Foetal Attraction (27 page)

Gillian advised her that things could be worse. ‘An elephant’s gestation period is six hundred and forty days.’

‘Why can’t I be a hamster? You know how long hamsters are up the duff? Sixteen lovely days.’

‘Yes, but they give birth to
litters
.’

‘And then get inserted into the rectums of Hollywood homosexuals.’

‘Guppies seem the most sensible creatures in the animal kingdom,’ Gillian concluded. ‘They have their children and then
eat
them.’

When Maddy wasn’t whingeing along these lines or loitering in Sainsbury’s (it was rumoured that if a woman’s waters broke whilst shopping, management donated everything in her trolley) she religiously studied Felicity’s column. It had taken, of late, a decidedly darker turn.

‘
It’s interesting, isn’t it, dear reader, how women don’t tell jokes
,’ began one. ‘
That’s because we marry them
.’

Another was called ‘How to Kill Your Husband’. ‘
No husband is suitable
,’ it read. ‘
Take Robert Browning’s Last Duchess. How could she not have realized that arctic megalomaniac would never be thawed by her warm and winning ways? And Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. Her repertoire of grotesque hubbies is staggering. The same could be said for the gruesome Prince of Wales and his poor Lady Di
…’ She went on to fight the corner for polyandry. Maddy looked it up in a dictionary. It means having several husbands simultaneously.

She knows,
she knows
, thought Maddy.

The following week she reported on the tallest married couple in the world. The woman, from Canada – seven foot, five and a half inches. The bloke, from Kentucky – seven foot, two. They ended in a bloody suicide pact.

She knows. She knows
, thought Maddy.

Felicity’s next instalment was on revenge techniques for philandering husbands or, more worryingly, their mistresses. ‘
Violent crimes committed by women, dear reader, have increased by three hundred and fifty per cent.
Women
’, she wrote, ‘
are no longer willing to remain passive as they are discarded or ill-treated without hitting back
.’ The next paragraph reported on an army major’s respectable wife, who, in a blindly jealous rage, ran over her husband’s lover, by driving over her body four times.

Maddy, knowing all the tricks of the dumped wife’s trade, became paranoid. She put up a sign saying ‘No deliveries of manure/pizza/cement etc. accepted’. She no longer passed under ladders, jay-walked or went out alone at night. She got the phone disconnected so that no one could break in, dial the time in New York and leave the receiver off the hook.

Felicity’s column then began making regular reference to ‘the wonderful Ingrid’, their Norwegian nanny, without whom the household couldn’t function. Then the column disappeared altogether. It was replaced by a cooking segment on beans and their flatulence levels.

Maddy was racked with guilt. Gillian tried to snap her out of it. ‘A girl’s only
gilt
complex, my dear, should be not having enough gold carat in her rings.’ But Maddy’s anxiety was unshakeable. There had been no postcards from Alex. Nor calls. A toupeed zoologist with FF (Fanciability Factor), despite what Maddy saw as bad teeth and questionable muscle tone, appeared on the BBC with a rival nature programme. She rang his Oxford number. Answering machine. She rang his Maida Vale flat. Nothing. The
television
station wouldn’t even take messages. The only time she caught a glimpse of him was illustrating an article in the newspaper. The trouble was it was wrapped around somebody’s else’s fish and chips on the tube. She could only read it by putting a periscope twist into her neck and contorting into the lap of the passenger next to her. Even then all she got was the second half of each sentence. ‘… maimed during a fierce … charging bull elephant and … to death by tsetse flies in …’

Demented with worry, Maddy started tracking down his friends. Most of them were disgustingly rude in that very English way. ‘Frantic now … but
love
to see you.’ ‘Oh,
yes
. Let’s get together soon.’

Sonia, recently returned from superglueing all the fur back on to seal cubs in Antarctica, was now resident in a clinic for people with eating disorders. Maddy tried to pump some information out of her about Alex. But unless he came with a calorie content quota, Sonia wasn’t interested.

‘I’m getting better, though … The doctor’s got me on two different diets.’

Yes, thought Maddy, watching Sonia wolf down the box of chocolates she’d bought in the hospital kiosk, ’cos you can’t get enough to eat on one.

The cause of her hospitalization – her husband – was also invalided. The Socially Aware Popstar had plummeted in the charts. Now when he spoke of his ‘group’ he was referring to his group therapy. To keep
up
with the trendy and much younger Imogen, he had undergone secret silicone implants in his calf muscles, thighs, backside and pectorals. ‘Arnies’ they were called. Maddy studied his broader chest, narrower hips and bulgier arms. He was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a chronic infection in the backside. He’d been making love with Imogen when his bottom had burst. Just exploded.

