Royals

by Emma Forrest

  ‘That shop raises money for cancer research. Poor people shop there because they have to. Don’t go doing your anarchic pranks on them.’

  ‘You could have stopped me. But you didn’t, because you were enjoying it.’

  ‘I didn’t stop you because I was appalled.’

  ‘You were scared.’

  ‘Yeah, so what? I was scared. Let me let you in on something in case you haven’t noticed yet: I’m always scared. My mum is always scared for me and I picked it up and I internalised it and I’m scared shitless all the time.’

  My obsession with Jasmine was a way not to have to feel how scared I am all the time. All obsessive love serves that function.

  ‘Let me meet your mum. I can break through. I can reset your dynamic.’

  ‘No. You’re not meeting her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I paused. ‘You’ll scare her.’

  ‘I am the least frightening person in the world.’ She was literally covered in fifteen layers of dead people’s clothes. ‘That is not true. I can’t imagine how it is you see me.’

  The clothes still smelled of nicotine, bleach, end of life.

  ‘Like a beautiful scary person.’

  ‘Then why are you hanging out with me?’

  ‘For the reasons I just described. You’re catnip. You’re kryptonite.’

  She batted her hand at me and started to cross the street.

  ‘Superman doesn’t want to be near kryptonite; you’re misunderstanding the world.’

  She was nimble, despite her puffed up outer-wear. I rushed to catch up with her, nearly walking right in front of a double-decker bus.

  ‘I want to be near you. Okay?’

  She leapt up onto the steps of the same bus I’d just avoided. I raced to make it as she held out her hand to me. I didn’t fall and I wasn’t crushed beneath the wheels and really it was a triumph in every way, except I thought I was going to have a heart attack.

  ‘I want to be near you, all the time. You’re all I think about. When I’m doing the washing and my Walkman isn’t working, instead of listening to music, I think about you.’

  She was walking up the steps and by the time I met her at the top, she’d already taken a seat.

  ‘Would you ever go straight for me?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Whether you’d go straight for me?’

  ‘I adore you. I adore you. I just… haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘There’s a news flash.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet. And I feel like an idiot because you’ve done everything.’

  She looked sad. ‘It’s not like I do those things because I want to especially.’

  ‘Then why?’

  She didn’t cry as she answered, ‘I’ve started so I have to finish.’

  I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and say, ‘Just stop! Calm down, take a rest, lie on the sofa watching Coronation Street and don’t let anybody inside you again until you’re really in love!’ But the bus shook, and my nerve shook and, like everyone else, I was just happy to be in her company.

  She tapped the shoulder of the man seated in front of us, in the ‘driving’ seat.

  ‘Excuse me? Do you mind if we sit there? I always think that’s the best seat on the bus.’

  To my astonishment, he nodded his head and switched places with us. That could only ever happen to Jasmine, that if something was better she deserved it, whereas I felt, as a teen, that if something was better it must not be meant for me. Though maybe, in that particular instance, it might not have been because she was lovely, but because she had fifteen layers on and looked mental.

  Now we’d been upgraded, she leaned on me and said, ‘Some gay men only have romantic love. Not sexual.’

  ‘Which ones?’

  ‘Ancient Greeks.’

  ‘Great. Will you introduce me to them?’

  The weeping willows were brushing the roof of the bus, like we were driving through an enchanted car wash.

  ‘Don’t be a sad sack,’ she admonished me. ‘You’re always sad for yourself. Not for other people.’

  ‘Who do you help? Do you donate money to charity or only steal from them?’

  ‘Yes. Some money gets donated. But mainly time. I do art with Ilona a few days a week because she hasn’t another soul in the world, poor little bird.’

  ‘Who’s Ilona?’

  ‘Oh, it’s quite hard to explain. I’d rather just introduce you to her.’

  We sat in silence for a spell, and then, as we approached Soho, she leapt up, pulled the ‘Please Stop’ cord and popped down the stairs, like a rather large pixie. I followed her as she picked her way off the bus without tripping over her layers.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’m going to introduce you to Ilona.’

