Foetal Attraction (7 page)

Gillian had no time for Alex and his ‘Porche-driving Progressives’ who, she said, were about as relevant as a cupboard full of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ T-shirts. She took Maddy on the last fox-hunt of the year. After a day of watching Gillian in hot pursuit of the most prosperous member of the peerage available, it occurred to Maddy that if the ‘Huntsabs’ wanted to prevent the entrapment of defenceless creatures, it was moneyed bachelors who needed protecting. In fact, they needed an Anti-Husband-Hunting League all of their own.

Alex didn’t want to hear about Gillian’s blue ribbon status in sexual dressage. He dismissed her as a woman for whom lunch was a vocation. They were on their way to lunch, themselves, at the home of Sonia
and
the Socially Aware Popstar. As Sonia was an animal activist, he thought it best to keep Maddy’s little fox-hunting excursion to themselves.

Maddy was alarmed to be greeted by a Brazilian Indian with a plate in his bottom lip. Not just a plate. It looked like an entire dinner service in there. Determined to pray to the Tree God, the Brazilian had torn up the backyard rhododendrons to create an igloo-shaped ‘sweat lodge’.

This idea was wholeheartedly embraced by the Socially Aware Popstar, who, it seemed to Maddy, needed little encouragement to strip down to his Calvin Klein posing pouch. Nor was she surprised by Sonia’s enthusiasm. This was, after all, a woman who referred to her house plants as ‘botanical companions’.

Maddy selflessly volunteered to wait for the take-away.

Starkers and goose-pimpled, the entire gathering disappeared into the makeshift hut for the rest of the afternoon, only to emerge now and then, eyes streaming from the smoke, to nosh down a tandoori or two.

At débutante balls, Gillian introduced her to women who seemed to have spent most of their young lives behind oatmeal and yoghurt masks … and were destined to spend the rest of their lives behind Marmaduke-Davenports and Hickson-Smythes. As far as Maddy could figure it, England was one big school;
and
everyone she met with Gillian had been there together.

At one such ball, Maddy found herself a couple of pushy and shovey paparazzi away from Princess Di. There were more Royals than you could shake a sceptre at. In an effort to be friendly, Maddy volunteered to the people at her table that she couldn’t understand all this fuss over a bunch of robber barons who’d blown in with Bill the Conqueror, shoved all the Anglos into feudal concentration camps, then lain around in-breeding for centuries. She was promptly avoided with the same zest as venereal disease.

At an environmental meeting, while Alex was on stage being asked the question people were asking that week about the decline of British peat bogs, a topic rivalling ‘Toenails and How they Grow’ for Maddy’s attention span, Maddy once more set about trying to make friends.

Beside the tray of curling sandwiches and warm wine, an Indonesian dissident lectured her on the destructive implications of ‘borealocentrism’. This, it turned out, was the implicit belief in the superiority of northern hemisphere culture. Maddy, being Australian, was included in the group of the marginalized and dispossessed, oppressed by a dominant culture.

But, Maddy ventured, she liked England. She liked English culture. Her mental geography had been
shaped
by George Eliot, Johnny Rotten, Peter Pan, Monty Python. ‘Oppress me already,’ she said, jokingly, to be informed by a bespectacled Maori separatist that she had the IQ of a draught-excluder.

Alex and Gillian’s friends were very different, but in some ways they danced to the same tune; a social pirouette involving moving around the room waving to as many people as possible. Or even better, being waved
to
. But wherever either of them took her, Maddy was out of step. Living in England, she decided, was like permanently being at someone else’s birthday party.

Maddy turned down Gillian’s invitation to Wimbledon without even mentioning it to Alex. An Arsenal supporter, he dismissed Wimbledon as ‘élitist’. It was like croquet – a place for men who ‘sent their shirts out to be stuffed’. Besides, he had a rare day free from filming. Maddy had already packed the picnic hamper, selected the love poetry and compiled a list of London’s most discreet public conveniences, when Alex discovered a steering committee he’d forgotten. It seemed to Maddy that Alex was on more steering committees than an admiral. He had an entire fleet of the buggers.

‘Which interchangeable South American country is he in
this
time?’ Gillian taunted as they pushed past the desultory lines of people who’d been queuing all
week
for a ticket to Centre Court and were still no closer. ‘He’s like the Loch Ness Monster … Reported sightings, but still no proof of his existence. Still, it has meant you could make it to the tennis.’

