“If you don’t mind,” Rachel told him, “I’ll leave you to it. I’ve still got masses left to do upstairs.”
* * * * *
She had just finished putting fresh linen on Xantia and Otto’s bed when the phone rang. Her first thought was to let the answer machine pick up. Then she remembered she’d given the Marxes’ number to her mother and to Sam’s school in case of emergencies. Feeling a sudden swell of maternal panic, she shuffle-bottomed across the bed and snatched at the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Rachel, thank God I got you. It’s me. I’m at Hylda Klompus.”
“Mum,” she said, “I gave you this number for emergencies.”
“But darling, this is an emergency. A catering emergency.”
“Sorry,” Rachel said, frowning in confusion, “I’m not with you.” She maneuvered herself so that she was now sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Look,” Faye said, sounding distinctly harassed. “All I want to know is whether you’d prefer profiteroles or crêpes with hot cherries for dessert. Of course if you went for the profiteroles then the cream would have to be nondairy—if we had chicken for a main course that is . . . then again we could go for the kosher Chinese option. You know, spring rolls, mango chicken . . .”
“Mum, slow down. I’m finding this about as easy to follow as the
Oberammergau Passion Play
.”
“Hylda says she’s got a Sunday at the end of April that nobody’s taken yet, and she’ll give us twenty percent off if we book now.”
“Mum, please. Book what?”
“The reception, sweetie. Yours and Adam’s.”
“Our reception,” Rachel repeated tonelessly.
“Yes. Look, I’m in Hylda’s lounge. She’s gone off to make coffee. If we’re thinking about a spring wedding, we have to make some quick decisions.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Listen, Rachel, you can’t go wrong with Hylda Klompus. She did your cousin Geoffrey’s bar mitzvah in 1974. Wonderful melon balls. Not too ripe. She’s over eighty now, but believe me she can still buffet with the best of them . . . Rachel? Please, speak to me.”
Rachel let out a long slow breath.
“Mum,” she said, doing her level best to control her exasperation, “I told you Adam and I weren’t going to discuss wedding dates until he got back from South Africa.”
“I know. But you ended up saying you would think about whether to have a spring or summer wedding.”
“Yes, think about. That doesn’t give you carte blanche to go organizing receptions without discussing it with us first . . . I don’t believe this. I bet you’ve told the entire neighborhood Adam and I are getting married next spring. You have, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t. Honest . . . I mean, naturally I mentioned it to your father. And all right, I may have mentioned it in passing yesterday to the girl who waxed my bikini line, but Rachel, she’s from Chechnya, barely speaks English. Who’s she going to tell?”
Rachel shook her head slowly. “Mum, please . . . you can’t start making wedding plans until Adam and I give the go-ahead. Just say thank you to Hylda whatsit and tell her you’ll be in touch soon. Now then, I’ve got to go. The washing machine repairman’s downstairs and I ought to check how he’s getting on. I’ll phone you tonight. In the meantime please, please promise me you won’t book anything.”
“But, darling, what about Hylda’s twenty percent discount? Personally I think we should grab it. I mean, if you don’t like the Chinese idea we could think about poached salmon. A bit uninspired maybe, but it always goes down well. . . .”
“Mum,” Rachel said gently, but firmly.
“OK, darling. I promise.”
* * * * *
Rachel walked slowly down the glass stairs, replaying the conversation with her mother and hoping she hadn’t been too hard on her. Maddening as Faye could be, she meant well. It was a few moments before she got to the bit where Faye had mentioned waxing her bikini line. Rachel frowned.
“What?” she muttered out loud. “She’s waxing? At her age?” In the thirty-four years she’d known her mother, Faye had never once mentioned owning a bikini line, let alone one she needed to wax. What was more, Rachel had always thought that when women reached Faye’s age things started to get a bit thin on the ground down there.
“Every other sixty-something woman starts losing it,” she said to herself, “and my mother suddenly develops Velcro inner thighs.” She reached the hallway. As she wandered into the kitchen, she was still puzzling about the cause of her mother’s newfound pubic circumstances.
“Unbalanced load,” Matt Clapton declared, turning to smile at her as he finished putting away the last of his tools.
It was a moment or two before she realized he was referring to the washing machine and not her mother’s hormones.
“So,” she said, having quickly gathered her thoughts and feeling overcome by a powerful, almost childlike need to display her wit to this berk with his smug, self-satisfied smile. “Is that ‘unbalanced’ as in demented, unhinged and in need of therapy?”
He closed his toolbox, stood up. The smile turned into a broad grin.