  They say that toddlers have no sense of time: they can weep inconsolably for their mum who’s been gone ten minutes, but if she goes away for a fortnight, on her return, they act as if they’ve seen her just the hour before. Similarly, Jasmine had no sense of time, which may be why she was so good at making things happen.

  Ilona lived in a top-floor flat. I bristled a little when I realised I was not the only poor person in Jasmine’s life. I bristled again as it struck me that perhaps she collected us, like layers stolen from a charity shop.

  But Ilona was so happy to see her, so careful and loving, all my bad feelings melted. She had the thin, crêpey skin of extreme old age, and the thick Scottish accent of her childhood. Her immaculately kept bedroom and living room were shut in by other buildings. But the view from her kitchen spanned across London, so that’s where we congregated.

  She insisted on making us tea, and though I very badly wanted to take over because she was too wobbly and too close to the ground, Jasmine insisted I let her finish. Then she gave us digestive biscuits that were so old they could have their past lives read by a psychic. I tried to discreetly spit mine into a paper napkin, but Jasmine insisted I eat it.

  ‘Ilona, you look so beautiful!’ And she did, wearing tropical green eyeshadow, as if she’d been expecting us. To wear that every day, when you live alone on the top floor of a tower block whose only good view is from the kitchen, and to be furthermore draped in costume jewellery from travels you would never take again… I could see why Jasmine was moved by her.

  Something about the great jewellery triggered Jasmine and she finally removed all her disgusting layers of stolen clothes. She folded them neatly into a black bin bag and it struck me what a good Victorian washerwoman she’d have made if she hadn’t been born a twentieth-century heiress.

  They got out some gouache and started painting together and pretty soon I asked if I could join in. It wasn’t part of what I’d been seeking when I chose to run out of my suburban rut and away with a glamorous It Girl, but it might have been one of my happiest moments with her. It was certainly the calmest. The three of us painted the view and, by and by, we were in rather a trance state.

  Eventually Ilona was the one to break the silence, which seemed right, as it was her flat. ‘How much longer until they get back, then?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Charles and Diana.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, cleaning off my brush on a square of kitchen roll. ‘Shall we turn on the TV? There may be a report.’

  She smiled and started mottling the high-rise windows with dots of sun glare. ‘I don’t have a television.’

  I thought of the many, endless hours the television was on in our house. How the most extreme behaviours within our four walls were witnessed and nullified by it. The drone, the hum, the constancy against my parents’ highs and lows. After I met Ilona, watched her with her paints, I decided never to own a TV once I left home and I stuck to my word.

  ‘Were you always into art?’ I asked Ilona.

  ‘I always did it. First it drove my mum mad, then my teachers, then my husband. But he was the one who really loved me for it. He used to sit for me. Have a
look in my bedroom.’

  On her bed was a pink satin elephant, well loved, and above it, on the wall, a portrait of her husband, just as well loved. He must have sat at a precise angle, looking towards her from three-quarters on, and she had then hung it in a way that they’d be locking gazes as she fell asleep each evening. It was one of those things you come across now and then that makes you feel simultaneously elated and devastated. That’s art. That’s what it does when it works. It’s what I’ve tried to do with my clothes. It’s what she’d managed with the portrait of her long-gone love.

  What does someone mean to you, or what did they once mean to you? That’s every book, every film, every song that’s ever mattered to me. If you can be really precise, if you can concentrate hard enough to record it all exactly as it was in a way strangers can understand, then the love lives on.

  Jasmine didn’t try and get out of there by a certain time, rather, around five o’clock, Ilona was looking sleepy and she decided we should make our excuses so the older woman could prep for bed.

  As we were leaving, Ilona insisted on giving me a chunky Bakelite necklace.

  ‘It’s rare to find a Bakelite necklace like this, because it’s so easy to break.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. I promise.’

  ‘I know you will.’

