Seasonal Cocktails

 

I breathed in the scent of honeysuckle; pure and fierce.  On balmy days like this, when the air was flat, the scent was especially strong.  Beside me on the grass, my cousin Tina was sipping a Toucan’s Punch cocktail.  She looked gorgeous, like a bunnygirl.   When she rolled over, the boys in the tree house next door licked their lips and wolf whistled quietly, with respect.  On my other side was Blanche, lumpy and colourless, scowling as usual.  Blanche was the sister of the boys in the tree house.  Everyone felt sorry for Blanche.  Not just because she lacked beauty.  But because she lacked anything – charm, tact, wit, charisma. She was an angry nothing.

Tina got up; stretched.  She smiled in the direction of the tree house.  Blanche chewed her lip, flipped over another page of the book she was pretending to read.  Her hand left greasy marks on the page. Her hair hung over her face, white, like a blank page.  Whoever said blondes have more fun hadn’t met Blanche.

“Sunbathing makes me exhausted,” announced Tina.

Blanche and I exchanged a look.  If Tina noticed, she didn’t say anything.  Our look said everything though. 

“Do you want another drink?” I pointedly asked Blanche.  Her pink swimming costume had dark patches on it from her sweat.

“Yes please darling,” Tina said, holding out her empty glass.

Blanche and I left Tina on her rug on the dry, yellowing grass, and padded into the cool, dark cave-like kitchen.

“She’s such a bitch,” I said, getting clean glasses from the cupboard.

“A beautiful bitch.”  The envy in Blanche’s voice was unmistakable.

“She’ll get old like everyone else,” I said, ever the optimist.

“I’d rather be an old Tina than a young me,” said Blanche, wrapping strands of limp hair around her fingers.

 

Tina had a boyfriend, Brendan.  She had another boyfriend in London too, but while she was staying with us Brendan took her out.  He was boringly handsome.  Whereas Tina’s face had something a little different about it, as if she could have been born ugly, but was granted breath-taking good looks instead.  Brendan looked like he played golf and worked for an insurance company.  But Brendan didn’t work at anything, except spending his father’s money.   

Mum was impressed with Brendan.  I listened at her bedroom door when she was on the phone to Auntie Susan, “you’d be so proud…a really nice young man…” Mum emphasised the word ‘nice’ so it made my stomach crunch up.

She liked things to be nice.  Our house was tastefully decorated in pale yellows and blues.  There were always clean towels in the airing cupboard; the laundry basket never over-flowed with dirty jeans.  The kitchen was spotless.  You could have run your tongue all over the gleaming tiles, because germs didn’t dare live in that kitchen.

“And his family are wonderful too…the father’s a solicitor, so Tina tells me.”

She went on and on about what a great catch Tina had got for herself.  She was so proud, her voice tinkling with girlish laughter, as if Tina was her daughter instead of her niece.  And I imagined Auntie Susan listening to all this, lying on the sofa, recovering from her mystery operation, absorbing Mum’s words like she was being drip-fed.

 

“Here,” I said, passing Tina her glass.

“Too much vodka,” she squirmed.  “There’s nothing worse than a hangover in the heat, didn’t you know that?”

I shrugged, ignored her, exchanged another look with Blanche.

“If you two keep staring at each other like that, all the boys will think you’re lesbians.”

“Well we are,” I answered.

Blanche’s mouth drooped open, stupidly.  She twisted her wispy white hair.  “I’m not,” she said.

Tina leaned close, her chocolate brown eyes wide.  “Oh, I bet you are.”

“Forget it, Blanche,” I said.  “Actually, she’s a man-eater,” I added to Tina.

Tina laughed so hard, Blanche seemed to think she’d been paid a compliment, and her mouth twitched into a smile. 

 

          Brendan was taking Tina out that night.  Tina waited in the conservatory my dad had added to the house, the year before he went back-packing around India and decided not to come back.  The conservatory was the only part of the house Tina said she liked.  I have no idea why.  But there was a certain peacefulness in there, that I could feel too.  Sometimes I thought something of my dad, his spirit or whatever, was wandering about in there.  Trapped inside the glass building.  But of course I wouldn’t have told Tina this.

