The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

by William Boyd

  She goes into the kitchen and lets out a little shriek of surprise and alarm. Ten swarthy men wearing jeans and T-shirts are sitting round the kitchen table eating food out of cartons. One man stands up and speaks to her – smilingly, amiably – in a language she doesn’t understand or recognize.

  She gives him a wave, turns and goes upstairs to her and Kasimierz’s bedroom and locks the door.

  When Kasimierz comes home late that night he explains. It’s a new venture, he says, and it’s going to make him a lot of money. He has bought twenty two-year-old Ford Mondeos at a car auction for £1,000 each. The men downstairs are his new drivers. With his drivers and his cars he is now in a position to bid for all the London borough contracts.

  ‘Council work,’ he tells her. ‘Now I can undercutting all English mini-cab firms by fifty per cent – sixty per cent, even. No competition.’

  Bethany asks a few more questions.

  Yes, Kasimierz says, the men will be living here in the basement. ‘They have TV, they have food, they have bed and roof. They very happy. I paying them £3 per hour – four times what they do in their country.’

  Kasimierz kisses her as if he senses her anxieties. ‘They will work eighty hours a week. You never see them.’

  He outlines the future as he sees it: first twenty cars, then forty, then 200 – every London borough will be coming to him.

  ‘You must meet Chaz,’ Kasimierz says.

  ‘Who’s Chaz?’

  ‘He is my Englishman. You must have an English for meetings and phone.’

  In No Parking Bethany sits at her small desk looking at Fernando Benn’s photos of photos of men at war thinking of Kasimierz. This is what drew her to Kasimierz, she realizes, it wasn’t simply his rangy frame, his energy, his almost disturbingly pale pale-blue eyes. He achieved things. He made events conform to his wishes. He had ambitions and he realized them.

  She picks up the phone and calls him. She says her mother is unwell and she has to go home and look after her for a few days.

  ‘I text you, Bethany,’ Kasimierz says. ‘Take care.’

  Bethany hands in her notice the day ‘WAR’/WAR is due to open. Howard seems barely to register the news.

  ‘Fine, fine – give my love to your mother.’

  As she’s about to leave the room he calls her back.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with that dirty bugger Neville, is it?’ he asks. ‘Neville hasn’t jumped on you or anything, has he? Made a pass?’

  ‘Who’s Neville?’ Bethany asks.

  ‘Neville Benn. Sorry, Fernando – I keep forgetting.’

  ‘No, no,’ Bethany says, nothing to do with Neville.

  To celebrate her joblessness Bethany goes to a bar before catching a Tube to South Kensington where her mother lives. Her mother is pleased but also irritated to have her back at home again, Bethany can tell.

  Kasimierz has texted her a couple of times to ask if she’s missing him. It’s early evening and the bar is quiet. Bethany looks at the list of cocktails and orders one called a Crack of Doom – it has many powerful alcoholic ingredients, some with names she doesn’t recognize. She wants to smoke a cigarette and think about her plan and is annoyed she can’t.

  She has found a website called fli-leaf.com where photographic books can be made. Fli-leaf.com supplies a format, you provide images and text and pay them £120. Two weeks later you receive a bound hardback book with glossy pages. Further books can be ordered at £30 each. Suffering from Optimism will be born at last, at last she –

  Her thoughts are interrupted by the sight of the barman throwing a bottle to the ceiling and catching it behind his back. He balances the cocktail shaker on his knee and pours in liquor from a full arm’s length away. He jams the cap on the shaker and spins it on a fingertip, then he juggles four shot glasses, snatches one and sets it in front of her, catches the other three at the same time and finally serves her the drink – it’s a fizzing dark purple, with a dense orange froth.

  ‘Wait, I have to set it on fire,’ the barman says. ‘Just kidding. It’s a cool drink. Don’t get many requests for it.’

  He has a Scottish accent. He’s a small stocky young guy, with a broad, open face. He has a thin stripe of beard running down his chin from his lower lip. He is clearly incredibly fit and muscled. Bethany is usually drawn to tall skinny guys but there’s something about this person …

  ‘That was amazing,’ she says. ‘How did you learn to do that stuff?’

  ‘I used to be a juggler,’ he says. ‘But there’s no money in juggling. So I became a mixologist. All these tricks are very easy. Beginner’s juggling – but it looks good in a bar.’

