That year high-heeled pumps with red soles were the thing, though not for much longer. Soon they would be regarded as cheap, though at over £400 a pair they were far from it. The designer, I had read, had been inspired by the shoes of cabaret dancers and prostitutes, those early twenty-first-century muses. I could not afford a pair, of course, but in my first year at university I had been invited to a friend’s 21st birthday party at her large house in Belgravia, and had rustled up a decent imitation using a can of cherry red spray paint from the hardware shop. These I retrieved from the back of the cupboard and teamed with a loose, black silk slip. I left my nose ring in.
‘Your collarbone looks gorgeous in that dress,’ said Lou, who was wearing a pair of navy palazzo pants and a cream blouse made from the type of silk that forgives only the most budlike of breasts. ‘We’re not getting the tube in this heat. I’ll call a cab.’
It was thirty degrees outside and, though the sky was a bright canvas of concentrated blue, the city air had a muggy quality. Steam seemed to rise from the pavements and mingle with exhaust fumes to form a noxious, greasy film upon the cool, clear oxygen we had craved for so long. Despite the lightness of my clothing, it had bonded itself to my skin. I wanted to peel it off like wallpaper.
As the driver pulled out of the crescent, I shifted about in an attempt to detach the moist pleather of the car seats from the backs of my thighs, thinking that there were many other things I would rather be doing today than going to meet Lou’s mother, a woman she had never spoken about in the kindest of terms. Being in bed with Josh, as I had been almost every day since our first, was one such activity. His body made my insides fizz. It wasn’t that sleeping with him was some transcendental revelation – I had had good sex before, the academic was proof of that – but there was a charge to it that made me feel vital, not just to him, but in the world.
We had not discussed the particulars of our relationship – he had merely slipped into bed with me one evening and that was that. I closed my eyes and remembered gripping his muscular shoulders as he hovered above me. I had forgotten to take my little beige pill.
The taxicab wove its way through the sunlit streets and looking out of the window I experienced a surging sense of unconditional love for the city. The pollution, the drills, the sirens, the gridlock, the fact that somewhere at that very moment, probably, someone was doing a murder: these were all defects that ceased to be of import. I watched a guy in a Rasta hat moonwalk along the line of a bus stop, a woman cooling her freckled shoulders against the glass façade of an office building, sunglasses towards reflected sky, cigarette in mouth. I saw a teenage boy in a kippah pulling his grandmother’s shopping caddy behind him with a look of peaceful resignation, a lady shouting insults outside a supermarket as the unflustered folks of Camden strolled by oblivious, having seen it all before. The gutter punks, the paint-splattered builders crowding the pavement with their lunchtime pints, the gangs of teenage girls, all braids and trainers and unapologetic sass: the way these groups tessellated in this outlandish place seemed to me miraculous, and until we entered Mayfair and the crowds dispersed, I soared.
‘Strange choice of venue, Mummy,’ said Lou when we arrived at the bar, her cheek skimming that of her mother’s. She eyed the art deco lines of the dark wood panelling. ‘It’s not very summery.’
‘It’s cool and dark and they do an excellent martini, which is all that matters to me,’ said Lucia’s mother, who, as soon as Lou had got close, had reached out to grasp the flesh on the underside of one of her arms and tutted. It was an act sufficient to silence her daughter.
‘And who do we have here?’ She turned to me, performing the subtle but arch visual appraisal of all mothers of a certain class, smiling warmly to show it was ironic in spirit. She had the blonde hair and pout of a much younger woman, but her skin was soft and unmeddled with, with deep laughter lines around her eyes. She wore an expensive-looking silk tunic.
‘I’m Cecilia.’
‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said. I slid into the chair opposite while Lucia sat next to her mother, her bare arms lolling ostentatiously on the table, as if in protest.
‘I suppose Lucia has told you a lot about me,’ she said. ‘All horrible, of course.’
‘I — ’
‘Mother . . . ’ Lou exhaled. She looked tired already, sitting there. She seemed to shrink in her mother’s presence, not from fear or shyness, but from sheer exhaustion.
