by Sue Margolis
Hugh had always been determined to become a writer. In his first term at Leeds he started doing pieces for the student newspaper. Cyn, who was considering going into journalism after she graduated, was also writing for the paper. They met in the office one day and immediately hit it off. Since they were reasonably talented and enthusiastic—most people who got involved with the newspaper were neither—by the second year they were editing the thing.
Correction. Cyn edited it while Hugh sat on the office phone trying to con his way into getting interviews with his latest Hollywood crush. “Look, I’m sure if you explain to Mr. Cruise,” he would say, in an accent that sounded like it had been minted during the Raj, “that the piece is for the London Times, he will agree to a brief interview.” Of course nobody ever did.
Even though she knew perfectly well that Hugh was gay, it hadn’t stopped her fancying him. He was just so tall, patrician and handsome. So ridiculously gentile. Sleeping with him would be like having a glass of milk and a bacon sandwich on Yom Kippur, only heaps more fun.
One night toward the end of that second year, the pair of them got very drunk and she persuaded him to let her try and “cure” him.
“Don’t you think my father has already tried that by forcing me to do bloody engineering?”
“Yeah, but engineering is boring. This won’t be.” He laughed and agreed let her have her way with him—or at least try to. The scene that followed was an almost exact replica of the one in Some Like It Hot—which happened to be her favorite ever comedy film—where Marilyn Monroe tries to seduce Tony Curtis on the yacht. The only differences were that instead of being on a luxury yacht, Cyn and Hugh were in Cyn’s room in a crummy flat in Meanwood, and Marilyn hadn’t actually been going down on Tony.
For nearly two hours, Cyn worked away trying to effect what Hugh insisted on referring to as a “froth in the groin department.” “Ooh, hang on,” she said at one stage, “I think I definitely felt something just then.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, my darling, there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing,” he said doing a perfect impression of Tony Curtis. Finally Cyn developed jaw ache and they decided to give up and just be mates.
When Hugh wasn’t trying to intimidate L.A. film agents with his accent, he was busy penning his latest literary masterpiece. How he fitted in his academic work, she had no idea, but somehow he managed to come away with a bachelor’s degree.
To date, Huge had penned thirteen literary masterpieces and half a dozen screenplays, all of which had been rejected. Cyn had only read a couple of the screenplays, but she’d plowed through almost all his novels. There was no doubt he was a gifted writer, but his incessant classical references, turgid, rambling sentences that could last an entire page, and the lapses into poetry somehow got in the way of the story. On top of all this, the subject matter was always unrelentingly bleak. She could never understand how somebody as funny and witty as Hugh could write such disheartening stuff. Each novel was a three-hundred-thousand-word tome of unrelenting darkness and misery—usually set in a Neolithic cave or a windswept, disease-raddled Viking settlement. By the time she was halfway through, she was practically reaching for the Prozac.
Even now, when a rejection letter arrived, Hugh would hibernate in his flat, marooned in a Strindbergian depression. He would sit there for days on end, putting venomous reader reviews on Amazon; his anger was aimed at any author to whom he considered himself superior, from Salman Rushdie to John Irving. Then, miraculously, he would manage to pull himself round and throw himself into a new project. “All literary geniuses have struggled,” he would declare, convincing himself that this next oeuvre would have the publishers or film companies “coming in their pants.”
To make ends meet (the Thorpe Duffs were penniless, having sold the family seat years ago to pay death duties on Hugh’s grandfather’s estate), Hugh worked at Selfridges as a surrogate boyfriend. The revolutionary scheme had been introduced a few months ago. His job was to escort women around the store and help them shop for clothes, while their boyfriends stayed in the boyfriend crèche playing video games and reading lad mags.
