The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (24 page)
Read The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl Online
Authors: Belle de Jour
‘Really?’ I say. ‘Well, I’m almost thirty. Don’t you think it’s time I did?’
He sighs. I can hear in his voice, far more clearly than ever before, a note of defeat that was never there when my parents were together. I wonder who this woman is; she’s probably young, and knowing how soft-hearted my father is, she’s probably a mess. Probably using him for money and free babysitting. He deserves so much better. ‘Things between me and your mother have always been complicated, right from the start,’ he says.
‘But you met as kids. You’ve known each other for ever. What’s difficult about that?’
‘Yes, we did,’ he says. ‘And then I didn’t see her for years, until me and her brother were at university together and she came to visit. She was still at school then.’
I knew my parents had married early, when they were both still students. ‘Well, what could possibly have been difficult when you were both so young?’ Thinking about the wringer I’d been through in the last few years, with relationships, with my work, with not being able to be honest to my family – the very people I loved most in the world.
‘I never told you this, honey, and your mother would probably prefer you not know, but she was pregnant when she came to visit. Her brother couldn’t take her to have a termination, so I went with her instead. That was it. We were together after that.’
Oh.
‘Listen, sweetie, I have to go, I’m going out,’ Daddy said. ‘I’ll ring you at home soon.’
And that was it, he was gone.
I walked home slowly via the T-shaped bodega, where I bought a chocolate milk. Why did they never tell me? I thought we knew everything about each other. Scratch that – almost everything. Honesty was always held to be so important at home.
And yet … I could imagine the strain on a young couple. He loves her, she’s pregnant by someone else, someone who won’t even do what is needful, and he has to take care of the mess left afterwards. The mess another man has put her into. Over time, they might get over it. Or they might bury it, it might fester and poison everything. I know that I don’t want to know exactly why they split; knowing this is enough.
I turn round and go back to the phone, ring the Boy, and tell him I love him.
mercredi, le 15 juin
The Boy rang late. He was in a mood. I hate it when he does that; if he doesn’t want to talk to me, why bother calling? I asked him what was wrong.
He sighed. ‘Oh, nothing really. Just reading some things I wrote last year, and …’
His diary. I hadn’t checked it in ages, he’d stopped writing in it about the time I’d phoned and confronted Georgie about his two-timing.
‘Really?’ I said, neutrally. Was he trying to catch me out? I had even now never admitted to finding his blog, only to reading his email.
‘Do you really care about me?’ he asked in his little-boy voice. ‘Really, really?’
‘Oh, you silly,’ I said. ‘What have you written that’s made you so upset?’
I decided not to let on. Best left in the past.
‘Old chunterings from when we didn’t really get along.’ Well, that would be about 90 per cent of the time we’ve been together, I thought.
‘Maybe you should just erase that and let it be, whatever it is,’ I said.
He thought about it. ‘Maybe I should.’
jeudi, le 16 juin
Tomorrow I will be dining in high style with two girls I was at school with, L and Miriam, who is staying with L for the week. In an interesting, if unlikely, turn of events, we have ended up in the same place at the same time with similar taste in food. I am reliably informed of, and suitably excited about, a ‘dessert room’ (for yes, this girl has an insatiable sweet tooth) and promises of much swank. It should be an enjoyable evening.
It’s been so very long since I have had female friends – round about the time we three were at shcool, in fact – that the etiquette of feminine gift-buying is beyond my ken. On the other hand, we have a lot of the same tastes, so how hard can it be? Though perhaps a shared love of boxing matches and Star Trek spin-offs isn’t quite enough to go on. I know lingerie is out, books are too predictable (in another odd coincidence we are all reading Jonathan Strange & Mister Norell at the moment, and it is good), and jewellery smacks of trying too hard.
So it’s out to the shops for me. Life is rough sometimes. Today I had a tub of little sweets from M & S in the post! Courtesy of the Boy, who is patiently (I hope; unlikely) awaiting my return. It was like a whiff of Englishness came through the door. They were slightly melted into a chocolate-and-coconut slurry, but gorgeous.
