Foetal Attraction (13 page)

Maddy located the stairs and took them two at a time. ‘Do you really think I would throw over my life, my job, my friends, for a “fling”? It’s not like he makes a habit of falling in love!’

Harriet honked disparagingly. ‘Listen, for years we shared adjoining offices at the Beeb and, believe me, I never saw him come to work from the same direction.’

‘Crap.’

‘My dear, you could make a board game out of Alexander Drake’s love life.’

There was nothing quite as cruel as the contemptuous suavity of a celibate Femocrat, Maddy decided. ‘Including
you
?’ she hazarded.

Harriet blanched. Maddy had noticed that the English have a hatred of being asked anything intimate. The whole country should dangle a Do Not Disturb sign on its door.

‘There is’, Harriet finally enunciated, mopping her mouth with the napkin scrunched in one hand, ‘a certain … etiquette involving affairs. A woman like
you
is a trophy. Something to flaunt at select dinner parties. Alexander has many circles of chums. Our circle totally accepts his …’ she looked at Maddy disdainfully, ‘dalliances. Other circles see him as husband and …’

‘Father?’ Maddy bitterly concurred.

‘… of the Year. Into that circle, you will never receive entry.’

Harriet had a terrifying insularity of mind. There had never been a husband or a child to dilute her self-confidence, to put bags under her eyes and cracks in her concentration.

‘He’s only interested in women who are interested in him. That’s why he selects non-rivals. He’s brought home quite a collection of specimens from his travels over the years,’ she fog-horned. ‘The Argentinian acrobat. She walked a tightrope, no less! … The Timor revolutionary. A beauty, but So Serious. A world-champion sky-diver, a pet convict … I forget what she’d been sentenced for, but she wrote a book about her experiences of torture and was in great demand on the chat-show circuit … and now a tall Australian scuba-diver who drives some kind of a lorry …’

But for all her authority, there was something remote about Harriet Fielding. Something, Maddy felt, almost forlorn.

‘Considering his plethora of stimuli, I suggest you cut your losses, comrade, and move on.’

Maddy thrust past her into the dining room. It was
a
cavernous hall, the roof of which was a rib-cage of black and white beams. It was like being inside a small whale, swallowed whole. At least half the people around the mahogany table she recognized. It seemed to Maddy that despite the size of metropolitan London, its inhabitants just went round and round in vicious circles. She surveyed them the way you do the contents of a fridge when attempting to ascertain the source of an odour. There was Humphrey, pale and veined as Stilton cheese. The Rock Star, prepackaged in million-dollar Versace, his soft-boiled-egg eyes peeled on to Model and Mother of the Year, Imogen Bliss. She sat nearby, twining blonde fronds of her famous locks around varnished fingers. She blew him surreptitious kisses but only when Bryce was attending their designer baby displayed in the corner on an Afghan prayer rug. And finally, nestled between a drop-dead-gorgeous Russian woman with jet-black eyes and Salman Rushdie, was Alex, looking all luscious and edible, but rotten to the core. Catching sight of Maddy, his face became as shrivelled as his plate of sun-dried tomatoes.

The exotic Russian was in the midst of recounting her interrogation ordeals under Brezhnev’s KGB. With strip-tease calm, she revealed, for Alex’s benefit, the pale scars on her marbled arms. This was the sort of woman men betrayed their countries for. Maddy had noticed that Rent-a-Russians had recently become the most fashionable addition to London
soirées
. They’d taken over from arugula salad.

As the others became aware of her presence, Maddy distinctly heard the click of the collective noses of her critics going out of joint.

‘Madeline!’ Sonia scraped her chair back across the flag-stones and slapped towards her in hand-woven leather thongs fashioned by a native Brazilian. ‘I would have invited you, but …’ she extended a half-hearted cheek in greeting, ‘as you can see, there is just no more room at my table.’

Maddy deduced that the shortage of dinner-party invitations was more to do with the fact that her tan had faded, proving she was not, after all, a true blue Pinjinjara princess. ‘Oh, I don’t take up that much space,’ she replied defiantly, and dragged a chair in amongst the guests.

With great reluctance, they wriggled sideways to accommodate her.

‘Well …’ continued the flummoxed hostess, ‘
do
stay for a drink.’

