by Fiona Mozley
Bastian finishes his coffee and gets out of bed. He takes the empty cup through to the kitchen and places it on the top shelf of the dishwasher. Then he showers, dresses, and heads to work.
He meets his dad at the office.
“I’ve ordered a car,” Tobias tells him, when he arrives.
“It’s a fifteen-minute walk, if that. Can we go on foot?”
Tobias agrees, and Bastian watches as he takes out his phone and presses an uncertain thumb on the car-service app Bastian recently downloaded for him. He taps the screen a few times, trying to cancel the vehicle he’s booked, and when the app doesn’t respond, he taps at it more forcefully.
“Damn thing,” he says.
Bastian takes the phone and does it for him, then hands back the device. He checks his own phone to make doubly sure of the best route, and notes that it’s an estimated twenty-four-minute walk, though he won’t tell his dad it’s further than he said. Tobias Elton eats too much red meat and drinks too much red wine, and he never does any exercise. Bastian worries about his health.
They set out, Bastian walking more slowly than he usually would.
“Have you given any more thought to the GDL?” Tobias asks. Bastian had been thinking vaguely about studying the law.
“A bit,” Bastian replies. “I definitely don’t want to start this coming round, but maybe the year after.”
The two men revert to silence for a bit, then Tobias says, “You know, you don’t have to do it at all. There are other roles you can take in the business, and I really don’t mind if you just use this job as a stepping stone. You can gain experience in a few different areas then move on somewhere else.”
“Yeah,” says Bastian. “I don’t know. I quite enjoy the strategy stuff. I like thinking about where and what to develop. I do like the legal bits as well, though, but it’s all quite detailed and repetitive.”
“Were you thinking of something more creative? Your mum’s the person to speak to about that.”
“Maybe. She did invite me to stay with them in New York, to see if I wanted to do something out there, but I don’t want to live with her and Jerome.”
“No,” agrees Tobias. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want that. And you’re settled in Rebecca’s flat.”
Bastian doesn’t reply to that.
Tobias continues. “I am still planning on setting you up with a property of your own, you know. When this latest batch of Soho flats is finished, Agatha Howard says she will sell me one at a favorable rate. If I put it in your name, you and Rebecca can rent it out or you can move in and rent out her place. With the income from that, and the interest from your grandfather’s trust, you should have enough stability to take some risks.”
Bastian thanks his dad. Then he says, “Is that what we’re meeting Agatha for today?”
“What? Oh, no, no. It’s all this awful business with her sisters. You see, you think I’m a glorified conveyancer, but really it’s probate I’ve had to specialize in.”
Bastian knows that Agatha Howard’s sisters have been contesting their father’s will, and suing her about various things, for years. Tobias rarely discusses the details of the dispute but he does speak about some of the people involved, particularly the three sisters: Angel, Chelsea, and Victoria.
“I do want to introduce you to Agatha, though. If you do want to stay on, you should meet her at some point.”
Bastian realizes that he knows all sorts of information about Agatha Howard’s business and her legal disputes, but he has never heard his father speak about her as a person.
“What’s she like?” he asks.
“In what sense?”
“In the sense of her personality.”
Tobias laughs.
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
“What do you mean?”
“She tries very hard,” Tobias says. Then he laughs again.
Bastian begins to laugh too, prompted by his father’s bizarre response. Bastian asks his dad what he’s getting at.
“She thinks she’s very sophisticated, much more sophisticated than her sisters. But really, they’re not so different.” Tobias glances at his son and detects that he is still confused. “They’re very showy. All of them.”
“Okay,” says Bastian, still unsure. “I’ll wait and see.”
The walk takes them through Soho, along Old Compton Street. Bastian hadn’t thought this through when he suggested they walk. There are sex shops and gay bars, and men sitting outside cafes with their arms around each other, watching passers-by. He feels suddenly alarmed that people might think he and his dad are a couple, and he momentarily tries to work out how best to outwardly present a filial relationship, before telling himself not to be so ridiculous.
Then they pass the club, and Bastian remembers the room he found upstairs with the camp beds. Bastian told his dad about what he saw that night. Bastian had expected his dad – or anyone he told—to think he’d been hallucinating, and for this reason he was reluctant to mention the incident at all. At first he just tried to forget about it. But the memory didn’t lie still, or slowly diminish. It began to breathe within him and reach around for other memories to attach itself to, like ivy between a line of trees. Bastian found the memory in unexpected places or, rather, it appeared while he was thinking about all sorts of other, unconnected things. He was in the corner shop and saw a box of rubber cleaning gloves, and he thought of the pair of marigolds the woman wore. He went shopping for camping gear and remembered the mattresses, arranged side by side. Even takeaway boxes, or a certain kind of industrial-looking carpet. And whenever he read anything on the internet about displaced people, or illegal migrants, he thought about that room.
In the end, Bastian did tell his dad. It was a couple of months ago now, and Tobias responded strangely.
