To the Devil - a Diva! (21 page)

‘We were evacuees together,' Karla said at last. She went
hunting for her cigarettes and lighter, then realised that she wouldn't be able to here, where everything was fresh and raw and new. ‘Yes, that long ago. A long, long time. We went to the same family, up in the Lake District. We'd lived in the same street, you see. Known each other all our lives. At that point, in Kendal, it was almost like we were sisters.'

‘Sisters!' Effie was starting to tackle a purple-tinged slab of tuna. It was on a bright green plate.

‘Oh, yes. I don't suppose she put it that way, did she?'

Effie jabbed at her fish. ‘Like I say, she doesn't let much slip, our Sally.'

Karla tossed her beautifully streaked mane of hair. Effie wondered if all of it was real. ‘I was the mucky kid on the street,' Karla explained. ‘Deprived, I suppose they would call it now. Abused, maybe.'

Effie kept a respectful silence, as she would if anyone brought up that curious word ‘abuse'. It was something she had noticed had crept into the language, these past twenty years or so. The word had taken on an increasingly frightening, serious charge and the respectful silence that had to follow its use had to be proportionately intense. You couldn't mess around with words like that. It was something she had heard from people of even her own age: that they could look back on their lives and start thinking and using that word. It seemed to make them feel better somehow.

Karla was going on. This was the next stage, Sally thought grimly. When the person starts telling you the details of their purported abuse. Then you have to measure it up, along with them, against the known scale of historical neglect and maltreatment. And you finish the conversation
by agreeing between yourselves that no life is easy; everyone suffers; there are degrees of different hurts. But Karla was an actress, Effie reminded herself. She'd use her training to elicit even more sympathy than that which Effie was prepared to show.

‘Sally and her mother were both very good to me,' Karla was saying. ‘My own mother was hopeless. When the war finished at last and we were sent back to Salford, I found my mother in a terrible way. She'd always been a drinker, of course. Always running after the men. Before the war she'd been relatively glamorous. There was always a queue of new uncles down our street. She got a name for herself, not that she cared. Well, by the time I was back home from the Lake District I'd grown up quite a bit and suddenly I was the one having to look after her and do for her. The supply of booze and the uncles had started to dry up for her. She had turned into this proper old woman.' Karla laughed and shook her head. ‘God, she was probably twenty years younger than I am now. But she'd never looked after herself. Back then, people didn't look after themselves, did they? Not in the same way. Not like now.'

Effie nodded slowly. She was thinking about the adverts on the telly that had models saying they pampered themselves and titivated themselves all day long. And that you, the viewer, should do just the same. ‘Because I'm worth it,' is what they kept saying. Their endless self-serving mantra that seemed like an excuse, a justification for all their nonsense. No one seemed to quibble with that. Everyone believed that they were worth it too and the thought of that scandalised Effie sometimes. The money and time that people lavished on
themselves. Her own face was burning under its new mask of dear creams.

‘Anyway,' said Karla. ‘We were on the run after that. We went from room to room, boarding house to boarding house. We only ever got places with one room. Shared a bed. Did our laundry in the sink in the corner. We had to climb out of the windows, sometimes. Just to get away from paying the rent we owed. The two of us – shinning down drainpipes! Chucking our cases down into the alley! Sneaking away. Well, we had nothing. And as time went on we couldn't stick each other. We rubbed along so hard and so long we brought out the worst and hated each other.'

‘How terrible.'

‘So that was when I lost touch with Sally. When me and my mother were moving around so much. Flitting. Keeping away from the law. Sally's mother was quite respectable, you see. A nice person. A proper widow woman. And I think she'd have thought we'd gone beyond the pale. Decent people didn't do flits like we did. Decent people stayed in one place. They faced their problems. They didn't have their problems chasing them. I was too ashamed to walk down our street, you see. I couldn't even walk down our original street, where I'd been happiest.' Effie nodded.

‘I think perhaps Sally and her mother might have thought that I'd drifted into the same way as my poor old mum. With the dirty men and the gin and all.'

Effie looked shocked. ‘Would they have assumed that?'

