Olivia’s Luck (2000) (3 page)

“Hey, what’s your game?” he rounded on her.

“Sorry, we didn’t realise you were queuing,” she smiled sweetly.

“Oh right, so what did you think we were doing then – standing in a line behind total strangers just for the hell of it?”

Molly’s dark eyes widened. “Well, it’s a possibility. You look sad enough to try and make friends that way, but to tell you the truth, I really hadn’t considered you at all.”

Nudging and giggling we then piled into the next empty cart as it conveniently came to a standstill in front of us, and Johnny and his friends had to make do indignantly with the one behind. As we soared up into the night sky they hooted and catcalled after us, pelting us with peanuts, and we dutifully squeaked and ducked, pretending to be outraged, but loving every minute of it. I remember swinging round right at the top and catching Johnny’s eye, shrieking as he took aim, wondering – as his peanut hit the mark, like a perfect Cupid’s arrow, right between the eyes – if he knew the effect he had on people. I believe he did.

Of course, we lurked around after the boys for the rest of the evening then, trailing them mercilessly and popping up giggling behind every shooting range and coconut shy they went on, as they, in turn, went through the adolescent ritual of groaning and trying to lose us. Inevitably, though, all six of us ended up together outside the only pub on the green, equipped with far too many goldfish, candyfloss in our hair, cigarettes glowing competitively, and all eyes bright with possibility. Johnny, aged eighteen, went in for the drinks and we sat on the grass outside. We gleaned from the other two boys that they were all at Harrow, but that such was the enlightened attitude of boarding schools these days, they’d been allowed out for the evening. “So long as we’re back by – ooh – ” one of them coolly flashed his Rolex – “about midnight, I suppose.” Suitably impressed by their bravado but just about managing not to show it, we’d sipped our lager-and-limes; Molly, flirting like billyo, Imogen, blonde and beautiful and not needing to, and me, certainly needing to but not having the confidence. As ever, I wished I wasn’t so tongue-tied, but Molly made sure every silence was filled, which gave me a chance to observe.

‘Posh-gob Scot’ was how Johnny described himself, with generations of Scottish ancestors behind him, but brought up in England and sent to Harrow like the rest of his family.

“Only child, I’ll bet,” said Molly, her dark eyes flashing with amusement, “of totally indulgent parents. Ponies for Christmas, a convertible for your birthday, the apple of Mummy and Daddy’s eye. They probably peel you grapes for breakfast.”

He grinned. “Wrong, actually. Three sisters.”

“Ah, only boy. Yes well, that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Your Godlike demeanour. Clearly the world revolves around you at home and you’re waited on hand and foot. Loo seats are probably warmed for you and you’ve been mistakenly led to believe in the superiority of the male species. They obviously think the sun shine out of your wotsit.”

He laughed. “God, I wish! Those wretched sirens torment me, gang up on me, they probably stick pins in little effigies of me.”

“Ah, shame. So you’re put upon?”

“You bet.”

“Misunderstood?”

“Totally.”

“In need of a little analysis?”

“No fear. Those shrinks would have a field day with me!”

“Even so, worth a try. Here – lie down on my couch.” She patted her lap and Johnny, grinning, obligingly put his head in it. Oh, to have Molly’s nerve. She frowned with mock concentration. “So…a tortured soul, eh, teased mercilessly by your sisters, and I imagine Mummy’s no help because – let me see now – Mummy’s always in the beauty parlour having her nails done?”

“Christ – in her dreams!” he chortled.

“And Daddy, well, Daddy’s no help either because he’s – let’s think, what would Daddy be? Certainly something in the City; something fairly enormous. Pr-o-bably the Governor of the Bank of England, and pr-ob-ably called – Peregrine?”

“Wrong again. His name’s Oliver and he’s a trainer.”

“What, fitness?” I said without thinking.

Johnny sat up, startled. Then he and the other boys hooted with laughter.

“No, racehorses!” he cried. “God, fitness. I’d like to see Dad in a leotard!”

We all laughed, but I felt foolish and could feel myself reddening as I joined in. It didn’t escape Johnny and he shot me a kind look. I don’t believe he meant to embarrass me.

“So back to your mother then,” persisted Molly, yanking his shoulders down into her lap again. “Shut your eyes, please. I must have total concentration in my counselling rooms. If she’s not in the beauty parlour, she’s…?”

