by Alex Marwood
Well, get on with it, then, you old bat, he thinks. If you weren’t so mean, you’d have a phone like every twelve-year-old in the country. ‘Fire ahead,’ he says.
‘I waited in when you came on rent day. You usually come down.’
‘And you usually complain when I do,’ he says.
‘No,’ says Vesta, ‘I complain because nothing ever seems to get done, no matter how often I ask. I’d be perfectly happy for you to come down if I thought for a minute you were going to mend something.’
Moan, moan, moan. ‘You can’t expect a new Schreiber kitchen every couple of years on the rent you pay,’ he says, resentfully. Vesta’s sitting tenancy has been a thorn in his side since they put paid to any new ones in the 1980s. Squatting there in the bowels of the house, rendering it unsaleable while paying less than he gets for a single room upstairs. If it weren’t for Vesta he would have sold up years ago. If it weren’t for Vesta he’d be sitting pretty, running a complex of maid-service holiday lets somewhere warm instead of trudging back and forth up Northbourne High Street. Letting her drain him dry.
‘You know perfectly well I’m not asking for that sort of thing. When have I ever? It’s those drains. You’ve got to do something about those drains. Every time someone flushes the loo upstairs, stuff comes up out of the area grating. It’s disgusting. I’m going to get ill soon.’
‘Didn’t that drain cleaner I put down work?’
Collette pulls her top off and he freezes the image while her back is still turned; a muscular back with a well-defined waist that suggests that she has, at some point in her life, at least, taken care of her figure. He wants to get back into the mood before she turns to face the camera. His genitals are still sensitive with interrupted excitement, and if he can get the old bag off the phone, stop listening to her ladylike vowels and her I-know-my-rights complaints, he might still be able to get there.
‘Do you think I’d be calling if it had? I’ve been spending the best part of five pounds a week on bleach, and heaven knows how much it’s costing on the immersion, pouring gallon after gallon of hot water down there. Not to mention the environment. All that bleach going into the water system…’
Everyone’s an environmentalist, these days. Especially when they want something. He toys with a nipple and eases himself upright on the couch. Picks up his tinnie and takes a gulp.
‘You need to call the drain people,’ she says. ‘I’m going to get ill.’
Good, he thinks. Hope you bloody die. That would sort a lot of things out. He takes another gulp of beer and raises an arm to let the fan play into the matted hair in the pit. ‘I’ll come and have a look,’ he says.
‘When?’
‘When I get a minute.’
‘Well, it needs to be soon, Mr Preece. I’ll have to call the Health and Safety, otherwise. And another thing. That lock.’
‘Lock?’
‘On my back door.’
‘What about it?’
‘It needs replacing.’
The beer repeats on him, and he makes little effort to disguise the sound. Unwraps a sucky sweet and pops it in his mouth. ‘Be my guest.’
‘It didn’t stop that vandal getting in at all. Just popped straight out of the latch.’
‘Well, help yourself.’
There’s a silence. Then she tries again. ‘I think that’s up to you.’
The Landlord screws up the sweet wrapper and adds it to the pile in the ashtray. ‘No, I don’t think so. If you want to beef up your security, that’s up to you, but as far as I’m concerned there’s a door and a lock. Maybe,’ he says spitefully, ‘you should ask your insurers. They might upgrade it for you.’
He hears her suck in her breath. ‘You know perfectly well I’m on a state pension. You know I can’t afford insur —’
He hears beeps on the line. The forty pee has run out. ‘When are you —’ she begins, and her voice is cut off.
His mood is almost lost, Collette frozen with her arms above her head. Irritably, he polishes off his beer in a single chug and throws himself back against the cushions. Every time he talks to that stubborn old cow, it puts a frown on his face, reminds him of the money she’s depriving him of. That flat alone, even in its current state, with the kitchen that time forgot and the drains of doom, must be worth a hundred and fifty thousand. A big house like that, with a big garden, on a road the estate agents are calling ‘popular’, is worth half a million, easy, even without modernisation. Vesta Collins is cheating him out of his dreams.