  He smiles at her, Bethany can tell he likes her.

  ‘I’m Bethany,’ she says.

  ‘I’m Hunter,’ he says.

  ‘Is that your first name or your surname,’ Bethany asks, ‘or your vocation?’

  ‘Hunter Doig,’ he says, smiling. ‘Hunter’s a first name in Scotland.’

  Bethany sips her Crack of Doom – it’s very strong.

  Hunter leans his muscled forearms on the bar. ‘So, Bethany,’ Hunter says, ‘what do you do?’

  Bethany pauses a moment, sets her drink down.

  ‘I’m a photographer,’ she says.

  Six …

  Bethany steps forward and takes a bow.

  ‘Big round of applause for my lovely assistant, Bethany!’ Hunter Doig cries.

  A few people clap dutifully but they are more interested in Hunter in his top hat, balancing on his unicycle, managing to keep it upright without moving.

  Bethany picks up the Indian clubs and hands them to him one after the other, trying to keep the smile fixed on her face as she thinks to herself – is this as low as I’ve ever been? Have I hit the bottom now – at age twenty-three – and now the only way is up?

  She hopes so, she thinks, as she turns and goes to fetch the oranges.

  Hunter Doig’s best trick is to juggle six oranges simultaneously. Bethany now knows that even for a competent juggler five balls in the air is a challenge – the fact that Hunter can do six while riding on an immobile unicycle puts him in a different juggling league.

  The Indian clubs hit the cobbled paving of the Covent Garden piazza with a dull clatter as Hunter lets them fall. The crowd whistles and cheers.

  ‘Bethany – the oranges!’ Hunter calls and Bethany steps forward in her silly Pierrot costume with the plunging neckline and throws the orange artlessly over Hunter’s head. Laughter.

  She runs around and picks it up. She was never good at throwing and Hunter milks her ineptitude for a lot of random hilarity before the finale of his act.

  It is amazing, Bethany thinks, to see the near-blur of six oranges passing through Hunter’s whirring hands and circling in a tall oval in front of his fiercely concentrating face. He can only keep it going for a few seconds and as he tires he heads the oranges into the crowd until he’s just left with two, and then one.

  ‘This is still juggling, you know,’ Hunter yells. ‘Juggling with one orange,’ throwing it with one hand up into the air and catching it with the other. ‘Try it at home.’

  More laughter.

  Bethany feels the dread mount in her like vomit in her throat as she knows what’s coming next. Hunter flings the last orange into the crowd and takes off his top hat to genuine, admiring applause. Then he spin-throws the top hat, like a strange kind of Frisbee, to Bethany and of course she drops it.

  Yes, whoop, laugh and boo at the inept assistant, Bethany thinks to herself, keeping her smile in place and hoping she isn’t blushing too much. She always blushes as she moves amongst the people collecting their donations, the coins and occasional notes falling into the dark sweaty crown of the topper.

  I’m really no more than a kind of beggar, Bethany realizes, as she collects the money – I can go no lower than this.

  Bethany has told her various friends that Hunter is her new boyfriend (after Sholto, after Kasimierz) and that she has ‘mo
ved in with him’.

  This is true, she supposes, but the reality is that she has moved in with Hunter and his brother, Calder. They share a large ground-floor front room in a house in Stockwell. She unlocks the door of the room and dumps the unicycle and the bag of juggling gear on the floor. Hunter has gone to an audition. Bethany vaguely resents having to cart everything back to Stockwell from Covent Garden but Hunter has given her £40 – her share of the day’s take – so she reckons it would have been graceless to have refused.

  She’s still feeling obscurely down so she goes to the house’s communal bathroom on the first floor and, locking herself in, indulges in a brief cry. What is it about life, she wonders, that makes it so hard for it to turn out the way you want it to? Always surprises, always things coming at you out of the blue. She wants a life with no surprises, she tells herself, at least for a month or so.

  She sits on the toilet seat, dries her eyes and gives herself a talking to. Don’t be such a wimp, she admonishes herself. You’re a photographer, she says, you have self-published a book of photographs. Art isn’t easy. Many artists struggle and have to do other jobs before they are recognized. She looks at herself in the mirror, drags her fingers through her hair, releasing it, making it big and full, pouts, puts on some lipstick.