“No, as in too light, diminutive and insignificant,” he said. “The thing about your Wiener is that it tends to kick up if the load isn’t heavy enough. Drum slips off its bearings, which is what happened here. Fortunately I’ve managed to get it back. Shouldn’t give you any more trouble so long as from now on you make sure it’s full before you use it.”
“OK,” she said quietly, irritated that the machine had broken down because of her incompetence. He was probably more certain than ever that women’s technical skills began and ended with them spitting on their mascara brushes.
“Right,” she said, “I’ll show you out, then.”
He nodded.
“Oh, by the way, I’ve left the invoice for Xantia on the counter,” he said as they reached the front door.
She shot him the briefest of smiles and opened the door. It was only as she stood back to let him out that she noticed a copy of
The Clitorati—Heroines of the British Feminist Movement from Wollstonecraft to Widdecombe
sticking out of his jacket pocket.
CHAPTER 4
“So you don’t reckon there’s any possibility,” Rachel said, biting into one of Shelley’s sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free alfalfa and kelp scones and wishing she hadn’t, “that a misogynist letch could be reading
The Clitorati
?”
Rachel’s best friend, Shelley Peach, partnerless, six months pregnant sometime actress, hand model and health food freak, who rented the flat downstairs, kept on stirring mint leaves round in the teapot.
“Seems highly unlikely,” she said thoughtfully. “It’d be like Lucrezia Borgia owning a copy of
Women Who Love Too Much
.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said thoughtfully as she chewed on the scone, while lying stretched out on her friend’s battered lime-green sofa. “That’s kinda what I thought . . . which doesn’t explain why he behaved like an arrogant jerk.”
While Shelley poured tea into two Elvis mugs, Rachel brought one arm under the back of her head and pondered.
“Right, I’ve got it,” she said, sitting up and swinging her legs onto the floor. “How’s about this: he’s wandering round WH Smith looking for girlie mags. . . .” By now she was waving the remainder of her scone in the air. “Notices a book with
Clitorati
in the title, decides it has to be porn, that Wollstonecraft and Widdecombe are a pair of lesbian lap dancers and buys it.” With that she popped the last of the scone into her mouth.
Shelley gave her a withering look. “Rachel,” she said, leaning over the coffee table and handing her a mug of mint tea, “has it occurred to you that maybe you got him all wrong, that maybe you overreacted. I mean, perhaps he wasn’t staring at your tits at all.”
“What do you mean, not staring at my tits?” Rachel said indignantly, through the mouthful of scone. “Shelley, believe me. His eyes were fixed on my mammaries like the Hubble telescope on Alpha Centauri.” She took a sip of tea to wash down the scone.
“Ah, you might think they were, but what if he’s cross-eyed?”
“Cross-eyed?”
“Yeah. Why not? It’s possible. We had a domestic science teacher at school who was cross-eyed. Clarence we called her, after the lion in
Daktari
. She could fillet a mackerel and starch a pillowcase at the same time.”
“Sounds more ambidextrous than cross-eyed.”
Shelley thought for a moment. “Yeah, you could be right. Maybe she was both. You know, cross-eyed and ambiwhatsit . . .” She paused to swallow some tea. “But anyway you get my gist.”
“S’pose,” Rachel smiled.
Just then Shelley’s cordless phone began ringing in the kitchen.
“Oh God,” she said, tossing the remainder of her scone back on the plate and leaping out of her armchair, “that could be my agent.” Rachel knew she’d been on tenterhooks for days waiting to find out if her hands had been chosen to pour the blue menstrual flow in a sanitary towel commercial.
“Look, I’ll go,” Rachel said, looking at her watch. “I didn’t mean to stay so long. Sam’s upstairs waiting to be fed and for me to help him with his homework.”
“OK, but just hang on for a sec while I take this call,” Shelley called out excitedly from the kitchen. “If I’ve got this gig, I want you to be the first to congratulate me.”
While Shelley took the call, Rachel sat sipping her tea, her eyes wandering round the room. Shelley had only just finished decorating. Rachel smiled. To say her friend’s taste was wacky was an understatement. Ordinary or garden-variety wacky worshipped at the altar of Shelley Peach wacky. For a start both the walls and ceiling were painted deep red. A giant silver disco ball hung from the ceiling, the battered junk shop dining table was concealed beneath a floor-length emerald-green sequined tablecloth and opposite the seventies lime sofa was another table covered in pony skin. The lampshades were made of bubble-gum-pink fake fur and in the far corner, suspended above the Astro Turf rug and half a dozen pots of plastic crocuses, was a wooden garden swing. Shelley called it her tart’s-boudoir-meets-the-Teletubbies look. While Rachel adored the humor and outlandishness of it all, Adam, who had visited chez Shelley only once, had walked into the living room, visibly stiffened and declared in a loud whisper that they had clearly just descended into hell and were standing in Lucifer’s garden room.
