by Wendy Holden
“Glad you like it,” Jett breathed, coming closer. Overwhelmed by the powerful garlic aroma of his breath, Anna hardly dared think of the near proximity of his hairy, unclothed body, least of all his thong. Fortunately, the end of his joint chose just that moment to fall off and disappear into the intensely patterned carpet. “Damn,” cursed Jett, flicking furiously at the remainder with the silver microphone-shaped lighter. At least, Anna hoped it was a microphone. Just as she hoped that vast pink object in the corner wasn’t what she thought it was.
“I see you’ve spotted Dick,” grinned Jett, waving an expansive arm towards the vast, thick, and hideously veined protrusion somewhat at odds with the bust of Shakespeare in the niche above it. “Ten-foot-tall rubber penis. Part of one of our old stage shows. Kept it out of sentiment—wanted to have it in the front garden at one point but Sandra wouldn’t hear of it. Might take it on tour—it’ll be good to get it up again.”
Anna cleared her throat and edged away on the pretext of admiring some of the volumes.
“How fantastic,” she enthused. “You’ve got everything. From The Idylls of the King to the complete works of Christopher Marlowe. Amazing.”
“Yeah, and what’s even more amazing,” yelped Jett, evidently restored after a deep drag or two, “is that they’ve got the complete goddamn works of Martin Scorsese underneath them.” He stabbed the shelf beneath the book spines with his beringed forefinger. Tamburlaine lurched forward, then, slowly lowering itself to the horizontal, revealed the video of Mean Streets fitted snugly behind the leather spine.
Anna stared. “What, they’re all DVDs?
Jett nodded. “There’s a button beneath each book which activates a spring at the back of the video and pushes it out,” he explained proudly. “All filed by what you might call free association. Sixteenth-century playwrights equal mobster movies—I reckoned old Marlowe had probably seen some pretty goddamn mean streets in his time—while all those repressed Victorian chicks are the porn section.” He flipped Wuthering Heights forward to reveal the lurid cover of Debbie Does Dallas.
“Yeah, I’ve read most of the classics,” he told her. Anna could see her astonished face reflected in his lenses. “Can’t beat ’em for song ideas. Wrote a great one about King Lear called ‘Bitch Daddy,’ and then of course you’ll remember the Bloodcastle album inspired by Macbeth. Number one both sides of the Atlantic. Nineteen seventy-eight,” he added, wistfully. “What a great goddamn year that was. Drove the Rolls into the goddamn swimming pool. Jagger was furious…” He took another long drag of his joint.
Why was it, Anna wondered, that all rock and roll anecdotes seemed to involve Mick Jagger and swimming pools?
“Specially as it was his neighbour’s goddamn swimming pool. I’d got the wrong goddamn garden. Say, let’s put some goddamn music on,” Jett suddenly shouted. He threw himself into a vast, carved, throne-like chair and pressed a button apparently concealed on the left-hand inside of the red velvet-lined arm.
One of the walls of volumes on the opposite side of the room slid aside to expose a vast TV the size of a cinema screen. It instantly flicked into life to show a plump dark-haired girl, naked apart from a black leather bustier, whip, and black leather cap festooned with chains, thrusting away on top of a skinny, long-haired man wearing mirrored sunglasses and an ecstatic expression. He looked, Anna thought, vaguely familiar.
“Oops,” giggled Jett, shoving his joint between his teeth again as he stabbed at the right-hand side of the chair. “My version of Emma. Not quite the same as Jane goddamn Austen’s. Let’s have some music instead.” As the screen slid away behind the rows of Fieldings and Popes, a vast stereo appeared; what had been an entire wall of Shakespeare slid from sight.
“You,” said Jett, jumping about in his seat and pointing the biggest remote control Anna had ever seen in the direction of the stereo, “are the luckiest goddamn woman on earth.”
Anna, catching sight of the sprouts of salty growth under Jett’s armpits, doubted it.
“Because you,” Jett went on, “are about to have a private world prem-eer of Solstice’s comeback album.”
Anna said nothing.
