Running in Heels

by Anna Maxted

  “Oh Chris, you poor th—”

  “And! And the fucker goes, ‘But if you’ve got anything else you want me to hear, bring it in!’ Not a sniff of guilt, it was like, ‘scuse me, mate, but can you lift your arm so I can twist the knife better?’ Jesus, man! And then, two seconds later, Tarqy’s on the line, the fucking Judas! After all I’ve done for him! He’d still be an alarms and installations engineer if it weren’t for me! Going on about how I was managing them all wrong! Says, ‘Piers has put an end to the toilet tour because it takes all the glamour and quality out of our act.’ I mean, when I got the Blue Fiends a gig at the Berwick-on-Tweed university bar, Tarqy was delirious, man!”

  “Oh Chris.” I sigh. “You poor th—”

  “It’s like, it’s like, what is this, ma—”

  As Chris launches into a whinge as long as Route 66, there is a beep-beep on the line. I know it’s Frannie.

  “Chris, I’m sorry to interrupt. Look, I’ve got to be quick, it’s dreadful about Piers, what a total git, but what—what can I do? I…I don’t think Tony can help you with this.”

  “You gotta call him, princess, he can recommend a brief, or maybe have a word with Piers, I—”

  “I can’t ask him to do that,” I blurt, jiggling both legs.

  “Ah come on, man, I’m not asking much, I—”

  It’s the “man” that does it.

  “I can’t,” I say coldly. And, imperious in a blaze of courage, I press line two.

  “Really really sorry to keep you waiting,” I bleat.

  “I should hope so,” says Frannie. “What is it?”

  It takes a short explanation—during which I swallow enough humble pie to double my weight—to reel her in. Frannie’s shift ends at 10:15 tonight. We can meet near the hospital, in Lambeth, or somewhere along her route home. A bar near Bank tube, where she changes for Bethnal Green, would be acceptable. I’m too uncool to know anywhere in Lambeth or Bethnal Green, so I say, “That sounds great, Frannie. I know, why don’t we meet at the Pitcher & Piano in Cornhill? It’s bang in the City, just round the corner from Bank tube.”

  There is a cough, as if Frannie is choking on my bad taste.

  “Natalie,” she says, sighing, “you’re so petit bourgeois. I’ve never been to the Pitcher & Piano. But I suppose it will be an education. And as for your problem with Chris, I’m sorry to hear it, but it doesn’t surprise me. Don’t you see that by willfully resisting an appearance of physical maturity, you pander to the male vested interest in promoting and overvaluing thinness? You help Chris to repress you! It’s far easier to subjugate a woman who looks fragile and prepubescent like yourself, rather than a hardy Amazon like Barbara, or a voluptuous earth mother, like myself”—that’s certainly one way of describing seventeen stone, I think. Has Frannie ever thought of PR?—“Of course he’ll treat you like a toy if you don’t have the courage to challenge and confront his primal fears by presenting a mature, powerful image of womanhood. By starving yourself to a husk and never speaking up for yourself, you encourage his persecutory conviction that the powerful woman emasculates. Do you understand, Natalie? You, the compliant child, are permitting his fantasies of potency and authority—thanks to you, these fantasies become factasies. If you don’t pudge up, of course he’ll shag around! By remaining size eight you allow his physical and mental superiority—you are a nonperson! Now do me a favor and think about that. I’ll see you in the Pitcher & Piano, ten-forty. Au revoir!”

  Two seconds into Frannie’s monologue, I realize that ideas devised at 2 A.M. are rarely as brilliant as they appear at their time of conception. But it’s too late. The phone lies dead in my hand and I’ve roped in the biggest meanest troll outside of “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” to help solve Babs’s marriage problems. Repressed indeed! And I am eating more. (I discovered last week that lack of protein can make your hair fall out. What next? Lack of yellow in your wallpaper? Lack of good TV programs on a Tuesday at 4 A.M.?)

  But I don’t dare ring Frannie back, so I spend the rest of the day in a state of creeping dread. At 9:30 P.M., I can bear it no longer and leave the flat. Incidentally and not that I care, where is Andy? Out with a girl? I drag my feet to Chalk Farm tube. At least I can count on London Transport to delay me. Every journey takes an hour in this city—there’s always a station closed because an escalator is broken or it’s the ticketmaster’s birthday. I dream of moving to Bangladesh for a taste of efficiency. The Circle & District Line speeds me to Bank in seven minutes flat.

