Telling Lies to Alice (4 page)

I said, “I didn’t know he was going to be there last time.”

“But you liked him, didn’t you?” I was surprised by how anxious he sounded. “I wanted you to meet him, that was all.” He sounded so hurt that even though half of me was thinking, pull the other one, it’s got bells on, the other half was thinking, did I get the wrong end of the stick? That made me feel a bit embarrassed, because it’s not as if I go about thinking I’m God’s gift to men or something. . . . There was this long pause and I felt like he could hear what I was thinking, so as soon as he mentioned a date I said, yes, fine, whatever you like, just to get him off the phone. Then of course I looked at what I’d scribbled down and realised I’d have to ask if I could swap my shift. It never even occurred to me to ring him back and change it.

Somebody asked me once, if Lenny hadn’t been so famous, would I have said yes? Which annoyed me, because I didn’t know he was famous, did I, that first time? And I still fancied him like mad. But I suppose that was part of the turn-on, although I don’t think I realised it, back then. There was something about him . . . well, it was power, really, because Lenny and Jack, they did have a lot of power—they were very successful, they earned a lot of money, and people wanted to be around them and do what they said, you know? But I noticed that quite a few times at the club when someone important came in. With those men . . . rich, powerful . . . some of them were nice—good manners—and some of them were pretty vile, really, but they all had one thing in common—they thought they could just have anybody. Whether they were going to charm the girl into bed or just snap their fingers—although of course they weren’t doing any of that in the club because it was very controlled—they behaved like they’d got it all laid out on a plate with an apple in its mouth and a feather up its bum. Mind you, the last few years . . . I don’t know if I just met the wrong men, but they all seemed to
expect
that you’d go to bed with them—even one or two while I was married to Jeff, although that really only lasted about three years. It was this constant pressure that it was just
the thing you did
. It seemed so ridiculous, and half of them I couldn’t have fancied if my life depended on it. I wasn’t interested, and I wasn’t getting anything out of it, and after a while I started to think, what sort of person does it make me, if I’m doing this? It all seemed so pointless—as if I didn’t have a compass anymore, I was just sort of drifting about with no idea what I was doing, or why. That was when I came to live here.

I miss it, though. Not sex so much—well, a bit—but
being
with someone. I mean, it’s great having my dog and the horses and everything, but the talking, and . . . you know. All that stuff. I thought it was wonderful at first, being alone after everything that happened . . . but with something like this—the newspaper cutting—you suddenly realise: You’re on your own.

Whoever sent it knows where I live and they know I was at that party, so I suppose they know about Lenny. It wouldn’t be hard to find out that I’d left Jeff, that I’m here alone . . . I’ve told myself a hundred times that they just forgot to put a note in with the cutting but I can’t make myself believe it. The nights are the worst. I keep expecting a phone call, or a knock on the door, a tap on the window. I’m even afraid to go to sleep because I don’t want to have the dream again. The really stupid thing is, I’m terrified something’s going to happen, but I’ve got no idea what, or why. It’s the way the newspaper cutting brought everything back—what happened between Kitty and Lenny, and how unhappy I was, and he was, and then the way he died—and it’s just . . . horrible. I was on the point of ringing a friend in London last night to ask if I could stay with her, but then I thought: the animals—I can’t just leave them. There’d be no one to look after them if I wasn’t here, so I’m stuck.

With Lenny, the fame was part of him, who he was, but I wasn’t looking to hook myself up with a rich man or anything. In those days I just thought about enjoying myself. That sounds shallow, doesn’t it? But I was twenty, twenty-one, and I thought that was what life was all about. I didn’t come to London because I wanted to get rich and famous and be the big I Am, I came because it seemed exciting and I wanted to be part of it. One of the best things about the club was that you could be whoever you wanted to be; we only knew each other by our bunny names, you see, and they weren’t always the real ones. Everyone had to have a different name, and if there was already a bunny with your name, you had to pick another one. I started life as Alison. I didn’t change because there was another one—“Bunny Alison” just didn’t sound right, so I chose Alice because it was close, but a bit more classy. I got used to everyone calling me Alice at work and I liked it, so if I did a bit of modelling or made a new friend I’d always tell them my name was Alice, and it stuck. Honestly, if I went down the street tomorrow and heard someone shouting “Alison!” I’d never think it was me they wanted. The only person who calls me Alison now is my mum.