“Featuring,” Jett added, still fumbling with the remote control, “thanks to the miracles of modern technology, our former bassist Dirty del Amico, the greadest axeman rock and roll has ever seen until he perished in a mysterious gardening accident twenny years ago. Play that axe, dead boy,” Jett screamed, leaping to his feet and puffing frantically on his spliff as a head-spinning blast of the loudest music Anna had ever heard suddenly shook the library to its foundations. She tried not to look as Jett, starting to headbang frantically, set all his wobbly bits reverberating like wind chimes in a gale. Suddenly, he rushed over to the stereo and, grinding his buttocks into its buttons while still facing Anna, started to jerk wildly up and down. She swallowed, fearing the worst, until she realised he was attempting to push the volume control up with his bottom.
“Say, you’re a really cool chick,” Jett screeched. He pulled Anna towards himself and breathed a mixture of garlic, sweat, and patchouli in her face. Something hard was pressing against her, somewhere in the region of the thong. “I can instinctively tell you empathise with creadive people,” he bawled at her. “My wife doesn’t understand me ad all. Ad all. I’m just a money factory as far as she’s concerned. A goddamn trophy husband…”
“Trophy husband?”
Anna was suddenly aware the sound had been turned abruptly off. A ringing silence now filled the library.
“Trophy husband?” repeated the acid voice that Anna recognised, heart sinking, as Cassandra’s. Wrapped in her pashmina bathrobe, Cassandra, barefoot, silently circled the pair. Her eyes were as mean and narrow as those of a boa constrictor about to strike. “Depends what you mean by trophy, I suppose,” she hissed, her glance, now mocking, sliding from Anna to Jett and back again. “If you mean a rotting moosehead someone shot in nineteen fifty-eight, I suppose I’d have to go along with it. Atrophy husband, more like. Except when it comes to getting your end away with the sodding nanny. Bloody hell, you don’t waste much time, do you?” she screamed at Jett, who pressed himself back against the stereo, the contents of his thong shrinking visibly.
“And as for you…” As Cassandra took a step towards her, Anna recoiled. But not soon enough. As Cassandra pressed her face threateningly close, an overpowering smell of gin suddenly filled Anna’s nostrils. “I’ve been waiting,” Cassandra hissed. “Waiting and waiting…” Anna felt herself start to shake. Yet the fact remained—if Cassandra had been so certain Jett would try to seduce her, why hadn’t she stopped him? “And waiting,” Cassandra continued. “So in the end I came downstairs.” She paused again, eyes glittering, then struck. “Where the FUCK is my fucking breakfast?”
***
“Oh no. That’s just too funny! Hope you put that in the diary.” As Geri spluttered her café au lait all over her nurse’s uniform, the waiters looked at them with interest.
Anna felt both irritated and gratified that someone found her ordeal amusing. Her legs still ached from the five times Cassandra had proceeded to send her tea back, and she had ironing blisters. The sheer scale of the pile Cassandra demanded she spend the day pressing had had a fairy tale quality—it had made Anna feel pretty Grimm, in any case. Still, it had been good material for the diary, whatever purpose that might eventually serve.
“Actually,” Geri confessed, “she accused me yesterday of having a fling with him.”
“What?” Fear began to grow in Anna’s heart.
“She called me on my private line and told me to fuck off and stop ringing her husband.”
“And were you?” Remembering the aftermath of Thoby’s wedding, Anna braced herself for the worst.
“Of course not!” Geri looked outraged. “When I’m that desperate, I’ll stick my mobile up myself. It vibrates,” she explained, catching Anna’s
puzzled glance. “No, Cassandra pressed one four seven one. It must have been after I’d tried to call you. When I answered she must have thought I was one of his slappers. So do I take it he is on the loose again, then?”
“You could say that,” said Anna, thinking of the thong. “Last night she flung an entire dinner service at him whilst yelling she was a woman who loved too much.”
“What she loves too much is gin,” Geri grinned. “No wonder she can’t write anymore.”
There was a silence. Then Anna remembered something.
“Did you say you had a private line?”
“Of course. Naturally the family pay for all the calls…even if my bill does sometimes look like an international phone book.” Geri grinned guiltily.
