by Kathy Lette
Jazz rode to my social rescue with a call to dinner, and even though Studz had not yet arrived, we filed into the ornate dining room where the elite male intellectuals jockeyed for position next to the Pop Princess. As we devoured the eggplant soup and pimento coulis, the human rights lawyer once imprisoned in Burma, the journalist from Chile who’d written about his torture, and the poet still living under a Fatwa all began to compete to see who had been the most heroic and self-sacrificing, who had received the most death threats. ‘The reward for sticking one’s head above the political parapet,’ sighed the Pulitzer-winning journalist. It was the intellectual version of comparing penis sizes. Basically these pacifists would have killed for a Nobel Peace Prize.
I myself had never got close to active combat, unless you counted the supermarket check-out queue. How inadequate not to be on a hit list, or to have my phone tapped. Mind you, if I want terror I just attend my son’s parent-teacher night.
Oblivious to the men’s posturing, the Pop Princess jabbered on about tofu face creams, while we wives rolled our eyes, sharing a silent laugh at the girl’s inanity and the men’s vanity.
Jazz, the hands-on-hostess, was carting platters of vegetables to the table. She paused by my chair as a mildewed political activist talked of his brutal imprisonment in South Africa. ‘Truth be known,’ she murmured in my ear, ‘his only experience of real pain was when a BBC interviewer asked him if he was tortured by the guilt of inherited wealth.’
I glanced in his direction. Not only was this Oxford Mandarin an antediluvian, but he had the kind of face which would frighten a gargoyle. ‘Don’t mock. Some day his looks will go,’ I whispered back to Jazz.
Giggles were rising up in us like champagne bubbles. Men are so egotistical they never think they’re too old for a girl – not even when they lose their dentures during oral sex.
The lawyers, heads down, chins tucked into their other chins, were now competing to see who did the most pro bono work. Jazz confided to me that she was only pro Bono if he was headlining a concert. It was like watching a room of flat-chested women fighting over a 36C cup bra.
Hannah, Jazz and I were crossing our legs and biting our lips to contain our glee. Good girlfriends have an emotional patois only they can understand. We can speak fluently to each other without using words. I was just pondering how much easier it would be if men had antlers (perhaps then they would at least stop driving those stupid cars), when David Studlands swept into the room and eclipsed every one of them.
The all-over tan, the tailored teeth, the coronet of luxuriant greying hair, his bouffant was so distinguished there was talk of giving it its own knighthood, the freshly laundered silk shirts and racy Paul Smith cufflinks – he commanded respect. When Jazz rose to greet her husband, the air around her lit up with love.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said briskly. ‘Urgent meeting with the PM on our AIDS funding in Uganda.’ Studz was so in demand, so over-scheduled, so heroic – always coming straight from scaling the cliff-face of fundraising for torture victims or something equally important – that he was also invariably forgiven, fussed over, indulged.
Studz flashed his dashing smile – the smile of a gambler who only plays for dangerously high stakes. When he spoke, the room became illuminated by his eloquence. As he expounded on his latest project in the Sudan, praising the Pop Princess for her contribution to the health of underprivileged children, with amusing little asides and witty, self-deprecating remarks, managing to flatter every single person present by referring fleetingly to their own unique and selfless qualities, Jazz just smiled fondly and went to the kitchen to fetch the main course.
A steaming vat of her famous osso bucco appeared, complemented by leeks and red beet essence. As the guests marvelled greedily, Jazz started to relax. It was the first time I’d seen her laughing and joking since her mother died. And there was still no mention of the dreaded C word. I was just breathing a sigh of relief when the Pop Princess bayoneted a piece of veal on her fork and held it aloft as though it were a medical experiment gone wrong.
‘I doan eat meat. It gives ya colon cancer, yer know,’ she drawled.
Jazz jumped as if something had bitten her. Hannah and I locked eyes in dismay. I thought now would be a good time for Rory to hold forth on the mating habits of the Giant Squid, but it was a difficult concept to communicate to him using only sign language.
‘Have some wine,’ Hannah offered in an effort to derail the Pop Princess. The smiles of the other guests, aware that Jazz had just lost her mother to cancer, seemed spackled on as we all telepathically begged her to shut the hell up.
