“Write down, please,” demanded Malheurbe. I scribbled something on the piece of paper he shoved at me, and he scuttled off, clearly thinking that what was said about English girls was all true. The spell was broken, and I ran toward Penny. By the time I reached the crowd, I saw that I had been beaten to it. Milo, in perfect, mellifluous French, was gently soothing the gendarmes and flirting with the PV officials. Penny looked upon her savior with eyes of Magdalenic devotion and would, I’m sure, have washed his feet, dried them with her hair, and anointed them with fragrant oils, had the necessary equipment and sufficient privacy been available.
And that’s about it, really, incidentwise. No charges were made against Penny, and she fortunately missed the satirical endpiece on the French early evening news. The next day was like the one before, except with more cloth, less philosophy, and a dramatic reduction in Penny-centered art installation–oriented mishaps. On Saturday morning we flicked off the safety catch and gave Paris another burst of semiautomatic shopping, and then it was Eurostar and home. And yes, I thought lots more about Liam. And yes, the idea of sleeping with him, just once or maybe twice, if it was nice, had grown in my mind, nurtured by boredom and Penny’s haphazard malice. But no, at that stage, constancy, faithfulness, devotion, and love had the better, just, of abandonment, concupiscence (my favorite word since A levels, O dishy Mr. Carapace, dreamy stand-in teacher of English and inciter of teenage lust!), and revenge.
One thing more. In the station, and on the train back, I had the strangest feeling that I was being watched, perhaps followed. Nothing tangible, just that I sensed a shadow lurking at the edges of things. It was probably a metaphor.
CHAPTER 6
How Can I Deny,
She’s Mine, I’m Hers?
It was nice getting back on Sunday. Ludo capered around me like a puppy: if I’d let him, I’m sure he’d have licked my face. He’d even bought flowers; clueless flowers, but flowers. We had dinner upstairs at Odette’s, surrounded by the magical golden mirrors that make you look beautiful, even when you’re not. He was buzzing with ideas and jokes and little impersonations that lasted two seconds but caught someone completely. It was my favorite Ludo: serious and silly, letting his mind wander down strange and sometimes dark paths, but always coming back again into the light with some pretty bauble. And when Ludo was like this, I found that I changed, too. I wanted to play his word games and think about important things and shake my mind clear from the clutter and trivia and bitchiness.
We made love that night for the first time in weeks. It was one of the best ever. I’ve said that Ludo didn’t have the sexiness gene, but that isn’t fair (you may have noticed that I’m not always). It was more that I’d just got out of the habit of finding Ludo sexy. It had something to do with the fact that he thought sex was fundamentally amusing. And yes, we all know that funny men are sexy, but that doesn’t mean that sex should be funny. Ludo had a way of saying just the wrong sort of funny thing at particularly . . . intense moments, and by breaking the tension, the moment would be lost. The worst thing he did was to turn the body (usually mine) into a comedy prop, tickling, blowing, nurdling, sucking, not from desire or to achieve any kind of focused sexual pleasure, but just to see what sorts of silly noises it would make.
Well, that night it was different. No blowing raspberries on my tummy this time, just a long, deep kiss at the top of the stairs, the kind of kiss that makes you lose where one face ends and the other begins, and without the kiss ever stopping we were in bed, and he was inside me, motionless but for a barely perceptibly pulsing, and then building slowly, by tiny increments. I decided to fake a little orgasm—see, I told you I wasn’t all bad—but after a couple of preliminary moans I found the real thing was sneaking up on me, and I sobbed and bit his shoulder in surprise, and then he came, laughing and joyous.
I was late for work on Monday morning. For once Penny had arrived before me. She was in tears. Sukie, a new girl with a bit more brains than the rest, had called me back as I ran up the stairs.
“You’d better watch it, Katie, Penny’s had a setback.”
“What kind of setback? It’s not bloody Harvey Nicks again, is it? They’re getting to be more trouble than they’re worth.”
