The Boy From Brazil (1)

by Peacock, Sophie

  ‘Who’s this singing Suze?’

  ‘Gilberto Gil. Hear that high whoopy sound?’

  ‘That singing?’

  ‘It’s not it’s a drum. I call them the hiccup drums. They have this funny push-me, pull-you cord like a kid’s toy. It’s the sound of Brazil for me.’

  ’I think Richard might even like this.’

  The music’s bringing it all back, ‘You know, Neen, this trip really made me wonder what I’m doing with myself. Washing along on the tide of the next job, taking me wherever.’

  ‘Come on, you love it all, it’s your life.’

  ‘I’m out of work, that’s my life now.’

  ‘It’s only a glitch, it’ll all pick up again before long.’

  But do I want it to?

  Too confused in myself even to take the conversation further, I shut up and let the music take me over.

  Flitting between old friends and enemies, new friends and enemies, new lovers, old lovers. It’s the only life I know. What if I’ve been in a rut without realising it? Every set’s different, but then, oddly, always the same. A weird combination of strict rules and wild privilege. There are always the secret affairs everyone knows about and the very public affairs everyone wished they didn’t have to know about, usually amongst the actors; there are always the stupid squabbles, the picky fights and the out and out wars, all fanned and fuelled by the gossip and rumour collective that is called the catering tent. The long stretches of boredom are made bearable by funny stories, practical jokes, and idle chatter about our lives on the road we can talk about freely with each other without stupid dumb Sloanes like Tilly twittering on about name or place dropping. Could I ever exist now without it? And if so: How? Where? Do I even need to ask that question?

  CHAPTER 3

  Int. Day: Arlene's Hair & Beauty, Kentish Town High Road, London NW3

  Now, I don’t go for pain.

  I don’t do hurt.

  ‘EEEEEOWWWCH’

  So guess why I’m lying bum-naked on this horrible crumply white paper with my legs spread wide and my eyes squeezed shut?

  ‘Yeee AAAAWWWWWW aw aw aw AAAark.’

  ‘There, bum crack finish, now we do the front. Legs down a bit please.’

  I slowly lower my legs. The little plop of slightly too hot wax on my twatch pings me into action. I shift myself up onto my elbows and glare at her. The new girl. The new girl in the waxing salon.

  ‘Listen here,’ I glance at her name tag neatly pinned onto her white coat ‘Libi’.., , I keep my voice at its level, calmest best. The last thing I need is to get on the wrong side of this girl with the hot wax pot and an “access all areas” pass to my fanny, ‘Libby – would you mind me asking, how long have you been doing this?’

  ‘Five year,’ she says without a blink putting gentle pressure to my shoulders.

  ‘Now lie back please, we nearly finish.’

  I’d only booked a routine leg-wax and the usual little bikini trim - slick slick two pulls and I’m out of there. But when I saw the Brazilian advertised there was no question was there? Returning to Benj, I wanted to give him a little surprise.

  Nina thinks I’m mad. Not because I’m paying for pain here, but because I’m a natural blonde. She reckons he’s more likely to do the Brazilian equivalent of ‘doh’ when he gets down there and it could kill my whole mystique stone dead. Well, that’s something I’ll have to risk. Besides, the hair’ll grow back. Unlike my hairy nairy neurosis which has been growing by the minute.

  Yup, I’m going.

  I’m calling it my mini gap year.

  Nina and I have decided that every woman in her mid-thirties deserves one. Especially those of us who missed out when we were students, and what with all the pressures: have children and work; have children but don’t work; don’t have children and don’t work. Sod it, have loads and loads of work and loads and loads of children; don’t work and don’t, whatever you do, have children; send them to nursery, all nurseries are evil; stress is bad for you, stress is good for you….. all this assuming you’ve copped a man, of course. If you haven’t, you can add: finding a decent single man in his mid thirties in London is officially, statistically, Boris Johnson-approved-with-knobs-on NOT going to happen, so single parenting is a social necessity, versus the every child needs two parents, and getting fruity with a turkey baster surrogate is a wicked, wicked thing, argument.

