They slept fitfully, mirroring one another’s movements around the bed with the slight unease of new lovers. As they drifted off they tried to make their breathing patterns coincide, so fearful were they of slipping from their reverie. Amy was careful to keep her hair out of his mouth when her back was turned to him and he gently held his hand across her breasts. Like wood nymphs curled in some beechen haven, thought Amy as she lapsed into her dreams.
The next morning they woke to a sky of deepest azure and had no choice but to spend the day outside in the sunshine. Kew Gardens was decided on as the picnic venue, and they made a trip to the supermarket, where they cavorted among the aisles, having lightsaber fights with baguettes and filling their baskets with every variety of kitsch food ever invented: Jaffa cakes, Nutella, mini rum babas with green cherries on top, and fake cream.
“God, I love fake cream,” said Amy, cherishing a can with its plastic whipped peak.
Orlando thought he’d probably be able to find an erotic use for it later, I mean, with its hard nozzle and frothy contents, it was practically begging to be squirted over Amy. “Let’s get some of those plastic cheese slices, too,” said Orlando, heading for the dairy products.
“And Pringles,” added Amy, remembering with joyous irony the night she’d binged on two whole cans to suppress her misery. She grabbed his hand and kissed it hastily.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Just because.”
Just because she was relieved that it had all sorted itself out, that here they were, enjoying each other’s company and getting along like oldest friends, bed was a treat and they laughed easily together. What more could a girl ask for? (Premieres cartwheeled through her mind but she dismissed these with a “they can wait.”)
They made their way to the drinks and picked out green cream soda and little bottles of cherry-flavored pop with polar bears on the label.
“You do realize that we’ll be high as kites for a month with all this tartrazine and sunset yellow stuff,” said Amy.
“Yeah, who needs drugs when you can overdose on food coloring?”
They stopped off at an old-fashioned sweetshop on the way to the park and bought lemon bonbons, sherbet pips by the quarter, and some pear drops. As they were about to pay, Amy dropped in a walnut whip for good measure.
“Whatever happened to Spangles?” they wondered as the door creaked shut behind them.
They paid their entrance to the gardens and, as it was almost twelve o’clock, felt that they must have lunch, if only to relieve them of the burden of several carrier bags full of food.
“Let’s go over by these bushes.” Amy led the way to a spot she’d singled out but on closer inspection the ground was wet. Instead they found a bench and, sitting at either corner, like a pair of bookends, spread the garishly colored feast out between them.
“It’s so beautiful with all the spring flowers around and the birds—like a morning out of Chaucer.”
“And pray tell what is a Chaucer morning like?” Orlando asked, taking a teeth-marked bite out of a slice of orange cheese.
“Well, just lots of flowers in bloom, ready for the May queen to make her entrance, and always lots of bird noises. Can you imagine what England was like in Chaucer’s time? So many trees, my God, wolves still roamed the land.”
“I could never get to grips with The Pardoner’s Tale for A level. I just cheated and read the crib notes,” Orlando confessed.
“God, no, Chaucer’s great, the bawdiest stories imaginable. That’s the whole joke, if teenage boys had known that they were all about farting and sex, you’d all have got grade As at A level.”
“But I couldn’t understand it.”
“Just a matter of time. Persevere, he’s worth it.” So Orlando made a mental note to pick up a copy of the Canterbury Tales when he was next in a bookshop. In the way that we’ve all at some time or another, in those early days of love, decided that there was after all some merit in the cinematography of Apocalypse Now or that Hemingway could be enjoyed by women, too. All utter lies, of course, but love is a powerful broadener of horizons for all of five minutes.
They grazed their way through the assembled rainbow of nibbles, a pear drop here and nectarine there. Orlando picked up a strawberry and squirted the foamy cream onto the top of it.
“For you,” he proffered. Amy opened her mouth and he popped it in. Tess of the D’Urbervilles at long last, she thought.
She made up a sandwich of banana and Nutella, promising it was the most heavenly thing Orlando would ever eat.
“No, it sounds revolting,” he protested.
“Trust me, you’ll love it.”
He screwed up his face and opened his mouth, as if preparing for a spoonful of castor oil.
“See, it’s gorgeous,” she said. He remained unconvinced and washed it down with a huge gulp of cherry soda.