  She points her finger at the mirror: You’re not only talented, girl, you’re fucking beautiful as well, she says to her reflection.

  Coming down the stairs she can hear the TV is on in the room. Hunter must be back, she thinks, and goes in feeling better, wanting to hold Hunter’s stocky muscled body to her, wanting to go to the pub and spend some of her money on powerful alcoholic drinks.

  But it isn’t Hunter, it’s Calder, sitting slumped in front of the TV. Calder is in the street-theatre business, also. He’s a living statue. His speciality is ‘Man in a Hurry’, standing frozen for minutes as an urgently striding man, his face a white mask of make-up, his long thick hair lacquered like stone, streaming in unmoving horizontal curls off the back of his head, his stiffened tie whipped around his neck, his stiffened jacket fronts folded back as if he’s walking into a fresh breeze, as he stands there trapped for ever in mid-pace, a rolled-up clutched newspaper in one hand as if he’s rushing, late for a train. It’s a very effective living statue – so different from the boring, immobile grey or gold simulated public statuary that is the norm.

  Calder makes a lot of money playing ‘Man in a Hurry’ and Bethany admires the mental discipline that he has to summon up to hold that pose, minutes and minutes on end, that petrified dash going nowhere.

  Story of her life, she thinks.

  ‘Hi, Calder,’ Bethany says.

  He grunts, eyes on the news. He’s still in his full ‘Man in a Hurry’ get-up. Stiff hair streaming back from his head, white face, tie whipped around his neck. He seems reluctant to change from this persona and clean himself up – he’ll sit around for hours like this – a fact that annoys Bethany, she has to admit.

  Bethany isn’t sure if Calder welcomes her presence here in the room he used to share with only his brother. He has put a kind of hospital screen around his bed. When she and Hunter make love – as quietly as possible – Hunter assures her Calder wouldn’t mind, anyway, even if he could hear what was going on. Which he can’t.

  Bethany makes a cup of tea. They don’t have a kitchen in the room but there is a kettle, a toaster and an electric ring on top of a scarred chest of drawers that allows them to make snacks. Most of the time they eat out or bring home takeaways. Bethany pours in the milk (having thoroughly sniffed the carton first) and stirs her mug of tea, sensing an extraordinary lassitude spread through her.

  ‘Bethany?’ She jumps – Calder has silently appeared by the scarred chest of drawers with his white face and horizontal hair, his stiff tie around his throat. It’s as if he’s standing in the face of a gale, a hurricane.

  ‘Hey, Calder,’ Bethany says. ‘Gave me a shock there, mate.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, touching his stiff hair and tie. He turns away, showing the frozen billows of his jacket. Then he turns back as if he’s about to say something – but he doesn’t.

  ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Bethany asks.

  ‘No, thanks,’ he says.

  Bethany picks up her mug, sips her tea and holds it to her chest.

  ‘So, how was your day, Calder?’ she asks.

  Calder thinks, his face utterly deadpan.

  ‘I love you, Bethany,’ he says, softly, his voice cracking.

  ‘I love you,’ he repeats as Hunter comes in the door.

  Seven …

  Bethany sits under the awning of the Kafé Klee and looks at the traffic snailing by on the Fulham Road. Where are all these people going on 2 January, she asks herself? Her friend Moxy appears with two double-shot cappuccinos and sits down. Moxy offers her a cigarette (Bethany accepts) and they both light up in the style of the Sean Young character in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. They both agree, Bethany and Moxy, that no one has ever lit a cigarette in a cooler way than Rachael, Sean Young’s character, and this is a judgement based on long analysis of smoking scenes in key cult movies. Bethany, as it happens, thinks she is better at replicating Rachael than Moxy.

  They exhale, blowing smoke strongly out of the sides of their mouths, and sit for a while sipping their coffee. Bethany likes the Klee, not simply because of the half-dozen reproductions of the master’s work inside, but also because it is cheap and you can smoke comfortably on the pavement under the awning thanks to the glowing orange heaters bolted on to the wall above their heads. She and Moxy are trying to come up with a list of achievable New Year resolutions, and are stuck on the subject of sex.

