Holy smoke, thought Gramercy, her mother’s favourite ejaculation suddenly appropriate, you think I want a fuck I can’t imagine anything better than a climax now, but what kind of an outfit is this with the maids sleeping in the cupboards and performing special services at any time of the day or night for a measly tip that I was giving her anyway because she’s rescued me.
Ella was still plucking at the silk of her nightdress, and steering her gently towards the bed, her face was calm and quiet, not as if she’s coming on to me. Gramercy’s thoughts were breaking on her consciousness in ragged foam as she pulled the garment over her head and plunged on to the bed. Ella climbed on to it with her; they were both small women and the heap of the hotel mattress was still out of scale even for the two of them together. Ella didn’t express any reaction at her nakedness, or even look at her, but pulled Gramercy’s concert sandals off her feet and set them down neatly side by side on the floor, bending over with an easy suppleness from her position on the bed. She was squatting, with her legs tucked under her, at right angles to Gramercy’s stiff body with the tattooed dagger on her left thigh. Gramercy was scared; this was like the first time with a new lover when you didn’t know if he’d turn into a raving flagellator. Phil’s face flickered into focus, then faded; Ella’s brows were gathered, she was intent on something serious. And she’d just got up, after a night spent on a shelf in a laundry cupboard. For an instant, Gramercy’s eyes met Ella’s. She could grasp nothing from their shaded irises; then Ella was putting one hand under Gramercy’s shoulder and the other under her hip and was turning her on to her stomach.
Her neck hurt in that position, and as if Ella understood this, she lifted her hair off that place – it was still wet from its steeping in the ice bucket – and began to knead the muscles of Gramercy’s nape, digging in with strong cool fingers. To get a better purchase, she hitched her uniform higher and climbed on to Gramercy’s body, settling herself into the small of her back, one leg on either side, as she worked at the vertebrae of her neck and then with the flat of her palms fanned out to the muscles of her shoulders. Points of fire flared in Gramercy’s flesh under Ella’s fingers; her flesh was a potbound plant, her muscles roots swollen and knotted and gasping for air and grappling for space, and Ella was teasing them out, the taproots and the threads. Her fingers were combing Gramercy’s muscles and replanting them in some fresh moist soft earth, now sifting it to make it more hospitable now slapping it down firmly, and as she worked, she dug herself in more deeply into Gramercy’s body, straddling her bottom so that the maid’s weight, however slight, pressed Gramercy’s cunt into the mattress until she wanted to laugh at the waves that quivered there to rise and meet and melt the pain of Ella’s diagnostic probes. As Ella moved down her body, gathering energy and concentration, Gramercy felt her body heat rise and its smells filled her nostrils squashed against the pillows, and there mingled hotel laundry and soap and warm hair and new sweat, and she heard with increasing awe the grunts she made as Ella pummelled her.
Ella concluded by snapping each toe till the joints cracked; after the tenth digit obligingly loosened, she climbed off Gramercy’s body, pulled down her pink uniform, once again looped her hair smooth on her neck and said, in English, ‘I leave you now, goodbye, Signora. Thank you.’
Gramercy fell at once into a dreamless, odourless sleep, her body limp with the bliss of surrender.