Even the champagne seemed to froth indignantly in Maddy’s glass. She skolled it in one go and waited for a refill. But Sonia had meant a drink, literally. When no more was forthcoming, Maddy seized the bottle and refilled her own flute. Obviously charity did not begin in the château. It wasn’t until she started nibbling her drinks coaster that any of the roast, congealing in the middle of the table, was proffered.

The London social ladder is harder to climb than the
Andes
. The trick, Maddy was learning, was to snub somebody before they could snub you. English parties are snubbing competitions. Good punters can average ten to fifteen condescending looks per conversation. Ignoring her neighbours, she reached over Humphrey to retrieve the mint sauce.

‘God,’ Humphrey scoffed, blasting her with his carbolic breath, ‘you are living down to the cultural stereotype, aren’t you?’

Maddy dipped her fork full of meat into the sauce dish. ‘Oh, no. Now, if I’d had sex with the lamb before eating it,
that
would be living down to the cultural stereotype.’

‘She’s Aust
ralian
,’ Humphrey announced to the table by way of explanation.

‘What?’ Maddy replied sarcastically. ‘Is my tail showing?’ She had a sudden and irrespressible urge to see what kind of Frisbee her priceless antique plate would make.

‘I thought up an acronym for Australia the other day. An Uncouth Society Treats Royalty Almost Like Its Aborigines.’ Humphrey’s hair seemed bushier than before. Maddy suspected some counterfeit foliage.

‘Don’t hold her nationality against her.’ Alex’s tone was one of practised affability. His black velvet lapels sharked across his jacket. ‘A pearl, after all, begins life as a bit of oyster phlegm.’ He glared at her.

‘I ate a bad oyster the other day,’ Humphrey said, pointedly. ‘Still got the runs, actually.’

‘Well, I tell you, their financial pearls turned out to be fake. Look at Bond,’ Bryce declared. ‘The world is no longer
his
oyster.’

‘Do you know what you call an Australian in a suit?’ Humphrey pontificated in a mock Aussie drone. ‘A defendant.’

To the English, Maddy realized, Australians are the Irish of the Pacific.

‘Tell yer wot. I ‘ated goin’ there on tour,’ came the East End gutturalness of the host. ‘The food was fuckin’ weird. Fricassée of ant-eater, kangaroo-tail soup, sliced arsehole of wat-sa-ma-call-it …’

‘Really? I’ve met a few arseholes,’ Maddy returned Alex’s murderous look, ‘but I’ve never eaten any.’

Her lover had trained her in which fork to use for the fish, but not in this other usage of cutlery. She’d only been here fifteen minutes and already had an entire canteen of knives sticking out of her back. To make her even more uncomfortable, every time she went to put down her drink, Sonia slipped a coaster depicting some beheaded monarch between her descending glass and the mahogany. What Maddy needed was a life-size coaster, so she wouldn’t mark their precious society. Eating her soup with a fluted dessert spoon and serving up her salad on to the side plate stamped her for ever as a hapless parvenu.

Humphrey seized the salad servers, ceremoniously deposited his greens on to his dinner plate in a ‘this is how it’s done’ gesture, then turned towards her to
raise
a mocking eyebrow. There was a dichotomy in the English national character which Maddy couldn’t comprehend. Whilst accepting eccentricities – she could walk down Oxford Street wearing nothing but a woggle and a sequinned nose ring without being molested – minute breaches of protocol, like saying ‘toilet’ instead of ‘lavatory’, were a major transgression.

‘At least we’re not numb-from-the-neck-down, shoot-your-brains-out boring,’ she retaliated.

The faces of her fellow diners came down like blinds. Except for Salman Rushdie, who lit up and laughed out loud. He looked as out of place amongst these piranhas as she did.

The Rent-a-Russian leant over Alex and gazed at the Very Important Guest. ‘So,’ she said to Salman Rushdie, ‘where are you living now?’

Maddy scanned the table. She waited for the anti-Russian jokes, the jibes about licking her plate and eating with her feet. But not a blush passed across the comradette’s high-rise cheekbones. The other diners just smiled politely at the
faux pas
of the century. Life, Maddy fumed, wasn’t fair. It helped to remember Gallipoli.

‘I had to let the servants go for the night,’ Sonia hurried on, melodramatically, ‘as a safety precaution. So, I do hope the food’s bearable. The wine’s organic and the eggs free-range. The fruit we treated with eco-friendly pesticides and the meat’s hormone free.’

