Ambition

by Julie Burchill

  Nothing happened.

  She tugged again, this time with both hands. The effort made her head feel as though it was about to implode.

  Still nothing happened.

  ‘Help!’ she called weakly. Then louder: ‘Help!’

  It was useless. The walls of the sauna were thick and sound-proofed. She sank to the floor, stunned and shaking in spite of the heat. She felt herself start to black out. She closed her eyes . . .

  ‘Susan! Susan!’ The thick wooden door pushed painfully against her naked body, and a gust of what seemed like fantastically icy air hit her on the shoulder. ‘For Christ’s sake, girl, watchoo playing at? Shit! What’s going on in there? Susan?’

  ‘Mouse . . .’ With a massive effort, she rolled over on to her back. The door opened a few inches wider and the skeletal Mouse slipped through the gap. Then she was in the sauna room, crouching on her heels and shaking Susan by the shoulders.

  ‘Jesus, Susan! You trying to add yourself to the Marks & Spencer range of pre-cooked gourmet goodies or something? Hack Bonne Femme? Come on, girl – on your feet and get out of here!’

  ‘Can’t,’ she croaked.

  ‘Ok. Just keep still. You’re taking a free ride.’ Grabbing her by the feet, the Mouse pulled her out of the room, dropped her and looked around frantically. ‘Water. Water. Gotta get your body temperature down. I got it! The hydropool – gotta get you in the hydropool!’ She pulled Susan down a narrow corridor and into a room blue with Italian ceramic tiles, a sunken bath full of swirling white water in the middle of the floor. Depositing Susan by its edge, she climbed down into the pool herself and then reached out and took the half-conscious girl in her arms, easing her into the cool water, holding her there as she floated on her back.

  After a while Susan opened her eyes.

  ‘You OK?’ whispered Mouse, sounding scared for the first time.

  ‘Think so. Feel a bit sick. A bit dizzy.’

  ‘At least you’ve cooled down a bit. Christ, you should have seen the colour you were! Like a lobster being boiled alive. I saw one once in France. What the Sam Hill were you playing at in there?’

  ‘The door wouldn’t open.’

  ‘Bullsheet. It opened for me, and Schwarzenegger I’m not.’

  Susan cased the concave Americaine. ‘Thanks, Mouse. You saved my life.’

  ‘I saved your ass, girl. But you’d have done the same for me. Listen, you feeling better? Can you stay here alone for a minute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re still a funny colour. But hang loose, I’m gonna go get one of the screws – they’ll know what to do. If this was the US, you could sue them puce for locking you in that hellhole, for sure. Here, hold on to the sides – that’s it.’

  ‘Hurry up, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure thing. Uno momento, love-bucket.’ The Mouse slithered and skidded out of the pool room, still naked.

  Susan floated on her back, hands on the sides of the hydro, her mind slowly grinding back into action. Door sstuck sometimes. That was all. Accident.

  The water, which had been burbling gently, seemed to grow a little fiercer.

  She must have touched a switch. She groped along the poolside to reset it.

  Her hand met smooth tiles. The water began to spill over the sides of the bath as its heaving increased.

  Her hand slipped from the rim of the hydropool and she felt herself being pulled down into the cold blue bubbling cauldron that the bath had suddenly become. She opened her mouth to scream, and swallowed chlorinated water.

  Her curriculum vitae flashed before her eyes: The Beat, Parvenu, the reporter’s job on the Sunday Best, the deputy editorship. Then she swallowed more water, and that was all she knew.

  When she awoke some dyke nurse was kneading away at her breasts as if trying for the blue ribbon at some pastry chef competition and Mouse was trying to put cocaine up her nose through a ballpoint-pen holder.

  Alarmed by both activities, she came to her senses rather more quickly than was usual, wrenched herself away sharpish and sat up, blinking around her.

  ‘It’s alive!’ shrieked Mouse indelicately.

  ‘Miss Street! You gave us quite a fright!’ scolded the nurse, who was in actuality nothing more depraved than a God-fearing Scots grandmother with no desire to see a death on the premises.

  ‘Not half so much as your killer jacuzzi gave me.’ She put her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees.

