Ralph's Party

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Siobhan-fucking-McNamara, Mish McNamara, Mish Dickshon, Mish Dickshon, Siobhan.’ Cheri’s letters flew from his hands all over the carpet and up the stairs. He turned towards his front door in disgust and negotiated the lock, falling on to the floor of the hall, front first. Picking himself up, he noticed a red envelope on his doormat, handwritten, with no stamp.

  He tore the envelope open, wobbling gently from side to side and stifling a dainty hiccup. He moved the letter within away from him and towards him until it made itself readable, squinting like an old man reading the Times. There was some handwriting scrawled on the back.

  ‘ … listened to your shows … made me cry … live downstairs … know lots of beautiful single women … thought you could do with a good party … next Friday … just a thought … bring a guest … champagne all night … just turn up …’

  Karl smiled crookedly.

  Free champagne, huh? He’d be there. What a nishe bloke, he thought to himself. What a nishe, nishe, nishe, nishe bloke. He smiled again, left his overcoat where it fell on the floor, stumbled into his bedroom and collapsed on top of his unmade bed and into a deep and instantaneous sleep.

  Cheri watched Karl from her window, sliding into the front seat of his funny old black car and driving away down Almanac Road. She waited until he was out of view and then strode quickly and lightly to her front door and down the communal stairs, her cashmere-socked feet barely making a sound as she tiptoed across the floorboards.

  She stopped outside Karl’s door and quickly peered through the hall window, checking that he hadn’t unexpectedly returned, before reaching into the back pocket of her jeans and taking out a screwdriver, a nail file and her expired American Express card.

  Cheri’s plan was starting to gather momentum. She’d had a most unexpected visitor the day before, one of the guys from the basement flat – not the good-looking one she’d had that drink with at Oriel just before Christmas, but the scruffy one – Ralph. He’d asked her for a favour. It was all a bit weird really, and her first instinct had been to say no, but then Ralph had told her who else was going to be there and she’d thought about the journalist at the Daily Mail she’d phoned the day before, the one who said they’d be interested in her story, and she’d decided that it might be to her advantage to help out. And besides, he’d been really quite sweet, that Ralph bloke, and such a nice smile.

  So she’d said yes and now all she had to do was get into Karl’s flat somehow to find what she needed. She knew it was possible. One of her old boyfriends had managed to get her door open a couple of years ago when she’d locked herself out. All the doors in the house were the same, the original ones that had been put in during conversion, so the locks were probably the same, too.

  After a good fifteen minutes of manipulation and stress and desperate attempts not to damage the paintwork and gouge large chunks of wood out of the door-jamb, the door suddenly and happily creaked open. Cheri smiled with satisfaction, put her tools back in her jeans pocket and wandered into the flat. She wrinkled her nose a little with distaste. It was a mess: the curtains were drawn, there were piles of old Sunday papers all over the floor, mugs and plates everywhere, takeaway containers balanced precariously on top of the television, and the whole flat was imbued with an overwhelming odour of musty bedsheets and old shoes.

  She surveyed the room and wondered where to begin. She didn’t even really know what she was looking for. An address book would be a start, she thought, so she headed towards a table that looked like it might, at one point, have been a desk. Her heart was racing under her sweatshirt, reverberating against her ribcage. Her hands were shaking and her breath was short and sharp. She was enjoying this! She began leafing through piles of paper on the table and then trying the drawers. Nothing.

  She wandered into the kitchen and then backed out again when she saw the state of it. Why didn’t the stupid bastard get a cleaning lady for Christ’s sake? He could afford it. To think that she could have … yuck … with someone so unclean, with such low standards. She shuddered a bit and put the thought to the back of her mind.

  Gingerly, she pushed open the bedroom door and took a deep breath against the assault of the smell of his unwashed bedclothes and un-hung-up clothes strewn about the room. She switched on the light and balked at the sight of a pair of unappetizing-looking boxer shorts resting at her feet. She sneered and stepped daintily over them, towards the dressing-table at the far side of the room. Bingo! There it was – exactly what she was looking for. A letter, addressed to Siobhan but covered now in a barely legible scrawl. 78 Towbridge Road, Potters Bar, Herts. She memorized the address, repeating it to herself several times before placing the letter back on the dressing-table, switching off the bedroom light and softly retracing her steps back to her flat upstairs.

