His friends start thumping the table: the drumbeat of the British bully preparing for the kill. Harriet puts a fist on a hip, drops her head to one side so her pigtails bob. ‘Pants!’ cry the mob, and other tables drop their conversations to watch. ‘Pants! Pants! Pants! Pants! Pants!’
‘Stand up,’ orders Harriet. Her victim uncurls to face her, flushed with drink, excitement and being the centre of attention. He gives her a sheepish grin and she pouts bossily. ‘No good smiling here,’ she says, ‘you can’t charm your way out of your punishment. Now, drop your trousers.’
The boys burst into a rapturous cheer. Roger starts to fiddle with his buttons. ‘Hurry up! Hurry up!’ I order.
‘Please, miss.’ He tries to look boyish and appealing, but I can practically smell the dribble coming out of the side of his mouth. ‘I can’t do it by myself.’
Wanker. There’s always one. Every night, someone who fails to distinguish between a novelty waitress and a flycatcher.
‘Sorry, sonny,’ I snarl. There are times when you have to turn on the thumbscrews, put them in their place without putting them off the fun. It’s the fact that we mastered this art so quickly and he was able to save himself bouncer money that keeps Roy employing us despite everything. ‘If you’re after a classy bird, try Stringfellows. We expect our pupils to have mastered their trousers by the time they come to this establishment. Now, drop ’em!’
‘Now!’ repeats Harriet, points her cane at his crotch.
Obediently, he lets his trousers fall open. He is wearing white boxer shorts underneath, cute widdle piccies of dancing pigs popping out from behind his striped shirt tails.
That’s enough for me. I step forward, grab the flap of his trousers and neatly drop a blancmange inside, grind it in, safely keeping hands away from flesh, with the paper plate. As the refrigerated jelly hits his skin, his back arches back involuntarily in shock, as it always does. And I leap into the air and land the second blancmange full in his howling face.
A great bay of male approval. Not approval of what I’ve done, of course, but rather joy at the sight of another man humiliated. The noise always makes me want to duck and hide, but I stand my ground and wait while Harriet steps forward once again to take the spotlight.
‘Time,’ she says quietly once the cheering has died to a gurgling mutter, ‘to take your caning.’
‘Oh, God,’ says Roger, wiping blancmange from his face. ‘Not more.’
‘Any more of that, and it’ll be twelve of the best,’ she snaps. Sometimes I wonder how much acting goes into Harriet’s role. I know this for a fact: Harriet, having grown up in a family where men were little more than tools for women’s advancement, has only a small supply of respect for them. Plus, of course, she was educated by nuns. ‘Now, get over that desk and take your whacking.’
I lead him by the tie to the podium in the middle of the room, bend him over the inky desk upon it and quietly slip the scissors from the pencil slot. Once Harriet’s done, my turn comes.
This is her divine moment, the moment she always makes the most of. Stalking up and down the podium, she slaps the cane into the palm of her hand as the room rustles to the sound of readjusted trousers. Harriet bends over, showing both stocking tops and knickers, and a small groan rises from the assembly. ‘Are you ready?’ she asks.
The question is ostensibly aimed at Roger, but a dozen voices mutter, almost involuntarily, ‘Oh, yes.’ Men. Can’t live with them, but threaten to paddle their arses and they’ll be yours for ever.
‘Well, get ready.’ Harriet brandishes the cane under his nose, bends it until you think it must snap, then gets behind him. Places it on his buttocks, and the hairs on his legs stand on end. ‘Count with me,’ she tells the audience. Pulls her arm back to its fullest arc.
‘One!’ they shout. And Harriet, with the deftness of one who has had years of practice, suddenly produces the ping-pong bat in her left hand and brings it down upon Roger’s backside. For this is the secret of public violence: maximum drama, maximum pain, but woe betide the restaurant that leaves a welt in the age of litigation. The crack rings out over the audience, Roger yelps and Harriet pulls her arm back for another shot.
‘Two!’ Whack.
‘Three!’ Whack.
‘Four!’ Whack.
‘Five!’ Whack.
‘Six!’ Whack.
I step forward. ‘Whaddawe say?’ I cry.