Now I’ll get us emulsifying lotion and good soap and shampoo and some needles and thread and tissues so no more torn-up newspaper today or tomorrow and we’ll be given lots to eat lots downstairs too Lauro in the kitchens will give me and Phoebe lots of food and wrap up some for us to take as well it’s been difficult these last days trying to find Dr Marlin last night I was so hungry I was dreaming we went fishing – for anthills in the sea with lobster pots and fishing boats we set out over brown water it was nighttime lights were dancing deep down where the ant grubs were fat and protein-rich that’s why we were setting out to hunt them they had clustered eggs like honeycombs dug deep into the ridged sand below the boats our shadows moved on the sand deep down below the ant grubs rose to the bait we fixed inside each pot don’t know how they swam into the pots Phoebe came too she was happy playing in the boat with ants hatching from the haul in the baskets we pulled up on board I taught her how to eat the eggs they were like round brown balls and she said, all smiling, They taste of chocolate Luigi promised to do his best to get us more medicine even cheaper maybe he told me 150,000 lira for one month’s supply he will appreciate the singer’s clothes I hope especially the high-heeled shoes for you can see she’s worn them he has collectors who will give him real money for tights and other things with sweat on them from big stars I don’t know if she is big enough I have to find Dr Martin again at the head office of FemMédecs they said I should call back this week she would be back then I will go by there again today now that I have this money I can skip an afternoon the landlord still wants money for last week and if I give him some we can have key to the bathroom but if I could find more we could have room alone together and I could look after Phoebe with no people crowding always having to explain no danger to them not contagious not infectious just the shivers and the shakes from something happened to us a long time ago not TB not HIV though she has turned blue and sometimes yellow sometimes maybe this young singer will bring us luck she feels lucky like fate sings through her every day and gives her pretty shoes and necklaces and flowers and dresses but her body was twisted up and scalding hot not with fever of the flesh something else burning her from inside she all alone here maybe that bothers her I loosen her and cool her maybe then fortune’ll give me something in return it’s a fair trade I say to fate with a big grin showing my teeth like a wolf defending herself so you can’t tell if it’s a smile or really a snarl just to show I’m no pushover you have to look fate in the eye not give in without squaring up to her
The next day, the ice bucket was missing from her room: the only piece of evidence that Gramercy was able to produce to persuade Monica and TB and the others that she wasn’t making everything up.
She wasn’t going to tell them she couldn’t find her nightdress. Or the pair of tights she’d worn at the concert – silver Lurex. Or her sandals. She’d have to buy another pair. She’d tell Monica she broke the heel and threw them away. Pontona was a good place to shop for shoes.
The funny thing was, Gramercy was pleased that her night visitor had taken something of hers; the intimacy of the thefts made her feel the connection between them wasn’t severed. But she knew she was being weird, that she should feel outraged. Or at least vulnerable.
‘Gramercy,’ said TB, as calmly as he could. ‘You know we don’t think you’re lying. You’re just all stressed out. You need to relax more.’ He was worried. They still had six more countries to play.
‘Did you have cheese in anything last night?’ scolded Monica. ‘What about E-numbers? Surely they don’t stuff food with E-numbers here?’
Gramercy shrieked back, ‘It was not a dream. I know the difference between waking and dreaming. I had a nightmare and it woke me up. After that, I was wide-awake. That’s why I left my room in the first place.’
‘It could be the flowers,’ Monica went on, ‘they’re taken out of the wards in hospitals. They’re poisonous.
‘Or you’re allergic to something.’
Monica moved TB out of the way to get closer to Gramercy where she sat, stubborn and inflamed, on the bed.
‘The hotel manager is coming to see you,’ she said. ‘We insisted – we made ourselves understood. Actually a lot of them downstairs speak English.’
The manager, when he appeared, was a fan, one of those men in her audience who’d had to give up revolutionary dreams. He bowed over Gramercy’s hand and kissed the air six inches above it very gravely. ‘I was catering and management student in Enoch,’ he began. ‘It is a grand honour for our hotel you are here. Please accept our deepest apologies. It will not happen again. This bad trash .
. .’
‘What!’ cried Gramercy. ‘You’ve got completely the wrong end of the stick. I want it to happen again. I want you to find her. This Rosa—’ She stabbed a finger at the cleaner’s card from the dressing table: ‘Look, it says, “Hello, I am your cleaner. My name is Rosa. Thank you.” Oh shit.’ She began crying. ‘I’d just like to give her – and the girl – tickets for the next concert,’ she added, lamely, for that wasn’t what was chiefly on her mind. Though she’d do that, of course, if they could be traced.
The manager continued, a look of embarrassment and misery overwhelming his suaveness.
‘I have sent away the housekeeper – for allowing these intrusions. It was not Rosa’s time yesterday. Rosa was not here last night. I have checked. Please accept . . .’ he waved at the room. ‘Compliments of the hotel.’ There was a knock on the door. More flowers appeared, and a bottle of champagne in another ice bucket.
