Acquired Tastes (2 page)

Vanessa eyed the dress then went and sat down beside her mother on the white, king-sized, Louis XV-style bed that occupied most of the floor space in her parent’s bedroom. She gave her mother a little hug. 'Go to the health farm. I can look after myself.'

Her mother looked at her, her eyes suddenly bright and hard. 'That's the one thing a girl should always be able to do, look after herself. My old ma said much the same thing to me - always know the score and never let
anyone
get the better of you, do you hear me? '

Vanessa nodded although she needed no bidding. There had never been a time in her eleven-year-old existence that she not known the score as her mother put it.

Now, as the nun in charge of the dormitory began to call out names and allocate cubicles to the assembled new girls, she bent down and whispered in Alicia’s ear: 'Don't worry, I'll make sure you’re next to me. Just do as I say.'

And for nearly twenty-five years, Alicia had been largely content to do just that. After all, Vanessa was her dearest and oldest friend.

'Sex was always the problem with Jeremy,' Vanessa said, waving the empty wine bottle at a passing waiter who promptly brought a fresh bottle. Alicia put her hand over her glass as the waiter attempted to refill it but Vanessa held hers up impatiently.

'He felt it was his duty to perform once a week, in bed and with the lights out. If I blinked my eyes it was all over. God, he was so predictable.' Vanessa drained her glass. 'When I dared to suggest that there were other ways to do it other than with him on top, he couldn't get it up for weeks.' She threw back her head and shrieked with laughter.

Alicia shifted uneasily in her chair, aware that Vanessa had regained her audience at the surrounding tables. She decided to try to steer the conversation away from Jeremy.

'How's your job going these days? It always sounds so glamorous.'

'Working in television isn't all a bed of roses you know, although everybody thinks it is,' said Vanessa. 'Sometimes I long for the quiet life like you. No pressures, no rat race, no endlessly trying to prove yourself better than the next man.'

'Oh, but university life has its own pressures,' Alicia said eagerly. 'There's always a lot of competition for any available post, particularly with all the cutbacks. Only the other day …'

'But of course my life does have its compensations,' Vanessa continued, as though Alicia hadn't spoken. 'The money, the people, the way the adrenalin races when you are about to go on air.'

'But what
exactly
is it that you do?' asked Alicia. 'I always keep a look out for your name at the end of programmes, but I must be watching the wrong ones.'

'I'm strictly a back-room boy at the moment, but there are big things in the pipeline,' Vanessa said airily. 'PP and I, that's Philip Pryce of Right Pryce Productions, one of the biggest noises in independent production, PP and I have got some really super ideas that will put us right up there among the major players.'

'So you don't work for the BBC any more? Oh dear, I've been telling everyone that you run one of the departments there, documentaries or something. I get so muddled. It all seems so awfully technical.'

Alicia never seemed to be able to keep up with Vanessa's career. She was accustomed to university life where academic posts were so hard to get, people tended to hang on to them for life, but Vanessa seemed to change jobs every couple of months.

'The BBC was nothing, merely a stepping stone.' Vanessa waved her hand dismissively, with all the authority that her three-month stint as a temporary secretary in the documentary department had given her.

'The independent sector is where it's all happening these days, not that I'd expect you to know that, tucked away from the real world in your cosy little academic nest up there in the Styx. The BBC is a dinosaur and well on its way to extinction. I wouldn't be caught dead working for it anymore. I'm at the heart of the media revolution these days. We're talking satellite, cable, interactive programming, the demand is insatiable.'

Vanessa leaned across the table, stabbing a long magenta-tipped index finger at Alicia to emphasise her point as she grew more excited. 'Its dog eat dog out there, no room for the faint-hearted.'

She reached over and with the same finger, scooped some cream off the top of the cheesecake Alicia was eating. Vanessa had ordered fresh fruit to follow her grilled sole and green salad with no dressing, but she had insisted Alicia order from the dessert trolley. After all, Alicia never seemed bothered about the way she looked and it showed. She was beginning to look positively middle-aged thought Vanessa as she caught sight of her own reflection in a mirror opposite. She smiled. No one could possibly believe that she was thirty-six and nearly a year older than Alicia. She looked at least ten years younger.

