Acquired Tastes

by Simone Mondesir

  Alicia finally took a deep breath. 'I'm sorry, I'm behaving like a complete idiot,' she sniffed, wiping away the last of the tears.

  Jeremy squeezed her arm, 'Not in the least, old thing, best get it out of your system.'

  Alicia risked a peep at him and then quickly hung her head so that her hair fell across her face. 'You must think I look an awful wreck.'

  Jeremy brushed her hair aside and tucked it behind her ears.

  Alicia's nose was indeed a rather unbecoming shade of pink and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.

  'I think you look absolutely fine,' he said gallantly. 'Like a …' he paused. He had never really thought of Alicia as his kind of girl, but she was really rather nice. She made him feel protective, which was the last thing Vanessa had ever done. '… like a garden after a summer shower: all dewy and fresh,' he finished triumphantly, rather pleased at his turn of phrase.

  Alicia flashed him a grateful smile. Her eyes, which Jeremy could have sworn were a kind of nondescript brown, were shot through with hints of green and gold, like sunlight in the depths of a wood.

  'If you haven't got any other plans, why don't you stay for dinner,' Alicia ventured shyly. 'I do so hate cooking just for myself.'

  Jeremy nodded eagerly. 'Vee hated cooking. She always said that if women were meant to cook, God wouldn't have invented microwaves and Marks & Spencer ready meals. I don't think she cooked a meal for us once in all the time we were married.'

  Alicia placed a sympathetic hand over his.

  'And this is such a nice little flat,' Jeremy continued looking around. 'You ought to see the room where I'm staying in Hackney. Even the cockroaches have packed their bags and left.'

  Alicia giggled, 'Surely it can't be that bad.'

  'Oh yes it is,' Jeremy said vehemently. 'I can't begin to tell you what that woman has done to me. Look at me, I've lost everything: job, family, friends. She left me with absolutely nothing, not even pride.' Jeremy's voice cracked.

  It was Alicia's turn to be the comforter. She slipped her arm around his shoulders. Jeremy buried his head between Alicia's breasts, his shoulders heaving.

  Alicia tentatively stroked his hair. It seemed to sooth him, so she continued until his breathing grew even. For the first time in what seemed like years, she felt peaceful.

  The warm sounds of a London summer's evening drifted through the window. Somewhere, someone was playing a melodious saxophone, distant traffic providing the base line, and the high clear wail of a police siren the descant. On the rickety balcony outside, two pigeons fluffed out their chests and cocked their heads from side to side as they cooed a beady-eyed serenade of love.

  Jeremy's body began to feel heavy, and there was an unpleasantly moist patch between her breasts where he was breathing, although now his deep breaths were beginning to sound like snores.

  Alicia gently shook him. 'Jeremy…' He woke with a start.

  'Good Lord! Did I fall asleep? How awfully bad mannered of me.' He rubbed his eyes and ran his hand through his hair which was rather attractively ruffled.

  'Oh, please don't worry,' Alicia said, surreptitiously trying to straighten her crumpled dress and conceal the damp patch at the same time. 'I think we're both rather sleepy. It's probably the wine.'

  Jeremy glanced at his watch; it was after ten. 'It's past my bedtime. I'd better be getting along. Perhaps we could do dinner another night,' he said wistfully.

  'Oh, but you don't have to go,' the words came out before Alicia had realised. She blushed. 'What I mean to say is that you could sleep here,' she indicated the room, 'that is, if you don't mind the floor. There are plenty of spare blankets.'

  'Anything would be better than the slog back to Hackney.'

  Alicia bustled around, finding blankets and sheets and insisting on making a light supper of Welsh Rarebit, followed by more chocolate cake and some milky cocoa to help them both sleep.

  But Jeremy did not need any assistance. As she turned at the door to bid him good night, he was already asleep, ensconced on his bed of cushions. With a whispered 'sleep well', Alicia switched off the light and quietly closed the door.

  She sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. The day had certainly not turned out the way she'd expected. She put a hand between her breasts where Jeremy's head had lain for that blissful half hour. Poor man, how could Vanessa have treated him so badly?

