Read The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl Online
Authors: Belle de Jour
The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl (25 page)
I phoned up A4, emailed a few people, and generally felt unable to do anything more meaningful. Left a message for the Boy saying what was going on. He rang me a few minutes later.
‘Sorry, I’m a bit shaken,’ I said. ‘Thanks for ringing back.’
‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘Did you actually know this guy?’
Did I bloody know him!
mercredi, le 22 juin
This, in case I ever have to tell my children or grandchildren, is how it happened. I’m cruising around on a bicycle, long skirt tucked between my knees, huge sunglasses, enjoying the sunshine. A man waves at me. He’s wearing white linen trousers and a blue T-shirt, he’s cute, I wave back. He tilts his head and I stop to talk. What’s the worst that can happen? He mentions maybe lunch? I know a place. We have a lot in common – we’re from the same area, have similar experiences, laugh at the same things. Soon we’re finishing each other’s sentences.
He looks at his hands, sad. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘I wish I could go with this,’ he says. But he has a girlfriend, she’s coming to visit next month. I have a boyfriend.
His name is David, I’m meant to be leaving in about a fortnight, and I am so fucked.
jeudi, le 23 juin
vendredi, le 24 juin
‘I’m a mess, I’m an idiot when it comes to men,’ I say to L. ‘I used to have a clue, you know? I used to be cool. Now I’m like some stupid chick-lit woman, and I’ve no idea why.’
‘What on earth makes you say a thing like that?’ she said.
‘Well, why am I with my boyfriend when we so clearly drive each other mad, and not in a good way? Why do I meet a great guy just when the timing couldn’t be worse? How did I manage to lose a great guy like A4? Will I ever do anything right?’
L reapplied lotion to her thighs. A tightly swimsuited young man brought our drinks over on a tray, and she smiled at him winningly. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘You do what you have to do.’
‘The question is, do I really have to do this? Act like a completely stupid girl just because I don’t want to be alone?’ I readjusted my bikini top, checking to see whether the strap marks were in awkward places.
L sipped the icy concoction. Her lips always look so lush; when I asked her secret, whether cosmetic procedure or clever make-up application, she replied, ‘Genetics, baby. Read ’em and weep.’ I spent something like the weekly income of a local on a tube of her preferred lipstick, anyway.
‘It’s not stupid,’ she finally said. ‘You’ve glimpsed the future, and while it’s nice to be running around with a cute little body like yours now, someday you’ll have to choose between your face and your ass, and whether you are willing to compromise when it comes to relationships or prefer to become the intensely lonely fossil who, on finishing the eighth double Scotch of the evening, blankly stares into the middle distance, considering the irrevocable march towards death.’
Yikes. ‘Sounds like you’ve thought about that a lot,’ I said weakly.
‘Also a part of my genetic inheritance,’ she shrugged. ‘It’s what made me a good law student. And will guarantee that I reach the age of sixty with a houseful of furs and antiques rather than children.’
samedi, le 25 juin
The Boy rings to say that, because of family obligations, he won’t be able to ring me over the weekend. This has the ring of untruth but I bite my tongue. Fuck it, let what happens happen. Things could all be different in a week, anyway.
dimanche, le 26 juin
David and I go to his house. He has local beer in the fridge and lets me choose the music. It’s a nice house, I say; is he renting? No. Owns. He’s moved here permanently, to start a business. His girlfriend didn’t join him. He got the dog.
The dog is called Fritz, and hasn’t taken his eyes off me since I came in. I scratch his belly and pet his ears.
‘I can tell you’re a sensual person,’ David says.
‘How’s that?’
‘By the way you touch his ears.’ Fritz suddenly licks my face. ‘Don’t do that Fritz, I haven’t even kissed her yet!’
I don’t fall for someone often, and feel like fate is mocking me. He’s funny. Smart. Has his own business. And is, of course, not quite single. His on-again, off-again partner, who lives as far from here as mine does, is visiting after I go. He says he’s sure they’ll break up then, but at least he’s straight with me. It makes him feel guilty, he owns up to her existence. It’s a bittersweet flirtation. In a parallel universe we’re probably carrying on a scorching love affair without even a pang of guilt. But in this one, we’re both Jewish.
‘What do you want to do?’ I ask. ‘You know what I want to do.’
‘I don’t. You haven’t even kissed me yet.’
‘I’d like to take you on the floor and spend the next three hours fucking.’
What is it about relationships that makes shared misery feel so much like intimacy? I think, rather despising myself for doing so, about what makes a good crew on a yacht: good sails in charmed conditions, bad ones in wind against tide, and, quite simply, time on the water. Miles under your bow make a dilapidated cruiser more attractive than a box-fresh trimaran sleeping six.
I look at David and decide that he is thinking something similar (though perhaps with fewer awkward boat analogies). And that we are both weighing up the investment of time and effort on our respective craft, and how fully fitted the spec for the new model looks.
‘Really?’ I say.
‘Really,’ he says.
My breath is heavy and uneven. ‘Oh.’
Before we part I step towards him – a move which, in other circumstances, would signal the big romantic clinch; in this case neither of us can bring ourselves to cross that line. I can smell him, feel the warmth of his skin. But we don’t even kiss. I stay up all night wondering what the Boy’s up to and thinking what an idiot I am.
lundi, le 27 juin
I find out why my boyfriend is incommunicado. It’s all in the online photo album, isn’t it? I so despise indiscretion.
He is at home seeing his family, all right. Seeing his family – and taking along his ex-girlfriend Jo, who has been nursing a crush on him ever since they split. It’s a blow. I’m hardly blameless, what with going off and falling for someone else, but still …
mardi, le 28 juin
‘So you read her email and saw the photos,’ L said. ‘What’s this one like?’