He levers the remote out from under his left buttock, and presses play. Collette turns round, and shows him her breasts.
Chapter Seventeen
As in life, so in death: a woman needs a good moisture routine to maintain her beauty, both inside and out. Even after desiccation, the process of putrefaction continues, albeit more slowly, and a woman exposed to the open air – and the bacteria and fungus spores that float in it – deserves protection.
Once the forty days was done, the taricheutes would take the sacred corpse, now a hardened shell, and wash it in palm wine. The Lover has made do with Asda budget vodka. Even at eight quid a bottle, the alcoholic proof must be higher than anything they produced on the banks of the Nile, he guesses. The body was then massaged back to suppleness with scented oils, and the empty torso packed with resin and herbs and sewn up, for scent and verisimilitude. It was then wrapped in resin-soaked bandages before being placed in its ornately painted coffin, en route to the hereafter.
But an Egyptian mummy was only destined for the afterlife. Keeping his ladies user-friendly requires, as he has discovered, more regular attention. Once a week, the Lover gives Marianne her ritual ablutions. He only wishes he’d worked out the need before it was too late for Alice. She’s almost beyond salvage, now. The last time he oiled her, he rubbed a little too hard with his home-made strigil and took a strip almost a foot long from her thigh, so that the bone showed through. And he has to admit that, with her abdomen unsealed, the smell coming from her is hard to ignore. Now he leaves her well alone, feels the reproach beaming from her shrivelled breasts as she sits in her chair and watches Marianne receive the attention that should have been her own. The rictus on her face has turned cynical over the past few weeks, as her nose has dried out and turned up. So much for loving me for ever, it says. You’ve barely given me a year. She’s like one of those suburban wives who lets herself go, then sits about in a onesie, complaining about men.
Ah, but Marianne. Not a first wife, but certainly a trophy wife. Renewer of love, restorer of faith; the basis of his new family, harbinger of happiness to come. If anything, Marianne has improved with age. The slightly lumpy chin, the faint pot belly, the chunky thighs that used to irritate him when they were courting, have vanished in the preservation process, and she is as slim as a supermodel, her cheekbones like Audrey Hepburn’s, her nose snipped like Paris Hilton’s, the three-point jawline of Alicia Silverstone. Dressed in hipster jeans and a little broderie anglaise top, she reminds him vaguely of Kate Moss.
He lays her gently out on the plastic sheeting, lights his neroli candles and starts the ritual. He tests the temperature of the oil, warmed gently on the stove, on the tender skin of his inner elbow and, judging it right, pours a drizzle on to her beautiful shoulder. Watches it spread. Inhales the aroma and smiles: sweet almond, white soft paraffin, and essential oils – neroli, sandalwood and vanilla – from the hippy shop in Balham. It’s a ladylike scent, spicy yet clean, and it hides the smell of decay.
Palms flat, he reaches out and helps the oil on it way. Strokes his way over the shoulders, down the arms. Takes each hand and massages it all the way up to the fingertips, one by one. He is proud of his skill, of the fact that he has given her eternal life. Her fingernails, buffed and filed back to evenness, though a little short after her struggle to break free, are still perfect, still flexible and roundly pointed, painted once a month to match her toes. He talks to her as he rubs; makes circles with his fingertips and wor
ks the magic potion in. There, my darling. We’ll keep you beautiful. Her skin so cold in the muggy air, so soft, almost papery, beneath his hands. You like that, don’t you, my love? he asks. You know it’s all for you.
He works slowly, methodically. Is determined that no breath of outside will taint his darling, damage her purity. It takes nearly an hour to oil her head-to-toe, then he dresses her, gently, gently: pink silk French knickers and a white lace bra (padded, but only slightly, just to replace what has been lost), and then a chic little black dress from the Trinity Hospice shop: a cast-off, he knows, but as good as new with its short pleated skirt and light crêpe bodice. Two silver bangles on the delicate wrists, a single stone of amber on a pendant between the jutting collarbones, matching droplets in the holes in her ears.
