Dreaming Of The Bones

Byron’s Pool… Still in the dawnlit waters cool his ghostly lordship swims…. The night is warm and close, heavy with moisture, Nathan and Adam and Lydia wait for her in a bower among the pink-petaled mallow, they pass round a bottle of wine, a joint Lydia’s begged from a musician friend … sight, sound, and touch so sharp and intense, time stretches … Verity comes, so lovely and unfinished, the thick straight honey of her hair smells of roses … They undress her among the soft leaves, moonlight slides over her skin and she laughs at the lightness of their fingers as they caress her… Adam sings a snatch of “Till There Was You,” they collapse into hysterical giggles while Darcy watches in impatient arousal, his breath rasping in Nathan’s ear… “Come,” Darcy coaxes her, “I’ll be Rupert, you be Virginia, we’ll have a midnight swim,” and he eases her down into the dark water….

Nathan takes the rose from Lydia’s hair while Adam unfastens her sandals … her body emerges from the dress like a butterfly from a chrysalis … Nathan brushes the petals of the rose over her skin… at that moment Lydia is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, the delicate curve of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, the perfect fullness of her dark-nippled breasts … She laughs up at him as Adam kisses her toes…

A cry from the far side of the pool, faint as a night bird, a stirring of the water … Nathan lifts his head to listen, but Lydia pulls him down to meet her mouth as she begins to unbutton his shirt, he falls helplessly into the warm rushing darkness of her lips and her tongue… then with some scrap of awareness he feels Adam stand, hears him say, “Darcy?” and again, “Darcy?”

A muffled sound again, a splash, then Darcy’s voice, a high scream of panic, “I can’t find her! I can’t bloody find her!” Adam is into the water by the time Nathan stumbles to his feet and follows. The cool water fills his clothes, his strokes are heavy, the few yards an impossible distance.

Adam reaches Darcy first, disappears beneath the surface, rises gasping. “It’s like pitch!” He shakes Darcy by the shoulders. “Where did she go under? You bloody fool! Tell me!”

“There!” Darcy points. “Just there. I didn’t mean—”