“It wasn’t as bad as all that,” I said quietly. I thought I could be forgiven for that lie. No need to rub it in about all the tears I’d shed and my fervent wish to die of galloping consumption. “I was just … it rather hurt.…” (Okay, so that was the understatement of the century!) “It rather hurt to think you’d only been pretending all along, I mean the kisses, saying you loved me.…” I was getting embarrassed, so I stopped.
He looked, if possible, even more remorseful. “I promise you nothing like that will ever happen again.”
What exactly did he mean? I couldn’t quite make it out. “Well, now that I know, of course it wouldn’t work another time,” I said a bit more firmly. “And between you and me, it was a silly plan anyway. People in love aren’t influenced more easily than anyone else—far from it! With all those hormones churning around, you never know what they’ll do next.” I was living proof of that, after all.
“But people do things out of love that they wouldn’t do at all usually.” Gideon raised a hand as if to caress my cheek, and then he let it fall again. “If you’re in love, the other person suddenly seems more important than yourself.” If I hadn’t known better, I’d almost have thought he was about to burst into tears. “You make sacrifices … that’s probably what the count meant.”
“I don’t think the count has any idea what he’s talking about,” I said scornfully. “If you ask me, he’s not what you might call an expert on love, and as for his knowledge of the female mind, it’s … it’s pathetic!” Now kiss me; I want to know if stubble feels prickly.
A smile lit up Gideon’s face. “You could be right,” he said, taking a deep breath like when someone has had a heavy weight fall from his heart. “I’m glad we’ve cleared that up, anyway. We’ll always stay good friends, won’t we?”
What?
“Good friends?” he repeated, and suddenly my mouth felt dry. “Good friends who know they can trust and rely on each other,” he added. “It’s really important for you to trust me.”
It took a couple of seconds, but then it began to dawn on me that somewhere in this conversation, we’d branched off in different directions. What Gideon had been trying to say wasn’t “please forgive me, I love you,” but “let’s stay good friends.” And every idiot knows that those are two totally different things.
It meant that he hadn’t fallen in love with me.
It meant that Lesley and I had seen too many romantic films.
It meant …
“You bastard!” I cried. Fury, bright, hot fury was pouring through me so violently that it made my voice hoarse. “What a nerve! How dare you? One day you kiss me and say you’ve fallen in love with me; the next you say you’re sorry for telling such horrible lies—and then you want me to trust you?”
Now Gideon also realized that we’d been talking at cross purposes. The smile disappeared from his face. “Gwen—”
“Shall I tell you something? I regret every single tear I shed over you!” I was trying to shout at him, but I failed miserably. “And you needn’t imagine there were all that many of them!” I just about managed to croak.
“Gwen!” Gideon tried to take my hand. “Oh, God! I’m so sorry. I really didn’t want to … please!”
Please what? I stared angrily at him. Didn’t he notice that he was just making everything even worse? And did he think that pleading look in his eyes would change anything? I wanted to turn around, but Gideon had a firm grasp on my wrist.
“Gwen, listen to me. There are dangerous times ahead of us, and it’s important for the two of us to stand by each other. I … I really do like you very much, I want us to…”
He surely wasn’t going to say it again. Not that corny old bit about good friends. But he did exactly that.
“… be good friends. Don’t you see? Unless we can trust each other—”
I tore myself away from him. “As if I wanted to be friends with someone like you!” Now my voice was back, and it was so loud that it made the pigeons fly up from the roof. “You don’t have the faintest idea what friendship means!”
And suddenly it was dead easy. I tossed my hair back, turned on my heel, and swept away.
You’ve got to jump off cliffs—and build your wings on the way down.
RAY BRADBURY
THREE
LET’S STAY FRIENDS—I mean, that really was the end!
“What do you bet a fairy dies every time someone says that anywhere in the world?” I asked. I’d locked myself into the ladies to call Lesley on my mobile, and I was doing my best not to scream, although only half an hour after my conversation with Gideon, that’s what I still felt like doing.
“He said he wants you to be friends,” Lesley corrected me. As usual, she’d noticed every word.
“It’s exactly the same,” I said.
“No. I mean yes, maybe.” Lesley sighed. “I don’t understand. Are you sure you definitely let him finish what he was saying? Remember how in Ten Things I Hate About You—”
“I did let him finish what he was saying. Unfortunately, I’d add.” I looked at the time. “Oh, shit. I told Mr. George I’d be back in a minute.” I glanced at myself in the mirror above the old-fashioned washbasin. “Oh, shit!” I said again. There were two circular red patches on my cheeks. “I think I have some kind of allergic reaction.”
