Sweet

by Julie Burchill

  ‘You don’t have a bank account!’ Baggy clapped his hands. ‘Ooh, you get more perfect by the day, Tiny Tears!’

  Aggy went back to his man-bag. ‘Shut it, shim-face. Hmm, low on cash – Bags has been blowing it all on Immac and gin miniatures, no doubt.’ He turned round and smiled at me. ‘Sugar-shack, why don’t you take a Red Bull break before we fit the Princess dress? Bags, you come out with me and we can pick up a crate of shampoo from Threshers while we’re at it.’

  I chuckled to myself as they left, Baggy grumbling that all Aggy needed him for was as ‘a beast of burden, a donkey’! ‘Shame you’re not hung like one!’ I heard Aggy snap before the door slammed.

  I stepped out of my skating skirt and stood there in my leotard – it’s sort of a body for snobs – stretching happily. I could get to like this model racket, I thought – just standing stock still with a couple of blokes down on their knees worshipping me. Felt . . . natural, somehow. And whereas when I first met them I thought they were this demonic double-act looking down their noses at me, now there were times when it definitely felt like me and Aggy having a laugh at Bags – like Ag’d recognized that I was, I dunno, a superior sort of person too, like him. I was starting to think that I’d been unfair on the both of them really.

  I went towards the kitchen to grab a Red Bull when I felt the first stirrings of some bladder action. See, this is the difference between a professional model and an amateur – an amateur, left alone by her mentors, would use the break as an excuse to have a fag, pick at stuff from the fridge, maybe have a swig from something sticky on the drinks trolley and generally nose about, dead common. But being a proper model I decided I should answer the call of nature before I was pinned into my Princess dress. So I swerved and was heading for the downstairs toilet, as per, when a thought struck me.

  I didn’t WANT to use the downstairs dunny today. It seemed wrong, somehow. Look at me – conversing wittily with top fashion designers, about to be fitted for my Princess dress! I hadn’t been into the en suite since I started modelling for them – some poor Croatian cow was cleaning up after them now – but my memories of it were well sweet. Apart from the huge marble bath, big enough to take my entire family – perish the thought, I’d drown them first! – there was the leopard-print toilet seat, the snow-leopard-print shag-pile carpet, the Bvlgari soaps, the shower that was also a tiny steam-room, the little telly on the adjustable stalk, the concealed stereo speakers, the mini fridge filled with Red Bull and champagne miniatures, the bog roll that was so soft and so white it seemed to have been made of flattened, stretched, perforated clouds – ooh, I’m not joking, I could have happily lived in there. There was nothing wrong with the downstairs lav, don’t get me wrong – you could have eaten your tapas off it. It was just . . . ordinary. And ordinary was the last thing I felt . . .

  I padded up the stairs in my scanties, feeling like a beautiful jewel thief . . . except I was the biggest jewel of all, heh heh! I figured that with a crate of champagne in mind, they’d be heading for the local Oddbins, where Aggy had a big crush on the surfer dude who worked there – there was bound to be a whole bunch of ‘tasting’ and ‘sampling’ going on, with Baggy reduced to gnashing his teeth in the background and then carting the box back up the hill, complaining bitterly that they could have caught a cab, while Aggy hissed that the workout would be good for him. I had half an hour, easy.

  I walked into their bedroom, where I’d spent so many happy hours dossing on the king-size and going through the drawers when I was their servant rather than their muse. The shocking pink walls – ‘Pomegranate’ – and the gold leaf ceiling made it feel like a big old bling womb or something, and I almost purred with satisfaction that I’d made it so far, so quick – not only was there room at the top, but I was about to use the VIP lavvy!

  I pushed open the en suite door – suite, Sweet! see, it was all falling into place – and I honestly couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d discovered a unicorn having a bath with a dodo. Doing his thing at the privy was a naked, gorgeous, golden brown fifteen-year-old boy. And not just any naked, gorgeous, golden brown fifteen-year-old boy either – it was only Duane Trulocke, Jesus’s best mate, used to hang at ours all the time when he needed to get away from his own excuse for a family. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been on the business end of my fist, when I caught him and Jesus perving over me as I was laying naked by my bedroom window on a whole roll of BacoFoil, trying to catch some rays on a cold but sunny winter day when I didn’t have the readies for a spray-on!