‘I shudder to recollect. Plain and dumpy.’ And weirdly convinced, as so many large girls are, that head-to-toe black is a slimming look – not when you’re standing against a pale background, it’s not. And you’re almost always standing against a pale background.
‘You reckon he’s shtupping her?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s the lie more than anything. If she’s just a friend, sure he can spend time with just a friend. I spend loads of time with other men. I don’t know why he feels he has to hide it, I don’t hide my male friends from him.’
L came out of the dressing room, wearing a pink bikini. ‘I know, I know, doesn’t go with the hair. But if I was a blonde, right? I’m so buying this.’
‘Truly stunning piece of logic. You should have had all currency instruments confiscated on entering the country.’ Keeping up with L is costing me, too – nothing wildly extravagant, mind, just the endless rounds of drinks, shopping, and so on. But I can’t claim I don’t enjoy it.
L retreated behind the faux-bamboo door to change into street clothes. ‘Has it occurred to you that he’s worried about your male friends? That he finds them threatening?’
‘But that’s the point – I make them obvious, so he knows they’re not a threat.’
L peered over the door, sunglasses holding back her hair. ‘You know what I think? You should forget about the lad here and the one at home and marry that one you’re always talking about.’
‘Which one is that?’
‘You know, the one with the flat.’ Oh. A4. ‘You guys are so still in love and you know it.’
‘What? It’s been six years,’ I said. ‘Anyway, if he wants to be together, it’s up to him. He’s the one who dumped me.’
L came out of the changing room, unsuitable bikini in hand, and thrust a credit card at the woman behind the counter. ‘What does that mean?’
‘You know, he split with me. So it’s up to him to declare his intentions. I’m not going to go begging.’
‘What the hell kind of a rule is that?’
‘Standard operating procedure, surely?’
L gave me a look. ‘Never heard such nonsense in my life,’ she said.
mercredi, le 29 juin
Man to Woman: your handy cut-out-and-keep translation:
I’ve never cheated on a girlfriend. I’ve never had sex with two women in the same day, at least not without showering first. Probably.
My phone doesn’t get very good reception here. I’m going to turn off my phone when I’m at her house, in case you ring.
I think of you all the time. I think of you when I’m sending you a text.
Where have you been all night? Don’t you dare do any of the things I do!
You’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved. I tell this to all the girls.
I’m not a liar. I am a liar.
I have a vague feeling I wasn’t always so ambivalent about men, but it’s difficult to remember.
jeudi, le 30 juin
Visited David and went for a walk. Fritz came. Fritz is a boy dog and has a rakish one-ear-up, one-ear-down look. Fritz gets all the ladies.
But in spite of Fritz’s dog’s-dog, low-maintenance appearance, this pup has needs that mark him out as a little more metrosexual than you might expect. Such as scratching requirements. This is a dog that will push its bum into your face and demand to be scratched there, often, because it’s the one place he can’t reach.
So we’re meandering around a lake, it’s a balmy afternoon, the sort you think summer was expressly made for. Ducks and a few honking geese, other people and other dogs, children playing in the fields. Fritz is let off the leash for a few minutes, runs as far from us as he can, then begins a little dance: three circles clockwise, three anti-clockwise, have a poo and kick the grass over it. It’s a level of fussiness about his toilet that is, frankly, unbecoming in a male.
We hook the lead back on and round the pond. A child comes up to us, a boy, maybe twelve. His hair is long and he’s wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘Ha Ha Ha’. ‘Can I pet the dog?’ he asks.
‘Sure.’
And the kid, he goes straight for the spot. The bum spot. Fritz is digging it in the extreme. ‘You love that, don’t you?’ he asks the dog. ‘My dog loves that, too.’
As we go on our way, the kid yells after us, ‘Don’t do it too much, though, or he’ll start to demaaaand it!’ Which, of course, Fritz already does. ‘He’ll start coming up to you and sticking his bum in your face!’ And the kid sticks out his own bottom, and wags it.
Dear Belle
Dear Belle,
I am a little torn. I have a new boyfriend who seemed great but has now started saying ‘Please’ when asking for a shag and putting on a little-boy look. This is not the first time I have had one of these types. Have you any training tips?
Dear Mary Poppins,
Personally I like a man with a lot of fight in him, and changing someone’s nappies is not my idea of a good time. (Fans who kink that way: rest assured, there are still plenty of working girls who will be happy to do this for you. I simply am not one of them.) Provided such behaviour is not a deal-breaking turn-off for you, I don’t see the harm in indulging him. Just so you remember to impose limits if (and when) he reaches your bearability threshold.
Breaking a manchild of such habits is probably a fruitless exercise, so you must ask yourself whether it is a path you’d at least consider going down. If all else fails, promise him he can have whatever he likes so long as he finishes his peas.
Dear Belle,
I have a new boyfriend and everything appears to be going well, but I have just discovered that his ex-girlfriend is the spitting image of me. Should I assume this is just one of those things and persevere with our promising relationship, or will it all end with me jumping off a church roof cf Vertigo?
Dear Twin Town,
By ‘spitting image’, do you mean you look like a distorted rubber mask of her? Or do you mean that she and you share a few general characteristics? Just as women have ideals and preferences in their romantic partners, so do men, and unfortunately their ticksheet for the perfect woman is sometimes – by which I mean always – a touch more superficial than ours. Men can be picky about such things as height, weight, and hair colour (hmm, starting to sound like your average client here). So you have blonde highlights, just like her, possibly dress similarly, and are within a order of magnitude of her weight. Unless he demands that you get her tattoos in the same places and takes you to her parents’ for Christmas dinner, I wouldn’t worry.