  I emerge from the wrong exit on purpose and pigeon-toe along Threadneedle Street, thinking, it’s so gray and smart, oh yeah, doesn’t Simon work round here?

  I’m so blond. Of course Simon works round here! How else would I know about a git-magnet like the Pitcher & Piano? In peacetime, Babs forced me along for the rat’s birthday drinks! “It’s like his second office,” she’d said fondly.

  As I (unfondly) reminisce, a timid thought presents itself. What if he’s there? I bet he is. Would I confront him? Yes. Compliant child, my arse! Although there’s no need for language, as my mother would say…I sweep toward the Pitcher & Piano like a vengeful god. Pausing only to apply lipstick.

  My legs are jelly as I join the braying fray, as a thousand well-paid eyes sweep over me, assessing and dismissing in one disdainful move. I drop my gaze, knowing that I look cheap. (As in the lower tax bracket.) I feel like the oik at the ball. There’s no point trying to buy a drink, as bar staff ignore me in roughly the same way that polite company ignore a dog’s erection. What am I doing here? My idea was mad. I can’t go through with it. I wrench my mobile from my bag, page Frannie with the instruction: “Sorry to mess you around but it’s okay now.” Right. To the loo, then home, no harm done.

  I start slinking through the yattering crowds—“scuse me, scuse me”—gently touching my palms to the walls of gray tailored backs to stop them from crushing me like a grape in a winepress, ducking under trays of sloshing pints—“sorry, sorry”—although it’s their fault—

  “Natalie,” barks a crisp voice only slightly blurred at the edges. “Woulden have thought this was your kind of hangout, won’t you come and say hello?” I spin round as Simon claps a heavy hand on my shoulder and twiddles me toward him.

  “Hello, hello,” I stutter, hearing my voice, weak and squeaky, and thinking, Now what? I note his slack features and unfocused eyes and attempt a frosty smile.

  “Come and meet the gang,” he slurs, his hand slipping downward. “Gentlemen,” he booms—a loud huddle of posh suits part and stare—“may I introdush you to a fren of mine?”

  “Fren”?! Since when are we frens? It took him four months to remember my name! I am propelled forward, a reluctant object of curiosity like Tank Girl at an Action Man convention, and various stubbled faces nod and grin and look me up and down. I’d be floored by the alcohol fumes, except that Simon hasn’t removed his hand from my back—I think he’s forgotten he left it there. I bleat a greeting but fail to perform further.

  He drawls, “We should get you a bevvy, mm, what’ll you have? I suggest a pink drink for a lady, a vodka and cranberry or a kir royale?”

  The assembled chimps seem to think this is funny, so I invoke the spirit of Frannie and say, “That sounds pretty but what I’d really like is a pint of Carlsberg Elephant.” (All I know is, I once saw a tramp drink it.) Simon’s cronies bend over laughing, spraying one another’s expensive ties in lager.

  “Where’s Babs?” I ask tightly, turning away. “Will she be joining us?”

  Simon—his hand may actually be welded to my back—steers me to the bar and within seconds summons a pink drink from the air.

  “My wife,” he titters, “maaaaai waayyyyf is out saving lives, she’s a lifesaver, doncha know.”

  He rolls his eyes in sarcastic wonder. His hair is a little askew. Simon is as sozzled as a worm in tequila. Go on, tell him. My heart bops in anticipation. I turn around and block his path to the rest of the pack. He smiles and teeters.
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  I swallow my fear and stare down at his black Chelsea boots. Then I look up and say sternly, if unnecessarily, “You are drunk.”

  Simon’s grin spreads slowly across his face like treacle and he says, “Natalie—you don’t mind if I call you Natalie, do you?”

  What else was he planning to call me? John Thomas? I light a cigarette and don’t offer him one. “You do call me Natalie,” I remind him curtly.

  “I do call you Nadalie! Nadalie, thish is a lovely surprise seeing you here, did I tell you that? Thish is my stomping ground, did I tell you, I woulden expect to see you round here, the girlies round here are all seccies and ball-breakers!” Simon chugs a half pint of lager down his elegant throat.

  “Simon,” I say.

  “Whassat?” says Simon.

  “Don’t you think you should get home to Babs?”

  “No!” he blurts, and staggers backward, giggling.

  “Careful!” I gasp as he slips and treads heavily on the heel of a man with shoulders and neck like a bull. “Sorry,” I cry.