When he’s done, he sits her in a chair and slowly, delicately, cleans her face with Clarin’s cream cleanser, massages it with oil, pressing in above the jaw to encourage the plumpness back upwards, and replaces her make-up. Marianne needs little work. Black liquid eyeliner and a set of eyelashes, a couple of coats of mascara to bind them to the fading originals. Some blush to emphasise her spectacular angles and a touch of burgundy to thicken her slightly thinning lips.
He steps back to admire his handiwork, Alice glaring balefully, neglected, from the corner. I really must get rid of you, he thinks, spitefully. I hate the way you make me feel so bad. It’s not her fault she came out better than you did. It’s not her fault she’s beautiful. He snatches up a tea towel from the draining board and throws it over her face. If she can’t be good, she must live with the consequences.
Marianne sits, poised and graceful, in her chair, her green glass eyes gazing in rapture at the light fitting. Just one more duty, one more gesture of care, and they’re done. He opens one of his fold-up chairs and puts it behind her, fetches the bowl of almond oil and dips into it the soft bristles of a Mason Pearson hairbrush. One hundred strokes for beauty; it’s in every manual from the Romans to the Victorians. One hundred strokes for beauty.
He counts out loud as he brushes, enjoys the feeling of her hair running through his fingers. You like that, don’t you, my darling? You like it that I make you lovely. Her hair is long and dark, and lustrous because of the oil, though every week a few more strands come away on the bristles of the brush.
Chapter Eighteen
The trick is to know the territory better than the punter does, and to look so out of it that he’s off his guard. And not to let him see your face, much. Not that most of them are looking. They don’t look at your face much, when they’re thinking with their dicks.
She may have the reading age of an eleven-year-old, but Cher knows what makes the blood rush away from the brain. There are things you learn in school, and things you learn in Britain’s better care homes. You need to look young, you need to look dirty and you need to look desperate. She’s good at that. She’s had a lot of practice.
On Brad Street, there’s a house with a broken side gate where no lights have shown for months. She rings on the doorbell, waits for a response and, when none comes, slips into the dark little cave of the side-return and organises herself.
She is already wearing her wig, with the fringe brushed forward over her face so that her brows and eyes are partly covered. Squatting over her bag, she pulls off her fake Uggs and pulls on a pair of peep-toe mules – easy to kick off when the need arises. She sheds her denim jacket and pulls her knee-length dress over her head. Tucks it all away into the bag, but leaves it open, ready for action.
I hate him, she thinks, but I have no choice. I can’t go back to sleeping rough again. It nearly killed me, last winter, before I found him. I need this room. He knows I need it. And shoplifting’s all very well for your daily essentials, but you never get more than a tenner for anything. What am I meant to do?
She stands up in hot pants and tube top, and steps back out into the street. It’s all quiet, down here. You’d never know you were two hundred yards from streets of bars and restaurants, the Old Vic theatre and a busy tube station tipping tipsy office workers who’ve stayed too long at Happy Hour on to their suburban trains. London is such a city of contrasts: one of those places where you can turn a corner and drop off the edge of the world. Where the IMAX cinema now stands used to be a subway full of the homeless known as Cardboard City. Back then the South Bank trendies would take mile-long detours to stay above ground.
These Dickensian mazes are perfect for her purpose. Rows of heavily restored black-brick cottages that sell for close on a million pounds, whose inhabitants come in and out by cab after dark, to avoid the dripping shadows under the railway arch. It’s dinky in the day, all potters and delicatessens and artisan bread, but once the wooden shutters close, it echoes. A significant advantage for her, for someone giving chase in shoes will drown out the sound of someone fleeing barefoot.
Two corners away from her bag, someone from some council past has planted a bench by a stunted tree: a sad little gesture towards recreational facilities for the echoing maze of the Peabody Estate behind. Cher once tried sleeping there for a few nights, which is how she knows that these roads are a shortcut for drunken men staggering through to the Embankment from the bars of Waterloo. She sits down, arranges her long legs, lights a cigarette and waits.