  ‘I’d love to make you something to wear. I’m just finishing something for Jasmine, then is there anything you’d like me to design?’

  ‘I’d like a snood.’

  ‘A snood?’

  I knew exactly what that was. A close-fitting hood worn over the back of the head. ‘What pattern?’

  ‘Forget pattern. Let’s start with fabric. Velvet.’

  ‘Okay. I could burn patterns into the velvet? That could be nice.’

  When we left I said to Jasmine, ‘Imagine you being friends with a lady who’s lived so long.’

  ‘Why?’

  I could see the back of her head in the mirror and she was carrying the bin bag of charity clothes at her side.

  ‘Because you’re only nineteen and you’re always trying to top yourself!’

  She laughed. But as we rode the lift back down to the ground floor, I took her hand.

  ‘You’re the best part of her week. You can see how much she waits for it. She’d have really missed you if you’d died.’

  She looked genuinely stricken. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. But I wasn’t going to succeed.’

  ‘Well, can you just stop trying now? It’s boring.’

  ‘I agree.’ She looked at me, absolutely serious. ‘I won’t do it again.’

  Feeling overwhelmed by what I might have just achieved, I called my mum to say I wouldn’t be coming home that night. Jasmine’s red lips curled upwards like a cellophane fish when she heard me make the call.

  ‘You’ve won,’ I said.

  ‘I always win,’ she answered, ‘apart from all the ways I lose.’

  CHAPTER 10

  It was the first time I’d stayed with Jasmine without asking her or being asked. I stayed because we both assumed I would. She fed the cats, made us Welsh rarebit with extra mustard, poured champagne and turned on the telly.

  Diana and Charles had been photographed looking out into the Adriatic Ocean from a yacht. If the idea of ocean breeze and a huge boat in motion would suggest jeans and a white peasant blouse, that wasn’t the way she went. He was wearing a suit and tie and she a pearl choker and cream two-piece dotted with blue and orange flowers.

  ‘Is that silk?’

  ‘I hope so. I hope it isn’t rayon.’

  ‘I don’t think they’d let her, do you?’

  ‘I don’t think so, because it would be so likely to stain with sweat out there with all that heat.’

  ‘Is it hot there, now?’

  ‘You’d have to think so.’

  We didn’t have smartphones or computers to jump online and check and neither of us had seen a newspaper in days.

  ‘She needs one of our hand-painted fans.’

  The fact that we’d never got round to making the fans energised her and she started getting excited about the dress I was meant to make.

  ‘Let’s do a fitting!’

  I think she felt a bit restless and just wanted to take off her clothes in front of me, me being as good as anybody. I got from her wardrobe the dress as it so far existed, which is to say it was two rather sad strips of neglected fabric, and I draped them across her, moving the taffeta this way and that, trying to make it come to life, which can be a challenge with a fabric that heavy. But I got the shape I wanted – punk rock Greek goddess, Diana on her yacht looking out to sea and Debbie in her Rapture – and I put in a few fat stitches to hold my idea together, then carefully peeled it off over her head.

  Her breasts were small, her tummy flat, and her bottom and thighs round. She was strong and slim at the same time in a way you more often find with American women. She caught me looking at her and smiled, slicing through that silly opinion with her cut-glass accent.

  ‘Ever been with a girl?’

  I put back the dress, attempting to tuck away with it her line of questioning.

  ‘I’ve never been with anyone.’

  ‘When you find your Knight in Shining Armour, how will you know how to kiss him?’

  I blushed. I was still facing away from her but I knew my neck was blushing, too, and that she could see it. The idea that someone might exist who would one day take me away from myself was so overwhelming I could have sunk to my knees. Instead, I went back to the sofa and sat down.

  She turned off the TV and knelt before me. ‘Let me kiss you, oh please!’

  I was so afraid, so longing and so mortified, I looked down at the carpet. Art deco roses, red blooms on black, with a turquoise border. The best carpet I’d ever seen. You often notice something lovely when you’re feeling crushed with shame. She put her fingers on my chin and very slowly tilted my face upwards. For a blink of an eye, it looked to me like there were half-moons on her nails.

