by Simon Brooke
Then I go and sit in a chair in the corner of the room while she puts on her make-up. She does it quickly and confidently, pausing every few seconds to pout or look sideways to check the effect. Her blonde hair is already neatly sculpted into its classic wave and she is brushing powder onto her elegant cheekbones. She puts her hand on brushes and pencils without having to look round for them. Then she examines her face from every angle, opening her huge dark eyes wider every now and then.
It’s funny, I’ve never really watched a woman get ready. Helen hardly ever wore make-up except when we went to a wedding and she kept applying lipstick nervously during the service and asking me if it was smudged.
I could never have sat and watched my mum put her makeup on. I suppose for her, powdering her face and applying a bit of lipstick is a private, furtive thing. If people notice that she is wearing it and compliment her she gets embarrassed and says, “Well, I thought I’d better make the effort.” Either that or she laughs with embarrassment and tells them, “Oh, shut up!”
I never saw any of my other girlfriends get ready to go out. They probably didn’t have the confidence to let a man observe this secret female ritual. One of the first, Cathy, suddenly appeared at my house on a Saturday night with dark lines around her eyes.
“Are you all right? You look ill,” I said.
“No, I’m just wearing a bit of make-up” she explained as if it were the obvious alternative explanation for her appearance. My older sister sometimes wore it when she went out with her friends. I still remember the sound of a hairdryer over the babble of Radio One and the sharp sting of Clearasil on the landing outside her room that hit you like a sisterly slap in the face.
Finally Marion stands up, smoothes down her dress and turns to look approvingly in the mirror at herself in profile. Then she looks round and smiles at me. The kind of inviting smile that fills a room, the kind of smile that must have caught the eye of her ex-husbands and ex-lovers. And trapped them.
“Whaddya think?”
“Delicious.”
She walks over to where I am sitting and I put my arms round her hips while she buries my face in her stomach and plays with my hair. Then she pulls back, looks at me and says disappointedly, “We’ll have to get you a new shirt. Look at this, Andrew, you can’t meet people dressed like this.” One of her long, tapering fingers touches my neck and suddenly I imagine them wrapped round my dick again. I pull her to me and start kissing her. She resists at first, but then gives in, begins to run her hands through my hair as she pushes her tongue harder into my mouth. I begin to manoeuvre her towards the bed but she pulls away.
“I’ve got people coming.”
“I’ll say.”
“Oh, look, I’m all smudged.” Then she giggles. “Andrew, you’re such a naughty boy.”
“I know,” I find myself whispering.
She goes back to her dressing table and repairs the damage. Pouting and licking those lips of hers. Then she stands up again and looks at me.
“We should get you a suit, maybe. A really good suit, the kind you can wear to lunch and for shopping.”
“OK,” I say coolly.
Marion leads the way downstairs. Anna Maria is opening the door to a tall, dark-haired woman dressed in black.
“Marion, my darling, how are you?” says the woman in a thick Middle-Eastern accent, rushing in to meet her. She holds Marion’s hands in hers and they triple kiss.
“Good, thanks,” says Marion, smiling gently. Still holding her hands, the woman studies her for a moment and then says urgently, “You’re looking well, that’s the main thing.”
“Daria, this is Andrew Collins.” I stick my hand out but by this time the woman has very quickly nodded in my direction and is looking back at Marion anxiously. I let my hand drop slowly.
Daria is already getting up my nose. I decide I’d better make the effort, though. God knows how.
Fortunately, the door bell rings again and I go to open it before Anna Maria can get there. Two young guys stop talking and look up at me. I think for a moment that they must be at the wrong house. Both are in 501s and DMs, one has a tight, white T-shirt and cut-off denim jacket, the other just a tartan waistcoat covered with buckles and clips, a sort of post-punk Gaultier effort.
“Is Marion in?” asks the waistcoat in a French accent.
“Er, yeah, come in.” I gesture them into the house.