  Moxy claims she had no sex during this last year, something Bethany finds a little shocking, given that she, Bethany, had enjoyed so relatively much – though on reflection perhaps the word ‘enjoy’ is wrong. Still, clearly she had many more sexual connections with men in the year than Moxy. This is also somewhat surprising as Bethany thinks Moxy is a very attractive girl in a slightly feral, grubby way. Bethany indulges in a short, clandestine thought experiment – imagining if she were a man confronted by Moxy. Slim, vivid (the rusty-maroon hair contrasting with the pale face), fashionable, intelligent (Moxy dropped out of her Fine Arts degree at Edinburgh after a year), confident and edgy. What’s not to like?

  Being ruthless, Bethany decides that, if she were a man, she would be somewhat put off by Moxy’s nose stud. It’s on the large side, a stylized silver multi-petalled flower, but the tarnished grey petals are surrounded by a pink areola of inflamed skin, as if the tissues of Moxy’s left nostril are reacting angrily to this piercing, as if cleanliness, basic hygiene, had not been part of the process. Bethany knows that Moxy had this flower inserted in her nose over a year ago, in Goa, on her twenty-first birthday but it has never truly settled, its hot pink ring forever visible. Moxy says she feels no pain, the flower can be removed and easily replaced with no unseemly oozings but, all the same, there it is in the middle of her face and it gives off its own little aura of sepsis, of incipient purulence.

  So, Bethany says, keen to move her mind on, ‘What’s your New Year resolution, then?’

  ‘I’ve just got to have a shag,’ Moxy says, flatly. ‘Simple as that. That’s all I want. Once that happens everything else can move forward.’

  Bethany remonstrates – surely there must be other important ambitions? But Moxy won’t hear of anything more high-minded.

  ‘It’s all very well for you,’ Moxy says, with an edge of bitterness to her voice. ‘You lived with three men in the last year. Nympho.’

  This hurts, but it’s true, Bethany realizes. She tells Moxy everything – well, almost everything – so Moxy knows about Sholto and then Kasimierz and then Hunter (but she doesn’t know about Hunter’s brother, Calder). Suddenly Bethany wonders if there’s something wrong with her: she’s only twenty-three but she lived with these three young men pretty much one after the other, all interestingly alluring and str
angely sexy guys in their own special way, under different roofs. With each one the same routines and rituals applied: they slept together in the same bed, they shopped together, ate together, went out together, did rudimentary housework together, paid bills together, each had a set of keys to the front door of their habitation – but one by one these relationships were unilaterally ended. Just for a moment, a few weeks, a month or three, some sort of stasis of contentment was reached. And then it went wrong and Bethany declared it was over.

  ‘Any news of Sholto?’ Moxy asks. Sholto was Moxy’s friend and she had introduced him to Bethany.

  ‘Deafening silence,’ Bethany says. ‘For all I know he’s in Alaska with an Inuit wife.’ She smiles. ‘Yeah, to hell with Sholto.’

  They sit for a while, smoking. Then Bethany asks Moxy if she’d like to hear her New Year resolutions. Moxy sighs and says, get on with it.

  ‘One,’ Bethany says, ‘move out of my mother’s house. I can’t live there any longer.’

  Moxy says that’s also one of her New Year resolutions – after getting laid.

  ‘Two,’ Bethany continues, ‘experience a period of deliberate celibacy – no men.’

  ‘You bitch,’ Moxy says.

  ‘Only in order to, three, kick-start my acting career again,’ Bethany explains.

  ‘I thought you were going to be a photographer,’ Moxy says.

  ‘I’ll still be a photographer,’ Bethany says, ‘I can act and take photographs. Like that actress, what’s her name, the one who was in the Woody Allen films.’

  ‘Penelope Cruz,’ Moxy suggests.

  ‘No, the older one – Diane something.’

  Moxy doesn’t know who she’s talking about.

  ‘And, four (a) and (b) get an agent and start going to auditions.’

  Bethany feels a sudden surge of optimism notionally laying out her future in this way. It immediately seems very possible. Move out of her mother’s house, get an agent, go to auditions, be offered a part in a play/sitcom/TV drama/movie/commercial and begin to realize her dreams of acting on stage or screen – she’s not fussy. In fact she’s annoyed that she can’t be going to meetings with her agent and deciding what auditions she’ll do and what she’ll ignore. London is closed, she knows, England is on hold, Great Britain is immobile while its enforced, enervating seasonal holiday plays out, interminably.