It should be said at this point that if male sexuality was represented on a continuum that began with Jack Nicholson and ended with Jack McFarland, Hugh came in round about Will Truman. He was straight looking, tall, with a great figure and boyish upper-class good looks—think a young Jeremy Irons—but with a style and elegance that few straight men either achieved or desired. Hugh happily described himself as a “fashion savant.” “And since I am also endlessly enthusiastic, attentive and admiring, I am the perfect retail therapist. And it’s not easy, particularly when you’re trying to buy a frock for some brick of a woman with an arse like a mobile home.” Hugh’s mother, who knew her son was gay and had no problem with it, also knew what her son did for a living. His father had no idea and never asked.
The reason he pretty much lived for free was that the Thorpe Duffs’ extensive circle of aristocratic friends were extremely mindful of the family’s embarrassed financial position. Hugh’s parents, who lived in a delightful but shabby Gloucestershire farmhouse, were always being offered villas for the summer. The same friends—desperate for a house sitter while they flitted off on six-month jaunts to their second and third homes—would offer Hugh their London flats and houses. For the last eight months he had been living in a majestic four-story house in Knightsbridge, which he was “keeping an eye on” for friends of his parents who were busy remodeling their house in Cape Town.
Tonight, Hugh was feeling particularly gung ho because he had just submitted a screenplay to Warner Bros. “Come on,” Cyn said, “what’s it about?”
“OK . . .”
As he stared off into the distance for dramatic effect, Cyn prepared herself for the rest of the sentence, which usually went: “Picture it: winter AD 900, a small Hebridean settlement. A lone, wounded rider emerges from the dawn mist . . .”
“I’ve made something of a historical departure,” Hugh said. “It’s set in the twentieth century for a change.” Hmm, already an improvement, Cyn thought. “Picture it: 1940, a courtroom in South Carolina.” He was leaning in toward her, his voice soft, but urgent. “It’s summer. The air is like thick, hot soup. A ceiling fan is turning relentlessly. The camera pans round and stops at two men sitting next to their lawyer. He’s short and overweight and wears rimless glasses and suspenders. The camera moves in for a close-up of the two men. It takes awhile for you to work out that there is something odd about them. They are identical, clearly twins. But not just ordinary twins. These men are Siamese twins, joined at the abdomen for the last forty-seven years.”
“Blimey.”
“See, it’s already drawing you in, isn’t it? Anyway . . .” By now Hugh was on his feet, pacing. “One of them has murdered this guy in a bar. If he’s found guilty he faces the electric chair. His brother had no part in the murder and is completely innocent. What does the jury do?”
She sat there, speechless, half expecting him to say, “God, I really had you going there” and announce it was a joke. It was a few seconds before she realized he wasn’t joking and that he actually believed somebody in Hollywood was going to take this seriously. “Wow, so what does the jury do?”
“I’ve brought you a copy of the screenplay,” he said. The shoulder bag he’d been carrying when he arrived was sitting on the floor by the living room door. He went over and pulled out a thick manuscript. “I’ve called it My Brother, My Blood, My Life. You can read it and find out what happens. I see the whole thing as a philosophical allegory, a metaphor if you will, for the futility of human struggle.” He sat back down next to her.
“O . . . K,” she said slowly. “I can see that.” In fact, she couldn’t remotely see it.
“You’ll be able to say more when you’ve read it, but what do you think in principle?”
“I . . . er. I think it’s good.” She saw his face collapse. “No, what am I saying? It’s more than just good. It’s sparkling, original
and deep. Very deep. Deeply profound.”
“Thanks, Cyn,” he beamed. “God, you know I’m really excited about this one.” She took the screenplay from him, kissed him on the forehead and said she hoped he made a million. Some hopes. A month from now the rejection would arrive and he would be sitting alone in a darkened room, sticking pins into effigies of the brothers Warner.
“So,” he said, changing the subject, “how on earth did you end up getting a car that doubles as an ad for Anusol?”
She explained how there had been two cars on offer and that both were meant to be from drug companies. “But when Chelsea went to the garage last night, it turns out that one is from Stella McCartney. Not only that, but it arrived early.”
