by Patrick Gale
‘Not what?’
‘Not not-so-nice young girls with elegant, titled but undeniably female partners.’
‘So?’ Claudia purred, setting the donkey back on its shelf and taking my hands in hers. ‘Let Prudie have her joke. Let her show her feelings. Maybe it’s easier for her this way. After all, it’s only a shop, not the Castello Windsor.’
The precision of her pronunciation of Windsor made me smile through my discomfort. I called to mind the beauty of the flat she was buying us. I let her lead me forward.
The woman behind the counter was old enough to have grand-daughters. Unable to meet her eye, I fell to examining her uniform, wondering how something so ill-tailored could convey such irreproachability in the wearer. She would be scandalized.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ said Mother.
‘Have you come to choose something from a list?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Mother. That was my cue. She was smiling at me and the woman behind the counter was waiting with her head at a politely enquiring angle.
‘We’ve come to make one of our own,’ I confessed.
‘Lovely,’ said the woman, her face impassive the while. ‘Congratulations. I’ll just open a file for you.’ She tapped away at the computer keyboard. ‘Your name, please.’ Now she smiled at me briefly.
‘Polly Reith,’ I told her. ‘Miss Polly Reith.’
‘And the gentleman’s name?’
‘Er…’ I faltered and looked to Mother for help.
‘Not a gentleman,’ Mother told her. ‘Not a male, that is. Is there a problem?’
I noticed that the woman wore an unusual jet ring. She turned it briefly on her finger.
‘Not at all,’ she assured us. ‘The lady’s name?’
‘Claudia Carafontana,’ said Claudia. ‘Contessa.’
I saw Mother’s eyes glitter with vulgar pride. The woman behind the counter tapped in Claudia’s title.
‘Contessa,’ she repeated under her breath. ‘And will you be wanting the gifts delivered as they are bought,’ she asked, ‘or would you rather arrange for collection at a later date?’
‘Oh, delivery would be better, I think,’ said Claudia, evidently entering into the spirit of the occasion. ‘Don’t you think so, darling? Of course, the address is not quite certain as yet.’
‘That’s not a problem. If I could just have a phone number in case of queries.’
‘Of course,’ I said, anxious not to be quite passed over, and I gave her Lorenzo’s number and address.
‘Fine,’ we were told. ‘Walk around the store at your leisure and when you see things you’d like, just write their details on this form. Here, I’ll fix it on a clipboard to make writing easier.’
‘Not a perambulator,’ said Claudia as we headed towards the household appliances department. ‘Not just yet.’
Claudia’s solicitors and those of the property developers who sold her — who sold us — the flat, worked fast. We were able to take possession within a month of her offer being accepted. In the interim, I discovered Claudia to be far richer than I had imagined. In Rome she had existed within a mise-en-scène completed long before my arrival. Her chests, mirrors and portraits, her rugs, pewter plates, even her vast bed with its carved headboard, were so encrusted with Carafontana family history that they seemed an extension of her personality, barely material and certainly nothing one could buy. It was something of a shock, therefore, to see her cut adrift from her historical moorings. Free to create a new setting of her very own. Of our very own. She dedicated her mornings to setting up the new branch of her antique business. Claudia and her cousin Maurizio, did nothing so sordid as buy and sell. Rather, they found antiques for clients too busy to shop themselves, discreetly arranging purchase and well-insured delivery for a large commission. She swiftly found a clutch of London clients who were either eager to buy the kind of Italian antiques that rarely found their way into auction houses or keen to sell their English furniture for the inflated prices Claudia could easily persuade her Italian clients to pay. I spent my mornings sustaining the illusion that I was searching for gainful employment.
