam’s shoulder muscles from here.

‘You’re a coward, hiding behind that slab of beef that calls himself a barman. You put him up to calling me, didn’t you? I told him where to go.’

‘Will you just listen to me, you stubborn arse?’ Tab shouts. ‘I’m trying to make this right!’

Sam swells up like the Incredible Hulk. I wonder if his tight shirt might rip down the back and display his famous walnut muscles for all to see.

‘
Don’t
call me an arse—’

‘I’ll call you an arsing arse if I want to!’ Tabby shrieks. ‘I’m
sorry
, OK?’

Maria places a hand on Sam’s arm. ‘You guys need to calm down.’

Tabby rounds on her. ‘Piss off, Barbie.’

There is a delighted intake of breath from the goggling onlookers, Oz included.

‘Nice,’ says Maria coolly. She smiles up at Sam. ‘You coming?’

‘Well I’m not hanging around here to be called an arse again,’ Sam mutters. He looks defeated. ‘You messed this up, Tab. Live with it.’

‘You’re an ARSING ARSEMINSTER ABBEY!’ Tabby screams as Sam and Maria walk away down the High Street. They don’t look back.

The crowd disperse in disappointment, leaving Oz and Tabby still standing on the steps. Oz puts his arm cautiously around Tab’s shoulders.

‘Good one,’ he says. ‘Arsing Arseminster Abbey.’

Batting him off, Tab rushes down the steps. I almost fall backwards as she throws her arms around me and weeps all over my parka.

‘I’ve screwed up,’ she hiccups. ‘Totally and utterly screwed up. Maria’s got him now and I think I want to die.’

I rock and soothe her, but she is inconsolable.

‘Let’s go and get doughnuts,’ suggests Oz. ‘Sugar’s good for shock.’

‘Great idea,’ I say, stroking Tab’s shuddering back. ‘You’re buying.’

Krispy Kreme is down Water Lane, off the High Street and near the river. Oz orders a box of six and we sit at a table near the back with a wodge of serviettes from the dispenser. It isn’t long before we are surrounded by soggy paper napkins, crumbs and sugar. Tabby manages a Strawberry Gloss, leaving Oz and me to cope with the rest.

‘Your lips match your eyes now,’ says Oz as Tabby wipes strawberry icing off her mouth with a trembling finger.

‘Tabs, ignore the insensitive elephant across the table and listen to me,’ I instruct. ‘You have to let Sam go.
Find something to take your mind off him. Something new and challenging. The bad stuff will pass more easily if you’re busy.’

Tabby gazes puffily at me. ‘You mean, like do a missionary thing in Papua New Guinea?’

‘Maybe not quite that challenging,’ I say
.
‘You’ve got to keep up your college work and I don’t think they do the same modules in Papua New Guinea.’

‘I can’t let Sam go!’

‘Of course you can. Break-ups don’t kill people.’

I try to hold her eye while willing her not to notice the Dave-shaped shadows lurking behind my eyelashes. Oz sneaks the last doughnut.

‘I guess,’ Tab mumbles at last.

I check my watch. Four forty-five. ‘I have to go. New job starts at five.’

This seems to startle Tab out of her funk. ‘You got a job? Your life is always so together, babes,’ she sniffs. ‘Doing what?’

Dodging a guy with North Sea eyes
.
‘Pulling pints,’ I say out loud.

‘Can we come?’ asks Oz, rising from the table. ‘Can you get us free crisps and beer and stuff? Where is it?’

‘Take Tab home for me, Oz,’ I say cagily. ‘I don’t want to leave her by herself. I’ll call you in the morning, hon,’ I add, kissing my soggy mate’s salty cheek. ‘We’ll have worked out your Let Sam Go strategy by Sunday night. Totally doable.

‘Trust me.’

I
t is an interesting evening.

