Altar Ego (17 page)

Celestia turned down the offer of Devils On Horseback, pronouncing herself a ‘free-fall vegetarian’.

‘And what pray tell is that?’ I asked haughtily.

‘She only eats vegetables an’ fruit that have fallen to the earth,’ Rotty said with counterfeit sincerity, ‘an’ not been cruelly plucked from branches. Ain’t that right, sweet-cheeks?’

‘And no meat of course,’ she purred.

‘Oh? So I suppose blow jobs are out of the question?’ I said viciously.

Zack’s fleshy lips tangoed across his face, settling into a wicked grin.

‘Zachary had no complaints the other night,’ Rotterman mentioned, as if in passing.

I reeled around to hiss at Zack – ‘You’ve
slept
with her?’

‘Well, you sleep with the
husband
, doan ’cha?’

‘That’s different. Why would you sleep with a … a … groupie?’

Zack shrugged. ‘Because I can.’

And would again if I didn’t move fast.

‘Does “hubby” know you’re here? snarled Rotterman poisonously.

‘Zack, can we get out of here?’

‘There’s my dressin’ room,’ he pointed behind him. ‘Come on in for coffee.’

Inside the poky little cupboard, he turned, leant down and kissed my inner thigh. Just once. It was then that the final G-string of restraint slipped nonchalantly to the floor.

The kettle didn’t stand a chance.

17
The Fountain Of Age

‘
SOMETHING AWFUL HAS
happened,’ I confessed as we piled into Anouska’s car an hour or so later.

‘You saw your bum from the back?’ guessed Anouska, leaving the car park on two wheels and careering through an orange light (Amber is an ‘It Girl Green’.)

‘Well, not
awful
exactly. Amazing. Something amazing has happened.’

‘You’ve had an Elvis Visitation?’ asked Kate facetiously.

I flicked down the sun visor to gauge her reaction in the make-up mirror. I took a deep breath. ‘Zachary has asked me to move in with him.’

Kate guffawed. ‘Oh, lemme guess. Was this just right before he screwed you?’

‘How did you know I …’

‘And now you think you’ve been struck by love’s arrow …’

‘Javelin more like it,’ Anouska snorted, hitting first the steering wheel with her palm and then, more alarmingly, the kerbstone with the car.

‘Annie! For God’s sake! … At first I kidded myself that it was just sex. Zack kept saying he loved me, but I never said it back. I thought if I didn’t say it out loud, I’d be okay. But now I can’t keep him out of my bed
or
my head. I … I think I do love him … Yes. That’s what’s awful.’

Kate guffawed again. ‘That’s what I like about you, you big dag. Your undies are always thinking.’

‘I mean it, Kate.’

‘I’m sorry, but people do not consummate “love” against a wall in a back alley of Wembley Stadium.’

‘How do you
know
?’ asked Anouska anxiously, glancing over at me. ‘That you’re in love, I mean?’

‘Will you keep your goddamn eyes on the …’ We caromed off the bumper of a parked car. ‘I don’t know. Love is like an orgasm,’ I said. ‘Hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it.’

‘You’re “in lust”, Becky, that’s all.’ Kate flicked my head. ‘You
always
fall in lust. The euphoria span usually lasts what? One to two months tops … Or until you meet his younger brother.’

‘I’m thinking of leaving Julian.’

Anouska veered off the road altogether, collecting a post box en route.

Kate thumped her hand on Anouska’s headrest. ‘Pull over, you big dickhead. Pronto. Okay,’ she said, once the car had screeched to a halt on a double-yellow line, ‘it’s official. Your brain has been surgically replaced by your G spot.’

‘I know it’s insane, but we just seem somehow … I dunno. Fated.’

‘Oh yes. It’s fate that forced you to fuck behind your husband’s back. Then hey presto. Two houses you can’t sell, two vacuum cleaners that don’t work and his drummer moulting all over your mother at the wedding reception.’

‘I think it’s kind of romantic …’ Anouska sniffled.

‘Romance is a foolish bloody longing for life without mortgages and dentists. Romance is love without real life attached. What women need is equality, not romance.’

I ran a tongue over the lovebites on my lower lip. ‘Kate, I want him so bad I can feel it.’

‘… and lust is a low-down rotten trick played on us by Mother Nature to assure the continuation of the bloody species. It’s hormonal hives. Curable only by a good dose of common bloody sense. Now go and get us some coffee,’ she ordered Anouska. ‘… And one penis-on-rye, for the cradle-snatcher, here.’ She hooked a thumb in my direction.