“Oh Mum, well, she’s a bit dizzy. ‘Creative’ is how I’m sure she’d like to be described.”

“Ah, a bit off-the-wall.”

He opened one eye. “Well, only in the sense that loo paper is.”

We giggled, and then for some reason we couldn’t stop laughing, and we all fell about on the grass in a heap.

We roared at Johnny’s jokes for most of that summer. After that first meeting, it somehow seemed only natural for the six of us to hang around together. The schools were breaking up for the holidays, we all lived relatively close to each other in the stretch of green belt that wrapped itself around the foothills of the Chilterns – it was fun, it was convenient, it was easy. Secretly I think the boys felt they were too old to be hanging about at home and should have been spending their final holiday from school backpacking in Istanbul, or smoking ganja on some remote Caribbean beach, but since they weren’t, they deigned to swagger along beside us, to the events on offer locally. Keen to be equally cool, we girls sneeringly dismissed the discos and parties as ‘so-o-o incredibly tame’ – quick flick of the hair, quick drag on the cigarette – as they no doubt were, but there was no convincing my mother. She saw drug pushers and rapists at every Pony Club dance and tennis club party, and I had practically to shin down the drainpipe to join my friends.

On one occasion when she forbade me to go to a concert in London, I rather daringly ignored her and went anyway. Halfway through some throbbing Supertramp keyboard number, a man came on stage, interrupted the music, and asked if an Olivia Faber could please leave now because her mother was waiting for her in the car park. I remember going literally rigid with shock in my seat, then blushing to my roots. I didn’t move. Molly and Imogen on either side of me both reached out and squeezed my hands. A few minutes later the music resumed, but then ten minutes after that, the man was back. Could Olivia Faber
please
leave now, because otherwise the police would be called and the concert could not continue. I got to my feet, puce with shame, and passed down along the rows. I remember going past Johnny, who caught my eye sympathetically, and then, to titters of ‘home to Mummy’, left the stadium.

Sure enough, Mum was waiting. I got in the car without a word and maintained a tight-lipped silence all the way home, as did my mother. To this day we’ve never spoken of it. I think we both knew that she’d overstepped the mark, but then again, so had I, and there was a delicious symmetry to it which resulted in a stalemate. Looking back, I wonder we didn’t hurl more insults and recriminations at each other, but we never did, we were more careful. Once those things are said, they’re out there for ever, hanging in the air and, at the end of the day, we loved each other. She was all I had, and vice versa. Thereafter, though, I did detect a perceptible loosening of the reins, and certainly towards the end of the summer, there wasn’t a party I didn’t go to or a dance I didn’t make.

It’s incredible to me now that I can only just remember the names of the other two boys. Peter, I think, and Ben. All eyes were firmly on Johnny, you see, and there was no question of second best. As the summer wore on, though, it became clear that one of our number was forging ahead in the popularity stakes, and two of us would have to resign ourselves to back seats. It was Molly, after all, who’d spotted him first, Molly, who’d wooed him, Molly who’d put in all the hard, flirtatious work, and now Molly who was firmly staking her claim. Every slow dance was hers, every joke addressed to her, every look came winging her way, whilst Imogen and I sat dumbly by, enviously awaiting the first kiss.

During this time we more or less lived at Johnny’s parents’ house, which, like son and heir, was something of an eye-opener. I’d never seen anything quite like the McFarllens’ estate, and probably never will. It was huge, it was Jacobean, it was turreted – it was even
moated
, for God’s sake – in short, it was the sort of place where you suppressed a ‘bloody hell’ as you went up the drive. Here they talked of land rather than garden, watered the orangery rather than the conservatory, and had a clock tower instead of a weather vane. The lifeblood of the place was, of course, the stables, or ‘the yard’, as I came to call it, which was adjacent to the house, and run like a slick, well-oiled machine – just like the thoroughbred racing machines it housed, who nodded their elegant, arched necks over every green stable door.

