The Mistressclass

by Michèle Roberts

  She’s been up half the night since the gig ended. Last week they watched a performance artist bury himself alive in a tiny dugout under an art gallery in Marylebone; this week they applauded, when he’d tunnelled out under the road and erupted on the other side like a large mole. She came back to Adam’s flat in Bethnal Green. He’s the first person she’s met, of her peers, to have a place of his own; even though it’s rented. They’ve been playing with the camera, listening to music, passing books of poems back and forth and reading bits out to each other. She’s warm and floaty from pints of beer in the pub and then red wine back here in Adam’s room, and now spiralling higher, smoking dope.

  She wants him so much it’s hard to speak, let alone sound remotely intelligent. She can’t get the words onto her tongue; too swollen and thick; and when she does blurt something out she exaggerates and sounds stupid. She chooses poems to read out that are clever and funny. Nothing to do with desire, with love, with sex. Trying not to give herself away.

  She can’t talk truly because she can’t touch. If she could only touch him that would convey everything she wants to say. Touch is subtle talk better than words. No, that’s not true; it’s just that she wants to touch him as well as talk with him; her words would come right if she could only touch him at the same time. Her fingers ache with the effort not to reach out.

  She hauls herself upright, from where she’s slipped down the cushion, and frowns at her feet. Bad girl don’t touch bad girl. This is the mad logic of her Catholic girlhood: what you want must be forbidden so because it’s forbidden you want it you can never have it bad girl. Round and round you go forgetting you can have and you can want and you can not have and you might get. She wants to peel his clothes off and kiss him top to toe. At home they had a kitten once, which used to perch on Vinny’s shoulder and lick her face and neck with its little rasping tongue; she’d like to do that to Adam, lick him all over, and she’d like him to do it to her too, and she’d like to hold his penis, stroke it between her hands, kiss it, lick it. Catholic girls weren’t supposed to want to do that either. You had to tell the priest about it on Saturday night. Unchaste thoughts. It was better not to have them so you didn’t have to mention them to the priest.

  Saturday night. Three in the morning. Vinny and Adam have known each other for two weeks. A long time, in terms of their world, in terms of fancying someone and telling them so. It was simple to meet him. She went to his reading, approached him afterwards, told him how much she liked his novel. She hung around, became part of the group that went to the pub. She has been for walks in the park with him, has gone drinking with him, has shared a curry with him after a gig. They have discovered they have both lost their mothers. Adam’s ran away. That’s as much as he will say. Now he sits a foot away from her, flicking over the pages of the book, looking so self-contained she’s in despair.

  She must have got it all wrong. Perhaps he’s in a panic, regretting he ever invited her back. Probably he doesn’t fancy her at all. He really only cares about literature. She doesn’t feel able to say any of this. What’s the protocol anyway? No rules these days about who makes the first move. Women’s liberation lets you claim your desire, but nonetheless men don’t always like it, and you don’t want to be insensitive, trying to get off with someone who’s not interested. Actually, liar, yes, you do. You’d like to be able to interest him. Seduce him with amazing subtle feminine power so that he’s hardly aware of what’s happening but still he’s yielding, he’s doing exactly what you want, pulling you into his arms, stroking your breasts. Vinny doesn’t know how to tiptoe up to him and render him putty in her hands. She wishes she were the sort of woman you meet in novels, who just radiates a soft feminine sexuality that has the hero madly in love with her within three seconds. She’s terrified of sounding like a sergeant major barking orders. Trousers off! Into bed!

  Adam goes on reading.

  She tells herself not to be in such a rush. Enjoy the moment. Take your time. Why be in such a hurry?

  She watches her hand bound across the space of amber rug between them and land, light as a grasshopper, at the edge of his thigh.

  Apparently casual. Almost a mistake. So he doesn’t have to notice. He can just go on reading to her, if he wants; he can pretend he doesn’t know she’s sent him a tiny message in sign-writing.

  He halts. Looks up. Their eyes meet. She watches him read what her eyes convey and in the same instant reads what his eyes send back.

  Both of them bump six inches towards each other along the rug.