  ‘You must have passed out,’ said Mouse, ‘and gone under. I shouldn’t have left you while you were so faint from the heat. I already told Mrs Moran about the sauna.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Street – you must let us extend to you a further week, gratis, to compensate for your nasty experience,’ said the nurse, ever mindful of bad publicity.

  She opened her mouth, ready to tell them how the water had suddenly seemed to turn on her. Then she thought better of it. They’d say that the heat had turned her head; that she’d imagined it. She stood up wearily. ‘Thanks, Mrs Moran, but no thanks. I won’t be staying my full week as it is. I’ll be going back to London tomorrow.’

  There was no point in staying any longer than necessary, she thought to herself as she went to her room to pack. Because, she was starting to realize, the number of miles she put between herself and Constantine Lejeune didn’t matter. She could run, but she couldn’t hide; not from a man with a thousand eyes, and twice as many torments in store.

  TEN

  Matthew Stockbridge wore a blue tracksuit and an expression usually kept in a jar by the bedsides of the terminally ill. Which was, nevertheless, very suitable to the occasion. ‘We’ve got to talk about our relationship,’ he said.

  ‘What’s wrong, run out of patients?’ Susan quipped weakly.

  ‘Very funny.’ He looked at her sternly. She sat at the kitchen table in a loose, long black T-shirt, her legs bare, her dark hair piled up, with a black Winchester Filofax and a black Harper House Dayrunner in front of her. The Filofax, bought five years ago, was going to the big brasserie in the sky; the Dayrunner had cost more than twice as much and was less than half as common. It was also made of something she didn’t even want to think about.

  But trust Doctor Death to get his caring sharing oar in. ‘What’s this made of?’ he said with distaste, holding it up between thumb and forefinger.

  She stood up and snatched it from him. ‘How should I know? A laid-off steel worker. An unwaged minority person. A member of the Fabian Society. Or one of your fucking patients. There. That’s the Susan you like to think you know and love, isn’t it?’ She sat down and continued copying numbers into it.

  He chuckled, pleased with her performance and his own sense of superiority. ‘You’ve turned into a real little yuppie monster, haven’t you? The Filofax that ate the world.’

  She sighed and threw down her Mont Blanc. ‘Yuppie. That has to be the laziest word, used by the most bog-standard of people, since charismatic. You know who’s called a yuppie these days? Anyone under fifty with their own teeth and a roof over their head on more than ten G p.a. It’s become completely meaningless, Matthew. I’m surprised you still use it.’ She scored one, and continued with her Bs: Bracewell, Brampton, Brody, Broughton, Blondell.

  ‘We’ve got to talk,’ he repeated.

  ‘Who’s stopping you?’

  ‘Susan.’ He put his hand on hers, stopping her from writing. ‘We can’t talk while you’re copying out your Filofax.’

  She sighed. ‘Matthew. Every evening for the next two and half weeks, I have dinner with some hack, some money man or some poncey author whose poxy book we’re thinking of bidding for for reasons beyond my comprehension. On Sundays and Mondays I need to sleep and I can’t stand to either write or think; I do that all week. Now, my Filofax is embarrassing me to the point where I can’t bear to get it out in public – I feel disgusting, like a flasher. I feel soiled. I see people looking at me with pity and contempt. I have to spend my one free evening re-doing it. Now at this rate, I estim
ate that I’m free for lunch in the year 2000. Shall I book you a window then, or would you like to talk now? I can do two things at once, I assure you – I spend my days doing five things at once. Why, I can probably write, talk and chew gum at the same time. What do you say?’

  He stuck out his jaw – what there was of it. ‘The day I buy a Filofax, I give up.’

  ‘Matthew, you gave up years ago. That’s why you’re still on twenty thousand a year.’

  He looked at her bitterly. ‘Do you know what’s wrong with women today?’