‘Oh, they thought that I was a wild one. They definitely thought that. And I was, but not in the way they suspected. I was full of fire and energy and determination. I was wilful and ambitious. But then, I had to be, didn't I? I had to be if
I wanted to haul myself out of the muck and to become an actress. You can't do that by just staying at home and living the quiet, respectable life. You've got to stick your head over the battlements …'

‘You knew then what you wanted to be?'

Karla smiled. ‘It was like a little voice had told me. Whispered it to me. A little demon on my shoulder, bending in close and hissing. When it came to my ambitions I was on automatic pilot. No question but that I was going with my demon. I knew where I was headed.'

Effie loved to hear about other people's ambitions, even when they hadn't worked out. She found them the most fascinating thing about anyone she met and she was always amazed at how gladly people would discuss them. Karla was turning out to be no exception. This was like being on a chat show. Here was Effie, firing off the questions, and here was Karla being so unguarded. She was opening up complacently as they nibbled at their delicate dishes.

‘So you never saw Sally again after that? After you left your street?'

‘Oh, yes,' Karla nodded slowly. She toyed with her chopsticks, tapping out a little rhythm. ‘I don't know if she'd remember. But we saw each other again when I was about nineteen. Just out of the blue we bumped into each other. We were both having tea at the Midland Hotel …'

‘How glamorous,' Effie smiled.

‘It should have been.'

‘It used to be lovely then,' Effie sighed. ‘When was that, the Fifties? High tea at the Midland …'

‘I really wanted it to be lovely and special,' said Karla. ‘And Sally was the last person I expected to see
sitting there. It was a shock to both of us. Of course, we recognised each other straight away. I was there with a man.' She smirked at the look on Effie's face. ‘It wasn't anything like that. He was a theatrical agent. Piggy, they all called him. He was the first one to show any real interest in me. For the right reasons, I mean. Well, he'd made it plain that I held no interest for him in any other way than professionally, as an actress. So I thought: well, Piggy chum, you'll do for me. So we were having high tea together, to seal the bargain, while the ink dried on the contract we'd both signed. He was going to represent me! He'd seen my promise and would let the whole world know. He'd sworn to make me a star.'

‘It sounds like a film,' Effie said, rather moved.

‘That's exactly how I'd always wanted it to be. Sat there in those grand old chairs, with the waitresses fussing around us and those silver salvers and doilies and the little cakes and fancies … Well, I was Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn and Joan Crawford and oh, everyone, all rolled into one.' Karla was looking into the distance, down the length of the conveyor belt and laughing wistfully at herself.

But she made it, Effie reminded herself. It wasn't just some silly kid's dream. Karla really did eventually become famous as a film actress and now she's a household name. All across the world they know her. Effie herself had seen Karla's name flash up across the screen at the cinema and on the telly, though she'd never admit to watching those kind of late night films. Horror wasn't quite Effie's cup of tea.

‘Piggy even ordered champagne. He wanted to do
things right. It came in a bucket, all frosted up and they had these long-stemmed flutes. First time I ever saw them, and the champagne tasted dry and sweet and grownup and strange and everything I'd imagined it would. It was exploding in my mouth after the first sip and I was determined not to cough or choke or to show myself up in front of Piggy.'

‘Fancy calling him Piggy!' Effie laughed.

‘He was an ugly brute of a man, bless him. Bright ginger hair coming out in tufts everywhere, his ears, his nose. He had this little red Hitler tash and a comb-over. And he'd wear green checky outdoorsy clothes, hunting and fishing type of wear. He'd put on airs to make you think he was posh. I don't think I was ever fooled. But I never doubted that Piggy could get me into the business. I knew he was the real thing.'

‘And Sally was there?'

‘Right at the next table. It was a shock to both of us. There I was, all hell-bent on my success and my future and celebrating and all, and here's this young woman at the next table, doing exactly the same thing. With a young man. Well, I'd already cast a glance in his direction. He was an agreeable, beefy-looking soldier type. I'd had a pang – I admit – of envy. Why did other girls get to hook the good men? And I hadn't paid much attention to the girl that this handsome chap was with. Then I did. And it was her. All grown-up and staring back at me with this funny look all over her face. A look that was like – What right have you got to be here, Katy MacBride?' Karla gave a sudden bark of laughter. ‘It was exactly the look she had on last night, actually. In the bar at the Prince Albert. As if she still
thought I didn't belong there, or anywhere. I was still the mucky kid who'd been dragged up and who lived down the end of her street.'

