Acquired Tastes

by Simone Mondesir

  'I like it. It has definite possibilities. A few problems too, but I definitely like it.'

  'But it's exploitative, it's worse than Page Three …' protested Vijay.

  'Since it's the workers you think so wonderful who gawp at the bare tits on Page Three during their two-hour tea-breaks, I don't see why you should object to it on television,' Vanessa taunted him.

  'I like it too,' Hugo announced suddenly. 'It has strong visual potential.'

  He leapt up and began to pace up and down, running his hands through his hair. 'Let me run this by you. Imagine a Roman orgy: mounds of writhing bodies, dancing girls, grotesque dwarves, eunuchs, muscular black slaves, naked except for golden chains, their bodies oiled and glistening. I could shoot it in the style of one of those early Hollywood epics - the stuff they used to do before the Hays lot started laying down the law. We could even go all grainy and black and white like Fellini, but using computer graphics. What do you think?”

  Philip cleared his throat again. 'I hear what you're saying, Hugo, and I don't want to rule anything out at this point in time, but I suspect we may have to think of economies of scale.' Hugo shrugged and slumped back into his chair as though exhausted by his effort.

  Philip turned to Vanessa. 'Have you given any thought to a presenter yet?'

  'I've spent a long time on that one,' Vanessa lied, 'but given the subject matter, I haven't been able to come up with anyone who has the right kind of gravitas combined with the ability to pull in audiences.'

  'I think it should be a woman,' Philip was resolute. 'If we had a man it could look like it was mere pornography, just another men's locker-room show. A woman presenter would avoid that accusation.'

  He had been thinking fast. The series would be easier to sell to the Network with a well-known name fronting it, but household names were expensive and over-protective about their images. They needed someone who was no longer a front-rank celebrity, but still well-known enough to draw audiences yet willing to take risks with their image. Most of all, they had to be cheap. There was an old friend of his …

  'It's a bit of a wild card, but how about Gabriella Wolfe?'

  'Don't say she's still alive,' drawled Hugo, 'whatever happened to her?'

  'Gabriella has her own very successful satellite chat show in Italy,' said Philip defensively.

  'Ah, so she's gone to the great TV personality graveyard in the sky,' Hugo grinned.

  'But she's so passé,' protested Vanessa. 'I think we should go for someone new and fresh.'

  'I disagree,' Hugo interrupted. 'If we're going Hollywood Babylon, then Gabriella, with all that cleavage and those eyelashes, fits the image perfectly: kitschy and trashy.'

  Philip looked pained.

  'Well, I always thought Gabriella was rather nice when she used to read the news,' Rosie ventured, 'and my mother never missed her chat show. She always used to have her supper on a tray so she could watch it.'

  'There's our audience for you,' Philip said triumphantly. 'Gabriella it is then. Now, I want a more detailed proposal by … where are we now?'

  He checked his desk calendar. 'Let's say by the beginning of next week. We've got to move fast on this one.'

  Vanessa started to protest again about Gabriella, but Philip held up his hand.

  'I have taken an executive decision Vanessa, let's just get this show on the road, shall we?'

  The meeting was over.

  Four

  Jeremy sat hunched up on Vanessa's front door step. He had been waiting for nearly three hours. He knew he was not meant to be there until six o'clock but he had nowhere else to go. He stared dully down at the suitcase and two overstuffed plastic carrier bags which threatened to spew their contents onto the pavement on the step beside him. They contained all the possessions he owned in the world. Not much for a man who would be forty this year.

  Why was he sitting here waiting for Vanessa, of all people? If anyone was to blame for his problems it was her. He had been disinherited by his father, disowned by his mother, he was unemployed, homeless and broke and all because of Vanessa.

  If only he'd married Chloe. His mother had said he should. Everyone said he should. She would have been such a suitable wife and would have done all the things that wives are meant to do, like have children and cook meals. Not like Vanessa. But if he was being absolutely honest with himself - and he liked to think he could be - that wasn’t that why he had wanted to marry Vanessa? She was different and dangerous, and his mother hadn't liked her.

