by Kate Spicer
No one rises to the challenge because among the finance tribes supply, demand and the survival of the fittest are the guiding principle. If I were to talk about the male preference for competition and battle steering the world we live in, I’d be laughed off as a Trot. To these men, feminism is a hobby for the ladies. There’s not an ally in the house. All the creativity here is funded by capitalism in its rawest expression: the money markets. For these guys and girls, without money there is nothing. Nyet.
A new couple have joined us for Claudia’s simple ‘kitchen supper’ for 12. The wife is wearing a formal A-line dress with diamanté-buckled Manolo Blahnik mid-heel pumps. She is trying not to stare at my seedy old Green Flash with the backs trodden down. I can feel her wondering if someone like me is here, then why is she? To be honest, who really knows what she’s thinking? Imagining what she’s thinking is a form of anthropomorphism, like when I project emotions onto Wolfy. Her face, stilled by Botox and fillers, is blank save a permanent expression of terror and hauteur. I feel an irrational dislike of her.
The wine glass is glued to my lip. I might be drinking a fine £100 wine and the welcome might be warm but I feel bloody awkward, like an animal, circling, unsure and wary. Despite the invitation being for a relaxed kitchen supper, it’s a formal kind of casual in here.
This sofa Wolfy’s parked on, casually licking his bum, is sculptural and oozes across the room like a car-sized piece of molten lead: a chesterfield by way of Dalí. The dog licks his willy a couple of lacklustre times and coils himself defensively tight like a Cumberland sausage, a safe shape for the business of sleep in a strange place.
Gunther is holding forth and flirting with an American woman who describes herself as an art consultant. I’ve met her several times. She is my age but with a freakishly incredible body, like a Playboy model. I assume it’s the combined effect of her fitness and healthy eating regime and the efforts of a squadron of top cosmetic medics. She’s something to behold, perfect in every way, I stare at her like I stare at the long-limbed girls on Instagram. Some women are so magnificent to look at, it’s like they come from another planet. I almost fancy her. It’s just her face – it’s so surgically altered that it has lost all movement and character. In all this perfection, the face is screaming, ‘I hate myself! I am vulnerable’. I have never heard her utter a hint of weakness, insecurity, fear; she doesn’t moan or bitch, she is bright and positive, kind and supportive. But that face makes me want to cry.
Claudia comes through waving the heavenly white burgundy, her unusually full pouty lips pulled back over her perfect teeth. What a delightful and friendly smile. ‘More?’ These people have such good wine. I love it here. The caramelo pleasure of this 20-year-old nectar is palling just the merest touch.
‘Thank you Clauds, but I think I might move to red.’ I help myself to a glass of wine that tastes of ripe blackcurrants and pencils. God, it’s so epic. I turn to Jim, smile and wave and point at the glass with a thumbs-up and my own substandard wonky smile. I must go and kiss his arse later, I think. I want to be invited back more often.
The sight of the dog on the sofa wipes the smile off Clauds’s gorgeous face. ‘Oh, no, he needs to get off there.’
‘Of course, sorry, come on, off there. Off!’ I try to drag the dog off without his claws damaging the upholstery. I shower her in frantic apologies. ‘What a beautiful, er, a sofa, is it?’ I say. ‘Who is it by?’
I am reassured that it is from the Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which, she does not add, is like a very expensive Furniture World for people who can’t bear for anything in their house not to be art. It’s collectible, apparently, and (I google later) prices start at £100,000.
The dog slinks off, sniffing round the edge of the room, without a Woof Bed, he is trying to find his safe place.
‘This is interesting.’ I motion to a lump of clay glazed pink and mounted on a stick that I assume her youngest daughter, the dog-mauling cutie, has made at her elite society kindergarten. ‘That’s feminist,’ she says and her voice drops an octave. ‘It’s a pretty great piece isn’t it. It’s her response to the history of birth control, she’s drawn inspiration from the ambiguous heroism of the female back-street abortionists and of the cultural shame in women’s bodies.’
‘Oh. Right. Mmm.’ I nod, with an affected ponderous curiosity.