  Yeah, exactly. So I’m going to Brazil.

  As Nina says, my whole life’s full of gaps anyway, so what’s one more?

  At least this one will be self-inflicted, which is a novelty, and’ll get me off the work mindset for a while. I’ll be able to see what I’m like out of London without a clip-board and a film schedule marking out my days.

  Oh, and I’ll see Benj again.

  No way am I going to kid myself. I’m no Shirley Valentine. This is more about me than him. I’m not going to get away from myself, or to find myself, and it’s not all about being in love either, or even in lust. It’s more about being in life. The film world’s an illusion, is the real world an illusion too? Can I ever fit in anywhere that

  doesn’t have false walls, clothes, light, rain, people pretending to be other people and times pretending to be other times?

  Oh, and I’ll see Benj again.

  We’ve settled into a cosy-cosy e-mail relationship. Well, all right, obsessive. I’m addicted to my phone. If a day goes by without him popping up in my In Box I panic and am up all night, logging on over and over.

  I’m not going just so I can come home again, either. The truth is, since I got home I’ve been struggling to find anything good about London revving up for Christmas at all.

  Christmas in Rio? Or another Christmas with mum and Phil? My brother’s dry insistence that Benj is a drugs courier recruitment officer and my mother’s top punt, that he’s after a European passport, only makes me more determined to prove them wrong.

  Still, it was no small decision. You’d think I’d have an advantage in this because after my dad died, my brother Phil had even more reason never to leave home. And I suppose I should be grateful he’s there keeping my mum company as he balds into his 40s, but it’s also a warped tangent to my feelings of responsibility. I’ve always been there at Christmas, if at no other time.

  They’re both happy enough but I think it’s creepy. You can’t say it’s because she’s got some funky London apartment he couldn’t bear to leave. Only my mother could have succeeded so spectacularly in finding the precise centre of nowhere in London. She lives in a place called Mitcham, a mess of roundabouts, warehouses and buddleia bushes in the south. Not quite suburb, not quite town, with all the threats of the city but none of the advantages.

  No matter how good my intentions, as soon as I get there it’s like a big, scratchy blanket comes down over my face and I can’t wait to leave again. That’s what happened when I visited a couple of weeks ago. The thought of another Christmas Day in our dingy old dining room makes me shudder. In Brazil I wanted to be in the show, in the carnival, but this, it coldly came home to me last time I went, was the truth.

  This was my show, my reality. Where I’m from. Where I Went To School. These are my people. Even if they do they conspire against me all the time. And that was when I decided I was going to go back.

  First to get my goat was Phil, droning on and on about Brazil being one big cesspit of poverty and crime (he’s always looking for things that are wrong, it must be a family trait). I shut my ears and another one of my interminable lists starts forming in my head. What would I miss? If not my flat, if not my family: Nina, Marmite (I don’t like it that much, but it’s kind of obligatory isn’t it), builder’s tea, Heat magazine, marshmallows, Lorraine Kelly, parsnips, Crunchies, cornflakes and fresh milk, Through The Keyhole, Downton Abbey, Nina, Selfridges, Cheddar and pickle sandwiches, all sweetshops, The Firkin pub on a Saturday lunchtime, Kettle crisps and olives, shepherd’s pie, fish and chips, the Sunday papers, Nina….

  Then i
t was my mother’s turn.

  ‘Don’t tell me any more, Phil. She’s back now, safe and sound. As far as we can tell.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said icily.

  She gave me one of her looks, ‘I’m only stating facts, dear.’

  ‘No you’re not, what do you mean?’

  Phil tapped his fingers on his head like he was playing the piano, and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hand.

  ‘What?’ I snapped at Phil.

  ‘Er – I think she means STDs,’ he said over-kindly.

  ‘Ahhh,’ I said super-calmly, let them finish, let them finish….

  ‘It mightn’t be a bad idea, you know, if you did, I’m not saying you did, but I know you like to keep your private life private but…’

  ‘You think I should get checked out do you?’

  ‘Well, dear, I’m only being factual, you’re more likely to die in South America than you are here.”