‘Them preservatives they use in wine are carcinogenic too,’ Kinkee lectured. Perhaps it was an opportune moment to tell her that she’d left the price tag on her tits.
The skin on Jasmine’s smooth cheek tic-ed. All night there’d been an ocean of chatter, eddying around the table, but we were now conversationally becalmed. The dinner party suddenly seemed to have been going on longer than the war in Iraq – and we were only on the main course.
‘Worrying will give you wrinkles,’ I cajoled, but the Pop Princess shot me a censorious look.
‘You should be like really, really, really like worried. I mean, what’s that shit in your hair? Chemicals?’
‘Sure is. You could nuke al Qaeda terrorist cells with this stuff.’
‘Ohmygod. That will definitely give you cancer.’
Jasmine’s eyebrows quirked as though she were about to cry.
The screech of Rory’s mobile relieved the suffocating silence. No doubt some hamster-related emergency.
‘Oh, you use a cellphone? I don’t,’ said the actress self-righteously as my husband rushed off to assist some lemming to suicide or something equally ‘urgent’. ‘Not any more, anyways. Because—’
‘Yes, yes, it’s carcinogenic,’ snapped Hannah.
‘I think too much, doan I? That’s my trouble,’ the Pop Princess giggled.
The men nodded in eager agreement. Could have fooled me. I would have guessed that her ambition was to be a contestant on Big Brother – only she didn’t have the IQ.
As the Pop Princess rabbited on about the cancerous tumours caused by mobile-phone masts, Jazz kept looking at her lap. And Hannah kept gesturing helplessly at me, to which I responded with my own social SOS hand signals. There was so much semaphore going on around that table we could have landed an aeroplane.
What topic could I raise that would divert her? I racked my brain. A barbed comment utilizing the F word would cover things nicely. What did people normally talk about at London dinner parties? School league tables, foreign policy, remortgaging. The one time I actually wanted them to discuss how much they’d paid for their houses and how much more they’re worth today, what did I get? Nothing. What suitable subject-matter would interest a Californian pop star? Then I hit upon the foolproof small-talk safety net. ‘I know – what’s your star sign?’ I asked enthusiastically.
The entire table of guests looked at the Pop Princess in eager anticipation.
‘Cancer,’ she replied.
With that, Hannah, Jasmine and I were up out of our seats, dashing to the kitchen on the pretext of culinary duties. Once there, we exploded into helpless laughter. We fuelled our hysteria with comments about ending world hunger by eating more pop princesses and references to genetically modified vegetables i.e. aged male intellectuals. By now we were rolling around on the floor as only old friends can. I laughed so hard I had to take off my jacket, exposing the big silver safety pin securing my trousers, which only made us howl more.
The hilarity subsided slightly when Hannah announced that she’d laughed so hard she now had a headache. Jazz tripped upstairs for Panadol. ‘I’m sure David’s got some in his bathroom,’ she said, still chuckling. ‘He is a doctor, after all.’
While Jazz was rummaging in her husband’s bathroom cabinet, I examined her kitchen. The Le Creuset, the whole range, matched the aubergine-tiled splashback. On the walls,
around the Bang & Olufsen plasma television screen, were tasteful black and white photos of their working holidays in Namibia and Sri Lanka. With her Neff stainless steel double oven, Miele fridge, cappuccino machine and breadmaker, everything was Vogue Perfect Living. Flowers in coronets of tissue paper lay on the counter waiting for vases. I thought of my own kitchen – the bowls of leftovers growing fur, the Himalayan piles of plates in the sink, the forgotten hot dogs in the microwave which savaged me when I discovered them three weeks later – and felt a pang of envy for my friend’s perfect husband, perfect son, perfect life. I would have gargled Satan’s sperm to have a life like hers.
‘Right, I’ve got Panadol, Aspirin . . .’ As Jazz handed each packet to Hannah, she read aloud the names of the pills. ‘Nurofen, Ibuprofin, Viagra . . .’
The word was out of her mouth before she could catch it.
‘Viagra?’ Hannah asked as we formed a clot around the offending packet. ‘How long has Studz been using Viagra?’
Jazz’s face took on a cloudy cast. ‘I didn’t know he was.’
‘Oy veh!’ Hannah exclaimed, wide-eyed, before recovering her composure. ‘Not that it matters that you didn’t know. It’s rather nice that he wanted to keep it from you. We’ll stay shtum, won’t we, Cassie? Cone of silence.’