“No, it’s not Harvey Nicks. It’s that Young British Designer Award thing. Somebody nominated Penny, and then one of the judges phoned up to see how old she was. When they found out she wasn’t under thirty, they chucked her out.”
“Oh, God. I wonder who nominated her? Probably did it herself.”
Sukie gasped and giggled. Penny still had the status of a deity, and a potentially cruel one at that, among the shop girls. Blasphemy always shocked and excited them. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sukie. She was certainly bright, and she knew how to show enthusiasm at the right moments. She looked like a pretty Richard III, dark and a little hunched, with unreadable eyes. She was Cheltenham Ladies College and claimed to be “filling in,” although between what she never said. On balance I didn’t trust her.
When I got to the office I found it full of people. Hugh was there, standing helplessly in the traditional English way. Tony, the sample machinist, was weeping in sympathy with Penny, mouthing the last word of each of her phrases. Mandy stood by, her mouth tense, pursed, and ready to spring.
“They called me mature. Mature!”
“Mature,” mouthed Tony.
“How could they, the beasts?”
“Beasts,” echoed Tony.
“You know, Penny my love,” said Hugh, “maybe they have a point. Sixt—er, fifty is, well, you know, a touch, um, as they said, mature, for a, you know, young designer.” I’d never seen Hugh so dithery. Distant, detached, divorced, yes, but dithery, no.
“Well,” Penny said petulantly, irritated by such a lack of loyalty, “Sarah Bernhardt played Juliet at the age of sixty, with a wooden leg, and only one buttock.”
“One buttock?” I asked, joining in.
“Yes, one buttock. But of course, that was in the days before bicycles.”
This raised all kinds of interesting, if ghastly, questions. How did she lose a buttock? Or was she born with only one? And which buttock? The same side as the wooden leg? Were they lost in the same gruesome accident, one involving some unfathomable piece of farming equipment, with flails and blades? Or had Penny misunderstood? Perhaps Sarah whatever had lost a billhook or some butter.
“Isn’t that somewhere in Voltaire?” Hugh suggested.
“Oh yes, she played all the great roles.”
“No, I mean there’s a story somewhere involving a siege at a harem—”
“Sarah Bernhardt,” interrupted Penny, in a tone that suggested firmly that this particular conversation was at an end, “was not that sort of actress. Any more than I was.”
After half an hour the storm showed little sign of abating. Penny’s emotional stamina was legendary. Hugh performed an expert tactical retreat, leaving the soothing of Penny to those of us on the mollification payroll. We tried the line that Penny Moss was clearly far too established a company for the petty little awards, which were intended for struggling newcomers, and that they’d no more consider us than Gucci, Max Mara, or Yves Saint Laurent. There was some reduction in the flow, and sensing that hyperbole might yield the best results, I wheeled out the “But Penny, you’re the last of the greats. Balenciaga, Dior, Chanel, gone, all gone. It’s just you now, Penny. You owe it to the world to carry on.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said, but the life had gone from her face, and she looked close to her true age.
The phone rang. It was Sukie.
“There’s a Milo Mayerbeer here to see Penny.”
“Milo,” I said aloud, “what does he want?”
Penny stopped sniffing. “Milo? Is that Milo. Oh, I suggested he pop in to chat about our profile. It was the least I could do after he helped with my little difficulty with that malevolent art object. Ask him to come up in five minutes.”
Suddenly the
face was alive again. Tiny muscles went into action, carving beauty out of the soft dough. Nose and eyes were dabbed dry, makeup was speedily applied. When Milo appeared at the top of the stairs, she was once more the perfect drag queen of his dreams.
Milo’s advice was simple: a little less discretion about our famous customers; a little more work with the fashion editors; perhaps a touch more daring in the collection. I’d been saying the same thing to Penny for months, but it took Milo’s dark eyes and full lips, along with a bill for a thousand pounds (not mentioned during the course of this preliminary chat), to drive the message home.
