6Summer Loving
Chapter Three:
Regulus Black was playing hard to get, Vesper could tell and she was furious; sprawled across her bed and eyeing the ceiling with the most jaded expression, she sat there thinking what on earth had gone wrong and how she would ever face him again and more precisely what could be done to salvage their relationship that seemed to be dangling by the thread before her very eyes. Vesper's lids flickered as the smoke from her father's room stung, making her deep blue eyes overwhelmingly irritable; despite this, her thoughts stayed rigidly with Regulus and unconsciously, rather sluggishly, her fingers began moving over the parts of her clothes that he had glanced upon, clutched or simply let himself feel with the most deftest of touches, thinking that Vesper had not been aware. However, he must have known this too, with every one of these gestures, Vesper's body had tightened, warmed and released. She had known and so he must have known. The simplest of logic could be applied to Regulus and Vesper; however she had complicated things through sheer stubborn will and desire to oppose him and Vesper found that the heat of the day was to be blamed…
…On the possibly the hottest morning of June, Lola Cunningham had thought it appropriate to introduce Vesper to the Sullivans, an elite family of wizards that spent its summers in the cooler countryside before returning to London for the school year; with this agenda, she had arrived earliest at the McDonald residence, earlier than expected at least for she was also to take Vesper to the Black residence later that day as promised on the night of her birthday, but because she felt that the Sullivans had been put aside long enough, the two of them, mother and daughter should pay the Sullivans a visit before bustling over to the Blacks with Sullivan company in tow. Remarkable was the only word appropriate for Lola's haphazard planning, Vesper believed.
Vesper could hardly breathe in the heat of the day and woke up disgusted with the heavy perspiration that had collected at the base of her neck near her shoulders. However, having overheard Lola and Victor arguing over the quickie trip to the Sullivans, she gathered as much that her mother had altered plans and that she was to see another family before trotting on over to the Blacks to do their bidding, so she rolled out of bed and trudged to the bathroom to shower and dress. She knew exactly what she was wearing for she wanted to please her mother as well as stay easy-breezy comfortable.
Sliding her hands through her wet hair Vesper turned to look at the mirror inquisitively, her mouth in a perfect pucker and she grimaced, reaching delicately for her lips; torn to shreds with her incessant and habitual chewing and though she had never been concerned with her raw lips before, London strove and tormented her to be perfect. Licking them, she leaned into the mirror and puckered them once more to see the tiny wounds. Vesper then shook her head, making a smart resolve to coat them in honey.
"Vesper your breakfast is ready."
"Oh I'm not eating this morning, I feel fat."
"Don't be ridiculous, Toffee. You look beautiful."
This small odd interchange with Victor and George was what Vesper experienced some mornings when Victor tried to enforce an idea and failed miserably because Vesper failed to comply, followed by a tactful interjection by George to coax Vesper to do exactly as Victor wanted her to before George planted a kiss on the top of Vesper's head, cooling all early morning tensions. Vesper smiled lightly to herself as she bit into her marmalade toast, having been reminded of the harmony that the order of things seemed to fall into with George's presence. She shuddered to think what this morning would have been like if Victor had stayed faithful to Lola and George would never have been there to understand Vesper. She didn't know it then but she was soon to see the image to match the thought, just in a matter of moments.
Lola sat stiffened across Vesper, eyeing Auntie Eileen with the most deathly of glares and Auntie Eileen was only too happy to return it with an aggrieved scowl. "You look lovely today Vesper!" Lola suddenly turned her attentions to her daughter with a brightened face. "Lavender floral on delicate white sheer? It looks absolutely fetching my dear!"
Vesper managed a wider smile than she had scarcely allowed herself since coming to London and this she shared with her mother before exchanging knowing glances with George to whom she quickly asked, before she forgot, whether he would hand her the honey bottle. Squirting some on her finger, she at once layered her lips, much to Lola's perplexity. "Darling what on earth are you up to?" She spoke with a restraint unsure giggle.
"Yes, what is that?" Victor asked with narrowed eyes, "I hope you don't plan to kiss this boy, what's his name? Regulus? Yes I hope you're not hoping for one of- (clearing his throat)…that, do you-are you?" He finished bumbling nearly but quite stern in the face and voice and Vesper shook her head.
"No, not at all." She replied in the negative. He scowled, unconvinced and though Vesper was somewhat unaccustomed to his fatherly side, she sighed and decided to go along with it, continuing in one big exasperated breath, "My lips look atrocious compared to your Harper Paisleys of the world!…So I need to stop shredding them every spare moment I've got with them." Her last note was of conviction and deliberation.
Victor's face softened somewhat but remained steely overall, "Oh that's right…you hate the taste of honey…"
Lola scribbled that into her notebook aptly entitled; Things That I Need To Remember about My Dear Lovely Little Vesper.