Claudia devoted her afternoons to Mammon and Mother in equal proportions. Trailing me, astonished, in her wake, she bought paintings, looking glasses, Bokhara carpets, candelabra and vases. We pored over whole epics of fabric samples and she ordered curtains and drapes of a luxury that rounded even Mother’s bridge-table eyes. She was dissatisfied with much that the property developers had done and painstaking hours were spent planning the undoing of their costly work and choosing replacement doorknobs, window catches and taps. Until then I had no idea that taps could be so expensive. This booty was stored in what had once been my bedroom, which was, as Mother pointed out, only twenty minutes’ drive from the new flat. Mother would admire each new purchase judiciously, robbing it, as she did so, of the charms that had briefly seemed to distinguish it from others of its kind. She would then invariably take Claudia on some social excursion.
‘You don’t mind my borrowing her, do you, darling?’ she asked the first few times, making it plain that I was surplus to her requirements. ‘Just silly old friends who bore you rigid, but they will insist on laying eyes, if not hands, on dear Claudia before the reception.’
Claudia’s capacity for such socializing astounded me. In Rome she had only met people in the evenings and then only in strictly monitored doses. She regarded her own mother and her fustian social rounds with undisguised contempt, which made her unlooked-for charity towards Prudie and her no more interesting bridge cronies doubly curious.
Left to my own devices, I indulged in cinema matinees, enjoying the excuse some of the more far-flung repertory houses gave for lengthy taxi rides. A cinema in Hampstead was showing Rosemary’s Baby. I had missed it first time around and found the plot oddly compelling. I saw it three times in one week. Like Othello (which Claudia claimed had one of the theatre’s richest histories of audience interruption), the more one saw it the more maddening it became.
‘Open your eyes!’ I wanted to scream at Mia Farrow. ‘Put down that milk shake, pack your bags and run!’
But I never did.
We moved into the flat only two days before the reception was to be held there but the process was remarkably unstressful. Claudia and Mother between them had scheduled the delivery of her larger purchases with the precision of a military campaign. Unfortunately, my half-hearted trail through the job market had proved successful and I found myself committed to a mornings-only post as a researcher.
‘Never mind, cara,’ Claudia told me. ‘You can come for lunch and have a lovely surprise.’
So I set off to work from Enzo’s flat as usual then came home to our own, for lunch.
Two men had been to remove taps, knobs and window catches and Claudia’s choices were now in place, as were her rugs, the booty stored in my childhood bedroom and a Jacobean bed that was almost as big as the one we had shared in Rome. I stood in the doorway looking around me over the wall of cardboard boxes. Claudia shut the door, stooped to remove my shoes, kissed each of my stockinged feet then led me to the bed.
‘And so,’ she said, unbuttoning my suit, ‘begins our new life together.’ She made her habitually subtle love to me on new matchless bed linen after which she fed me champagne and, in memoriam, figs. ‘Mmm,’ she sighed contentedly, ‘Prudie was right to have the bed delivered first. I was all for concentrating on the pictures.’
‘This was her idea?!’
Claudia laughed nervously at my tone.
‘Well, only the bed. I thought of the figs myself.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Polly, don’t sulk. It’s childish.’
‘Well maybe, but spending so much time with old women is unnatural.’
‘Unnatural?’
‘Yes.’ I sat up and swung my legs off the side of the bed. ‘Anyway, they’re only interested because you’re a countess.’
‘Hardly,’ C
laudia snorted. ‘Prudie’s circle is a lot more sophisticated than you seem to realize. They haven’t batted an eyelid about you and I living together and if the way that wedding list is being ticked off is any indication, they’re giving us a substantial blessing.’ She rubbed my shoulder. ‘Cara.’ She hesitated. ‘You really don’t see it, do you?’
‘See what?’
‘When did your father die?’
‘When I was about three.’
‘And how many boyfriends has Prudie had since then?’
‘I don’t know. She’s always been very discreet. Several, I should think.’
‘None, Polly. She’s had none. And she’s still an attractive woman. Does she cherish his memory?’
‘Not exactly. He was much older than her. There’s a photograph of them somewhere.’
I turned at last. Claudia was leaning on one elbow, dark hair swept back to reveal her silver earring. She raised her glass to drink and her ivory bracelets slid with a clatter to her elbow. She smiled slowly.
‘No!’ I breathed.
