Size Matters (23 page)

‘I wanted to ask you if you'll be the Matron of Honour or whatever it is you have at Register Office weddings. If it's yes, get something peachy to wear. See you next week, Delphine.'

And if it was no? Jay felt old rebellions stirring inside, a mild huffiness at being bossed around by a cousin she hadn't seen since Delphine had gone off to
Australia ten years ago with Bill Durant (husband number two, succumbed to liver failure three years back), and had communicated with, till these last few weeks, only at Christmas and birthdays. But then, it couldn't be no, could it? If it was, she'd have to phone Delphine and tell her and be callously aware she was being pointlessly hurtful, and what kind of a person would do that? After all, who else was Delphine going to ask? How many non-family old friendships would she still have over here that she could so casually revive when she needed them? So it would be yes, of course it would. But . . . peachy? That was a puzzle. What did that mean, exactly?

Jay put the card on the table and zapped around clearing up the kitchen, ready for Monique to come in later in the morning and give it a proper clean. In fact, she decided, she would treat the house to an all-out blitz before Delphine got there, or better yet, she'd treat herself and Delphine to one. It would be a perfect pre-wedding trip out for the two of them, an all-dayer at a spa and then home again to a spankingly scrubbed-out house.

‘What do you think she meant by peachy?' Jay asked Barbara as they drove the van over to Masefield Avenue to talk terms with their potential new client. ‘Do you think she means the colour? Or is peachy a sort of Australian term for cute, do you think? I'm way too old for cute, but oh please God, don't let it be the colour.'

Barbara frowned and looked at Jay. ‘Heavens I hope it
isn't
the colour. You can't wear peach, not with your browny-blonde hair. You'll look like a trifle.'

‘Thanks, Barbara, don't wrap it up for me will you? You're right though, peach only looks good on six-year-old bridesmaids with cream tights, yards of tulle underskirts and freesias in their hair.'

‘But weren't you thrilled to be asked?' Barbara said, giggling. ‘It must mean that her man's been in touch and told her you've passed the entrance exam. What did you think of him? Was he the Perfect Man for Ms Perfect Cousin?'

Jay thought for a moment. ‘Well he was . . . really nice. The sort of man you say “Oh he's a really nice man” about. I think he did that trick of making sure everyone liked him without actually giving much away about himself.'

‘Clever knack that, not one that most women have, that's for sure. Maybe it's just a man thing. You must have found out
something
.'

‘Well I'm racking my brains, but he managed to sidestep any probing about ex-wives, children etc. Very metaphorically nippy on his feet – must be all that dancing.'

‘Do you think he'd fancy you in peach?'

Jay made a face. ‘
No-one
would fancy me in peach! Mind you, I've been Delphine's bridesmaid before. Peach or no peach, believe me, getting to choose my own outfit is definitely a plus.'

‘Why? What did you wear last time then?'

Jay shuddered, remembering, ‘Elastoplast pink. Duchesse satin, something called “ballerina length” – not good on a short person – skintight bodice with dropped waist and pearl beads sewn on the shawl-neck bit. I looked like a chrysalis that's been out in the rain. I was away at university and stupidly sent the measurements instead of getting back home to try it on. And by the time I did, well, let's just say Delphine ordered me to starve for five days so all the fifty-six buttons would fasten. I was a little bit pregnant with Imogen.'

‘Did you tell her that?'

‘I did. She got into a panic that I'd throw up halfway down the aisle, or faint in front of the altar or something,
and Auntie Win had a right old go and said I was very selfish, getting myself pregnant for Delphine's big day. As if I'd done it on purpose, specially for that. Mum was great – she said it served them right for not getting
her
to make the frocks, after all the years she'd spent running up glitzy little Latin American numbers for Delphine's competitions. She very sniffily told Win that a first-class dressmaker who really knew her stuff would have allowed a bit extra for “give”.'

‘Or for lying. Think how many people must swear they're a size ten when what they really mean is they hope to diet down to it.'

Jay laughed. ‘I can relate to that, Barbara, don't knock it. It's not called Goal Weight for nothing!'

Barbara steered the van round the corner and pulled up at the house. Jay looked up at the mimosa tree that waved its graceful slender branches out over the pavement. ‘This reminds me of somewhere . . . Heavens, surely it can't be the place I saw in Rory's magazine?'