Orchards smelling of roses without a single bloom, sweet vine scents and apple tree oaks were some of the various enchantments that Vesper was aching to see as Lola continued to describe the luxury and extravagance of the Sullivans but what most took her into a delirium was the little known fact that the Sullivans owned a lake and the adjoining land a kilometer north from the main household, shrouded completely and hidden behind the thick fulsome vegetation of the countryside. Vesper was an avid swimmer and it had pained her to learn that her house in London did not have a pool to splash about in; neither did the Sullivans but their lake was better than a swimming pool, inartificial, integrative with the environment and naturally placid and cool and though the Sullivans owned some of the most extraordinary estates in the country, they were quite generous enough to allow the public to see and stall about though Vesper and Lola were not 'public'. They were elite and connected.
The Sullivans consisted of firstly the father, Julian Sullivan, a grave-mien businessman who was also an avid collector of muggle automobiles, sports-cars they were called, and the earliest concoctioner of a breakthrough potion called Bis Morgen de Laet which allowed the consumer to look a day into the future; upon this breakthrough he had furthered his success with fantastical deals and such so he was quite intelligent and successful. The second of the Sullivans was a son of thirteen called Mickey, derived from Michael and he was a young inexperienced lad with strawberry blonde hair and eyes a deep blue, perhaps the most misunderstood and temperamental young boy Vesper had ever met and though she was recoiling with every steely glare he threw at her, she felt the deepest sorrow for him for no known reason. Julian was a little more becoming as Lola introduced her to them in their family room; he seemed puzzled at first, exchanging glances with an encouraging Lola who smiled easefully and so he hesitantly got up from his chair, a tall man, and stooped to shake Vesper's hand with a polite smile and said, "How do you do?"
"Perfectly, how are you?" Vesper could feel a little girl's crush settling in as a small timid but charmed smile crept on to her face. Julian's face opened up a little more and his smile widened as he replied that he was in the best of health.
"Vesper, why-why don't you sit down and speak to me for a bit…? Mickey's not feeling too good this morning…" Julian said with a check at his son from the corner of his eyes and Vesper was happy to oblige, the pit of her stomach warming; though as she too took a quick glance at Mickey, Lola's hand was firmly gripping his shoulder and she was whispering something to him in soothing tones. Again, Vesper's stomach warmed; Lola looked remarkably homely with Mickey, nothing like the outrageous and gregarious mothering she subjected Vesper to; here, she was soft, delicate and subtle. Exactly what Vesper wanted from her. With heavy lids, Vesper turned back to Julian. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"
Vesper talked to Julian about her life in France and how different it was from life in London and she seemed to catch that though he was interested and that he had a deep understanding of what she was speaking of, his mind was drifting elsewhere; he seemed troubled too, a quick glance at Mickey a regular feature of their conversation. Lola joined in too, very happily though a very different euphoria than what she usually exhibited; she was so suddenly refined and Vesper, usually on edge with Lola in fear that her mother might say something infinitely inappropriate, was at ease with herself. There were no knots in her stomach, no pains and she even laughed with them. Mickey joined in too, slowly but eventually, at which point Julian was relieved and turned his full attention back to Vesper and as they laughed at a joke that Mickey unwittingly made, Vesper looked at Julian but he was looking at Lola and she at him; a silent moment shared between the two that shattered Vesper, but in a good way, in a way that made her happier and stronger. Were Lola and Julian secret lovers? Did she want to be Mrs. Sullivan and mother Mickey? Mrs. Sullivan, Vesper presumed, was dead for neither of the three made any reference to her and so silently vowed to help the match to be together.
"Excuse your mother and I, please Vesper." Julian said with an apologetic smile as he took Lola's hand and helped her to her feet. "She and I have something momentous to discuss…we'll be upstairs…"
"Of course…" Vesper replied and the two left the room. Mickey was suddenly quite uncomfortable.
"What about you, your father told me you weren't quite feeling yourself this morning?" Vesper commenced before even she felt awkward.
"No, but I feel much better now…" He replied timidly.
"Really? Well that's very well, I should have been very bored talking to those two all day."
Mickey smiled, "Are you coming with us to see the Blacks this afternoon?"
"Yes, I was invited to by their eldest son and I don't think I could refuse, though I do want to."
Mickey frowned, "is it that you fancy him?"
Vesper nearly laughed, "No...I don't think so..."
However Mickey look troubled for a moment, as if within an internal struggle of some sort. Vesper frowned, "Why do you look like that, what's the matter?"
"Oh nothing, really…it's just…the Blacks, they have another son, Sirius..."
"So?"
"He's good friend of mine, a bit of an ass sometimes but on the whole, he's alright and he's just…says that Regulus is not…"
"Regulus is not what?" inquired Vesper.
"No, I don't think...I mean, you'll be meeting Sirius anyway, maybe you could...y'know," Mickey shrugged, glanced at her and settled with the following, "talk to him about Regulus..."