‘Not that he knows,’ Maddy had to shout to raise her voice above a group of anarchists, the Class War warriors, protesting at the fact that the Tories had granted Murdoch exclusive rights to the television coverage of the tournament. ‘Alex doesn’t like me hob-nobbing with the
hoi polloi
.’ Once inside, Gillian swept past the liveried bouncer and into the corporate hospitality campsite. This was an up-market tent-city. Billowing gold-and-cream-coloured marquees, sponsored by banks and TV networks and motorway catering firms, rose up off the lawn like large lemon meringues.

‘Sniff that air,’ Gillian purled. ‘I smell Husband!’ She turned towards Maddy and switched on her two-hundred-watt smile. ‘Teeth?’

Maddy examined them for breakfast debris or lipstick traces. ‘Fine.’

‘Tits?’ After careful scrutiny, Maddy’s right hand disappeared into Gillian’s left bra cup for a small readjustment. As she checked the realignment, Gillian tossed back her head for Maddy’s further inspection. ‘Nose?’

‘All clean.’

‘Hose?’ She pivoted sideways so Maddy could check the seams of her stockings before leading the
way
across the zebra-striped croquet lawn to the Sky TV hospitality tent.

Champagne flutes and delicately decorated hors-d’oeuvres were pressed into their hands as they crossed the red-carpeted threshold. Maddy was nearly asphyxiated by the aftershave fumes of a television personality she couldn’t quite place. The marquee was engorged with the usual rent-a-crowd – a goal-keeper for Chelsea, the woman from the Feminine Hygiene advertisement, the ubiquitous David Frost, some Captains of Industry; men who’d made millions out of salami skins and ball bearings – the type who have photos of the children they never see printed on to Christmas cards annually – and an ex-dictator of a jungle republic. The men had jowls and the women had jewels. It was an open-sesame on the world of wealth.

The blokes were gathered around the television monitor watching Monica Seles ‘nnnuurghhh’ and ‘arrrrggh’ her way to the climax of the match.

‘Christ. She’s nob-able,’ drooled a large lump of sauerkraut in a suit. ‘What thigh muscles. They could kill a boy.’

‘Close your eyes and you could be in her bed. I do love a noisy Sheila.’ They were not so much lager-louts as Bollinger bovver boys, Heidsieck hoons.

‘I’m a bum man, myself,’ confessed a pock-marked, pot-bellied Sky executive with karate-chop vowels. In the search for ever-more feral associates, old Rupert
now
seemed to be exclusively recruiting South Efricans.

‘Fancy a bit of rumpity humpity with
that
little number,’ contributed his guest, a cravated Chinless Wonder. Watching him eat, Maddy finally understood why the Upper Class had bred chins out of their line. While others mopped ineptly at greasy mouths, the butter from his lobster dripped straight to the floor.

Behind them sat women with crepey necks. They demolished cakes with grim determination, crumbs clinging to pale pink lipstick. Faces cement-rendered by foundation, fingers barnacled with jewels, feet squeezed into too-tight shoes, ankles puffing like pastry – they had ‘wife’ written all over them.

As Seles hurdled over the net, four of the men rejoined Maddy’s table for seconds. Half-shickered, they carried on a verbal men’s double, lobbing banter back and forth across the smoked salmon. The South African Sky executive with the boiled lobster countenance served first. ‘That little Argentinian number can sit on my dial any day.’

‘Na, you never want to go the whole hog,’ volleyed the Australian beer baron. ‘It’s not the cunt, it’s the hunt.’

The wives twisted rings, fiddled with scarves, patted at perms, as if making certain they weren’t invisible.

‘That’s the trouble with the wife.’ The beer baron hooked a thumb in her direction, exposing a chaos of unkempt teeth. ‘No
ball skills
.’

While the men roared appreciatively, his wife nibbled soundlessly on a scone, replacing her fluted cup on its porcelain saucer with elegant precision.

Maddy flinched. ‘We pretend we come for the tennis, don’t we, ladies?’ She sloshed champagne into their glasses. ‘But really we come for the male bottoms. Look, there’s Agassi … Now
his
buttocks have a social life all their own.’ A silence descended upon the table. ‘I mean,’ she pressed on, ‘they’re so bouncy, don’t you think?’ Maddy was just considering hara-kiri with her swizzle stick, when the wife of the Aussie beer baron drained her drink in one long gulp.

‘Hope they’re better lovers than players,’ she said. ‘The average male rally is only three seconds long.’ Her husband developed a fascination for his feet. He examined his snub-nosed shoes. ‘No net-play. Just wham-bam, thank you, ma’am.’ The other women at the table tittered in agreement.

