by Amanda Coe
‘Bit tired,’ said Katrina, rolling her eyes.
It was as if she had taken a key and wound Lallie up. She produced an impression. Garbo. ‘I vant to be alone.’ Beneath it, Quentin could see there had been words. Maybe Lallie hadn’t wanted to come. After all, it was work for her too, shaking that little money-maker. Poor kid.
‘Shall we order breakfast?’
Lallie had a poached egg, Katrina stipulating on her behalf that it should be kept apart from its accompanying toast. Which should be unbuttered. Quentin approved of the juvenile finickiness. From what she’d seen, this was a country generally in need of a little more active discernment. She herself had been negotiating for yogurt for a couple of days, and that morning it cashed out in the shape of a narrow pot, gingerly proffered on a saucer, with a vaguely alarming logo: ‘Ski’. What the hell did skiing have to do with yogurt? She delved, cautiously, as Katrina smoked over her fried stuff and Lallie methodically opened the three foil pats of butter that had come with her order.
‘So you do like butter,’ Quentin observed.
‘Yeah, but I don’t like—’
‘She doesn’t like melted butter,’ interrupted Katrina. ‘She likes butter on toast when it’s gone cold. Don’t know where she gets it from!’
Katrina, Quentin had noticed, was always eager to promote her daughter as some sort of freak, whose eccentricity was unique but whose talents were firmly connected to her. She watched Lallie mush the rectangle of cold butter on to the toast.
‘It’s nicer,’ she said, firmly.
‘So.’ Quentin gathered herself, smiled. Time to shake her own money-maker. She wondered what Hugh was up to. Breakfast at Claridge’s perhaps, or rough sex with some boy he’d picked up; did he give or take? It was hard to work out in one so confidently dominant and yet alertly receptive. Well balanced, that’s what she loved. Complete even. Maybe that was it. Maybe he didn’t need anyone. Maybe he did it with himself in the mirror, or only with boys who looked like him, like a certain movie star her dad had told her about. While looking at himself in the mirror. And where was the harm, as she’d thought at the time? The movie star was so beautiful, why wouldn’t he want to drown in his very own swimming-pool-blue eyes? Of course with Hugh, it wasn’t narcissism exactly. There just didn’t seem that much of a gap between him and the world, a gap that cashed out as any kind of need. Ah, that need, that fucking need, Quentin. To work.
‘Have you ever read A Little Princess?’ she addressed Lallie, smiling her smile.
‘A Little Princess, A Little Princess, ooh, I’m not sure we’ve read that one, have we, luvvie?’
Lallie chewed her toast.
‘No.’
‘She’s not much of a reader,’ confided Katrina. ‘Too much to do.’
‘Well, I’ll make sure you get a copy.’
And then she pitched it, aware that as long as there was a ticket to Hollywood on the table, she could have said it was about a kid giving blow jobs for peanut-butter sandwiches and the mommy would sign her daughter up. It was tempting, but Quentin stuck to the truth. Weirdly, A Little Princess was a book she remembered well from her own childhood. Particularly the ending, when the dad came back. Or was that the one about the trains? It didn’t matter: in a movie the dad would end up coming back for the girl, since that was obviously what everyone would be rooting for.
If she did say so herself, Quentin did a good job. She knew, because Lallie switched her attention from cutting exact triangles from the white of her egg to listening to her. The story began to live in her face. She loved the ending too, Quentin’s version. Katrina was also excited, if only for her own reasons. They were all still talking about it and asking questions when Lallie’s tutor came to find her. The tutor was a hesitant woman in her forties, too fat for her fussy purple blouse. Quentin knew as soon as she saw her she had a drink problem. Holding it together, maybe not yet starting until after lunch, but in another ten years she’d be a wreck. No wonder. Nice career, hon.
‘Off we go! Fractions today.’
Lallie took her time drinking a glass of milk, enforcing her status as the tutor hovered, unconfident of taking a seat. Quentin didn’t suggest she did, and it clearly didn’t occur to Katrina, who operated only out of commitment to the cause of Lallie. Finally, Lallie got up.
‘I’ll get you a copy of the book,’ Quentin told her.