The art consultant woman joins in with an even greater enthusiasm on the feminism front than Clauds. She stands next to me, I can smell the delicious chemical fragrance of her expensive blow-dry. I become hyperaware of my thick upper arms. The skin on her arms is tightly wrapped round her muscles rather than loosely draped like mine. Forget this glazed feminist knob thingumbybob, this woman is a work of art.
‘… Everything she does plays with female ideas of remembered identity, the vagina and the clitoris, of course.’ She laughs with delight, at saying the word clitoris and joy in the art. ‘She’s all about domestic utilitarian materials that she elevates to high art. A great woman.’
‘Oh she really is, you’d love her Kate,’ adds Clauds. I wish I’d had a leg wax, a trust fund and a blow-dry. ‘She’s a riot. A ball. A great girl. You must meet her next time she’s over. We are great patrons of her work.’
With my head cocked to one side I act out a silent moment of enjoyable intellectual contemplation, hopefully. I’m fucking bored of the art already.
I take another big sip of the art in my glass and appreciate that, the structure, the dignity and as another dose of alcohol kicks in some more of my bitterness and envy fade. ‘And this piece, is it by the same artist?’ I turn towards a papier mâché puppet princess with a grotesque face, which is a naive idea of beauty with huge eyelashes and lips, slashes of dark pink on the cheeks and a tiny little button of a nose. ‘It’s a such a simple comment on the beauty standards imposed on young girls, yet it really works, such a direct impact.’ I’m getting into the swing of it now.
‘Rose made that,’ – the daughter – ‘sweet, isn’t it.’ I should have seen that one coming and now I feel a proper tit. Through the French windows I can see Wolfy perusing the herbaceous border, sniffing out the perfect spot to squirt a jet of his most precious asset, burnt gold or rather his more marker-pen-yellow urine. ‘Oops, better stop that.’ Too late, the rear leg’s up.
‘Is the dog peeing?’ Claudia asks, her mild consternation only just masked by finishing-school equanimity. ‘Oh Christ, no.’ She leaps forward, politesse forgotten. ‘If he goes there every lapdog in Knightsbridge will be pissing all over my garden on Monday. I’ve got a Kalita trunk show, those silky kaftan girls don’t go anywhere without their yappy bloody rats.’
I apologise profusely again and ask Perla the hovering housekeeper for a jug of water. ‘Sparkling or still?’
‘Tap’s fine.’
‘Oh don’t worry about it. Perla, can you wash the area down please?’ Clauds says, taking my arm. ‘Come back and talk to us.’
A new female has entered the fray. She is, I don’t know, the wife of some other guy with loadsamoney I assume. ‘It’s a big plot of land, eighty acres, but the house is too big. I told him, “please, babe, let’s just make this one cosy,”’ she is saying, ‘but he goes and gets the architect to put a nightclub in. It’s just too big, and he knows it …’
The problems of the 0.001%.
‘Kate’s a writer,’ says Clauds to the uptight woman in the Manolo pumps, who is glaring at me behind a whitened rictus smile.
‘Vogue?’ says Manolo.
‘No, I did one story for them once and apparently the editor threw it out because I’m “too grubby”.’ I’m expecting some laughs at this but everyone makes a sad face like they feel sorry for me.
It doesn’t surprise me when Manolo tells us some senior editor there is ‘a dear friend’.
I’m heading out of the merry and squiffy phase of drunkenness and towards the uncensored and sloppy and make a mental note to contain myself. The guzzling of olives and breadsticks and chunks of very
expensive Parmesan has not compensated for the lack so far of dinner. The ‘grubby’ anecdote was ill-judged, not one for this audience.
‘When are you going to write a book?’ says Clauds, brightly.
I start babbling about money, cringing as I do, because talking about money with this lot is a bit like talking about Christmas in Jeddah. They all love to talk about cutting back and not spending. But for them money problems mean not being able to hire a yacht for £200,000 a week; it’s their husbands saying they need to stop bidding on so much stuff at charity auctions, or struggling to pay their annual £150,000 wine bill at Berry Brothers, which has functioned as a Majestic for the aristocracy since 1698 and the oligarchy since 1992.
‘A lack of money has never stopped great art being made,’ says the consultant.
I paw at the lace-like smashed glass of my phone. The Virginia Woolf quote. I have to find it. Here, here it is. Taking a leaf from Gunther’s book, I raise the volume a touch: ‘“Intellectual freedom depends on material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry.”’