‘It was a bewdiful arse,’ he lamented. Recalling their last bruising encounter, he seemed only too keen to cooperate under questioning. ‘The quack got just the right curvature in each cheek. It was the bleedin’ friction, wan it? Bloody hell! Three and a half thousand smackers up in smoke!’

When Maddy steered the conversation around to Alex, he became defensive. ‘I’m gunna sue that bastard for damages. All those dreary animal docos and fucking Labour party fund-raisers he made me sit through. If he weren’t such a boring windbag, I wouldn’t have put such wear and tear on the implant, see?’

Imogen, also receiving treatment for burns and lacerations, hadn’t seen Alex either. This was mainly because she only had eyes for her plastic surgeon.

Maddy located Bryce in the Children’s Court, a deflated baby papoose by his side. Despite recent disappointments (their designer child had failed ‘Baby Mensa’) he was still determined to win custody. If only he’d not bothered with a spouse and done what all his
friends
had done: hand-picked a Peruvian peasant’s child. Ripping up a picture of Imogen, he snarled that it was his own fault for going for beauty above brains. ‘It was Alex who introduced me to her,’ Bryce grumbled, in response to Maddy’s enquiries. ‘What I fell in love with were those long, flowing locks. And do you know what? They were fake. Imported from the Third World and woven into her own hair. Isn’t that repulsive? Imagine waking up next to some strange woman’s hair strands on the pillow …’

Maddy was going to suggest he sue for bleach of promise, but registered bleakly that Alex was the only one who’d appreciate the pun.

Humphrey was harder to find. As he had been accused of plagiarizing an entire plot from a little known Bosnian patriot poet, Maddy thought the best bet would be the bondage club Gillian had told her about. After all, he now had a lot to be punished for.

She’d heard of some clubs insisting on a dress code, but this was ridiculous. Cursing, she scrunched herself, with spasms and convulsions, into her rubber tourniquet. Bondage wear, apparently, did not come in maternity sizes. ‘Mutual Aberrations’ was full of middle-aged men and women, cracking whips or crawling, dog-collared, in chains. In contrast to the muscle-rippling, baby-oiled couples writhing and gyrating on various video screens, the real-life patrons looked decidedly pale and weedy. They sat, round-shouldered and knobbly-kneed, at the bar, rubber
G-strings
exposing secret pimples. What was this English obsession with sado-masochism? All Maddy could deduce was that English winters are long and Scrabble and Monopoly do get boring after a while.

She located Humphrey busily licking the dust off a pair of ‘beg-for-it-baby’ high heels strapped to the legs of a leather goddess. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Humphrey. After all, you can’t have all work and no plagiarism … as
Alex
would say.’ Maddy began in what she felt was a subtle segue into her desired topic. Oblivious, the greatest living poet just kept on tonguing leather. Maddy squatted down to his level. ‘Hump, look, I know now is not exactly a good time, but have you seen him? I’m so worried …’

Humphrey retrieved his tongue, cleared his throat of phlegm and surveyed her with a cold, reptilian eye. ‘Emotions bore me. Except my own. And those I keep to myself.’

‘That’s obviously what makes you such a brilliant writer,’ she replied sarcastically.

These weren’t Alex’s real mates at all. They were friends by social compulsion only.

No Alex. No news bulletins. He was an endangered species lost in the concrete jungle of London.

Waxing and Waning

THE ONLY DISTRACTIONS
from Maddy’s manhunt were excursions to the Harvey Nichols beauty salon. The thought of having strangers peering up her privates sustained her in a permanent state of terror. As if preparing for a lover, she kept her pubes trimmed, feet pedicured and legs waxed. In that last month of pregnancy she must have been their most regular client. Even hotter than the wax was the gossip. Since the demise of religion in the Western world, the beauty salon has taken over as confessional. Just like the little black box in church, it’s anonymous – you’re not likely to run into your ‘therapist’ at an artsy-fartsy cocktail party – and intimate. Hey, this woman was waxing your bikini line, ran Maddy’s logic. There ain’t
nothin
’ she don’t know about you! Which is why, as she lay there, stretched out on the slab, slivers of hot wax carving out minuscule airstrips of flesh in her calf foliage, she wasn’t surprised to hear a woman
in
the next cubicle whingeing about her husband.