I don’t think I ever knew anybody’s surname at the club—well, only Suzanne Palmer. She got a bit part in a Hammer film, and I asked so I could look out for her when the credits came up at the end. It was a Dennis Wheatley thing and she was in it for about three seconds as one of the virgins they sacrificed, ha, ha. Oh yeah, and Candy Knight, the porn star. I don’t know if that was her real name, but she was always Candy, Bunny Candy. . . . When I was in London a few weeks ago I went past the Eros Cinema in Piccadilly, and there was a poster for one of those smutty comedies she does—I can’t remember what it was called,
Knickers Must Fall
or something stupid like that, but anyway,
Jack’s
name was on it! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I know he hasn’t been on TV recently, but honestly . . . he’d never have been doing that if Lenny was still around, I’m sure of it. If they’d stayed together, that is, because Lenny did most of the writing—they did use other people from time to time, but mainly it was the two of them, they’d spend hours in Lenny’s flat just talking, bouncing things off each other, tape-recording it all, and then Jack would go home to Val, and Lenny would sit down at the typewriter and spend all night bashing out a script, and that would be the basis of the act or the series or whatever it happened to be. It really was like Don Findlater said, together they were greater than the sum of their parts—just . . .
brilliant
. That’s why I was so astonished to see Jack doing rubbish like that.

The only other girl whose full name I knew was Bunny Kitty. Her real name was Gail McClintock. Everyone at the club thought she’d just jacked it in without telling anybody, because quite a lot of girls did that, but we found out later that she’d never picked up her cards or anything. I did hear something about her flatmate coming home one day and finding some of Kitty’s stuff gone, but it could have been a burglary because there wasn’t a note or anything—and that was it, really. Well, so far as I know.

I didn’t know much about Kitty’s background—or any of the other bunnies, come to that, because nobody really talked about their families. I mean, most of them probably went home for the odd Sunday and ate roast beef and tinned peaches and drank orangeade like I did with Grandma and Granddad. . . . What I mean is, once you were in the club you could leave all that behind and be a new person, and wearing the costume gave you this great feeling of confidence. Power, even. Mind you, those costumes, if they nipped you in a certain place, down the side, you’d get the most terrible stitch, and your
feet
. . . Of course, you had to be the right type to start with, I mean, you couldn’t take just any girl and make her into a bunny—there were masses of them who didn’t make it through the training.

But the point is, we were all into what was happening in the here and now, not talking about the past. There were one or two quite posh girls when I was there, but I never felt looked down on—from what I could make out, they were doing it to get up their family’s noses anyway—but they did know more what the drinks were and things like that. I mean, I’d never tasted champagne or gin or scotch before I went to work at the club, and I remember the first time I walked in there, I couldn’t imagine there was anything more sophisticated in the world. And then I met Blanche, the Bunny Mother, and she was a vision of perfection and glamour, and I thought, she probably
lives
in a place like this. God, when I think of it now . . . I was so naive. But all I knew was my mum’s caravan and my grandparents’ semi in Horsham, because all my friends at school had the same. Not so much the caravan, because my mum—well, let’s just say she wasn’t quite like the other mothers. I didn’t have a dad, for a start. I wasn’t aware of that at first, but then I heard a few remarks and the kids in my class would talk about, oh, my dad did this or that, and I’d think, well, where’s
my
dad? I asked her—I suppose I was about seven—and all she said was, “Oh, you can forget about him, he’s dead.” I don’t know if that was true but it could have been, because I was a war baby. I think a lot of kids like me were given up for adoption, and I don’t really know why I wasn’t, but it might explain why I often had a feeling of being on probation, if you know what I mean. I remember once my grandma told me about shopping in the olden days, how you could get things “on approval”—I don’t mean like a leg of lamb, but a dress or a hat or something—and then if you didn’t like it, you could take it back. I thought it was sad for the things if people didn’t want them and they had to go back to the shop—well, I was only little—but I think it was because of feeling a bit like that about myself.

