Bed of Roses

It takes him a moment to work out what she is implying. ‘Ah, of course,’ he says slowly, ‘how very disagreeable.’ A tiny flash of vexation that he hadn’t worked it out before, and then he imagines it: the strange man, the photograph, Fanny listening. He feels faintly aroused. ‘Well, I suppose you’re always going to get these specimens, aren’t you. They see these sort of images in the paper and they take them as an invitation…’

Fanny doesn’t say anything. The room feels small with Robert in it, talking confidingly about things she’d so much prefer never to discuss with him. People wanking over her. She feels claustrophobic. She wishes he’d leave her alone.

‘Perhaps we should call the police?’ he says.

‘No.’

‘Well, Fanny, it’s obviously upset you…’

‘No. Robert—’ She stops, forces herself to smile again. ‘I’m fine. Forget it. So, anyway, you came to see me. What did you want? How can I help? Actually, I’m glad you came, because I’ve really been wanting to ask you about Scarlett.’

‘Scarlett?’ He looks confused.

‘You know Scarlett. Little disabled Scarlett, with the thick specs.’ Fanny speaks quickly, keen to move the conversation on. ‘Scarlett Mozely. Only she won’t show me any work and there are no notes. Mrs Haywood can’t find any notes and I’m wondering—’

‘Fanny, excuse me, but I return to work to discover photographs of our new head teacher in her bra and panties all over the press and you’re talking to me about—’

‘I wasn’t in my “panties”,’ she snaps. ‘Don’t get carried away.’

‘The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing all morning. You’re hiding away in your office here, refusing to pick it up, refusing to come to class. It’s hardly the way—It’s hardly a very good example.’

‘I know.’ She sighs. ‘I know it isn’t. And I’m sorry. Give me two minutes—’

‘What were you doing in your bra and panties, anyway?’ he persists. ‘In front of everyone! What are the kids supposed to think? More to the point what is the Local Authority supposed to think? They’re seeing images of our new headmistress in her bra and panties—’

‘I wasn’t in my pa—’ She stops, glares up at him.

He smiles. ‘And what about me?’ he adds softly. ‘Tell me, Fanny.’ He moves across and sits down on the edge of her desk. ‘Hmm? What am I supposed to think?’

She can’t stand it. She can’t stand him. What’s he doing, sitting on her desk? She feels anger rising, and panic. She needs, she knows, to get on top of the situation. And yet—‘Please, think whatever you want.’ She longs for him to go away. Instead he leans forward, over the table, and rests a light hand on her shoulder. ‘No, really, Robert. Please,’ she shrugs her shoulder, but the light hand stays in place. ‘Thank you for trying to help. And I don’t mean to be rude, but—’

‘Shhh,’ he says, and begins to massage ever so gently. ‘You’re so tense, Fanny,’ he murmurs. ‘You need to relax.’

‘Please – seriously – piss off.’ And from nowhere she notices that she’s crying, and that he hasn’t pissed off, far from it. And that the telephone is ringing again. He’s slid further across the desk and now he has both hands on her shoulders, massaging, stroking and she’s still bloody well crying.

‘Shhh…Shhhh,’ it’s barely a whisper, ‘relax. Relax, Fanny. Why so tense? Hmm?…Why so tense?’

Out of desperation, to get him away – to bring a third party into the room – she picks up the telephone. ‘Louis?’ she says. ‘Is that you?’

Panting.

‘Oh…Fuck off!’ She bends her head to the desk, with the telephone still rammed to her ear.

Robert eases the receiver from her hand and gently returns it to its cradle, and as he does so his soft pink lips burrow beneath her hair, and he kisses her neck. ‘Louis isn’t here now,’ he murmurs, ‘I’m here…I’m here.’

And though she tells him to fuck off, more than once, it sounds muffled, with her face on the desk. It’s possible Robert doesn’t hear.

And from nowhere, for the moment, can she seem to find the strength to push him off…

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Louis grew up in Baton Rouge, the son of an Anglican vicar and a classics professor at Louisiana State University. His parents sent him to England for his degree, because it was something they had both always wanted to do themselves, and because he asked, and they could just about afford it. He and Fanny were both enrolled on the same course and have been friends since the first week of their first term together. Louis is happy in England (he tends to be happy wherever he finds himself), and except for the occasional holiday, he hasn’t quite got around to going home since.

He spent a couple of years after university driving removal vans. Then he went to art school. He worked briefly as a children’s illustrator. He trained as a TEFL teacher and for a year or two made a fortune giving private English lessons to Japanese bankers. He worked as a park attendant. He took a course in cabinet-making.

For the past year Louis has been working as a freelance news photographer which, with the occasional boost from painting and decorating jobs, more or less pays his way. He enjoys the work: it allows him to travel, and to chat to people (which he loves) and he’s actually a pretty good photographer, too. But Louis isn’t somebody who lays much weight on his ‘career’, nor has he ever been. In fact he’s always found other people’s career obsessions very comical.

