The Aftermath: Chapter Five
Wherein Hugo and Amory contemplate new beginnings...or a reassessment of the old
Chapter Five
Later that night, or very early the next morning, Amory and Hugo could be found amid the detritus of what had turned out to be a not entirely dissatisfactory but still rather inconvenient Chelsea house party. The pretense of the facemasks had long since been abandoned, social distancing a thing of the recent past. Amory reclined, sprawled across the black velvet chaise, like a femme fatale in a 1930s black-and-white film. Hugo lay on his back on the floor at Amory’s feet. Neither were drunk, nor were they entirely sober either.
“I think I’m in love,” Amory said.
“Do people still say that?” Hugo asked.
“What?”
“I mean, do people still think that?”
Amory was too blissed out to be annoyed. “I say that,” she said. “I think that. Obviously because I said it.”
“Not with me, I suppose.” No hurt or irony in his voice: more a statement of fact. “This love thing.”
“I don’t think you understand. I mean, I don’t think you understand what it’s been like for me.”
“No,” Hugo said after a pause. “I suppose I don’t.”
“I didn’t think you’d make it.”
“Or rather, you were hoping I wouldn’t make it.”
“Hmm.” How well he knew her. “There’s that.”
“I didn’t think I’d make it,” Hugo said, almost as though he was trying to make her feel better.
“Was it horrible?”
“What?”
“It. I don’t want to call it by name. Somehow a name legitimizes it.”
“It was horrible, yes. I couldn’t breathe.”
“Whatever Fitz told you, I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t actually remember.”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“I thought that’s what he wanted to talk to you about.”
“It doesn’t matter. You thought I was going to die.”
“What did he talk to you about?”
“Fitz?”
“He wasn’t too boring, was he? I think he’s boring. So full of himself.” Amory shuddered.
“No more than any of the others.”
Amory paused. “I suppose.”
“He wants to talk to me about art.”
“Yawn.”
“Actually it sounds rather intriguing. This idea he has.”
“You’ve always been more of an aesthete than me.”
“He’s invited me to supper. Once lockdown eases. And a tour of his gallery.”
“I miss the Poster Bar. Speaking of art.”
“At the RA?”
“Uh-huh.” Amory turned on her side. She let her foot dangle over the edge of the chaise, hovering just over Hugo’s head. “I’d kill for an Aperol Spritz.”
Hugo massaged her foot. He really knew her too well. She liked that about him. She liked that about them. There was, when she thought about it, a lot to like about Hugo and Amory.
“I meant to ask,” he said. “Earlier. When you said you thought you were in love.”
“Oh that.”
“I meant to ask who you thought you were in love with.”
Hugo knew every trigger spot in her foot, where all the knots were. How her toes needed a good crack…
“Clothilde,” the name lingered on her tongue.
“Fitz’s bird?”
“His appendage.”
“I didn’t know you were into that sort of thing.”
Amory closed her eyes.
“I didn’t know I was either,” she said.
“We could, you know…”
“What?”
“If you wanted to. If you thought, you know…”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t mind. At least, I don’t think I’d mind.”
“Us?” The notion had never occurred to her. “Us and…her?”
“If you’d like.”
“Would you like?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not really about me, is it? You thought I was going to die.”
“Yes, but you didn’t die.”
“No, but.”
Amory thought a moment. The idea of it. The idea of them and Clothilde.
“I didn’t think you liked it,” she said.
“What?”
“Sex.”
“I’ve never said I didn’t like it.”
“Sex with me.”
Hugo shrugged. “To new beginnings,” he said.
“Is that what this is then? A new beginning.”
“It could be.”
“Even though I’m not in love with you.”
“Amory.” Hugo let go of her foot. He sat up. They looked at each other as though seeing – really seeing – each other for the first time since he’d been released from hospital. The clarity was exciting. At least it was for Amory. She couldn’t vouch for Hugo. “It’s a new world, right?”
“I suppose.”
“We’re meant to try new things. We’ve always been in each other’s lives.”
“Since uni, yeah.”
“Which might as well be a lifetime.”
“And then some.”
“We could give it a go is all I’m saying.”
“With Clothilde?”
“With Clothilde or anyone else you like.”
“Who do you like?”
Hugo thought a moment. Amory watched him think. She liked the way he creased his forehead and the way his glasses slipped down past the bridge of his nose when he was concentrating, like when he was editing a manuscript. She thought it sexy even though intellectuals weren’t really Amory’s thing. But she thought Hugo wore the look well.
“There might be someone,” he said. He looked up at her. His brown eyes flashed a mischievous sparkle that made Amory wonder if perhaps he might fancy her. Sometimes Amory thought there would have been nothing more in all the world that she would have liked better than to be fancied by Hugo Champion. But she knew he didn’t fancy her, just as she didn’t really fancy him. Not anymore. Maybe once. Maybe once back at uni. She couldn’t remember. Ten years was a long time to be with someone who didn’t fancy you, or whom you didn’t particularly fancy.
“Fitz?” she teased, but it wasn’t really teasing because she knew the answer and what made it all the worse and all the more confusing was that she knew the answer and almost didn’t care. She let her hand dangle over the edge of the sofa until her fingertips touched the top of Hugo’s head. Her fingers lightly skimmed the surface of his hair.
“Would it bother you if I said yes?”
Amory thought. She pushed herself up so she could lean against the back of the chaise and drew her knees up under her chin. Her hair fell in front of her face, obscuring her expression from Hugo. She didn’t want him to see her while she considered the extent of how much she was or wasn’t bothered.
“Not if you said he made you happy,” she said. “If I can have Clothilde, who am I to say you can’t have Fitz?”
“But you said something happened between the two of you.”
That again. Amory wanted to sigh and groan and beg him not to bring up the subject of what might or might not have happened between her and Fitzgerald Kirkpatrick but it seemed Hugo did so without judgment so she supposed maybe it was all right after all.
In the end, what Amory said was: “It was nothing. Some Zoom thing. He likes to be looked at. End of.”
And Hugo didn’t pursue it.
“I don’t suppose you’ve given anymore thought to what I said earlier?” he asked.
Amory closed her eyes. She wished she had a cigarette or some weed. Weed would put her to sleep. Amory wanted to sleep.
“Yes,” she heard herself say as she drifted off. Her eyelids were suddenly so heavy she couldn’t stand to keep them open. “Yes, we should. Go somewhere. Anywhere you like. Anywhere but here.”
It was the only thing she could have said in the situation. And in that moment, Amory meant it too.