My mum’s always been a difficult person. She prefers living alone and she likes animals better than people—including me—so most of the time I stayed with Granddad and Grandma. Mum didn’t get on with them, so when I was born Granddad bought a field and put a caravan in the middle of it and she moved in there . . . he couldn’t afford to get her a house and anyway, she wanted the grass because she had a sheep and a goat. Not for milk or anything, they were her pets. The goat had a collar and lead and she used to take it for walks up and down the lane. I think that’s one of my earliest memories, picking flowers and trying to stop Maisy eating them . . . that and lying in bed in the caravan and listening to the rain on the roof.

A lot of people thought Mum was off her head. There’d be the odd funny remark about me not being born on the right side of the blanket, but my granddad was the stationmaster and everyone liked him so it was more a case of “Poor old Mr. Conway, his daughter’s a bit peculiar,” and wondering behind their hands if I’d go the same way. I can’t say Granddad was thrilled when I told him what job I’d got. I hadn’t gone to live in London with the intention of becoming a bunny—just as well, because if I’d told him that he’d probably have locked me in my bedroom for good. One of my friends showed me this ad for the club in
The Stage,
and she said she was going for the audition and asked me to come with her, and I thought, why not? I only did it for a giggle, but she’d told me the money was good and on the way there I started thinking, maybe I could do this, because I’d done a bit of waitressing, you know. . . . But when we got inside the door there was this stunning girl there—just gorgeous—and I said, “Well, if they all look like that, we might as well turn round and go home,” but my friend said, “Oh, rubbish,” and pushed me in front of her. . . .

I don’t remember much about it—you had to wear a swimsuit, and there was an interview, and that was about it, really. But I remember next time I went to see Granddad, I was on the train and all I could think of was, how on earth am I going to tell him? Like I said, he wasn’t exactly delighted—in his mind, the club was some sort of bordello, and nothing I said could persuade him it wasn’t. I think that was mainly because of Mum—the shame of having a baby when you weren’t married, and he was bothered about it happening to me, but in the end he said, “Well, if you’re happy . . .” Which was quite progressive of him, really, because I know he used to worry about me. He never wanted to know anything about my work. The only question he ever asked me was whether I’d remembered to look at my pay packet to check they’d given me the right money. I never dared tell him I was making more in tips than I got in wages. . . .

He didn’t tell any of the neighbours, either. The first time I came back to visit I was determined to show him how well I was doing and that I was looking after myself. So I got dressed up in all my new clothes—showing off, really—and put my face on. I’d hardly worn makeup at home—Horsham not being exactly the height of sophistication—but I’d been getting tips from the other girls, watching how they did it, and of course it was a very made-up look then, very artificial . . . Anyway, I went to Granddad’s house and walked up the front path dressed to the nines, and I was standing in the porch feeling like the cat’s whiskers when I heard “Will you look at that? Now we know what
she
does in London . . .” and it was Mrs. O’Shea and Mrs. Cooper from up the road. Granddad almost pulled my arm off dragging me inside. “What have you done to yourself? Talk about the dog’s dinner.” I felt about an inch high, but I wanted him to see that I was still the same person so I said I’d come down to his allotment and give him a hand like I used to when I was little. I didn’t have anything to protect my dress so Granddad wrapped a bit of sacking round me but it must have been dirty because when I took it off there was mud all down my front. My grandma was clucking over it—“Why did you let her do that, Bert? She’s spoilt her new frock—they don’t grow on trees, you know!” as if I was about six, but Granddad just winked at me and said, “Well, it looks better like that, if you ask me,” because it was from one of those boutiques in the King’s Road, all swirly and garish, so the mud toned it down a bit. I suddenly thought, you old . . .
whatever,
you did it on purpose. I suppose I should have got angry with him, but I was too busy trying not to laugh.