‘And one for luck!’ they scream in return, and Harriet brings the paddle down for one last lick.
Harriet is panting as she helps Roger to his feet, plants a thick lipsticky kiss on his left cheek while I do the same on the right, deftly cutting the end off his tie at the same time. We always keep little souvenirs of our victims; Harriet includes them in collages and I turn them into funky little play-toys for Henry. ‘Well done,’ we say.
‘Thank you,’ he mumbles through the tears pouring down his cheeks.
Harriet shakes her head. ‘You truly are a sad individual.’
‘And you are a goddess,’ he replies.
Chapter Eight
The Front Room
What people don’t realise is that after-hours drinking joints are not actually there to service the coke-addled networking ambitions of thrusting media Turks, but are, in reality, there to provide places where the people who have been servicing them can go for some post-work R&R. All the restaurant and bar staff in central London are members of each other’s clubs, and all the door staff at all of them know the other people on the restaurant circuit. The coke-addled media Turks are there to subsidise the leisure of the leisure providers. You know those people you see waltzing past the queues, the ones who don’t even have to hand over their names to have the velvet ropes snapped open for them? They’re not big faces in the record industry; they’ve probably just got off work at a bar in Mayfair. People dedicate their whole lives to finding out the secret of being on the guest list, and never discover that it’s this: if you want access to all of London’s leisure facilities, get a job as staff.
Once the last customer has been dispatched, singing and gurgling and walking gingerly round the weals on his buttocks, we drag Shahin via Victoria station and the papers for a drink at the Front Room. The Front Room is a Manchester theme bar, complete with tasselled lampshades, swirly carpet, flying ducks and ceramic sauce bottles, on each of the tables that line the walls. I think the decor was meant to be an Ironic Statement. The joy of it is that, instead, everyone who goes there treats it with a Coronation Street cosiness that would probably seriously depress its designers.
Harriet and I kiss Alexi, the bouncer, and he unclips his velvet rope to usher us inside. Then everyone kisses Jasmine, who used to work with Harriet at Ollie’s Bar, and Harriet requests a huge vodka and tonic. I have a double espresso because I think I’m going to die any minute now. I’m not sure what I’m doing still up, to be honest, except that I’m too wired to go to bed. Shahin orders tea. Not very late-night London, I know, but there you go. Bet you don’t always start banging them home when you get in from work either. We find a worn brown velvet sofa whose headrest is protected by white lace antimacassars encased in plastic and slump down to read.
Godiva has made the front pages of everything but the Financial Times. Even the Guardian has a downpage piece under the headline ‘Feminist icon re-emerges as saint? ‘It’s a miracle!’ screams the Sun. ‘Blessing of Belhaven’, says the Mail with characteristic alliteration. The Independent has a half-page photograph of the scrum of photographers outside the gates of the Great House and the headline ‘Fawcett exhumation renews hysteria’. I like the Sport best. Its headline merely reads: ‘36–24–34: Godiva’s body found unchanged’.
Jasmine brings the drinks. I sugar my coffee heavily and read the ‘20 things you never knew about Godiva Fawcett’ column in the Headline. No 12 is ‘It is estimated that Godiva’s patronage raised over £30m for charity – £180m at today’s rates. The biggest single fundraising effort was when she lent her image to the
One World Fair and Ball at London’s Alexandra Palace in 1981. Guests and visitors donated over £1m between them, though administration costs reduced the take to just under £70,000.’ At No 19 – well, you have to scrape the barrel if you’re looking for things people don’t know about someone as famous as Godiva – is ‘Godiva wore a size 3 shoe, the same as Grace Kelly, Boadicea and Geri Halliwell.’
Harriet reads impassively. There’s no sign of emotion on her face; she’s been too well trained to let it slip through. I know, though, that there’s stuff going on behind that porcelain mask; I’ve known her too long to be fooled. I sip my coffee and feel an almost instantaneous jolt. Not from caffeine, though: Jasmine has added about half a pint of brandy to the mug, which is one of those things that bar people do as little gifts for other bar people. Damn. And I was going to get a good night’s sober sleep tonight.
