Murder Most Fab (3 page)

She had
a face like that of a porcelain doll, with fine, delicate features and a
rosebud mouth. Her makeup was a perfect mask. Pale foundation and frosted blue
eye-shadow clouded seamlessly into white beneath a finely drawn eyebrow. Her
lips were baby ink, and smiled knowingly. She resembled an extra from
The
Rocky Horror Show.
Her cloud of perfume hit me and my nose twitched.

‘Don’t
think I’ve overdone it with the Chanel, do you?’ she said.

‘No,
it’s nice. It’s No. 5, isn’t it? My favourite. I’m Johnny. I moved in a few
weeks ago.’

‘Yes,
I’ve heard you. Are you a student at the drama school by any chance? Only I
heard you attempt ‘On The Street Where You Live’ sixteen times in a row the
other night. Much more of that and you’ll have to find another street. You’re
way out on the C sharp, too.’

‘Sorry
if I disturbed you.’

‘Oh, I
was already disturbed, darling. Welcome to the madhouse, Johnny. My name’s Catherine
and I’m off to slop out some bedpans and see who’s pegged it in the night.’ She
dropped her cigarette on the lino and stepped on it, swivelling her ankle three
times to ensure it was extinguished properly.

‘Have a
good day, then. See you later,’ I said.

‘It
will be a good day if Mr Pickering’s passed on, that’s for sure. His shit
stinks.’ She clacked off down the stairs.

I
giggled. This was the first glimmer of hope I’d experienced since I’d arrived
in Lewisham that I might meet a kindred spirit to keep me amused. Perhaps
Catherine was the friend I’d been waiting for.

Later that night I was in
my room rehearsing my part in the class studio production of a musical about
Wendy Richard. At about eight thirty there was a knock on my door. I opened it and
there stood Catherine with a bottle of wine in one hand and two glass tumblers
in the other. She was wearing a dark blue embroidered kimono and smelt strongly
of jasmine mixed with Benson & Hedges. ‘Enough of that shit. Party time!’ she
announced, and minced into my room. ‘Mr Pickering’s still with us but Mr
Lawson’s shuffled off, thank the Lord and sweet baby Moses in a basket.’ She
set the glasses on my cluttered yellow-Formica dressing-table and clumsily
poured us each a glass of warm Chardonnay. ‘To the life hereafter!’ she said,
raising her glass.

I
grabbed mine and we chinked. ‘Bottoms up!’ I said.

It
transpired that Catherine worked on the geriatric ward at Greenwich Hospital.
‘Fucking coffin-dodgers,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind the ones who can wipe their
arses and know their names, but I’ve got some who can’t do a thing except eat.
Well, it’s a waste of food, isn’t it?’

I
giggled again. Something about Catherine was refreshing after all the fake luvviedom
of college. Her honesty and openness were a blessed relief.

Almost
immediately, we charmed each other and found immense enjoyment in each other’s
company because we laughed so much and so hard, and there is little as
seductive as laughter.

‘Ooh,
you’re a scream, you are,’ said Catherine.

If we
were in the mood, we could howl at a blank sheet of paper. Mostly, though, it
was the absurdity of human behaviour that amused us: the stiffness of a nervous
newsreader, a man at the bus stop unaware of the bogey hanging from his nose,
or the gauche bartender trying to make a pass at one of us.

Apart
from my mother, I had never been so entranced by a woman, and before long we
were meeting up every night to drink, talk, tell each other stories and make
each other laugh hysterically. She helped me cope with the hostility I was
enduring at college and I saved up incidents and anecdotes for her at the end
of the day.

‘That
Sean erased my face with his biro on a lunchtime-production poster on the noticeboard.
Imagine!’

‘No!’
said Catherine. ‘The evil bitch. I say we push her emaciated frame under a
train!’

I had
never met anyone like her. I found myself rushing home from college and waiting
for her to come in. I could soon recognize her three-taps knock and would
hurry to answer.

‘Cup of
tea, Cowboy?’ She nicknamed me ‘Cowboy’ because of my Kentish Lad background.
‘Or are you too immersed in
Grease?’