  It was all systems go!

  Ralph? Ralph? Ralph?

  Who the fuck was Ralph?

  Siobhan had gone to school with a boy called Ralph – Ralph Millard, a pretty, fey boy with a reputation for being ‘posh’, but he wasn’t even in her year. Her doctor was called Ralph, or was it Rupert? Rodney? No – she didn’t know any Ralphs.

  So who the hell had sent her this invitation?

  She picked it up again and looked at it, turning it over to see if any give-away clues had suddenly appeared on the back. No. Nothing.

  It had arrived a week ago, in a parcel of forwarded mail from her mother, in a red, handwritten envelope. It was addressed correctly, to Siobhan McNamara, but without a postcode. The postmark said it had been posted in w1 – could have been anyone. She certainly did not recognize the handwriting and, although it had been marked RSVP, there was no address or telephone number enclosed to which to do so. It was a total mystery. And Siobhan did love a mystery.

  She’d deliberately passed by Ledbury Road earlier on that week and satisfied herself that Galerie Dauvignon did actually exist and was actually showing a collection of paintings, but she’d suddenly been too shy to go in and, besides, she was quite enjoying the suspense and didn’t want to spoil whatever surprise it was that was awaiting her on Friday night. Maybe it was Ralph Millard. He might well have been the type to end up an artist. Maybe he’d always had a secret crush on her and had kept her mother’s address all these years, waiting till he’d made a success of his life before getting in touch again, to show off. Or maybe he’d been bearing some sort of grudge for twenty years and now it was pay-back time? No, Siobhan had never said more than two words to the boy.

  It was all a wonderful, great, gooey mystery and, as the days had gone by since she’d first opened the invitation, she’d become really quite excited at the prospect, planning her outfit and booking an appointment at the hairdresser’s. Whatever it was, whoever it was, she was ready for it. The worst thing that could happen would be that it was all a mistake – so what? At least she’d have a chance to get dressed up and show off her new figure and her trendy new haircut. If it was an awful party, all she had to do was leave, hail a cab and go back to Rick’s. Back home. She’d only been living at Rick’s for a couple of weeks and hadn’t quite got into the habit of calling it home yet.

  Rick hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was coming, although he was every bit as intrigued and excited as Siobhan by the mystery of it. Siobhan knew he was just trying to be cool, trying to play the easygoing boyfriend, giving his new girlfriend some ‘space’, showing that he was happy to let her go out on her own to a strange party on a Friday night, just like Karl had been in the early days of their romance. ‘Oh, no,’ Rick had said, so sweetly, ‘you don’t want me hanging around, cramping your style, you go on your own.’ Bless him. Such a sweetheart. Siobhan secretly hoped he wouldn’t come. She was still enjoying the euphoria of newfound freedom, the reincarnation of her old independent spirit, which had been buried away for years inside layers of routine, boredom and fat. She wanted to enjoy her adventure tonight alone.

  She wandered into the bathroom, the expensive designer bathroom in Rick’s flat
with the stainless-steel shower compartment and the curved mirrors, the expensive designer bathroom that was polished every two days by the Hungarian cleaning lady who came in every day to clean all the rooms in Rick’s expensive designer flat.

  She’d lost even more weight after she moved into Rick’s flat; it just wasn’t the sort of flat that a fat girl could feel comfortable in, it was a thin girl’s flat. Something about the sparse fixtures and fittings, the long, flowing swags of curtains, the elegant vases of slender flowers, the glass and chrome objects on skinny, barely-there shelves, the tall, thin Georgian windows, high ceilings and shutters, the soft, elegant minimalism of the place, had just sort of sucked the fat off her. She hadn’t had to try. And of course, it was a well-known fact that falling in love was one of the most effective diets known to woman.