Adam’s visit had been a month or so ago, when the room was still awaiting its finishing touches. Now every surface was covered in glam-kitsch plastic ornaments. Rachel’s favorite was a twelve-inch statue of Marilyn Monroe whose white polythene skirt flew up when a button was pressed in her back. Only most of the time it didn’t and her head fell off instead. In Rachel’s opinion, Marilyn’s sole rival for pride of place was the Elvis toilet paper holder in the bathroom. Every time a piece of paper was torn off, he burst into “Wipe Me Tender.”
* * * * *
The two women had become friends from the moment they met four months ago—on the Saturday Shelley moved in.
Feeling at a loss because she was gigless that night, Joe, her ex, had Sam for the weekend and Adam was at a root canal symposium in Kentucky, Rachel had spent the morning wandering from room to room in her pajamas, dibbing and dabbing at bits of housework, trying to decide how to spend her day. By midafternoon she was still dibbing and still in her pajamas. It was then, as she stood staring out the window at nothing in particular, that she noticed a woman pull up in an exceedingly battered East German Trabant, which had been sprayed fluorescent orange. She was closely followed by what Rachel took to be a hired man and van. The woman was clearly her new neighbor. Curious and having bugger all else to do, Rachel decided to carry on watching.
The first thing she noticed about Shelley was her breasts. They seemed to emerge from the car a full three seconds before the rest of her. It wasn’t that they were
freakishly
huge—probably no more than Ds, Rachel guessed—they just appeared so because Shelley was five foot nothing and skinny with it. With her cropped copper hair, fuchsia bell bottoms and tangerine and purple tie-dyed top she looked like a multicolored umbrella, a substantial section of which was refusing to fold down. Rachel found it difficult to strike up relationships with beautiful women with perfect figures because they always made her feel that she should be listed in
The Guinness Book of Yuck,
but with her out-of-proportion tits and slightly too-big nose, Shelley appeared reassuringly imperfect body-wise. Moreover, her garish style suggested a vivacious, off-the-wall personality that appealed to Rachel. So when the removal man disappeared just after six, she went downstairs to introduce herself.
By way of a neighborly gesture she took with her the week-old supermarket African violet that had been sitting on the window ledge in the kitchen and still looked new.
“Hi, I’m Rachel,” she beamed as Shelley opened the door. “From upstairs. I just popped down to say welcome.” She held out the African violet, which she’d wrapped in some used but relatively uncreased blue tissue she’d found in one of the kitchen drawers. Shelley smiled weakly. Then, as she took the plant, she promptly burst into tears.
“Oh God,” Rachel said, panicking. She assumed Shelley had realized the African violet was less than fresh and taken umbrage. Her best strategy, she decided, was to make a quick exit.
“Look,” she said, “I’ve obviously called at a bad time. I’ll come back later.”
“No, you haven’t,” Shelley sobbed. “It’s just that I’m . . .”
“Oh right,” Rachel said in a distinctly relieved tone. “Don’t tell me. You’re allergic to African violets.”
For some reason Rachel was instantly overtaken by the need to invent a story that would justify her choice of gift.
“I’m really, truly sorry. I had no idea,” she started to gabble. “Thing is, I got to the supermarket late and all they had left were African violets or roses meant for training. I know for a fact the roses are crap. My mother’s been training hers for years and they still don’t know any tricks.”
Shelley immediately began laughing through her tears.
“No, it’s not the plant,” she said, wiping her eyes, which were huge and green. “It’s lovely, really. You’re very kind. I’m just feeling a bit emotional, that’s all. Probably just the move. I’m Shelley, by the way.” She held out her hand, and Rachel noticed her fingers were long and exquisitely manicured. “Please come in.”
She led Rachel through the chaos of half-emptied packing cases into the kitchen. Rachel stood in the doorway and did a double take. The work surfaces were awash with packets of organic flours, nuts, grains, beans, seeds, lentils and tubs of sprouting shoots. A box of Planet Organic fruit and veg was balancing on a stool. The kitchen table was covered in books of the
Healing Juices, Love Your Liver, Blissful Bioflavonoids
variety. On the floor beside the water filter was a box labeled “Masticating Juicer.” Next to this were twenty or thirty plastic tubs of vitamins and diet supplements.
“Wow,” Rachel said, walking in and shaking her head. “Your kitchen makes Holland and Barratt look like the Pop-Tart factory.”