“When was this?” he asked.
Bastian searched his mind for the precise date. “End of June,” he said. “I can’t be more precise than that without looking back through my texts, which I can do if you need me to.”
“No, no, I was just curious.”
“I mentioned it because I thought Agatha Howard might own the building.”
“She does.”
“And it was really weird. Do you have any idea what was going on?”
“It sounds to me like a gang of domestic staff had been put up there.”
“Right. Well, erm, that’s not usual, is it?”
“I don’t know how usual it is, but it’s certainly illegal.”
“Yeah, it didn’t seem quite right to me.”
“I’ll speak to Agatha about it when I see her next.”
That’s where the conversation ended. Bastian wonders whether that’s what his dad will be discussing with Agatha Howard today. Either way, he has a strong sense that he has discharged himself of any duty he might have had to report what he had seen, whatever it was that he had seen.
They cross over Regent Street into Mayfair, and arrive at the club before Agatha. Bastian waits in the lobby while his dad finds an appropriate table at which to greet his guest. Bastian settles himself on an uncomfortable, creaking antique chair, and gets out his phone. Glenda has messaged back.
Not free but would be lovely to see you! Going for dinner with my mate Lorenzo (you’ve met him briefly, I think) and he says he’s happy for you to come too. Meet at the Behn for a drink first and we’ll go over to the restaurant together. It is called Feast and sounds … intriguing …
She has sent him a couple of reviews and Bastian reads them. It sounds bizarre. Feast comprises one long table situated in a disused Soho theater. Everyone who comes sits on benches and eats cuts of meat from one animal that has been slow-cooked for hours. Where you sit at the table affects both the price and the cut of meat you get served. It is meant to mimic some historical custom, where your social rank determined what portion of the animal you got, and when. Instead of the determining factor being social rank, you simply pay a different pric
e. It meant you could choose to pay a lot and sit at the top of the table and eat fillet steaks, or you could pay very little and sit at the lowest end of the table and eat the cheaper cuts. The “social enterprise” part of the concept was that right at the very end, homeless people or people who used food banks can come in for a free meaty broth made from the bones.
In the Sight of God
Precious waits. There are five women in front of her in the queue for the self-service checkout machines. Two are wearing headphones, swaying to private melodies. One is reading a glossy magazine. She casts through pages of fashion tips and candid photographs of startled celebrities. Two are looking at their phones, eyes drawn by bright lights and moving images. There has been a mass shooting in America and one of the women is checking a live news feed. There are embedded videos of weeping parents and a blank-looking NRA spokesman.
Precious is holding a shopping basket laden with toothbrushes, toothpaste, soaps and fizzy bath bombs. It is her day off. She is running errands—first this, then a visit to the GP, then some downtime. Later, there will be a demonstration on the street outside the walk-up, and after that she is meeting a photojournalist who got in touch. It is the second protest they’ve staged, and the culmination of months of campaigning. Precious has doubts about the effectiveness of such activities, but they have to do something.
A group of teenagers loiters nearby. They are telling lewd jokes competitively. One of the teenagers is clearly uncomfortable with the behavior of his peers, and shuffles nervously. He throws anxious glances at Precious, as if concerned she will immediately telephone his mother. She must look like the type of person to be easily offended.
The queue progresses and Precious makes her way to a self-service machine. She scans her items one by one and places them to the side while the self-service machine calculates how much money she owes. She decides there are too many disparate items to carry safely so takes a plastic bag. The machine asks for £7.28. Precious shoves a handful of loose change into the slot without counting it, and the machine spits out the overpayment.
Outside, a cool wind skips along the street. It kicks up litter and tips out pools of the night’s rainfall from shopfront awnings. Precious unties the arms of her thin sweatshirt from around her waist and puts it on. She draws the fabric close around her body and hunches her shoulders. Summer wore itself out.
The clinic is on the next street. Precious has an appointment to see the nurse for a routine mammogram. It’s a task she resents more than she can explain, but she’s at that age, apparently. She’ll be 42 in December.
The waiting room is full, and there is a shortage of chairs. Precious has one at first then gives it to an elderly man and goes to lean against a wall next to a noticeboard displaying images of common ailments. The old man now sitting in her chair winks at her. He has spilled part of his breakfast down his shirt. Precious can see a crust of milk and dried porridge oats. He winks again. She looks the other way.
There are women with children. One young mother is trying to distract her toddler from his stomach ache with a set of wooden farmyard creatures. The cow and the sheep provide no help. The pig does a little better but the boy soon tires of the creature’s curly tail and toothy grin and his wailing resumes.
Precious recognizes a woman in the corner, but can’t place her. Her clothes are understated and elegant. She is wearing a neat, natural linen dress and a number of diamonds are positioned on her fingers, on one of her wrists, and around her neck. They are cut roughly, in the way that is currently fashionable, as if they are not diamonds at all but pieces of weathered glass found on the beach and sold at auction for thousands of pounds.