‘I don’t want flowers.’
The manager turned to Monica. ‘You see,’ he began. ‘It’s a big problem for us, refugees, thousands of them. Everyone wan’ to come here – then go on – to other places, make money, have cars, doctors – foreign aid give handouts, then these people use money to do other things . . . give papers to illegals. Refugees. Gipsies. They work for little money – what can we do? We have big shortage of trained staff – it is a problem. When one of the permanent staff – we’re not cowboys, we pay salaries, insurance, pension, everything, all the trimmings as you say – wan’ to take a holiday, wan’ to sleep late, don’ wan’ to work, we have to go to agency, and they go and find one of these gipsies – at the bus station, in a bar, in one of those places they know they hang out. Saturdays is baddest for this. It’s very dangerous. For you. For us. They rob our clients. She take something?’
Gramercy shook her head.
‘She could’ve hurt you,’ he said. ‘Dangerous. They are very dangerous.’
Gramercy grew more impatient. She wanted to know, ‘Why shouldn’t she come back and do the same again? Tonight?’
The manager finished his sentence, waving his hands in the air, ‘Agency gives them a little money, but most they take it. They can’ complain, the police find them . . . So one night here, one night there. They’re not found, if they keep moving.’
Monica put a hand to Gramercy’s cheek. ‘Come on, love, we’ll find someone just as good. It’s only a massage.’
Gramercy ignored this. ‘I see. By asking after her I’ve driven her out. So fuck it.’
The manager replied, with a quick spread of his hands, ‘If we find her we will tell you, of course.’ He looked over towards the window. ‘But they’re everywhere and it’s a big place out there.’
4
An Animal Refuge
When Gramercy looked back, over the ten years she loved Phil, she could not see any crack in the brickwork that could have let in the chill wind that caught him up and spirited him away.
But when the numbness of the first months after his departure began to fade, the fresh pain of her solitude quickened her memories and she was able to look back and assemble the pieces, bit by bit.
‘Making a difference begins with small things,’ said Phil. He had become a vegetarian and was building a compartmentalised compost heap in the garden to sort vegetable waste from animal remains, in which he included eggshells.
After the first stray cat, the menagerie gained new members very quickly. The next acquisition was the baby hedgehog: Gramercy came back from the north one afternoon and found Phil nursing it with an eye lotion dropper.
‘I found it half dead in the road – but it seems to be rallying.’
Gramercy was very touched by the sight of Phil’s gentleness and the small round bundle of soft spines in his square strong hand. She bent over and kissed his fingers, nodding vigorously when Phil said that animals were the key to a holistic life.
The hedgehog took up residence in a box in the garage.
After another tour, she came back to three terrier pups, with black patches over one eye, waggling bottoms with short fat little tails. She fell in love with all three, as, peeing with excitement, they rubbed against her legs. They were given a basket in the bedroom, with an Indian silk embroidered cushion to curl up on. Phil bought a trainer’s guide to dog rearing, and soon Hook and Jonty (for Long John Silver) and the bitch, Bonny, were leaping after balls and jumping over sticks; Gramercy was proud of Phil’s skills in handling them. ‘You’ve got a real gift with animals,’ she said.
The numbers grew: Phil rescued squirrels and rabbits and foxes and birds, including a darling owlet, all white down and fluffy feathers; he acquired discarded pets from chance acquaintances or contacts made on the grapevine in the local inns that he visited: a chameleon, leaf-green with a tail like the crozier of a fern, joined the collection, assorted specimens of breeds that were cute small, but soon grew too large. He penned in the ducks – Cayugas with petrol-lustrous deep emerald tail feathers and plump white Jemima Puddleducks; he added a pair of geese. The last frightened Gramercy; they opened their wings wide and poked out their stiff necks and screeched at her when, a comparative stranger in her own garden, she arrived back again from Enoch, where she’d been filming a promo.
‘Don’t you think you’ve given yourself enough responsibility?’ she asked Phil. ‘I mean, you’re spending all your time cleaning out trays and pans and buying feed and scraping perches . . . the house is a lavatory.’
