Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (29 page)

‘You never sliced yourself up no more after that?' says Mandy.

‘That's right. You asked me how come I never cut myself again. Well, it was something they did. I can see it clearer now after going back over it, finding the words for what happened. Although they didn't kiss me on the lips or look me in the eye, there was a sort of love. Or kindness. They wanted me, even if for the wrong reasons.'

Perhaps the simple act of giving attention heals. Sunbleached hour by hour, my body learnt something. That suffering doesn't have to be a full-time occupation. You can blot it out for a little at a time.

A sudden sadness hits me. I say, ‘They helped let a scab grow over a wound. Even their lack of words helped. Because of them I started to get better. Them and being in Greece.'

‘That's the best excuse I heard yet for shagging two at a time,' says Debs.

‘Are you shocked?' I ask her.

‘Fuck off! It's just hard to imagine, looking at you now.'

‘She's all right,' says Mandy, ‘It's only the demon drink, she'd clean up all right. Eh, Corinne? You can't be over forty, eh?'

‘Not much,' I say. ‘Some of life's experiences sweep through you like a clean wind, others leave their marks on your flesh. You don't get to choose which.'

‘Here, hang on a minute,' Mandy pipes up. ‘Did you say your mum called you? I know it was a druggy mind-flip and that, but I thought you said she never wanted you?'

‘She didn't.'

‘So what she go calling you for? What she do that for? How come you got her tracking you down all shagged out in a tent in Greece?'

I open my mouth and shut it again. I don't have an answer. I look at Mandy and look back at the silver ring on my little finger. I rub it with the fingers of my left hand. Eventually I admit, ‘I didn't think of it like that.'

Seeing it like that changes everything. Or nothing.

There is a jangle of keys and the door opens. Beverly comes back in. She walks to her bed and sinks her head in her hands.

‘You OK, Bev?' asks Mandy.

‘It's true, what I thought. Doctor told me I'm pregnant.'

Wednesday 19th December 11.45 am

‘It has been the most spectacular phenomenon of TV cookery,' the not-so-young man effused as he handed the waiter his black serge coat and his rolled-up Union Jack umbrella. He checked his Rolex, sat down and lent forward across the table. ‘It is a privilege to meet the Goddess in the Kitchen! For the best part of thirty years you have blessed us with your heavenly recipes.'

Mimi Divine acknowledged the adulation by rearranging her still-handsome face into one of the six smiles she used on television, the one that signalled fake modesty when a dish had turned out particularly well. She dabbed at her perfect hairdo and picked up the menu. ‘Even goddesses enjoy a day off. The food was passable here last time I came.' She scanned the list. ‘I'll have the Vichyssoise. Light food for an early lunch is always best I think, don't you, er…' She titled her head slightly. ‘I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name.'

‘Hugh Forbes-Williams. Please call me Hugh.'

‘Hugh,' she gave a perfunctory smile. ‘Sorry I couldn't fit you in for lunch a bit later.' As he beckoned the waiter, she looked out through the window onto the Essex Road.

The cold cloud-filled sky hovered low over the street. People in macks and overcoats hurried by on a pavement edged with dirty slush. One figure, a young man with a pale face and long brown dreadlocks, was wearing only a battered red windcheater over jeans. He dragged his feet slowly past, then turned and walked back again. Mimi watched him.

Hugh followed her eyes. ‘I think it's trying to rain,' he said. ‘It has ambitions in that direction.'

Without bringing her eyes in from the window, she said ‘I'm still intrigued to know why someone from margarine wanted to wine and dine me. I'm past the age when such invitations were frequent. You know I never use margarine in my recipes. And you know the Corporation's position on advertising.'

‘I expect you scarcely imagined how big it would become,' Hugh continued, ignoring her remark. ‘Your show. From those first days, the photospreads. With you always watched by your little blond daughter. That was an inspired trademark touch.'

Mimi winced slightly. ‘Oh, that.' Her manicured fingers dismissed his remark, then moved to her neck to fondle the necklace resting on the Grecian-style swathed drapery of her red dress..

‘Such personal appeal,' Hugh continued, ‘both of you. The whole nation envisioned having such charm and such food to come home to, and held its breath. Especially in the 60s, when so many traditional values were under attack.'

