Before and After (5 page)

I
managed to convey that her social blunder had gone unnoticed.

“Kensington.”
I corrected her considerately.

Sylvia’s
eyes boggled. I smiled kindly at her marvelling
not
for the first time that the magic of royalty still works amongst the variegated classes of this small grey island. Breathing the word of the aristocracy is like unleashing a hidden password, or uncovering the secret to Aladdin’s lamp. Abracadabra. And we’re off.

Marmaduke
sat by my leg pressing his warm living flesh into my own. I stroked his head and wondered if the memory of the salt beef was still lingering in his canine mind. What
do
dogs think about all day?

I
was brought back from a childhood enduring wish that dogs were able to read by Bella.

“Flora,
what do you think?”

I
snapped back to attention.

“Sorry
Bella, I was miles away, what was it you said?” I said smiling at the sight of her undeniably pretty yet podgy face with butter smears on her chin.

“The
house, what are we going to do to the house?” she said insistently, looking thrilled yet scared as to what Archie was going have to say about all of this.

I
paused before I answered. I heard footsteps in the hallway and guessed that it was Hal. I needed him on my side, and wondered if I could talk to him privately, but no. The door swung open and the rumpled, devastatingly attractive golden youth entered the room. I guessed that he’d had a troubled night.

He
smiled shyly at me, and self-consciously rubbed his bed tousled hair. His mother pushed the toast towards him, and his sister the marmalade.

“Has
Pa gone?” he asked.

“Long
ago darling,” Sylvia answered. “You know he likes to leave here early on a Friday.”

I
wanted to know why. Was there some arcane gathering of Zurich gnomes that met early on a Friday morning in Threadneedle Street to sort out the world’s finances? Or did Archie have a cabal with other bankers in the privacy of a steaming Turkish bath somewhere along the tree lined streets of the Gentleman’s clubs? I raised my eyebrows in a polite manner towards Sylvia, inviting her to explain to me. The moment passed however as the chiming of the front door told me that the team of decorators had arrived.

Marmaduke
dragged himself away from my side and dutifully made a noise in the hallway whilst Maria skittered past him to answer the door. Soon we were all seated in the living room.

Hal
and Bella flanked me, whilst Sylvia sat on a cherry wood chair, her hands listlessly still in her lap. She darted glances of anxiety towards the designer - a middle aged homosexual called John Taylor - which managed to convey a certain helplessness combined with the knowledge that she wasn’t worthy of all this attention. The team of dungaree clad painters lounged against the wall eyeing up their new territory.

“This
is all so sudden,” Sylvia managed to blurt out, one hand convulsively clutching her throat. “I don’t really know if –“

“We
understand,” John Taylor said soothingly, “But when Miss Tate called, we immediately
sprang
into action. Now then, may I suggest you have a quick peek at a few magazines and storyboards that I’ve brought with me to get a feel of what we suggest?” He guided Sylvia towards a table that he had spread his papers out on. “Delicious scent, by the way, Mitsouko? Yes, I thought so…”

I
watched entranced as John Taylor wove his deceit. I estimated that within an hour Sylvia would be his. And I was right. And he didn’t even use the eye drops, but then, I
had
done all the spade work.

The
team of painters were moving furniture and wrapping china and glass. John and Sylvia were sitting on the hall stairs with a colour chart on their laps looking very matey. Bella had attached herself to the youngest of the painters, a rather charming Irishman called Fiachra, which left Hal free to follow me around the ground floor. I’d moved into the music room, sweeping the silver framed photographs off the piano when he caught up with me.

“I
say Flora, isn’t this all going to cost rather a lot?”

I
smiled at him. Really, out of the mouths of babes…

“Yes,
of course. But just think of the result! A beautiful new home, albeit with a period of chaos and irritation.” I said gaily, looking with disinterest at the black and white faces peering at me from the fake art-deco frames.

Hal
looked blankly at me.

“A
pearl is an irritant within the saline silk of an oyster. To be calm in a storm can be a release, Hal. That’s what I am providing here, a shake-up, a move, a jostling of ideas, a new habitat, a change of energy.” I lay my hand on his shoulder. I could feel his young warm flesh leap to reach the touch of my hand.

“Do
you understand?” I said, slowly stroking his back.

