by Ben Foster
Gran’s legacy had set me up as a masseur and I couldn’t help wondering what she would have said had she known I had massaged Angela Hartley, not to mention the rest. Like Pete Taylor, Gran believed there were Them and Us and Angela Hartley was definitely one of Them.
I missed her. I missed her stories, her humour, the way she stabbed the Daily Mirror with her finger when she read something that made her angry. Gran had been evacuated to Torquay during the last war with her younger brother, Jack. At the funeral, he talked about their childhood and there was a catch in his throat when he ended by saying: ‘I’m going to miss you, old girl. I suppose if I don’t see you in heaven, I’ll see you in Devon.’
It always made me smile when I remembered that.
The back door was open. A wedge of sunlight crossed the kitchen and the pair of blackbirds that had adopted us perched on the fence watching Ollie and George kick a ball around the garden. Claire was giving me a rare treat sitting on my knee as she ate pieces of orange from a bowl. I was a lucky man. I could have been down the coal mines getting black lung. I could have been on the trawlers with the constant risk of getting washed away in a storm. I had made a break from the past. There wasn’t a working class movement as there had been in Gran’s day. You have to live in your own times. Morals and codes had changed. It was hard just to survive, and it seemed to me that sunny morning in 2006 that surviving was more important than how you did so.
Kelly had finished folding clean clothes ready for the kids to dirty again. She stood beside the table with her hands on her hips.
‘What are grinning about?’ she said.
‘I didn’t tell you. I gave Angela Hartley a massage.’
‘Who?’ she asked and I laughed.
‘That Tory MP always running off at the mouth.’
She shrugged. Kelly didn’t follow the news, she was too busy, and seemed to be getting used to the fact that my clients were all rich women. Who else could afford to pay for a massage? I never kept secrets from Kelly. Now my whole life was a secret I couldn’t share with anyone.
‘Me. Me,’ Claire said as she struggled to get down.
It was coming up to nine. I was dressed in clean jeans, new trainers and a short-sleeved white shirt from Gap. I slipped on a pair of imitation Ray Bans as I glanced in the hall mirror.
‘Is that cool or is that cool?’ I said.
‘You need a haircut,’ Kelly replied.
‘You think so?’
‘You don’t want to look scruffy for all those rich ladies.’
We kissed cheeks. Claire was watching.
‘Me, Me,’ she said, and I suddenly realised who she took after: my Gran.
I bent down. ‘When are you going to learn some new words?’
‘Me. Me,’ she said again, and I gave her a kiss.
The tap of my fingers on the roof of the Golf reassured me that the car wasn’t a mirage. This wasn’t a dream. This was my life. The indicators bleeped twice when I pressed the key fob. I even liked the vinyl-smell of the interior when I slipped into the driver’s seat. The van had the sound of an old man coughing when I turned the ignition. The Golf purred like a kitten when you stroke its belly. I snapped into the seat belt and pressed the play switch on the CD for another session with Napoleon Hill.
Most people were at work by nine and it was a good time to drive into London. I parked in the National Car Park in Brewer Street and wandered through Soho. The clubs appeared rundown and seedy below the morning sky with its wisps of white cloud burning off in the sunshine. I watched a girl in a short skirt and big heels polishing a display case showing shots of the pole dancers punters would find inside the club when it opened. I had never been to a strip joint and didn’t imagine I ever would.
Dustmen emptied overflowing bins and a street cleaning machine rumbled by sucking up fag packets behind a pair of swirling brushes. There weren’t many people about, just the drunks and runaways leaving empty doorways where they had spent the night. At least it wasn’t cold.
Tourists were taking photographs in Piccadilly Circus. Decades of grime and graffiti had been cleaned from the buildings. Cranes stretched into the sky, the same as in Lambeth and Westminster. London was booming. Not for everyone, the rich were getting richer. The poor were falling behind. But you could taste the optimism in the air. It was like a drug. Young blokes in black jackets stood on street corners speaking into their new generation mobiles. Girls armed with backpacks marched by with intense expressions. There was a pulse, a tempo. It made you feel that you had to meet the same beat or get left behind.