  ‘Duane! What you think you’re playing at!’

  He gasped and grabbed at a face flannel to cover his shame. Didn’t really do much though, as he was a big boy for his age. ‘Ria!’

  ‘What you playing at, you little git! You robbing my mates?!’

  He smirked. ‘Do I look like I’m dressed for robbing?’

  The smirk said more than the words. I felt well stupid. ‘You might have . . . stripped off so you could squeeze through a narrow space—’

  ‘Yeah, right!’ He picked up a pair of boxers and pulled them on. ‘That’s probably why I’m greased too!’ He laughed.

  I just stood there gaping at him. Aggy, my mate . . . with an underage kid . . . and Baggy makes three! Annoying little twat that he was, Duane was almost family, in a pervy incestuous brother kinda way.

  ‘Anyway, what you mean, your mates?’ He took a flying leap and landed on the bed. It looked really weird seeing dirty little Duane from the Ravendene Estate sitting there on all those rumpled Frette sheets – like some sort of porn video out the back of Attitude. ‘Seeing how you’re dressed, I’d say you was being paid for the same reason as me.’ He sniggered. ‘’Cept you’re a GIRL so they wouldn’t have no use for you!’

  ‘Get lost! I’m their model!’

  ‘Yeah – glamour. Full frontal! ’

  I was just about to give him an encore of what he’d asked for that day on the BacoFoil, when I realized where I was. I couldn’t go acting like some slapper down West Street on a Saturday night, I was a muse! And Duane, dirty little perve or not, was their . . . lover or something! And if I was going to be part of a more . . . I dunno, civilized setup than what I was used to, I was going to have to act in a more civilized manner, I s’pose, and not react fist first, brain belatedly as I always had done.

  So I folded my arms to keep my fists out of harm’s way and left it at looking down my nose at him. ‘I’m their muse, actually. I won’t even ask if you know what that word means, but it’s enough to say that what I do for Mr Agnew and Mr Bagshawe I do on my feet rather than on my knees.’ With that I turned to go, but then something good and spiteful occurred to me, and I turned to smile over my shoulder. ‘Talking of which, it wouldn’t kill you to have a bit of a wash. Those sheets cost an arm and a leg – they don’t want to have to send them to the cleaners every time you drop by for tea and fairy cakes.’

  ‘Don’t tell Jesus, right!! Please, Ria!’ I heard his scared yelp as I closed the door. But not scared enough, apparently. As I started to go down the stairs, I heard a Ravendene upbringing triumph over fear, and a shameless cry of, ‘NICE TITS!’ These kids, they’re dragged up, not brought up!

  6

  So a week later I was sitting in this waiting room of this private clinic, Susie having kittens – bad choice of cliché! – beside me. It might have been private, just like she wanted, but it was a right temple of gloom, I can tell you. They had some local Sussex pop radio station playing – fair play to them, they probably thought it would cheer the assembled tot-slayers up, but like, did it never occur to them that every other word in every other pop song is, like, ‘baby’? ‘My baby’s gone . . . come back, baby . . . baby don’t leave me . . .’ It was like some mole from the pro-life side had got in under the wire and was doing their damned best to turn the poor broads at the eleventh hour. And they all sat there with faces like they just won a wet weekend in Wivelsfield, brooding on their imaginary babies. I mean, it’s th
e wet indecisiveness I can’t stand, in any part of life – do one thing or do the other, but for God’s sake DON’T do one thing while wishing you could do the other! I’ve known that that’s the quickest route to misery since I was six – a DOG probably knows it – an AMOEBA probably knows it! So why do adults have such a big problem working it out?

  As if reading my thoughts, Susie said, with the suspicion of a sniffle, ‘And the funny thing is, I’ve always been pro-life—’

  ‘You still are,’ I said briskly, trying to remember what Kim had drummed into me about A Woman’s Right To Choose; I felt a bit of a pang as I remembered how I’d always driven her mad by saying that I was more interested in A Woman’s Right To Booze. ‘Still,’ I’d added cheekily, ‘I s’pose they’re the same thing really – I wouldn’t want no one giving me evils for nine months every time I ordered an Aftershock!’ Happy days . . . ‘You’re choosing a real life – yours – over a –’ What was the word? Sounded like ‘potato’ – ‘over a putative one.’ On cue, some mad old singing bird started complaining that she couldn’t find her baby, and Susie started sniffling again.