‘Ooh, we’d love that, wouldn’t we, hen?’ said Katrina. ‘I’ll have to read it and all.’ At last, she included the tutor. ‘She’s talking about our Lallie being in a film, in America. The Little Princess. You know, from a book.’
The tutor smiled indefinitely, revealing mottled teeth. ‘Lovely.’ She scooped Lallie along. ‘Isn’t it set in England, though?’
‘Well, they’ll set it where they like, won’t they? Doesn’t have to be in England.’
For a moment, Quentin was apprehensive that Lallie and the tutor would go and leave her to Katrina’s mercies, but after a moment to stub her cigarette with all the vehemence of grinding it into the tutor’s eye, Katrina headed off with them. Maybe she sat in on the lessons? As soon as they’d gone, although she had been desperate for them to go – hey, she could do Garbo herself – Quentin felt the drop, another of those time spools. Maybe another cup of coffee. The coffee here was weird, with a gross kind of skin that clung to your lip, like algae bloom on a stagnant pond. When she glanced around, she was surprised to see the room was empty except for the older woman in the corner, and that all the other tables had been cleared.
‘I think there’s someone in the kitchen, would you like me to knock?’
The actress waved her baton of folded newspaper at the door behind her shoulder. Quentin could see she was nearly done on the crossword.
‘Oh, that’s OK—’
But the actress – she should know her name, probably – was already leaning over and calling through an opened gap: ‘Excuse me, service?’
Over Quentin’s ‘No, really, it’s not a problem’, the woman said she fancied another cup of tea herself. Then, tilting the cup, observed that perhaps it had been coffee? She was no Hugh, but the thespian self-confidence was better than nothing. When the waiter came, smelling of cigarettes, Quentin ordered the drinks and invited the actress to join her.
‘Vera Wyngate.’
Quentin introduced herself. She recognized Vera now from what she had learned to call the rushes. She looked really different with her own hair. Seeing her as herself, Quentin thought she might be familiar from another movie, but it would be kind of rude to ask. If you have to ask, it doesn’t count. Although she had that instant actress intimacy which made her seem almost American, and so potentially impossible to offend. It was nice to be with her, drinking the weird coffee. Vera seemed about as lonely as she was.
‘Back home this time next week, touch wood,’ she told Quentin.
This was London, apparently. Not married ‘any more, thank God’, no kids. Although she knew Quentin was the producer, Vera was the first person she’d met on the movie, including Lallie, who wasn’t trying any sort of angle on her. Even Hugh. Hugh Hugh Hugh.
‘Have you worked with anyone before? The director? Hugh?’
See, it felt nice just to say that, to be in a world where other people potentially knew him. This was Vera’s first time working with asshole Mike apparently, ‘But I’ve known darling Hugh since he was a baby, practically. His father was a producer too, you know. Sidney Calder. Terrible man.’
The way Vera said this, Quentin could see she’d fucked Hugh’s dad. He’d fucked her. Danny-wise, probably. Live and learn, or just keep on living.
‘With the ladies?’ she empathized.
‘Oh, awful, darling. Not that he had much to offer, apart from a part – I mean in a film, because that part –’ Vera gestured and grimaced – ‘not much to write home about, let me tell you. Hugh definitely gets his looks from his mother, I don’t know about anything else, I hasten to add – Hilary Longton, do you know her? She wa
s a lovely actress. Of course Sidney made her give it all up when they got married and had the boys. Hugh adored her, I think. Well, everyone did. Such a shame. She used to turn a blind eye, although Sidney would have just carried on in front of her if she hadn’t, I think. Of course the boys were at boarding school.’
Poor little Hugh. It was like they were related. Movie brats. She hadn’t known that. Although she imagined it was all a little different here, kind of simultaneously downscale and yet classier than her Hollywood biog.
‘But Hughie’s an absolute sweetie.’
The way Vera spoke, Quentin could see she didn’t get it. Him. No matter. Vera shepherded her cigarette ash into one corner of the plastic ashtray, confidentially rearranged her shoulders.
‘But now – what do you think about the girl?’