  Once the excess weight had gone she’d been filled with confidence to try different things. So she’d gone to the hairdresser’s and winced while they snipped painfully through her pony-tail, screwing her eyes shut as she heard the severed hair fall quietly to the floor, like a whisper. They’d cut her hair to just below her shoulders, into big chunky layers, a ‘Rachel’ she supposed it was called, although she hated to admit it. They’d put some blonder streaks at the front and blow-dried it upside-down. She’d shaken her shorn hair and thrown back her head, and there in the mirror in front of her was a young woman! A young, modern woman of the nineties. Karl would have been horrified. He’d loved her hair almost as much as he loved her, Siobhan had sometimes thought, and he hated change.

  From the hairdresser’s, Siobhan had gone straight to Covent Garden, to Oasis and Warehouse and French Connection, and bought herself a rather extravagant amount of clothes – fashionable clothes to go with her fashionable hair! And not a pair of leggings among them.

  Rick had loved her new look, commenting in a very unboyfriendlike way on how her old hair had dragged her down, as beautiful as it was, and how much better the new cut framed her face and accentuated her fine, Irish features, the blonde streaks bringing out the dazzling blue of her eyes.

  She was shampooing her new hair now, marvelling still at how much less hassle it was and wondering why she’d saddled herself with such a ridiculous amount of hair for so many bloody years. She was free – free of her hair and free of her fat and free of the past.

  She rinsed it through, stepped out of the shower and into a soft, cream towel, shaking her head to loosen the droplets of water from her ears, while she dried her neck and shoulders. She picked up the glass of wine she’d left sitting by the sink, now sparkling with beads of jewel-like condensation, and took a large gulp. She rolled the glass between the palms of her hands, turned to look at her reflection in the mirror behind her and smiled a little smile of excitement.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ‘Oh, ma’ God – look at you! You are elegance personified – no?!’ Philippe slapped Ralph on the shoulder and looked around the room for a reaction from the caterers who were wheeling in trolleys of food and champagne from a van parked outside. Philippe always did everything for effect.

  Ralph pulled at his tie and shifted nervously from foot to foot. He’d felt self-conscious all the way to the gallery. It was the first time he’d worn a suit and tie since his aunt’s funeral the previous year. It was a nice suit, though. Dolce & Gabbana. Ha! If Claudia could see him now! It was grey (this season’s black, apparently) with nice neat little pockets. They’d talked him into a rather radical stripy shirt with a cutaway collar. ‘Natural clothes-horse,’ the small, painfully fashionable Spanish assistant had told him admiringly as he held ties up to his chest. ‘Yes – ’ave you ever thought about modelling?’ the tall, painfully fashionable French assistant had agreed. ‘You ’ave the ’eight, the post-yure, you know? Ees so nice, for me, when you wear these clothes, ees so nice!’ They’d stood and beamed at him.

  Ralph had been flattered but embarrassed. But he’d liked the suit and the groovy shirt and he particularly liked the natty thin black tie they’d chosen for him – more Madness than Kid Creole, and not too trendy. He’d walked out into Bond Street, six hundred pounds poorer, but feeling ten inches taller. He’d faced the trauma of designer-clothes shopping and he’d triumphed. Male model indeed!

  It was important that the suit was right. Very important. He wanted everything to be right tonight. This was more important than the opening night, more important than any of those overblown old farts and pretentious tossers who’d come to criticize his work for the papers. He’d been up to James Street to have his hair cut that morning and had finally relented to one of those proper old-fashioned wet shaves with steaming towels that his barber had been offering him for years. New shoes. New whistle. Soft chin. Best socks. It was party night.

  ‘So, Ralph, for what honour do we owe these new clothes, this ’andsomeness, this’ – Philippe sniffed the air to either side of Ralph’s collar – ‘this sexy perfume.’ He raised his eyebrows and patted Ralph’s cheeks gently with both hands.

  ‘You’ll see, Phil, you’ll understand,’ he replied, a little stiffly. He wasn’t in the mood for piss-take. He was far too nervous.

  ‘Is a woman, no?’ Philippe’s brown eyes sparkled with mischief.

  ‘No – is not a woman – it’s just a suit, that’s all.’ He bristled slightly. His heart was racing. He slipped a finger under the collar of his shirt. ‘God, it’s fucking sweltering in here, Phil– is the aircon switched on?’