          Mum and I cleaned up after dinner while Tina sat in the conservatory, like a princess.  When the bell rang and we heard voices, Mum suggested I ask Tina and Brendan if they’d like cocktails in the conservatory.  I knew Mum wanted to show off the thin-stemmed glasses Susan had given her last Christmas.  And she wanted a chance to talk to Brendan, because Tina usually made sure that she was sitting in the MG before he’d even taken off his seat belt.

 

I could tell Mum was nothing more than an amusing, if slightly irritating joke, in Brendan’s opinion.  I hated the way he and Tina kept raising their eyes at each other, as if Mum was asking them something embarrassing like if they’d had sex yet.  When all she was discussing was university, and whether they’d like another cocktail.

          I think Mum thought Brendan would be impressed at being offered cocktails, but I could tell he wasn’t impressed at all.  When he started in on his Sapphire Sensation, he looked as if he were about to choke.  And even Tina left most of her Toucan’s Punch.   

          “Let me help Rebecca carry the glasses to the kitchen,” Brendan said, when the drinks were finished.

          “I don’t need any help,” I said, because I hated him for despising my mother.

          He didn’t get the hint.

          As I took a cocktail glass from Mum’s hand, I thought how sad and old she looked, like my grandma.  I wanted to please her; I wanted Tina to please her.  But there was no pleasing her.

The kitchen was bright and sparkled clean as usual.  Brendan glanced about, as if there must be dirt somewhere, because he anticipated Mum to be the sort of woman who forgets to do the dishes.  I took the glasses from Brendan, put them in the washing up bowl.  I expected him to leave.  But he stayed watching me, with a slight sneer on his face.  I switched on the hot tap, squeezed in Fairy Liquid.  He stood behind me, like he was my father, and he wanted to tell me how much he loved me.  I could smell his sweat mingled with his aftershave.  His boringly beautiful face towered above me in the reflection from the kitchen window.  We paused, frozen, like an abstract family portrait.  Then he bent down, pulled back the collar of my blouse, and sucked the skin on my neck.  I breathed out as he was leaving the kitchen, closing the door behind him.   

          Some girls like pink.  I had always chosen purple.  The love bite Brendan had given me was purple like my curtains and duvet.  I kept touching it with my fingers, pulling at the little bruise on my flesh.  I’d show it to Blanche.  Maybe she’d get a kick out of what Tina’s boyfriend had done to me. 

          That night when Brendan dropped Tina off around half-eleven as usual, I pulled back the curtain slightly, the lights in my room switched off, and watched them in his car.  I was wondering what Brendan was saying to her.  I was wondering whether he was telling her he’d just given her cousin a love bite.  I wondered whether Tina had a love bite too. 

 

After the love bite, Brendan started hanging around our house a lot more.  Mum seemed to think this was because he and Tina were getting on so well.  I heard her on the phone to Auntie Susan.

          “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the one,” she’d say excitedly.  “They spend all their time together.  I know it’s the holidays, and they’re both young, but…there’s definitely something in the air.”

          And I would agree with her, silently, from behind the door, that there was definitely something in the air.

          Tina was growing bored of Brendan, that much was for certain.  He came round most afternoons, lying about in the back garden with Tina and me and Blanche, reading magazines.  He was indifferent to Mum, although she brought him Sun Burns and Mountain Altitudes, trying to find a cocktail he’d like.  Occasionally she’d mention careers and what was he planning on doing with his life.  Brendan would shrug, as if to say wasn’t it obvious.  And he’d share secret smiles with Tina, and then secret smiles with me when he thought Tina wasn’t watching.

          It was difficult to say exactly what Blanche made of Brendan’s love bite on my neck.  She touched it, with her fingers, like it was something precious, and I’d jerked away.  I wanted to show it to her.  I wanted her admiration.  Even her stupid laughter, if she could manage to understand that I’d got one over Tina.  But I didn’t want her touching.

          “Would he give one to me?”

          I tried to imagine Brendan doing to Blanche what he’d done to me.

         

Brendan liked my purple room.  He drew the purple curtains, and lay down on the purple duvet, his arms behind his head.  He was wearing beige shorts.  His T-shirt was on the floor.  Mum had taken Tina shoe shopping.  As soon as they’d left I was almost beside myself with excitement at having an hour or two alone with Brendan.  There were love bites on my breasts and neck from the few minutes we were occasionally able to spend together.  But now, I could have him all to myself.   I lay beside him on the bed, my hand trailing over his nipples.

