by Jo Hamya
The woman with platinum eyebrows looked over to me. You don’t anymore?
There wasn’t much on it, I said. I prefer Twitter. Really, there was only one user that kind of made the app worth it, I kind of knew her. And then she stopped posting.
What were her pictures like?
A little contrived, I said, and paused. One of my legs had started dying but I was sitting between participants and the exchange of opinions was in full flow. If I moved, there was a chance I would break it, and I did not have the authority to do that. The woman with platinum eyebrows had raised them triumphantly at my flatmate’s father, sitting next to me. You see, Ray. He shook his head, but before he could speak, I shook my leg as inconspicuously as I could and intervened. I’m not sure there was anything more contrived about them than any novel I’ve read, or film I’ve watched, I said. Whether those novels or films were better than an Instagram account is probably down to personal taste. I didn’t think much of it as an app either, before I realized her pictures meant she could carry herself beyond . . . I trailed off, slightly unsure of what I meant, and then, because the circle was still looking at me to finish my sentence, I said, the way a good book takes you away from where you are, and as an excuse for getting the pins and needles out of my calf, shifted to pour myself a glass of wine. The blood rushed back. My flatmate’s father nodded.
Well, that’s bollocks if only because a good book should remind you exactly what the conditions of your life or the lives of the people around you are in the first place. In the second, it’s apples and oranges, my flatmate contributed. You’re unlikely to even be talking about the same audiences.
No, no, her father interposed. I think perhaps we might actually be talking about reaching the same audiences in this case. Working with film is expensive, but everyone has a phone. Everyone does everything on their phone—read, watch. Sometimes create. Teresa, have you got your phone?
A woman resembling my flatmate’s mother but with dyed red hair pulled out her phone.
Patrick?
The one who was sitting next to me duly showed his Huawei model. My flatmate looked pained; I saw her bite her tongue. Nevertheless, she turned to her father. We know you’ve got a phone, she said.
Yes, he said. He took over the point. You’re both snobs, he said to the man in the leather jacket and the woman with platinum eyebrows, who only shrugged. If we were thirty years back, you’d be insisting on daguerreotypes. When you exalt the purity of working with the old ways, you both conveniently forget to remember these technologies were invented to spread access and ease, and were discarded only when something that provided better success in that endeavor took their place. Their value now is in how expensive their rarity and relative cumbersomeness has made them. They’re markers of wealth and taste. He seemed to catch my expression out of the corner of his eye and smiled. You look like you want to say something, dear.
I had been biting my top lip. It came out from my teeth and tongue wetly. Come on, my flatmate said. It would be nice to hear you give an actual opinion for a change. Her father dipped his forefinger and thumb into his wine; flicked it across the room at her. Rude little girl—but he was smiling. Don’t mind her, she takes after me. Please go on.
This was not encouraging. At my flatmate’s comment, I thought of what the art director had said about me regurgitating headlines, and the memory made me less confident about the value of what I wanted to say. But everyone in the circle had turned towards me, and the uniform shift meant that, at last, I could position myself comfortably. I hedged.
I work at a magazine. Actually, it’s quite a fatuous thing, but it’s run on prestige and wealth and class. I was just thinking—
Quietly, my flatmate breathed, A shocking notion. Her father flicked more wine at her. Some of it went sideways and landed on my blouse. I resumed.
They venerate tradition and the past, but they use new tech to bring it into the present and make it shinier than it was. They retouched an archival page to show in the new issue week before last. They filter everything and then they share it on social media. Effectively, the use of all that new tech becomes a marker of wealth and taste, as you say.
Oh fuck the money, the man in the leather jacket said, bored. It’s about the quality of the thing. And if you compare my films to the crap a consumer mag puts out, he said warningly to my flatmate’s father, I’ll withdraw my commission and you won’t see me again.
It was as though I hadn’t spoken. No one considered my point. I shrank. My flatmate’s father held up his palms, into which my flatmate’s mother deposited a platter of meze. Having not noticed her advance, he fumbled—his attention veered. I tried to help him, and in shifting my position, noticed a tower of orange squares reflected in the roof of the conservatory’s glass. I followed the reflection to its source—beyond the back garden, sequences of high-rises; further back, the Grenfell Tower, and the two-year-old damage from the fire that claimed it, sheathed. A few weeks previously, the government had released a letter promising to take responsibility for the site and to erect a memorial, though it remained unclear how it planned to account for the state negligence which had killed or dispossessed its inhabitants in the first place.
I think, my flatmate’s mother said softly, finding her seat and doling out food, quite apart from the fact that you value film for its flaws, in the same way people value, say, vinyl for that little muffled scratch under each song, I think she’s the only one who’s got a clue. Now—she smiled at me—what kept you coming back to your friend’s Instagram?
She wasn’t exactly my friend, I muttered, I’m not sure. I just did. But the answer sounded pitiable even to me, so I tried again: I wanted to know what would happen in her life next, and what that would look like. I paused. I wanted to know where she had been.
Quite right, my flatmate’s mother said. Now let’s talk about something else. I took a sip of my wine and repeated the conversation back to myself, but with wittier, more profound lines where my parts were. And the meze, and the coatrack; the conservatory and its array of mismatched chairs.