Inside, the house was full of colour and drama. There was a blood-red dining room, a pale blue morning room, vibrant chintz in the sitting room, murals in the bathrooms and, at every window, curtains as thick as duvets hung from fabulous, coro-neted pelmets. Every bedroom was painted a deep jewel colour – sapphire, ruby or emerald – and as I crept around upstairs one day on a rather spurious search for a loo, I was also startled to note that each bed had a huge crucifix hanging over it. This, it transpired, was down to Oliver, Johnny’s father, who, born a Protestant, had apparently seen the light in later life and made a sweeping and dramatic conversion to Catholicism. Like most born-agains he was messianic in his belief and, insisting that the rest of his family should join him on his road to Damascus, had filled the place with the trappings of his new-found religion. Huge church candles and prayer books loitered in the most unlikely places – next to a pile of
Horse and Hound
in the loo, or in the case of the candles, chewed to bits by the latest puppy in its basket, because for all Oliver’s religious fervour, one didn’t have to look far to find signs of a hedonistic lifestyle. A velvet curtain, ripped accidentally during a raucous party a few years ago, still hung forlornly by threads from its pelmet, there were shot gun cartridges in the bath, empty whisky bottles behind the loo, and betting slips in every overflowing ashtray, all of which, I thought, gave the place a thrilling air of debauchery.

Oliver McFarllen, tall, handsome and urbane as he strutted about the place in his breeches in an impossibly Mr Darcy-like manner, was altogether a glamorous, if formidable figure. We were all rather in awe of him and kept out of his way, but he wasn’t unfriendly and always shot us a cheery “Hello there!” and a flashing smile if he strode by us in the yard. His moods were mercurial, though, and having once been shocked to a standstill as we heard him bawl out an unfortunate stable girl for not mucking out a filthy stable, we knew better than to hang about in the yard for too long, particularly if clients were viewing their horses. Johnny also told us that the barns at the back of the house, which held Oliver’s prized collection of classic vintage cars, were quite simply out of bounds.

The sisters, all younger than us, were terrifyingly good-looking in a pale, consumptive sort of way, and I distinctly remember being introduced to them in the icy splendour of the morning room as they lolled around reading
Tatler
and
Harpers
, glossy blonde hair spilling on to the equally glossy pages. The three of us, Molly, Imogen and I, had stood in the doorway awkwardly, fully prepared to be coolly appraised, then whispered about as we left the room, but to our surprise the McFarllen girls jumped up, pounced on us and dragged us off to the stables, insisting we see their ponies. Once in the privacy of the stables they’d grilled us rigid, bitterly disappointed that none of us had had our tummy buttons pierced, tattooed our bottoms, or at the very least, had sex with their brother. They pretty much ran wild about the place, and rode bareback like demons, and I remember once watching them race their ponies around the gallops for a laugh, waving and shrieking to their father, who was standing up in his ancient, convertible Bristol, binoculars to eyes, playing ‘the trainer’ for them. As he laughed and roared them on, I remember thinking how alien their world was to mine.

And of course I drank it all in thirstily, parched as I was of this sybaritic lifestyle. It spoke to me, released something pent up and suburban in my soul, as indeed did Angie, Johnny’s mother. Bright-eyed, copper-haired and beautiful, with Johnny’s brilliant, languid smile, it was she who held the whole chaotic shooting match together, she who was the pivot around whom the household revolved. The kitchen was her domain – although I don’t believe she ever cooked in it – but she treated it as her salon and welcomed everyone to it. I can see her now, sweeping saddles from the vast oak table and calling for everyone to sit down together around a steaming pot of soup, placing a trainer next to an old soak, next to a schoolgirl, next to an elderly widow. Once her table was full she’d sit at the head, satisfied that everyone was about her, and then entrance us all, telling stories – but listening too, leaving no one out – and inviting our confidences, until I think I’d told her more about myself than I’d told any adult. I believe Peter and Ben were secretly in love with her, and her husband certainly was, liking nothing more than to show her off.

After a typically liquid lunch with fourteen or so of us around the kitchen table, Oliver, plastered, his pale blue eyes swimming rheumily, would stagger round to her end and try to persuade her to sing.

“She’s got a bloody good voice, you know; trained as an opera singer before she met me. God, she should be captivating the front row of Covent Garden instead of a crowd of reprobates like you! Come on, Ange, the girls would love it, wouldn’t you, girls? Ask her to sing, Molly; she’ll do it for you.”

“Bugger off, Oily,” Angie would laugh, swatting him good-naturedly with her napkin and not moving from her chair. “Why is that when you’re in your cups you have to have everyone on their feet hollering ‘Flower of Scotland’?”