‘That’s his survival technique. Commit to no one, watch your own backside and then kid about what a rat you are because that will make people think you’re joking.’

Maddy squeezed open one eye and listened intently.

‘But I thought he was one of them new-fangled house-husband types?’ Maddy presumed this to be the therapist speaking, mainly because her sentences were fractured with ‘lift that leg’s, ‘turn over’s and ‘this won’t hurt now’s.

‘House-husband? Hah! The only thing he polishes are his industry awards and Emmys. And that’s just so he can see his reflection in them!’

Maddy sat bolt upright on her bed. ‘Everythin’ all right?’ her own therapist asked.

‘What? Oh yes …’ Maddy shushed her.

‘It’s the success wot does it to ’em. I have so many ladies singin’ the same soddin’ tune. Their marriages are goin’ along fine. Then he makes his money and does a runner. Finito!’

‘Oh no. It wasn’t success that spoiled him, Sharn … He’s always been a bastard.’ Even if it wasn’t Felicity, it might as well be. Maddy had the sinking realization that this same scenario was no doubt being played out in every beauty salon across the city.

‘Anyways, it gives you lots of stuff to write when you start up your column again. Laugh? I used to wet myself readin’ it.’

Maddy heaved herself up on to her feet on the divan and tried to peer over the partition. ‘Hey!’ her beautician complained, a dripping spatula of hot wax in one hand.

‘Well, you reach a certain age and words are all you’ve got left to play with.’ The woman let out a bitter sob. ‘Christ. It can’t be that difficult! Male pelicans remain faithful to their wives. And
they’re
a lower life form.’

‘There, there, love.’

‘Of course he’s been unfaithful right from the start. Do you know where I spent my honeymoon? Thirteen thousand feet up Everest in a single sleeping bag, with a Arriflex camera between us. It had to be kept at blood heat so it wouldn’t mist up in the morning.’

‘You have a good cry. A lot of my ladies do.’

Maddy’s heart was pulsating violently. She slid back on to the divan and crouched on all fours. This pain was because of her. She wanted to dive into the hot vat and wax herself to death.

‘Are you sure he’s having an affair, then? Really sure? How do you know?’

‘Well, getting a dose of a sexually transmitted disease is a fairly reliable clue, wouldn’t you say, Sharn?’

Maddy went cold all over. He’d never told her! ‘Do lie down, love,’ her therapist implored. ‘It’s not the baby, is it?’

‘The worst thing is the embarrassment. I mean, if
he’d
fallen for a cabinet minister or a leading actress or, I don’t know … a Nobel-Prize-winning writer … but this woman is no competition!’

Maddy felt herself sicken in the pit of her stomach.

‘Do you have children, Sharn?’

‘Not bloody likely!’

‘Well, when you do, you’ll know all about the “child monitor”. It’s a wonderful invention. A kind of walkie-talkie which enables you to, say, enjoy dinner downstairs, whilst eavesdropping on the children upstairs. You get quite used to them. Forget they’re on, even. Which is what happened to my husband. I heard him making love to her over the intercom. I could hear them kissing. Can you believe?’

Maddy felt dizzy, the way you do when heavily pregnant. She’d read about this. The blood rushes from your brain and you black out, quite suddenly. ‘Are you okay? Is it labour?’ asked the shocked assistant. The baby started somersaulting. Life was too much. Now she was being kicked from the in
and
the outside.

‘Yes,’ Felicity continued, unaware of the drama being played out in the next cubicle. ‘My husband went off to find himself in the underwear of our Norwegian nanny, Ingrid.’

There was a thump in her chest. It was her heart backfiring. These were the last words Maddy heard as she toppled forwards off the couch and on to the cold linoleum.

If Life is a Bed of Roses, Then What Am I Doing in the Compost?

THERE HAD BEEN
a bomb scare at Clapham Junction. The street, Sellotaped off and silent, was like the end of the world. Maddy, stopping every few minutes to catch her breath, staggered home past the meek, defeated houses – row upon row of tall and tense tenements, cheek to jowl, shoulders hunched against the cold. It was 3.30 and already getting dark. The wan grey light gave the whole of London a washed-out sepia look. She felt she was in a pre-war photograph. The bare trees straggled up the hill, like hairs in an unshaven armpit. Pedestrians, shrunken and cringing, bustled past her. The English, Maddy decided, had no appetite for life. They were on a life diet. And who could blame them. It was a nice place to live – if you happened to be a lemming.