  ‘Yes, but you’re more likely to live first,’ I shot back. ‘Brazil’s a country larger than the USA which is full of thousands of millions of people who never get AIDs, who are never shot dead, burgled, mugged even, who go about their daily lives quite normally..’

  That was, I suppose, the first time I realised I really was going to do it. For myself, yes, but then as well, if I didn’t follow it through with Benj, I’d always be wondering. And I wanted to prove them wrong.

  YEOOOWWWW…..

  Besides. Working out if my feelings for Benj stretch beyond animal lust will be a bit more interesting than hanging round for non-existent work, doing up the bathroom or traipsing round Thailand for 3 months with a bunch of 18 yr olds boasting about beer being 2p cheaper in Bali.

  YAK..

  And if it doesn’t work out with Benj? Well, I’ve never depended on anyone else for my happiness anyway so that isn’t going to change anything.

  Ooh that’s nice! Cool baby powder, pat pat. Hmmm, suspiciously gentle, though.

  ‘Be careful, please b…’

  ‘OW!’

  ‘Huuurrrrrgghhh, arrrgh ar ar ar EAKKKKK. STOP IT! Stop STOP - NOW!’

  I thought I’d researched all this thoroughly. But somehow I’d managed to miss the crucial detail that the ‘full’ bit of ‘full Brazilian’ means what it says on the packet. That everywhere means everywhere you can imagine and moreso.

  That the pain gets worse as the procedure moved from bum to twatch to labia is prior knowledge I’d rather not have at this point.

  ‘ArrrrrrrGGHHUYPPPP.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Another drip of wax drops on the pain fizzing between my legs.

  ‘YEEEEKK,’ my legs snap together and I shoot up to sitting position.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ Arlene swings through the white slatted swing doors like a Putney cowboy.

  ‘Yeah - great!’ my nostrils flare and fill with the thick smell of her coconut and cinnamon hairspray.

  A personal visit from Arlene is part of the routine, like a maitre’d paying the table a visit, but I don’t have to be psychic to pick up she’d been hovering outside the door waiting for this – delicate – moment.

  ‘Now, you’re being careful with her aren’t you, Lib there darling,’ she pats the girl on the shoulder and turns to me,‘she’s from Brazil, you know.’

  ‘She’s doing really well.’

  ‘Open wide now please,’ Libi pushes my legs wider and covers my cunt with baby powder.

  ‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ said Arlene cheerfully before disappearing out of the door.

  ‘Nearly there. I’ll be verrrry careful now. Now, take a deep breath please.’

  Words coming from the mouth of a bikini waxer I knew only too well mean “get ready for the most painful bit of all.”

  I feel her fingers pulling back my labia, then the plop of hot warm wax on my twatch, not unpleasurable if it be known. If it weren’t for the knowledge of what was to…….

  ‘CHHHHHHHHH Awk,’ I just have time to pant feebly before the second pull.

  My shrieks turn into a kind of throaty simpering whimpering warble – probably the stage in Chinese torture chambers when the interrogators know they’ve won.

  I sit up slowly while Libby bustles around at the sink.

  ‘Don let it grow too much next time. Come back soon, it will be better for you.’

  NEXT time, she says! Haaa aaa, ha ha, I can laugh now.

  ‘Leave the unnerwear off for the rest of the day till it settles.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ I say, popping my knickers in my bag and curtly smoothing my skirt down.

  I look up at her slowly. She’s smiling back, knowingly.

  I’m feeling a tweensy surge of private, very private satisfaction down there.

  The gain of the pain grows. By the time I’m in the front shop paying the bill, a big grin is filling my face from ear to ear.

  And it gets better. I feel so randy. When I get to the tube, sit down and cross my legs, there’s this amazing feeling of my skin-smooth twat, soft as a baby’s proverbial, beneath my skirt.

  It’s a Brazilian feeling all right.

  Clean, sexy and right on stage.

  Ready for Benj.

  CHAPTER 4

  Int Night: Varig Airlines Economy Class, London Gatwick – Rio via Lisbon

  Piss, piss, PISS FUCK. It took the whole of London-Lisbon to reach a satisfactory non-verbal agreement with the man next to me about the middle arm-rest. We’d finally settled on the front bit belonging to the side of my right knee and the back two-thirds to his elbow when, just as the seatbelt signs pinged on, the bugger went and swapped places with his tank-sized wife.