I wonder if the girls would be interested in a half-eaten clutch of biscuits?
vendredi, le 17 juin
L’s hired a car – not so much a car, really, as a fortress on wheels – and she and Miriam come to collect me. ‘Pardon the smell; my neighbour’s dog was exercising his inner Keith Richards and I spent the afternoon scrubbing doggy vom off the backseat.’ It’s a good hour’s drive to the restaurant. It’s silly, but I’m relieved that at least I dressed appropriately: silk blouse, pencil skirt. Not that these two would hold any sartorial misstep against me. They knew me in glasses.
I’ve not been to the city since arriving here, apart from going to and from the airport. It’s much more modern than I expect, with lots of new buildings going up, plenty of large pastel flats, built in a vaguely Spanish style. L nods; says this is the good part of the city. I wouldn’t want to see some of the rest.
The restaurant is indeed swank. A driver whisks the car away and we enter. L, who studied languages before acting and law, confirms our reservations in flawless Spanish. I leave it to her to order, then produce their gifts (a silk scarf and A Room of One’s Own for L; a silver necklace and Seneca for Miriam). L and I split a bottle of wine – Miriam is driving us back – then another, and are tiddly before the food even arrives.
‘Would you look at these women,’ L says, slightly louder than I think strictly necessary. ‘Nipped and tucked to within an inch of their lives.’
‘You reckon?’ I say. The women do indeed look almost airbrushed. There are plenty of pretty girls in London, but almost none who look like that.
‘Look at her thighs,’ L hisses as one walks by on the arm of a man three times her age. ‘She’s never done a day’s workout in her life. That’s not meat on her bones. That’s veal.’ Miriam and I laugh into our drinks.
‘Do you think they’re working girls?’ I ask carefully. L and Miriam most emphatically do not know what I used to do.
‘God, no,’ L says, hand to bosom. ‘They wouldn’t dare lower themselves so. More importantly, I don’t think the concept of any hourly work, even sex, would agree with them. But I bet in five years’ time’ – and she nods at another veal hanging off another septuagenarian – ‘she’ll be what we like to call a professional widow.’
‘Works for some,’ Miriam smirks into her steak.
When the plates are whisked away L asks the silver-haired gent looking after our dining room whether we could see the wine cellar. Now, that’s chutzpah, I think. And he gives us a tour himself before we are shepherded into the dessert room.
L and Miriam share a chocolate-three-ways something or other, but my mind isn’t on sweets. It is on home. I have a glass of their most expensive port instead.
samedi, le 18 juin
Tried to reach A1 again; still no answer. Gave in and rang the Boy instead. The pickings at home must be slim for him because he’s gone all needy.
‘You never say you love me,’ he whined.
‘If you say it too much, it loses all meaning,’ I said.
‘You never loved me as much as you loved him,’ he said, and I know whom he meant, the one before him.
‘That’s not true,’ I said. What I had fallen in love with was an image, a cipher; the man I had wanted to spend the rest of my life with never existed. It was true that I went on missing that work of fiction for ages. Still do at times. But I would never have him back, because the person I fell in love with never existed.
‘It is,’ the Boy said. ‘He broke your heart.’
‘Why, is that something you aspire to?’ I said. Men are so odd. The other one, I should have seen it coming. He kept quiet when he should have spoken, said things I recognised only in retrospect for the idiocies they were.
Once, when visiting up North, that man and I were meeting my friends. Naturally curious, A2 asked where he was from. He wasn’t sharp enough to spot the trap being laid, so when he replied with ‘London-ish’, someone else asked where exactly. He said St Albans. My friend laughed derisively; he was from Luton. Neither of them was from London at all. My lover had been caught out in a lie that was conceited and weak. My friends’ opinion of my judgment slipped precariously after that, but I attributed the fault to myself, not him. I was under a spell.