‘Of course, all of that was before your time,' Mimi remarked.

‘But your early work is legendary.' Hugh tried to catch her eye.

‘There he is again,' said Mimi. ‘He seems to be limping.' She watched the figure in the red windcheater pass slowly by the window.

‘She must be grown-up now, your daughter,' Hugh persisted. ‘Maybe children of her own… I wonder, has she followed in your footsteps at all…?'

Mimi turned to him and looked at him as if she couldn't see him. ‘My daughter? Oh no, my daughter…' Her hand froze at her neck. ‘My daughter… she has her own life. Did you order?'

The young man in the red windcheater continued to walk to and fro along the pavement outside as they started their meal. In the middle of her Vichyssoise, Mimi glanced out of the window again: ‘He's injured. He has his arm in a sling. I could have sworn he didn't before. Poor dear. Extraordinary that he seems to keep walking past.'

Hugh's small eyes darted towards the pavement and back. ‘Some people don't seem to have homes to go to. As I was saying, so much of your success derives from the way your show has developed and changed. So that the
hoi polloi
can look into their TV and see a mirror of their times. And that, I think, is where Lifespread Margarine could really come in.' He sucked on a mussel and the innards slid down his throat.

Mimi's dark red fingernails clasped her glass of wine and she took a sip. ‘I have seen it on the supermarket shelves,' she said, ‘though of course for many years it has been difficult for me to do my own shopping. The price of success. One gets all types of people approaching one with all sorts of problems. Not all culinary, I must confess… As if being famous gives one some kind of magic wand…' She looked out of the window again.

‘If I may say so,' Hugh raised his voice slightly to gain her attention, ‘I think you do. Have some kind of wand. Where you lead, millions follow. Your example could have an effect that is little short of magical.'

‘My example?… There he is again…' She put down her spoon and dabbed at her mouth with the orange linen serviette. She noticed it clashed with her dress and set it aside.

Hugh continued, ‘We feel that if you used margarine in some of your recipes it would show your concern for the health of your viewers. I don't say our brand, I know the Beeb can't be seen to advertise. But the sheer fact of your using margarine of any variety would benefit so many people.'

‘Don't you see that it is precisely because butter has connotations of luxury that it appeals?'

He smoothed his hair and leant forward again. ‘One word: cholesterol… And in these times, don't you think something a little more economical? It would help you to keep the common touch.'

‘I never had the common touch,' she snapped. ‘Delicious food, on my own terms. That's always been my byword. Now I know he didn't have that on his head before.'

The young man with the long brown locks limped slowly past the window nursing the arm in a sling. This time his bowed head was bound round with a white bandage.

Mimi gave a dramatic sigh. ‘What is he up to?'

Hugh persisted. ‘All the same, there is a need to keep abreast of the times. More and more people are turning to margarine.'

‘I', she replied, ‘I am not turning to margarine.' She looked past his right ear and beckoned, ‘Excuse me.' When the waiter approached she lowered her voice. ‘There is a young man outside who seems to be in trouble.'

‘I'll see to it, madam.' He went to the counter and conferred with the woman at the till. She disappeared into the kitchen.

After a few moments there emerged a tall thin woman with greying hair in a fashionable bob. She strode across the restaurant with a clink of gold bracelets and a scowl on her face, and walked out of the door onto the pavement. ‘The police are on their way again and if this goes on…'; her terse words to the young man came faintly through the open door as it went through the last stages of controlled closure on a time-spring. Then the door shut. The rest of her sentence and his reply were inaudible, though the exchange could be seen in dumb show through the restaurant window. Finally the young man shrugged and walked off. As she came back in to the restaurant, the woman made a bee-line for Mimi's table:

‘I'm so sorry about that. I hope he wasn't bothering you. I'm afraid we get used to a little local colour, being in Islington…'

‘He wasn't bothering me,' said Mimi, ‘but he looked distressed.'

‘Some people are just attention-seekers,' said the woman. ‘Theatricals. Allow me to bring you each one of our speciality chocolate and hazelnut mousses. Courtesy of the house. To make up for your inconvenience…' She strode off to the kitchen, her jaw set hard.