For the first forty minutes of my shift Jem keeps trying to talk to me, so I shoot off on missions I’ve suddenly ‘remembered’ Val asking me to do. Stuff like cleaning the dishwasher filter with a very small brush and colour-coordinating the wine bottles in the fridge.

At around six-thirty, Val finds me in the cellar, where I am feather-dusting cobwebs. Her bracelets jangle as she places her hand on her denim hips.

‘What next, polishing the barrels? I gave you this job assuming you could cope with an ex-boyfriend. You knew you’d have to work with him when you applied. Have I made a mistake here?’

‘He’s not my ex,’ I say in mortification. ‘He’s – OK, so I kissed him last night, but that’s it. He’s totally not a problem.’ Pulling myself together, I wave my feather duster around in a super-efficient manner. ‘But the spiders down here, Val – they seriously ARE a problem. You could get Health and Safety on your back if they’re not sorted. Dad’s pub got into all kinds of trouble over it. If you ask me, that’s why it closed.’

‘You’re embarrassed.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

I let the feather duster fall to my side. ‘OK, yes, a bit,’ I mumble.

‘My son’s a good lad,’ Val says more gently. ‘And you have to work together. So unless you man up, you can forget this job because it’s not going to work. It’s time to start doing what I pay you for, love. Serving customers.’

Tumbleweed seems to roll through the cellar in a gust of imaginary desert wind.

‘I’m on my way,’ I squeak.

Jem is spraying the bartop with something that smells of lemons and hospitals. He turns, aiming the spray nozzle at me like a gun.

‘Stick ’em up or I’ll disinfect,’ I say weakly. ‘The boss is your mother?’

He shrugs.

‘But you call her Val!’

‘Always have.’

‘You didn’t think to mention this before I told her we kissed?’

He smiles slightly. ‘Sorry.’

Focus on the conversation, Delilah, not the smile
. ‘Would she really have docked your wages last night if you’d missed your shift?’

‘She’s running a business, not a charity. Did your dad pay you at the pub?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Not much but – yes.’

‘And there were rules about not knocking off early or generally taking the mick?’

‘I guess.’

‘We have more in common than you think.’

I lace my fingers together. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you.’

‘Girls don’t usually run away when I kiss them,’ he says wryly. ‘One minute we were moonstruck, the next you were legging it like a greyhound. Was it Studs? That mutual friend he mentioned?’

‘Yes.’

‘And are you seeing this mutual friend?’

I stare. ‘No! No, that’s not— the mutual friend’s the guy I dumped.’

He looks confused. ‘So why was it a problem?’

‘My ex was seeing someone else the whole time we were together. Studs was there when I found out . . .’ I swallow. I haven’t had any practice in saying this stuff out loud. ‘I didn’t take it very well. I’m still not taking it very well, to be honest.’

The clouds in his eyes evaporate. He steps towards me. ‘I’ve been going nuts, wondering.’

I raise my hand, placing it on his chest to stop him getting any closer, feeling his warmth radiating through my palm. ‘I’m not looking for . . . any complications in my life.’ I cringe inside as I say this. It sounds extremely naff. ‘That’s why I ran away. So I’m telling you now, please don’t try and kiss me again or do anything to make me like you because I don’t want to like you.’

‘OK,’ he says slowly, looking down at my hand. ‘No complications. Check.’

I laugh, a combination of embarrassment and nerves.

He turns away to serve a cluster of customers who’ve suddenly come into the bar. I want to say something else, but don’t know what. So I suck it up and get to work.

It isn’t long before we are drowning in a blur of beer and Twiglets. I fetch glasses, fire the soda gun, count change, ring the till, change the music, change the music back, distribute beer mats, wring out bar towels, twist off Coke lids, take empty crisp boxes round the back, learn the knack of the hand-held swipe machine and the way the vodka optic dribbles sideways, blush and mumble my way past some of the friskier customers, scarf a packet of crisps for my dinner and grab precisely one visit to the loo. It isn’t even that busy, punter-wise. Val watches me throughout; Jem, not so much. In fact, not at all.

