Taking the view that you have to pick yourself up, brush yourself down, etc., Amy faced Saturday morning with a schizophrenic blend of utter misery and eternal optimism. She flicked off the shipping forecast because she wisely knew it would depress her, all those lonely little boats in gales and wives sitting sadly at home. Instead she put on that anthem for female empowerment, “I Will Survive,” and had it blaring from stereo and tonsils. Nine in the morning and she was dusting her room in her pajamas. She flung her arms and duster tunelessly around, feeling better now. Thanks, Gloria, you’ve done a lot of women, and many a gay man, a great service over the years.
She decided that retail therapy was just what the doctor ordered for this particular brand of nagging pain. The pain of humiliation and professional catastrophe. She burned lavender oil to lift her spirits and slipped her emergency-only credit card into her purse. On the bus to King’s Road she read glossy magazines, mentally noting her purchases: new nail polish, a must; shampoo for thicker, fuller hair, could transform my life; fennel tea to kick the demon coffee. She hummed her anthem the length of Sloane Street and felt content in the morning sunshine. In Harvey Nichols food hall she picked up some black olives in basil, she sniffed a scoop of Chinese green tea, and ran her fingers through a barrel of shiny black coffee beans. She bought a bag of watermelon-flavored jelly beans and meandered her way back downstairs via bed linens and Le Creuset saucepans. This is the life, she smiled to herself.
Pottering down Fulham Road, she popped into the Conran Shop, past the array of flowers and lobsters, stroking rosewood tables and, catching a glimpse of herself in a knotted wood Mexican mirror, looking good for a girl low on love, Amy reassured herself. Self-love is the first step to loving others, she had once read. As she picked up a giant starfish which would look exquisite in her bathroom she saw the familiar profile of Orlando Rock browsing among the potpourri. Oh, no, it can’t be. I spend my life not seeing a single famous person and then in the space of two weeks they begin to reproduce asexually all over the place, like those spores I learned about in biology. Except that this was one famous person cloning himself all over her life. She decided to ignore him; he’d hardly be offended that a person whom he’d met for a grand total of an hour in his entire life decided to snub him. She slunk behind the bathrobes and disappeared into candles, surreptitiously glancing in mirrors to make sure he wasn’t behind her. Just as she was about to disappear up the stairs and make her exit she felt a hand on her elbow.
“Hello, trouble.” Shit. She stopped dead, caught in the act. Turning slowly, she helloed with fake surprise.
“Orlando! We have to stop meeting like this!” Did I really say that?
“I never usually come to such smart places as this, but I have to get a present for someone.”
“Your girlfriend?” Amy spilled out without thinking.
“No, just divorced. For my mother actually.” Expect the unexpected, Amy, isn’t that your perfume’s motto?
“They have some fantastic things, for gifts.” Get a grip, Amy.
“I know, there’s this amazing sofa, come and have a look.” He led her up the stairs by her fingertips and flopped down on a vast, fat leather sofa.
“Veeeryy nice. If you want to get laid,” offered Amy. He laughed.
“No pulling the wool over your eyes, eh?”
“I prefer this one, jewel-colored crushed velvet. Jimi Hendrix would buy it.”
“They should have a sticker saying that on it. In tests eight out of ten dead rock stars would buy this sofa.”
“What about actors?” Amy queried.
“No sense of style at all, just take on board the life wholesale. Y’know, I might just buy this place intact, rhubarb leaves in wineglasses, that kind of thing. No imagination of my own, just method furnishing.”
“I sometimes think that one day I’ll have a magnificent dinner party with all this stylized stuff, serve pebbles in bowls with a few red berries for color, goldfish in the soup tureen,” Amy ventured. They both got the giggles and invented a fantastical life in the day of the Conran Shop shopper.
“Pyramids of oysters and a banana tree,” he offered.
“A bed you could live in, like that Evelyn Waugh character, Sonia Digby Vane Trumpington, who just drank Black Velvet in bed all day, entertained all her gentlemen friends from the bath, and let her pekes keep her feet warm. Darling.” Amy put on her best Noël Coward voice, and they spun through the chic splendor of the shop until they’d constructed a fantasy around every teaspoon and assumed parts of Italian countesses, reclusive starlets, and East End gangsters shacking up on the Costa del Sol.
“What about this one?” Orlando said, hurrying over to a filigree lace hammock.
“I don’t think it would hold me,” said Amy, assessing its delicacy.
“Rubbish, it would hold both of us. It’s for some South Pacific island where you could swim with turtles by day and lie beneath the Southern Cross at night.”
“Tied between two palm trees,” Amy mused, fingering the white lace.
“No, mango trees, then you could pluck them handily for breakfast.”
“I should think if I decided to plant a farm at the foot of the Ngong hills, I’d like one of these.” Amy put on her best Out of Africa voice and patted a large mother-of-pearl-encrusted tea chest.
“But watch out for syphilis,” warned Orlando.
“Why syphilis?” Amy asked.
“Because, my dear, the Happy Valley was positively alive with it, that and elephants and the sound of us all making love to our best friends’ wives. See what I mean, old girl?”
“Absolutely, darling. Neville was the most handsome man I ever had the pleasure of committing adultery with.” Amy smoked an invisible cigarette and tilted her head to one side.
“Almost as good as me in bed?” asked Orlando, holding her gaze and falling silent.
Amy didn’t say anything. For a half second they looked at each other and she held her breath, then a shopper with a large palm tree walked between them. Barely remembering who they were, they collapsed, exhausted, on the sofa where they’d begun.
“I still don’t know what to get for my mother.” Orlando frowned.
“Hyacinths,” said Amy confidently. “Mothers always go on about how divine they smell and ‘what a beautiful blue’ they are.”
“Settled,” he said, heading for a vast terra-cotta tub of bulbs.
They stood in the queue to pay.
“All this talk of grand lifestyles has made me feel like Neanderthal man, never cooking, never entertaining. Why not come round for Sunday lunch tomorrow? I can’t promise olive groves but I can buy some cashews from Sainsbury’s.”
“Love to,” said Amy. They shook hands.
“Done.”
“Here’s my address.” He scribbled on a taxi card and handed it to her. “One-ish.” Amy nodded.
As she was leaving she noticed the girl at the till noticing him. She was pouting and fluttering like a drag queen. Never mind, Amy shrugged, I’m sharing roast chicken with him, not her. That-a-girl, Amy!