‘Running away’ was all very well as a phrase, and Scarlet could see it was fine in theory, but then if you did there would
be no home. It was like a piece of careful knitting, which you could undo by pulling a single thread and then suddenly it
was just a pile of wool and no garment at all. She could change her mind now and no one would know a thing – except Lola,
of course, waiting in the wings, packing Scarlet’s runaway case even now, egging her on to leave, and if she, Scarlet, didn’t
follow through, Lola would despise her for her lack of purpose, her dithering and flapping, and rightly so. The coward’s course
was to do nothing, and that was the path Beverley was trying to make her follow. Well, she would not. She was young and brave:
she would throw herself into the future as Lola was throwing herself into Haiti; would not run like Cynara from Jesper the
frying pan into D’Dora the fire; or like her mother into the arms of Jesus. She was doing something far less drastic: holing
up with Jackson for a little but still very definitely her own person. If she stayed with Louis she would end up a mother
in Nopasaran and that would be the end of personhood, the end of her. She was already late with her life: she was nearly thirty
and what had she achieved?
‘Poor Cynara,’ her grandmother was saying. ‘She got all that feminist stuff so wrong. It was just a capitalist plot to lower
male wages by getting women into the workforce. Which happened, and now look. We told them so but they dismissed us as male
stooges. Now the rich are richer and the poor are poorer and no one can do anything about it. I don’t suppose before you rush
off to your lover you have time to wash my hair?’
‘Oh Gran,’ protests Scarlet, ‘I really do have to rush. And it is such an important day for me. Doesn’t your carer come this
afternoon?’
‘I’ve run out of shampoo,’ says Beverley. ‘And if she pops out to get some she’ll bring back some kind of harsh stuff like
oven cleaner because anything else is a wicked waste. You’ve no idea what these people are like.’
Scarlet compromises by staying to make her grandmother a cup of coffee. Beverley likes it hideously strong, with brandy in
it. Scarlet does not mention that she has a couple of Alterna White Truffle shampoo sachets in her Chloé tote bag, being a
wash-everyday person, and you never know quite where you’ll end up. Scarlet bought the bag mostly to annoy her sister, who
is affronted by needless extravagance. And she certainly doesn’t want her grandmother asking how much the shampoo costs. As
it is she has to peel the price labels from the Waitrose shopping before she brings it into the house, in case her grandmother
demands she takes it all back and goes to Lidl’s.
Jackson Knight is an ex-child actor who starred in the 1980s remake of the children’s film
Danny in the Orchard
and later as the teen hero of the
Vampire Rising
trilogy, and as a well-endowed young man in a number of unspectacular art movies. He hovers on the edges of B- and C-list
celebrity and has made the columns of the
Daily Mail
, by virtue of appearing from time to time as an A-list squeeze. He has recently all but rescued his career by accepting the
part of Hudson, the charming Scottish butler of admirable rectitude, in the big-budget film remake of the old TV show
Upstairs, Downstairs
. A drunken altercation in a pub with its director had left him without the part, or indeed an agent.
‘Sorry, Jackson, you just don’t get it.’ Mike Bronstein had got through to him the next day. ‘Sure, he’s a TV director and
never made a movie, but the Internet is the future, TV is the present and movies are maybe dead. And in my book – sorry mate
– so are you. There is such a thing as
politesse
.’
Jackson then told Bronstein what he thought of him. Bronstein and his exploiting like were the scum of the earth. Twenty per
cent in return for a few phone calls – what a shit way to earn a living. Bronstein told Jackson he was yesterday’s man and
had better get himself a job as a taxi driver. He wouldn’t find another agent, unless he turned himself into a gay icon, which
was a good idea. Heterosexuality
was so last week, my dear. Hadn’t Jackson realised? Probably not, being one sandwich short of a lunch box, one nostril short
of a snort. He, Bronstein was shutting up shop, going home to look after his grandchildren. He was needed at home: he couldn’t
keep them in nannies any more. The film business was finished. So was he. He had busted a gut to get Jackson the part; as
it turned out too many people had been looking for an excuse to get rid of him. Jackson had played right into their hands.