  He was not a natural rebel. In fact, he rather liked things to be in their place. It made him feel comfortable. He had been quite willing to choose his wife out of the suitable girls his mother made sure he met, by inviting them to house parties or suggesting he play tennis doubles with them. He chose Chloe because she seemed fragile and he enjoyed feeling protective towards her. Most of the other girls who moved in his circle were a little too hearty for his tastes. They seemed to be able to deliver a foal, cook a five-course dinner for ten and drive a Land Rover all at the same time. Chloe had been the perfect antidote to all that until he met Vanessa.

  It had been a particularly good day for him, or so he thought at the time. It was the first day of the cricket season, and something of a grudge match against the opposing team led by that idiot Gavin. They were at school together, but he had avoided Gavin and his like-minded flashy friends who only talked about money like the plague. So it had been rather galling to discover, years later, that their respective cricket teams played in the same minor league. The competition between them was fanatical, and Jeremy had sworn revenge on Gavin after his team had won the league trophy the season before - but only because the last match was washed out. To win the first match of the new season by bowling out Gavin had made victory even sweeter.

  He had been walking back to the pavilion when he first saw Vanessa. She strode towards him like some burnished Amazon and within moments had taken command of both him and the situation.

  If only Chloe had been there that day instead of away on some cookery, or was it a flower arranging, course? And if only his mother Henrietta had not been so set against Vanessa, perhaps it would have been a brief affair - one last mad fling before he settled down to the security of marriage with dear little Chloe. But the moment Henrietta and Vanessa met, it had been war, with him as the prize. Both sides had wielded their weapons to inflict maximum damage, Henrietta using filial loyalty and Vanessa sex. Sex had won. He married Vanessa within two months of meeting her.

  He thought that everything would change after the wedding. Henrietta would accept Vanessa as his wife, babies would come along, and everyone would live happily ever after. How could he have been so wrong?

  It had never crossed his mind to ask Vanessa before they got married whether she wanted to have babies, he had taken it for granted, surely all woman wanted babies. After all, what were women for? Her refusal to have any had felt like a physical blow. It made him take a long, hard look at himself and, for the first time in his life, he realised how much he wanted some small being to look up at him and call him Daddy.

  His mother made it even worse. He would have liked to talk to her, perhaps even have received some comfort from her, but she refused to have any mention of Vanessa made in her presence and the set of her mouth said it all. She had told him so.

  Nanny Greig had been more encouraging. She suggested that he give Vanessa a little more time. According to Nanny Greig, a woman's hormones always took over.

  He had taken her advice and he had tried to be patient. Nanny Greig's predictions, like her potions for sore tummies, usually worked. They moved out of their flat in Fulham and bought a five-bedroom, three-reception house near Clapham Common. Vanessa had hated the idea at first because she considered south of the river to be foreign territory, but then she discovered how many media people lived there and agreed. Jeremy had wanted to buy the house because he thought it would make the perfect family home. He looked out at the hundred-foot garden and imagined it s
trewn with toys and echoing with the sounds of happy children. And while he patiently waited for Vanessa's hormones to do their job, it was to the garden he turned to fulfil his unspoken need to see things grow.

  At first his ambitions had been modest: a nice lawn, neat flower beds and a small patio with a barbecue for the garden parties Vanessa wanted to throw for her neighbours. He soon discovered he possessed a surprising talent for nurturing plants and as his sense of achievement grew, so did his sense of adventure. After watching a Channel 4 programme on organic gardening, he carefully disposed of all his chemical fertilisers and insecticides and made a vow to work hand in hand with Mother Nature.

  He bought a rotavator, and his carefully striped lawn disappeared under rows of lettuces, Chinese cabbages, radishes and onions, all of which grew lush and chemical free. He agonised over Big Bud Mites and Mealy Aphids, and harboured murderous intentions towards the neighbourhood cats whose unsanitary habits showed a total disregard for his prized kohlrabi.

