The Marriage Diaries Page 14

  “There is here the genius of space,” said Claude Malheurbe, a philosopher who wrote a regular column for Air (it's what you breathe) magazine. He'd recently become fashionable again himself with a book about his travels to war-torn regions, where he'd explain things to the victims of ethnic cleansing or state torture. The cover showed him adopting a crucified pose in front of a tank. He was an old friend of Galatea's and acted as an “ideas consultant” for several of the top architects and design companies, Gisbourne, Packet, and Straube among them. “Brilliantly,” he continued, “we find that the light is on the irrelevant detail, the empty space, the blank wall, the fleck of dust, the vacuum. How often have I said that Nietzsche abhors the vacuum, eh? Ha-ha. Thus, we have shown that that which is irrelevant is vital and that which is thought to be of the essence is irrelevant.”

  One or two of the journalists made a stab at writing some of this down, but most had already moved on to find something more interesting to do—trying to get at Kylie, drinking, putting out their eyes with knitting needles.

  I was with the shop manager, whom I'd known well for several years. She was French but spoke English so perfectly she could have been Danish. She dressed in that immaculately dull way that only the French can do, and it was exactly right for a shop manager. When you shop, you don't want to be outdone by the staff, but nor do you want to be fussed over by crusties. You want sharp, clean, efficient, invisible.

  “What do you think, Julie?” I asked.

  “About the party?”

  “About the shop.”

  “Why, I think it is absurd. But I am a manageress and not a designer or a philosopher of space. We will see. I expect that we will get in some more lighting when the fuss is over. Are you enjoying the party?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “Seems to be fun.” I was nervous. Ludo was supposed to be coming with Katie. I'd tried to talk Sean into staying at home. I even faked a couple of phone conversations with babysitters: “Oh, you can't make it? What a shame!” But for once, Astrid's liver was up to the job. I tried not to think of her giving Harry a good shake to shut him up so that she could get back to necking her Goth boyfriend.

  However much he complains about them, Sean loves parties. He says it's because he doesn't see anyone all day and so has all this pent-up energy and talk. I think it's more to do with flirting, although leching might be a better word. I dressed him in a reasonably trendy FCUK outfit I'd bought him, so he didn't show me up too badly, and then, as soon as we reached the shop, he went off to bother strangers. He had drunk four bottles of beer as we got ready, so, to use his words, he'd “hit the ground running.” I could hear him laughing at his own jokes somewhere upstairs.

  And then Ludo arrived. Followed by Katie, and then, curiously, a film crew. Or rather, a cameraman holding his own boom mike and a badly dressed redheaded dolly. They barged past Ludo and Katie in the doorway and yelled out “Channel BUY BUY BUY,” as if that was supposed to mean anything to me. But then a couple of the PR people appeared smiling and led them away accompanied by swans. I supposed that TV coverage was precious, even if it was some shitty shopping channel. Katie and I exchanged world-weary glances, and Ludo stuck out his hand, which I shook, laughing.

  “Very formal, Ludo,” said Katie. “Not kissing tonight?”

  “Oh, if I must.” Then he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I could feel from his soft bristles that he hadn't shaved today. As ever, he smelled of harsh soap, and I felt a spasm of desire that almost bent me double.

  “Glad you could make it,” I said at them both. “I was getting—” I just managed to stop myself from saying “bored” in front of Julie. “Let's go and find something to drink—that's if Sean's left anything. Is Penny coming?” Katie usually did the rounds for Penny Moss, but the great lady herself was still generally invited to this sort of thing, especially since becoming a dame, added to her professorship at the London College of Fashion.

  “She threatened to. But she doesn't usually bother these days unless there's at least one other royal present: she likes having her own kind to talk to.”

  After a ten-minute gossip, Katie found herself dragged off by some media acquaintances. “Look after Ludo for me, will you,” she cried over her shoulder.

  Ludo was quiet for a moment, but he looked like he was going to say something, so I shut up.

  “I missed you,” he managed finally.

  “I missed you, too. I thought you were going to call.”