‘So much for the lull during showtime,’ I gasp in the kitchen, wiping my sweaty forehead with my sleeve as Jem calls last orders.

‘There’s no show just now,’ says Val.

‘Oh,’ I say, now feeling stupid on top of tired.

‘We have the annual amateur Musical in a Month starting next week, with a performance around Hallowe’en,’ she adds. ‘That’ll perk things up.’

Musical in a Month sounds as much fun as a harpoon through the neck. Mum did am-dram, leaving a toxic trail of high kicks, ambition and melting vinyl records in her wake. I still can’t hear
Chicago
without breaking into a sweat. I try to focus on what Val is saying.

‘Kids with stage ambitions and enough energy for long rehearsals come from the college. They get in a couple of pros to give it some weight. The theatre lends costumes and props and expertise. It’s good publicity working with amateurs, and big business for the bar at a quiet time of year.’ She smiles a little evilly. ‘Think you can take the pace?’

I give a fixed smile. ‘No problem.’

By the time we have put the dishwasher on for the final load of the night, it’s close to midnight. Val gives me my money and I pull my coat from one of the kitchen lockers, heading wearily for the door.

‘Tomorrow at five!’ Val calls after me. ‘Don’t be late!’

Jem is waiting for me on the steps.

‘Thought I’d walk you wherever you need to go,’ he says.

‘There’ll be a bus in five minutes,’ I say, feeling stupidly shy as I point at my bus stop opposite. ‘It takes me to the end of my road. I’ll be fine.’

He rubs his jaw. I have a terrible urge to rub it too. Maybe even kiss it a bit, on the part where the stubble gives way to the softer skin on his neck.

‘Guess I was the only one that felt it,’ he says.

‘Felt what?’ I ask nervously.

He frowns. ‘Like the moon was inside me.’

I open my mouth like a poleaxed goldfish. He turns away, head down, pushing back inside the theatre doors and out of sight.

‘Babe, it’s me,’ I say through Tabby’s bedroom door the following morning, unfeasibly bright and early. ‘Your mum let me in. I know it’s Saturday first thing but she says you’re going out later and we have to talk. I brought you tea.’

Tabby peeps blearily out from under her duvet as I flip on the light and crash into her room, putting the tea on her bedside table.

‘Wher time zit?’ she croaks. ‘Wass happened?’

Where to start? The beginning, I decide. It’s going to sound crazy however I do this, but beginnings at least prove there’s some kind of order in the world.

‘Remember me telling you about making out with that French guy in the holidays? About the incredible brain-frying kiss and the moon?’

Fumbling on her bedside table, Tabby finds her glasses and slides them on. She’s starting to look more awake. ‘Lilah, in what way is this urgent? First thing in the morning, a wee is urgent, not a chat about kissing. On the subject of which . . .’

‘The French guy Laurent,’ I resume the minute Tab returns from the bathroom. ‘He spun me this line on something called Aphrodite’s Kiss in the sand dunes. A load of donkey doodah about—’

‘I know about Aphrodite’s Kiss,’ she interrupts.

I freeze. This is exactly what I don’t want to hear.

‘You do?’ I say weakly.

Tab extracts a bit of sleepy dust the size of Wales from one eye. ‘I’m studying Classics, babe. We talk about Aphrodite a
lot
. Not that she’s been much help lately,’ she adds bitterly.

‘Tell me,’ I order.

‘According to the legend, Aphrodite first gave the Kiss to a huntsman in the foothills of ancient Athens by the light of a full moon,’ Tabby says with a yawn. ‘The Kiss drove him gloriously, happily mad. But life is fickle, and Aphrodite didn’t stick around.’ Her voice wobbles, but she steadies herself. ‘The huntsman caught the eye of a girl in the market place and gave her the Kiss instead. The girl instantly fell in love with the huntsman. Then a soldier with nice biceps passed through Athens and gave the girl a pretty bead necklace, causing her to thank him in the traditional manner and do the dirty on the huntsman. Cow. And basically the Kiss is supposed to have spread from there, leaving a trail of love and agony in its wake.’