“I am Jean-Charles,” he says, “and this is Philippe.” I give them both a firm, arm’s-length handshake and take them into the living room. Somehow I didn’t think Marion’s friends would look like they collected glasses in a gay bar.
“Hello, boys,” calls Marion from the settee.
They walk over and kiss her.
“Jean-Charles and Philippe work at my health club,” Marion says. Daria is sitting next to her, staring at her intently. The boys get an even quicker acknowledgement from her than I did. One of them makes a face to the other who tries not to laugh. I ask them if they would like a drink. They both have Absolut and cranberry juice.
Daria is saying something to Marion. “I saw Judy last week in New York. She is looking very old.”
“She should sue her plastic surgeon then,” says Marion to the boys who are now standing by the fireplace, gazing adoringly at her and wishing Daria would fuck off. They giggle again.
“Marion,” says one of them, “you never come to see us anymore at the club.”
“No, I know, I’m just too busy. I have other things to keep me occupied at the moment.” She looks across at me, they follow her gaze.
“And to give you exercise,” says the one in the T-shirt. They laugh and so does Marion. I don’t like the tone of this conversation. I’m beginning to feel like a strippergram. I laugh too, but slowly. Unfortunately, instead of sounding threatening and masculine, I just sound a bit thick, like I’m slow getting the joke.
“I’m going to Cap Ferrat next week,” says Daria, eyes wide. “You should come. It will do you good. I am staying at a beautiful little hotel. Very exclusive. Exquisite service. Anouska had her breakdown there.”
“Mmm, why not? Would you like that, Andrew?” Marion asks, flirting jointly with me and the French guys.
“Wouldn’t mind,” I say.
Daria looks horrified, she obviously hadn’t banked on this.
“Do you like France?” asks Jean Charles or Philippe.
“Yeah, it’s OK.”
“I am from the south, do you know Marseilles?” says the other.
“Oh, right,” I say and go over to the drinks cabinet to get some more champagne. Perhaps I can be promoted from strippergram to barman. I refill Marion and Daria who are having a conversation, or what passes for one with Daria. The door bell rings again and Anna Maria shoots out of the kitchen swallowing something quickly and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
A tall, middle-aged bloke comes into the room, enjoying a quiet, private joke with Anna Maria. He is immaculately dressed in a double-breasted suit with a ridiculously loud pinstripe and a watch chain in the lapel.
“Sorry, I came straight from work, hellishly busy, no time to change. I feel horribly underdressed,” he tells everyone. His bouffant grey hair has a definite tinge of blue. When he introduces himself to me as Christopher Maurice-Jackson he gives me a handshake with his fingers only and I am sure he is wearing eyeliner. He triple kisses Marion and Daria.
“Hello,” he says quickly to the boys. He takes a glass of champagne from me, gasps, “Oh, lifesaver!” and then throws himself down in a chair, undoes his jacket and crosses his long, thin legs. His city brogues are the shiniest shoes I have ever seen. Why aren’t mine like that? Possibly because mine come from Saxone, I’ve had them for two years and I’ve never polished them.
Another guest arrives, a young pretty Arab girl and a tall, lanky young guy with a quite a tough face and what my hairdresser, Lisa, calls a “Paul Newman crop” when she tried to sell it to me. It actually looks pretty good on him. The A
rab girl is dressed in a complicated beige outfit and he is wearing a starched a dark blue blazer, a white granddad shirt and a thin gold chain under it. They are both in their late twenties.
The girl, Farrah, triple kisses each person while everyone else watches, which takes some time. Her boyfriend, David, follows her, just shaking hands or nodding.
“So you’re Andrew,” says Farrah when she gets to me. She stands very close and touches my arm. “I’ve heard so much about you.” I smile graciously and say something slightly funny. Farrah laughs and says to Marion, “Oh Marion, he’s charming.”
Anna Maria is hovering. I let her do the drinks this time because she obviously wants to.
“Oh, what shall I have? David, what do you think?” says Farrah, obviously glad still to be the centre of attention.
“I’ll have a Bud,” says David in a strong Geordie accent.