‘Using money as an excuse points to an underlying fear of not being enough.’ The woman in the Manolo pumps fixes me with mean flinty eyes that burn from the mask of her face.
‘That’s as may be.’ There’s a hovering silence. I can’t remember her name. I really do not like her. ‘But I still think Virginia is right.’
There’s a quiet as we all behave nicely like ladies should and draw a line under any controversy.
Manolo says, without moving a muscle on her face, ‘Where we live in Chelsea, this dog worship thing is out of hand.’ A nearly imperceptible laugh as she says, ‘When will we see the first Betty Ford Treatment Center for Dog Addiction?’
Clauds ignores this crap attempt at a joke. I think she likes me more than her. I don’t blame her.
‘Why don’t we have a little fundraiser round here one evening. You can write some of your book, and do a reading, and people can donate to you finishing it.’
‘Erm, are you joking?’ I mutter. She is not. ‘You’re very kind but I think probably there are more deserving causes than me. Another drink, anyone?’
Two of them are on neat vodka on the rocks, the slender woman’s choice. Clauds is still on the Dom Perignon – ‘so bloating but I just love the stuff.’
I move away in the direction of wine, and I hear Manolo say, ‘Clauds dear, that came across a touch patronising.’
‘I’m only trying to help,’ she says. ‘She’s always talking about how poor she is.’
I cringe while mentally rubbing my hands in glee. Charlie will absolutely love the story of a benefit being thrown for me up on the hill. This one’s gonna be a long runner. I circuit the rooms with the glass of Gevrey Chambertin stuck to my lips. No Wolfy. Where is he? I start to worry a bit and venture downstairs to the two-storey basement, where Ernie is standing in a black corridor lined with the family’s sizeable collection of Tracey Emin neons. He is holding Wolfy tightly by the nose and shaking it side to side.
‘What are you doing! Stop it. Stop!’
‘He loves it.’
‘Don’t touch him.’ I grab the dog’s collar and take him away.
I go up to Alfie’s bedroom and knock on the door. He is playing a computer game. ‘Ernie is not good with dogs.’ I tell him what happened and he says, without taking his eyes off the screen, ‘Yes, I think he was just trying to make Mummy and Daddy happy.’
Wolfy jumps on the bed. He seems happier here. ‘Can Wolfy stay here with me?’ says Alfie.
‘Yeah sure, I’ll come and get him when I leave.’
I stand up and leave the room; 20 seconds later Wolfy is hurtling down the stairs after me.
When dinner is served none of the women eat anything, just pick at a few leaves on their plates. Clauds doesn’t eat at all. Reassuringly, she is well on the way to being absolutely hammered.
After dinner Jim points to a huddle smoking Marlboros hungrily on the sofa in the garden. ‘That lot are over there are doing drugs. Appalling. Ghastly stuff.’ It’s funny hearing it coming out of Jim’s mouth. He’s disapproving but clearly his priority is being patient with the huddle in the garden.
I wonder if the huddle is sniffing coke. Quite drunk now, I have about as much willpower as the dog with a treat on his nose. Which is to say, I walk towards the huddle and greet Gunther as if he is my dearest friend.
He put his arm around my shoulder as I looked sideways up at him. ‘Got any?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he says, ‘but we want some.’
‘Could you, I don’t know, sort it?’ he says, uncomfortable with the colloquial language. ‘I’ll pay for it. He’s a big client that one’. He nods towards another in the huddle. ‘I need to keep him happy. Thank God you pitched up. I knew you’d be in the loop.’
Tarik is a local drug dealer, who just happens to be Muslim. He wears a tidy beard but his moral compass is definitely not pointing towards Mecca. His main job is delivery driver. Evenings and weekends he sells a bit of gear on the side to supplement his income.
I was walking the well-trod coffee path up Blenheim Crescent one morning when I saw him cruise by in a flash motor. He normally drove a nondescript old banger. What was this silver C-Class Merc? I gave him a wave and, when he pulled over, popped my head through the passenger-side window. On the seat below me there was a Pomeranian and a chihuahua. On the seat behind, a massive beast with a square head, panting and looking out the window.