Shahin puts down his copy of the Daily Extra and gives his verdict. ‘Crazy fuckin’ English peoples,’ he says. ‘Always death, death, death. This lady, she been dead for how long now?’
‘Fifteen years,’ says Harriet.
Shahin takes a loud slurp from his cabbage-leaf teacup. Pulls a face. ‘And another thing. How come you got to put milk in your tea? Always. Horrible.’ He emphasises the ‘h’ roundly from the back of his throat, a sound that suddenly turns this simple adjective into a blissful onomatopoeia. I’ll never pronounce it the old way again.
‘Don’t think of it as tea, Shahin, think of it as penance.’
He pouts, waggles his head, rests his cup and saucer down on his doily. Jasmine has brought us a cakestand full of sweet treats, apologising for the lack of lardy cake due to a bit of a rush when the staff of lastminute.com had a corporate bonding session. Shahin picks up a Fondant Fancy, sniffs it, puts it back.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ says Harriet. ‘Remind me to eat your toad-in-the-hole next time I’m in.’
He grins that sly Persian grin, that ‘I cheat at backgammon and you’ll never find out how’ smirk. ‘I remember when your mother die,’ he says.
‘Died, Shahin,’ says Harriet. ‘She died.’
He frowns, waggles his head a bit more. ‘Yeah, I know. We find out about it even in Iran. I was maybe eight years old.’
‘Jesus,’ Harriet interjects. ‘I’ve heard of showbiz ages, but I don’t think I knew there were kitchen ones. You’re saying you’re twenty-three?’
‘Yes.’ He breaks open an Eccles cake, sniffs, and puts a shred in his mouth. Pulls a face like a disgusted camel and spits it into his hand, and from his hand transfers it to the ashtray. ‘Gaad. This you call food?’
‘It’s a special kind of rural cuisine, Shahin.’ I pat his shoulder. ‘More decorative than edible. I don’t think you’re actually supposed to eat it.’
He licks the back of his hand and does another couple of faces. Yes, I think, I really did sleep with this man. I think it was something to do with his eyes being like glittering pools of oil in the desert or something. That, or vodka and the small box of honey-soaked cakelets he brought me from the Reza Patisserie one afternoon. Like I said, he’s a total sweetie.
‘Crazy. Crazy people. Who makes food that is not for eating? Anyway, day she die was on Iranian TV. Whore from England dies using Moslem children for puppets for TV. Pictures – not many pictures. They say she dress like prostitute all the time, sleep with many man, was perfect example of how Western morality spit in the face of God, that her death is example of God’s wenchance. Then I switch over to CNN, that my dad had though could be put in jail, and is all these people weeping on screen, tearing hair and beating their face and saying she was angel, she was most beautiful woman who ever live, she was kind, she was great moral leader, I love her. It was just like when motherfuckin’ bastard Khomenei die …’ Shahin never says the Imam’s name without the preceding two words. He feels that the entire Iranian revolution was carried out as part of a dastardly plot to personally rob him of the opportunity to eat at McDonald’s and wear sunglasses as a teenager.
Harriet stubs her cigarette out on his old teabag. ‘Get to the point, Shahin.’
‘So.’ He looks again at the Eccles cake, shakes a Marlboro from the pack in his breast pocket and starts waving it about. ‘The point is this. Which was she, this mother of yours? She was angel, she was whore? You never talk about her. In all the time I known you, you never mention.’
Harriet thinks for a bit. Says, ‘I suppose she was something a bit in between, really. Only she was good at the presentation. She did stuff that was – well, I don’t know – pretty awful, really, but somehow she managed to emerge smelling of roses every time. She had that sort of charisma. I mean, I loved her. She was a pretty crap mother most of the time, but she could charm the arse off you. You know. She’d turn up three days late for your week’s visitation rights, and she’d be all presents and apologies and compliments, and you just couldn’t stay angry for more than ten minutes. And she had that effect on everyone. I think people just didn’t want to believe that someone that lovely could have really done all the things they heard about her. So they just didn’t. They just blocked it out.’
‘And that’s how you get to be saint, these days?’ Shahin lights his cigarette, pours out another cup of tea, adds milk.