I’ve been thinking of doing a short loop, the man with the Huawei phone said, of blood running down Downing Street. You could project it on their walls, you know? Would you sponsor that? Would only take a few hundred quid. I’ll make sure to acknowledge you. The reach on Twitter would be huge.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
* * *
The view directly across from the cistern was a shelf built into the wall, full of Molton Brown products. They were elegant in their semitransparent colored bottles, assembled in sets: shampoo and conditioner, hand soap and hand cream, bath oil and shower gel—they had names like Suede Orris or Oudh Accord. When I washed my hands and came away perfumed, refreshed, I felt like a god. I imagined what kind of a life it would be, to smell expensively of bergamot as a simple consequence of having taken a piss. My flatmate’s mother found me sniffing the many rows of toiletries.
You were gone for a while, she said. I apologized, replaced the cap on the Sea Fennel body lotion. She led me to a colorless bedroom. A mirror fitted to the expanse of the west wall reflected the white sheets, white furniture and ceramics, LED lights; doubled it all and threw it back. There were two rooms. She looked at the reflected one for a moment, then fixed a vase of flowers on the nightstand according to how it looked in the glass. Please sit, she said, but I could not see how. I was wearing indigo-blue jeans. It seemed inescapable that they would stain the duvet, or the cream-colored leather on the chair in front of the vanity table. I could have tied my cardigan around my waist, but still I would have worried about disordering the bed, or leaving a dent in the seat whose cushion rose so perfectly upwards. I stayed where I was. She herself remained standing and looked steadily at me.
It’s not too hard on that sofa? My daughter can be very untidy.
It’s fine, I said. It’s okay. It’s fine.
Are you sure? If I were your mother, I’d be insisting you c
ome home immediately.
Yes. Mine is.
My flatmate’s mother tipped her head. So why don’t you?
I just—I gasped, and broke. Everything came in great, juddering breaths. I probably should. I don’t know what I’m going to do because I don’t have a contract and I thought it would be better if I left academia and got a real-world job and I thought I’d end up with a salary and a flat, and that I would have friends and a life, but when I’m not in the office I spend all my time alone and worrying about whether they’ll want to keep me, and I’m really fucking sick of not having a room of my own, and sleeping on a sofa, I mean, I know I’m not homeless and there are bigger problems in the world, and you’re right, I can go and stay with my parents for a bit if I have to, but why should I, when did it become ridiculous to think that a stable economy and a fair housing market were reasonable expectations? I really think growing up in the middle of a financial crash traumatized a lot of my generation and skewed our perception of what we’re allowed to ask for. You know?
At this point I couldn’t see for clumps of running mascara. I felt ridiculous almost as soon as my mouth closed. My flatmate’s mother disappeared from my line of sight briefly, then returned with tissues. I blew my nose and did my best to stop crying. I tried to laugh instead and gestured at my own ridiculousness.
Something about your generation I’ve noticed, she said not unkindly once I had fallen silent, is that you give up very easily. You seem to expect things to turn out perfectly at first try. I had to work very hard—she looked briefly at the mirror—to end up in this house.
I’m not saying I don’t want to work hard, I said, stung. I do work very hard.
No, no, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, she said at once, laying a hand on my arm. I just meant that I see a lot of people your age expecting far more than we ever did, and on a much quicker timeline. Even though you’ve got so much more of an advantage than I ever did. I think it might be because of how freely available the image of a glamorous lifestyle is on your phones now. I catch a glimpse of Priscilla’s phone now and again over her shoulder, and you all seem to be very adept at making your lives look far more interesting than they have any right to be. The truth is, most days are inexhaustibly dull and full of striving. I did my share of boring, low-wage administrative jobs and living in bedsits, or on friends’ floors as well. I’m sure your peers do, too, they just don’t post about it. And then, because of a few get-rich-quick success stories, and the lack of representation around how much work it usually does take to attain any kind of achievement, a sort of entitlement gets bred.
That might be true, I conceded. But I didn’t really mean that. I don’t want anything glamorous, I just want normal things. At least you didn’t feel deranged for thinking you might afford a house one day.
Honestly, she said, I didn’t think about it. I rented run-down flats with friends for years. My husband and I scraped to buy the first house we did because we wanted Priscilla to have a nice room. I think until she came along, I sort of . . . waited to see how things would turn out.
I don’t think I can do that, I whispered.
She cocked her head. Why?
I looked at my feet. You have a very beautiful home, I said finally. I think you should have been able to go through the early stages of your adulthood secure in the knowledge you would end up in it.
When I looked up, my flatmate’s mother seemed to have exhaled. Her body softened. There’s a face wash in the bathroom, petal, she said. You can clean that makeup off a little. When you feel better, come downstairs and have some food and wine. She led me to an en suite, where on the sink was another bottle from Molton Brown. I lathered my face and tried not to think beyond the smell of mandarin and clary sage. Back downstairs, the others had split to form several smaller groups which talked among themselves: the only available seat was next to the man who had pulled out the Huawei phone. I smiled briefly at him and felt self-conscious at my newly bare face. He smiled back: we rocked, very slightly, towards and away from each other, each taking small repositories of breath—the pause for thought before a conversation stretched out for eternity until my embarrassment overtook me, and I made my confession: I’m not very good with names. I forgot it again as soon as he told me.