  Being a gardener opened up a whole new world of seed catalogues, garden centres and chats across the fence with fellow enthusiasts. He even joined a local organic gardening club, which was how he met Belle.

  Belle was a guest speaker at the club. She gave a talk on the importance of gardening as an expression of feminist creativity exemplified by the efforts of Vita Sackville-West. Jeremy had not heard much of what she was saying as he was more intent on studying her.

  She was small and slim and very pretty, with dark, lustrous skin. The curve of her cheeks and the perfection of her features reminded him of sculpture, an effect emphasised by her hair, which lay flat against her head in an intricate braided design. The faint musical lilt of her voice was a legacy of her Caribbean childhood. After the lecture, Jeremy made sure he was the first to congratulate her. With a little coaxing on his part, she accepted a glass of organic wine and despite the disparity in their backgrounds, they discovered they had a lot to talk about.

  Belle lived in a housing estate in Stockwell, but did her gardening on an allotment several streets away from where Jeremy and Vanessa lived. He had taken to dropping by there at weekends to offer her vegetables and flowers from his garden, and they would sit and talk over cups of Celestial Seasonings herb tea. It was Belle's gentle but firm persuasion that had finally decided Jeremy to become a vegetarian. But while giving up flesh was one thing, getting up the courage to tell Vanessa had been another. Since by this time they rarely - if ever - sat down to a meal together, he was able to become a vegetarian without her noticing. However he knew he had to tell her sometime, but when?

  One evening, after several large glasses of organic wine, he shouted the announcement of his conversion through the bathroom door as Vanessa was getting ready to go to yet another media party.

  Just as he decided that she had not heard him and he was about to return thankfully to the kitchen, Vanessa's head wrapped in a towel appeared round the door.

  'This is some kind of a joke, isn't it?'

  'No. I've decided that on environmental and ethical grounds I must take a stand. I wish you'd think about it too Vee, I feel so much better, liberated even, since I've taken the decision.'

  Under Belle's tutelage, he had acquired some new vocabulary.

  Vanessa strode across the room, naked except for the towel on her head, her body pink and glowing from the bath. She rubbed her hair vigorously. 'Whose dumb idea is this? It sounds too idiotic even for those chinless wonders who you work with. Is it some kind of silly, schoolboy bet?'

  Jeremy perched himself on the end of the bed and tried to be patient. He wanted Vanessa to understand and perhaps even to join him. They seemed to have so little in common these days.

  'I don't think you understand Vee, killing animals for our gratification is wrong. If only you'd seen the documentary about factory farming the other night, you'd never touch another steak. Belle says … '

  Vanessa whirled round, suddenly alert. 'Belle, who's Belle?'

  'She's just someone I met at the gardening club,' Jeremy said defensively.

  'Really?' Vanessa sounded disbelieving. She stood in front of him.

  Nakedness made most people look vulnerable, but not Vanessa. Jeremy tried to avert his eyes but it was difficult.

  'Tell me more about this Belle,' she demanded.

  At that time there hadn't been anything to tell, but Vanessa did not believe him and so begun a period of questions and suspicion. Vanessa called him at work, often demanding to speak to him when he was meeting important clients just to prove he was there and not with Belle. She even prodded him awake in the middle of the night to question him about her.

  At first he had tried to keep away from Belle, but Vanessa's pitiless interrogation finally drove him to the sanctuary of the allotments and Belle's little shed, where Belle comforted him while they drank some of her surprisingly strong, home-brewed beer.

  Jeremy groaned and put his head in his hands at the memory. He had not intended to commit adultery, it just happened, and it was Vanessa's fault. She had gone on and on at him until he was almost at the point of madness.

  The unmistakeable sound of a London black cab drawing up outside Vanessa’s flat made him look through his fingers. A familiar pair of legs got out of the cab and strode towards him.

  'Well, if it isn't my long lost ex-husband,' Vanessa said mockingly.

  Jeremy struggled stiffly to his feet.