‘Sally isn't like that …'

‘She is to me, Effie, dear. I'll always, always be muck in her eye.'

Colin had a new friend, too, that Saturday afternoon. But at first he was alarmed.

When he woke up his breath stank, he only had yesterday's clothes with him, and he remembered that his pals had made a show of him in Lance's front room last night. They had left bad-naturedly when it became clear that they'd be leaving without Colin.

He woke up and there was a host of awkward thoughts waiting for him. He vaguely took in the fact of the crisp sheets' luxury and the presence of a warm, heavy, sleeping body lying only inches away. He listened to the oddness of the city sounds just outside the window and he tried to orient himself. But soon enough all the difficult thoughts came rushing up. And then the headache and the swooning dizziness.

He imagined dressing hurriedly in his dirty clothes and setting off for home on the first bus he could find. That's how it would happen. Without even time to wash, and he'd be sitting on the bus with his hair sticking up daft. Everyone who saw him would be thinking: slag. They'd know what he'd been up to, and they would be right. And worse – Lance would be awkward with him forever now. They had done
something Lance would have started to regret the moment it began. Now Colin would be forced to regret it as well. He would be forced by the way Lance would avoid him in future. He'd stay away from Slag! bar. He'd slide his eyes away uncomfortably should they happen to bump into each other again. Ever again. That was it now. Something promising nipped so brusquely, so disastrously, in the bud.

Beside him Lance was beginning to emerge from a heavy sleep. He slept like an animal, all selfish and abandoned, hogging the space and the bedclothes. He had pushed Colin right to the side. Colin had balanced there, in shock, feeling begrudged, cool under a slippery sheet.

He would have to handle this very carefully. When Lance woke up properly he would have to make sure he was tactful. They had ended up doing exactly what Colin had promised only the day before they never would.

‘Oh, hi,' Lance said, coughing and sitting up gently. He'd grown an awful lot of stubble in the night. Suddenly Colin was conscious of the burn of it, all over his body.

‘Hiya,' Colin said and was stuck then. Usually their conversations had a shape. Barboy and customer. Usually at this point they'd be talking about what drink Colin would fix for him. Then some general chitchat about the morning's news. There was a pause now, as if they were both thinking this, and Colin looked at the blue and tastefully pale walls; the muslin billowing softly at the window; the heavily framed prints – Picasso line drawings, quite suggestive.

Lance rolled over the other way, away from him. Colin stared at the hard ridge of muscle down his side as the sheet slipped back. Colin was sitting with his knees drawn up, rather demurely.

‘I'll make some coffee in a bit,' Lance told him, without looking round.

Colin frowned. ‘I think I remember Raf and Vicki leaving. Did they?'

Lance was quiet for a bit. ‘Yeah. I don't know what they came round for anyway. Kids. They weren't too happy with you. Not going with them.'

‘Oh.' Colin looked at Lance's smooth shoulder; the top of his head.

‘Fuck 'em,' Lance said. ‘They're not nice friends for you.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘I just didn't like them,' Lance said, yawning. ‘That Raf is just a sniffy queen. I don't know why you bother with him.'

‘I don't, really,' Colin said, his heart leaping with betrayal.

‘You're better than that,' Lance went on sleepily. ‘You're not just some … little queen, coming up to have a look – at what I've got, and where I live. You're not like that.'

‘I'm not?' Colin was losing his voice. He suddenly felt exposed. What was he supposed to be like? He had expected – and usually was – chucked out on the street by now.

‘No,' said Lance and turned round to look at him. Before Colin knew what was going on he was being hugged hard and aggressively. It was almost a fatherly kind of thing and that made him feel very odd. Then Lance was rolling him around and he was forced to unbend and lie straight again, pulled back into the bed. Lance was pressed against him, pushing against him, and fragments of last night's events were starting to come back to him, bit by bit, as they went about doing them all over again. Like doing them again would convince them, confirm them.