“I can’t believe it. Cassandra makes me pay whenever I use her phone. Even if I don’t get through.”
“That’s ridiculous. She should bloody well give you your own phone. Insist on a digital answerphone as well, and while you’re at it, get the stingy cow to give you a mobile. Preferably a vibrating one like mine. Hours of fun, I promise you.”
“Some hope.” The nearest she was going to get to a mobile, Anna thought miserably, was Alexander Calder in the hallway.
“So,” said Geri, a careful look creeping into her eyes. “She given you any writing lessons yet?”
Anna’s heart sank. At the back of the café she could hear Slob, Allegra, Trace, and Alice laughing with each other. No doubt because, Anna reflected jealously, they had all probably had two changes of sports car and three pay raises since yesterday. Reluctantly, she shook her head.
“Shall I tell you something?” Geri looked at her. “I think you’re wasting your time with Cassandra. Time for a change of focus. I’ve been thinking about you, and—”
Anna took a deep breath. Her measured tones, she hoped, gave no hint of the fury suddenly filling her. “As I recall, you’d been thinking about me when you encouraged me to get a writing apprenticeship in the first place. And look where that’s got me.”
“Quite,” said Geri, not batting an eyelid. “But we need to approach it a different way. It’s obvious that you don’t want to be a nanny despite us all spelling out to you the advantages. If you still want to write books, well, fine. But you need more than a great novel to get what you want out of life.”
“I do?” How did Geri always manage to completely wrong-foot her?
“Absolutely. What you need is a great man. A rich one, so you don’t have to work and can write your books without having to wait hand and foot on Cassandra and rush off to Operabugs and junior Cordon Bleu every five minutes. And I’m going to help you find him.” She grinned broadly at Anna. “There. What about it?”
“But I’m a complete failure with men,” Anna wailed.
“Rubbish. You may not be in a brilliant position bookwise, but you’re certainly in one manwise.”
“What?” The dreadful suspicion that Geri was encouraging her to have a fling with Jett dawned horribly on Anna. She blinked hard to eradicate the memory of his scrawny, hairy buttocks bouncing around in front of her in the hall.
“I mean that when nannies pick the family they’re going to work for, they should do it with two things in mind. One is everything we discussed last time. The other”—Geri paused, her Malteser brown eyes coyly disappearing under her lowering lashes—“is the man-meeting potential. High-profile, high-earning families, such as the one I work for, attract high-profile and high-earning men to their dinner parties. The type of men no nanny could hope to meet in normal circumstances.” Geri leant forward, eyes glowing. “You coming to Savannah and Siena’s birthday party on Saturday?”
Anna nodded. “Cassandra bribed Zak with a digital camera to get him to go.”
“Good. Because, let me tell you, it’s a man magnet. Those kids have so many godfathers, it’s not true. Kate and Julian asked practically every mover and shaker in the country to come and move and shake by the font. Establishment, high society, the arts, the lot. You can’t fail to score.”
“Just watch me,” said Anna miserably.
Chapter Eleven
By dawn on the day of Savannah and Siena’s party, Cassandra had already been up for several hours struggling with the computerised wardrobe. Denim shirt and jeans for that wholesome, Hope-Stanley, yoghurt-ad look? Or more smart Sloane with the loafers and stand-up collar? Casual yet stylish was what she was going for; you couldn’t join in Sardines and Pass the Parcel in Givenchy couture (although some, like Shayla Reeves, would probably try to). What she wanted was something scruffy enough for games but smart enough to translate to the Number Ten dinner table, should Cherie suddenly find herself a body short of a placement and remember that perfectly charming writer at Kate’s children’s party.
Cassandra had prepared for the party like a military offensive. Every grooming eventuality was anticipated. By the end of the week, she had had a full-peel facial, manicure and pedicure, and even a bikini wax. Well, you never knew. It might be sunny and she didn’t want to be sprouting around the gusset of her Versace swimsuit.