The beer baron’s face elongated with the effort not to explode. Niggardly lines of irritation radiated from around his mouth like whiskers on a rat. ‘Don’t expect her to be too bloody rational.’ There was a metallic snarl in his voice. ‘She’s on HRT. Doan cha know? It’s an extract of pregnant mare’s urine.’

His wife retreated into silence. Although smiling, she was frantically chewing off her lipstick. Now Maddy understood all the jewels. They were campaign medals, for bravery in the face of adultery, neglect and humiliation. Before she could attempt a
little
penile augmentation beneath the table with her stiletto, the beer baron expressed a sudden interest in going up to the grandstand. With a curt ‘Coming, love?’ he tugged his wife out of her chair. As an exodus of diners bustled away from Maddy’s table, she retrieved Gillian from the arms of a man with a bright pink parting who was very big in radioactive waste-product disposal.

‘I think this is
it
,’ Gillian thrilled, once they were outside in the sun. ‘Milo Roxburghe. He’s a knight, you know. He’s been knighted twice!’

‘A two-knight stand, huh?’ said Maddy sourly.

‘He’s got a private cricket pitch! Have you got any idea what that would have cost?’

‘Listen, Gillian, I’m not coming out on safari with you any more.’ Gillian was in a trance as she skipped lightly up the pavilion steps. Maddy ascended leadenly after her. ‘And you should give it a big miss too. Did you see those women in there? Do you really want to become one of
them
?’

Their progress was halted by an official at the foot of the final tier. ‘Sshhh.’ The uniformed sentry pressed his finger up to his lips in a gesture of silence.

‘… Doomed to a life of holding your stomach in?’

‘What?’ Gillian’s smile collapsed, the spell shattered. ‘Do I look fat?’

‘Those men are thugs. Alex is right. They have all the charm of a death squad. No wonder he wouldn’t be seen dead with any of them.’

Gillian turned side on. ‘Can you tell I’m holding my stomach in?’

‘Better to go for a bloke who hasn’t got a pot to piss in, than
that
lot.’

‘I’m considering tummy liposuction, I told you … It’s the only way to remove unsightly fat.’

As far as Maddy was concerned, the best way to remove unsightly fat would be to kick all those freeloading men out of the Sky TV hospitality tent. But before she could share this observation, the end of the set was signalled by the roar of the crowd. It was like the lid coming off a pressure cooker. Gillian took the lead, guiding Maddy to their allotted seats in the most prestigious row. They squeezed past the tweedy knees of a group of perspiring, balding businessmen. Sitting like that, all neatly in a row, Maddy thought they resembled an open egg carton.

But it was
she
who was about to be scrambled. As she adjusted her cushion and flumped grumpily down upon it, she registered a pang of familiarity about the black dome of hair positioned in front of her. The tilt to the head. The creases in the neck. The deep throaty laugh. Her face flushed hot with concomitant feelings of unexpected pleasure and pure rage. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘but isn’t this a little off course for your steering committee?’

Alex swung around. Stiffening, he fumbled for his dark glasses, glanced furtively about, then tossed his head and laughed archly. ‘Oh yes, right. It crashed.’

‘But you escaped unscathed?’

‘Of course.’

Maddy observed the men accompanying her lover. They wore dark, impenetrable suits and ominous shades. The sort of men who would send their shirts out to be stuffed. ‘I thought you said Wimbledon was élitist?’

‘Yes,’ Alex did a nice line in slow, mischievous smiles, ‘but, I do think it’s important to talk to the enemy.’

Maddy scrutinized one of his companions. Her eyes flickered wide with incredulity. ‘Isn’t that Rupert Murdoch?’

‘Sshh,’ he whispered. ‘You know my insatiable appetite for Australia’s Good and Great.’

‘Alex, Rupert Murdoch is a great Australian the way Attila was a great Hun.’

‘Quiet, please!’ Maddy concentrated on the adenoidal delivery of the umpire. The thwack, thwack, thwack monotony was broken by the appearance of two Class War warriors streaking across the court, trailing a banner reading, succinctly, ‘Die, Rich Skum’. Court officials and police, armed with everything bar tactical nuclear weapons, gave chase. The paparazzi jostled for position. A ball girl was knocked to the ground. The ambulance attendant sprinted to her side. As did the players. The umpire, in his David Niven voice, was advising people to stay calm, to keep collected, not to panic.