‘Well, yeah. Sainthood’s all in the perception, isn’t it? And the point was, it’s not whether my mum was good or bad either way, is it? It’s the fact that she was famous enough for it to count.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look.’ Harriet flips her stocking-clad feet, the stilettos long since consigned to a plastic bag, onto the top of the fold-out space-saver lounge-dining table. ‘You’re not virtuous these days unless you’re famous. It’s fame that makes people virtuous. All those nurses and carers and Médecins Sans Frontières, all the Christians and Moslems and charity workers and mine-clearance experts and people who find people’s wallets in the street and hand them in intact, and the good coppers and the kindly priests and the soup-kitchen volunteers and the people who make a habit of giving money to beggars: they’re just doing what they ought to. Look at Mother Theresa: she was a straightforward nun, doing her nun thing, albeit pretty effectively, until the celebs started beating a path to her door. She saved thousands of lives on the streets of Calcutta, but she was admired because of her connection to the rich and famous. If you’re famous, and you put your arm round one mangy-looking poor person, you’re a saint. That’s what my mother did. And in a way it’s what Anna’s mother did too. Think about it. Nowadays, Anna’s mother is a Nobel cult figure with a following of millions and as much research money as she could ever want. Before she got picked up by the newspapers, she was just the local weird kid who preferred reading about quantum theory to smoking on the village bench. But once everybody got to know who she was, she turned into an example to us all.’
Harriet pauses. Recrosses her ankles. ‘Which is why,’ she continues, looking at me now, ‘you and I will be lowly sinners all our lives.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But don’t you prefer it that way?’
‘Oh, yes,’ says Harriet. ‘Christ, yes.’
Chapter Nine
LEEZA HAYMAN
She Says What She Means, and She Means Business
Sometimes I’m ashamed to live in this country. And sometimes I’m proud. But what I’m proudest of this week is that I write for a paper that reflects the real views of real people. Since Friday, we have heard nothing from the twelve-year-olds who write for the ‘highbrow’ – for highbrow read boring – papers but complaints about the so-called ‘hysteria’ that real people have reacted with when it emerged that Godiva Fawcett’s body has been found to be uncorrupted after 15 years in her grave.
According to certain so-called experts, this shows that people – for ‘people’ read you and me – have their priorities all mixed up. I suppose, according to them, we should all be putting our priorities into handing out money and flats to any asylum seeker who jumps off a lorry in Dover, and inves
ting money that could be spent on shortening NHS queues in drop-in centres for one-legged lesbian Bengali single mothers.
Godiva, they say, was a figurehead, a showbiz personality who got too big for her boots. We should forget about her and start getting our priorities right. No doubt they mean things like setting up Aids awareness programmes for three-year-olds, or funding alternative theatre groups to ‘educate’ teenagers in homosexual practices in schools. That’s what the loony liberals who are so scornful of Godiva want to do with your hard-earned tax money, you’d better believe it.
Well, not me, mate. You may be too young to remember the things that Godiva Fawcett did for this country, but I do and so do millions of ordinary people whose lives she touched in the last century. And I’ve got a few facts for you:
FACT: Godiva Fawcett was a self-made success story, and one of the most accomplished actresses that Great Britain exported. But of course, she didn’t make black and white subtitled films about starving pearl divers in one of the fashionable spots in the Third World, so no doubt the socks and sandals brigade will never have heard of mere popular hits like ‘Beach Bunny Massacre’ or ‘The Power Game’.
FACT: As a single mother myself, I admire Godiva’s courage in continuing to show public affection to her daughter despite the suffering her father had put her through. Furthermore, she was, despite all the unhappiness in her own life, the most hospitable and encouraging person you could ever hope to meet. I will always remember when, as a tyro reporter, I was sent to interview her over lunch at her favourite restaurant, Le Gavroche. She was honest and forthcoming about herself, and full of good advice. ‘Leeza,’ she said to me, ‘it doesn’t matter what other people say, if you’re true to yourself and your own opinions, you can never go wrong.’ I have followed her advice, and have always found it comforting when I have doubts or depressions of my own.
FACT: Godiva raised over £3bn for charity. The do-gooders like to think that they have the monopoly on giving, but the truth is that it was Godiva’s efforts that really raised people’s awareness.
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