Jermyn Street was lined with tailors, shirt-makers, a theatre. Someone had placed a multi-coloured hat on the bronze statue of Beau Brummell, ‘The arbiter of men’s fashion,’ I read.
I glanced into Rowley’s, a restaurant that could have been frozen in a different age as an example of how people used to live. A woman sat at a table set with shiny silverware. She was alone except for the company of her multiple reflections in the long gilt mirrors. I shielded my eyes to take a second look and felt like a Peeping Tom catching Vivienne Raynott in an unguarded moment. She was in profile, legs crossed, her gaze fixed as if she were studying the arrangement of pink roses in an oversized white vase. In her hand she held a closed book, her finger marking the page. I wasn’t sure what to do, whether I would be intruding if I joined her – stupidly, whether it was my place to do so. I was still undecided when she turned. Our eyes met and she tapped her chest as if her heart were beating faster.
She placed the book on the table as she stood and opened her mouth to huff warm air on the window. She drew a smiley face that faded as I entered the cool of the restaurant and we touched cheeks in a way that was more intimate than if we had kissed on the lips. She was wearing white, I had only ever seen her in white. Now with a short skirt, cropped top, trainers with thick soles. Her pale blonde hair swayed about her shoulders and her blue eyes grew brighter as I stared into them. It was an odd sensation. Looking into her eyes was like looking into my own.
‘This feels like an assignation. Would you like some tea?’
We sat. I tucked my sunglasses in my pocket. She waved her hand and a waiter, an older man in an old-fashioned costume, hurried towards us.
‘More tea, please.’ She fluttered her fingers over the pot on the table. ‘You can take this away.’
The gloom that had marked her features when I first saw her had gone taking ten years from her age. She seemed thrilled to see me. It wasn’t an act or a pose. She behaved as if we were lovers meeting in secret. Not that it was like that at all. Angela had made the appointment, but Vivienne had been waiting for me in Jermyn Street. According to Angela, Maggs had christened my penis Big Ben, while it was Vivienne who had shaved my pubic hair, a memory that still sent a shudder down my spine. They were like parts of the same person, although the part sitting across the table from me was the one I liked being with most.
The tea arrived and she poured two cups.
‘Milk?’
‘Please.’
‘Sugar?’
‘No thank you.’
‘The moment I pour a cup of tea, I see a picture of mummy serving the vicar. Always the same picture. It’s funny those things.’ She leaned across the table as if to share a confidence. ‘Can you swim?’ she asked and looked relieved when I answered.
‘Yes, I can.’
‘I’m hopeless. I bet you’re a good swimmer.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, but not bad for a fisherman.’
She gasped. ‘A fisherman!’
‘I was once, when I was young.’
‘And you’re so old now, a hundred at least.’ She paused. ‘Have you read The Old Man and the Sea?’
‘No.’
‘Hemingway. It’s about a fisherman, a very old man, like you, struggling to land a giant fish.’
‘I’ve done that a few times,’ I said, and she smiled.
‘You really were a fisherman?’
‘On a trawler, herring,
cod . . . ’
‘That’s so romantic.’
She looked thoughtful as if she were filing this a way. I glanced at the book on the table. It was The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek.
‘It’s about a piano teacher who likes sex and has a rather odd relationship with her mother.’ She sat back and laughed, a wild, hysterical laugh that made her blush. She became serious again. ‘Women who read are suspect. Women who write are dangerous. Do you know who upset the applecart?’
‘No.’
‘Eve, of course. She was the one who bit into the forbidden fruit and tempted Adam.’
‘I imagine he was waiting to be tempted.’
She brought her hands together. ‘That is so revealing,’ she said and sat back in her chair. ‘What were you saying?’
‘I imagine Adam was waiting to be tempted.’
‘Undoubtedly. But it took Eve to get the ball rolling. Did you know, every time you have an orgasm, an angel comes to life?’