That afternoon Penny started on the collection for next winter. This involved sifting through her scribbled notes, her drawings, and her photographs, playing with the swatches from Première Vision. Somehow out of the confusion ideas would begin to form. An evening dress would be suggested by a single, sinuous line from a sketchbook. A perfect wedding outfit would emerge, hat first, from the clutter; jackets and skirts would form like a vampire, refleshed from a mound of bone ash, by a drop of virgin’s blood.
And I watched and made my suggestions, deft hints, and criticisms. I fetched things, and made tea, and soothed and calmed and flattered. This was what I loved. You see, I told a bit of a white lie at the beginning when I said that I didn’t really want to be a designer. Of course I did. That’s why I went to fashion college. That’s why I took the job in the shop. That’s why I seduced Ludo. That’s why I put up with the prima donna–ing of Penny. But everybody who works in fashion wants to be a designer, to achieve the holy grail of being “creative.” It’s pathetic, and I didn’t want to appear pathetic. Not to you. Not then.
I’m conscious that I’ve made Penny into a bit of a grotesque. And she is a bit of a grotesque. But you have to remember that that’s not all she is. She had it. I hate to say it, but it’s true. I’m not talking now just about the bruising, battle-hardened self-belief. She had that in spades, but it’s never quite enough. No, she had the other thing as well: the little homunculus inside her that told her what people wanted to wear, that whispered to her the secret of making women feel that yes, this was the suit to buy, that this was the dress that would make everything all right, that these were the clothes that would win the desire of men, earn the admiration or envy of women, that would secure the promotion at work.
You know the feeling. You’ve looked in the cramped little mirror in the changing room, and you’re not sure, so you step in your stocking feet out into the shop to stand in front of the big mirror. You stroke the fabric over your hips; you twist each way to try to catch your bottom unawares. And the joy begins to well up inside you, as if you’re three sips into a martini. The hours of chasing that feeling, of dissatisfaction, despair, are forgotten. The assistant coos and sighs, and for once you know she means it, and you even think about thanking her by buying the bag that goes with it (but you don’t).
Penny had a kind of formula, which she tried to hammer into me when I began designing with her. “Darling,” she’d say, “does it make her look rich, thin, or beddable? All three together and you’ve got a husband somewhere crying over his credit card bill.”
So Penny could do it. Not as consistently as before, but her strike rate was still pretty high. And I was learning how. There would come a time when it would be my scribbles and notes that would take on life and move through the streets of London, and I would have a little Katie Castle of my own to do the things I do.
So Monday passed, and Tuesday passed. I hadn’t quite forgotten about Thursday, but the thought of it was a toy to play with and not a real thing at all. It helped to occupy spare minutes, those lovely still moments when nothing happens. I quite enjoyed the thought that I’d been reckless and enjoyed even more the knowledge that I didn’t actually have to do anything about it.
It was Wednesday. Ludo telephoned at five-thirty, just as I was thinking of going home.
“I’m in the supermarket. What do you want me to get?”
“Get for what?”
The line went funny. I heard something about Guinness.
What was he talking about? Guinness? I’m cold. Did he know about Liam?
“The line’s bad. What did you say?”
“To go with the beef and Guinness pie?”
Hang on, deep breaths. Beef and Guinness pie was Ludo’s dinner party special. And then it all came back. I’d arranged a dinner party weeks ago. Liam and Paris had put it out of my head. Fuck. It was the last thing I wanted. Especially given the guests.
“Oh, vegetables or a salad or something. I don’t really care.”
“That’s helpful, thanks. What shall I get to drink?”
“To go with beef and Guinness pie? What else but Guinness?”
“But you hate Guinness!”
“It’s chic at the moment,” I lied.
Midweek dinner parties are an obscenity, at least when they’re yours. No time to get the house properly sorted. No time for dressing to look nice. Just a frantic tidy round and a smear of Mac. And I must have been insane to arrange this one just after Première Vision. Thank God Ludo likes to cook. He’s not bad, either, as long as he sticks to hale-and-hearty and doesn’t venture anything too elaborate or exotic. I always say he cooks like a cannibal: one big pot with some unfortunate beast half-in and half-out and a big spoon to stir. And he always says that tidying for me is like a martial art: a couple of savage kicks and thrusts and the room cowers in submission.