“I know,” Shelley smiled. “ ’Scuse the mess. You caught me in the middle of loading cupboards.” She picked up the box of fruit and veg, put it on the floor and invited Rachel to sit down on the stool.
As Rachel did so she couldn’t help thinking that despite the smiles, Shelley still looked bloody miserable.
“I got into the health food kick,” Shelley said, picking up a packet of millet and a bottle of tamari and putting them on a shelf in one of the cupboards, “after a nutritionist cured my thrush. I tell you, before I saw her it was so bad I reckon I had an entire flock of the bloody things roosting down there.”
Rachel giggled and passed her some more packets, which she arranged in the cupboard. While Rachel carried on passing packets and Shelley stored them, they exchanged the usual Where do you come from? What do you do? stuff. Rachel talked about being a stand-up and described the first time she’d died onstage during a routine about misshapen vegetables that looked like penises, and how she’d nearly given it all up there and then.
“At least you don’t have these to worry about,” Shelley said, pointing to her breasts. “Ever since I was a teenager, all I’ve ever wanted to be is a serious actress. Some hopes. Everybody else gets auditioned for parts, I get measured. So what made you decide to become a stand-up?”
Rachel explained how she’d gone into journalism because it seemed a logical safe option, having done English at the university.
“Plus by then I was married and we were thinking about getting a mortgage. So I needed a proper job. Thing was, deep down I always knew I wanted to be a comic. Even when I was a kid. My mum would have the family over for tea and I always ended up standing in the middle of the living room, telling pathetic jokes that I’d got from some kids’ joke book or other. Then when I was seventeen I started going to comedy clubs. I saw people like Jo Brand and Julian Clary, ages before they were famous. Pretty soon I was writing my own material. In secret, of course. I never showed it to anybody. Just performed on my own in front of the mirror. Then one night, two or three years after I’d left uni, a whole gang of us were out on this hen night and we ended up at a comedy club. They had an open mike night. The girls I was with could see I was desperate to have a go, but I was too scared. In the end, they virtually dragged me up on the stage. I remember I did this routine about my cat going to the vet to be neutered and how I felt so sorry for him that I’d taken him out the night before the operation to find a cat hooker. Anyway, the audience laughed. They actually laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Pretty soon I started doing the odd pub gig on weekends and finally I plucked up the courage to go professional.”
It turned out Shelley had been born in Upminster.
“So we’re both Essex girls, then,” Shelley said.
“Yeah, but don’t forget,” Rachel said, “when we were growing up, the place still had a definite air of gentility about it. Back then, Essex Girls was a hockey team, not an insult.”
Shelley’s face broke into a broad grin. Rachel had a sense she was cheering her up.
“Don’t know about you,” Shelley said after they’d filled two cupboards, “but I could murder a drink.”
Assuming she meant of an alcoholic variety, Rachel nodded enthusiastically. Shelley opened the fridge and took out a carton of organic cranberry juice.
“Wonderful for cystitis,” she declared, holding up the carton. “Totally detoxes your water works . . . Oh, and I think I’ve got a packet of sunflower and pumpkin seeds somewhere.”
She began rummaging through the piles of packets.
“Tell you what,” Rachel said, doing her best to sound tactful, “you still look a bit down. How’s about we spike it with some vodka? I’ve got an unopened bottle upstairs.”
“No, I mustn’t,” Shelley said uneasily. “You see, I’m pregnant.”
At this point she burst into tears again.
“Look,” Rachel said, “I don’t want to pry, but if it would help I’d be happy to listen.”
Ten minutes later they were sitting on the living room floor (the junk shop man wasn’t delivering the sofas until Monday), drinking cranberry juice. Although in Rachel’s case it was more like cranberry-laced vodka juice.
Shelley took another glug of her drink and started telling Rachel how she was three months pregnant and that Ted, her thirty-eight-year-old boyfriend, had reacted to the news by ending their relationship and asking her to move out because he said he didn’t feel ready for marriage or fatherhood.
“And what does the hypocritical bastard go and do? I’ll tell you what he does. He shacks up with a seventeen-year-old who’s still wearing a retainer and has a Saturday job frying burgers. . . Still, at least he’s agreed to support the baby. I suppose I should be grateful.”
Rachel, who by now had forgiven Shelley her health food fanaticism on the grounds that she was funny, open and warm, shuffled across the floor and put an arm round her.
“God, I’m really sorry. What a tosser. Going off with a McSchoolgirl when he could’ve had you and the baby. I dunno why we bother to have men in our lives,” she went on, knocking back more of her drink.
“I do,” Shelley said, smiling. “It’s because a vibrator can’t mow the grass.”