He
allowed himself the luxury of staying in my power for as long as his blush took to travel to his face, and then the exquisite feeling of excitement and confusion dragged his body away.

“Um,
yes, I see… well, I think I see,” he added courageously.

“That’s
all that we can ask for Hal. Now then, let’s find a home for these extremely tedious photographs and then I think you and I should go out for the afternoon.”

He
jumped nervously.

I
smiled.

“Well,
John Taylor is taking your mother shopping for a few things. Bella is helping her new friend Fiachra the painter and then I’m sure will do something yeasty with Maria in the kitchen, your father is at work, Maria will undoubtedly be busy making milky sweet tea all day for invading hordes of painters as well as instructing Bella, so you and I have the afternoon all to ourselves.”

A
few glancing memories swept across my mind. Other afternoons, other young men. A jumble of images fought their way through my mind. Silky hair lapping down a smooth almost hairless chest caressed by linen sheets, a slim naked brown torso twisted in a bolt of purple fabric, an open mouth raised to mine revealing milk white puppy teeth, how long ago? How long indeed. Perhaps far too long. But I had to be careful, I reminded myself. Peaking too early was always a danger and then I would have a love sick puppy on my hands. But, then again, the Ambles were proving themselves to be very malleable. Perhaps the timing was right after all?

“Where
are we going?” Hal asked with an air of forced politeness.

I
weighed the possibilities. Could I let myself indulge in the play of the flesh this afternoon? And if so, where?

“Do
you know Mr Isaacs? He lives in Limehouse.” I asked, knowing that Hal couldn’t possibly know that monster of venal intrigue.

“Um,
no, no I don’t,” Hal said, showing that he had been searching his memory by screwing up his brow in concentration.

“But
of
course
you don’t, how could you?” I said.

Rule
Number Five

“
Copulation
is
the
act
of
an
animal
.
Seduction
is
the
art
of
a

woman
.
But
there
is
nothing
to
stop
the
latter
taking
tips
from
the

former
.”

Archie Amble was having a bad day. He’d had an even worse night. He had suffered from acid indigestion, heartburn and insomnia, not to mention acute social unease at the hands of the Elvis impersonator at that ghastly Chinese dive. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had food poisoning. To cap it all off, the spare room that he’d been delegated to had a terribly draughty window that had let in a thin icy breeze that had coagulated somewhere around his left ear.

He
smoothed the pink sheets of the FT spread on his desk and sighed heavily. He sipped at his coffee, noting with distaste that the china cup was not quite clean. With the amount of money that everyone was paid in this financial institution, he thought, there really was no excuse. None. Normally he would have been on the phone complaining and sorting out the problem. But not today. He was too tired. He flicked on his computer and stared at the day’s market leaders. Not good. Another sigh issued from his mouth. He stared at his diary. No inspiration of cheer came from there, either. A round of meetings, a lunch with two senior (but junior to
him
) heads of department where he would be expected to be avuncular yet
wise
and indulge in a glass too many of claret, and an afternoon wrestling with an impenetrable report.

It
was all that bloody woman’s fault. Flora Tate. Who was she anyway? More to the point, how the hell had she ended up in his house, let alone commandeering his bedroom? He knew damn-all about her. What did she
do
exactly? On impulse he googled her.

Nothing,
other than the same articles that Sylvia had shown him earlier.

Well,
some sort of family tree from New England dating from 1822 mentioned a Flora Tate but obviously nothing to do with her. And there was some ridiculous web site about sexual problems that he glanced but cursorily at.

Flora
Tate. Flora Tate. Hmm. Good looking woman, no denying it, no idea where she comes from though. Archie wasn’t used to feeling even the slightest of irritations and the novel sensation confused him. A slight ache in his ear and an itchy warm feeling in his groin made him sigh and groan simultaneously. He had the uncanny feeling that Flora could somehow see the scuttling thoughts in his mind, like mice skittering behind a skirting board, and he didn’t enjoy the sensation at all. He sighed again and tried to concentrate on work.