Finally, they packed their wrappers away into a plastic bag and rested bloated and groaning against one another.
“Do you think we’re bulimic?” asked Amy.
“No, just greedy.”
“I feel so sick,” she moaned. Orlando prodded her tummy.
“Bleugh! Get off!”
They sat there emitting wailing noises and vowing they’d never eat another sweet as long as they lived, until Amy finally decided that enough was enough and there was a hothouse to visit. She pulled Orlando up from the bench and they strolled into the steamy glasshouse.
“Come on, fatty,” she teased him, patting his stomach.
“People in glasshouses shouldn’t throw stones,” he said, relishing the opportunity.
“You are so unoriginal. What am I doing with you?” She shook her head in mock despair.
“We should go to Brazil sometime, see the real rain forest, canoe down the Amazon, and live on sugarcane.”
“I’ve had enough sugar for a lifetime. Rio would be great though, they all wear G-strings all the time, that’s the only problem.” Man rose to the bait.
“Let’s go tomorrow, darling,” he said, squeezing her bottom.
They wandered through green dewy leaves and strange flowering flytraps, breaking off for the odd damp kiss.
“This is so lovely, I usually spend Saturdays doing mundane rubbish, shopping, ironing; it’s so nice not to do anything. But still I have this guilty feeling that I should be doing something.” Amy was delirious and rambling.
“You are, you’re busy falling in love,” said Orlando, taking the back of her head in his hand and easing her fringe behind her ear. Love? Amy was silent inside. A huge word that seemed to fill the greenhouse, fill her head. Was that a casual “love” or the enormous rare variety? If in doubt, play dumb, a clever female adage.
“Am I?”
“I am,” said Orlando, his blue eyes looking so carefully into hers that she lowered her lashes and held her breath. Six feet of darkly beautiful Orlando Rock was standing before her, telling her he was in love with her (at least, she thought that’s what he meant, she was too dithery to think). She felt the full force of his actorly passion, his stage-managed intensity and romantic-hero status. Except this wasn’t film, it wasn’t the cornfield kiss in A Room with a View, it wasn’t the safe page-turning romance of Jane Austen, it was flesh and blood and less than a foot away, no ecstatic embellishments needed.
“Me, too.” But she asked it rather than telling it. She was face-to-face with the most romantic encounter of her life (sex doesn’t really count, that was much easier) and its proximity left her terrified. But just wait until I tell Lucinda, she thought, suddenly happier.
The rest of the afternoon was a haze of April drizzle and easy kisses; they held hands and pored over snowdrops and daffodils, hiding under willow trees when the rain poured. Amy was happy to be outside, the hothouse encounter had left her flushed and in need of time to herself, but this was much more relaxed, more fun now he wasn’t quite so intense. Back home later on, when Orlando had gone to sort out a leaky washing machine in his flat, Amy alternated between hopping around her landing and feeling terrified of being in love. Was she? She’d always thought it would take much longer, and Orlando was divine, it was immensely flattering but? But. There had to be one but, things like that didn’t just happen, and, well, he could have been acting, he must be so used to telling women he loved them, practically did it for a living. This thought made Amy a bit happier; he was obviously very fond of her but maybe just a bit dramatic to call it love, yes, that’s it, the words just come easier to him. I’m sure once I’ve spent a bit longer with him I’ll be in love, too.
Orlando was on the phone to Bill.
“See the thing is, Bill, she’s just lovely, so normal, so funny and everything, we can just go to the park, the supermarket, McDonald’s and no one even bothers us.”
“Och, it sounds great but doesn’t the wee lass want to go anywhere more exciting?”
“No, Bill, it’s really exciting just being with her, doing everyday things. After all those years of Hello! interviews it’s like heaven.”
“Take my word for it, she’ll get bored pretty soon if you keep on harping on about being such unexciting things. You’re bloody obsessed with being Mr. Average, Olly.” But Orlando was too in love to heed Bill’s words. And he was in love. He loved the romance of Amy, her spark and imagination; for him it made even the bus journey seem like an Odyssean adventure, her vision was inspiring and refreshing. And he loved the way she bit her lip when she was thinking. Yup, he did love her, he thought, as he scattered tea towels all over the wet kitchen floor.