  Adam took that photograph. To Vinny, staring back at him holding the camera, it meant she was now properly in the room, part of it, not just looking on. Entering, she was still a voyeur. He tossed out the invitation above the hubbub in the pub. You can come back to my place if you like. OK, she answered. She was saying yes to sex. She assumed. That was the code. Going to a man’s room meant sex. Once you were through his door you’d said yes. If you said no while you were in there it meant you were a cockteaser. Women’s liberation hadn’t yet changed that, though it might. Early days. She didn’t know if he was sleeping with anyone else. She wouldn’t have dreamed of asking. That would be possessive. That was the code too. Not being jealous of a man or making demands on him or assuming anything. Once that rubbish was cleared away you could make love freely. So men said. You tried to live up to their ideal. Sometimes you exploded with rage.

  They wove along the street crowded with people bubbling out of the pubs, not talking much. Not touching. Vinny was suddenly so shy she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Entering his bedroom in the shabby flat, she took a good swerving glance round. Before he turned off the lights and they hunched near the flame of the thick churchy candle stuck on a low iron spike. He had painted the walls a strong yellow, with a wide dark red stripe at waist level, dark red cornice and skirting-boards. She picked her way across the sanded floor between stalagmites of books, tossed-down clothes, sprays of folders and papers, a tray of used crockery, a heap of unmatched boots and shoes, a bright slither of albums circling the record player. The Band on top. He picked up the glossy square of cardboard, slid the record out, wiping the vinyl on his woollen sleeve, put it on the turntable. While he hovered over the needle, making sure it slotted neatly down, Vinny’s glance swept over the low bed, a base propped on planks, half draped with an Indian spread in yellow and red Paisley, the desk in the corner, piled with more books and papers, the Grateful Dead and Che Guevara posters on the walls, the weeping fig and cheeseplant by the window-sill.

  The gas fire bloomed into life. They parked themselves a foot apart on the dark yellow rug, sprawled against the edge of the bed, propped by floor cushions covered in purple velvet. Adam hooked his stash out from the wooden box he used as a bedside table and turned off the overhead light. He lit the fat white candles. Vinny took the tobacco tin from him.

  —Let me.

  She wanted him to see how well she could roll a joint. A modest three-paper one, the skins swiftly licked along their gummed edge then pressed into a single oblong sheet, chocolate curls of tobacco, fresh and damp, laid along it then fidgeted into the pinched crease, the lump of dope heated at one end with a lit match, smouldering fragrance, then this brown softness crumbled along the length of the tobacco bed, the whole thing twirled up between fingers and thumbs into a cylinder fattish at one end, rolled-up piece of cardboard slid in for a roach, twisted end lit. She inhaled the dark sweetness of the hit, passed the joint to Adam.

  In the morning he crouched, naked and shivering, in front of the fire, lighting it, then pulled on an ancient frogged woollen dressing-gown and went off barefoot to forage for breakfast. Vinny liked the grey dressing-gown. She recognised another habitué of junk stalls and jumble sales. He reappeared with mugs of tea and a plateful of bacon sandwiches oozing butter, got back into bed with her. He put his arm around her and kissed her. The sheets were thin flannel, candy stripes now dingy and in need of a wash. Smelling of Adam’s sweat.
Vinny didn’t mind the grubby sheets. It was how people were. Anyway, she liked Adam’s smell. And now she had added her own smell to the mix.

  They went out together at noon. A couple of ghosts flew up and followed them. One was Mum and the other was Dad.

  * * *

  Vinny flicked through her guidebook, a green oblong one the size of some folded legal document. Paragraphs of descriptive text were headlined in red, accompanied by sketched illustrations and little maps, suggestions of routes. Pneumatic Michelin men gambolled in the margins.

  The book expected the reader to be touring by car. Tourism was the modern word, which denoted groups in planes and coaches. Touring was old-fashioned and individual. It suggested ladies wearing white dustcoats and veils tied over their hats, men with waxed moustaches posing with one foot on the running-board of the stately motor, wicker picnic-baskets strapped on behind. All to do with class. Tourism was middle to lower, touring was middle to upper. But Vinny and Catherine were taking the boat-train.

