Boy, she getting pissed quickly. This is the problem when your diet consists of seaweed, grated carrot, and organic air. Nothing to soak the nectar up, especially when it’s 65 percent alcohol.
I’m just glad Maxine never did drugs, especially moving in her coked-up fashion milieu. She promised me she’d never even try them when I gave her the lecture “Today’s Casual Marijuana Smoker Is Tomorrow’s Crack Addict” when she was fifteen.
“After nearly twenty years in the business, Miss Bags of Experience is still scrabbling around for work while these trust-fund babes swan in as interns one week and a month later they’re off on a paid shoot to the Maldives with Testino or Rankin. And I’ll be really past it soon. Actually I am past it. I’ve been twenty-nine for eleven years already.”
I top up Maxine’s glass. Must be getting thirsty with all of this ranting.
“When I left Saint Martins I thought the world would fall at my feet because my lecturers said I was a star in the making. ‘Pentecostal Caribbean Women’s Attire on a Sunday Morning in Hackney’ got me a First. Now look at me, a stylist. Sometimes I feel like ending it all, really.”
“Morris, perhaps we can advise my daughter on the options?” I suggest, scraping back my chair, stretching out my legs, disentangling my arms from behind my head. “Poison? Drowning? Asphyxiation? What sayest thou?”
Morris starts to reassemble himself on his chair, while Maxine reaches for her Gucci handbag like she will either storm out or land it upon my person.
“Don’t mind your father,” he says. “You and I both know he thinks he funny. My advice is do the thing you love; otherwise you reach my age and you swimming in a sea of regrets. I was brilliant at maths at school, so I studied it at university because my parents was determined to have a mathematician for a son. But I hated it, couldn’t adapt to university life in England, so I dropped out and still ended up as a bookkeeper my entire working life.”
Morris takes another sip of his rum and Coke.
“Anybody know about a wasted life? I do. Other scholarship men of my generation ended up in government as high achievers, leaders. Look at Arthur Lewis from St. Lucia over there, got the Nobel Prize for Economics. What does that make me?”
“Morris,” I interject to stop him jumping off Tower Bridge into the icy Thames at midnight, “stop it, man. Be positive, like I always telling you.”
“Yes, don’t be down on yourself, Uncle Morris,” Maxine agrees, dropping her own preoccupations miraculously.
“I am a loser and a waster,” he insists. “I should’ve enrolled in the Open University when the kids left home and become a history teacher, maybe for adult education. Unlike your father, who is something of a dilettante, I would-a pursued one subject properly, passionately.”
“Easy, man,” I tease Morris, swiping his head. “I ain’t no dilettante. I am what they call a polymath.”
“You still young, Maxie,” he says, ignoring me. “Soon as you hit fifty you start feeling nostalgic for your forties. By the time you in your seventies you’ll think people in their fifties are practically teenagers.”
“Don’t get me started on that,” Maxine exclaims, deftly bringing the conversation full circle. “I feel that way about people in their twenties, evil little whippersnappers. And I’m not in my forties yet, Uncle Morris. I’ve just turned forty.”
She undrapes her legs from the arm of her chair and I marvel at how flexible they are, like wet, twisted rope, flopping this way and that. Was I ever that supple, so unthinking about how I moved my body?
She sits forward, hugging her knees.
“Daddy, I was wondering if you could help me out with a little something?”
Maxine’s gone all girly. Me and Morris agree that if she had kids of her own she’d stop behaving like one.
Get to the point, my dear, which, knowing you, is probably the one where you approach your father, Zeus, King of the Gods, with yuh begging bowl.
She exhales a breathy sigh befitting the yoga classes she attends over at that Peace, Love, and Bellbottoms Centre in Notting Hill that’s popular with celebrities and their hangers-on. She calls it networking. Oh yes, networking, the latest malarkey that, I gather, involves pretentious luvvies dressing up, getting drunk, and stuffing their faces with canapés, which they then have the cheek to call work.