  “Please, Simon,” I shout over the hubbub. “What about Babs, it’s so unfair, you don’t want to make her unhappy, she adores you and I know you’re mad about her, I know—”

  Simon slaps his hand on my shoulder and leans on it—it takes all my strength not to buckle—and bends until his lips tickle my ear. I assume he wants to confess his regret but instead he murmurs, “Nadalie, you don’t mind if I call you Nadalie, Nadalie, did anyone ever tell you you’ve got sush a pretty mouth only you don’t use it mush I could tell you what to do with a mouth like that you’re very quiet but I like that, you know what they say about the quiet ones, don’t you?”

  I lurch away with such force I head-butt his nose.

  “Shit,” he splutters, cupping his hand over his face as the red dribbles through his fingers, “shit.”

  I stare at him, the ugliness inside spits and boils, and I babble, “You…you, I’m not sorry, Simon, you’re disgusting, I’m not sorry, you don’t say things like that, you’re drunk, you’re drunk, okay, but—”

  Simon drops his empty pint glass on the floor and everyone turns as it smashes, and he uncups his hand and violently yanks my head toward him and presses his mouth to mine, hard, crushing, mashing my lips and clinking my teeth and I flail and push and struggle and snort blood and grip his arm to try to get him off me but it’s only when I lift my boot and scrape it hard down his shin and stab it into his foot that he lets go and stares at me in bleary shock and pain and I want to fling my pink drink in his stupid face and over his sunshine yellow silk tie and pale blue shirt and dark blue suit but what would that say to Babs, so I place the sticky half-spilled kir royale on the bar with trembling fingers, wipe the blood and spit off my mouth with the back of my hand, and say, “Be a man, Simon, and get home to your wife.” I walk calmly out of the Pitcher & Piano into the dark night and then I start running, shuddering and retching, like a trainee vampire after its first bite.

  26

  ACCORDING TO THE CHINESE CALENDAR, I WAS born in the year of the Rooster. I suppose I got off lightly (Belinda was born in the year of the Dog and I think Tony is a Rat,) but I’ve never liked being a Rooster. I wanted to be a Tiger of course. (I think the only other options are a Goat, Monkey, Horse, or Snake—apparently the Chinese aren’t bothered about giving their children complexes.) But having resented the Chinese calendar all these years for labeling me, I’m now forced to accept that it was close to spot on. I was born in the Year of the Headless Chicken.

  “You all right there, love?” says the taxi driver, glancing in his mirror. “Boyfriend trouble, is it?”

  I rub my mouth and croak, “No, yes, I’m fine, thank you,” but when I pay the fare he watches my hands shake.

  “You wanna watch yourself, love,” he rasps, leaning an elbow out of his window as I hurry up the path. “Can’t be too careful.”

  Tell me about it. I jam the key in the lock, fall inside, and stagger to the bathroom. I see myself and shudder. Dried blood round my mouth, I look like a bad-mannered cannibal, and my hair is wild and my eyes, bright in a mad frazzled way, and my face is long and gaunt, is this what I want, ugh, I want to strip off my clothes and scour my skin raw but I can’t bear to see myself, this hollow self, because Babs is right, I’m not fat, I am not fat, I can see it now, but I feel it, what I am is not good, oh god, what have I done, I wash the dirt off my face and clean my teeth and spit spit spit into the sink and I’m trembling so hard I can’t get a grip on anything.

  I place the towel back on the rail and it slithers to the floor. I snatch it up and fling it at the rail, whipping it, you bastard towel! whap whap! then hold my breath in case I’ve woken Andy. What would I say if he saw me like this? I had steak for dinner and got carried away?

  I smooth my hair, straighten my shirt, glide to the kitchen, and softly lock the door. I want to sleep for a thousand years but I don’t think I could ever sleep again. I know what I’m about to do, and the thrill shivers through me like an ill wind. I open the larder door, step on a chair, and lift down a large tin box from the top shelf. I place it silently on the table.

  Open sesame.

  The contents of the box shine like paste jewels under the bright ceiling lights.

  “You’d feel a lot better if you ate something,” I drone, imitating my mother. (“You’d feel a lot better if you ate something,” is what she’d say if I’d been slashed in the stomach with a carving knife: it’s her answer to everything. She once watched a recording of Johnny Rotten singing “Anarchy in the UK” and remarked to Tony, “He’d feel a lot better if he ate something.”)

  I stare into the box and and my insides writhe. I reach out, my pulse is speeding, the urge overtakes me, I’m possessed, I can’t stop myself, I’m suffocating in lust.