“Now I can’t drink champagne, my hairdresser says nothing fizzy, it makes my hair brittle.”
“White wine?” I suggest.
“So acidic,” says Farrah, staring at the drinks cabinet. “Oh, Marion, what do you think?”
“The boys are drinking Absolut and cranberry juice,” says Marion, breaking off from Daria. I am about to point out that this is acidic as well, but then realize that if Anna Maria doesn’t get Farrah something to drink soon we’ll never eat.
“A vodka,” says Farrah triumphantly. “Yes, why not? A vodka please, with ice and lemon.”
Immediately Anna Maria sets about making it for her and Farrah, clearly not wanting to lose the momentum she has built up turns round and asks, “So what have we all been up to today?”
It is a completely unanswerable question, mainly because no one has done anything, and it is clearly just an excuse for her to tell us about her day, which she does. “Marion, I went to Joe’s for lunch today with Vincente. David joined us for coffee after.” Farrah squeezes David’s hand as they sit together on a settee; she is pert and upright, he is sitting back with legs open wide and face set in an uninterested, slightly aggressive way. “Anna Maria, I spent this morning throwing out old clothes I never wear and I found a couple of dresses that would be perfect for you. David, don’t you think those two dresses would look great on Anna Maria?” David nods unconvincingly, obviously not over-exercised on the subject of dresses.
She prattles on. Marion mildly amused, Daria fuming, Christopher Maurice-Jackson listening politely and the boys smirking quietly. David is taking us in one by one. “Us?” I mean the others.
After a while, I notice that Christopher Maurice-Jackson has moved away from everyone else. He is standing, legs apart, arms loosely folded with one hand touching his chin. He stares intently at a section of wall beside the kitchen door as if it were the most important thing in the world.
“Marion,” he says, measuring the space in mid-air with his hands.
She looks across.
“I have an exquisite Beidermier table that would fit in here beautifully. The proportions are right, the width is right and it would give this room a little lift, a touch of—”
“Yeah, like I really need some more furniture,” says Marion, finishing her champagne. “Three houses full and then some.” Three houses? I’m intrigued. Christopher Maurice-Jackson pauses for a moment. “Just a thought,” he says, pained. Turning back to the group he sees me smiling and begins to scowl. “You ought to get rid of something, then,” he suggests, still looking at me.
Marion gets up. “Let’s eat,” she says. “I’m starved.” She squeezes my neck gently as she walks past me to the table. She allocates places quickly. We sit down, no one particularly pleased to be next to anyone else. I have Farrah and David on one side, which isn’t bad, and Marion on the other.
Daria, who has managed to put herself the far side of Marion, gives a little laugh and touches Marion’s hand.
“We played such an amusing game at Marina’s the other night,” she says, laughing again at something that just cannot be that funny. The two French guys start laughing as well but this makes her nervous so she stops and eyes them suspiciously, then she continues, “We played a game where you have to say who from history you would invite to your ideal dinner party.”
“Not you, that’s for sure,” one of the French guys whispers to the other.
“Who would you invite, Marion? I wanted Marilyn Monroe, Mozart, Einstein, Peter the Great, Tutankhamen, and Keats. Imagine the conversation!”
“Yeah, great, except they wouldn’t be able to understand each other,” sniggers one of the French guys. I smile too at this.
“Marina always knows such great games,” says Farrah, trying to smooth over the embarrassment.
Anna Maria and another South American girl I have not seen before bring in plates of Parma ham and figs. We eat with Marion’s huge, heavy, silver cutlery. I look round the table. Marion, who I notice only has figs, eats slowly using only her fork while listening passively to Daria. She gives me a slow, subtle wink which makes me feel ten times better. Farrah is telling David something. The French boys have their heads down low over their plates and shovel in their food ravenously, throwing in lots of bread. I realize that I have one thing in common with them: we have to try and eat as much as possible tonight because it’s free food. Christopher Maurice-Jackson takes a tiny mouthful, puts his elbows on the table and forms a roof with his fingers as he chews.
