‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘Drink more,’ he said.
‘No. I’ve had enough.’
‘Go on – drink more.’
She rolled her eyes and drank more. Bart could never take no for an answer. Better to get it over and done with. Once, when she was six and he seven, he’d persuaded her to eat a worm. He’d gone on about it for ages, dangling it in front of her face and coming up with a never-ending supply of reasons for why she should do such a thing, almost managing to package the idea attractively (only a very brave girl would eat a worm, only the very best, bravest, most boy-like girl would dare), and she finally accepted the challenge. The governess, Madame Choubert, a mean old toad with an entire forest of nose hair, caught her with the worm half in her mouth and slapped the back of her head to make her spit it out, slapped it hard, and all the while, Bart’s hand was over his mouth to keep the hysterical laughter from exploding out, and the governess turned to look at him like a St Bernard spotting a squirrel, and she grabbed his ear and forced him to his feet and dragged him across the garden with her almighty buttocks swishing the train of her skirt and him wriggling in pain but still laughing, his earlobe stretched like warm toffee, and the next day he’d shown her the red tear under his ear. This was a typical memory.
‘So Daddy Dearest wouldn’t relent?’ he said, taking the bottle from her.
‘No. I’m going to take another crack at him tomorrow though.’
‘Well. It is a damned good school. For a girls’ school, I mean. Unless you’d prefer to learn etiquette at Lady Foster’s Academy for Dead-Eyed Shrews.’
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But what’s the point?’
‘Education is the point.’
‘Yes, an education! Think of all the Aristotle I shall quote to impress my future husband’s family. I shall order my scullery girl in only the best Latin. And Bart – I shall write my shopping lists in iambic pentameter. Give me the rum.’
Bart had picked up a cockle shell and was twisting the hot end of his cigarette against its serrated surface, twisting it into a point, ash and sparks flying off.
‘Bart?’
‘Hmm?’
‘I said—’
‘Are you going to miss me?’ he said, a queer, thoughtful look in his eyes.
‘Miss you? Well, I should think so, a little. In the same way that one misses a boil on one’s nose after it’s been lanced.’
‘I’ll miss you. Awfully.’
Bettina looked down at the sand. She dragged her finger through it, making a spiral. She and Bart were so seldom ‘nice’ to each other. She drank from the bottle, still avoiding his eyes.
‘I always look forward to the holidays,’ he said, ‘because it means I’ll get to see you. I always think of you, at school.’ He laughed suddenly, and she glanced up, relieved. He was smiling. The lantern’s flickering light cast shadows across his face, spreading his smile in a dark and clownish fashion. ‘I love to make you squirm.’
‘Those who take pleasure in the displeasure of others are generally regarded as evil,’ she said. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I meant what I said though.’ He took her hand and laced his thin, dry fingers through hers. ‘I really did.’
She could feel her face tightening. She really should say something kind back to him, something real and true, a collection of words forming a stark, nude emotion, a collection of words like a brand-new baby. But she needn’t have worried about it, about words, because suddenly Bart was plucking his cigarette out of his mouth, stabbing it in the sand and coming for her, his face for her face, his lips for hers, a look of brave focus in his grey-green eyes, like the look of someone who resolves, finally, to enter the burning building to rescue the child, and there was no time for Bettina to decide what she should do and what she wanted to do and what she might do, because his mouth was on hers and his body upon hers, and the weight of him was pushing her back to the sand, and as his soft lips wrestled against hers and his soggy tongue found entry, two distinct thoughts uttered, voice-like, in her mind:
I’m going to get sand in my hair.
And:
I might as well try this.
His breath came out of his nose as he kissed her, a warm zephyr from each nostril, in and out. His spit was a ghastly soup of liquor, smoke and onion. He rotated his hips, pressing his groin into hers. He put his hand on her breast. On it, just on it. He did not build up to this and he did not caress it or squeeze it. Just put his hand on it. And left it there, neither loose nor clamping. She blasted laughter into his mouth, wild shocked laughter, and he pulled his head away and looked down at her, gormlessly. She brought her arm over her face, pushing her nose into the fleshy crook of her elbow and laughed hard, her body shivering under him.
He rolled off and his arm reached out piston-like for the bottle of rum.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. But the laughter was still bubbling wickedly. She wiped her eyes and stretched her cheeks down and tried to breathe. ‘Genuinely, Bart, I’m sorry.’ He was looking down at the sand with his face in shadow. ‘Please don’t be angry with me. Please don’t, Bart. I didn’t mean to laugh.’
He glanced up finally. Expressionless. He took out two cigarettes and lit them slowly, his hands shaking. He chuckled. Shook his head. Handed her a cigarette. ‘You’re going to think I’m being vengeful now, but I promise you I’m not,’ he said. ‘But this is the thing of it: I didn’t—’ He shook his head again. ‘You’ll think I’m being mean. You’ll think I’m feeling rejected and want to hurt your feelings.’
She sat up straight. ‘Well, you can’t leave it unsaid now.’
‘I promise you, my motives aren’t petty.’
‘Bloody well say it then.’
He nodded. ‘Here’s the thing. I didn’t really feel anything, Betts. I thought I’d feel something. But I didn’t. I mean – sorry to offend your delicate female sensibilities and all that, but not even half a cock-stand—’
‘Bart!’
‘I’m sorry. I thought you could handle the fact that I possess male genitalia. I’m just being honest. I felt nothing. Sweet fuck all. And look at you – you’re Aphrodite. I wonder what could be the matter with me.’
She considered this, smoking her cigarette slowly. ‘That’s all right. I didn’t feel anything either.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You’re not just saying that because you feel slighted?’
‘No! I mean, I suppose I would lie if I felt slighted, wouldn’t I? To save face. But I’m one hundred per cent not lying. I felt nothing.’
‘Save amusement?’
‘Save amusement,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘And profound embarrassment.’
He gave her a look she knew well – he was about to say something rude, something that tested her. And he did: ‘So in effect, you gave me the flop and I, in turn, turned your vagina to ice?’
‘Bart!’ She slapped the side of his head. ‘Why do you always have to take everything too far?’ She hated the v-word, and he knew it.
He was hunched over, laughing. And soon – she couldn’t help it – she was laughing too, clutching her stomach and shaking, both their glowing cigarette ends dancing under the pavilion’s dark arms.
‘I’ve never admitted this to you,’ she said, once the laughter was spent, ‘on account of your overflowing vanity, but I do think you’re handsome. Very handsome, actually. Bizarre, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe we’re too close friends, do you think?’ he said, lying down on his side, propped up with an elbow. ‘Like siblings?’
She shrugged. Bart had once had a sister. Tabitha. Bettina could still remember her, just about – a fat, ringletted little thing, very sweet, always eating. One of her earliest memories, in fact, was of standing in the Dawes’s stables, staring down at a dark-stained spot in the hay and noticing a scrap of bone with dried blood on it. From Tabitha’s skull? She’d been about to prod it with her foot when the stable hand saw what she was looking at and quickly scooped her up in his arms and took her back to the house. ‘Oh, the poor little thing just wants a sister again,’ Venetia would say, whenever Monty caught Bart sneaking in through the servants’ entrance to play with Bettina. ‘Even so, it’s a bit off, those two being so tight,’ he’d say, or something like this. As if six-year-old girls and seven-year-old boys were in the habit of eloping. Idiot.