It wasn't like sleeping with anyone else. Colin remembered that much from the thick of last night. The novelty of it all was still rolling around in Colin's head like a penny about to drop, and he could feel it knocking away inside his body like all his joints had come loose. He had been tenderised, sensitised – and maybe a little roughed up.

Right now Lance was lying right over him: all the weight of this older man was pressing him right down and bearing on him hard. It was like having the full brunt of someone's attention on him. A stare that refused to blink away. The torture of an endless Chinese burn. Colin wasn't used to that quality of attention. He knew he was labouring these points to himself as he ran them through his mind. He was too conscious, too panicky, worrying if he was doing the right things. He was too callow, too inexpert with this mature man's practised body.

I'm too used to the teenaged sex I've been having, all through my twenties.

He had only come out at nineteen. Only started doing stuff at twenty. And ‘doing stuff' was how he still thought of it, what he still called it to himself. And he only ever ‘did stuff' sporadically anyway: when he got lucky, or when he got drunk; when randomness, loss of inhibitions or chance collisions in hectic circumstances paid off for him, or forced his hand.

All these encounters were starting to seem slighter than they had even felt at the time. More furtive, less comfortable. Less meant, somehow. A whole lot of games of sardines, murder in the dark, or ping-pong. Lots of squash with mismatched partners. Or maybe that most insultingly simplistic game of
all: ‘Snap!' Maybe that's what all his previous sex had been like. ‘Look! Snap! I've got just the same!'

Was making love with Lance making him retrospectively dismiss his own sex life thus far? So soon? Maybe it was just sleep deprivation, anxiety, hangover. They were conspiring to make everything up till this moment seem utterly useless. This moment with Lance Randall and his perfect, even, TV star teeth nipping gently, playfully down the length of Colin's neck. Making this weird electricity he'd never felt before run round past his ears and over his scalp. He felt the length of Lance's cock nudging under his thigh and he struggled to free one hand and take hold of the famous Randall equipment. He felt it pulsing in his grip and Lance raised his pelvis neatly to let him take a tight hold. It had the girth and heft of a small and frightened animal. Not frightened, Colin thought, gripping harder and starting to stroke him hard: alert, aquiver, preparing to strike.

Lance laughed. ‘What are you doing?' His voice was right in Colin's ear. ‘Don't wank me so fast.'

‘I'm gonna make you come …'

‘You sound like someone awful out of a porno film,' Lance said, and his hand brushed down, knocking Colin's away. ‘We've got time. Don't push it. What's the hurry?'

Colin swallowed his reply as Lance started kissing him again. So what had been the hurry, after all? And what was his problem? Why did it have to be a race?

Colin remembered nights of vague and quite drunken sexual shenanigans, when it seemed that making the other bloke come first was the only object. And not out of any kind of gallantry. It wasn't in order to concentrate on their
pleasure. It was to make them feel that they weren't being short-changed. That they were getting something out of this transaction. It was to stop them regretting it.

And it was as if that were the only way to make them feel or seem vulnerable. That was the truth. As if at last, now that I can see your face above me as you come on me, on my chest and all hot in my face and trickily in my hair – I have managed to solve the puzzle of you. I have managed to fettle you and best you, here in your own bed.

It wasn't like that with Lance. Lance seemed to know that's how it usually was, and he was determined that this would be quite different.

I feel and seem vulnerable, Colin thought. I feel and seem involved. I feel and seem like I'm not thinking about anything but the fact that Lance is kissing me now. And I can respond and not think it through. I could stop thinking altogether if I wanted to. And I won't try too hard to please him. And now what's he doing? And what should I do back?

‘Colin,' said Lance, quite patiently. He was smiling at him, but there was a glimmer of exasperation there, at the back of his eyes. ‘Jesus. Don't you ever relax?'

They had coffee in companionable silence.

Lance threw open all the windows in the living room, letting out the fug of last night's smoke and the wine fumes and the bad moods of the last couple of days. Colin had started to pull on his own, worn clothes and Lance had looked at him appalled. He reached into a drawer and threw him an expensive pair of new pants. Now Colin was sitting on a corner of the settee with his bare legs drawn up, balancing a large coffee bowl in both hands. His knees had
marks of old scars on them. He wished he had something to cover them up.