My mother always asks for small portions of everything. “Just a little bit for me, please. Ooh! Far too much, someone else better have this one.” I remember one Sunday lunchtime at my grandparents. My grandfather had had his first stroke and was “not quite himself,” as everyone put it. I didn’t know quite who he was now but whoever it was, he wasn’t very nice. He had never been very affectionate or even very friendly towards his grandchildren. Me and Grandpa never went fishing together and he didn’t have a mysterious shed at the bottom of the garden full of weird, dangerous things like stuffed fish and hacksaws.
He had a car, well, a series of cars, I suppose, over the years. Always very nice ones—Mercedes, Jaguars and I think he was one of the first people where they lived to have a BMW. When we went over for Sunday lunch, as we did every Sunday, he would wash his car all morning and spend the afternoon waxing it, polishing it and hoovering the inside, occasionally shooting me and my sister a suspicious glance as we played on the lawn or in the driveway. At the time we thought it was the one good thing about Grandpa that he left us to do whatever we wanted and play anywhere as long as we kept away from the car. Looking back, it’s a bit sinister really that he didn’t mind us messing about in the road or with the lawn mower, just as long as we didn’t damage his precious bloody motor.
God, I hated that house. It was a mean little 1950s bungalow on an estate about three-quarters of an hour’s drive from us. It always smelled stale and musty. My grandparents’ huge, ugly old furniture was crammed into it, ridiculously out of proportion, hopelessly out of place. Doors wouldn’t open properly because there wasn’t room. Wherever you stood, you were in the way of something or someone. It was cold and empty and at the same time stifling and overcrowded. When we arrived Grandma would check us over, trying to hide her disappointment and we would kiss her very quickly on the cheek. I think she had seen Prince Charles do something similar to the Queen when he was young. Grandpa would pass through as quickly as he could. He died before I could tell him, “I know how you feel. I don’t want to be here either.”
Their stuff had been brought back from India where they had “stayed on,” as my grandmother called it. I realize now that she hoped to give the impression that they had been part of the colonial service or that they were old army types. In fact, my grandfather had worked for an electronics company out there until, as with the colonials they always pretended to be, the Indians decided that they could do it better themselves and needed no more help from the British.
This particular lunchtime we sat in their dining room as usual, their large, grim dresser casting a menacing
shadow over me and my sister as we ate Grandma’s thick, tasteless food and struggled with her huge, unwieldy bone-handled cutlery in silence. Our parents’ polite conversation was stretched like worn lace across the table, ready to break at any moment. In the end it was broken by my grandfather or, at least, the person he became after his stroke.
My grandma graciously offered my mother some pudding, guests first, of course, making it clear that Mum would never really be family. As always, my mother smiled weakly and said, “Oh, just a bit for me, please.” This is what she had said when offered the roast lamb and the packet oxtail soup before it. It was what she said to everything. Just a little bit, just a little one, don’t bother about me, I’ll make do with this. No, really.
Grandpa stood up (at first I thought he was going to the loo) and shouted at her: “Oh, for Christ’s sake, woman, have some more. There’s bloody heaps of it. Take as much as you want.”
Then he sat down calmly and waited for Grandma to pass him his. My mum was horrified. She turned her eyes away from him and obediently handed her plate back to Grandma who spooned some more thin, evaporated milk rice pudding onto it and then served the rest of us. It was actually quite frightening but I also wanted to laugh. What was really so funny was to hear Grandpa say “bloody.” We ate in silence and fled soon after, leaving the old bugger vacuuming angrily under his rear passenger seat.
In the car on the way home my mother took a tattered paper tissue from the sleeve of her cardigan and began to sob. My dad quickly put his arm round her during a straight stretch of road and muttered something about Grandpa not meaning it, not being himself.
“Oh, I know he can’t help it,” my mother sniffled, “old people get like that, especially after what has happened to him. It just took me by surprise, that’s all. It was a bit of shock, I’m not used to being shouted at like that.”