‘What, the one you said was a brothel?' Barbara peered out of the van window, checking out what looked like an ordinary family home. ‘Looks perfectly normal to me. Nice and big but nothing special.'

‘It does doesn't it? The real one's probably nowhere round here. Pity, but all the same let's get inside quick, have a shufti!'

‘I keep rooms,' the proprietor of number thirty-six announced as soon as she'd opened the door to Jay and Barbara. The term had a grand Edwardian ring about it, as if the house was a warren of gloomy bedsitters each containing a gas ring and a genteel governess of good family, who had fallen on harder times than her upbringing had led her to expect.

Mrs Howard was a small, bony woman in her mid-sixties. Her head darted forward and back, nose leading
as she spoke, reminding Jay of a skinny budgie on a perch. Disappointingly, she was nothing like the brash bawdy-house madam Jay had been hoping to meet. It would have been great fun to have been greeted on the doorstep by an aged siren with fluffy high-heeled mules, a long cigarette holder, scarlet slit skirt belted with wide black patent and a deeply cut translucent black frilly blouse. A classic caricature definitely, but nothing wrong with that, it was very Beryl Cook, and if it was good enough for her . . . The vision should have been topped off with piled-up ginger curls and a filthy laugh. This lady was all tidy Marks and Spencers box pleats and high-necked crisp white blouse and looked very much as if she would order Jay and Barbara from the premises if they so much as accidentally flashed a leopard-print bra strap. Men who visited the house wouldn't be punters, they'd surely be referred to as ‘gentlemen callers'.

‘. . . girls who work in the theatre, they're mostly from abroad,' she was continuing as she showed them into her sitting room. This sounded more promising. What on earth would girls ‘from abroad' be doing on the stages of London theatres? Unless you counted all those bouncy Irish ones who'd been recruited for
River-dance
a few years back.

‘These days,' she seemed keen to explain, ‘the younger girls are on such short contracts they need somewhere to stay where they won't be molested or get lonely, and they tend to move on so it's not worth their while setting up home in flats. Being so close to the station, we're handy for the West End, you see, and cheaper than central areas.'

Jay looked around the room, taking in the fact that it was meticulously tidy and that there were relatively few knick-knacks on the surfaces. There was something mildly impersonal about it, as if paintings (Lake
District landscapes, a 1920s Thames pleasure-boat scene) had been chosen to match the decor. There was a decided preference for Laura Ashley. The walls were papered with a sort of pale terracotta, patterned to look like rag-rolling. Her aunt Win would be pleased by the many floral cushions, the creamy damask curtains and the peach-striped sofas. Jay tried for a second, and failed, to imagine herself wearing this colour to Delphine's wedding. She was more of a grey-blue person really, absolutely not this. She'd have to wait and see what Delphine was intending to wear and tone herself in with something.

‘It's really only the communal areas that need your services, and then the girls' rooms as and when they're vacated. Some stay a while, some are off after a few days,' Mrs Howard went on, leading the way up the stairs. ‘The girls like their privacy so while they're here I have to trust them to keep their own rooms up to scratch.' She turned and gave them a wry smile. ‘Some of them though, frankly you wonder where they were dragged up. And if you say anything you come up against the language barrier. What does it take to run a duster over a shelf?'

Jay bit her tongue to stop herself from blurting out, ‘About ten quid an hour.'

The three bathrooms – two on the first floor and another one between the two attic rooms – were all strangely void of real signs of habitation. There were no toothbrushes on the shelves, no Tampax boxes, shampoo bottles, towels, shower gels, flannels or loofahs strewn about. Jay imagined the inhabitants behind the closed bedroom doors, shyly peering out to see if the coast was clear before scuttling into the bathroom, clutching sponge bags and towels and trussed up in big velour dressing gowns. It was probably miles from the truth – when the occupants were around, the
place would surely be vibrant with polyglottal girly chat, the air full of clashing scents and shower steam. Just now, though, with everything quiet and empty there was a strange air of deadness and sterility – like, she imagined, an old boarding-school dormitory a day before term began. The kitchen was a jollier place – the dresser hung with a lively selection of brightly coloured mugs, the walls a pretty sky blue and a big noticeboard covered with photos, messages, lists, postcards and fast-food flyers.