‘Quite a floorshow, if that was what it was…' said Mimi.

Hugh glanced at his watch again. ‘So how do you feel about margarine?'

Mimi looked at him full on for the first time across the restaurant table. ‘Greasy,' she said. ‘Cheap and greasy.'

Wednesday 19
^th
December 11.45 am

‘You see,' Anthea was saying as she settled back into the wicker chair and finished drying her hands on her skirt, ‘All my problems seem to begin and end with Greece. And all the best things in my world as well. The very first time I went there was the first time in my life I felt real danger.'

Ren checked the tape recorder and looked up at her. ‘Bright light can create shadows.' She paused. ‘Do you want to talk about that first visit?'

‘You want me to tell you how it all started…? Talking to you like this, all the bits and pieces are coming together in a way I never realized. But who knows if they'll ever make a whole? Or a coherent picture, a pattern…'

Ren shrugged. ‘Real life can be untidy. The bits don't always fit together neatly.'

‘I have to go way back…' said Anthea. ‘Where to start?…' She looked at her feet and wriggled her toes, then began:

‘I've always loved Greece ever since I was little. I got a translation of Homer's
Odyssey
when I was eight. It was on the bookstall at a local fete. A paperback, one of the old Penguins, the cover had a brown border. I paid for it with a threepenny bit, all my pocket money for that week. I loved the world it described. “It's not natural,” my Mum used to say when she found me with my nose in it. “Why not read comics like the others?”

‘I did the 11-plus and got in to the local grammar school. Greek wasn't on the syllabus, but the Latin teacher taught me after school hours. I did it for A-Level, then, like I said, I left school and went to work in the bank. Later on, when I was at university, I started learning Modern Greek in my spare time. But it wasn't 'till I saw that film ‘
Z'
that I realized what had happened to modern Greece. I saw it at some society at college. The right-wing coup. The Junta. The colonels. The prison camps. At that time I didn't know anything about politics, but I was shocked. At the film showing they were giving out leaflets about a group trying to help the families of the people in prison. I took one. I wrote to them. Is there anything I can do to help? Yes, they said. That was how I got involved in doing something secret and dangerous in Greece.

‘Shall I tell you about it?'

‘Tell me whatever you want to,' Ren replied. ‘Whatever you think is relevant.'

‘I'm not sure what's relevant, so I'll tell you the whole story.

‘It was the summer of 1972, the first summer of university. July. I used the money I'd saved and I set off for Greece. It was my first time abroad. The journey wasn't quite what I'd imagined. On the boat from Dover there were hopeful signs pointing to the “Sun Deck”, but it was damp and cold. Then there was a long overnight train journey leaving Ostend at 10 o'clock at night. I slept in a couchette and I kept getting woken by different officials at intervals all through the night. In the morning I had a memory of having been prodded many times in different languages and asked to produce documents. Each time I put them back under my pillow and I slept fitfully. I was already anxious about the assignment I was going to carry out, although I hadn't fully realized what I'd taken on.

‘The Hellas Express left Munich at 9 o'clock the next evening and there was another broken night, then a whole day travelling through some very flat bits of Yugoslavia. My back itched, my legs felt stiff, my bottom got cramp and I couldn't find any comfortable way to sit. At times like that you forget where you're travelling from and travelling to, and even why you're travelling at all.

‘Then a group of Greeks came into my apartment and started singing. I listened to them, cheered up and started on the Modern Greek novel I'd brought with me. I got through that, and through most of a Modern Greek detective story. I had read a ‘Teach Yourself…' book; and Modern Greek isn't so hard if you know Ancient Greek. My mother's picnic lasted really well. I ate the last chicken joint when we were still in Yugoslavia.

‘That night I slept in my seat, struggling to find a comfortable position, and the next morning I woke up aching and feeling very old. Then it gradually filtered through to me that we were in Greece and the sun was shining and my body sort of uncurled. The Greeks woke up and started singing again, and the last day just floated by. I ate the last of my mother's pasties and the last egg sandwich – it was a bit the worse for wear by then. I nibbled the last of her home-made ginger biscuits as we rolled in to Athens. As we came into the station everyone in the carriage got excited. And there were crowds of people waiting for the train, screaming and jumping up and down on the platform.