  “I did.”

  I remembered the three empty messages on the answerphone. Bottles washed on the shore with nothing but blank paper inside them.

  “I want to see you again,” he said. He spoke quietly but with an extraordinary tension. He looked older than I remembered. Had he been sleeping? I thought not. I hadn't.

  “When?”

  “It's easy for me. I can do anytime. But for you, … it must be … harder.” Trying not to mention Harry. Trying not to mention Sean.

  “On Saturday aren't you and the other boys coming round to watch football? I was going to go out. If you had to … cancel, we could see each other. Somewhere.”

  “I didn't want to go on Saturday. I like Sean. I didn't want to … I don't like doing this … to him.”

  “Cheer up, you two!” Katie had reappeared. She couldn't have heard anything. “You know, Ludo, you shouldn't come to these things if all you're going to do is drag my friends down into the pit of despond with you. I'm sorry, Celeste. But talking of troublesome spouses …”—then she stopped and blushed, remembering that she and Ludo were not married—“… partners, whatever, I think you ought to go and rein in Sean. What is it with him and spunk?”

  “What? Oh God!”

  I found him upstairs. There was a gang of bemused fashion people and startled swans around him.

  “Don't talk to me about sperm counts,” he was saying. “I'm down to one now, but it's a fucking whopper, this big.” He stretched out his arms. “Wriggles around on the floor like a bastard eel. Contraception for us means hitting the fucker with a tennis racket—yah, yah, yah.” An invisible racket was raised above his head and brought down savagely three times. “But that's nothing compared to what's happening with my cock. I mean, there it was when I was sixteen, straight up like Apollo 11. Then each year, it drops down a degree or two. By thirty, it was at forty-five degrees, and now it's like I'm firing just over the heads of the demonstrators, peeeoum peeeeoum. Another couple of years, and it'll be pointing backward through my legs. Oh, hello. What are you doing here?”

  This last bit was aimed not at me, nor at any of the bemused listeners, but at the girl part of the film crew from BUY BUY BUY. The cameraman had caught most of his monologue.

  “I'm working, stupid. At least I get paid for looking like a fool.”

  How did he know her? He didn't know anybody.

  “Oh, Celeste,” he said, finally noticing me. “Um, this is one of the other mums from the Freudian playgroup. Uma. Uma Thursday. And um, Uma, this is Celeste, my, er, wife.”

  “Your what, sorry?” She said this looking me up and down, like I was some tramp trying to steal her man. Some more swans waded by, interrupting things for a couple of seconds. One smirked at me.

  “Wife.”

  “Wife? Oh, hi.”

  And then she and her cameraman were away, drawing with them most of the members of Sean's group and a flotilla of swans.

  “You've never mentioned her,” I said sweetly, still watching the departing Uma.

  “Oh, you know, she's, like I said, just one of the mothers from the playgroup. She lives up the, er … and we sometimes walk back a bit. Just down the road awhile. I knew she was in TV, but I thought she just did crap bits for some shopping channel.”

  I gave him a look. I tried to fill it with disdain and hauteur, but without giving the impression that I'd read any of his stupid journal.

  “Oh.”

  “Is Ludo here yet?” he asked, pathetically changing the subject.

  �
��Downstairs with Katie.”

  “Thank Christ. Someone normal to talk to.”

  “Coming from a man who's just spent half an hour describing his sperm and various sexual failings, I hardly think ‘normal’ counts as a compliment.” But he was already clumping unsteadily down the dark polished wood of the stairs.

  So, that was the famous Uma Thursday. What did I make of her? It seems appropriate that we start with fashion. She was wearing an overfussy top—a cheap high street take on the boho look—and a flamenco tiered skirt and high black boots. Fringing, beading, a heavy, low-slung belt. It took me a few seconds to work out exactly what was going on. Yes, that was it. She was someone who really didn't give a fuck about fashion, but she knew that other people cared, and so she'd made herself plow through the magazines, checked out what the look was, and then set out to re-create it as cheaply as possible, in the course of a single stroll down Oxford Street. The sort of thing, in fact, that teenage girls do every weekend. But because Uma didn't really give a fuck, everything was just a little wrong. The boots were too low and the skirt too high; the top was trying its hardest, but its origins in a Chinese sweatshop were showing. Contrary to what you might think, I don't really judge people by what they wear. It's just that everyone I know spends time and money on getting the look, and that's the language we speak. Uma Thursday spoke a different language, and it took some understanding.