One
night she tapped and swanned in without waiting for an answer. She handed me four
Valium. ‘Listen, babe, these are for you. Wesley’s coming over shortly and
there might be a bit of noise. They’ll help you sleep. Good luck to you and
your family.’

The
door swung closed.

I
adored her for the exquisite campness of such encounters. She provided me with
quality comedy on a daily basis. I loved the idea of the nurse off to work in
full slap, reeking of alcohol; I thrilled to her casual announcements of tragic
deaths, and admired the tough, ever-present survival instinct that ensured she
always came out on top in any situation and by any evaluation.

That
night she entertained Wesley so royally she should have handed out Valium in
Deptford, too. Imagine a hyena giving birth to a pineapple and you’re getting
close.

‘You
amaze me, Catherine,’ I said to her once, when she showed me the black pearls
she had liberated from a confused pensioner. ‘You really are the most unusual
nurse I’ve ever met.’

‘I have
to keep my sense of humour, Cowboy. I work in God’s waiting room. When one of
my patients dies and the relatives, if there are any who can be arsed, have
said their goodbyes, we pull the curtains round, strip them naked and wash them
head to foot, inside and out, before they go down to the morgue. Most of the
other nurses don’t like doing it so I always get the job when I’m on duty. I
don’t mind. I take a pride in my work. My stiffs are spotless. I’m the last
hand to touch them, probably the last person to look at them. I clean their
nails and comb their hair. I talk to them, tell them what I’m doing, and how
nice and clean I’m making them. Hygiene’s important, I think, especially when
you’re dead. And as I do it, I wonder what sort of lives they’ve lived. I’m far
nicer to them once they’re gone, really. They scratch my back and I’ll scrub
theirs. And with each old penny dreadful, I make the sign of the cross. Rest in
peace, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.’ She looked
at me solemnly. ‘And then I see if I fancy any of their jewellery before I send
them down to the freezer.’

Being
with Catherine was never boring. As well as her dark and dangerously hilarious anecdotes
about life and death on the geriatric ward, she would, without premeditation,
make sure that every evening had a beginning, a middle and an end. She had a
gift for creating a well-structured social occasion. Frequently, after we had
downed the wine she provided, we ended up in our local pub, the Cocky Sailor.

Out of
uniform, she dressed demurely in black and burgundy blouses, perfectly pressed
skin-tight jeans and kitten heels. She insisted we drink white wine, favouring
the oaky, rich Chardonnay that rolls down the throat like Spanish semen but
gets you drunk and tired all the same.

We’d
talk the whole evening, getting drunker and drunker. Occasionally a Lewisham
lad would saunter over and try to chat her up. She gave them very short shrift,
usually, and would send them packing with admirable efficiency. If they offered
to buy her a drink she’d say, ‘Yes, thank you, I’ll have a large Chardonnay and
so will my friend Johnny.’ And when the unfortunate chap elivered the glasses:
‘Ta. Now fuck off and take your button-mushroom cock with you.’

I loved
her wry take on life, and I think she was amused by my naïvety. Besides calling
me ‘Cowboy’, she never missed an opportunity to refer to me as a country
bumpkin. ‘This must be quite a shock to your system, coming to London.
Electricity and cutlery, washing more than once a month! Quite a steep learning
curve for a teenage sheep-shagger from Kent …‘

The
‘middle’ of the evening might be an altercation with a parked car as we
staggered home, or Catherine’s sudden need for a wee behind a wheelie-bin
parked on a busy junction. The end was always the same: Catherine and me
screeching with laughter back in my room as we reviewed the night’s highlights.

If we
weren’t at the Cocky Sailor, we stayed in for what Catherine called ‘girly
nights’, enjoying cheap white wine or Tesco’s vodka with a Chinese takeaway
while we applied menthol face packs and talked about our futures.

One
night, Catherine produced a joint from her designer handbag and we lay top to
tail on my single bed, smoking until we were nicely high.

‘What
is it about you, Cowboy?’ she asked. ‘It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to spot
sadness in your aura. I wish you’d cheer up. From what I understand about gay
life, you’d all shag a sleeping policeman if it was dark and you’d had a few Bacardis.
But you’re not like that so there’s only one explanation. You’ve fallen in
love, haven’t you? Or you think you have, probably with someone unattainable,
like a cartoon character or a nameless shadow you met in a bus shelter.’