The remainder of her time had been spent finding exactly the right presents. Ignoring Zak’s insistence that what Savannah and Siena really wanted was a plastic ray gun and a light sabre respectively, Cassandra had rifled the racks of Oilily, Petit Bateau, and half junior Bond Street before settling on two fabulously sequinned and frill-festooned party dresses, complete with huge net underskirts, from Please Mum. She was, Cassandra told herself as she left the shop with her bags, now ready for all eventualities. The only thing that remained out of her control was the SMSPA Promises auction to be held at the party.
Cassandra bitterly regretted her offer—well, as much as anything you were forced into could possibly be an offer—to cook a dinner party for eight at her home. She quailed at the thought of who might win it and, in order to prevent such ghastly eventualities as having to wait on Fenella Greatorex and friends hand and foot, almost considered bringing Jett along to outbid everyone else. Financial considerations—Jett, after all, was the man who bid ten thousand pounds for one of Eric Clapton’s guitar strings during that dreadful period when he was trying to set up a rock and roll museum—had forced her to abandon the plan. The added risk that Cherie might clap eyes on Jett had been judged worse than Fenella Greatorex’s being the highest bidder for the dinner. If that happened, Cassandra decided philosophically, she would just have to put Liquid Paper in the sauce.
Anna too had been up for hours. Saturday was glass day—after doing all the windows, Anna had now moved on to the mirrors. She sprayed furniture polish on the hall’s vast, frameless looking-glass and rubbed it while trying not to look at her dejected reflection. It was difficult to avoid it—the sheer misery in her eyes drew the viewer. Once sparkling, they were now as flat as week-old Bellinger; her hair looked redder and lanker than ever beside the grey of her exhausted face. The only comfort was that she looked thinner—cheekbones, faint but discernible, ridged each side of her formerly shapeless cheeks. Her mouth too, though pale and dry, seemed bigger. Anna tried to smile at herself, but the lips didn’t move. I don’t do smiling anymore, she thought.
I must get out of here, she repeated mantra-like to herself with each circle or her duster. God knows how, though. Or where. I’ve no money, nowhere to live, and no skills to speak of, especially housework…damn this polish. Every stroke of the cloth left wild white streaks elsewhere on the mirror’s surface. Cleaning, Anna was beginning to realise, was more exacting an art than she had imagined.
Depressing though it was to admit it, Geri was right. Cassandra had absolutely no intention of teaching her anything at all about writing and Zak had no intention of doing anything other than making her life a misery. The only mercy was that the library incident with Jett had thankfully not been repeated—Anna had kept well away from its Gothic portals, especially after having, during one of Cassandra’s rants about he
r being more useless even than her predecessors, worked out who the Emma in the video must be. Less thankfully, Jett had recently taken to squeezing past her in the corridor and, less excusably, in rooms containing sufficient space for two articulated lorries to pass each other, let alone two people. On each occasion, Anna had been aware of something large and hard in the region formerly occupied by the leopardskin thong.
“Sue him for sexual harassment,” Geri had urged her. “I would. I knew a nanny who sued her employer’s husband for coming into her bathroom by mistake. She wasn’t even in it at the time. You’d make a fortune.”
“And be all over the papers?” protested Anna. “Spend the rest of my life being the woman who was groped by some has-been old celebrity? At least Monica Lewinsky was groped by the president of the United States.”
“Well, he’ll be a has-been old celebrity soon,” said Geri.
“Yes, but imagine it all over the News of the World—The Rock Star, Me, And That Leopardskin Thong.”
“Well, it’s got more of a ring to it than that boring old blue dress. I think you should consider it.”
Anna sighed and rubbed her polish harder. The sound of the telephone ringing in the hall was a welcome diversion.
“Guest list for the party’s looking great,” Geri whispered on the other end. “Two financiers, three actors, four TV executives, a lord, and a couple of national newspaper editors, and that’s just for starters. Your best bet is one of the financiers. Stinking rich and—although admittedly this is a drawback—young.”
“Why is that a drawback?”
“They’re best old, really, then they drop off the perch after the honeymoon and leave you all their money. The good news is, no emotional baggage or, worse, grabby first wife wanting tons of alimony. He’s unmarried—never has been, from what I can work out—but seems to be straight. Reasonable-looking, as well, apparently, although I’ve never seen him in the flesh to confirm this.”