‘What the fu—?’ A Muslim, nunchaku-carrying wideboy with two Paris Hilton yappy rats in diamanté collars riding shotgun, and a bloody great slobbering beast in the back. ‘Are these yours, Tarik?’
His wholesaler had gone down for a five stretch and now Tarik was caring for the animals because this Mr Big’s girlfriend had no clue what looking after one dog required, let alone three. Turned out Tarik knew a lot about dogs. He spent so much time describing to me the special needs of the lapdog breeds: ‘Their proper name’s companion dog, innit, and they need to be close to people, you see, the companion breeds, all the time. You can’t leave ’em too long, they’ll be traumatised.’ He moved on to the fighting breeds – ‘They just need to know who’s boss.’ He reached back and scuffled the monster in the rear seat. ‘You’re a real softy, aren’t you, Satan … It’s this one that’s the dangerous dog.’ He chuckled, tickling the black Pomeranian under its chin. ‘Eh, Tyson, you little tosser.’
In exchange for his care and expertise, he got to use Big’s car. Well, it was quite a tale and I thought I’d never get away. By the time I came up for air I had a crick in my lower back.
I punch in ‘Dog Dealer’ and Tarik’s digits come up. I do the deal by Clauds’s side door, the tradesman’s entrance, by a cupboard containing row upon row of scented candles. In the house’s past, I imagine it was for storing glasses.
Tarik and I hover there briefly to chat after Gunther has furnished the client with nosebag and directed him down to the depths of the wine cellar on the second basement floor, with instructions not to let the hosts or the staff see.
Tarik starts talking about dogs immediately. He’s got this technique he uses for flushing his dogs’ urinary tracts of any infection by getting them thirsty and then letting them gorge on a bowl of water with vitamin C powder in it. ‘It’s important to flush through their system every now and again.’
I’m not sure what to think about this. It’s weird taking dog husbandry classes from a Muslim drug dealer.
‘Tarik, you’re a Muslim, you’ve got a beard, I thought you guys weren’t allowed to touch dogs or something.’
‘Nah, it’s cool with dogs, it’s only the nutters who think they’re the devil an’ that, but the thing is if you touch them when they’re wet or if you touch their saliva then you k
now you got to wash your hands seven times after. It can get time-consuming with them three in the flat, innit’ – he laughs – ‘Washing me hands all day, aren’t I.’
For the first time that night I laugh too, out loud.
‘Thanks for the hook-up,’ he says, and then mumbles, as he always does, something about needing to get out of the game.
I mumble something in return about cleaning up. He spends a few minutes talking to Wolfy, offering up lots of pats and lecturing me on Wolfy’s beta personality, about how he’s a real one-man dog and I need to make sure I never leave him with the wrong person. Wolfy leans into him. ‘I can look after him if you like. If you ever need it. I understand dogs.’
‘Sure, yes,’ I say. ‘Look, you couldn’t give me a lift, could you, I’m too pissed to drive now.’
‘Yeah no problem, mate.’
Charlie wakes up as I clatter up the stairs.
‘And?’
‘Bit pissed, didn’t do any drugs.’
‘Well done Foxy,’ and he rolls over to sleep some more of his beloved sleep.
‘What time are you getting up?’
I ask him this a few times more and eventually a muffled answer comes. ‘Mnhix.’
Wolfy’s claws come tic-tac up the steep wooden stairs a few minutes later. Up in the eaves of our little workman’s cottage the room is hot and he’s already panting. If he jumps on the bed tonight we will all roast. I ask him to stay in his basket by the bed and he pauses, sitting there in the dark.
‘Stay Wolf. Stay.’
He collapses down in a tangle of legs and fur. I know he is looking up at me with his black marble eyes. We stare at each other in the dark for a while and then he lowers his head and closes his eyes, and so do I.
CHAPTER FOUR
If you want to be a Londoner you have to choose a point on the compass. I chose west nearly thirty years ago. I do east London, in small doses. South London? Where even is south London? And north London? Urgh. That place does my head in. ‘Oh, the Heath, Highgate, Islington. Tony Blair, Jeremy Corbyn, home of liberal intelligentsia, and oh, the schools,’ they say. Sod that.