Sally Read Free Page A

makes my day. Is so very beautiful. In you I see the English Rosa. If I was Shake His Speare, I write a play for you. You are foods for my ’eart and a vision for my eyes. Is so very lovely. I am breaking open for your smile of pretty innocence.’
    Hand pressed with conviction against his heart, he kissed up at the sky as if imploring the gods to grant his wish. Sally was flattered to the hilt. Cocking her head, she gave him the smile to make his day, a wink too, and a tip which far exceeded her previously uniform ten per cent.
    Not quite
, thought Sally as she strolled away home,
but thank you anyway
. She threw back her head and grinned hugely at the near-dark sky.
Actually, the smile that has made your day is not that of an innocent English Rose, but is rather the glow of a well-laid woman.

THREE
    â€˜F oxy Lady!’
    Jimi Hendrix’s chocolate voice, the aggressive twang and slice of his guitar, rings out and reverberates off the walls. The music is loud and frantic. It adds action and life to the room.
    There is little furniture but what there is has, undoubtedly, the British Design Council seal of approval. The run of the floorboards, interrupted only occasionally by a piece of carefully chosen, intelligently placed furniture, leads the eye to the fireplace above which an Alexander Calder gouache explodes colour and shape on to the intensely white wall. The low coffee table is a sleek construction in burnished steel and tinted glass. It supports a matt black vase stuffed with emphatically upright tulips; white, waxy but not real. On a diagonal to the table’s edge is a copy of Warhol’s
Diaries
. Along one wall stands an ash and glass cabinet. Understated and stunning, the carpentry is exquisite. It is filled with books meticulously organized into a personal library system. Pride of place is given to the leather-bound volumes: Shakespeare, Donne, Fielding, the
Complete Oxford Dictionary
, the
Dictionary of Quotations
. On the shelf above are art books, epic tomes and sumptuous catalogues: Mantegna, Vermeer, Cézanne and Poussin. The shelves below carry novels, all hardback, all standing proud in alphabetical order: Bellow, Heller, Kafka, Marquez, Nabokov, Pasternak, Seth.
    On one side of the fireplace, a fabulous Conran standard lamp stands to attention while on the other side is the CD system, a veritable piece of sculpture in itself; wafer-thin, subtle Scandinavian lines, matt black, obviously. On custom-built shelves (oak and chrome) are enough CDs to open a shop. They are categorized, of course; the concise rock section alphabetically, the comprehensive classical section chronologically: Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, Schoenberg, Bartok, Tippett. And yet it is Mr Hendrix who somewhat anomalously fills this unnervingly chic room in Notting Hill with sound.
    Can you guess where we are? It is still the day of the Big B. and, a few miles away, Sally has just arrived home, where she is presently dancing Giselle in the devoré skirt and nothing else. Physically, she may be some distance from Jimi and the Calder and the tulips; however, the memory of her is very much here, clear and current in the mind of this flat’s occupant, evoked by Mr Hendrix’s beast of chase. It is time for the Rodin to assume his true identity.
    Would Richard Stonehill please stand up?
    Look there! Against the long sash window, framed movie-like by imperceptibly breezing muslin drapes. That’s him, resting his brow against his outstretched arm against the window. Turn around – oh, just look! Six foot two and-a-bit, perfectly carved and gorgeously chiselled. Now this
is
the stuff of Levi jeans commercials. Hair the colour of the sand at Rosilli Bay where his childhood was spent, Richard’s skin boasts the health, vitality and natural tan of someone who lived long in the care and goodness of Welsh sea air. His eyes are the most extraordinary dark violet, his teeth are very good,