  Alicia reached for the zip at the back of her dress, but she couldn't pull it open past her waist, it was stuck fast. She stood up and twisted the dress round until it was back to front and tried again; the zip refused to budge. Frustrated, Alicia tried to pull the dress down over her hips, but even though she held her breath in, it wouldn't move. She tried pulling it over her head, but it refused to go over her breasts. Holding the zip with both hands, she pulled it down with all her strength. There was a loud rip and it gave way, taking part of the lining with it.

  Alicia held up the offending article. It was beyond even her needlewoman's skills to mend. Anyway, she hadn't really liked it. It made her look even fatter than she was, and she wished she'd been wearing something else today when she met Jeremy. She bundled it up and stuffed it into the bottom of the wardrobe. As she did so, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror inside the wardrobe door. It was something she normally avoided unless she was fully dressed, and then only to check that her hair was tidy and that her slip wasn't showing.

  Alicia looked despairingly at her body, encased in sensible all-enveloping white cotton pants and her old-fashioned bra, which looked like two armoured breastplates designed to repel all intruders. She bought her underwear by mail order, as she could no longer face going into a lingerie department. All those racks of frothy lace bras and tiny bikini pants made her feel absolutely wretched, especially when added to the disdainful look on the face of some seventeen-year old, bra-less shop assistant when she asked for her size.

  On one visit to the lingerie department of a big store, she had been tempted into buying a corset made of strange, stretchy material. It was very expensive but she had been feeling particularly low and the salesgirl said that it was the latest technology and would flatten and streamline all her bulges, making her look two sizes slimmer. However, it had merely displaced her bulges to other parts of her anatomy, making her body resemble a sack full of fighting cats.

  Alicia forced herself to look at her body in the mirror. She was beyond any doubt not merely overweight, but disgustingly fat. At boarding school, she had dreaded changing for games. While all the other girls flung off their clothes and ran around naked, she had huddled miserably in a corner pretending to untie her laces, waiting for everyone to go before scrambling into her games clothes. All that commotion over her large breasts had made it worse. She had felt like a freak and still did. How could any man find her attractive? It was all very well for Jeremy to say she was pretty, but he was only trying to be kind because she was so upset. He hadn't meant it.

  Alicia closed the door so she could no longer see herself, and slowly finished undressing. She pulled on a flannelette nightgown and sat on the edge of the bed to brush her hair one hundred times. She tiptoed across the hall to the bathroom, then climbed into bed, where she lay staring up at the ceiling willing herself to fall asleep.

  She heard the toilet being flushed, and wondered whether there would be enough hot water for Jeremy to take a bath in the morning. She decided to check the immersion heater.

  She tiptoed into the hall. The controls were in the kitchen which was through the sitting room. Alicia hesitated, and then knocked softly on the sitting room door. There was no answer. She gingerly pushed the door open.

  Jeremy lay curled up on the floor, his sleeping face illuminated by a pale beam of moonlight.

  Alicia sighed. Jeremy obviously hadn’t been disturbed by her restlessness. She checked the time switch on the wall. The heater was set to come on in the morning just as she had set it. She crept back to bed and lay staring at the ceiling again. Perhaps she sho
uld go on a diet starting at breakfast. If she ate only one egg - poached rather than fried - and grilled the bacon and sausages…?

  Jeremy heard the door close and opened his eyes and let out the breath he had been holding. He had been thinking about the nights when he was a child and had crept along to Nanny Greig's room and crawled in beside her. She slept on a high, old-fashioned iron bedstead which always seemed unassailable when he was small, but she kept a footstool under the bed which he could climb on. She slept, propped nearly upright by four pillows, her hair wound into tight little curls, pinned flat against her scalp with silver clips and covered by a hair net. During the day, her hair was rigidly straight beneath the starched cap she always wore, so Jeremy had decided that the nightly curls were some kind of mysterious female ritual which men were not meant to understand.