  Philippe nodded. ‘Full power. Here, come see the beautiful flowers– they just arrived. Peonies, just like you asked. Come – see.’ He guided Ralph across the gallery, over flawless bleached-blond maplewood flooring, to the office at the back.

  Ralph’s head moved to the left and right as he walked, looking at his paintings, trying to see them through Jem’s eyes. What would she think? Would she freak? Would she laugh? Would she love them? Oh, God, he hoped she’d love them. They were all for her, after all. He’d hung them with Jem in mind, placed them on the walls in the exact order he wanted her to see them in, imagined her in her black coat, furry stole and gloves, imagined her swivelling her head this way and that, stepping closer to look at the captions, turning and smiling at him every now and then.

  The small office at the back was awash with peonies – Ralph had ordered two hundred and fifty pounds’ worth – and the fresh floral aroma permeated his nerves and dissolved his tension a little. He ran his fingers absent-mindedly over the soft, silken tips of the multicoloured petals and slowed his breathing.

  ‘Any chance of a glass of wine, Phil?’ he asked, adjusting his tie.

  Philippe raised his eyebrows. ‘Wine? Ralph. What is going on? Yesterday, and the day before, and the day before this, it was jeans and lager– now, today, is suits and wine. Is me – yes? I am rubbing off on you – you are becoming a Frenchman – no?!’ He giggled and pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge behind him and took two glasses from the cabinet.

  Ralph picked up his wine, lit one of Philippe’s cigarettes and walked back into the gallery. He reached beneath the reception desk and changed the CD on the music system located there. Radiohead. There. That’s better.

  And then he paced for a while, enjoying the muted thud of his leather soles against the springy floorboards, following the lines between the boards, balancing on one foot, seeing if he could splay his feet, heel to heel, into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees angle, without falling over. He could.

  He put his hands in his pockets and pulled them out, admiring the expensive sweep of his trousers and the perfection of the creases that ran from hip to ankle. He buttoned his jacket, felt even hotter and unbuttoned it. He flapped the sides of the jacket back and forth to ventilate his armpits. Shit, it was hot.

  He stood at the front door, his cigarette and wine in one hand, his other in his pocket, leaning against the door-frame. He probably looked like a pretentious twat, hanging out in a trendy Notting Hill gallery in his Dolce & Gabbana suit, drinking wine and smoking French cigarettes. He d
idn’t care. He was nervous.

  He watched people walking past. Most of them didn’t look in. Art. Not Really My Cup Of Tea. Don’t Care For It Much. He didn’t blame them really. It was a funny old thing, art, when you thought about it. His paintings. They were for him. Bits of him. His fantasies and dreams. No wonder most people wouldn’t want it in their homes. The sort of people who did want it, the sort of people who were prepared to pay £2,500 for one of his paintings, didn’t really have proper homes, they had houses, or offices, or ‘spaces’. He tried to imagine one of his paintings on the living-room wall at his mother’s, next to the clock with the swinging pendulum. He smiled.

  A glance at the clock on the wall behind him told him it was only 7.30 p.m. Another hour to go. Again he paced the room. He drank more wine. He smoked a dozen cigarettes. ‘You want we call this exhibition “Study in Nicotine”?’ Philippe had complained.

  The caterers worked around him, placing artfully designed platters of canapés on to white-clothed tables. Miniature Thai crabcakes festooned with sprigs of fresh coriander, dwarf sticks of satay with tiny little bowls of gloopy peanut sauce, diminutive pink bundles of prawn wrapped around baby butts of sugarcane, the smallest samosas Ralph had ever seen in his life, saucers of sweet chilli sauce, hot chilli sauce, chopped green chillis, minced red chillis and chilli pickle. Ralph had taken a lot of care over the food order.

  Two large black bins behind another table were full to brimming with ice and champagne and a young girl in a black skirt and smart white blouse was busy putting shiny glass flutes in rows on the table in front of her.

  Philippe was fussing with the peonies, arranging them around the room in huge extravagant bouquets, humming quietly to himself as he went. He was the girliest heterosexual Ralph knew.