‘Of course. Cone of silence,’ I added. ‘I’m sure Pascal takes Viagra as well and Hannah doesn’t know. He’d only have to take quarter-strength Viagra, though, ’cause he’s such a wanker,’ I teased.
Normally, Jazz delighted in any remark which belittled the pseudo-artist, but now her face remained frozen.
‘And Rory is definitely taking Viagra, on account of the fact that he’s got so much taller,’ Hannah rejoindered, but Jazz was still doing her Easter Island statuette impression. ‘Oh, come on, Jazz,’ she soothed. ‘It’s no big deal, dah-ling. All men of David’s age pop the odd pleasure pill to help them shtup.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t know,’ Jazz replied stonily, ‘as we don’t have sex. Haven’t had any sex at all for one year, one month, two weeks, five days and um . . .’ she checked her watch ‘. . . seven hours.’
The air around us suddenly thickened. ‘Oh,’ was pretty much all Hannah or I could say as the penny dropped.
‘My husband gives very good headache,’ she went on dully. ‘I just thought it was something to do with our stage in life. Well, his stage. I’m so desperate for sex that I had a cervical smear test from a male doctor last week and actually enjoyed it.’
If Jazz had meant it to be funny – well, it wasn’t. Hannah and I tried to mumble something conciliatory, but Jazz oscillated her hands through the air as though shooing away an invisible wasp.
We watched as she started manically rushing around the kitchen organizing desserts.
‘Even my fantasy life is boring. When I order a pizza, the pizza boy is not cute. He’s acned and fat and anyway, after I pay him, he leaves.’ Her valiant attempts to take this lightly were falling flat. She had now laid out twenty plates and was frisbeeing mango slices onto each one like Fanny Craddock on amphetamines. ‘But I didn’t know he was seeking satisfaction elsewhere. I’m obviously too dumb to notice.’ She lifted up a chunk of her blonde hair by way of explanation. ‘If I were a brunette, I’d have been on to him straight away. I suppose he’s only stayed with me for my cooking. An oral orgasm to Doctor Studlands means a fine gourmet meal. Honestly, if I were to serve myself up naked for dinner with a bit of watercress up my bum, David would just ask what’s for dessert. And tonight it’s papaya, mango and kiwi compote with lime mint salsa and coconut chocolate cake, as it happens,’ she said, squirting curlicues of cream onto the ziggurat of puddings she’d assembled frenziedly on consecutive plates.
‘Jazz, dah-ling.’ Hannah steadied our friend’s arm. ‘David’s obviously had an erectile problem, but he’s clearly trying to fix that now. This Viagra is obviously for you.’
Jazz’s face flickered and tensed. She shoved the Viagra packet into our hands. It was half-empty. And it was a repeat prescription. Sadness seemed to devour her. Then she threw the bowl of whipped cream at the wall where it detonated. Looking back, it was this moment which pinpointed her change from frustration to something much more ferocious. She turned on us, blonde hair flying. ‘Mind you, the world’s best-kept secret is how bad married sex actually is.’
‘Speak for yourself, dah-ling,’ said Hannah huffily.
‘Don’t tell me your sex-life is good, Hannah. Any wife who starts decorating the house as compulsively as you do is NOT having good sex. Basically, if the floor’s getting laid, then you are not.’
Hannah flared her eyebrows. ‘There is time for both, Jasmine. In marriage, couples develop a sort of sexual shorthand. Short and sweet. A sensual haiku.’
‘Ha! Sounds like that joke: Why don’t married women blink during foreplay? Because they don’t have time.’ Jazz spat out the punchline.
‘Well, I’m sorry for you, Jazz, but Pascal makes me very happy in bed.’
‘Yeah, right. And Doctor Shipman was a mercy killer.’
‘Well, Pascal should make you happy in bed, Hannah,’ I said, in an effort to dissipate the growing tension. ‘He spends enough time in it! That man has only got up before midday once in his life – and that was at Uni when his mattress caught fire, do you remember?’
Hannah cut me a slit-eyed glance. ‘Just because Cassie and you have awful sex-lives, don’t presume that—’
‘Hey! I didn’t say that Rory and I have—’ But before I could counter Hannah’s claim, Jazz reared her head defensively.
