The Intimates Read Online Free PDF Page A

be entirely unconstructive.”
    “They don't want us to do well, do they? My mother wouldn't even let me be an actress. It scared her that I was so literate; she couldn't get her head around it. She says she was just concerned that showbiz would chew me up and spit me out, but I know now she was just so scared that I might make a success of it. She talks about the world of cinema as if it's a conquest. A past lover, clamouring to get back in through the window. But the truth is, once she fell pregnant with my brother and I, the offers dried up. Straight away. Her appeal was as an untarnished, sexy girl-next-door. The idea of her having a family clashed too much with her image. Her window of opportunity passed… thanks to me and him.”
    I watch Barbara pulling her dress behind her, sticking her breasts out over the balcony as Franz chases her. She is laughing uproariously, as though thoroughly enjoying a man giving her his undivided attention. “Francoise wants us to play some party games later, which will doubtless involve a little acting. Did you see my mother's eyes light up when she suggested it? She'll play every part as if it's the title role in Some Like It Hot . We'll see more of her cleavage than is strictly necessary throughout it, and she'll embarrass me. I promise you, all of those things will happen.”
    I pause for a second, as both of us watch the grim flirtation between Franz and her mother play out.
    “Do you ever feel like she gives you a hard time for just being born?” I whisper, half-hoping my words will be drowned out by Barbara's laughter.
    “Yes. Ye s . Even now. ‘An actress' figure cannot endure childbirth,' she says. ‘My time ended the moment I had you both.'” Georgina hisses the words, her voice a prissy caricature of her mother's. “She doesn't even mention my brother; we barely ever talk about him anymore.”
    “He died just after you were both born, didn't he?”
    “Yes. But it's as if he never happened. She wasn't ready to be a mother, and didn't want to be, and he died weeks after coming into the world. His death was just the first barrier between me and her.”
    “I'm sorry,” I say. “Relationships with parents are almost always difficult.”
    She nods her agreement. “What about your father? Does he ever support your writing?”
    I quote his comments on my last piece precisely. It surprises me how exact the memory of insult is. The tone, the inflections, the emphases. Georgina laughs sympathetically, throwing her hair back – which in my memory splays over the light from the lamp behind her. It stays there like a snapshot, the fine gossamers layered against the canvas of the rich, dark sky. When the sensations from that moment have settled I look back at her, clutching a cocktail to her chest, her head bowed as she watches Franz circle her mother. “Don't stand here watching them,” I admonish. “Do you remember the summer house down in Francoise's garden?” My words tear her from her preoccupation for a second and she smiles, as if arrested by the arrival of comforting memory.
    “Do you think it is still there?” she asks, a little guiltily. “Let's find out.”
    As I walk deeper into the garden, I remember how Georgina and I had been the first to arrive at The Fountains that afternoon. The two of us had stayed out on that lawn for as long as we could, until Francoise drew us inside, away from the fading heat.
    It had felt good that afternoon to leave my usual routine. As I walked onto the sunlit lawn of The Fountains I felt as if I had entered a sanctuary. Though I usually felt taunted by uncertainty, here it no longer seemed pertinent. To reside in that house for one evening made me believe it inevitable that one day all my ambitions would be fulfilled; that my time outside The Fountains was a mere testing ground. It seemed I had returned home, to a place where all the usual questions were now irrelevant.
    Seeing Francoise reclining on the lawn, sipping a glass