Catherine
could usually prise anything out of me but this time I wasn’t giving anything
away. I knew what she was like. She’d make a joke of all that had happened in
my past, and I wasn’t sure I could take it. It was still a tender wound and I
could hardly bring myself to think, let alone talk, about it. I wouldn’t allow
anyone to mess with the man who lived in my head.

‘Oh no.
There’s no one,’ I said carelessly.

Catherine
gave me a meaningful look. She knew me well enough by now to guess that I wasn’t
being honest. ‘Well, love, if you want to keep it to yourself, that’s fine. But
you shouldn’t dwell on these things. If it’s all come to nothing, move on.
That’s what I’d do. You know what my motto is? “Eat life before it eats you. Or
you’re a loser.” And the best way to get over someone is to get under someone
new. I’ll send Wesley over, shall I?’

Wesley
sounded like an experienced and memorable lover. But I couldn’t — wouldn’t —
betray my true love. As tacky as it sounds, I was keeping myself nice. I
answered ironically, with a poem by Robert Herrick:

‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.’

‘Whatever. I catch your
drift,’ she said.

My
mother had raised me on poetry almost before I could talk, and my photographic
memory meant that I could recall a wealth of popular and metaphysical verses,
so it had become my habit to quote pertinent couplets or stanzas when they
popped into my head. Sometimes it seemed the best way to express what I was
thinking. Certain poets squeezed a lot of meaning into a few words, and I liked
their economy.

‘What
about you?’ I asked, handing back the joint as swirls of aromatic smoke floated
up to the ceiling. ‘What are your dreams? Are you going to stay a nurse all
your life?’

‘I’m
twenty-six, Cowboy. Time to find a husband. I want a doctor or a lawyer. Three
kids, big house, swimming-pool. I want the whole lot, even love.’ The next
sentence she spoke with uncharacteristic vehemence. ‘And I’m going to have it,
too.’

We
paused to absorb her slightly embarrassing display of ruthless ambition.
Catherine’s laugh rumbled first, but I wasn’t far behind. Within thirty seconds
we were rolling around on my rusty bed, holding our sides. Eventually we peaked,
and our laughter died slowly, bar the odd reprise, to a giggle that did not
prevent talking.

‘And
you?’ said Catherine, picking up where we’d left off. ‘What in the name of
Terry Wogan do you want?’

‘Oh,
I’d like to live with my gorgeous, faithful, well-balanced, sexually insatiable
boyfriend, of course,’ I said, without hesitation. ‘Next door to you, if that
could be arranged. I want to live happily ever after, too. He will be
remarkably earthy and Neanderthal but a rock in every respect: sober, fit,
self-contained, yet madly in love with me and happy to dedicate his every
waking hour to my continued happiness. And hung like a draught-excluder, natch.’

‘Dream
on,’ said Catherine, yawning shamelessly. ‘And if you think you’re getting your
grubby mitts on my Wesley, you can go fuck yourself’

‘Charming.’

Not long afterwards, I
discovered another side to Catherine.

There
was a communal telephone by the front door and several times I answered it to
an Oriental-sounding woman asking for her. Once summoned, Catherine would take
a pen and pad to the phone and write down some details. Thirty minutes later
she would be off, dressed to the nines, in a cloud of Chanel.

After
this had happened three times in quick succession, I asked her whether she was
being invited to parties.

She
laughed. ‘I suppose that’s one way to describe it. Parties for two. If they
pay, I party. Snatch for cash. I thought you’d twigged by now, to be honest.
Most nurses are lucky if they can afford a polyester skirt at the market. I’ve
got a Gucci tampon case. Did you never wonder? Think about it, Cowboy.’

She
explained that she was registered with an agency that allowed her to supplement
her modest nurse’s wages with occasional escort work. She made no bones about
her activities. ‘It’s business, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Pay to lay. Very
discreet, though, none of your rubbish. All done through the agency. Foreigners,
mainly, in need of a little feminine company. I get wined and dined, keep the
conversation going, laugh at their stupid jokes, and I’m paid for it. If they
want any extras — and they always bloody do — we make our own arrangements. I
can’t live on a nurse’s pay. It’s not a wage, it’s a fucking tip.’