  Nanny Greig had never asked questions when he crept into her bed. She just opened her arms and clasped him to her soft, capacious bosom where he promptly fell into a blissfully happy sleep, all nightmares forgotten. Next morning he invariably woke to find himself back in his own bed. Neither he nor Nanny Greig ever mentioned his nocturnal visits, and he was pretty sure that neither of his parents knew about them either.

  Jeremy punched the scatter cushions Alicia had given him for his head, trying to make them more comfortable. Alicia smelt powdery and flowery, just like Nanny Greig.

  Unable to sleep, he scrambled to his feet and padded into the hall. He listened at the bedroom door for a moment and then slowly turned the handle. There was no sound from the bed. He tiptoed across the room, and slipping carefully beneath the bedclothes, he lay still holding his breath.

  A small hand found his and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  Fifteen

  DAY-DREAM YOUR WAY TO STARDOM.

  EROTIC FANTASIES? AMOROUS DAY DREAMS?

  TELL US AND WE'LL MAKE

  YOUR WICKEDEST WISHES COME TRUE.

  TV COMPANY SEEKS PARTICIPANTS

  FOR NEW ADULT TV SHOW.

  Vijay dropped the piece of paper in disgust and looked at Vanessa. 'You can't put this sort of thing out. We'll have every pervert in the country calling us.'

  'Calling you, you mean,' said Vanessa sardonically. 'I have already placed this advert in several newspapers and magazines, and as you are our researcher, dear little Heather has been instructed to put all calls through to you. Anyway, I would have thought it was just your sort of thing, Vijay dear. You're always carrying on about how we ought to be in touch with people on the street. Now you'll discover what real people really think about while they make widgets on some assembly line, and I bet it isn't about whether to attend their next union meeting or to campaign for a crèche in their office.'

  Vijay thrust his glasses back over the bridge of his nose, as he desperately tried to think of a response that would cut Vanessa down to size. When he first had heard that his boss was going to be a woman, he had been delighted. He'd always believed that there ought to be more women in positions of power, because they would change the whole culture of the cut-throat, aggressive world of business and make it more co-operative, more nurturing. That was until he met Vanessa. He had never met anyone quite as dictatorial, aggressive and as set on self-promotion as her. She was just like a man, only worse.

  Working for Vanessa had confused all his feminist principles and he had decided that he hated her for it. Vanessa knew, but didn't seem to care. In fact, he had a suspicion she rather liked it, which made him hate her even more.

  He fixed what he hoped was his most intimidating glare on her, and opened his mouth to speak. Just at that moment, Philip popped his head round the door.

  'I gather we're off and running,' he said cheerfully as he came into the room.

  Vijay gave him a baleful look and marched out.

  Philip watched his disappearing back and sorrowfully shook his head. 'I am forced to the conclusion that I may have made a terrible mistake hiring that young man. On a delicate project like this, we need all hands to the pump. There can be no place on the team for those who do not pull their full weight. I look to you to make sure everyone does their bit, Vanessa.'

  Vanessa smiled reassuringly and shuffled some papers around on her desk.

  'Well, of course he wouldn't have been my choice, but I'm sure Vijay has some hidden talents, and you know me, PP, I always bring out the best in people. Don't worry, I'll sort him out.'

  Philip turned to go then hesitated. He turned back. 'I do hope that it goes without saying that it's imperative that no hint of what we are planning slips out to the press, Vanessa. The tabloids would have a field day, and it might scare off the Network. I'm already going out on a financial limb by making a pilot without a commitment from them. This new Committee for Media Morality, and all the publicity in certain newspapers about the need to clean up television, is making even the big players a bit more cautious, so I feel pitching it to them at this stage could be counter-productive. However, I just know that when the Network sees the pilot they'll go for it in a big way and commission a whole series. But until that happens, I'd like to keep things under wraps. There are a lot of people out there who could get completely the wrong idea, and there's absolutely no point in us making a wonderful pilot if we can't sell the idea to the Network.'

  Vanessa casually slipped the text of the advertisement into the middle of a sheaf of papers in her in-tray so that he could not see it.

  'PP - darling - trust me. It'll be roses all the way.' She flashed him a brilliant smile. 'Now, is there anything else I can do for you?'