  —Do you really not mind me coming too? Catherine asked.

  Vinny had originally planned to journey alone. Adam, already in France, would meet her at the other end. She would have a solo adventure, travelling towards him, a bag of turmoil and desire placed primly on her lap, held down like a squirming cat. Now, a change of plan. All because of that night in the pub.

  Catherine’s trip to Wales with friends had fallen through. The others had decided to go to Venice instead and she hadn’t the money to accompany them. She sounded glum on the telephone. Vinny imagined her twiddling a strand of hair, her mouth turned down. July, and it’s raining, and I’m going to be stuck in bloody London all summer. Vinny tapped her cigarette on the yellow Ricard ashtray. She had arranged to go for a drink with Adam, but she wanted to cheer her older sister up. That was their silent pact since their parents’ deaths: to comfort each other. As though that were possible. As though kindness were a quilt you could draw up over your nose and huddle under. As though it were a new skin patching the gaping wound. Better to stay numb. Cauterise the gash, the trunk of the tree torn away from the branch, with food, cigarettes, drink, sex. Vinny felt guilty, too. She was about to embark on delight, going to stay with Adam at his father’s house, whereas Catherine had been let down, robbed of the prospect of happiness. She must share her own happiness with her.

  Having something to offer Catherine made her feel powerful. She almost blurted it out immediately: why don’t you come with us to France? But she caught herself. She must ask Adam first. And it was his father’s house, not hers. She couldn’t just turn up with an extra guest without permission. So she said merely: come to the pub with us. You haven’t met Adam yet, I’m sure you’ll like him.

  Catherine had made sandwiches for the journey. Wrapped up greaseproof-paper packets of white bread, plump with egg mayonnaise, fringed with wispy cress, for Vinny, thinly spread with cottage cheese for herself. They ate their picnic on the cross-Channel boat, sitting on the empty promenade deck watching England recede into the mist, then tossed the crusts to the seagulls screaming in their wake. Milky and rippling, it spread out wide in the shape of a V.

  —V for Vinny, V for Victory, Vinny said.

  They were perched side by side on the chilly cream-painted edge of a lifebelt locker, the wind whipping their hair and slapping their cheeks, making their eyes water. Puddles glistened in the dents of the battered surface of their makeshift seat and on the deck underfoot. Some were oily, with caught rainbows idling in them like fish. Above them black fumes fled up in furry columns from the steamer’s funnel. The sky was grey, and the cold air smelt of smoke and salt. It left a gritty taste in your mouth. Both sisters wore fur-fringed Afghan waistcoats, red and white Palestinian scarves wound round their necks. They still felt cold. In between mouthfuls of sandwich they tucked their hands under their armpits and shivered.

  Catherine licked her fingers, which had white smears on them. She brushed a shower of crumbs off the knees of her jeans.

  —Do you mind me coming? she repeated: really?

  —No, of course not, Vinny said.

  In between truth and a lie. Bit late to ask that now. You could have thought of that earlier.

  Vinny and Catherine had walked through the rain to the Mother Redcap in Camden Town to meet Adam. Disdaining umbrellas; parka hoods up. Out of the black, wet street into warmth, yellow light, the smell of beer and cigarettes. The three of them sat at a small round table and drank pints and smoked, heads bent together. Conversation had to be pushed across under the din of the juke-box playing early Buddy Holly. A sheet of cigarette smoke the sail on their freight of words, tugging guarded politeness back and forth. Yes, my father’s a painter. Yes, he takes students for painting classes in the summer, but he’s got a five-week gap this year. So we’re going out. Yes, the house is quite old. A hundred and fifty years old, perhaps. Vinny hunched, smoothing her cigarette packet, half empty, soft, jiggling her box of matches, opening and shutting it; jack-in-the-box, no, puppet booth with Mr Punch jumping up to bash his babies’ black heads. She watched the other two size each other up from behind their beer glasses.

  Half an hour later, in the chilly, stinking ladies’, Catherine glared at the single cold tap dribbling into the rust-stained sink.

  —He seems OK, she said.

