The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl (29 page)

Colourfully‐wrapped fruit cakes sat on a shelf. I reached up to take one down, but even on tiptoe the sweet was just out of my reach. A man came up behind me. 'May I help you?'

'Can I have one of these?' I asked him.

'It depends,' he replied. 'Can I have one of you?'

jeudi, le 5 mai

We sailed on to Croatia and I bought a paper for the first time in a fortnight. They are full of disturbing images, the 252

sort that lead one to think about politics, war and the politics of war, and how these acts have always happened except we could never see them before. How righteous indignation and backlash sometimes seem products of ignorance, because who could not have guessed this would happen? Did we really need pictures in order to know? Are we truly angry at governments for doing what we knew they would do?

And you think, perhaps, there is one guarantee in life (that it ends) and one fairly safe bet as well (that it is painful) and freedom and property are illusions that can only exist in the mind. And that cleverer people have already thought these thoughts and discarded them and why don't I stop this rubbish philosophising already? Oh look, a woman in a stripy hat walking a champagne poodle.

I don't mean to make light of these events, but I'm hoping for a little pick‐up in the terror‐sex department at work when I get home.

It would do me the world of good.

vendredi, le 7 mai

It's a chalk‐bright afternoon and I've been walking, listening to music all day for the last few days. This helps ‐ no one assumes you can hear them, with the headphones on, so no one speaks to you. This is good.

I don't understand the language very well. When I want to hear the sounds around me, I switch the player off but leave the headphones on. I smile a lot. People smile back. Are people happier everywhere else in the world? Sure seems so.

But I know it's not the truth. I was in a bar, talking to a man my age. He'd been through three wars before he was twenty‐one.

'Why are men so horrible to each other?' I asked, naive.

'

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In my experience all people are horrible.' 'So why are we this way?'

'We don't know how else to be.' And we were quiet. He finished a drink, smiled at my guidebook. It was a smile that said, 'Where do you want to go? You know you won't find it in there.' Not that I've used it very much anyway, I like to choose a direction and keep going.

In this way I found the Jewish quarter, decimated and abandoned forever ago, like a forgotten film set, and the edge of the water, which I hadn't figured as being quite so close. His smile, it was so understanding, so accepting, I could feel the waves of goodwill just pouring off him, mixed with a little pity for me.

That, or he may have just been trying to pick me up. We girls have an absolutely appalling reputation abroad. Was there a pamphlet distributed in the last decade to men in foreign countries saying that the small islanders are simply gagging for it?

(I mean, I am, but yo, I'm on holiday, creep. So lay off.) samedi, le 8 mai

Holiday sex is always the best sex. I've had it everywhere ‐ Poole, Blackpool, swimming pools.

Someone else makes the bed afterwards, empties the bin of spent condoms, even picks up your wet and smelly towels from the floor. If the people below are kept up all night with the noises above, odds are either they won't know which people were responsible, or they'll be away the next morning anyway, or you can get away with a mild blush and a sheepish giggle, because you're on holiday, and only the sourest of pusses could deny anyone a healthy and vigorous bit of holiday exercise.

A1 always took me to the beach when my spirits were 254

flagging. He didn't enjoy the experience at all ‐ sand gets everywhere, which is anathema to a man as fastidious as he is, and he burns easily, which meant most of the outing would be spent re‐applying sun cream to the parts of his back he couldn't reach. One time we went away and he forgot to put sunblock on his feet, and they burned. For the entire week afterwards he couldn't wear socks or shoes.

But he did it for me, so I could recharge my batteries, he always said. And because he knew he'd be rewarded with an almighty screw in whatever bed and breakfast we were staying in that evening.

A2 loved the act of getting to his destination better than the holiday itself. He would drive and drive, and we would cover the entire country in a week, making stops wherever the spirit took us. If we spent the night in the Highlands, you could almost lay money on the fact that within twenty‐four hours we'd be holed up in a shabby guest house in Devon. He also liked taking pictures out of the window of a moving car, which always made me laugh and dive for the steering wheel as he did so.