  So instead of a controlled spill of surplus flesh over to my side of the armrest, I’m now threatened with 8 hours of verbal diarrhoea from a pastel pensioner. She’s already revving up for the package bargain comparison, angling to find out how much I paid for my seat.

  ‘So you’re not with Tomley’s Tours, then?

  ‘No.’

  BMA?

  ‘No.’

  Hawker Fallon?’

  I smile and shake my head. I hope in a polite, but firm, indication that I’m not into 8 hours of small talk Oh KAY??

  Her eyes dart to my fancy BA cosmetics bag tucked into my magazine net. ‘Abercrombie?’ she says hopefully.

  ‘I’m not with anyone,’ I say clippily. ‘I’m travelling alone.’

  ‘No no no, what travel company, what hotel?’ she says like she’s got such a right to know.

  ‘None. I’m visiting my boyfriend.’

  My boyfriend. It sounds weird saying it. But, that’s what he’s going to be for the next – what? 24 hours? 3 days? 3 months? Three months?

  Nina’s right. If we do last that long, I’ll have been in a sustained relationship for the first time since Zero.

  Thank God, we’re taxiing. As soon as we’re up I’ll be straight into a movie. Any movie. Even City of God’ll do.

  Her line of enquiry shifts.

  ‘So you’ve been before then?’

  I go back to nodding.

  ‘How long are you going for?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  She gives me an irritating nudge and a wink, ‘depends how it goes does it?’

  Fuck, I’ve definitely drawn the nutter on the bus card here. ‘Two months at least, long enough for Carnival anyway.’

  The engines whistle and roar and we’re pressed into the back in our seats as the plane guns it down the runway. Through the scratchy window, the lights of Lisbon airport streak to a blur.

  She’s frowning now, her peachy lower jowls wobbling with the vibrations. I let her keep the arm rest, I think she needs it more than me.

  ‘Yes, well, of course,’ she continues, in a slightly thinner voice. ‘We’re sorry to be missing that, but the prices! And it’s not till February you know… We’re going for a football match, she shakes her head and laughs to herself, ‘Bonkers, aren’t we! but it’s the only way I can get Ron on a pla
ne, and I enjoy a bit of football..…Occasionally,’ she says like she doesn’t.

  ‘You’ll love it. Maracana stadium’s one of the wonders of the world,’ I say.

  ‘Ooh have you been?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You’ve plenty of time to look around haven’t you? Three months! My you’re brave.’

  Brave or completely mad. That’s what I’ve been wondering ever since I gave my credit card number to the travel agent and got going on my To Worry list.

  Worry Number One is uppermost right now. What if he doesn’t turn up to meet me and simply disappears?

  She’s trying to suss out what I do for a living now. I’m usually straight in there with that one, boring people rigid. I’ve always loved telling people, outside the old crowd of course, about my job and I’m already feeling lost without it.

  Normally I’d be going through the film schedule now, looking at the days ahead, all neatly typed out with every hour of every day carefully charted. Checking the crew names I don’t know on the internet. Because I’m so useless at small-talk, I even plan little conversations. The first few days filming with a new crew are always on chit chat overload. So I go back over the films we worked on together, what went wrong, what went right, check how the movie went at the box office or if it went straight to DVD, check what the director’s doing now. Then I look up the reviews on rottentomatoes.com so I’m ready to applaud or commiserate as appropriate. Then I run through the cast. Most actors are good at their own continuity, a few are crap though, some play games, and children always have to be carefully watched. I like to work out what’s likely to go wrong, what’s likely to go right.

  ‘I’m a continuity girl,’ I finally give up the resistance, this is supposed to be a total break so I move on quickly. ‘But I’m taking a few months off.’

  ‘You’ve got a good job there then, if you can do that.’

  ‘It’s a first. My grown up gap year. I’ve always thought they were wasted on poverty-stricken students and Saga louts.’