  'Oh, I forgot to mention it earlier, but Gabriella's in town, so if you have nothing else in your diary, perhaps you would care to join us for lunch today. I think it would be an opportunity for you two girls to get to know each other better, since you'll be working so closely together. Heather has booked a table at that new place in Dean Street, the one the Sunday Times was praising to the skies last week. We'll expect you at one.'

  It was a command, not a request.

  Outside the door, Philip decided he had handled the exchange well. Vanessa had developed a way of objecting to everything he suggested, which had begun to make him doubt his own abilities. Perhaps he needed to show who was in command more often. He twitched his cuff links and smiled broadly. Nothing - not even Vanessa - could disturb his good humour today because he was going to see Gabriella.

  By his calculation, it was at least two years since he had last seen her. She had been one of the first women to read the national television news in the Seventies and with the looks of a Fifties film starlet, she had been a publicist's dream. She soon had her own thrice-weekly chat show on prime-time television, and anyone with anything to promote in the Eighties clamoured to appear on it. Yet no matter how big the star, if they would not guarantee to appear first on the eponymous 'Gabriella!' and give her an exclusive interview about their latest film, book, marriage, spell in rehab or whatever it was they wanted to sell, they were taken off her guest list.

  For a while, Gabriella had been bigger news than some of the stars that appeared on her show, her private life providing the tabloids with endless front pages. Philip tried to warn her that the public was notoriously fickle and quickly bored, but Gabriella was past caution. If you've got it, flaunt it, had been her reply to his caution, and her trademark deep, husky voice was heard advertising everything from cat food to Caribbean cruises, while hardly a day passed without a newspaper photograph of her at a party or an opening.

  But Philip had been proved right. Like Eighties padded-shoulder glamour, Gabriella went out of fashion in England, although with the growth of satellite channels, she found new audiences in Europe. It was Philip who had encouraged her to take up a lucrative offer to live and work in Italy, where she'd been for the last six years, just as it was he who had advised her to take a chance and move from news reading to the chat show sofa, intuiting that she would have a natural feel for an audience as well as the looks and presence to fill the small screen.

  W
hen Gabriella first moved to Italy, they had kept in close touch. For the first few years, she was offered frequent guest star spots on television shows in England, while he always spent the summer in a rented villa in Tuscany, so they had seen a lot of each other. But as time passed, Gabriella slipped down the celebrity guest list rankings, and the television appearances had dried up. As for Philip, once he left the BBC, there were no more two-month-long leisurely summer holidays in Italy, with the result that they had seen a lot less of each other in recent years. So Philip's step was decidedly jaunty as he set off from the Right Pryce offices to walk to the restaurant.

  He had been even more fastidious than usual that morning in selecting what to wear. He had eventually settled on a new, dark blue suit. His tailor had talked him into the dark blue. He normally chose pale blue or grey, feeling they suggested creativity and a free spirit. But his tailor had been right. The dark blue did give him a certain gravitas, the look of a decision maker. It also made him look a trifle slimmer, he thought. Not that he had let himself go. Twenty minutes each on his rowing machine and treadmill every morning had made sure of that. The finishing touch to his outfit was the pair of engraved gold and diamond studded cuff links that Gabriella had given him ten years before. He smiled at the recollection.

  She had presented them to him during a dinner at the Savoy to celebrate her being voted most popular television personality for the third year running. The occasion had been riotous. There must have been twenty people at their table, and they all insisted on making speeches.

  Eventually Gabriella stood and thanked them all for their help and support, but it was to him she raised her glass in a toast: 'to the man without whom none of this would have been possible'.

  When she sat down, she had leaned across and pressed a small velvet box into his hand. Inside were the cuff links. They had been engraved with their initials 'PG' intertwined. He had wiped away more than one tear that night.

  Of course Gabriella was right, thought Philip. Without him she would have been nothing. She really did owe him everything, more than her public would ever know. He paused to look at his reflection in a shop window, surreptitiously patting his hair into place. Would she notice how little of it he had left?