It doesn’t take long. He’s old – must be nearly thirty – and sweating slightly in his unbuttoned pinstripe suit. The tail end of a tie sticks out from a pocket, and he walks as though he’s trying to avoid the cracks in the pavement. Cher shifts around so he catches a good look at the lean length of her thigh, then looks up at the streetlight as he stops and looks again.
He crosses the road and sits himself down at the other end of the bench. It’s not a very long bench. She can smell the beer on him from where she sits. It’s a smell she remembers well.
He stretches one arm along the seat back in a parody of the casual, like a sixth-former in the cinema, and digs the other fist into his trouser pocket. She hears him breathe through blocked-up nostrils and feels him looking clumsily from the side of his eye.
He takes in a big whoosh of air and turns jerkily towards her as though he has only just spotted her. ‘Nice night,’ he says.
Cher shrugs, sucks on her fag and turns to look at him. She tends to keep the talking to a minimum during these transactions. He looks straight at her tits, then down at the imagined treasure between her thighs. ‘You all alone, then?’
It’s the sort of voice that puts her teeth on edge. A fat voice, full of plums and promising that its owner will soon be having to trade his suit up for a larger size. A voice that’s never had to struggle, that’s only slept outdoors on Officer Training Corps weekends. Cher pouts her frosted pink lips and shrugs again.
‘Are you, er… looking for company?’
Would it make any difference if I wasn’t? she wonders. And replies: ‘Sure.’
He almost starts dribbling. Christ, men. Are there any out there that don’t drool at the prospect of a feel? That don’t want to be at you with their poky fingers, to hump at you like a bull terrier? None that Cher’s met, anyway. The ones that are meant to take care of you are the worst, though. At least there’s an honesty to a transaction of this sort. At least he’s not telling her he loves her and talking about Little Secrets.
‘Have you got a place?’
What do you think this is, Shepherd Market? ‘No,’ she says. Nods over at the path that runs up the side of a language school. ‘That over there turns a corner round the back. Into a yard. We can be private there.’
She sees him look at the signage, conclude that a private education establishment can’t possibly be a trap. He turns back, blearily.
‘How much?’
‘What for?’ she asks. He doesn’t look like he’ll be up to anything much, but Cher is counting on that.
He runs through the vocabulary he’s heard in films. He’s not a habitual buyer of pussy. He’s practically congratulating himself on his audaciousness. ‘How much
for French?’
‘French?’ She can’t resist taunting him, taking the piss out of his attempts at sounding like he knows what he’s doing. ‘What’s that?’
‘I, er…’ His sweaty fatboy face falls as he realises he’s going to have to be more graphic; grapple with vocabulary he usually only uses with other men. ‘You know. Blowjob.’
‘Oh, riiiiight. Why didn’t you say so?’
‘I…’
‘Never mind. That’ll be sixty.’
‘Sixty?’
‘Oh, Christ. You’re not going to start haggling, are you?’ Cher shifts, deliberately; flashes a bit more cleavage, slightly, ever so slightly, parts her thighs.
His eyes glaze. ‘No. No, all right.’
She sits and looks at him; starts to slip off her shoes. It takes him a moment to work out why she’s gone quiet, then he reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out a fat, card-filled leather wallet. She waits silently as he counts out three twenties: one, two, three. Even in this light she can see there are quite a few more in there. He hands them over, fanned out like they’re a prize. Fat drunk rich boy wants me to suck his cock. Just like the fat old Landlord thinks he can get me to do, when I can’t come up with the rent. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
His phone rings and she takes her chance while he’s distracted. Waits until he’s got it out of his pocket and is looking at the screen – it’s an iPhone, of course it is, but it’s probably not worth her while to try to get that too – then bats it lightly out of his hand, so quickly he barely registers the blow. It skitters away across the pavement, lands up in the gutter. Fatboy looks up at her, lower lip quivering, cross and confused. She smiles. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
‘Ssss,’ he says. Wobbles to his feet, wallet carelessly in his hand, and walks over to the kerb. Silently, on bare feet, shoes in hand, she creeps up behind. As he bends and stretches, Cher snatches her moment. Runs forward and, with all her might, shoves at the unstable backside.