‘It’s not just sex,’ I told Kate. ‘He makes me feel, I dunno, brand new.’

‘What the hell are you? An electrical appliance?’

‘He makes me feel young, Kate.’

‘Couldn’t you just opt for a face cream? Or get breast implants? Or liposuction or something?’

‘I am
not
having a mid-life crisis.’

‘Bullshit. You want to trade in your old life for a new one, and
that’s
a “midlife”. If you were a man you’d be dying your chest hair or doing some red Ferrari thing. For God’s sake, Becky, why don’t you try acting like an adult? … Which ain’t going to be easy in that bloody outfit.’

‘He loves my laugh. He says it’s like a smile that burst.’

‘God, how nauseating. Can’t you see that it’s the secrecy and stuff which makes it exciting? What happens when that high voltage of sexual passion fizzes out? I mean, do you really want to share a toilet brush with this bloke? … Besides, how will you find the shoes to match your colostomy bag? I don’t think Gucci do a range of colostomy bags, do they, Anouska?’ she asked as two leaking Styrofoam cups of cappuccino passed through the window.

‘It’s a bit Freudian, doll,’ Anouska commented, squeezing back behind the wheel.

‘What?’ I blew on my coffee.

‘It’s obvious. Didn’t his mummy die when he was young?’

‘Oh. Oh.’ I put my hands up to cover my face as though reliving our recent car crash. ‘I see. Of course, there has to be some distasteful psychological reason
for
a younger man to become involved with an older woman,’ I snapped through foamy lips. ‘Well, swap the genders for a second – thirty-two-year-old man runs off with twenty-two-year-old woman and the tolerance level instantly rises, am I right?’

‘Running off?’ Kate’s coffee sprayed out of her mouth. ‘You’re seriously considering leaving Julian for this bit of … arm candy?’

‘But
you’re
the one who told me not to get married!’

‘Yeah, yeah. But I definitely think marriage is more fun than divorce. You know what this is? It’s a triumph of cunt over IQ. Julian is elegant, articulate, erudite …
Zachary
’s opening conversational gambit is to crush a bloody beer can on his forehead.’

‘Oh that’s rich. Spoken by an Aussie.’

‘He is a Vulgarian, doll.’

‘Big deal. Hell, I’d rather be with Falstaff than Hamlet. At least he knew how to have a good time. Julian can’t have a good time unless it’s scheduled in his diary.’

‘Zack is beautiful, I admit,’ conceded Kate. ‘But you’re much more likely to build a life with a man who wears chunky jumpers than one who leaps about on stage in a genital thong.’

‘I think Julian
is
the right man for you, doll …’

‘Yes, yes,’ I snapped. ‘We all know he’s the right man. But have I had enough
wrong
ones? I want to have some regrets when I’m old, you know? I’m sick
of
Julian’s PC World. I’m sick of unleaded, user-friendly, air-conditioned everythings …’

‘Happiness is learning to be content with what you
don’t
have,’ Kate said sternly.

I clicked on my seat belt. ‘If you feel that way, Kate, then I’m sorry for you, I really am.’

It was then she slapped me. Right across the face.

‘Jesus. What the …?’

‘You told me that if you ever said you were getting serious about Zachary to take you into a dark room and slap you repeatedly until you come to your senses.’ She slapped me again.

‘Will you quit that?’ Coffee sloshed on to the upholstery.

‘Only if you promise to tell Julian. It’s only fair to give him a fighting chance.’

‘Okay. Okay. I will. I have to. Before Rotterman does. As soon as Julian can fit in a conversation between his cocktail party inspections of the Lord Chancellor’s wallpaper in aid of the Educationally Non-gifted and Cross-Dressing Repeat Offenders gala balls …’

‘You’ve got to make up your mind, doll … and fast.’

‘I will.’ Yeah. Easy-peasey … and why didn’t I find a cure for Aids while I was at it?

For the next few days, my mind sort of sat on its hands. This was partly due to the fact that I was numb with shock at the situation I found myself in. Some women play hard to get. Well, I play hard to
want
.
Sure
, I’d been pursued by desirable men before, but
this time I was actually awake
! Two blokes! It was a gift from the Self-Esteem Fairy … Obviously their Frosties had been laced with a strong hallucinogenic. Which meant I’d better act fast, before the effects wore off and I ended up losing them both.

Dog-paddling lengths of the Lido in Parliament Hill – Kate’s favourite pool, despite the urine-count and concentration-camp architecture – I followed Anouska’s pragmatic advice and drew up lists For and Against.