She takes the plunge. “Look, I’ve been playing around with some fashion ideas, because I agree with Morris: it’s now or never. I’ve got to fulfill my dreams or I really will kill myself.”
She expels another yogic breath.
“Right . . . er . . . you see . . . my project might sound a bit left field, a bit outré, a bit beyond bizarre, but bear with me, guys, I have come up with something exceptional.”
We are bearing with you, m’dear. But look how nervous you is. You know your daddy might roar, but he don’t bite.
“Okay, herewith the idea for my first fashion collection, which is . . . wait for it . . . drumroll . . . an imaginative exploration of the relationship between fashion, food, furniture, friendship, and family. I wanted to add philosophy to my list, but it’s not spelled with an f, obv.”
She flings open her arms in a starry showbiz gesture, but drops them when Morris openly guffaws.
“Don’t laugh, Uncle Morris.”
“I’m not.”
“Morris, be-have. Maxine, you go-wan. I’m listening.”
“Me too, Maxie. I sorry. You know I am a philistine.” But he shrugs his shoulders in a take-me-or-leave-me gesture.
She shakes her head as if he is beyond help. “As I was saying, the plan is to encapsulate these five constituent elements into a single garment to show their interconnectedness; to show how everything is related.”
She starts rummaging in her Gucci again while Morris rolls his eyes at me like she is beyond bonkers. She takes out a real tapestry folder that is clearly not from W.H. Smith & Sons and extracts fancy art-paper drawings that she strokes tenderly with her elegant, fluorescent, be-taloned fingers.
“You are the first humans on earth to see these.”
I resist quipping something about other planets and galaxies and lean over the table to see her work close-up, looking attentive, serious, respectful.
“Righty-ho.” Maxine points to the main drawing, an evening gown.
“Isn’t it lovely? And look, the skirt will be made of leather strips that can be deconstructed into a stool. Yes, really . . . Pop-out metal rods hidden inside the seams and hey, presto, it becomes a functioning stool you can actually sit on while fully dressed for the ball. How about that?”
What ball? No one goes to a ball these days except students and they can’t afford no haute costliness.
“The buttons, lace, and frills you see here will also be edible. Yep, you heard right. They’ll be made out of sweets, candyfloss, popcorn, icing, glazed fruit. So my models will walk down the runway eating bits of the clothes they’re wearing. Totes amazeballs, no?”
We nod our heads in obedient approval.
“The material of the V-shaped basque will be a collage of photographs of family and friends, and the clutch bag will be imprinted with loving quotes from letters, texts, e-mails. Basically, what I have is the idea that food, family, and friendship equal sustenance, along with the idea that people wear their loved ones, dead or alive, when they go out, or can even sit on them? Bringing new meaning to the idea of community and family support? Do you see where I’m heading with this? Way deep, I know.”
Me and Morris make appreciative sounds and utterances. Her concept is a load of baloney, though we not goin’ tell her that. But her designs are really bold and stunning, geometric patterns and monochromes offset against deep, rich colors. I forgot how good an artist she is.
“Furthermore and more furtherly, as you would say, Dad, when sold as haute couture, each garment will be bespoke—made from the client’s personal images and quotes. The edible stuff will be replaced by regular materials, of course, but the garments can also be str
ipped to their core sensibility and sold off-the-peg on the high street. The basque becomes a boob tube, the petticoat becomes a gauzy little shift dress.”
Maxine is so overwhelmed at her own cleverness that her smile stretches from Soho to Shoreditch, showing off those teeth that seem to get whiter every time I see her—a blinding flash of Hollywood.
Morris is the first to speak. “You talented, Miss Maxie. Just make sure me and Barry have front-row seats at the fashion show.”
“Maxine,” I say, tapping her knees, “your imagination is something to behold.”
“Gosh, flattered.” She’s almost bouncing up and down in her seat. “My idea is groundbreaking. Pure genius, really.”
Problem with flattery is some people let it go to their heads. I discovered this when both girls was little. Within minutes of getting praise, they turned into little monsters.