‘It would have to be afternoons, for the cleaning,' Mrs Howard told Jay and Barbara. ‘The girls sleep late,' she said with a smile. ‘They need their rest, you see, working so hard at night.'

Oh if only, Jay thought, catching Barbara's eye, if only it were true, that behind those ordinary cream-gloss doors upstairs there were chambers all kitted out with exotic, erotic delights. It would make such a change from the tame suburban tastes of most of their clients. She imagined running Henry's nozzle under a bed and clanging it against abandoned handcuffs or tangling it in the laces of a leather basque. Instead of the usual bedroom shelves holding books, photographs, make-up, she pictured a row of vibrators, arranged neatly in size order. The big snag would be finding staff who didn't have scruples about polishing them . . .

Rory waited till the morning break. It had been hard to concentrate in French (bloody Jacques again, up to nothing much with his
cousine
Dominique, taking their
chien
to the
village
to buy some
crêpes
and eat them by the
rivière
).

‘Freddie?' Rory whispered into his mobile, even though he was under the trees on the far side of the football pitch and miles from anyone. ‘Freddie can you hear me?'

‘Whassup? It's early, man.' He'd woken him. Didn't you have to go to school during your last year? Was hours of free kip-time the way they got you to stay on after sixteen? Well punted, that.

‘Freddie it's nearly eleven.'

‘So? Got nothing till two. Whaddya need, cousin?'

‘That house, that one we went to with the tarts, except they weren't and I shoved that bit of paper through the door, they've only rung Mum and she's gone round there.'

‘So? It was just a house. What's she gone there for?'

‘Someone phoned about cleaning. I just said.' He felt slightly silly now. He'd overreacted. It
was
just a house. An ordinary big family-type place. The cleaning was just a job. Life was boring, predictable, unthrilling. He so wished it wasn't. He so wished that house had been crawling with stonkingly gorgeous pouty Albanian hookers offering porno services he'd only (so far) dreamed about. It was very handily local – he'd be tempted to save up and make a visit. But better than that, much better, he so wished – and his heart actually squeezed itself extra hard, he could feel it – he so wished Samantha Newton thought of him as more than the dim tosser at the back of the class who'd had trouble that morning translating ‘
Mon chien est noir et blanc
'. He'd looked at her as he wrestled with the language. She had her hand over her face as if she was trying not to laugh. He couldn't blame her, if he wasn't the one being so lame, he'd be laughing too.

‘Maybe you'll be able to find out what that Charles bloke's connection is,' Freddie said, sounding a bit more awake. ‘You been back to his swanky pad yet?' Rory heard him lighting a cigarette, then inhaling deeply on the first blissful one of the day.

‘I'd forgotten about him. He probably just knows the
owner. Dull as. And no, I haven't been back. Seen it, done it.'

Even to himself, his voice sounded gloom-filled. Someone should be taking care of him, treating him gently, feeding him Prozac before he turned into one of those teen suicide statistics. He sighed, reminding himself of one of the olds you saw on the bus every morning who sighed their annoyance at having accidentally got on before the pensioners' free travel kicked in and then sighed that schoolkids were in their space (sighed even more if someone let them sit down, as if they'd hoped for a bit of lively confrontation about Manners These Days). Then they sighed at having to get up off their comfy seat when they'd got to their stop and sighed when they made it safely to the pavement. God, if he was like this now, what would he be like at seventy? He'd be all sigh, no breathing.

‘You all right Rory? You sound a bit down, man.' Rory could hear Freddie peeing, then the flush of the loo. He pictured him striding about in his boxers, wandering between the bathroom and his bedroom, idly scratching his balls and flopping back on top of his bed, flicking the remote at the telly. Freddie, at ten, had had a Ryan Giggs duvet cover. He'd taken it with him on a school trip, unable to be apart from it and bravely oblivious to teasing. Rory tried to imagine the grown-up Freddie lying on Ryan. It was a bit of a gay picture he was conjuring up there, not at all like Freddie. He'd probably got a Kylie one now, which could pretty gay as well, he supposed. Could you get J-Lo ones? Or Beyoncé?