Ten miles away Sylvia Amble was having a surprisingly hectic day. John Taylor was whizzing her around London in his silver Mercedes, taking her to all the shops that she had only ever seen in colour supplements. He was well known in these elite haunts, and the owners of the shops pressed them to tiny cups of mint tea from Moroccan coloured glasses, or sips of icy vodka from silver thimbles. She learnt more in three hours from John Taylor than she had in years. She now knew where to buy a genuine Tibetan prayer wheel, how to source the finest silk, where to get amber, and what cottaging actually meant. He’d found the time to take her for a coffee in Bar Italia where he had many friends whom he had ignored, preferring instead to sit with her and talk to her about the colours that he dreamt of and the mother he missed. When John Taylor dropped her off outside her brilliantly lit house (brilliantly lit because of the severe wattage that builders use and the bare, curtain-less windows) in the chilly early evening, and roared off giving a cheerful wave, a piece of her heart went with him.

Bella Amble was in heaven. She had made
snitzen
with Maria and distributed the sticky, sweet fruit bread to all and sundry. Fiachra had pronounced it a treat, just like her. He had also confided that the job would take
ages
. Bella lay on her bed after the builders had gone, turning the pages of a cookery book, wondering what delights she could woo her beloved with on Monday. Perhaps by then the spot on her chin would have gone, too.

Jack the gardener spent the afternoon puzzling over the arty photographic book that he had been given. He brought it back to the Ambles along with a stack of ham and pickle sandwiches. He sat, in his garden shed, looking at grainy black and white pictures of other garden sheds and marvelled at the sheer lunacy of the gentry. He should have been sweeping the gravel at the very least, but the weather was cold and grey and the nasty cough he had made the shed seem very attractive.

Maria Kandinsky surreptitiously gathered the remains of the snitzen together in a parcel of silver foil, ready to take to her room where she could nibble on it later. The Ambles would have been horrified at the thought that Maria was underfed, but that wasn’t the case at all. She just liked the feeling of illicit snacking. It helped her to remember the terrible days of hunger that she had endured as a child. And anything that Maria could dredge from her memory of her hard childhood made her happy. She frowned when she thought of Flora Tate, and had a nagging feeling that she had encountered her before, but didn’t know where or when.

The Ambles house had taken on an unaccustomed air of chaos and dust. It was the dust of years ago that had been unleashed with the upheaval of removing the carpets and pictures and heavy furniture, that had, up till now anchored the dust where it was invisible. Step ladders, rolls of plastic sheeting, tins of paint and boxes of tools were stacked neatly enough against the bare walls. Boxes of knick knacks were piled in the hallway. The piano was standing alone and unloved in the middle of the room, leaving Marmaduke bewildered as to where his bed had gone. He eventually settled outside Flora Tate’s room, turning three times on his imaginary long grass, to make a bed.

Meanwhile, over at Limehouse, I was introducing Hal to Mr Isaacs. I felt very sure of myself. I knew how Mr Isaacs looked to Hal, indeed, how he looked to all of us. His voluptuous face was classically proportioned into one of those visages that belonged to the sixteenth century perhaps. He would have been quite at home being a Vatican spy, or perhaps the power behind a doge’s throne in the murkier times of Venice, where loyalty was severely tested and found wanting most of the time. Needless to say, Mr Isaacs and I saw eye to eye over nearly everything.

With
very little talk he ushered us into his Spartan office, and then unlocked the back door, to reveal a damp and chilly courtyard. Hal and I followed him in single file, my heels clicking on the broken paving stones. A few clammy ferns clung to the high sooty brick walls, but otherwise the courtyard was bare. The humming of a large refrigeration unit could be heard, and the twitterings of some brave London sparrows, but that was all, even the traffic noises were muted. Mr Isaacs unpadlocked a sturdy looking wooden door at the end of the courtyard, and stepped back to allow me to enter first. We were in yet another office, but oh how different this one was. A small mahogany desk and an abacus were the only real sign that any commerce went on here. Otherwise it was all red. Plum coloured walls, layer upon layer of Persian rugs, a damson coloured velvet
chaise
longue
, and a vast,
intimidatingly
vast, mirror that only I knew to be a two-way affair. It was like stepping into a nomad chieftain tent on the steppes. An incongruous looking steel door was set in the middle wall of this riot of colour, from which the hum of the motorised unit grew louder.