  Vanessa looked him up and down, shocked by the change in his appearance. He had lost a lot of weight, and his hair which had always been thick and floppy, now straggled long and lifeless, almost to his shoulders. The Jeremy she had known always wore Jermyn Street suits and shirts. Even at his most casual he wore cavalry twill trousers and a sports jacket. But the man standing awkwardly in front of her wore a scruffy T-shirt, filthy ripped jeans, and a pair of ancient trainers which in some past life, may have once been white.

  She indicated the bulging carrier bags at Jeremy's feet. 'This is your audition for your new career as a bag-lady, I take it?'

  Jeremy made a weak attempt at a smile. 'I'm sort of between homes at the moment.'

  Vanessa raised an eyebrow. 'Really. And to what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you?'

  'Would it be possible to speak inside?' Jeremy said, rubbing his buttocks, 'I arrived a bit early and your doorstep is a bit hard.' His jeans bagged about his thighs.

  'I'll give you five minutes and that's it, so it had better be good,' Vanessa said crisply, putting her key in the lock.

  Jeremy picked up his belongings and followed her inside.

  'Leave those in the hall,' Vanessa commanded, 'I don't want you bringing anything unpleasant into my flat.'

  Jeremy meekly put down his suitcase and bags and wiped his hands on his T-shirt, and his feet on the mat, before stepping into Vanessa's flat. He blinked and looked around. Every surface was white.

  What had once been a grand, ornately decorated drawing room had been stripped of every cornice, fireplace, dado and architectural indulgence leaving flat, featureless walls. Only the floor offered any contrast and that was made of blond beech wood. There were no books, pictures or ornaments, none of the bric-a-brac of life to give a clue to the personality of the occupier.

  Vanessa indicated a white leather sofa. Jeremy nervously wiped his hands on his T-shirt again and sat down, gingerly.

  'Well?' demanded Vanessa, sitting in a white leather armchair opposite him and crossing her long legs.

  Jeremy took a deep breath.

  'I know we're divorced,' he began.

  'Really? ' Vanessa raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. 'And whose fault is that?'

  Jeremy looked at his hands. His finger nails were filthy. He tried to hide them. 'I didn't mean…' his voice faltered.

  'Then perhaps you shouldn’t have screwed around with that woman.'

  'But I didn't, at least I hadn't. Not when you said I had, and if you hadn't been so… so… well… perhaps I might not…'

  'Are you trying to
say I was responsible for you committing adultery?' demanded Vanessa.

  Jeremy shrugged helplessly. He had never been any good at arguments.

  Vanessa relaxed back into her chair. She was enjoying herself. 'Am I to assume from your current homeless state that you are no longer living with the right-on PC little Ms Belle?' Her voice was as light as a soufflé.

  Jeremy's jaw twitched as he tried to control his emotions. 'She's found someone else,' he said at last.

  'Did I hear you right? She's found someone else.' Vanessa's voice was shrilly triumphant. 'This definitely calls for a drink.'

  She jumped to her feet and headed for the kitchen.

  Jeremy stared at the ground, misery blurring his vision. He knew he should not have called Vanessa, but he had nowhere else to go. He'd spent the last week living in a cheap hotel near King's Cross, venturing out only to buy an occasional hamburger. But the other rooms in the hotel appeared to be rented by the hour, and the grunts and squeaks coming through the paper thin walls at every hour of the day and night had prevented him from sleeping. Although he would not have thought it possible, the sound effects had succeeded in making him feel even more wretched than he already did.

  After a few days of this, he had finally got enough courage to go home and face his mother. However, when he telephoned her from a booth on King's Cross station, a contrite and repentant speech ready, his brother James had answered.

  'Jeremy old boy, how are you?' his brother boomed in a voice loud enough to hear even over the station announcements. 'We were only talking about you at dinner last night. Mother still seems a trifle upset, but I must say, whatever the old girl thinks, I rather envy you. How's the little coloured gel?'

  'She's okay, ' said Jeremy shortly, he didn’t like lying to his brother but neither did he want to explain anything to his brother. 'I was wondering James, is mother there?'