“Where you get your ideas from?” Morris asks.
“All I can say is, I don’t just have blue-sky moments. I have a blue-sky life.”
She leans back in her seat and gazes at the ceiling like she’s Einstein.
“I think it comes from you, Barry,” Morris pipes up. “Look at you, man. So bloody-minded, so individualistic, so clothes-conscious, and what some might call a colorful personality, at least when they being polite. Maxie, you had eighteen years of seeing his h-ugly face every day before you managed to escape. You absorbed his personality by osmosis.”
“Perhaps he is an influence then . . . if you put it that way,” Maxine concedes, not amused, like she’s not too keen on sharing credit. She starts to pack away her drawings as if she’s picking up sheets of gold leaf from the table. “I’ve got many more ideas. Take the unequal distribution of housework in the marital home. Oh, where did the inspiration for that one come from?”
I shan’t rise to the bait.
“I’ve got an idea for a nineteenth-century corset made out of tea towels threaded through with cutlery instead of whalebone. Men’s shoes that double as a dustbin and brush. I’ll give you a pair for free, Dad.”
The pair of them collapse into drunken splutterings—coconspiratorial colluders.
She shifts, places her hands primly on her lap, legs pressed together, all ladylike.
“I . . . it’s like . . . um . . . I’m just going to say it anyway. Look, don’t ask, don’t get, right?”
I register a blank face. I’m not making it easy for her.
“Dad . . . dy, I need backing to get this show on the road.”
She speaking to the palms of her outstretched hands, studying the lines as if her future is laid out in the design of them.
“In this recession especially, I really need an angel to come to my rescue and you’re the only one I know.” Because she is her father’s daughter she can’t help adding, “Fallen.”
Cute. Very cute. But Dad . . . dy ain’t no pushover.
“Um . . . and I’m thinking of calling it . . . How does House of Walker sound? A sort of homage to you?”
Double cute.
Maxine starts fiddling with her mobile. She knows well enough to give me so-called space. Only person knows me better is Morris.
I look past her into the café at all of those follow-fashion victims purring over their latest overpriced purchases that will be so yesterday by next month.
They’re playing another real, ole-school chanteuse over the speakers—Sarah Vaughan’s rendition of “If You Could See Me Now” . . .
I wonder what Wifey’s up to. She’ll have arrived over there. We’ve not been apart for thirty-two years, not since the last time she went home with Donna for her mother’s funeral and I stayed in England to look after Maxine. I’ve not been back since my own mother’s funeral in 1968. How many years is that? Is a long time for a man to be deracinated.
If Morris feels his life is wasted, mine has been spent in hiding: Secret Agent BJW, rumored to have gone underground circa 1950.
My mind wanders beyond the café and out onto Bond Street on this late Monday afternoon in May. For three hundred years one of the most important, most historic, most symbolic thoroughfares in one of the greatest cities on earth, with its luxurious emporia of Chanel, Prada, Versace, Armani, Burberry, Asprey, Louis Vuitton . . . House of Walker.
Walnut floors. Black lacquer walls. Crystal chandeliers.
Maxine, my younger girl. Ten years between her and Donna, who had been commandeered by Carmel, who wanted the elder one to herself. When she came along too early and too sickly, and Carmel wasn’t right in the head with what we later knew to be postnatal depression, Maxine became mine.
I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t socialize, I didn’t even miss it. I took leave from work. Morris helped out; the cronies helped out too, except they wasn’t hard-boiled cronies in those days but young women full of hope, expecting better things from life.
For the first eighteen months I kept Maxine alive. I attached this frail little thing to me in a sling like women back home. I never wanted to put her down, and when I did I felt pangs.
Carmel slept in the marital bed; me and Maxine slept on a mattress in the nursery. First few months I didn’t sleep for her crying. Next few months I didn’t sleep for checking up on her when she wasn’t crying.
In spite of Carmel’s condition, I was never more content than when being a surrogate mother to Maxine.
Who’d-a thought she would grow into this giant over-the-top octopus flinging her limbs all over the place?