  Then she kissed me, her tongue creeping into my mouth. I kissed her back, trying to copy her tongue.

  ‘Relax it.’

  I tried. As we were locked together, I wanted to ask who her friends were, where her friends were? Her real friends. Nobody had visited her in the hospital.

  Suddenly she jumped back and leapt triumphantly in the air with one of her pogo movements.

  ‘You’re going to be great! Who will it be? Your first kiss?’

  ‘Wasn’t it you? Just now? Technically?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t count. No, you mustn’t count me.’

  I felt hurt because I kind of wanted to count her. It wasn’t a joke or a trick to me. We’d kissed because we’d been wanting to kiss for a while. That’s how it was in my head. I got up and turned off the TV. Poor passionless Diana and her unromantic honeymoon. Cut-glass accents and dry lips.

  ‘Who was your first kiss?’ I asked Jasmine.

  She scooped up our dishes from dinner and put them in the sink. ‘A friend of my father’s.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘They were having a raucous party. He was handsome. He was old. A Spanish count, I’m pretty sure he was a count. Beautiful penis. Not that I’d know, I’d never seen one before he showed me his. I knew there was no way it would fit inside any part of me and he was so nice about that and we didn’t have to, I could just touch it. He was drunk. So was I, obviously. That’s why he picked his moment, I suppose.’

  ‘Where was your dad?’

  ‘On the balcony smoking a spliff, probably.’ She pointed to the sofa. ‘Jagger was sitting there. Right there.’

  ‘Mick or Bianca?’

  She looked at me like I was demented. ‘Mick. Though you are quite correct to keep a soft spot for her suits. So when do you reckon my dress will be ready, then? Can I have it by next month?’

  She didn’t say anything else about her first kiss, and I didn’t ask.

  But something was still on her mind.
>
  ‘Let’s call my dad.’

  I hadn’t seen him since the time we’d gone to Portobello, and she’d carried on as if it wasn’t a big deal. And maybe it hadn’t been to her, but it was now. She tried calling but there was no reply. She tried two times, three. She let it ring and ring.

  ‘I can’t keep up with all the numbers that man has.’

  She tried to stay cool. ‘I reckon he’d be in St-Tropez this time of year, maybe Portofino. But that means he’ll be stopping through London sooner or later. We have to do a meet-up again.’ She said, too cheerfully, ‘You’ll love him when you get to know him.’

  ‘I already think he’s something special.’

  Which of course he was. You don’t get to behave the way he behaves if you aren’t in some way special. People like that, you tut, ‘They think they’re so special.’ And they do. They think it and they are.

  As she tried to steer herself back to joyfulness, she began the now recognisable swing into mania: ‘I want to revive the personalised cigarette case! Beautiful mother-of-pearl engraving in a twenty-four-carat gold case, with rubies dotted over the “i”, if there is an “i” in your lover’s name. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Make it a token of love, like it used to be.’

  ‘But now people just think of death, I suppose.’

  ‘But that’s so glamorous! When we go to Paris, I’m going to take you to the Père Lachaise cemetery. They say Abelard and Eloise are buried there and you can kiss Oscar Wilde’s tomb. It’s covered in lipstick prints.’

  Though I could tell she was happy to be alive, she was still not out of love with the thought of suicide. I suppose she intended to always have it in her back pocket, to smack down on the card table with a flourish, to know everyone was always going to whip their head round at the sound, always wanting to see which card she had laid down.

  ‘I don’t think so. The connotation of cigarette cases isn’t just death, it’s cancer. Loads of it. I’ve seen my uncle go through that, it was horrible.’ Sometimes I thought I might be too prudish to make it as a great designer or really a great anything.

  ‘Oh, yes, my mother, too, that’s why she did what she did.’

  ‘I thought… sorry, I thought she did it because your father left her?’