“Honestly, no.” Evie shook her head, the grass she’d already smoked causing her to stray closer to the shuttered trapdoors in her head. She didn’t believe she had ever met anybody like Bram, and was currently picturing his tanned knees, wrinkled at head height as she awaited him on the bed. How she loved to hate what she loved. Feared she’d never be happy. Wouldn’t let herself.
“Any survival tips?” she asked.
“Haven’t a clue. I don’t keep up with things like that.” Clem was supine on her side. “I only turn up for the cocktails.”
Now it was Evie’s turn to deliver the condescending look.
“All right,” Clem shot back. “I do like to dress up, and laughing at those walruses and turkeys is a hoot… But as for the gossip, I’m nearly as out of it as you are. I’m only just home from college.”
Even more since she’d moved away, Evie had gleaned that when you live in any world it begins to permeate you: it’s a kind of seepage. For example, she had a soft spot for the sincerity of the country now that she had never had when living in the city. And similarly, as a child of a politician, she had spent her whole life steeped in the illusive rites of omission, ambition and indirection, so this thinking was embedded in her, too. Which was why she could spot falsehoods from a mile away, and why she was certain now that Clemmie was lying.
The speed with which Clem changed the subject confirmed Evie’s suspicions. “The party’s at Archie Wethered’s,” she said. “Do you know the Wethereds?”
“Never heard of them.”
“God, you have been out of it.” Clem raised the joint. “To the bucolic life. A purer way.”
“I’d like to see how you’d do up there.”
Clem arched an eyebrow. “Fuck that. Arch is in retail. He’s just branched into pharmacies. You should see his house.”
“Influential, then.”
“They say half the cabinet’s been round. Even the prime minister.”
“Bloody hell.”
“I could tell you a thing or two about Arch.”
But Evie wasn’t bothered. She felt snugly high, so much so that she wasn’t particularly interested when the next joint came her way. She set it on the corner of the coffee table, balanced diagonally so each tip hung above the carpet.
“He’s stepped up to the crease,” she said.
“He’s paid to join the Premier Group and annual membership doesn’t come cheap. Plus he’s hosting the garden party, so I’d say Arch hasn’t so much stepped up as is captaining the team entirely. Is it that dead where you’ve been that you wouldn’t have heard of the Wethereds? Have you been trussed up in a dungeon all this time or something?”
Barely an hour into the visit and already the asides were coming thick. Still, Evie couldn’t deny that the hidden arbours like this, the world of the Dallas’s and the Wethereds, were where things happened, where things felt safe. And who wouldn’t want a slice of these generous comforts?
“I suppose all the Who-do-you-know stuff does feel slightly immaterial these days,” she admitted.
“Immaterial?”
“You know, petty. It’s old-fashioned, isn’t it?”
“Jesus,” said Clem. “I’ll call the doctor.”
Speaking of old-fashioned, Evie had once asked Bram about his background. He’d told her that his father Gerry was a farmer, which her own father had found hugely amusing, because Sir Greville Guiseley was actually the eighth holder of a baronetcy that could be traced back to the seventeenth century. His stock was worth upwards of ten million pounds and included two thousand acres of arable land, Threndle House itself◦– inherited from his deceased wife, Margot◦– a stately home outside of Harrogate, his house in London and a hall near Whitby; all of which went to Bram upon his father’s death. The hereditary peerage must have come as something of a bonus, Clive joked.
“So is there any cock up there or what?” asked Clem, when they were a little drunker.
“God, no.”
“You hesitated.”
“Didn’t.”
“You’ve found some sport, Evie. I can tell.”
“Really I haven’t.”
“Balls,” said Clem. “I can still read you even if you have been off getting a farmer’s tan. Which suits you, by the way. Manure-brown.”
“You do realise we don’t have to look like Victorian dolls any more, Clem.”
Clem finished and docked out the second joint. Her room was hazy, smoke filtering from the skylight rather than into the house. She removed her t-shirt and shorts and faced Evie in her bra and knickers.
“Give me a hand with this, would you.”
Clem slipped her lingerie off and went to select a dress, now naked. She was so decisive. While she stepped into a coconut-white halter-neck, Evie stole a handful of grass from the tin and shoved it in her pocket.
“Breathe in, so I can do it up.”
“Breathe in,” said Clem, playfully slapping Evie’s wrist as her zip was fastened. Her figure was sickening in its way. So it was with pretty people.
“What do you think?” she said, popping another bottle, red.
“There is someone, actually,” Evie said.
“Go on.” Clem began her make-up.
“Someone local.”
“Horse and cart? Build walls?”
“No—”
“A brooding landowner then. Ha ha.”
“Oh shut up. He’s a year younger than me. Just left school. He does brood though.”
The fact Lawrence was a schoolboy seemed to surprise Clem. “That dress suits you,” said Evie.
“What’re you wearing?”
“I didn’t bring anything. Everything’s been a bit slap-dash.”
“That’s the best way to approach it. Take your pick from any of these if you like,” Clem said, entering her wardrobe and flicking through the hangers like a rolodex, removing dresses and laying them on the beanbag. Evie recalled Duncan remarking on Lawrence dressing from the penny rail at the market.
“Do you like him?” said Clem.
“Who?”
“What did I say about being coy? Your rustic. Tell me about him or you’re going to the party as you are.”
“He’s a miner’s son.”
“Shut up.”
“Really.”
“Evie, that’s bloody brilliant.”
“I can’t decide if I like him or if I’m just bored. Probably a bit of both. Maybe neither.”
“Maybe all of the above. What does he look like?”
“Well, he’s not really my type, but he has a quality. I think he’d do anything I asked.”
“Oh, why didn’t you bring him?”
“I’d have had a hard time. I don’t have his number and I don’t know where he lives◦– we’ve just been meeting in the woods. I think he’s embarrassed. Besides, I haven’t seen him for ages. We were supposed to meet up the other week… I didn’t show.”
“Cow.”
“He hasn’t been back. I’m not sure why I didn’t go.”
“Washing your hair, I expect.”
“Washing Duncan’s, more like.”
“You always did make me laugh.”
“Pass the wine. Thanks.”
“Certainly sounds interesting,” said Clem, brushing her hair. “Tell me something else.”
Lawrence. There wasn’t much Evie knew about the only person in Litten she had allowed herself to meet, which made it all the more strange that she found herself telling Clem about him now. She said, “He lies all the time, and he has this spot in his head, a cubbyhole he goes to. It’s absorbing, really. He just goes silent. He’s desperate, really.”