‘That I didn’t know.’
‘It’s true, cross my heart and hope to die.’
Vivienne was candid, clever, confident, silly, defenceless. I wanted to sit her on my knee and hold her tightly. I stared into her eyes, blue pools deep as the ocean, and thought about the scars on her back. She sipped her tea. Her long white arms were awkward and angular. Her skin was shiny, unblemished, except for the parts you couldn’t see. She placed her cup back in the saucer.
‘Isn’t this civilised,’ she said. ‘How’s our dear friend Angela?’
‘Not so civilised,’ I replied and again she laughed.
‘She’s adorable. I love her.’
I couldn’t conceive of anyone loving Angela Hartley, but then, I had never met anyone like Vivienne Raynott. She tucked her book into a black leather bag and waved her hand, scribbling in the air. The waiter came with a bill for £16, which I paid, leaving the change from a twenty as a tip. It was vulgar to worry about small sums of money.
Vivienne’s sleeveless top revealed a band of bare flesh that appeared in glimpses as she took long strides in her white trainers. Her yellow Ferrari was parked across the street where a warden was writing a ticket.
‘Oh, please don’t. Do be a sweetie,’ she called and he shrugged hopelessly.
He showed us his machine. ‘I’ve already done it. You can’t take it out.’
‘Oh, well, never mind. You have a lovely day.’ She leaned closer. ‘And don’t work too hard in this weather.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and we left him sliding the ticket into a plastic sleeve and sticking it on the windscreen.
She grabbed my arm. ‘Karma,’ she whispered. ‘We went to Nigeria and stole all the land, now the Nigerians are getting their own back. I think they’re all from the same tribe.’
The car was practically outside our destination, a double-fronted shop with big windows showing square-jawed dummies in hunting clothes on one side, shorts and polo shirts on the other. It had just gone ten. Raul was waiting for us. He was a short, broad man with swept back silver hair and an immaculate silver-grey suit I’m sure Beau Brummell would have approved of. He nursed his hands and bowed low as if to monarchy.
‘How nice to see you again, My Lady,’ he said with a strong accent, Spanish or Italian, I wasn’t sure.
‘You look very well, Raul. Have you been away?
‘Just in the garden on Sunday.’
‘How nice. This is Ben,’ she said, introducing me. ‘We’re going to start downstairs,’ she made a climbing motion with her fingers, ‘and work our way up.’
He laughed as if she had made a brilliant joke and I wondered if Vivienne knew the effect she had on people. Even the parking warden with his scarred cheeks and a coat that was obviously too heavy for the weather had seemed drawn to her and would have torn up the parking ticket if he could.
Vivienne moved around the basement picking out sports shirts and holding them against my chest. She settled on a Hugo Boss polo with four buttons. The changing room was about the size of the box room at home. There was a green leather chair, mirrors in gold frames, a print of hunters chasing dogs across open fields, a brass rail for hangers. Everything smelled of quality and polish.
‘Come and show me. I want to see everything.’
I stepped out like a runway model.
‘That’s perfect, perfect. Now trousers.’
I tried on jogging pants, chinos, cotton sweaters – ‘Summer never lasts forever,’ she said.
‘Nothing lasts forever,’ I replied and a cloud crossed her eyes.
‘Stop being so profound or you’ll get a smack.’ She drew breath. ‘It’s short and brutal and pointless. It was God’s sense of humour to give us a brain.’
She went to the table where she had amassed various items. She went through them, selecting and discarding in a way that reminded me of watching women at jumble sales in the church hall seeking bargains among the clothes their neighbours had thrown out. She picked up the polo shirt, white jogging pants, a pair of trousers and reeled off numbers: ten of these, six of these, plain white trainers, four pairs of Sebago deck shoes in different colours. Raul was nodding, writing a mental list.
‘Have you got that?’ she asked.
‘I think so, My Lady,’ he answered, and her hands went to her chest.