We stopped and posed by abandoned buildings, funny road signs and large trees. We laid blankets in stands of trees and had sex, as the mosquitoes attacked his backside. I sucked him off in Friday-afternoon bank holiday traffic going north.

I thought in all our trips we probably never stayed in the same place twice. Until we booked into a hotel one night in the back end of nowhere, attracted by its slightly antique signs. The woman at registration greeted us familiarly. We'd stayed there only three nights before and completely forgotten it.

A3 and I took a trip together once, to look at caves. In the complete dark of underground, in the complete silence in the middle of the earth, he held my hand for the first time. It is 255

difficult to think of a time before or since when I've been so thrilled.

A4 and I went on a beach holiday almost the first week we met. His housemate's girlfriend wanted cockles. We didn't buy any, but we went to three beaches looking for someone selling them. It was a very hot morning. At the first place we stopped, the water was in a shallow bay and the beach was more like a pile of shells. We walked into the water, which was exactly as warm as the air. It felt like bathing in sweat. We drove on.

At the second village, there was nowhere to park. We pulled off the road and looked at the beach and the water. We were still unsure around each other and didn't have many topics of conversation yet.

The third beach was perfect, sandy and deserted. It was somewhere A1 had been with me often. The wind was coming up and the heat had gone from the day. The water was open for miles and came in strong waves. A4 stripped down to his bathing shorts ‐1 was in awe of his beauty then, and couldn't stop staring at his body. He dived into the surf and flopped around happily. I walked out to the water's edge and put a foot in. It was freezing! I jumped back.

'Are you mad?' I yelled out to his bobbing head. 'Aren't you cold?'

'It's bracing!' he yelled back, and even at that distance I could hear his teeth chattering. I laughed and laughed. On the way home, we went past endless farms and looked at the pigs rooting in the last light of the day. A DJ on the radio was playing old songs, swing jazz, and we listened in happy silence. Sometimes to make me laugh he'd say, 'Bracing!'

But the best holiday with him, and we went on many together, was camping. We set up a large tent in the woods next to a cold water spring and stayed several days. The water was icy in the very hot summer and we bathed naked.

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A giant dead tree slanted out of the water and, balancing on that, he had me over and over. It felt so wonderfully primal. Until a naturist came along and paddled in the shallow water as if we weren't even there.

Holiday sex is the best. No one to answer to, no work, no neighbours. And if you're lucky, no phone reception. Pure sensation.

It's probably exactly what the clients at work are after.

lundi, le 10 mai

There were no direct flights back. Spent one night in Rome at a large, central hostel.

The shop around the corner must have been the only one open in the early evening as it was crowded. Bought bread, tomatoes, ricotta al forno. The markets of other countries are fascinating to me.

Walking the aisles slowly, seeing what is given pride of place on the shelves. Single‐serving meat pastes in the Czech Republic, screw‐top bottles of sangria in Spain sold as if they were soda, the odd variety of things offered in the supermarket queues in North America. Razors, balloons and dried meat especially.

The kitchen of the hostel was large and well‐equipped, with loud groups of young people at the tables. I sat on the corner of one eating sandwiches and reading a newspaper. Wrapped two rolls and some cheese in a bit of paper to save for breakfast.

A few people sat nearby. They were English, but not travelling in a group together. I asked one where he was from. Cheddar, he said. Ah, I replied. I knew someone from there a long time ago. Asked what he was doing in Rome. Not much, he said. Meeting a friend but she had gone on elsewhere. Did he like Italy? Yes. He showed me a map of all 257

the places he'd walked in Rome. Someone had left a sweet bread, a loaf of colomba, in the communal food cupboard. We tore it to bits.

The buttery flesh was sticky on top with crystallised sugar and candied peel. One of the others asked if we wanted to go for ice cream. 'Which flavour?' I asked.

'They have every flavour,' he said. The boy from Cheddar agreed. It was late, but they were open late, apparently.

We walked for almost an hour. The city was waking up, groups of men and women everywhere. I was pleased to be in the company of these men. They were each funny and clever, though I took a shine to the one from Cheddar. 'Is it that one?' I asked, as we walked past yet another gelateria. 'No, not yet,' he said. 'It's better than that.'