‘You’re losing touch, Gramercy, with what matters. Those consumerist values are getting to you, they’re contaminating you. Soon you’ll be just like everyone else in the plastic economy.’
Gramercy blinked. It was as well she hadn’t said that she didn’t really enjoy so many creatures around her, especially as an ammoniac miasma hung around the house even in fine weather when the windows were open and penetrated as far as the bedroom. She rolled herself a cigarette of dark tobacco.
‘Perhaps we could just take a rain check on any more – for the time being.’
‘“Take a rain check!” You’re joining the new colonials – the money masters teaching you language. Where’ve you been? You know these animals need help, they need care, they need me. I’ve never been happier than doing this, I swear to God. But you wouldn’t understand.’
He began to taunt her about her desire to make money.
‘You’re in danger of selling out. Look at all this!’ He’d wave sweepingly at the walls, the twenty-four-inch telly in the corner, the hefty tasselled curtain cords on the luxuriantly floral and belling drapes, the French apple wood armoire they’d found together at the annual country antiques fair in their local market hall, which now flowed with rivers of CDs and tapes and old vinyl on to the apricot and indigo kilims that lay on big square baked tiles from Mexico; he’d glare at it all as if spectres were hiding there, spectres from the grim carnival of corporate funds and turbo-charged capitalism and global companies, until his gesture concluded to indicate her, where she stood sullen and muted, fighting the anger that made her want to shout, ‘Aren’t you living here? Aren’t you enjoying living here? Isn’t it comfortable?’ But she never railed; she was trying to see it from his point of view, the undeserved money that kept coming from songs she’d written half drunk, or worse, years ago. And she never let the slow poison Phil dripped into her form into words, reproaches, or even questions. Not then. But later, she began to piece together how her sense that he was doing her an injustice dropped sharp flinty deposits between them, so that approaching each other in tenderness required passing on naked soles over this boundary, where Phil’s anger had hardened into sharp-edged rubble.
Now criticism of Bobby Grace enveloped her, and malice undid their old comic character. He’d accuse her of inheriting her mother’s frivolous, empty-headed, pleasure-seeking tendencies, of caving in to her ghastly, chintzy tastes. He sneered at her for her urban pretensions and expectations. He damned her collusion with exploiters and fat lazy multinationals. And laughed at her taste fo
r self-pampering frippery: he scoffed at the rummage bag of body oils, hair gels, sparkling eye shadows, lip glosses, nail varnishes that spilled round the basin in the bathroom and at the battery of cosmetics that crammed the cabinets. Phil forbade her to wear leather; she developed athlete’s foot and her nails warped and yellowed from the fungus that invaded after trying the plastic footwear he ordered for her from an animal rights charity catalogue. ‘You should wear flip-flops,’ he said. ‘I can’t wear flip-flops,’ she wanted to scream at him. ‘I make the money I do because I sing like I’m wearing slingback stilettos that I can hardly walk in – that’s the whole point.’
She repeated to herself, to others, to Bobby Grace, that he was working through his disappointment over the film scripts that were never made.
Later, Bobby Grace said, ‘You buried yourself alive with that boy. Honestly, your generation get a lot of flak, but we were so so much wilder. By your age, I’d had strings of beaux – you could have some fun now, darling. Get out there, you could have anyone you want.’
Monica said, ‘He was frustrated, Gramercy. You’re driven, you get on with your music, you’re a success. What happened to that film script? To that brave new world he was building? Hot air.’
‘Film scripts’, said Gramercy. ‘It’s not his fault they weren’t made. Nobody wants his kind of stuff. It’s too good. They want schlock. “Inspirational” rubbish about loners rescued by a wonderful, gifted, special child. Or video nasties. Or gangsta comedy. Not people who are dreaming of a new world. Not idealists.’
‘Men don’t like being new men. They’ll play at it for a while but it sticks in their craw.’ This was Monica, again.
‘Yes, he was convincing and you had some great years. You’re allowed to be sad – but you can’t let the sadness take over.’ (Bobby Grace, cajoling.)
The Leto Bundle Page 31