And yet, to his own dismay, he finds himself more than a little undermined by Fanny’s recent stride towards adulthood and respectability. He feels as though he’s dragging behind. After all, he has two degrees, one in English, another from the Camberwell School of Art, and almost nothing to show for either of them: a rented flat in horrible Hackney, a part-time job, a motorbike with two helmets, an overdrawn bank account and a credit card that’s just hit its limit.

When, the day after the limbo cotillion, Louis had ambled into the Fiddleford village post office to ask, on a whim, about local housing, Mrs Hooper had recognised him at once. Mrs Hooper (who was feeling a little lousy that Saturday morning) told Louis she was aware of only three places which were available in the area: one, a cottage on the road to Lamsbury, close to the famous hat maker’s, large and newly refurbished, and likely to be expensive. The other two, she said with a smirk, Louis would probably already be familiar with. Numbers 1 and 3 Old Alms Cottages, she explained, on either side of Miss Fanny Flynn, had been empty for years and would certainly be going cheap. They, like number 2, belonged to Mr and Mrs Guppy.

‘Ah…’ Louis smiled with his usual deprecating charm. ‘After last night I guess that might prove something of a problem.’ To which Mrs Hooper had thrown back her aching head and cackled.

‘Believe you me,’ she said, ‘nothing’s a problem for Ian Guppy, except missing out on the chance to make money. You’ll have no trouble with Ian! Just ring him up and tell him you want to take one of his cottages. No need to mention Miss Flynn; he’ll realise soon enough…But hang on a moment, I’ve got his number somewhere.’

‘By the way, ma’am,’ Louis said, as she disappeared to rummage beneath the counter.

Super manners! thought Mrs Hooper. Goes to show not ALL Americans are bad.

‘Would you mind very much—To be frank with you, I’ve only started thinking about this, so please, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d be obliged if you don’t say anything to Fanny.’

‘I shan’t breathe a word to anyone,’ she swore, as she always did when people were delightful enough to entrust her with their secrets. ‘Don’t you worry!’ And to Mrs Hooper’s credit, it should be said that though she told Kitty Mozely, who told Geraldine Adams, and though she did mention it to Mr Guppy, and though she couldn’t resist dropping a clue to Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary when she came in to buy her weekly Lotto, and though she implied as much to Messy McShane, and though she vaguely touched on the subject to young Colin and Chloe when they came delivering the eggs, and though she sort of hinted at it to the General, Mrs Hooper did not breathe a word to Fanny. And nor, of course, since the gossip was directly related to her, did anyone else…

Which is a shame because it would have cheered her up.

‘Louis isn’t here now,’ Robert White is murmuring, burrowing his soft pink lips into her hair, holding tight to that telephone receiver. ‘Louis isn’t here. I’m here. Robert’s here…’ And as he pushes her backwards towards the floor, she protests. She struggles, but her movements are restricted by her chair and desk; his wet mouth is covering her mouth, his wispy beard is soaking up her tears, and he has both arms around her.

Silence while Fanny tries to find some angle, beneath his bony limbs and wet, determined lips, to communicate more clearly her displeasure. She finds no angle. Can hardly breathe, in fact. Robert, more or less oblivious, moans in gentle pleasure. And both of Fanny’s telephones strike up at once; the one on her desk, the land line, is Geraldine Adams, returning Fanny’s returned call, and still trying to make that reading-with-the-kids appointment. The other one, her mobile, which has just been knocked to the floor and out of reach, is Louis.

Stepping out into the Canary Wharf sunshine, fresh from a surprisingly successful meeting with his picture editor, Louis holds his telephone to his ear and waits impatiently for Fanny to pick up. She has only just called him according to his own mobile, so she must be there…

This morning he telephoned Ian Guppy, who, after extracting an unfeasibly large deposit, agreed to leave keys to both Alms Cottages at the Fiddleford Arms, allowing Louis to choose between them in his own time. So he has a place to live. He has the promise of plenty of work from his editor. He envisages making this one call – just to be sure she’s still speaking to him. And then sometime afterwards, sometime very soon now, tipping up outside the school with keys to the neighbouring Alms Cottage in one hand and all his worldly goods in the other, and surprising her. They would have the whole summer together.

Because he’s been unable to get the picture out of his head all week. He can think of nothing but Fanny, standing all alone in that wretched village hall. Of the Coca-Cola glistening on her pale skin, of her absolute defiance as she stood there with all eyes upon her, absolutely isolated, foreign, misunderstood; absolutely, unbearably—It was the moment – or the image – which finally allowed him to acknowledge that he probably loved her. Probably had been in love with her for a very long time. They would have the whole summer together.

Maybe even the rest of their lives.

No answer. She’s not answering. He hangs up. She must be in class, he decides. He pulls on his crash helmet, kicks his bike into action and accelerates away. Towards London, briefly, and then on, to the new beginning. Towards Fanny.

He doesn’t believe he’s ever felt so certain about anything in his life.

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His lips are still pressed hard to hers. Somehow he’s got her on to the floor. Her mobile has rung and rung off and now she can feel his hand at her shirt buttons. He lifts his wet mouth, to look down at her and smile.

‘You’re so gorgeous,’ he murmurs. ‘Has anyone ever told you?’

It’s her first real chance to speak. ‘You stupid fucking creep! GET – OFF me!’