Precious is called in to see the nurse. Her name sounds rusty through the tannoy. The P pops and the “shus” rustles. Her surname is swallowed. She makes her way to the end of the waiting room and pushes through a set of heavy swing doors then follows a narrow corridor illuminated by murky skylights. The door Precious needs is the last on the right. She knocks gently then enters.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
The nurse reads Precious’s full name from her computer screen.
“Yep, that’s me.”
The room is both musty and caustic: a mixture of cleaning detergent and whatever odor the detergent was meant to expel. It smells like a wet swimming costume left overnight in a sports bag.
Precious takes off her sweatshirt, her T-shirt, her bra, and folds them on the chair. The nurse conducts the examination. Her hands are cold. She prods methodically then guides Precious toward the mammogram machine and helps her place her breasts into the opening. The process is awkward and uncomfortable.
The nurse is short with her and refuses to make eye contact. She must have read Precious’s records and made some inferences, most of which are probably accurate. There is a small, silver crucifix around her neck.
Precious used to be a Christian. She was raised within a church that was strictly evangelical, led by her stepfather, though Precious was obliged to refer to him as “Pastor.” He drove a Rolls Royce and owned a collection of Rolex watches. When Precious was little she confused the names of these luxury brands and referred to the man’s shiny gold car as a Rolex Royce. For Pastor, luxury was next to godliness. It was the rich who would inherit the earth, and entrance to heaven was something to be bought and sold. He encouraged his congregation to take as great an interest in worldly advancement as they did in matters of the immortal soul, and he promised aid in exchange for substantial donations to the church. As Precious grew up she slowly became disillusioned, although the rest of her family were well and truly duped. They fell out about it.
When the procedure is over, Precious puts her clothes back on and steps into the bright sunshine. On the way out, she sees the winking old man. It turns out he has a twitch, and was not trying to flirt at all. He has emerged from the doctor with a patch and looks considerably more distinguished.
Precious stops at the street market. There are stalls selling clothes, second-hand vinyl, cheese and chutney, and a couple of fruit and veg stalls that have been there since Precious can remember. She goes to one of them and considers buying a fresh pineapple. It would be nice to have it in the flat even if she never gets around to eating it. People buy flowers to decorate their homes, so why not fruit? She picks a pineapple from the crate and inspects it for bruises, turning it this way then that, lifting it to her nose. It smells of honey and moss. Satisfied, she passes it to the grocer. As he folds the pineapple inside the brown paper bag, she plans her lunch. She will make a curry and use the pineapple. She asks the man to wait, and she assembles more fresh ingredients: broccoli, onions, ginger, chilies. She has some specialist pastes in her fridge and spices in jars. She wants something hot. Something that will raise her heart rate and make her eyelids tingle. Something that will get her in the mood for a fight and keep her on her feet all afternoon.
She hands over each additional item, and he wraps them in brown paper bags. She pays and walks from the market to her house with two full bags of shopping in each hand. The straps draw red grooves in her fingers, and she can feel the weight pulling her elbows and wrists. Sometimes, she notices her spine curling to a slouch and corrects her posture. The action reminds her of the remonstrance of a mother, far off, and a grandmother, far off, possibly deceased.
The prospect of the protest later makes her feel uneasy. The first one, a month ago, attracted a large crowd and press attention, but Precious is worried the novelty of their cause will have worn off. For the last few days, she has checked the weather forecast regularly. She can’t imagine many people will want to come along if it rains. The Met Office has predicted sunshine with intermittent cloud cover, and the possibility of a deluge at three o’clock. The protest begins at two.
Precious looks at the sky. It is currently a bright blue, but there are storm clouds in the distance, sitting somewhere over south-west London. Hopefully there will be enough time to gather, have a bit of
a shout, get the message across, and hand out flyers before the heavens open. Most of the organization for the event was done by some enthusiastic activists who have become involved, but she still feels responsible for its success. She feels as if she has organized a party, and must now wait, done up in her best clothes, to see if anyone will come, dance, eat the finger food.
In the last few months, the question of the brothel has attracted an unexpected amount of attention. Not one but several feminist groups have taken up their cause, either in support of the sex workers or in support of the “prostituted women.” The former assortment of well-wishers campaigns in favor of them remaining in their homes and continuing to practice their trade. The latter view them as the victims of pimps, johns and, on a larger scale, the patriarchy itself, in which they and their bodies are unwittingly commodified. They tried to persuade Precious and the others not to be prostitutes, and they also colluded with the police. Tabitha went and told this lot to fuck off.
Some religious groups also tried to get involved. Although they looked different from the feminists and used different words, their aims were more or less the same: Precious and the others needed to be rescued and they were the only ones who could do it. There was also much discussion of daughters. They were all “daughters,” “our daughters,” “somebody’s daughter,” “imagine it was your daughter.” Precious has no daughters so presumably can’t pass comment.