In the looks department, there was no competition. Sartorially they were both about to be arrested by the fashion police (Zack had a penchant for wearing baseball caps. Only spermicide tubes should wear caps. And Julian had his predilection for big, bulky jumpers. Peruvian jumpers that not even a Peruvian would wear). But the body beneath the clothes was a wholly different story. There was Zack’s ‘No Pain, No Gain’ addiction to weight training and then there was Julian’s exercise philosophy of ‘No Pain, No Pain’. Sexually, you guessed it, there was no competition, either. While Jules had the motor skills of a rust-riddled Lada, Zack was the sort of man whose every sperm droplet you could enter individually in a rodeo.

But then there was the brain, I thought, as I dodged a floating Band-Aid. The trouble was, Zachary may have a strong libido, but could he spell it? He probably thought it meant the words in an opera. Except no,
opera
wasn’t exactly in his vocabulary either. Except next to the word ‘soap’. Julian, on the other hand, is a highbrow. Hell. He’s the highest of broweries. The guy’s a poetry-quoting brainiac. Been there, Donne that.

But still, Zack might have a vocabulary the equivalent of mental Novocaine, but believe me, he never put a tongue wrong in bed. The guy may not have any higher education but he had
heaps
of lower. Zack didn’t want to save the globe, he just wanted to trot it. Julian’s idea of living dangerously was to add a dash of whisky to his interminable honey and lemons – because he always has a cold, which he calls ‘the flu’ and which would no doubt develop into double pneumonia by morning. Yes! I thought, flailing around a child astride an inflatable dinosaur in the shallow end, that’s what I wanted! A man who spends money recklessly and not on long-term pension plans.

Although, I ruminated, thinking of my childhood in that poky council flat, there was something to be said for financial security. I mean, Zack might be starting to do well now, but rock stars went through money like women. He’d clear the debts he’d no doubt accumulated, then blow the rest on champagne, guitars, crap oil paintings by art-school chums, indulge in some ridiculous obsessions – Thunderbirds memorabilia or first-edition Monopoly games – then give the rest away, first to drug dealers and then to rehabilitation charities and end up on the dole. I panicked inwardly.

At least Julian does my car tax.

Julian it was then, I informed the wild ducks bobbing, a little bamboozled, around the deep end.

But Christ. You can’t live with a man because he renews your tax disc! Okay, he may check my oil filter, but we would never ever do it standing up backwards in doorways because we couldn’t wait to get home.

All right, all right – I risked death by drifting too near the kamikaze diving board overloaded with Kentish Town yobs – what it all came down to was, which man would be least annoying to live with? As every woman knows, the minimum acceptable Hideous Habit Ratio between cohabiters is invariably about 100 to 1 in the man’s favour. Julian’s Hideous Habits I knew well. His anal retentiveness, for one.
The man hugs his shoe-trees
. I’ve forgotten what he looks like without a thermometer wedged between his teeth. ‘I’m 104!’ Julian, you’re sitting on top of the Aga.’

But wait, I thought, braving the cold communal showers, at least he actually
did
the cooking. And a fair contribution to housework was not something to be swept under the carpet. Zack’s domesticity? Well, the man couldn’t turn down a bed.

Anybody’s.

That was another drawback to living with a rock star. Julian may make Woody Allen look un-neurotic, but at least he wouldn’t join the mile-high club with a total stranger. Even if Zack wasn’t cheating on me, he’d be locking himself into the toilet with his mates
for
a competition of Death by Fart Inhalation. From what I’d glimpsed of Zack’s friends, their idea of a good time is Indoor Football With a Gerbil.

The guy probably only has one clean pair of Y-fronts for those boringly formal occasions that actually require underwear – you know, like rectum surgery. So, on the one hand I had Julian who showered three times a day, and on the other Zack who told me he wouldn’t shower in case it washed the smell of my cunt out of his hair.

Then there was Julian’s tender side – and I don’t mean the legal kind. He loved me, I knew that. Zack was a rock star. And they only loved their guitars, in sickness and in health, till death do they part. Didn’t they? But he’d made up a song about little old me. And it was playing on the radio, making my heart expand like an accordion every time I heard it. And it wasn’t just the tune I couldn’t get out of my head. There was something he’d said about the English being addicted to misery; how if England had a constitution, ‘the pursuit of
misery
’ would be enshrined. Obviously he’d noticed the joyous vivacity of the tube commuter, the exuberant colour and exhibitionism displayed in the wearing of Barbour and tweed, the eager acceptance of newcomers and overwhelming hospitality towards strangers.