Jackson and Bronstein had ended up weeping on each other’s shoulders in Groucho’s, but that still didn’t mean Jackson had
an agent. Business would pick up again; it always did. An actor’s life was full of ups and downs. It wasn’t as if he was a
girl and finished at thirty-seven. There was no point in telling Scarlet: he could scarcely tell himself. Losing the part
meant he was in deep shit financially, which was astonishing, and for the first time in his life left him actually wondering
how to pay the rent. He rented because he didn’t want his ex-wife, or any future wife, to grab the home. Now he regretted
it, though a man like him had to be careful; women flocked, but often for all the wrong reasons.
Scarlet earned good money and there was obviously more in the background – he had once filmed in Nopasaran – and the fact
was not far from his mind when she called that morning and he said yes so promptly. But only of course one of the reasons.
He liked her. He liked the way she had big breasts confined within a narrow frame. She made him feel he had a brain, that
he was more than a sex toy. He wanted to move up the scale, intellectually and artistically. Of course she could move in.
It would make the gossip columns. It would be easy enough to dump his latest, a small-time lingerie model of undoubted looks,
serpentine body and sexual talent, with a gift for wrapping her long legs around a man’s neck
and practically knotting them. But she had no conversation, let his washing build up; he owed the dry cleaners money. That
very morning some old biddy who didn’t know who he was had all but refused to return his Diesel jeans from the other side
of the counter. The jeans could be washed, apparently, but he didn’t understand the instructions. What did a triangle with
a line through it mean?
And that’s the kind of person Jackson is, and if Scarlet wasn’t so bored by Louis and fed up with Nopasaran she would not
have been taken in by him for one minute. More, Jackson is both charming and needy, and has his sexual uncertainties. Bronstein
is too old to understand. Since the world stopped seeing itself as being composed of two genders, but rather of a multiplicity
of them – so far as desire if not procreation is concerned – the problem of who’s good, who’s bad; who’s the hero and who’s
the villain, has become confused. And the sexually ambiguous, like the dysfunctional, cling together. You’re confused, I’m
confused – wow! You don’t even have to touch if you’re on the Internet – you’re just in each other’s company.
I the writer am not condemning Jackson. If a lingerie model slithers down from the tree of knowledge and twines her legs around
his neck, why on earth should he resist? And if she brings a friend with her, why not? Who’s talking about love round here?
They may soon be talking about money because so far as they know and the world knows Jackson is loaded.
Now since Scarlet will be turning up with her suitcase, he quickly changes the sheets on the bed, tidies up a little, checks
the sofa for stray panties – that happened to him once: one night’s girl had found last night’s scraps of torn lace, but had
only laughed and asked what was the matter with the bed, though Jackson preferred the sofa; the bed smacked of permanence.
And he would have to get
down to his ex-wife’s house in Battersea that morning to collect his driving licence, because if Scarlet was moving in it
might be difficult for him to get out without her finding out where he was going, and he had to present the licence at the
police station before the end of the week.
Beverley drinks her coffee; Scarlet, fearful always for her complexion, sips hot water.
‘I really do appreciate your company, Scarlet,’ says Beverley. ‘Especially in the circumstances. I’d alter my will to give
you even more money but I fear this new scoundrel actor of yours would only get his hands on it. It would end up with his
first family. It always does.’
‘He hasn’t got a first family,’ says Scarlet. ‘And he isn’t a scoundrel.’
‘Of course he has a first family,’ says Beverley. ‘They always do. Sometimes it’s in the past and sometimes it isn’t. But
it’s always the way. And the brightest girls end up with the worst men. Look at me. Bright girls long to be absolved of their
cleverness. Louis would run through your inheritance but at least he’d put it into bricks and mortar. That mad house of his.
I’m assuming you have it in joint names? You’re a fool if you haven’t. Now Jesper’s gone, anything I leave Cynara will end
up with D’Dora and the Lesbian and Gay Sorority. But perhaps that’s better than it all ending up with Lola, which would happen
if Jesper was still around. Do be careful of Lola. She has endearing qualities, but many of the more undesirable family traits.’
‘Like murdering people?’ asks Scarlet, thinking she is joking, but
Beverley just shrugs her shoulders and says, ‘More people do that than you would ever imagine.’