It being midweek, it was mainly second-division friends. Oh, and Ludo’s. Ludo only really had two close friends: the aforementioned Tom, who was a fellow teacher; and Daniel, whom he’d known since his school days. Tom was a self-confessed roughneck from some depressed town in the Midlands: Birmingham or Nottingham, or somewhere else with factories. He was quite amusing, in a style that combined crudity with odd touches of surrealism. All of my friends hated and feared him, which made him occasionally useful.
Daniel was much more presentable. He worked for an auction house, albeit in a fairly lowly capacity, which made his shabby-genteel look acceptable. Just. Both of them were single: Tom was too mean to get a girlfriend, and Daniel was too nice.
By fluke or fate, there was a faintly Irish feel to the evening. As well as the Guinness, I’d invited a fashion writer whose name, as it appeared in print, was generally some variation on the theme of BlarãnugghŒroughnågh. It was, however, pronounced Blahna, and that’s what I intend to call her. She was plump and rather vague, in a misty-eyed, Celtic Dawn manner. Whether this was a ploy or simple native stupidity, I could never work out. She worked for a more or less respectable Sunday newspaper, and although you’d have thought her position would give her a certain weight of punch in my world, the general feeling was that she’d plateaued. She certainly never quite made that inner circle of clittorati, whose whims and fancies end up as instructions passed to pattern cutters or fed into machines. I should stress that despite her name, Blahna was no more Irish than I was: her parents, stolid Stevenage midbourgeois, had picked out the name from the Oxford Book of Pretentious Names No Sane Person Would Give Their Child.
Blahna’s husband, some kind of commercial lawyer called Luke, was very dry. One might almost say arid. Think Gobi Desert. Think Namibia. He had an irritating way of seeing through you that made it almost impossible not to stammer when you talked to him, and he wore rimless spectacles, which gave him the air of a concentration camp doctor. How he put up with Blahna of the Celtic Dawn I’ll never know. The dinner party had been arranged mainly for their benefit, as we owed them one from two years ago.
Kookai and Kleavage were coming, because they were simply everywhere, and if you didn’t want them to come to something, you actually had to single them out and tell them that they were not welcome, which was usually more trouble than it was worth. Anyway, they might bring along some new Milo stories.
Finally, there was the ever faithful Veronica. Veronica was my oldest friend. She’d been with me since our infant school in Eas
t Grinstead. She idolized me. She’d always copied what I wore. She used to try to speak and walk like me. We were sometimes mistaken for twins, not because of any physical resemblance (yuk)—no, Veronica most definitely belongs on the wrong side of plain—but because she was like an actress playing me, and sometimes her performance was uncanny.
Of course, everybody was late. Daniel and Tom had been drinking in the only local pub that hasn’t metamorphosed into a restaurant. Ludo had seen off a bottle of wine in the kitchen, which at least meant he didn’t feel the need to go into frantic catch-up mode. The boys brought carrier bags full of cans and bottles of beer. The girls brought flowers. Luke and Blahna didn’t bring anything, which is something to do with hitting a certain point on the income spectrum.
The “posh crisps and chitchat” bit of the evening was a touch lame. I just couldn’t be bothered catalyzing. The truth was that I didn’t really care about these people. They weren’t part of the plan, or at best they were tangential. The fashiony ones, Blahna, Kookai, and Kleavage, had little to offer in the way of influence or information, and the others weren’t amusing enough to make up for their lack of relevance.
Veronica was different. Not better. In many ways much worse. But different. You see, she was a friend. I have this theory that friendship has nothing to do with liking people. There are lots of people you might like but would never count as friends. And (I admit this side of the argument is a bit more controversial) there are people you would have to count as friends whom you don’t really like. So there has to be something else to it, and I think it’s—and don’t dare laugh—destiny. By a friend, I mean someone whose life has become so wrapped up in yours that it doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll just always be there. That was Veronica.
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