  ‘No, but I’m sitting comfortably, and I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘They’re turning into the sort of people men were before they got wise. They’re making all the mistakes men used to: treating the opposite sex like shit, working themselves into the ground in pursuit of fame and fortune, completely losing sight of the spiritual side of life and the eternal values, and sacrificing everything on the altar of success.’ He stopped, panting. ‘That’s what’s wrong with women today.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked at him very coldly for a long time. She heard more and more of this New Man-ifesto these days, and she liked it less on each hearing. It was called moving the goalposts in any language, and it stank of personal grudge and moral duplicity. She smiled, sugar and strychnine, and said softly, ‘Well, you lot shouldn’t have made it look like such fun, should you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I didn’t see men running home in droves from offices at lunchtime and banging on the doors of their houses shouting to their wives that they’d seen the light and from now on wanted to express their spirituality through the creative medium of dusting. No, they were out having five-martini lunches and shagging their secretaries. You lot loved the marketplace just fine until we got interested too – then you throw up your lilywhite hands and tell us how dreadful it is. Too late, buster! This fucking concern is just another way of telling women what to do. Well, don’t worry about us. Yes some of us will get ulcers, and some of us will crack up, and some of us will screw up our domestic situations, and some of us will end up at forty with a cat and cook-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce dinner for one and wonder if it was worth it. But more women will be happy, and more women will be fulfilled than ever before in the history of frigging personkind! Because IT WAS OUR CHOICE! We had the freedom to choose not to swallow the shit you offered to choose us tied up with a Valentine’s heart. You think women were happy before? Contented with their lot? Isn’t it funny, then, that for the first time in recorded history, the incidence of mental illness and suicide amongst men has overtaken that of women? All those happy housewives, why were they cracking up left, right and centre? Who’s stuffing Valium? Not me – some Godforsaken housewife, that’s who! And you see them! So don’t stand there preaching at me that having a career may be damaging to your health!’

  ‘Have you quite finished?’

  ‘Almost. Try this. Try saying blacks instead of women. Try telling blacks they shouldn’t go after material success because, oh, I’ve been there and it’s all empty and meaningless! You see how phoney that sounds? It’s called keeping the niggers down. And you’re not doing that to me, or to any other woman!’ She finished at a yell. He looked at her, amazed. ‘So there,’ she said weakly. She wasn’t in the habit of revealing this much of herself to Matthew. She felt almost naked. It was definitely the most she’d said to him in a good three years.

  He looked at her, amazed. ‘I didn’t realize you felt so strongly about feminism, Susan.’

  ‘You don’t realize how I feel about anything.’ Tears of self-pity caressed her kohl. ‘No one does.’

  ‘You’re never here for more than fifteen minutes in a row. What am I supposed to do? Buy his and hers cellphones and talk about our relationship on our way to work and squash?’

  ‘That would be better than this.’

  He threw open the fridge. ‘Look, Susan. Look at this. This is emblematic of our whole relationship. Tell me what you see.’

  She stood up and peered. ‘I see two lemons, a bottle of Chablis and some penicillin.’

  ‘That penicillin is houmous, Susan. Bought two weeks ago at M&S. It’s the only food we’ve had in the house for the duration. The rest has been tandoori takeaways for me and expense account for you. It’s got to stop, Susan.’

  ‘But why, Matthew? Why is a relationship based on how many hours one or another of the parties spends slaving over a hot stove? You’re not just being emblematic here. You’re being fucking medieval, boy.’

  ‘Susan, Susan.’ He sank to his knees on the other side of the table. I don’t want a housewife. I want you. Can’t you be a career girl and my Susan?’

  ‘No, baby, no. I can’t be your Susan. I can’t be anyone’s Susan any more, not even my own. I’m Susan Street, and I belong to no one and everyone.’ She thought about what she’d said; it was probably meaningless, but it sounded good. Sort of like late-period Marilyn Monroe. She shook herself. ‘Why don’t you go and put some Jellybean on?’

  She heard him in the next room, mumbling and fumbling with the sound system. Eventually Adele Bertei’s achingly beautiful voice slunk into the room and wrapped itself around her like a cat’s cradle made of silk.

  She heard Matthew moaning as the sublime dance track faded. If it wasn’t white, male and answered to the name of Knopfler, he wasn’t interested. How could she possibly be expected to perform sexual acts with a man who liked Dire Straits? It was perverted and unnatural.

  At the back of her Dayrunner, she found a bridge scorecard. Could she . . . ? No, he’d never pry. He might be a doctor but he had ethics, poor bastard.