Beverley’s knee is hurting. She thinks perhaps the wound, not yet quite healed, has been infected with MRSA after all. Everyone
who has recently been in hospital has become a little nervous of these things. It’s rather like the days of her youth back
again – when people were reluctant to go to hospital in case they never came out: go in feet first, come out feet first. There
was no MRSA then, she reflects, but there were no knee replacements either. Nothing is for nothing. Scarlet, as Beverley notices,
in spite of her earlier ill-concealed longing to get away
now, now, now
, seems rather reluctant to do so. Perhaps some of the things Beverley has been saying are sinking in? It’s unlikely, she
knows. Wisdom has to be reborn with each generation.
‘Gran,’ Scarlet is saying, ‘I have no choice. Last night Louis hit me. You must see that is unforgivable?’
‘Who won’t forgive it?’ asks Beverley. Her mouth sets in a grim straight line, which it sometimes did, for no apparent reason,
and which Scarlet, even as a small child, when the mouth was plumper and fuller than it is today, always wished it wouldn’t.
‘You? Or some mass consensus driven by your sister and her lesbian friends?’
‘This is nothing to do with Cynara,’ says Scarlet. ‘And why do you have to say lesbian friends, why can’t you just say friends?
Men shouldn’t hit women; I hope at least we agree on that. I have no intention of ending up a battered wife. If a man hits
you it is practically your duty to leave.’
‘I see no sign of injury,’ says Beverley. ‘Perhaps you had been drinking? Most domestic rows are fuelled by alcohol, and those
involved regularly deny it. Too much champagne at MetaFashion for Louis? For you, perhaps too many vodka martinis – or whatever
it is you drink these days – with your lover earlier on?’
MetaFashion is the business Louis runs and partly owns, designing and shipping sets for fashion shows the world over. A lot
of accurate logistics and camp tension goes with the job. Everyone’s gay except Louis.
‘I was not drunk,’ says Scarlet, glossing over the detail of the vodka martinis, which Beverley had not got exactly right.
‘Louis had been drinking champagne with his partner D’Kath, because they’d finally got
Icehouse Vamp
out of the workshops and off to Paris.’
‘I can’t follow you,’ says Beverley. ‘But at least you take an interest in his work.’
‘I don’t just take an interest,’ says Scarlet. ‘I give him most of his ideas.’
‘I know, I know,’ says Beverley. ‘And Louis makes you live in this dreadful house way out in the suburbs, that is to say,
practically round the corner from me, which is falling to bits and on which he spends a fortune. Wealth trickles away. But
it is not an awful house; people from all over come to admire it and you are a very, very lucky girl to have ended up in it.’
Scarlet acknowledges that she was glad enough to invite people to the party in Nopasaran’s concrete garden after her and Louis’
non-wedding, there being no other venue like it in all London. A great place for parties, and she knew at the time it would
stand her in good stead if she ever wanted to move over into
Interiors
or
World of Design
.
‘I’ve had six years of it,’ says Scarlet. ‘That’s a long enough shift. And whose side are you on anyway?’
‘Louis’s,’ says Beverley smartly.
Her knee is aching. Her hair feels horribly greasy. She thinks at
any moment she is likely to die and she would at least like to lie in her coffin with her hair at its best. Or do undertakers
do it for you anyway? As one gets older it is the kind of thing one wants to know.
‘Just find me the painkillers before you leave, Scarlet. And do remember Louis is real, not a figment of your imagination.
He can do real things, turn nasty, change locks, call lawyers, that kind of thing. An abandoned man feels you’ve upset the
natural order of things and vengeance is in order. Failing that, he will certainly do what he can to replace you. He will
have no trouble. Women prettier and younger than you will be queuing up at the faintest whiff of a free man.’
‘They’re welcome,’ says Scarlet, and looks for the painkillers.
Beverley belonged to another age, in which man was the breadwinner and woman was the chattel, and the man used her jealousy
as a weapon against her. ‘If you don’t oblige I’ll soon find someone who does.’ It was demeaning. Changing from one man to
another was not the big deal it once was. The Walter and Kitchie story would hardly happen now, the human race evolved, got
better, more self-aware. At any rate the middle classes did. Louis’ anger at rejection could hardly make the heavens fall
in, invoke hammer blows and lightning strikes from Thor, or whoever it was up there who punished you. All the same, she would
be careful and not tell Louis about Campion Tower; he could have her solicitor’s address. Partners switched all the time,
everybody did it and everyone accepted it and tried to be civilised, and hearts got broken but soon mended. It wasn’t as if
she and Louis had children he could put in the back of the car and fix a pipe up from the exhaust with the engine running.