For a sick heartbeat Quentin thought she was talking about a girl in connection with Hugh, a fiancée, as he’d probably call her, some pissy bitch with a creamy complexion and crystal vowels. But of course, she realized, once she’d interpreted Vera’s offstage flick of the eyes, she meant Lallie.
‘She’s quite a package.’
Vera nodded. ‘Isn’t she just.’
OK, so there was real dislike there. What was that about? Jealousy?
‘Poor little thing,’ said Vera, unsympathetically. ‘Of course it all comes from the mother.’
‘That’s traditional, I guess.’
‘God, yes. Don’t put your daughter on the stage … of course there’s a kind of genius there.’
Quentin never responded well to the G-word. She’d grown up in a town of geniuses, and the über-geniuses were always distinguished by how many people around them they could destroy, the über-über-geniuses by how spectacularly they could destroy themselves into the bargain. Lallie would have to rack herself up a few habits and burn through a few waster husbands before you could start approaching that word. And she didn’t even need a bra yet.
‘And she loves the limelight, no doubt about it. Mind you, don’t we all? Not you, darling. I’m sure the backroom stuff is much more well adjusted.’
Yeah, right. Quentin thought of all the kids she went to high school with, the fuck-ups with geniuses for parents. Herself probably included. True, the spawn of actors were more straightforwardly damaged: addictions, suicidal tendencies, nymphomania. The producers’ and writers’ and directors’ and designers’ kids took a more smorgasbord approach to neurosis, in her experience. There was a kind of hopeless simplicity, in the actors’ kids, in knowing you’d never be as beautiful or successful as your mom or dad, whereas such as she, well, they all had to work that stuff out, be their own personal Hamlet … anyway, that wasn’t Lallie’s potential problem. And Lallie’s potential problems weren’t her problem either. She was here to pretend to be a producer and functioning human and recruit Lallie for the other movie, maybe. She was kind of getting that Vera wasn’t unduly preoccupied with Lallie’s welfare herself.
‘Are there problems?’ she asked. ‘On set …’
‘Not that I can see.’ Vera’s regret was obvious. ‘Works like clockwork, poor mite. Absolute trouper, Mike’s probably told you.’
Quentin was yet to have much of a conversation with Mike. He was too twitchy, and come to think of it, Hugh had intervened between them without her really noticing. Silent diplomacy. She liked that. But it wouldn’t have mattered if Mike had sat her down and told her that Lallie threw tantrums and turned up four hours late every day and demanded he personally wipe her ass. She could see from the rushes – everyone always loves the dailies: thanks, Dad – that Lallie was something else. It didn’t matter, the Mom and the W.C. Fields impressions and the tacky TV show (which she hadn’t seen, but from what the agent and the Mom had said about it she could tell it was tack all the way). Because what Lallie had, money couldn’t buy, although God knows it was going to give it the old college try. And she, Quentin Genevieve Montpellier, was heading up the line. Just step into this sack, kid, there’s a heap of dollar bills at the bottom, and excuse me while I find something to tie it up with.
IT WAS REALLY only because of Gemma that Pauline went back to school before it broke up. Admitting this, especially to herself, would have infuriated her. As far as she was concerned, she went back because there was nothing better to do now Joanne was out of the house. At least at school she existed, if only to get done and spend hours standing outside Mr Scott’s office waiting to get done by him. And it was just as bad as she’d feared about the film and the auditions; it was all anyone talked about, even the teachers. Everyone was excited because the film people had been in at the weekend already and left stuff that showed the way they’d decorated the school to look different, and they all surrounded Mr Fletcher the caretaker in the playground at playtime to ask him everything about it, Gemma included.
Because of her talking to Mr Fletcher, Pauline didn’t realize until dinnertime that Gemma was avoiding her. In the queue, she talked to one of her snot-bag friends as though Pauline’s voice didn’t make noise. It was only when she pushed her on the shoulder that Gemma did this crap pretending to notice her face. They weren’t allowed to be on the same table at dinner itself, but Pauline could see Gemma from where she was sitting, serving up mince from the tin. Pauline finished her own meat and veg and square of flan ages before Gemma, then bided her time mouthing her tepid glass of water, metallic from the jug, with grey bits of mince sunk at the bottom. The moment Gemma pushed back her chair, Pauline was making for the door to meet her.