  And then I’m snatching, tearing, a wild animal, ripping at the wrappers with my teeth, the purple, gold, red, silver, bronze, all and everything, the loud wanton colors of desire, cramming, stuffing, jamming, oh it’s all gone wrong, this thick gluey lush glut of sweetness it’s molten heaven it tastes like a dream more more I’m hungry hungry I’m so fucking hungry rapacious I can’t stop it any longer, that emptiness inside like a yawning monster, grumbling, loud and absolute, I’m feeding, filling the badness, soothing it, pressing it back down, making it go away and oh oh yes it feels so good like ice on a wound, until the noise inside is silenced and I am sated.

  For about one piddling minute. And then it hammers at my chest again. I stare at the obscene wreckage of sweet wrappers littering my pristine white table and all I can think is, what have I done? I’ve had a fit. I’ve had a Roseanne Barr episode in my sleep. More pressingly, my stomach is swollen to the size and weight of a ripe watermelon and there’s a good chance I’ll split. I glance at my lap and it’s sprinkled in brown and white—chocolate and coconut crumbs. When I brush them away they smear, disgusting brown smears like shit on my trousers. They never show that on the Bounty ads—flabby arms and the brown trouser effect. I feel a great welling force, the urge to scratch the skin off my bones. Oh god. The tears ooze and I scrunch up the evidence and bury it in the bin, all the while wailing inside, this isn’t paradise, it’s hell, and could it be any worse?

  I sit at the kitchen table buzzing. I feel the whole of me buzzing with self-revulsion—although sharing the blame is the accumulated caffeine from a Mars Bar, a milk chocolate Bounty bar, a Milky Way, a Snickers, a mint Aero, a Fruit & Nut Dairy Milk, a box of malted milk balls, a packet of Minstrels, and a tube of Smarties. Not that smart at all. I sit and stare at the wall, the words “oh god oh god” run through my head over and again like an endless daisy chain and when I look up at the clock it’s 2:17 A.M. I want to go for a run, run it all off, I don’t want to go to bed, but considering I don’t want to exist either, going to bed is a small surrender. I unlock the door, tiptoe to the bathroom, clean my teeth until my spit isn’t brown, and pad into my bedroom. Then I scream.

  Andy is in my bed!r />
  The unutterable pervert!

  I stare disbelieving at the hump in the duvet and—when it doesn’t leap up in horror and shame—scream again. (As you might have observed, I’m good at screaming. It comes from having a nervous disposition.)

  “Natalie?” calls a bleary voice from down the hall. “That you? You okay?” Then who the—? I pick up a candlestick in one hand, then yank back the duvet with the other.

  Chris is in my bed!

  I rush to the door. “Fine, thanks,” I bleat into the dark.

  I gape at Chris. What the hell is he doing here? I was rude to him earlier. I’m sweet as custard and he’s grumpy for weeks and the minute I’m rude, he can’t get enough of me. Or can’t get enough out of me. Well, not only has the worm turned, it’s done a triple back flip. One word from him about Tony and he is history. I mean it. I’m whacked up on sugar and not to be messed with. I poke him in the side with the candlestick. He doesn’t wake up. Drunk. I place the candlestick back on the bedside cabinet and marvel. Once I would have been flattered that some loser of a man had chosen to slink home to my bed after overdoing it on the Jack ’n’ Cokes. (Aw! He’s all helpless and he’s come to me! Aaar! He’s been sick all over my bedclothes! Cute!) Now I just don’t have the patience.

  I paddle through my bottom drawer, dig out the biggest plainest scariest Victorian schoolmarm of a nightie I can find—high neck, ruffles, bows, beige, the lot—and put it on. Then I lie there feeling like a sea lion in drag until I fall asleep. I wake up queasy. After a few squeaks and grinds, my brain crunches into gear and I remember why. And I’m horrified and repulsed all over again. I blame the Edwards family. Babs and Andy pressing me to eat, eat, eat, and so I eat a little more, but it’s all or nothing with me, a little will never be enough, and so the pressure builds like steam inside a pan of boiling water with the lid jammed shut. And then, whoooooff! How could I? I controlled it for so long, I had it all under control, until she and her brother interfered. Christ, I feel sick. I blink at my alarm clock and flinch. Arrgh! A box of chocolates! Sitting there! Roses. For a second I think it’s god playing a joke. Then I realize. Chris. He might as well have bought me a pig costume and an apple to stuff in my mouth.