The next morning on the way in to work I stopped by Regent Street, where Molton Brown had a boutique, and forgoing all thought of lunch for a few days, bought the Mandarin & Clary Sage face wash for myself.
* * *
Out on the square in front of the office, the builders had unionized. This came as a shock to all of us because none of us had ever considered that they may have felt any kind of discontent. Beyond the cigarette breaks and shouted banter we observed in passing, we knew nothing of their circumstances, only that one morning, dozens of them—far more than I would have guessed—were suddenly marching up and down the thoroughfare and abandoning their drills. From my window, I could see the scurrying of miniature neon jackets, holding banners and shouting.
Oh, the intern breathed in the same tone they used to show the office cat videos. They look so funny.
They’re going to disturb the tents, the art director said, without looking up from her screen.
What? I asked.
Her eyes did not flicker from the screen. They’re going to disturb the homeless in the garden outside, someone should tell them.
I did not understand what she meant until I did a coffee run, and on my way back, the combined effects of the strike and the torn-up walkway forced me onto the green. While I’d been gone, the protest had circled back to the front of the square, but it had not interrupted the ordinances of those on their lunch break. The builders could usually have been found reclining alongside various office workers anyway, and I could easily picture myself, in two hours, doing exactly what those eating triangle sandwiches were doing now: headphones in, neck bent towards a screen or a book, or else just the grass.
I balanced the coffees in their cardboard tray. Rather than tangle myself up in the crowd again, I walked the perimeter of the garden towards the back gate. Near it, a row of muddy blue tents lined up with their backs to the curlicue iron railing. A German shepherd burrowed its nose disconsolately into the grass. It whined. Once I was aware of it, it was impossible to unhear—to the sound of protesting builders, I now added a high-pitched whistle.
I had been working at the magazine for a month. How had I not noticed this before? Claustrophobia began to set in. I wanted to get back to the benign white wood of my desk, but that impulse was the very thing I was trying to cull in myself. I felt my breathing increase. The tents had not been there in July, I was sure, but I had not noticed their arrival either. How long had I been negligent for? There was chaos in the square’s garden, and I, trying to recover my equilibrium, gripped the coffees, swayed lightly where I stood until a man in jeans and a white T-shirt asked me whether I was okay. I nodded. I wanted to ask whether there was anything I could do for him, but he was the one who gave me a pat on the back, asked whether I would like some water. When I shook my head, he retreated; sat in front of one of the tents and tipped the bottle he was holding towards the mouth of the fatigued beast instead, massaging its flanks. I ran back towards the office.
* * *
Oh, good, the associate editor said, accepting her matcha. Look, listen, you’re young. Tell me if you recognize this at all. She fumbled with her phone until some sound began to play from it, much too low to hear. I hummed perfunctorily while she jabbed the screen.
You know, it might have just passed you by, or it might not have, but I want to see whether you like it even if you haven’t heard it, you know?
I had never seen someone have so much trouble with their phone. The sound jerked up and down: I strained for a few guitar chords—they pulled back into the phone’s speakers and then dispensed again, breaking the air-conditioned calm of the office. Once I recognized the song, I frowned.
You see, it was quite popular in the nineties, the associ
ate editor said, not looking at me, but at the row of holes at the bottom of her phone, as though she could see the sound coming out of it. He was a total heartthrob. Not that he lived up to his image in person, you know, but then I met him not long after his wife left him and he was saddled with this baby he had absolutely no clue what to do with, and the baby had the same name as the wife, which really couldn’t have been helpful. No idea why he named the child that. I imagine he never did get therapy for the whole ordeal, he probably thought writing this song when she left him was enough. And of course, I was there to help him—
I love this song, the features editor said.
Yes, me too. It was always best to hear it in person, of course, this is terrible. He used to sing it to me, which I didn’t quite appreciate, you know, him singing a song about his ex-wife to me, while we were . . . Well, anyway, the point is—she looked up from the phone, suddenly focused—his wife was quite beautiful. After she left him, she circled around society for a bit, and she graced our pages a handful of times. Now, of course, there’s this nostalgia for the nineties with the younger generation and what have you, I’ve heard this song quite a bit. His daughter’s agreed to do a fashion shoot for us and we’ll dress her up in McQueen and vintage Galliano and whatever else—it’s quite clever, no? The whole thing about finding fame the song talks about: we’re going to style her as this nineties starlet. She’s a lovely little thing. She looks so much like her mother: we’ve emulated a lot of the looks she was wearing in the back issues for this. It’s good, it’ll work for older readers, and it’ll tap into all those girls like you. Anyway, do you know the song?
Yes, I said. I was back on South Parks Road in Oxford; I was in my thin red dress, holding a bottle of champagne. I was googling Ghislane’s name. The smell of cut grass.
It’s fabulous, isn’t it?
Yes.