  She was looking around for something on which to dry her wet hands. She wiped them on her long skirt.

  Vinny shouldered through to the bar and got whisky chasers for their pints. Coming back to their corner she stepped carefully, swerving through the pack of shouting drinkers, hands raised protectively, fingers laced around the three glasses. She planted these on the scarred brown tabletop. Light shone on Catherine’s red-gold hair, her skin. Her mouth was looser now she’d been drinking, less wary; she was half smiling as she listened to Adam. Her eyes, directed sideways, glanced up at Vinny. Adam’s blue eyes were looking down as he spoke intently. Then he glanced up too. She smiled at them both as she reclaimed her bentwood chair.

  She had certainly wanted to show Adam off. Look: isn’t he lovely? You’re not the only one who can have proper lovers, Cath. She had hidden that boast under pretending to be relaxed, casual. He and she didn’t have to be on their own all the time, did they? Also, three as a number felt so close, such a pleasing shape, such fullness, able to hold so much love, so perfect. Two was easy, but three required delicacy, balance, care. Three was good, too, because it meant you weren’t shutting the third person out.

  Vinny saw soon enough what was going to happen. Adam was generous and kind. He had plenty, and he was always ready to share with others. Books or beer or sweaters. He would jump in and offer. So when Catherine casually mentioned that her own holiday had fallen through, Adam immediately invited her to accompany them to France.

  Vinny bent her head over her whisky. She placed her hands round her glass, thumbs and fingers touching. If she was rough the glass might break and shards would cut her and she would bleed.

  He hadn’t consulted her. He hadn’t asked her first. So he was in charge of their plans, not he and Vinny together. Vinny was pierced in the stomach. To muffle the wound she gave the pain a name: jealousy; possessiveness. Bourgeois individualism. Pain you should not feel, because it ran counter to ideas of collective virtue, and so she concentrated extremely and willed it away. She snatched a cigarette and took a gulp of her whisky. The sharpness and burn inside could have a new name: booze. Anyway she loved Catherine yes she did.

  Don’t you think, Vinny?

  Oh yeah, great idea.

  After a week it became true some of the time. To say what she felt was no longer possible, too complicated, and then it was buried, forgotten, like a dead mouse under the floorboards. Sticking-plaster over her mouth stretched in a smile at Catherine. Coward. But the arrangements had all been made. Too late to alter anything. Her feelings jumped about, not untangled until she was on deck, sitting next to Catherine, thinking. I’m in love with Adam. Mustn’t tell him. Men hate that. A
nyway I don’t believe in romantic love do I. A delusion. A snare. Bourgeois ideology. Put it away, then, in her pocket, a secret to take out and study next time she is on her own. Or chuck it away now, cast it off, overboard, into the sea. Let it be gobbled up by hungry fish.

  Adam’s father lived outside the village of Sainte-Madeleine in the département of the Sarthe. Vinny and Catherine were to take the train from Calais to Paris, cross Paris by metro, take another main-line train from Montparnasse, then change to the branch line for Sainte-Madeleine.

  Now they were nearly on the last leg of the journey. Both of them suddenly weary of negotiating queues, crowded spaces. Under the high glass roof of Montparnasse station they felt sweaty and hot in the stale air smelling of frites. The main concourse was webbed with travellers and holiday-makers tugging children, little dogs, and carts of suitcases behind them. Passengers, arrivals and lookers-on milled doggedly back and forth. Whichever way you went it was always against the flow and you bumped into people. Voices exclaimed, the loudspeaker boomed, a transistor radio piped up eddies of pop music, soulful Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan soppy-sweet. The hubbub rose up in waves, banged back and forth.

  Vinny’s blue duffel slumped, grounded, heavy as a bag of sand, bulky with sharp-cornered objects that stuck out and hit your shins. Catherine, meeting Vinny at Victoria, watching her struggle to lift this soft rock onto her shoulder, had tested its weight and frowned.

  —Books, I suppose. Don’t tell me. The complete works of Charlotte Brontë. Surely Adam’s father will have books in his house?

  —Not necessarily the ones I want to read, Vinny said.