"Are you sure that it's not something you could tell me?" Vesper continued skeptically with an amused air, intrigued but before she could insist any further, from the corner of her eye, she had seen something shift across the open doorway and her curiosity burgeoned forward as light footsteps echoed across the floor, fading into the thin corridor. "Mickey, is anybody else in the house? Beyond the elfs and such?"
"No, nobody else is supposed to be…" he shrugged and then snapped his fingers, "ah, but you know what? It's probably…"
Vesper though wasn't listening anymore and she never caught the name of whom Mickey thought was most probable to be roaming the corridors but Vesper could not mistake those glistening grey eyes for anyone else's, those eyes that had so keenly looked upon her in her library on the night of her birthday party. She was irritated beyond red hot hell with them and would certainly not lose an opportunity to catch them; leaving Mickey, she surged forward out of the doors of the family room and into the corridors, slowly foot-stepping her way to wherever she believed his had taken him. However, somewhere along the way she began feeling quite silly with herself and was about to turn back and return to Mickey with a sheepish smile but then she heard voices.
"-just what the fuck was this, please just try and explain to me what you're trying to do with us?"
Vesper had stumbled upon Julian and Lola in her search for Grey Eyes. The speaker was Julian and Vesper nearly shook hearing him speak with such passion and vigor and instantaneously her mind began to indulge its own fantasies; were Lola and Julian confessing their love for each other? Why did he sound so pained? Had Lola hurt him? Vesper's heart was beating too fast for her to stand still but she was too excited to interrupt the moment by creating some sound such as a sigh or a step or even the rustling of her clothes; she was absolutely transfixed.
"Julian, she's my daughter and I wanted her to meet you and Mickey!"
So Julian was the one who wasn't having any of it; Vesper was suddenly enraged.
"And I would have loved to meet her! I did want to meet her! Mickey was just confused, he would have liked to meet her too, but eventually, not-! And Lola, she's a sweet little girl, honest to God, Lola! But springing her on us like this was the worst you could have done for us and for her!"
"Mickey didn't want to meet her so I thought that this was probably the best way! Julian-!"
"And you haven't even really told her who we really are-!"
"Vesper?"
For a moment Vesper thought she had been caught out in the midst of Lola and Julian's tumultuous love-confession-cum-dramatic spectacle and an apology was just upon the tip of her tongue but she realized that her name had neither been called by Lola nor Julian. Spinning on her satin feet to expose this new speaker, she whipped across and in the dark corridor, before her stood The Boy from the Library. The lovely Grey Eyes.
There was something the matter with the men of England that day, Vesper had decided later on, something dreadfully wrong for they were all impassioned, grim and romantic in the realistic poetic sense of the word, i.e. troubled, thoughtful and highly out of character or varying from it slightly. It had been her father in the morning, Julian a moment ago and Grey Eyes just now. For a moment she forgot that she was angry, or at least irritated with him for he looked puzzled and somewhat dismal, pitying as it were, with his furrowed black eyebrows, sad, sad grey eyes and tense mouth. He even hung before her not straight and looming as before but crestfallen and quite free and his head was tilted as if examining her expression just as she was examining his, trying to learn what to make of it. Again he spoke, his eyes wandering and sleepy and his voice was slow, well-paced and just slightly toned, "Vesper, what are you doing?"
"What are you doing?" She hissed back, "Do you stalk about in everybody's houses or is it just the ones that I visit?"
His disarming frown was replaced briefly by a sullen smile, "I was invited here."
Vesper cocked an eyebrow.
They had nothing to say to each other after that; Vesper was angry with him and from his posture and expression, he seemed to be pitying her, much to her dismay for she did not know how to act when one was being pitied and though she absolutely loathed being the centre of someone's sorrow, she was quite unaware of what the standard reaction was to be. After a few seconds of simply gazing at her and she at him, angrily rather, he lowered his head and her anger vanished with that came her curiosity, once again in full flood. Grey Eyes lifted his head, peering within the room and she frowned. "What's wrong?"
Though she did not give him the time to answer for she realized everything was as silent as a slaughterhouse; looking over her shoulder, she turned back to the room Lola and Julian had occupied and slowly crept to it, looking within via the thin crack between the open doors from whence some light flooded into the corridor and once more something shattered in Vesper though she did not know whether the feeling was for the better or worse. She felt like she knew deep inside of her why but that her conscious would not allow her to swallow it. What she saw was Lola and Julian completely entangled, making love as it were and Vesper's mouth went dry; the reason her head spun was unknown to her because this was what she wanted all the while that she had been here but as Grey Eyes crept up beside her, leaned in and whispered to her, that was all that had been needed to clarify everything.
"Vesper…" Grey Eyes whispered, "Julian is her husband and Lola is his wife."