Cecilia’s laugh came out in a trill. ‘Not to worry. It’s what we pay that expensive therapist for. I assume you’re still seeing Dr Stein, darling? Daddy tells me he’s certainly still paying for him.’
Lucia had told me several weeks previously that she thought Dr Stein was a crackpot and wanted to find another therapist, having recently cottoned on to the fact that the near-decade she had spent in his Highgate consulting rooms appeared to have been of extremely limited use. ‘He keeps talking about how anxiety is my transitional object and how I have this untapped fury in my unconscious that supposedly stems from my lousy childhood,’ Lou had said. ‘It drives me absolutely berserk. There I am trying to deal with the trauma of this rape, or whatever it was’ – she whispered the word beneath her breath in a hiss, although we were alone in the house – ‘and he keeps asking about Mummy’s drug use. The thing is, I have this strong suspicion it’s all bunkum. So I told him, “But I don’t feel angry, Reuben. I’ve tried ever so hard, I honestly have, but I can honestly say that I just don’t.” So then he said, get this, he said, “Well it’s your unconscious, so by definition you wouldn’t know what you are feeling.” And I just thought, well isn’t that terribly convenient for you? You can go around telling people what they are unconsciously feeling without any need to actually prove it, and if they query it you can just say they’re repressed or in denial. I mean, honestly. So I said, “How do I go about releasing this untapped fury, then?” and he said, “Very slowly, over many sessions.” I just thought, well isn’t that just perfect.’
Lucia didn’t explain any of this to Cecilia. She simply said, ‘Of course I am, mother,’ and ran a hand through the sleek black surface of her hair.
We ordered our £12 cocktails. I popped an olive in my mouth, suddenly starving.
‘Our bohemian parenting has cost us dear,’ said Cecilia, returning to the topic once our order had been placed. ‘Lucia is evidence of that. Not just financially but emotionally, though, good God, the Priory was expensive. It’s a good thing we had just sold the Notting Hill house . . . ’
‘Is that where you grew up?’ I said, in a mild sort of way.
I already knew this from my long talks with Lou, but her eyes were pleading with me to change the subject.
‘Yes,’ said Lou, with relief in her voice. ‘In one of those houses that looks like a wedding cake. Mummy bought it for nothing in about 1967.’
‘Notting Hill was a total slum in those days. Full of blacks and cockneys.’ Cecilia said this in a volume particular to the posh. ‘Now it’s all Russians and Arabs of course.’
‘Harmony’s parents were real hippies,’ said Lou, in what sounded like an almost-taunt. ‘They were squatters.’
‘Whereabouts? Quentin and I had some friends who were squatters, up on Freston Road. Heathcote, David. Some other people. They declared independence from the United Kingdom, actually. In 1979. The Republic of Frestonia. Had their own stamps. Though I don’t believe the United Nations ever got back to them about becoming a member state.’ Cecilia laughed.
‘Mine were more North London,’ I said, with a vagueness that I hoped would escape notice. ‘Frestonia. Wow. What an incredible story.’
‘It was the whole street,’ said Lou, who looked suddenly animated. ‘We’ve got loads of photos. I’ll show you. Like a hundred people. The Clash recorded there. I’m really good friends with some of the grandchildren. They still live there. It’s a housing co-op now.’
I looked from Lou to her mother, and considered the strange trajectory of Cecilia’s life,
the rampant contradictions of it. Greenham Common Peace Camp followed by an anorexic daughter at boarding school. Separation, the drug overdose, the flogging of the mansion in Notting Hill, the retreat to a commune in Scotland. Now reunited, Lucia’s parents lived platonically in a crumbling manor in Cornwall. Quentin painted and cultivated cannabis in the garden. Cecilia collected couture.
‘Another round?’
‘I’m going to step out for a cigarette,’ I said. My heels were thunderous against the black and white tiles of the lobby.