Lance went to sit on the armchair, away from him, in a kimono-type thing. He was looking at Colin oddly as he sipped his scalding coffee. ‘Well, you did it.'

‘Hm?' Colin knew what he was going to say. All of a sudden, he knew. He swallowed the froth of his coffee too hot and it went down in a boiling lump.

‘All that stuff you've been saying for ages. I knew you were just after … what we've just done.'

‘I really wasn't!' Colin burst out. ‘Really. It just all happened … spontaneously, didn't it? That's how it seemed.'

Lance grinned slowly, ruefully, as if he didn't trust what either of them were saying at all. ‘It seemed to. It was weird. I thought I'd grown out of being impulsive.'

‘Yeah, well.'

‘When we were in the hallway, I just …' Lance shrugged. ‘I just wanted to get you into bed. It seemed the right thing to do.'

‘It was,' Colin smiled back. Then he thought it was incredible, ridiculous, that here they were just grinning at each other across the room. Lance was usually so guarded. So private.

‘It's been a long time,' Lance said, ‘since I've had anyone properly in my life. Anything serious.'

‘Serious? Is that what this is?' Colin laughed. Then he thought: Shit. Lance is looking deadly earnest.

‘Yes, I think it might be. Don't you?'

‘Um,' said Colin. Oh, great. Um. What a brilliant contribution.

Lance was quite straightforward about it. ‘I know my own heart and mind. I'm quite a plain and centred person. And I think I know when I might be falling in love.'

Was he taking the piss? Was this some kind of perverted revenge for his having succumbed to a one night stand? Because that's all it was, surely. Colin wouldn't have dared expect anything else. And now he didn't know what to say.

He felt silly, sat there in a new pair of somebody else's white pants and listening to this. So he didn't say anything at all. He thought – if I close my eyes I'll see all my golden chances passing me by. But this bloke could still be taking the piss and trying to be cruel, couldn't he? He could still be about to laugh in my face and then chuck me out down the fire escape, back down on Canal Street, where I belong. A stab of hurt, there, amongst all the broiling, caffeine-fuelled confusion, as Colin thought: It's always other people's flats that I'm in. Even when I'm at home. Where is my home?

Lance was still looking at him. A clear-eyed stare. Like he was being completely honest with him. Oh, Jesus. ‘I mean it, Colin. You've had quite an effect. Already.'

‘I thought you weren't gay.'

‘I hate that word. It's trivialising. I don't think it means anything, really. I never did. And so I don't think of myself as anything in particular. So I'm not tied to anything. That's how I've always found it best to carry on. I've been with women and I've been with men. I've not really been in love. Didn't really trust anyone. And everyone – I suppose because of the roles I play on the telly – they think I'm a right dirty get.' He laughed. ‘Maybe me and Karla have a lot in common, after all. Mind, she really is a dirty get in real life, believe me.'

Colin's head span around for a bit. Oh, God, and I only
brought Raf and Vicki round because they wanted to use Lance in order to get close to Karla. She's the one they want to see. I was using Lance! Raf was making me do it. That's how it was last night. I was exploiting my slender link to Lance. I never dared hope – I never thought there'd be – anything like this—

Lance was on his feet now, sturdy and determined in the silky kimono. Oh, help, what's he saying now? He came to sit on Colin's settee. He lifted up his hands, all helpless, like he didn't know what to do with them. A dumbshow of exasperation. He slapped his palms down, hard, one on each of Colin's scabby knees. Colin jumped. Those eyes, again. Boring straight into his. Shit. Stop looking at me like that. Suddenly Colin didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Actually, he felt more like crying. What was that about?

‘I feel like the male lead in some old Victorian costume drama,' Lance said. He was sounding husky, for God's sake! He was making himself all emotional. But he was an actor, wasn't he? He could turn this shit on at will, couldn't he? ‘And I'm paying court to some delicate flower of Victorian maidenhood. That's what you bring out in me. That kind of … tenderness. You look pale. And vulnerable.'

‘Like a girl?'

‘Yes. Sort of.'

‘Oh, great!'