I dressed fast, left the flat and caught a taxi to Sloane Square. My mind was filled, as in some Satanic slide show, with images of Mother and her nearest and dearest — Heidi Kleinstock, Tricia Rokeby, Daphne Wain, the Crane Sisters (about whom I had always had my suspicions) and even Mrs Sopwith, in a fast-changing line of sexual arrangements. The editrix of the Bride’s Book greeted me with a knowing smile and twiddled her ring. I realized why it had first caught my eye. Daphne Wain had a jet ring too, though larger, of course, and so did Heidi Kleinstock and, when blowsy peasant fashions had held sway, even Mother had sported one, with large jet earrings to match.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Reith,’ said the woman. ‘Come to make a progress check? I’ll do you a print-out to take away with you.’
She pressed a button then, somewhere beneath her desk, a printer hummed into action. When it came to a rest, she handed me a sheet of paper. There were all the plates, bowls, cutlery, glasses, salad bowls and napkin sets chosen, as I had then supposed, merely to humour Mother’s fantastic game the other day. And there, beside most of them, were women’s names. Numerous women’s names. Many of them were quite unfamiliar and all of those I recognized were single by death, solicitors or choice. Half in jest, Mother had suggested I set down the name of a highly-developed dishwasher. A chronic exhibitionist, Tricia Rokeby had bought it for us. I pictured it being delivered in a large, jet-black bow with a card attached, swirled over with her jet-black greetings and unwanted solidarity.
I drank a cup of strong tea, not because I wanted it but because the store’s top floor cafe, The Coffee Bean, carried unfailing associations with the well-buttoned certainties of childhood. I drank a second cup because I had begun to realize that I was, perhaps, a little disorientated from drinking champagne with nothing more substantial than a few figs. Two walls of the cafe were taken up with windows onto the square and one of the bustling roads that fed it, a third, which I was facing, was panelled with mirrors. I stared at myself long and hard, stared at the long, un-Chelsea curls of my hair, at the unmade-up face which Mother had once called quiet in my hearing, at my small, ringless hands. I had bought my navy coat on a trip to Milan and it had done its best to look too big for me ever since, dissociating itself from my neck and shoulders at the least opportunity. I sat up straight and tugged slightly at the lapels. Obediently, it fitted me once more. I had taken shelter from a downpour — unprepared as usual — although Claudia was waiting for me in a restaurant on the other side of the piazza. It was the only important garment I had bought on my own since meeting her. Normally she was at my elbow, purring, ‘Or this, perhaps?’
I paid for my teas and hurried down the stairs to street level. There was a hair salon a few doors away, far too fashion-conscious and young for Mother, whatever her proclivities. I let myself in. Its atmosphere was stridently chemical; bubble gum and bleach. The music was loud — Claudia tended to listen to Baroque productions performed authentically — and gave me back the strength the mirrors had sapped. I would have my hair cut to within an inch of my scalp and dyed red. Traffic light red. It was what my coat had always needed. Mother too, perhaps.
‘Hello, there. What can we do for you, then,’ asked a stylist, picking incuriously at my hair. The words sounded like a challenge but her mind was plainly on other things.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Just a trim, please. And a wash.’ I offered her my quietest smile.
CHOKING
for Barry Goodman
‘I THOUGHT, perhaps, sardines,’ Charlie said, after pecking her cheek, patting her shoulder and casting an automatically assessing eye over what she was wearing. ‘I know they’re a bit cheap and cheerful but we’ve discovered they’re delicious barbecued with a bit of lettuce and some new potato salad and cooking them outside means you don’t get that awful stink hanging around the house for days afterwards.’
‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘I love sardines.’
‘I remember.’
Now that he was no longer her husband, Charlie was Maud’s best friend. Not that one excluded the other — he had been her best friend all along, which was one of the things that scuppered their marriage — but he was still her best friend despite now being her ex-husband. This was something other people found hard to understand. It was also, for her, a source of quiet pride.