  And the rest of her? Sean was right about the hair. It was thick and lustrous, just at the place where strawberry blond becomes red. But she hadn't done much with it: it was just there, like one of those big rocks you sometimes see out of a car window, left without purpose in the countryside. Her face was pretty enough as long as it remained in motion, and that it did, because Uma Thursday was forever throwing faces: a smile, a smirk, a frown, a look of quizzical disbelief. Her neck was on the short side, so she tended to swivel her whole body when she spoke. Her fingers were short, and her nails, uncared for. In summary, she was the kind of woman that other women don't quite get—physically, I mean. She had nothing (other than that lustrous hair) that other women covet—the perfect features, the flawless skin, the attenuated figure. And yet. And yet. What was the word that Sean had used? Stunner. That was it. Somehow, despite the flaws and the carelessness, Uma Thursday was a stunner.

  I felt it like the dull ache of a period. But then I sniffed and made the decision not to let Uma Thursday's attractiveness ruin my night.

  Luckily, just then Galatea tipped me the wink, and we halved a slender line on the bench in the changing rooms. After that, I forgot about Sean and his woman, and even, for a time, Ludo, as the party swirled around me. I think I was the first to decide that the swans were, officially, funny. A senior executive from the company, an American who cunningly disguised his heterosexuality with good clothes and pampered skin, continued his two-year attempt at seduction. I'd reached the point where I was prepared to smile when he touched my shoulder, and at this rate, he might eventually get to grope me if he could inch his walker close enough to my bath chair.

  Julie came and rescued me.

  “Why is it,” I asked her, “that I don't ever find Americans sexy?”

  “Because they are not,” she replied simply.

  “Oh yes.”

  And then Claude Malheurbe joined us. He was dressed in Jean Paul Gautier leathers at least a size too small for him. He did a sort of snarl at Julie, and she walked away.

  “Apart from swans, you are the most beautiful animal here,” he said, very close. “But then you English eat swans, is it not so?”

  “Only the queen.”

  “I shall explain the meaning of swans.”

  “Please do.”

  “Above, they are white and serene. But below the water, their legs are black and in frantic motion. This legs is the subconscious, the invisible black force that makes the swan happen. The legs are your sexualitay Are your legs black? Do they work like this, push push push?”

  Before I had the chance to answer, his face collapsed in horror, and he made a kind of whimpering noise. I looked around and saw Ludo striding toward me. When I looked back, Malheurbe had gone.

  “Do you always have that effect on philosophers?”

  Ludo smiled. “I had a run-in with him a couple of years ago.”

  “That was him? Oh, I heard something about that. Didn't he sleep with Katie?”

  “Probably. No, not really. I think he tried to, but she gave him the brush-off.”

  “Not like her. Sorry.” I laughed and covered my mouth with my hand.

  “I've told Sean I can't make Saturday.”

  “Good.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “What about the bar at The Hempel?”

  “The Hempel. But isn't that a hotel? Why … Oh.”

  I don't know why but I panicked, lost my cool.

  “No no no, it's a bar as well. It's really quiet and calming. Just a bar. People can go there just to drink. And talk.”

  I saw Sean and Katie coming up the stairs together. Ludo saw my eyes and said quickly, “Eight o'clock?”

  “Perfect. You know if I didn't have such a high opinion of your taste, Katie, I'd say something was going on between you and my husband.”

  That made everyone laugh.