“Do you still like Tina?” I ventured.

Brendan smirked.  “The ice maiden,” he muttered.  “The unattainable ice maiden.”

“But do you still like her though?”

I knew I sounded like a whining little girl, but I didn’t care.  After all, Brendan knew I was going to let him do anything he wanted.  He could indulge me a bit.

“Tina’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” Brendan said.

“What about me?”

“You’re not the worst.”

“Thanks a lot.”

I stared up at the cracks in my ceiling.  Bastard, I thought.  But then Brendan rolled over on top of me, and I forgot everything in the warmth of his body against mine; the scent of honeysuckle from the garden breathing into my open bedroom window, like a sweet kiss.

 

A couple of evenings later, while Tina and I were making cocktails to go with the salad my mother had prepared, Tina told me she knew about Brendan and me.

“I know what you let him do to you,” she said, whipping cream in an earthenware bowl.  “And I don’t give a shit.”

          I stopped grating the lime I was holding.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered.

          “Look Rebecca,” she went on,  “Brendan knows he can’t have me and ever since he’s been sniffing around you because he knows you’re an easy lay.”

          “No I’m not.”

          “You don’t even know where he’s been.  I just hope you’re on the pill.”

          I stared at her, the lime in my hand stinging against my flesh.  The smell of it was sharp and cruel.

          “Well, you are aren’t you?”

          I sucked in my cheeks; refused to look at her.

          “Get yourself fixed up.  I can’t imagine Brendan making a good daddy, can you?”

          “I’m not sleeping with him,” I said.  Maybe saying it out loud I could convince myself too.   

         

          Late summer, one particularly hot afternoon, Blanche and I sat out in the garden sipping ice-filled Aztec Screams, while I described what I did with Brendan.  Blanche hung on my every word, as usual.

          “Are you in love with him?” she wanted to know.

          I only had to think it over for about three seconds.  “No but I love his body.”

          “So do I.”

          She said it so quiet I almost thought I’d misheard her.  I looked at her beside me, her rippling white fat forced inside a yellow swimming costume.  Despite the unusually hot weather, she hadn’t tanned at all.

          “I didn’t know you were interested in Brendan,” I said.

          “He’s nice to me.”

          “What d’you mean?”

          “You’re not the only one.”  She sounded like she was about to cry.  I lay down on the rug; clenched my teeth.

          “And he’ll look after me.  That much I do know.” She stroked her stomach meaningfully and smiled at me.

          A lump formed in my throat.  I felt like a baby being strangled by the umbilical cord.

          “You’re so dim.”  I couldn’t help myself.  The words fell out along with a mouthful of Aztec Scream. 

          “I’m not stupid.”  Blanche sat up, as if she wanted to storm out of my back garden and home.  She glanced at her brothers in their tree house and lay down again.

          “Are you sure?” I said.

          “We did it three times and we didn’t use anything.”

          I shrugged.  “So what.  Have you missed your period?”

          “Not due on for a week.”

          “But…doesn’t Brendan know that you aren’t on the pill or anything?”

          Blanche blinked vacantly.  “He knows I went to the Family Planning Clinic with you.”

          “He’d assume you’re on the pill.  And he’ll be really pissed off when he finds out you aren’t.”

Brendan admired my efficiency when I said I was going on the pill.

          “We don’t want any accidents,” he’d smiled.

          “Blanche will go with me.”

          “Don’t expect me to,” he’d replied, and we’d laughed.  My laugh was getting a lot like Tina’s these days.  I’d prefer her figure.   

          “I don’t care what he thinks,” Blanche said, but she looked anxious.

          “Anyway, you probably aren’t,” I muttered.

          The back door opened; Tina padded out across the dry grass, and daintily lowered herself on one of the other rugs.

          “That was Brendan on the phone,” she said to me.  “He might come over this afternoon.”

          “Yeah, well, I’m not waiting around for him.”

          Tina glanced at me in surprise, sipped some of her Toucan’s Punch.

          I turned onto my front and squeezed my eyes against the white sun.  My mouth still tasted of Aztec Scream; and the heady scent of honeysuckle, dying now as September approached, was strong and sweet.