‘You’re just of the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, and Marry No Evil school, Hannah. At least Cassie is honest about how lousy things are in bed.’
‘My sex-life is not lousy!’ I reiterated. I thought of the joy of feeling my body all relinquished and pleasured and hot beside Rory’s, my nightie squelched up around my waist and the pleasant ache in my groin the next day as I minced, bow-legged up the tube escalator to work . . . Hang on – when exactly was the last time my walk was all John Wayned like that?
‘I don’t want to discuss this now. I have a headache,’ Hannah said irritably.
‘And I’m about to get one,’ I sulked.
‘Oh, then it must be bedtime,’ Jazz concluded bitterly.
A crespuscularity of mood crept over us. It was only shattered when Jazz’s seventeen-year-old son, Josh, ambled downstairs for food supplies. There was a Penguin Classic in one jean pocket, a half-written poem in the other. Jazz waved her hand like a windscreen wiper in front of her face to sweep away her emotions. She ruffled her son’s sandy-coloured hair as he raided the fridge. ‘Try and leave me the odd crumb this time,’ she said affectionately. ‘So much for your father’s medical prowess. He hasn’t found a cure for adolescence yet, has he?’
Jazz maintains that she spoils and pampers her son because one day he’ll be picking out her nursing home. But in actual fact she has to make up for David’s lack of paternal interest. Ever since Josh was born, she’s carried her own body weight in castor oils and Calpol, baby walkers, Play-Doh and unsweetened kumquat and guava juice – enough baby stuff, in fact, to establish a comfortable wilderness homestead.
David, on the other hand, did not take to parenthood. He took to travelling to war-torn environs instead. ‘That’s the trouble with marrying an activist – they’re so damn active!’ Jazz told people breezily. But as far as she was concerned, her son was the cleverest person on earth – now that Einstein has kicked the bucket. And Josh was clever. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d changed his own nappy as a baby. But David seemed oblivious. Josh is an only child, but he still isn’t his father’s favourite.
So it was for the sake of her son that Jazz reapplied her lipstick, put on her bright hostess look and returned to enjoy her wedding anniversary party. Only Hannah and I noted the tiny, uncharacteristic dab of lipstick on Jazz’s eyetooth, and that one of her shoes, a little too big, was sighing as she walked, as if in sympathy with h
er true feelings. Bearing trays of dessert, Jazz swept back into the dining room to find the Pop Princess sitting on her husband’s lap. She noted David’s concupiscent glance down the Pop Princess’s cleavage and smiled until her face cramped and her teeth looked ready to fall out.
‘You doan mind, do ya?’ Kinkee purred in explanation, clutching Dr Studlands’s hand as she heaved her ample bosom. ‘I just wanted to shake the hand that has saved so many lives in Africa.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it’s shaken a few other things as well,’ Jazz retorted with contrived friendliness, handing out her confectionary delights. ‘Although, darling, don’t you think she’s a little young for you?’ she said to her husband. ‘Of course, it’s the height of bad taste to point out the onset of your baldness, so I suppose that’s why I do it.’
I held my breath as my eyes jumped in Studz’s direction. But his face just creased with amusement.
‘My lovely and long-suffering wife is cross about my midlife-crisis motorbike. Pathetically clichéd, I know.’
‘Oh no, I don’t mind the bike, darling. I’m sure it must be reassuring to finally have something hard between your legs.’
My head spun to scrutinize my friend. Jazz’s mouth rose at the corners, smile held stiffly in place as if for an invisible photographer.
A murmur ran around the table, but Studz simply chuckled and raised a glass to his wife. ‘In celebration of twenty wonderful years with the only woman in the world who can keep me grounded.’
Jazz, now back at the opposite head of the table, raised her glass in reciprocation. ‘Darling,’ she enthused, and even I couldn’t tell if her buoyancy was counterfeit. She smiled luminously at her husband and we guests all exhaled for the first time in five minutes.
‘Yes, my love?’ Studz gave a languorous smile of anticipation.
‘Do you realize,’ she said sweetly, and we prepared for a loving statement of mutual warmth and respect on their twentieth wedding anniversary, ‘. . . that if I’d shot you the first time I seriously contemplated it, I’d be out on parole by now? Now, who’s up for a little partner swapping? Car keys in the centre of the table, please!’