  SEANJOURNALTHIRTEEN.DOC

  OLD GODS AND ANCIENT RITES

  Had a surprisingly agreeable time at Celeste's big do on Thursday night. I think I was on pretty good form, and I wheeled out one or two of my best routines. Always nice having a new audience. Plus I've never had a bad time at a party where girls were dressed as swans—it's become a kind of talisman with me. Of course, it helped having a couple of friendly faces there: good old Ludo turned up, and Katie. I like Katie. She doesn't have to flirt with me, and I know that she doesn't fancy me, but she goes through the motions anyway out of sheer generosity of spirit. Ludo looked a bit glum, but he's even worse at those fashion things than I am. I told him straight, “Just look around you, Ludie, there's all the champagne you can drink, plus some weird blue cocktail and high-quality nibbles and girls dressed as swans and Kylie Minogue's panties, and it's all free. So cheer up, you miserable fucker.” He just did a sort of turny-down smile—more a grimace, really—and went back to looking moody.

  Celeste then wasted a lot of what I am sure was valuable networking time talking to him. I sometimes forget about Celeste's nice side, which she does a lot to disguise but which is definitely there. She did look a bit tense, but it was a big night for her. Fashion's an odd world. It seems to run on the opposite of the dictum that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger—that is, that whatever doesn't make you stronger kills you. My point was that there's no standing still, no simple acceptance that what you have is good, that things are really all right. No, everything has to be changed, and changed now.

  Well, what did you expect? That's why it's called fashion, stupid.

  Shame Ludo couldn't get to our pizza-and-football night on Saturday, but Leo and Andy made it. As usual, we largely ignored the game, spinning back to the set whenever something dramatic happened, which wasn't often. Part of the fun had always been when Ludo and Leo, private schoolboys both, fucked up some bit of footie terminology, talking about the post when they meant the bar or confusing a fullback with the center half. That would elicit coruscating forays by me and Andy against all things elitist, effete, and southern, with counterattacking claims from Ludo and Leo that we were either a couple of gormless northern thugs or—and they were quite content with the contradiction—that we had now been assimilated as southern, middle-class poofs ourselves and should therefore fuck right off.

  Without Ludo, we didn't bother going down that path. Instead, Leo had an announcement, made through a mouthful of pepperoni: “Ogeck id pignut.”

  Andrew was first to react, a huge smile creeping across his face: “Did you say what I thought you said?”

  Leo swallowed. “I said, ‘Ogeck id pignut.’ ”

  “That's what I th
ought you said. Fucking well done, you mad bastard. How is she?”

  “Bit shocked, but pleased as punch.”

  There was much backslapping, and I ran down to Thresher's to get a bottle of whatever shit champagne they had in the cooler. We drank it splashed onto the dregs in our beer glasses.

  “You're in for some several years of hell, you know,” I said.

  “Yeah, I've heard you moaning about it enough to know that it's tough. But you were fool enough to volunteer to do the mothering. Odette's mad keen on all that. She's read all the books, watched the videos, tested her recipes for mushed-up carrots and peas. We're ready.”

  “Ready for two hours’ sleep a night?”

  “You forget, I'm a tortured intellectual. I haven't had two hours’ sleep a night since I was twelve.”

  “It'll be great,” said Andy. “A little Leo. Or Leonia. Or Leonella, or whatever you'll call it.”

  Right on cue, Harry appeared. That shouldn't have been possible. He must have pole-vaulted out of his cot using his toy giraffe.

  “Milk,” he said, and then, looking forlornly around, “Mommy.” His blond hair was sticking up in all directions, and his Lion King pajama top had rucked up, revealing his potbelly. He looked like he had a gallon of piss in his diaper.

  “Hey, little man, Mommy's gone out. Come cuddle Daddy.”

  “Want Mommy.”

  “See what I mean?” I said to Leo. “All that work I put in, and he still hates me.”

  He started to cry. (Harry, not Leo.) I made him some milk and changed his diaper in front of the TV, while Leo looked on, fascinated. Andrew was scared stiff of Harry and watched the game with a new intensity. After ten minutes of cuddling, I put the boy back to bed. I saw that the side of the cot was down—that was how he'd escaped. Celeste must have bent to kiss before she left and forgot to slide it back up. Naughty girl.