She right too. She too good to be just a stylist, although I’d never tell her. I’m glad she wants to explore her true worth. I laid the foundations for her to become a maker of art rather than an accessorizer of someone else’s creativity.
“Maxine, I go chew on it.”
She’s hiding it, but I can interpret everything that passes over my daughter’s face. A film in slow motion would display hope, fear, excitement, pleading, the expectation of disappointment.
“Okay, okay . . . Let we sit down, put our great minds together, one for business, one for creativity, and work out some logistics.”
Maxine knows I’m edging toward a yes, and her smile is quietly victorious. She also knows better than to grab my arms and start leading me in a waltz around the room just yet, although I wouldn’t put it past her.
Morris is slumbering. He looks beatific when he sleeps. He’s not snoring, although, knowing him, it’s in the cards.
With my excellent peripheral I see Maxine watching me watching him. Me and Morris have often wondered whether she suspects anything . . . especially as she spends all of her time in gay bars with her fellow fashionistas, and then keeps moaning she can’t catch a fella.
As for the straight guys? Number of times she’s come crying to me when she’s been dumped. Last fella was called Rick, who worked in computers. When I asked what he did exactly, she exclaimed, “How should I know? I’m not interested in computers.”
I told her that the only way she goin’ keep a man is if she shows she’s interested. Asks him questions and remembers the answers. “Men like women who are interested in them, dear.”
She didn’t talk to me for nearly a month.
One before that was a “totes gorg” Argentinian who didn’t speak English. She told me he didn’t need to, as they communicated through the language of love . . . and something called Google Translate. It lasted ten days.
“Daddy,” she says, hunched over the table, “if there’s anything you ever want to tell me . . . You know I’m not Mum and the God Squad.”
Lord, how come she asking me this now? A colony of ants starts crawling all over my scalp, but I’m too afraid to attack them in case she interprets my discomfort. This is too much. Anything is a big word that can accommodate all things, and everything, and something that, yes, she needs to know eventually, but it ain’t easy giving voice to the love that brings shame.
“What you want to know, that I robbed a bank?”
She shakes her head like I am so beyond, pretends to s
tudy the poster of the founder of this chain of cafés.
I been in a maximum-security prison too long.
He, his own affections’ counsellor / Is to himself . . . / so secret and so close . . .
Yet me and Morris are goin’ move in together. Are we really goin’ do that? It sounds so definite, so final, so brave, too brave . . .
“Any more of that rum?” she asks, turning back, shaking it off.
“Walker’s Drinking Establishment just run out of stock. Let us procure some more.”
“I know just the place where we can get the best blackberry mojito cocktails—in the bar at the Dorchester. Chambord liqueur, white rum, fresh blackberries, fresh mint, brown sugar. We’ll catch a cab.”
Dorchester? Taxi? Who paying for it?
She pulls out a bulging orange makeup bag and applies red lipstick in a gold hand mirror as if she herself is a work of art. Maxine can’t pass a mirror without a quick glance.
“Tom Ford Beauty Lip Color,” she informs me, as if her seventy-four-year-old dad has the slightest interest in what cosmetic gunk she puts on her face. “What do you think?” She poses, cheeks sucked in, pouting, like I’m David Bailey about to shoot. Then she elevates herself in all of her sloshed, six-footed, be-heeled glory, staggers over to Morris, and grabs his shoulders. “Uncle Morris, wake up.”
He is bleary-eyed.
She plonks herself on his lap, wrapping her arms around him. “Daddy’s thinking about bankrolling my fashion venture. Don’t look so surprised. He’s such a darling underneath it all.”
Underneath what all?
Morris rouses himself, probably because eight stone of human being has just plonked itself on his lap and is squeezing the oxygen out of him.
“Really?” He yawns. “About time your father did something philanthropic with his fortune.”
“I am not a charity case, Uncle Morris. He’ll get his money back. It is a business investment. Go on, put in a good word for me, then.”
Mr. Loverman Page 9