Outside, I leaned against the red brick of the building and took several deep breaths as I watched Mayfair saunter by. The Rollses and the Bentleys glided past almost silently, a gaggle of Arab women in full burkas less so, the bright yellow of their Selfridges bags a shock against the black. The whole place felt like another world, a world to which, at least to an uncurious outsider catching sight of me through the windows of a taxicab, I was party. I didn’t want to go back inside.
‘Do you ever wish you had normal parents?’ Lou appeared, cigarette poised, and waggled her fingers towards my lighter in a needing gesture.
‘I used to,’ I said. ‘All the time. Dad in a suit, Mum working part-time, clean carpets, just like my friends. I used to envy their food when I went round for tea. Egg and chips and peas, five on the dot.’
‘Before I was sent away to school, my parents used to seat me at their dinner parties,’ said Lou, ‘like I was their little pet. And all their druggy friends used to interrogate me and laugh at my responses.’ She said this lightly, but with a wince.
‘I would say that Cecilia seems nice, but it wouldn’t be entirely true,’ I said. ‘What she said, about your mental health . . . ’
‘I’ve learned to live with it.’
We were alerted, as if through telepathy, to the presence of a man. He was stout, balding and in black tie, in the process of lighting a cigar and appraising us from a distance. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying . . . ’ he began, in a strong Russian accent.
‘We are having a conversation,’ said Lou, who pretended that the frequent interruptions we encountered from men practically everywhere we went irritated her. I could already see that she was standing differently.
‘I just wanted to compliment your friend on her taste in shoes,’ the man said. ‘Those are beautiful shoes for a very beautiful lady.’
I was tempted to compliment the old man on his taste in hardware store spray paint, but thought better of it.
‘Thank you,’ I said, stubbing out my cigarette. ‘We have to get back in.’
‘Let me give you my card,’ said the old man. ‘I will take you to lunch on my plane. Anywhere in the world, you choose.’ He strode off before I had any time to reply.
‘Oh my God, you have to go,’ said Lou, as we re-entered the lobby. ‘Imagine! All-expenses paid lunch in Venice. How incredible.’
‘Lucia, you do realise that in order to attend said lunch I would have to have sex with the gentleman we both just met outside, don’t you?’ I said in a whispered hiss as the door to the bar was opened for us.
‘Worth it,’ she said. ‘Mummy, some Russian oligarch just offered to take Harmony to lunch anywhere in the world.’
‘You do realise, Harmony, that such things are of a purely transactional nature?’ said Cecilia.
I nodded. I thought of the academic and his texts in the middle of the night, messages that would light up my face as Josh slept soundly beside me and I pressed delete, delete, delete. He had paid for lots of dinners.
‘She’s not going anyway, the bore. Plus she’s sleeping with our flatmate,’ said Lou, plucking another olive from the dish.
‘As is her choice,’ said Cecilia. ‘It’s not something to be sniffed at, choice. I remember a time before women had very much of it at all.’
‘The swinging sixties? Please, mother. You were all sleeping around like nobody’s business, men and women. Sometimes both at once.’
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. ‘You say that, but for a movement called “sexual liberation”, I didn’t feel especially liberated. In fact, a lot of the time I felt rather used. But turning it down wasn’t really the done thing. In fact, it was downright rude. Someone would crawl into your bed and if you were lucky they’d say, “fancy a shag?’’ before getting started, and well, that was that. You were meant to be eager and willing.’
‘Did you not really get any enjoyment out of it?’ I wasn’t about to ask Lucia’s mother explicitly whether she found it difficult to reach orgasm, but Cecilia caught my meaning.
‘Sometimes. Rarely,’ she said. ‘Foreplay is a bit of a modern invention. What I remember most when I think back to that time – and bear in mind I was taking a lot of speed and other things – was looking at lots of cracks in ceilings. Peeling plaster and such like. I was at a party once where the entire ceiling collapsed. A man was almost impaled on a chandelier. But anyway, I found the whole thing rather tiresome after a while. There was always some hairy brute sliding under the covers with you, whether you liked it or not.’
‘Why not just say no?’