But I know no matter what happens, I could hate the Boy and would still love him because I know he is real. I know his faults and want him just the same. He knows mine and wouldn’t walk away just because I’m not perfect, unlike that other man, whose first argument with me was also the last. I know the Boy could ride out the gales as well as the glass.
I repeated the question. The Boy hesitated. ‘No, I want us to live together. I want to love you when you’re fat and old.’
‘That’s why you’re with me and he’s not,’ I said, softly. I hoped he read the implicit love in my voice. I can’t bring myself to say the word often. It should mean more than a drunken text. I hoped someday he’d understand that.
dimanche, le 19 juin
Spotted A4 online.
lundi, le 20 juin
J and his new woman (there’s always a new woman, I’ve decided; no point even learning their names) drove me to the beach. There was a thunderstorm approaching, and as we watched the sky grew darker with bolts of lightning coming closer and closer to shore.
It struck me, the power of what was headed toward us. Talking about it on the way home, we agreed that there is something rather humbling about not being in control – we were talking about the weather, obviously, but meant other things. Feeling a blast of sand and salt on the face as black clouds rolled towards us was frightening and exhilarating. Staying in the thick of something greater than individual humans was (nearly literally) electrifying.
I thought about the past few years, relationships and all that other maudlin rubbish. Change, power, blah blah blah – yes, I’m aware of sounding like a Keane song here – but it really was incredible.
That said, we did drive away as quickly as possible.
mardi, le 21 juin
Just heard from A1. His father, who’d been hovering at the edge of death for years, has passed. I didn’t know what to say. Who does? Can I do anything? Apart from bring your father back to life, I mean?
A1’s father was legendary. He was a big guy, big laugh, strong Eastern European features that belied his anglicised name. He was a Jew, kiddo, but not a reedy, neurotic Woody Allen type. The elder A1 wheeled, dealed and chewed scenery with the best of them. He gave me a lift from one end of the country to the other once, and here I was, a frightened teenager who was sleeping with his too-old-for-me son, and you wouldn’t have known it. Mr A1 chattered and joked the entire way down and gave my mother the eye when we arrived at our destination. He was a class act, a long-lost member of the Rat Pack.
A1 wasn’t raised particularly Jewish – or, in fact, at all. The family joke was that his dad was a Jew, and his mother from some strange Christian cult, so when they married they compromised and went C of E.
Mr A1 had a talent for inappropriate jokes, most of which I found the opportunity to recycle years later when I was entertaining men on an hourly basis. He had known the charms of call girls, too – one of his favourite anecdotes concerned a prostitute.
It was when he was in the army, and he and some friends threw their spare money together to get a girl for an hour. There wasn’t enough time for every lad to have a few minutes with her on his own, so they took her into a men’s toilet and watched as each in turn did the deed.
When it came Mr A1’s turn, he just wanted oral relief. She went down in front of his friends and provided it. Then, with his come still in her mouth she said – and here he would imitate her voice, her mouth full of his seed, a sort of half-gurgle – ‘For another pound I’ll swallow it.’
‘It’s yours now, love,’ Mr A1 said. ‘Do whatever you like.’
If I was ever meant to have a father-in-law, surely this was the man. When A1 and I split I was sad, not just for the end of that relationship, but for losing his family. They saw me here and there, of course; but it wasn’t the same. It’s never the same. You become ancient history to each other, a story to tell the new wife, an anecdote. Like the one-pound-more whore. You hear the old boy laugh somewhere across a room and it feels like you’re still part of that inner circle – but you’re not.
In the last few years, Mr A1’s voice and his laugh were stolen from him. The two-pack-a-day habit he picked up in the war and put down some twenty years later had caught up with him, and eventually the emphysema was so bad he had to be on oxygen all the time. At his son’s wedding we all but carried him around. You could see the look on his face and what it meant, touched though he was to see his son paired off. It was a look that said, I was vital once, I used to be the life of the party, now people just pity the old man.