“Only caused by rage,” was Lesley’s diagnosis when I told her what I saw. “How about your eyes? Are they flashing dangerously?”
I stared at my reflection. “Yes, sort of. I look a bit like Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter. Rather threatening.”
“That sounds okay. Listen, you go out now and flash them at everyone for all you’re worth, right?”
I nodded obediently and promised to do just that.
After that phone call, I felt a bit better, even if cold water couldn’t wash away my fury or the two red spots on my cheeks.
If Mr. George had been wondering where I’d been for so long, he didn’t show it.
“Everything all right?” he asked in kindly tones. He’d been waiting for me outside the Old Refectory.
“Everything’s fine!” I glanced through the open doorway, but there was no sign of Giordano and Charlotte after all, even though I was far too late for my lesson by now. “I just had to … er, put some new rouge on.”
Mr. George smiled. Apart from the laughter lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, nothing in his round, friendly face showed that he was well over seventy. The light was reflected on his bald patch, so that his whole head reminded me of a bowl polished until it shone.
I couldn’t help it, I had to smile back. The sight of Mr. George always had a soothing effect on me. “Honestly. You rub it into your face there,” I said, pointing to my two furious red spots.
Mr. George gave me his arm. “Come along, my brave girl,” he said. “I’ve let them know that we’re going downstairs for you to elapse.”
I looked at him in surprise. “But what about Giordano and colonial policy in the eighteenth century?”
Mr. George smiled slightly. “Let’s put it this way: I used the short wait while you were in the bathroom to tell Giordano we were afraid you wouldn’t have time for his lessons today.”
Dear, good Mr. George! He was the only one of the Guardians who seemed to bother about me as a real person at all. Although maybe a little minuet dancing might have calmed me down a bit. Like the way some people work off their aggression on a punching bag. Or by going to the gym. On the other hand, I could really do without Charlotte’s supercilious smile right now.
“The chronograph is waiting,” he added.
I was happy to take Mr. George’s arm. For once, I was even looking forward to elapsing—my daily few hours of controlled travel back to the past—and not just to get away from the horrible present day that meant Gideon. Because today’s journey back in time was the key point to the master plan that Lesley had thought up with me. If it worked as we hoped.
On the way down to the depths of the huge, vaulted cellars, Mr. George and I went right through the Guardians’ headquarters. It was hard to get a clear idea of the place, which occupied several buildings. There was so much to see, even in the winding corridors, that you might easily think you were in a museum. Countless framed paintings, ancient maps, handmade tapestries, and whole collections of swords hung on the walls. China that looked valuable, leather-bound books, and old musical instruments were on display in glass-fronted cupboards, and there were any number of chests and carved wooden boxes. In other circumstances, I’d have loved to find out what was inside them.
“I don’t know much about cosmetics, but if you want to let off steam to someone about Gideon—well, I’m a good listener,” said Mr. George.
“About Gideon?” I said slowly, as if I had to stop and work out who Gideon was. “Oh, everything’s fine between Gideon and me.” So there! I punched the wall in passing. “We’re friends, nothing more. Just friends.” Unfortunately the word didn’t really come out very easily. I was kind of grinding my teeth as I said it.
“I was sixteen once myself, Gwyneth.” Mr. George’s little eyes twinkled kindly at me. “And I promise I won’t say I warned you. Even though I did—”
“I’m sure you were a really nice boy when you were sixteen.” Hard to imagine Mr. George ever cunningly deceiving someone by kissing her and saying nice things without meaning them. You only have to be in the same room and I need to touch you and kiss you. I tried to shake off the memory of the way Gideon had looked at me by treading extra firmly as I walked along. The china in the glass-fronted cupboards shook slightly, clinking.
Right. Who needs to dance a minuet to work off aggression? This would do just fine. Although smashing one of those expensive-looking vases might have had an even better effect.
Mr. George looked sideways at me for some time, but finally he just pressed my arm and sighed. We were passing suits of armor at irregular intervals, and as usual, I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was under observation.
“There’s someone inside that armor, isn’t there?” I whispered to Mr. George. “Some poor novice who can’t go to the toilet all day, right? I can tell he’s staring at us.”
“No,” said Mr. George, laughing quietly. “But there are security cameras installed behind the visors of the helmets. That’s probably why you feel you’re being watched.”
Oh. Security cameras. At least I didn’t have to feel sorry for security cameras.
When we had reached the first flight of stairs down to the vaults, it struck me that Mr. George had forgotten something. “Don’t you want to blindfold me?”
“I think we can dispense with that today,” said Mr. George. “There’s no one here to say otherwise, is there?”