  She wrote TASKS at the top and 1 2 3 4 5 6 down the side. Then she wrote:

  1. KING’S CROSS. Tattoo.

  2. RIO. Three girls, three boys.

  3. SUN CITY. Two men.

  Three down, three to go – not bad for a girl from Nowhere-on-Sea who was neither nowhere or at sea where many better born or bred girls would have been carted off to the funny farm by now. Break her, would he? She laughed out loud.

  Matthew came back into the kitchen and stared at her like Gary Cooper in High Noon.

  ‘Would you kill Katharine Hamnett?’ she asked him conversationally, scanning her Hs.

  ‘Would I what?’

  ‘Kill Katharine Hamnett. Is she a dead number, do you think? You know – Stay Alive In 85. On The Breadline In 89? Over And Done In 91?’ She giggled. ‘A dead insert, or what?’

  He shook his head wonderingly. ‘Susan, all day I am faced with people who may die if I don’t make the right decision. Your toughest decision today has been whether or not to tear a name from your Filofax. Is it any wonder we can’t talk any more?’

  ‘So what do you want me to be?’ she sneered. ‘A nurse? So you can overwork and underpay me and condescend to me when in actual fact I’m carrying twice as much responsibility as you? You’ve read one too many hospital romances, Matthew.’ She laid down her pen. ‘Let’s stop talking in Want Ads. You’re not annoyed because I do a more flighty job than you. You’re annoyed because I earn more than you.’ She began to count down silently: five, four, three, two—

  ‘That’s it!’ Matthew screeched, banging his fist on the table and running for the door. ‘I’ve had it! You ALWAYS say that! This time I’ve had it!’ The door slammed, and he flashed in a blur of blue tracksuit past the window. She laughed, and started on the Js.

  Susan sat at a window table within the cool monochrome depths of Le Caprice and watched with fascinated horror as Caroline Malaise pushed and pulled at her heart-shaped steak tartare.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘Toby sent me one on my twenty-first. With a man from Securicor. It was Valentine’s Day . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Susan had never had a happy relationship with meat and, with this one act, she was to remain a vegetarian for the rest of her life.

  ‘Yes. He said, “It’s all meat, Caroline.” And I do see his point. Your heart is a piece of meat
, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather someone was straight with you rather than try and kid you your heart was made of Belgian chocolate?’

  ‘Actually, I think I’m going to have to be boring and go for the Belgian chocolate. How’s Candida?’

  ‘Not doing too well, poor thing.’ Caroline spoke about her sister as though she was a herbaceous border. ‘Toby’s record company majordomo has decided they’re a novelty act, and a bad one, and he’s put them on “ice”, I believe is the term. It means he won’t release their records but neither can anyone else. If you want my honest actual, they were silly to let Gary go. Obviously Toby’s going to get the best deal for himself, isn’t he? But I do think it’s rather mean. Candida’s only a sprog. She’s spitting blood, apparently. Do anything to get back at him.’ She picked an orchid from the table and began to tear it with the precision of a shredder and the passion of a psychopath. ‘Susie, who’s Joey Moorsom?’

  ‘He’s an MP. Labour. Why?’ She was only marginally less surprised than if Caroline had asked her who the president of North Yemen was.

  ‘Toby’s not very fond of him, is he? Why?’

  ‘He doesn’t think Tobias should be allowed to buy into media here. What with Sun City and all.’

  ‘Well.’ The steak tartare and Caroline’s fork were doing a very good impression of a fast day at Pamplona. ‘I do see his point. Don’t you?’ She sighed. ‘An American just bought my pa’s place in Somerset. These fantastic old people we’ve looked after for years in the cottages . . . out they go. He’s building what they call a theme park.’ Caroline looked up and her eyes were full of tears, or Badoit, or the Napa Valley Chardonnay they’d drunk with their sorrel soup. ‘Out goes Nanna, and in comes a killer shark. Toby says I’m being silly. What d’you think, Susie?’

  ‘That certainly sounds like the American way.’

  ‘Toby said it’s called progress. Progress! That sounds like the name of a stream engine . . . ! What time is it, Susie?’

  ‘Quarter to two.’

  ‘Oh.’ Caroline brightened. ‘My medicine. I’ll just be a minute.’