It was. I couldn't help but laugh, when we finally reached our destination. The large bright store had every flavour imaginable. I mean that. They had Nutella flavour, Ferrero Rocher, peanut butter, fruits I'd never heard of. They had more flavours of chocolate ice cream alone than most places had altogether. I was delighted, ordered a cone with one scoop of coconut and one of mango. The three of us nibbled from each other's, then bought more, different flavours.

We stood outside in a little piazza. The other boy disappeared, I didn't know where. The bit from Cheddar and I were talking about twins, and sex, and twins he'd wanted to have sex with, the sort of things that really only drunk people discuss, except we weren't drunk.

Perhaps high on ice cream. I asked what he did. He was a student, he said. Some variant of chemistry. Poor, of course. Though someone had once offered him a job as a stripper. Didn't you take it, I asked.

No, he said. Pity. I did it for a while, once. When I was a student.

'Really?' he asked. I nodded. The other one came back. We dropped the subject.

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They wanted to see the Trevi fountain. Actually, both of them had seen it before. They wanted me to see it. 'How many times have you been to Rome?' Incredulous. 'And you've never seen the fountain?'

We walked and walked. Well‐dressed couples were going into lamplit restaurants.

At the fountain there were groups of tourists, though it must have been about midnight. People selling cheap electronics. Short Asian girls with rosebuds who would stand almost in your armpit. The water was full of coins and rubbish. They say throwing money into the fountain ensures your safe return to Rome some day; I wonder what disposing of your sweet wrappers there signifies. We left.

Walked along the river, crossed a bridge. On both sides were statues of angels. We stopped, talked about sculpture, about Titian.

How the male form looks better in stone but the female looks better painted.

We looked at the map, turned down a road towards the Vatican.

Stood outside St Peter's. There is an obelisk there, a single needle pointing into the sky. There's another obelisk in London. Strange how we moderns have moved them around the world singly, when the Egyptians put them up in pairs. It would be like erecting half a minaret or just the nave of a church. You can go up in the dome of St Peter's, I said. In the roof there is a gift shop staffed by nuns; you can buy a postcard of the Vatican and post it from the roof. That, in my opinion, is the finest thing in the religion, which has no shortage of amazing things.

We walked back. We circled ruins, pillars of the Romans fallen into piles of stone discs. Something ‐1 can't remember what ‐ reminded me of a poem, and I recited it. The boys talked about children's television. Cheddar told us about the Singing Ringing Tree. We others could not remember it. Neither of them had ever read The Little Prince as children, so I told them that story.

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That's terrible,' Cheddar said. 'What a story to tell a child.'

I shrugged. We saw a scooter parked outside a restaurant that had silk flowers glued all over it. We bought and shared a terrible, overpriced slice of pizza with an artichoke topping.

Back at the hostel the other boy went to bed. Cheddar and I stayed up, talked and talked, mostly about Brighton. I drew nonsensical things on a paper napkin; he kept it. He talked about going back to the Vatican to see the Pope in the morning first thing. Stand in queues for the confessionals, which stand also in long rows, organised by the language the priest inside speaks. Asked if I would go.

'My flight is at eight,' I said. 'I need to get some sleep.' It was about five.

'I think I'll stay up,' he said.

'You should nap first, you'll die at this rate.'

'I haven't written in my journal yet,' he said. 'I'll sleep when I'm dead.' He walked me to my floor, we exchanged email addresses, touched lips on the stairs.

mardi, le 11 mai

Only just awake enough to check email when I finally arrived home. A note from Dr C, who is visiting the UK soon and wants to see me.

Must go sleep on it, as if I had a choice.

dimanche, le 16 mai

A few days ago, before going to Rome, I had a missed call from the agency and a text from the manager, confirming a client at half nine.

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I rang her back. 'Terribly sorry, you'll have to cancel, I'm still away.'

'Ah right, darling. You see, this man, he is so nice—'

'No ‐ I'm actually away. Out of the country. I'm not back until late Monday.' As I had told her, in several calls and emails during the last few weeks.