Hugh raised an eyebrow. “How wonderfully convenient.”
“Yes, I know. The thought had occurred to me.”
“What’s your relationship like with her? Do you get on?”
Cyn told him about the “well done, you” remark and how she thought Chelsea saw her as a rival. “But I guess it is possible the whole car thing could be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, right. And Elton John’s hair is natural.”
“But Chelsea is loaded, why would she be that bothered about getting one up on me?”
“You’ve just said it—she sees you as a rival. It’s as simple as that. Look, I know you want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I’m telling you, if you get any nicer you are in danger of growing big floppy ears and waking up one morning to find yourself starring in a Disney cartoon.”
“Huge, you’re missing the point. I don’t have any evidence that she knew about the Anusol car and until I do, I’m not about to risk making false accusations.”
It was then that she realized she hadn’t checked her answer machine to see if Chelsea had left a message last night to say she wouldn’t be able to meet her at the car showroom. She got up, went over to the phone. No messages were registered on her caller display.
“See,” Hugh said, “she didn’t even bother to make up an excuse. She just went ahead and did the dirty.”
“We don’t know that,” Cyn insisted. “There could be an explanation.” Hugh rolled his eyes as if to say “I give up.”
Cyn’s therapist, Veronica, was always telling her that she was “too damned nice.” During a one-on-one session, Cyn had mentioned how hard it had been to chuck her last boyfriend, Mark.
He was gorgeous and the sex had been brilliant, the best she’d had. Ever. When Mark went down on her, the earth didn’t merely move, it shifted on its axis. She wouldn’t have been remotely surprised to have come round from one of her glorious orgasms to discover that winter had turned into spring.
The only problem was that Mark had very little conversation beyond his work. She wouldn’t have minded so much if he had been a doctor or a lawyer or a journalist. She would have enjoyed listening to tales of who he’d cured or saved from a life sentence, or who Camilla Parker-Bowles was now shagging on the quiet. Dishy and sexually adept as he was, Mark was in public health. To be more specific, he was a restaurant inspector. “Did you know,” he would say as they lay snuggled up in her bed basking in their postcoital glow, “that raw meat and poultry contaminated with fecal matter are among the most frequent causes of food-borne illness?”
She was forever trying to explain why, when one of her girlfriends invited them to dinner, it was less than tactful to discuss E. coli and ptomaine poisoning at the table. He would take the point and then at the next dinner party he would be off again, chatting away about mice droppings and European chopping board protocols.
It had taken her weeks to find the courage to end it. She hated hurting people and apart from his passion for food hygiene, Mark was one of the kindest, sweetest boyfriends she’d ever had.
“But at least you did it,” Veronica had said, leaning forward in her chair, eyes gleaming. “That is real progress.” According to Veronica, the reason Cyn was in therapy was to learn how to be bad.
For the record, Cyn was not a doormat. It was more complicated than that.
In 1982, when Cyn was nine, Barbara was diagnosed with breast cancer. The tumor was minute and successfully removed. After three months of chemotherapy she made a complete recovery. But during that time, nobody knew how it would turn out and the family was thrown into complete turmoil. Her dad was at his wit’s end, and both Cyn and her brother were constantly being told by relatives to be on their best behavior so as not to worry their parents. Jonny, who was seven, responded by doing the very opposite. For a while he turned into an uncontrollable monster, desperate for parental attention. Cyn saw that this was only increasing the pressure on her mum and dad and became a model child. She never grew out of the habit.
Even when she was going through her brief punk phase, Cyn hadn’t done anything really bad. OK, she’d smoked a bit of weed with Jude, her best friend from school, and once or twice the two of them had gotten severely drunk, but that was about as far as it went. Her rebellion was very much rebellion-lite. She never trashed her pink princess bedroom (which she’d had since she was nine), never hung out with the wrong crowd, never shoplifted (God forbid!) nor swallowed a tablet more potent than Tylenol. When she lost her virginity at seventeen, it was to Jason Lieberman, a nice Jewish architecture student from Stanmore. Admittedly, a couple of years later she tried to seduce an Aryan homosexual, but that was hardly a hanging offense.