Mr
Isaacs (we had never been on first name terms, and in this life never would be) motioned for Hal and I sit on the chaise. Of course, sitting on a chaise has never, in all the history of that particular piece of elegant and opulent furniture been an option. One lolls or reclines like a well fed pasha and Hal and I were no exception. I saw that Hal was very silent looking almost frightened. He was, for all his outward polish that comes from good schooling and a polite family, nevertheless a very nervous young man.

“I
say Miss T- Flora, what are we doing here? I mean –“

“Oh,
I am so sorry Hal, haven’t I explained who Mr Isaacs is? He’s my furrier.” I smiled reassuringly at Hal laying a soothing hand on his young warm arm.

He
looked blankly at me.

“He’s
your what?”

Do
they teach them nothing at all at school these days? Honestly.

“I
buy, well,
borrow
perhaps might be a better way of describing it, all my winter furs from here.”

They
were very special sorts of furs too. A long time ago there had been an uprising of British sentimentality about the wearing of furs, culminating in a mass bonfire in Trafalgar Square. Mr Isaacs had been there too. Some think he may have engineered the whole thing. Whatever the truth, and we can be sure that we will never find anything out from clever Mr Isaacs, he was now the owner of the rarest, most luxurious,
furriest
furs in the whole of the British Isles. Mink, Ocelot, Sables, Tiger, Leopard, Bear, Wolf, Ermine, Beaver, Seal, Astrakhan, even the humble sheared sheepskin hung in perfect order in the vast humming cold store behind the steel door. Every hue of pelt from the most midnight of black to the palest of grey, from the living warmth of gold and the boldness of white were waiting in the frosty manufactured air. Hung like immaculate corpses in an abattoir they awaited the soft flesh of a human to inhabit them again. And, before anyone should judge me on the wearing of furs, let me state here and now that yes, it’s a bloody business, and no, these were not new coats. These animals had perished a long time ago. And really, it wasn’t so bloody a business as a butchers really, and oh,
how
we all love our roast beef on this island (even with the outbreak of terrible diseases amongst cattle, the consumption of roast rib of beef has not declined in four hundred years.)

Mr
Isaacs tilted his head and appraised me in an intimate, yet curiously detached manner.

“Hmm,
now then, let me see. As beautiful as ever, Miss Tate, I think your complexion has grown paler perhaps? But the light here is so deceptive… What furs will you be wearing this winter? Let me think now… mink perhaps? Or is that too obvious? We shall see, let me retrieve some for you to try. In private, of course.” He spun the steel wheel on the door and pushed it open, disappearing into the chilly depths.

I
smiled encouragingly at Hal. “Thank you so much for giving up your afternoon to me Hal, I find a man’s opinion
so
helpful in these matters.”

Hal
opened his mouth and closed it again very quickly. I continued quickly, not letting him reflect that he’d had no opportunity to not accompany me.

“And
then there’s the matter of the light, as Mr Isaacs so rightly said. One can never be sure of what one sees oneself in the mirror, don’t you think?”

Hal
nodded, obviously not knowing what I was talking about. And indeed at Hal’s age who can blame him?

I
let the silence descend upon us as we awaited Mr Isaacs’s return, giving Hal the opportunity to take his eyes away from me and wander the room. I saw him glance around, hardly taking in the rare fabrics or the Russian icon that glinted provocatively in the corner, and he settled his gaze upon me again. So be it. I can hardly be held responsible for a young man gawping, can I?

Mr
Isaacs threw a pile of pelts on the floor, for a second or two if one looked quickly it seemed that the pile of furs was alive, and a medley of unsuitable animals was writhing on the unlikely floor of a Persian rug. One blink later and the world turned back into normality.

Mr
Isaacs bowed his way out of the room, avoiding looking into my eyes with the practiced ease of a card sharp. I knew only too well that he would quickly make his way to the room next door and, sitting bolt upright on a hard kitchen chair, would sit transfixed before the two way mirror. There would, no doubt, be a box of tissues at his feet.

I stood up, pushing Hal gently back into his seat. And I began to undress. Sometimes it’s the best bit of the whole day. That first revealment. Oh how I loved it. A frisson of pleasure threaded through me.

“Don’t
worry Hal, I’m not about to seduce you,” I said sweetly to him, to put him at his ease. I saw a glimmer of fear, followed swiftly by disbelief flick over his face. I bit back a smile. Oh the young. How little they know about the pleasuring of the flesh.