Alicia closed her eyes as she savoured a spoonful of cheesecake. It was really rather good. She swallowed and looked across at her friend. 'Gosh, your world seems such an awfully long way from my little concerns over finishing research papers and preparing tutorials, although Fergus says that I am much too conscientious and work far too hard.' A hint of colour came into her cheeks.

'Fergus?' Vanessa looked away from the mirror; she could scent sex at twenty paces. 'Who's Fergus?'

'Dr Fergus Archibald,' Alicia said proudly, 'is a lecturer in the Psychology Department at Heartlands University. He should have been departmental head, but there are certain people …' she lowered her voice and looked around as though 'they' might be hiding somewhere in the restaurant, 'who are jealous of his brilliant mind.'

Vanessa waved a hand dismissively at what were, to her, matters of little import. 'Are you and him …?'

The unspoken word trailed in the air like a blazing comet.

'Vanessa,' Alicia protested, flushing deep red.

'Well, don't you think it's about time you got laid? They don't give prizes for saving it, you know, and Prince Charmings are at the top of the endangered species list. So,' demanded Vanessa scooping another helping of cream, 'is this Fergus person the one …?'

Alicia scooped up another spoonful of cheesecake. It was double chocolate cheesecake and well worth its name. 'It's a bit too early to say. I've only known him two terms.'

'And you haven't been to bed with him! Is he queer or something? You do have a way of picking them, Alicia.'

Vanessa's reference to an earlier disastrous crush that she had formed on a fellow scholar of dubious sexuality, caused Alicia to bridle.

'Fergus is very masculine,' she burst out. It was a rare act of defiance and quickly recanted. She lowered her eyes, 'It's not him, it's me. I'm not like you, Vanessa. You've always been so confident about, well… men and things.'

By 'things', Alicia meant sex. Something Vanessa had been aware of from the moment her mother had dressed her in pink satin and lace, strapped her plump little toddler's feet into silver patent leather shoes and urged her to smile and 'ask daddy nicely'.

Vanessa had needed little further bidding and quickly learned that daddy wasn't the only male who, for the price of a smile or a girlish kiss, would press whatever it was she wanted into her outstretched hands. Being sent to St Aloysius had temporarily denied her the requisite males on whom to try out her rapidly maturing charms, but Vanessa had soon found that girlish adoration could be quite as heady.

In the hothouse atmosphere of a girls' boarding school, matters bodily and sexual counted more than academic diligence, which was just as well for Vanessa. For while she was a walking encyclopaedia on the former, she would have come near the bottom on the latter if not for Alicia's willingness to 'help' her with her homework and sit next to her during exams.

While the rest of the Upper Fourth greeted the changes wrought on their bodies by the sudden rush of hormones like an ancient Greek chorus, plucking helplessly at the unwelcome flesh on their thighs, keening at the eruption of pimples, and hiding their faces with shame as they were forced to deal monthly with a part of their bodies that hitherto they had been taught to pretend didn't exist, Vanessa watched, untouched by angst as her olive-toned skin remained unfairly clear, and her body grew long and sleek. And with the confidence born of having started her periods first, Vanessa confidently predicted that she would be the first to wear a bra.

But for once, her confidence was unfounded.

No matter how much she thrust out her chest, or how many times she swung her arms backwards and forwards, silently chanting 'I must, I must improve my bust' in the privacy of her cubicle at night, the rosebud-trimmed cups of Vanessa's Modern Miss bra remained resolutely unfilled.

Meanwhile, in her cubicle next door, Alicia sat hugging herself in silent misery as her breasts not so much budded as sprouted alarmingly. Whilst mindful that some female saints who had prayed to be relieved of their femininity so as to avoid unwelcome suitors had woken up to find themselves with luxuriant beards, she, too, prayed for a miracle. But even attending early morning mass on twenty-seven successive days failed to have any effect on the pronounced and unwelcome change in her anatomy.

Up until their unwanted appearance, Alicia had happily managed to survive largely unnoticed. While consistently in the top three students in her year, she had never sought popularity or friendship other than with Vanessa.