‘Do you want to play skellingtons or owt?’
Gemma said she didn’t, that she was going to play two-ball with Christina, who was already installed by the Juniors’ wall. So Pauline followed her, watching, which was tolerated, although no one invited her to have a go. And when the bell shrilled for afternoon lessons, she got in the line behind Gemma and pushed the box into her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s a present for yer.’
Gemma opened the box containing Joanne’s charm.
‘It’s a guitar. You put it on a bracelet, like. It’s gold. I got it for me mam’s birthday.’
Gemma dangled it. ‘Gold? Really?’
‘Cross me heart.’ She could see that Gemma liked it.
‘Why hasn’t your mum got it if it’s her present?’
‘She already had one the same so she said it was all right if I wanted to give it to someone else.’
Gemma put the guitar back in the box, careful to centre it in its little red satin bed before she slid it in the pocket of her dress. Pauline felt so happy she sat in her class until four o’clock without bothering any of her neighbours, just thinking about Gemma’s house and the life she lived there. She got done for not listening to the teacher, but not the way she got done for pinching or kicking or taking pencils. Ever since she had been to Gemma’s house, she had run this daydream to herself, like a groove in a record. When Gemma had gone to the toilet, before they had played the murder game, Pauline had taken the opportunity to have a really good look around her bedroom. It was like the telly. Everything matched. She had opened a drawer and there were Gemma’s knickers and vests and socks laid out, clean and separate from each other. She didn’t recognize the socks at first, because they were balled in pairs. When she got home that night after she’d scarpered over the fence, she found as many socks as possible – she and Cheryl did what they could from a common pool – and tried to arrange them in these satisfying spheres. It wasn’t the same. Pauline realized that she needed Gemma’s kind of white socks, and she didn’t own any white socks; the best pair she had was some pale green pop socks left by Joanne. She’d been wearing those ever since Joanne had gone, although one of them was now quite badly laddered.
‘I’m not allowed pop socks until I start secondary,’ said Gemma critically, focusing on the ladder. But Pauline was listening. She nicked a blue pair from a shoe shop in town which kept a rack of them by the door and presented the packet to Gemma on her way in
to school the next day. The day after that, it was a Kit Kat, and on Thursday, a purse that had made its way to the house, brand new and shiny red, with a big-toothed zip all the way round. When Gemma undid the zip, curious to examine the inside, it disclosed a row of long metal loops, one of them holding a key. This disappointed them both.
‘It belonged to my mam,’ said Pauline. ‘She said you could have it ’cos she’s got a new one but she must have forgotten to take out the key, like.’
Gemma seemed satisfied by this.
‘Do you want the key back?’
‘Yeah.’
Pauline took it, although she knew it didn’t open any door round at hers. Her lie made her half believe the key really did belong to Joanne, so it was nice to have. Gemma didn’t play with her for long, though, at playtime, and at dinnertime play she couldn’t find her at all. Now they were in different classes there wasn’t any queuing to do together either, except at dinner. She got kept in after the last bell for swearing, and as Mrs Maclaren started her weary telling off, Pauline could hear the noise of everyone else spreading through the playground and disappearing through the gates.
‘I’ve got to go, Miss.’
‘You’re not going anywhere, Pauline, until you’ve realized what and what isn’t acceptable behaviour in my class.’
‘I know, Miss, I’m sorry, Miss, but I’ve got to go and look after me little brother, Miss.’
‘Well, he’ll have to wait, won’t he?’
Pauline was sure she could hear Gemma laughing in the mix of voices below the window. Mrs Maclaren had quickly finished telling her off and was tidying up the classroom, picking up dropped pencils, repositioning chairs casually upended on desks that might topple on to Mr Fletcher when he came to clean the floor. As she turned with a duster and began swiping her maths lesson into the chalky fog on the board, Pauline made a run for it. She was so quick down the stairs she didn’t know if Mrs Maclaren was coming after her, but once she was out of the gate she allowed herself a glance round and sure enough she was, gasping fury and shouting for other people to stop her, as though she’d stolen something.