‘Oh my God, I almost forgot. Bathing trunks.’
She rushed over to the Ralph Lauren collection and we added four pairs, red and white striped, dark blue, pale green and pink – a colour I would never have chosen in a hundred years.
‘Put one of the pairs in a bag for me, Raul. That would be so kind,’ she said.
While Raul was wrapping the blue shorts in layers of tissue paper, we climbed the stairs. I used this moment to tell Vivienne that I did not have the money to pay for the new clothes.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ she said.
‘I don’t want you to pay for them, Vivienne, you’ve done so much.’
She stepped closer. ‘I haven’t done anything. Really, you don’t have to worry. They all go on an account.’
‘You mean like a tax adjustment?’ I said and she smiled.
‘You’re catching on. Now enjoy it. We’re just getting to the good part.’
I was having a makeover. It was My Fair Lady in reverse. Vivienne was my Professor Higgins.
I tried on suits – linen, pure wool, a cashmere blazer with plain brass buttons; ‘you should never have designs or engravings unless you were in the military.’ I tried on shoes – loafers, Chelsea boots, brogues, cap toes, wingtips; shirts with pointed collars and straight collars, button downs, plain and striped. Only long sleeves. Except for sports shirts, short sleeves are a no no. When it’s hot you roll them up to just below the elbow, never above. You leave two buttons unbuttoned, never three. It was implicit, rather than regimented. There were codes, formulae, things you do and things you must never do. Things that are said and things that are left unsaid. Everything told a story. Those in the know could read between the lines.
Vivienne was eccentric, Maggs and Angela were eccentric for that matter. But their eccentricities fitted within conventions that were recognised and understood. When two Frenchmen speak, they know that the other is French and has not learned the language. It was like that with Vivienne and her friends. You could dress the same, speak the same, attend the same parties and regattas. But you remained always an outsider clinging to the fringes and cut loose if you ceased to amuse. It was an exclusive club and associate members consisted of beautiful young women because they were beautiful young women, the famous because they were famous and the new rich because they were very rich.
Raul watched with Vivienne as I paraded in shirts and suits, chinos and jackets, brown shoes and black. They stroked their chins and scratched their cheeks. They glanced at each other with quick, decisive nods when something was suitable, a frown and a shake of the head if it wasn’t. Vivienne preferred plain shirts, plain suits without a pattern in the weave, everything
simple, understated. Raul wore a striped shirt and there was a herring bone pattern in his silver suit, but praised Vivienne’s choices as if they were holy edicts. We added a dozen pairs of Calvin Klein boxers, socks and silk ties. Shopping is fun, especially when you don’t have to pay the bill.
There were trousers to take up, jackets to take in. Raul took my measurements so they had them on file for when there was more time and I needed new things to fit new occasions. I wasn’t sure what had happened to my clothes and was dressed now in an off-white linen suit, the jacket tailored at the waist with narrow lapels, a soft white shirt without labels or logos, two buttons unbuttoned, and dark brown deck shoes without socks. I brushed my hair back with my hands and stood in the reflections of a three way mirror.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘I need a haircut,’ I answered and she hissed through her teeth.
‘Are you out of your mind? You look beautiful.’
‘It’s only the clothes.’
‘Clothes maketh the man.’
‘I thought it was manners?’
‘Not in Italy,’ she replied and burst out laughing. Then she became serious and ran her fingers through my hair. ‘Don’t you dare touch it.’
As Raul wrote down my address, Vivienne copied it into her phone. Tailors would work through the night and everything would be delivered the following day. Raul disappeared for a few moments and returned with a plastic bag he held in the tips of his fingers. It contained my shirt with short sleeves, jeans and the Nike trainers I’d just bought.
‘What shall I do with these?’ he asked and Vivienne fluttered her long fingers.
‘Throw them away.’
Fifty quid down the drain, I thought to myself, and my £5 at the market shades gone, too.
Raul handed me the swimwear in a bag with long handles. I was exhausted. We had been in the shop for almost two hours.