Sin didn’t sit easily with Cyn. It wasn’t in her nature.
She was one of those women who find it hard to stick up for themselves, but have no problem rushing to somebody else’s defense.
Ages after somebody had made a bitchy comment or insulted her, she would be lying in bed or relaxing in the bath and the perfect response would hit her. Then she would kick herself for not thinking of it at the time.
One night after a couple of glasses of wine, she thought up what she firmly believed was a wonderful riposte (albeit a month late) to a sleazy pickup line this bloke, Milo, had used on her. Since he was a friend of a friend she was able to get his number and, without thinking, phoned him. “Hi, Milo, it’s Cyn, Lucy’s friend. We met a few weeks ago at a do at Bar Med. You don’t remember? OK, I was wearing a pink halter-neck top and new Paper Denim Cloth jeans. Anyway, what I wanted to say . . . What do I look like? OK, I’m five five, shoulder-length hair, brown hair with these subtle copper highlights. I’d just had it cut into soft layers. The hairdresser said they really frame my face and give me this sort of gamine look.” God, why was she prattling on about her hair? Despite the wine, she supposed she was still a bit nervous. “But none of that matters,” she went on. “The point is you came up to me, put your hand on my bum and asked me if I had any Irish in me. When I said no, you leered at me and suggested I might like some. At the time I was too taken aback by your boorish behavior to think of an appropriate reply, but I would just like to say in response to your suggestion . . .” Pause for maximum dramatic effect: “Yes, please. Mine’s a Guinness.” Huh, that would put this sexist jerk in his place, let him know she was a wit to be reckoned with. He wouldn’t mess with her again in a hurry.
“Oh yeah, I remember you. Cyn—the woman with the fabulous tits. Look, if you fancy meeting up for a drink sometime . . .”
Yep, she’d really shown him. Yes, indeedy.
Cyn and Hugh had just finished eating when the door buzzer rang. Cyn went to answer it. Standing in the hallway, her faced etched with panic, was Cyn’s other best friend, Harmony.
“God, wassup?” Cyn said.
“I think it’s started.” Harmony came in and began pulling off her coat.
“What’s started?” Cyn took her coat and hung it on the coat stand.
“The perimenopause.”
Harmony had hit forty last month. No matter how much people tried to convince her that forty was the new thirty, she remained convinced that she was tottering over the hill toward Crone City.
Not that she even looked forty. Harmony was stunning. People who m
et her for the first time always took her for a decade younger.
In her twenties she had been a lingerie model. Her photograph had appeared in practically every underwear catalogue in the Western world. “You want to know Victoria’s Secrets?” she would joke. “Then I’m the girl to ask.”
She should have been a catwalk model, but at five seven, she was way too short. Fashion photographers also turned up their noses because her look was more glam chick than heroin chic. But even now men (and women) did double takes when they saw her. It was partly her figure, but mainly it was her face. Her eyes were a true violet with a wide doelike quality. Her lips were full and sexy. Add to the mix lustrous chestnut hair and dark olive skin, and there was a woman who made most other women want to slash their wrists the moment they clapped eyes on her.
Since he was possessed of the most impeccable manners, Hugh rose to his feet the moment Harmony came into the living room. “Ah, the glorious Ms. Harmsworth McFarmsworth,” he teased, arms outstretched. Then, noticing her strained expression he added: “As ever a symbol of unbridled bacchanalian delight.” He gave her a hug and a kiss.
“Watcha, ’Ewge.” Her accent, pure, unreconstructed working-class Liverpool, collided spectacularly with her Miu Miu minikilt and pointy Jimmy Choo boots. She turned to Cyn. “What’s he on about?” she giggled. “Bacca what?”
“He’s taking the piss,” Cyn said.