‘I did once and got called a frigid boring bitch. Like I said, it wasn’t really done. Perhaps because it would have exposed the whole charade. We were supposed to be changing society, but really all that changed was that the sense of entitlement that men felt towards women’s bodies became more obvious. To me, at least. It’s why I joined the women’s movement.’
‘You never told me any of this before . . . ’ said Lucia in a tone I couldn’t place. Her mother took a sip of her martini.
‘You never asked. But there it is. So much for sexual freedom. I didn’t feel very free at all. Maybe others did, I don’t know. I remember feeling very sad and very sore. I quite envy you girls in many ways. You’re so much more assertive than we were back then. Sleeping with whomever you want, whenever you want. Feeling entitled to an orgasm. Not experiencing sex with men as though you were some floppy rag doll to be bent about this way and that, or feeling like you had to do it because he had taken your picture. Things have really come on, thanks to the hard work of the women of my generation. You don’t realise how lucky you are. Lucia, sweetheart . . . whatever is the matter?’
It was only then that I looked and saw Lou, head slightly bent, crying wordlessly.
Autumn 1987
The bairn’s squalling wakes me and so, in darkness, I take her from the cot in their room, thinking she’s hungry and could do with a bottle feed. Better, I decide, to let them sleep. Stella has not been well.
I become aware of the noise as I’m walking down the landing with the baby in my arms, a roaring that seems to shake the house at its foundations. No wonder she woke up.
I grope through the darkness in search of a light switch, fearing I will trip and drop her. I cup her head with one hand, the downy tuft of her hair tickling my palm as I use the other to reach for the switch. Nothing. The storm must have downed the power lines.
I put her down on my bed making soothing noises while I raid her father’s shrine for candles. She’s giving the storm a run for its money; I’m surprised the whole house is not awake. As the room fills with flickering light I hold her up to my face and kiss her, widening my eyes at the little face I can now see. She’s keening now, is breathing heavily from the strain of all that howling.
We go over to the window. The other houses in the street all sit in darkness, the scene strangely rural seeming without the glare of the orange street light. As our eyes adjust we watch a tree float down the street as though made of hollow papier mâché. Others have been plucked effortlessly from the earth by an invisible hand, gnarled roots raw and exposed. Poor Mr Moore opposite. His brand new Honda Accord has been crushed. The bairn squeals with excitement as I bounce her on the windowsill.
We sit and watch until the sky lightens and the winds subside. We have no reason to expect any visitors. The fierceness with which Stella loves her baby daughter is being smothered by exhaustion. She walks around in stained ni
ghties like a befuddled ghost, glazy-eyed, her face fastened up. Sometimes I see her looking at her baby with confusion, as though she is wondering how it turned up here. I have no reason to expect Bryn, either. He is trying to do his bit but he no longer climbs the stairs to my room or enters my bed. I do not mind this development. I’m not wanting for love.
She wakes up again, smiling and making a cooing noise. The sun is coming up. Daylight reveals a scene of chaos, smashed windscreens from falling roof tiles, a fallen plane tree blocking the road, rubbish everywhere. People will have died in the night, I am sure of it. And yet I find the carnage exciting, the suspension of normal rules a thrilling respite from the tedium of everyday life.
The incessant blaring of alarms is disturbing the baby, so we go away from the window and make our way downstairs to put a pot of coffee on. I experience a sudden, secret urge for a bacon sandwich, one of Mam’s, dripping with fat and brown sauce. I take a banana from the fruit bowl.
Bryn’s coat is missing from the hook near the door. Perhaps he has gone out to investigate the damage. I balance the bairn on my hip and carry a mug of hot coffee in my other hand, being careful to hold it at arm’s length so as not to risk scalding her (another thing they never tell you – that holding a baby essentially disables you). We make our way slowly up the spiral stairs.
Their door is ajar, the cool light of morning a fissure in the floorboards. I push it open gently with my unoccupied hip.
‘Good morning,’ I say, my voice very quiet. ‘Look who we have here.’
Stella is sitting up in bed, her hair tangled from a night of disrupted sleep. She puts her arms out in front of her, smiling weakly, and takes the baby from me.
The Tyranny of Lost Things Page 16