So far, Tab’s version of the story tallies with what Laurent told me. This is NOT GOOD.

‘It’s all a big fat lie,’ I prompt her.

‘I guess,’ Tabby says, looking wistful. ‘Why is this important?’

‘Something Jem said to me last night.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘You saw him again? More kissing?’

‘I went to the bank yesterday, learned I was broke, got a job at the Gaslight bar because seriously it was the ONLY job I found, embarrassed myself with his mother, worked myself to a shred beside him last night, end of story,’ I say in one breath.

Tabby reaches for her tea. ‘Sounds more like the beginning to me.’

‘I told him I don’t want anything else to happen,’ I say impatiently. ‘It was all massively Jeremy Kyle. And then he said . . .’ I pause. This is still extremely weird. ‘He
said
, when we kissed, he felt like the moon was inside him.’

‘That’s so romantic,’ gasps Tab.

She’s missing the point. ‘Tabby,’ I say, ‘the thing is, I felt like that when Laurent kissed
me
. Like the moon was shining inside me, sort of cold and bright and intense. I can remember thinking it in
exactly those terms
. It was a full moon both times – when Laurent kissed me, and when I kissed Jem. Don’t you think that’s a weird coincidence? Both of us describing – feeling – a kiss in that way?’

Tabby ponders this. ‘Maybe you read it somewhere?’

‘That’s what I was wondering,’ I say. ‘Can we check for quotes online?’

We start scrolling through variants on ‘kiss’, ‘Aphrodite’ and ‘moon’ on Tabby’s phone. (‘Not
that
kind of moon,’ says Tab at one point. ‘Honestly, my
eyes
.’) A couple of academic websites pop up; so does the British Museum.

‘I was thinking more along the lines of gossip mags and
New Scientist
,’ I say, feeling worried. ‘I don’t read this stuff.’

‘How about movies?’ says Tabby, scrolling on. ‘Elizabeth Taylor is supposed to have given Aphrodite’s Kiss to Richard Burton.’

I think back to a recent
Grazia
retrospective I read a while back, about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. ‘Not ringing bells,’ I say, a little uncertainly.

We suddenly hit gold. An Australian Classics professor has written an entire thesis on the subject of Aphrodite’s Kiss and uploaded the lot. There is silence as we both read what we can – me on Tabby’s laptop, Tab on her phone.

‘This weirdo’s tried tracing it,’ I say after a few moments’ rapt silence. How could a theoretically intelligent person be so gullible? ‘He says it went from Ancient Greece to Egypt – he’s quoted some source about Anthony and Cleopatra – to Rome . . .’

‘Italians!’ Tabby says with excitement. ‘It explains a lot about Italians.’

My best friend is supposed to be putting me
off
the idea that there’s something in this.

‘Tabby, it isn’t true,’ I insist.

‘The guy’s a
professor
,’ Tab points out. There’s a look in her eye that I don’t like. ‘Professors don’t publish theories without evidence. All the other academics would laugh themselves sick. Where did it go next?’

I scroll on and on, knowing this whole weirdness to be a massive heap of dungballs and yet somehow unable to tear my eyes away
.
‘Apparently it pops up in Venice in the eighteenth century— no way,
Casanova
?’

‘See? Italians again!’ Tab is now hovering over me, still-undrunk tea in her hand.

I scroll faster and faster. Venice, London, Naples, Sicily, back to Rome. I reach a bit about Richard Burton and my skin goes clammy.

‘. . . in Burton’s own words, recorded shortly before his death in 1984: “When I kissed Elizabeth Taylor for the first time that day in Rome, it was as though a light had gone on inside me. As if the moon had poured through my skin and taken hold.”’