His garden was a strenuous demonstration against what was expected behind a North London terraced cottage. There were no mundane flowers, no vegetables and no lawn. Instead Charlie had created a small jungle of big leaved foliage plants — gunnera, rhus, palms and other things too exotic for her to recognize. Water trickled over a pile of attractive rocks and striped pebbles into a square pool whose sides he had painted a nocturnal blue.
‘It’s a jungle!’ she laughed. ‘Your neighbours must think you’re mad.’ She could tell from the way their windows were dressed that his neighbours grew vegetables, dahlias and hideous Blue Moon and Cheerfulness roses.
‘I don’t speak to my neighbours,’ he said quietly.
A small table and chairs stood in a kind of clearing beyond the first swath of glossy greenery. The fish were already sizzling on a small barbecue to one side, a mute reproach to Maud for her lateness. As she sat, slipping off her jacket to enjoy the early autumn sun, Charlie wiped the drips off a bottle that had been cooling in the pond and poured them both some wine.
‘So,’ he said, sitting too. ‘How’s LA?’
‘I told you before,’ she laughed. ‘It’s not really LA. We’re so far down Sunset Boulevard, we can see the sunsets. Amazing sunsets. And if I stand on the balcony and lean out a bit, I can see the Pacific’
‘Nice.’
‘You should come. Both of you.’
‘Yes. Well…’ he sighed, allowing the impossible optimism of her suggestion to settle on the table between them. ‘The tan suits you,’ he added.
‘You call this a tan?’ she exclaimed. ‘I went this colour by staying out of the sun and wearing total block. There are people there with necks like old shoes but they persist in lying by their pools and baking. For a culture so founded on vanity, it’s inexplicable. Mmm. Lovely wine.’
‘It’s nothing special,’ Charlie shrugged. ‘Something Portuguese Kobo picked up.’
‘How is Kobo?’
‘Fine. He’s with a client in Moscow; one of his German property developers. He’ll be sorry he’s missed you.’
Their marriage had foundered when Charlie spent some time in therapy because he was worried that he kept losing his temper over insignificant things. Guided by the therapist, he came to see that he was not a cowardly bisexual, as he had always claimed, but a homosexual liar who should never have married. They did their best to adapt — they loved each other dearly, after all, and he had no desire to hurt her — but their attempt at an open relationship was doomed once his safaris into the realms of uncomplicated sex caused him to stumble into love with someone else. Maud had given him up with tears but l
ittle struggle, since he was still her best friend, and she knew when she was weaker than the competition. There had been a flurry of lovers since then, and more therapy, but then Charlie met Kobo, a Japanese lighting consultant, who brought him stability and a second marriage, longer and doubtless more fulfilling than his first. Kobo was handsome and clever and Maud had little difficulty in befriending him, but he made her nervous. She felt that her manner and appearance were too untidy for him, that he must be forever rearranging her in his mind. His poise, too, could madden her. Passing through his workroom during a drinks party she had once, in pure malice, unzipped his little black rubber pencil case and shaken the contents across his immaculate desktop.
‘Why are you here for such a little while?’ Charlie asked, helping her to two sardines, flakes of whose charred skin fell into her helping of potato salad.
‘It’s not a proper trip,’ she explained. ‘I hitched a ride with Alvaro. The company was sending him over for a couple of meetings and he’d clocked up enough miles on his frequent flier card to bring me along for nothing. He lives in airports. It was only an economy ticket but when the stewardess saw he was in club, she upgraded me to join him. He always flies with the same airline and I think they must have his name on their computer for extra nice treatment or something. Sorry, I’m gabbling. It’s jet lag.’
‘Lettuce?’
‘Please. Thanks.’ She could tell from Charlie’s abrupt change of tack that he was not about to ask about her boyfriend, even after she had asked after Kobo. She decided to tell him anyway.
‘He’s fine, by the way. Only he works so hard it’s quite scary,’ she said. ‘He went straight from the airport to a meeting in Wardour Street when the most I could do was brush my teeth and crawl into bed.’
Charlie merely snorted and lifted a tab of flesh off a sardine skeleton. ‘Have you got a job out there?’ he asked.