‘Unlike your husband,’ Maddy muttered under the
breath
. Imogen, baby cradled in the crook of her arm, was having trouble unbuttoning her blouse one-handed. The Socially Aware Popstar gallantly leapt to her assistance.

Sonia retrieved her
de facto
and led him back towards his seat. ‘I know it’s indulgent having help,’ she continued apologetically, ‘but our houses are so big and … well, people think it’s easy having servants, but it’s a lot of work … telling them what to buy and what to polish … Nobody tells you what a bother it is, actually—’ Her rock-star hubby let out a howl as he hit his head on a low-slung ceiling beam. Sonia seemed to have steered him into the collision.

Despite her anger, there was too much of the larrikin in Maddy to stop her from laughing. ‘Well, that explains a lot. Now I know why the English upper class is so stupid. I mean, you must have been hitting your heads on the low beams of your priceless Tudor cottages for
centuries
.’

No one else seemed to find this as humorous as she did. Alex restrained his urge to go ballistic. ‘Servants are a bit beyond me,’ the champion of the down-trodden volunteered. ‘I make no concession to my increased wealth … unless you count first-class tickets, five-star hotels, eating beluga and drinking Bollinger.’

‘Oh?’ Maddy crustily disrupted the relieved laughter. ‘What about your nanny? The one you hire for your
children
? Isn’t that a luxury?’

Alex’s smile spread across his face until it tickled his ear-lobes. It looked like a slice of water-melon. It remained there, frozen like that, until the break between courses enabled him to slip from the room. Maddy followed. He was waiting for her on the oak staircase.

‘Have you any idea who that avuncular-looking chap is at the end of the table?’ he hissed. ‘A journalist on
Private Eye
! I mean, what if Felicity had been here?’

Maddy ignored him. ‘Well, this is a nice little possie, for a
seminar
.’

‘
Position
, Madeline. The house is in a nice
position
. A “possie” is something which follows an outlaw.’

‘Exactly … So what happened to the think-tank? Gone septic, has it?’

‘Obviously,’ Alex improvised, ‘I couldn’t tell you where I was going for security reasons. I may be billed as a naturalist, but I’m also a journalist. Trained never to reveal such information to anyone. Even my lover …’ He placed his hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged it off. ‘Oh, excuse me, Walter Fucking Cronkite.’

‘That was a castrating remark. I’m about to start speaking in a very, very high voice.’

‘And what about your children? Is that also the kind of information you’re trained never to reveal?’

Alex’s face jellified, his lips akimbo. Regaining composure, he steered her brusquely by the elbow up the stairs. They passed through the room where the
Special
Branch were stationed. When they’d left the dining room, London’s cultural commandos had been discussing football and soccer scores. The Special Branch police were reading Shakespeare and studying Jacques Derrida, to the accompanying operatic strains of Monteverdi. What was wrong with this picture? Maddy asked herself. Once in the bay-windowed bedroom, she turned on him in an explosion which made Nagasaki look low-key.

‘Have you ever experienced an overwhelming urge to tell the truth?’

‘I didn’t lie. It was merely a case of selective honesty … I was going to tell you. But, as you know, my approach is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I didn’t want to burden you with too much at once. Besides, the children feel so remote from me … I just didn’t think it was all that important. After the twins were born …’

‘Twins! A brace. Jesus! The double whammy.’

‘… Felicity marginalized me. She has a low sex drive anyway, but after the babies it was non-existent. She withdrew all her love and poured it all into those kids. She alienated them from me. To the extent that I no longer feel any bonds. Do you think that’s easy to confess? That I’m a failed father?’

Maddy refused to be convinced. ‘So, what am I? Your mid-life crisis?’

‘You’re my unfinished negative,’ Alex ad-libbed. ‘No. You’re my proof … I’m incomplete without you.’

‘Incomplete?’ She shrank from his touch. ‘No, buster, you’re finished.’

‘You must believe me, Maddy. By Christ, I am going to leave her. But I went through my books. I saw my accountant. Do you realize how much I’m going to have to pay in alimony?’ Alex gnashed his perfectly polished teeth. ‘Believe me, nothing concentrates the mind like a bit of poverty … But, if I could get
her
to initiate the separation, the courts would be much more favourable … Meantime,’ he said craftily, ‘you’re an intelligent person, Maddy, so let’s think creatively.’ He couldn’t hold her gaze. ‘I could stay with Felicity half the week and you the other … It’s just an idea off-the-top-of-the-head …’