  Me, though, I went off into a reverie, thinking about Kim . . . would I have to go all around the world to find her – or just to Pease Pottage? I had no idea where the Lewises had taken her. I must’ve been making a right mis old face, because Susie dragged herself away from her mope-fest and smiled bravely at me. ‘I know what you’re thinking about . . .’

  What – Kim Lewis wearing nothing but a suntan, a scrunchy and a smile? ‘I bet you don’t!’ I snorted.

  ‘Yes I do. A mother always knows.’ She patted my hand. ‘You’re thinking about how you’d search all round the world just to find your baby.’

  ‘That’s right!’ I looked at her amazed. I didn’t think she’d actually grasped it about me and Kim, that we were More Than Just Good Friends – ‘But how can they, when they haven’t got one!’ was the one thing I recalled her saying about lesbians. And I wasn’t about to draw her a diagram – I only did that in public, on walls, with an audience!

  She patted my hand. ‘Find her, love. Find Ren.’

  ‘Yeah . . . course I will,’ I muttered. Mental note: FIND REN. (And give her to Mum to look after while I go and find Kim.)

  ‘She’ll be walking . . . talking . . . they grow up in the flash of an eye.’ Sniffles ahoy! ‘Like this little one – soon it’ll be moving—’

  ‘Yeah, walking and talking and no doubt playing the violin, all before it’s born!’ I was getting exasperated now. ‘Look, Mum, all this stuff you read in the papers about how bad abortion is – they’ve got an . . . invested agenda.’ Trying to remember the gospel according to Kizza again! ‘All they want women to do is stay at home and breed – that way there’s less competition for the cushy jobs. Look, when the Daily Mail says, “Oh, it’s moving about at three weeks!” or whatever, you want to take that with a pinch of salt – with a SHAKER of salt. I mean, motes of dust dance about in the air, and it’s well cute and all that – but it doesn’t mean they’re ALIVE!’

  ‘But I’m a Catholic!’

  ‘So are the Italians, Mum – and they’ve got the lowest birth rate in Europe!’ I was really quite glad now that I’d listened to Kim between our sex bouts, though it had seemed well boring at the time. ‘And, um, one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage so, you know, you’re just helping Mother Nature along really. And you’re less likely to be depressed after an abortion than after a baby . . . and best of all you won’t get any new stretch marks! Because face it, Mum, you already look like a zebra with your kit off!’

  ‘I know you’re right, love, I just—’ Susie’s putative words of wisdom were obscured by a burst of laughter from a group of staff ladies in the corner. I said it was a temple of gloom, but that was just the punters – the workers were well smiley. You’d have thought it was a cocktail party rather than a den of abortion!

  I checked in my bag. There it was – five hundred pounds, cash. Sweet.

  ‘But that’s more than I need!’ I’d squealed like a priss when Aggy’d handed the wad over shortly after my brush with Duane.

  ‘Don’t sweat it, treacle-trap – take her out for a posh cocktail afterwards. But please – keep her away from Sex On The Beach or a Slow Comfortable Screw!’

  I’d laughed – well, it was smutty, of course I laughed – but I’d felt a bit weird. Of course they couldn’t have known I knew about their bolshy bedmate, but to be honest I felt as though they were – what’s the words – trying to ‘buy my silence’.

  The door in front of us opened and that’s when I saw her – the Fox. She was walking towards us, and it seemed to me she was moving in slow motion – funnily enough, old Kimbo once told me she’d thought that the first time she saw me. She was every cliché about Oriental chicks rolled into one perfect size eight package, but instead of making you feel clumsy and gross like they usually do, she made me feel like standing up and cheering – she was that gorgeous. Course, she must’ve been twenty-three if she was a day, but after my doomed romance with Jailbait Lewis I could see the benefits of the older woman.

  In short, she made me want to lick her face and kiss her feet and hold her down and see to her. To sum up – lust at first sight.

  She stopped, frowned at a clipboard and called out, ‘Susie?’

  I didn’t even think about it, I just jumped to my feet. ‘Right here!’ I was aware of Mum gaping at me, but she’s used to me stealing the limelight, and why should the scene of her putative abortion be any different?