Vanessa had lots of other friends but Alicia never felt jealous. In fact, she was rather proud that she had a friend who was so popular and when Vanessa needed help with schoolwork, Alicia was only too happy to help. She felt that in some way it repaid Vanessa for being her friend and she had much to be thankful for - helping Vanessa had made her consider teaching as a vocation, something she might not have otherwise considered.

But while Alicia felt no jealousy of Vanessa, Vanessa’s jealousy of Alicia's growing breasts almost brought an end to their friendship. Vanessa considered them a personal affront, as did their housemistress, Sister Mary, who considered them unbecoming in a young lady in her charge.

Unfortunately, Sister Mary's disapproval had no more effect on the size of the offending breasts than Alicia's prayers, and so it was that one Sunday morning after mass, an embarrassed Alicia found herself standing in front of the thin-lipped triumvirate of Reverend Mother, Sister Mary and Sister Gertrude. They gazed sternly at the buttons on the front of her blouse, which steadfastly refused to stay done up. Tears of shame pricked Alicia's eyes and she had clenched her fists and willed herself not to cry.

Reverend Mother had peered over the top of her half moon glasses. 'Perhaps we ought to leave it in the hands of her mother, a letter …?' Her tone was patient although tinged with asperity.

She liked to keep Sunday morning audiences for matters of a moral or a spiritual nature, it seemed only right and fitting. Alicia Binn's breasts were of a distinctly temporal nature and well within the province of a housemistress to resolve.

Sister Mary's nostrils flared, 'Her mother is in Singapore.' She enunciated the words like an accusation of a dereliction of duty.

Reverend Mother let out a little 'Ah' and sat down behind her desk. She fingered the crucifix around her neck for a few moments and then looked up at Sister Gertrude, whose chief duty was the supervision of habits for the nuns and school uniforms for the girls.

'I think we should pray for guidance,' suggested Sister Gertrude brightly.

Sister Mary gave the older nun a look that was less than charitable, but joined Reverend Mother in lowering her head.

Alicia screwed up her eyes and clasped her hands tightly together. Perhaps praying in the presence of three holy women might help as her own prayers had not worked so far. She had even added a rosary to her already lengthy nightly prayers, and had taken to saying them kneeling, bare-kneed on the hard and splinter-ridden dormitory floor, rather than lying in bed, offering up her discomfort as a sacrifice to God if he would only grant her wish to be flat-chested again.

With a loud, 'Amen', Sister Gertrude finished. 'I always find a little prayer to St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes, helps,' she beamed.

Sister Mary gestured impatiently at Alicia's still-tumescent chest. 'What we need, Mother Mary Gertrude, is a practical solution. I won't have one of my girls making such a vulgar display of herself.'

Alicia miserably pulled her cardigan across her front and tried unsuccessfully to button it up.

'The Upper Fourth needlework project,' Sister Gertrude announced triumphantly. 'We'll make liberty bodices this term. It's the sort of thing which will be useful for all the girls when their time comes. There's always a solution if you look in the right place.' She smiled sweetly at Sister Mary. St Jude had been vindicated yet again.

'Praise be to God, Mother Mary, let this be a lesson to us all. The power of prayer succeeds where mere human endeavours fail.' Reverend Mother held up her hands as though in benediction, but it was also a sign that they were all dismissed.

'The Lord sends us trials so that we can overcome them,' intoned Sister Gertrude.

'Amen to that,' Sister Mary added, as she took Alicia by the shoulder and marched her out of the room.

Unfortunately, neither the Lord nor St Jude had allowed for the Upper Fourth's needlework skills. They took up the challenge of making a bodice with considerably more imagination than expertise and the resulting garment bore little resemblance to the portion of Alicia's anatomy that it was meant to confine and minimise.

However, the misshapen bodices restored Vanessa's equanimity and, as she explained to a mortified Alicia, it was a well-known fact that large breasts were distinctly common - no man from the right sort of background liked them.

Although one of the kindly younger nuns later took Alicia on a shopping expedition, which resulted in the purchase of some suitably supportive, although depressingly ugly bras, the whole episode confirmed publicly, and humiliatingly, Alicia's private opinion of herself - she was fat and unattractive and would never be any different.