  The Fox gave me a funny look and raised her eyebrow expertly, which always makes me feel a bit funny inside. ‘But it says here—’

  ‘PLEASE!’ I hissed. ‘I don’t want to do this in public!’

  She looked dubious, but turned anyway and walked towards a door marked DOCTOR – PRIVATE. There was a cardboard insert just beneath this:

  DR MAXINE FOX

  Ooh, perfecto! I practically hugged my bad self with sheer molten glee. I turned and gave Susie, who was by now staring at me saucer-eyed, the thumbs up.

  ‘Where you going, Ave?’ she whispered.

  ‘Just got to – um – check out the, ah, the lie of the land!’ I finished in a distracted rush, watching Dr Fox’s back go through the doorway to her office. She turned, and she looked at me with just a hint of that arrogance which often seems to bubble under the compliant surface of Chinese birds – or perhaps that was just my fevered imagination . . .

  ‘Susie?’ she said, a bit stern like, and I straightened my pencil skirt and pushed Mum down as she tried to stand up. ‘Get the weight off your feet!’ I advised her over my shoulder as I tip-tapped into Dr Fox’s lair. ‘You’re standing for two!’ Too late I realized I’d played into her soppy old hands, and I was aware of her face crumpling again. Whatever!

  Dr Fox was sitting down behind her desk when I got into her room, which was a shame as I’d been hoping for a good look at her legs.

  ‘So you are . . .’ She looked at her clipboard, then up at me. She did that eyebrow thing again. ‘Susie Sweet. But there’s surely some mistake. It says here you’re thirty-five.’

  ‘We live fast up Ravendene,’ I said with a winning twinkle. The Fox frowned and I realized I’d got it the wrong way round. ‘Good genes?’ I said weakly. Then, in the corner, I espied a table-type thing covered in slippery paper. ‘Shall I get my kit off, then?’ I stood and began to unzip my skirt.

  ‘PLEASE!’ She stood up and shouted, but she was sort of smiling too. ‘Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? This is hardly the time or place for jokes.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I sat down. I’d tried the humorous approach, perhaps now it was time for a touch of tragedy. ‘It’s just that –’ And here I made a little wobble come to my voice – ‘My mum – Susie Sweet – she’s never done anything like this before . . . she’s a Catholic, innit . . .’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said the Fox sternly.

  ‘Yeah, it sucks, dunnit!’ I agreed readily.


  ‘But if that’s the case – excuse me, what is your name?’

  ‘Maria Sweet. Well, Ave-Maria Sweet. But you can call me Sugar.’

  ‘If that’s the case, Miss Sweet, then why is your mother here?’

  ‘Mental health,’ I said, thinking on my feet. ‘She reckons it’s . . . ah, the spawn of the Devil. Like in that film. Cos she’s, um, what’s the word, sinned. And lapsed. And like, we all know it ain’t Satan the Second, of course –’ See the clever use of ‘we’ there, to bond me and the Fox into a team! – ‘but there ain’t no telling her that. And she says if she’s made to have it, she’s going to, like –’ I knew I was being a bit naughty here, of course, but all’s fair in love and war and stuff – ‘um, kill it. So, you know, me being a good daughter and all that . . . well, I thought, might as well get it done by a professional.’ Uh-oh, the Fox was looking daggers at me! ‘I mean, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Not that I think it’s killing . . . not like hanging . . . but on the other hand, you know, they deserve it most of the time.’ She was looking at me absolutely baffled, I realized. ‘Kiddy-fiddlers?’ I added hopefully.

  The Fox gave me a look that could have meant anything – fascination, lust, love – but, fair play, most likely meant that she thought I was an ocean-going prannet. So I held up my hands, got to my feet and admitted defeat. ‘Best leave it, yeah?’

  ‘Yes. Best.’ The Fox wasn’t having any, that was plain to see, as she went to the door and opened it, looking at me sternly. Talk about ‘a whopper a day keeps the doctor away’!

  But a playa never says neva, and as I passed her I couldn’t help whipping out a tampon, pulling off the cardboard and unrolling it in one graceful action – George Clooney’s got nothing on me when it comes to smooth moves, I tell you! I grabbed a pen from the Fox’s top pocket and scribbled my mobey number. Before she knew what had happened, I’d shoved it into the pocket, with her pen, and copped a quick backhand breaststroke into the bargain.