Virtue (19 page)

I announce myself to the maître d’. I never recognise anyone working in these places. I don’t know where they come from, or where they go to. No one I know has ever worked in one, or known anyone who worked in one. It’s as though they’ve been dug up from some service-ethic mine outside Birmingham and will, in the fullness of time, be shipped off second-hand to hotels in Sheffield. He scarcely affords me a glance, merely says, ‘Yes, madam, she’s already waiting,’ and leads the way to the table. Madam. No one ever calls me madam in the real world. They’ve been calling me it around my mother since I was fourteen.

It’s a bit of a shock to find her waiting at the table already. Grace usually makes a point of arriving five to ten minutes late wherever she goes; not late enough to be rude, but leaving things long enough to quietly emphasise that she’s worth waiting for. But here she is, looking like the big old spider that she is, eyes multiplied and blinking behind her bifocals.

I approach, give her the statutory peck on the cheek and take my seat. A Mediterranean-looking youth of about fifteen immediately shoots forward and shakes my white linen napkin into my lap. ‘Can I get you anything, madam?’ he asks.

Yes, please. I’ll have a bucket of gin and a straw and a handful of barbiturates. And maybe if you had a bottle of poppers handy, that would be nice. I could do with a laugh, and my headache’s not going to get any worse. ‘I’ll just have some fizzy water,’ I say.

My mother is silent. This isn’t all that unusual, as she doesn’t believe in small talk and despises those who do. ‘How was your flight?’ I ask. ‘How’s Boston? How’re the lectures going? What was it like going on
Newsnight
? Is Paxman as terrifying as he seems or is he just an interrupting boor? That’s a lovely brooch, where did you get that? What happened about the latest round of grant applications?’

I realise that I am prattling, and also that I am doing so to cover the fact that not one word has issued from her mouth. She is looking particularly severe tonight; she has scraped her hair back into a bun so tight that I think the skin at the front of her face must split from the pressure, and she has, for some reason, swapped her usual face-softening neck frills for a prison-warder-style grey tweed suit with a lilac blouse underneath. She watches me burble, her fingers running up and down the stem of her water glass.

The waiter returns with leather-look plastic-covered menus in maroon and, rather optimistically, a wine list in royal blue. My mother waves them away without looking at him, for she is continuing to stare at me in much the same way that police inspectors study suspected child molesters on ITV cop dramas. I finally run out of things to blather about and say, humbly, ‘What’s wrong, Mother?’

A silence. A small patch of red begins to form on the skin just above her collar. Oh, bugger. I’m in for it now.

‘How’s the library?’ she asks eventually.

There’s no way out of this; whatever reply she gets will be the wrong one. So I say, ‘Well, I didn’t want to tell you until I’d sorted out another job, but they had a round of budget cuts and had to lose some staff. So I’m not working there any more.’

It’s a terrible thing, this lying, but the awful thing is that, once you’ve got into the habit of lying to someone, it’s practically the most difficult habit to break. I lie to Grace pretty well as much as I talk to her. I think: okay, this time you’re going to have to get it over with, face her and tell her the truth, and once you’ve done it the first time, it can never be as bad again, and then when I gather my breath and open my mouth, the most absurd catalogue of falsehoods pours out and it feels as though there’s nothing I can do about it. I lie to Mother reflexively, idiotically and without control; I know I’m being stupid, that it’s much harder to remember one’s catalogue of lies than just live with the consequences of truth, but it’s as though I’m under someone else’s control. God, I might as well have been brought up a Catholic.

‘So,’ I finish, ‘it’s a bit of bad luck, but I’m sure it will be fine in the long run.’

‘Oh, really?’ Mother sips her water, places the glass carefully back on the table in the exact spot where its base had left a circular mark before.

‘Well, you know,’ I mutter.

‘I don’t,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘Well—’ Oh, God, what do I do? Why didn’t you give me one of those thick, twittery mothers like Mel’s got, who would reply to the announcement that you’d been on a day trip to the moon with a gasp of admiration and a whooshing, ‘
Really?
’ Or a cuddly mum like Lindsey’s who thinks that everything that makes her children happy is okay unless they’re actually crack-whoring or robbing sub-post-offices with sawn-off shotguns. Or Dom’s mother, who’s seen so much in her years in A&E that nothing comes as a surprise to her. Or Shahin’s mother, who thinks that the sun is actually generated by his flatulence and sends him regular care parcels full of pistachios and postcards of Isfahan even though he writes her about two letters a year in return.

‘I, um, well—’ I begin, then revert to my childhood tactic of staring down at the table in total silence.

‘And presumably you’re working here,’ she says, placing Sunday’s
News of the Screws
, the one with the front-page photo of Harriet and me standing in front of the desk, both leaning on a slim, bendy whitewood cane, on the white tablecloth, ‘because you’re desperately hard up and will do anything to pay the rent?’

Well, um, yes, sort of, but that’s not going to do me any good. Face burning, I continue with my in-depth study of the pattern on the tablecloth. Not a word issues from her lips. By saying nothing, she’s giving me all the slack I need to hang myself, I’m aware of that. Whatever way I jump, I’ll end up dangling in the breeze.

‘No,’ I mumble after a wait that draws itself out beyond the minute.

‘No what?’

‘No,’ I say, ‘I’m not doing it because of that.’

There’s another silence and I risk a snatched glance at her. The blotch has spread to her cheeks and her lips are white from pursing. I’ve never seen her so angry. She feigns astonishment. ‘Well, this must be a world first. The truth coming from the mouth of Anna Waters. And what do I owe the honour of being the first person to experience
that
to?’

She’s so angry she has actually allowed herself to indulge in a dangling participle. I’m going to cry if this goes on much longer. I’m aware that the waiter is hovering just behind my left shoulder, and that, having sized up the situation, he quietly makes himself scarce.

‘So what do you have to say?’

I shake my head. Misery has sucked the words right out of my head.

‘You’re not even going to apologise?’ hisses Grace, and to my astonishment, I find myself shaking my head again. What’s happened? Even yesterday I would probably have meekly said I was sorry and taken my punishment. But I’m not. I’m not sorry. More than that: it’s what I’ve chosen to do, and even if I’m not using my education, I’m still doing something I’m really good at, and I’m proud of that.

I look up, face that steely glare and lock eyes with her. ‘No, I’m not. I’m not going to apologise. I know it’s not what you had planned for me, but this is what I’ve chosen to do. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but I won’t apologise for my life.’

A double blink, and the lips bleach a little more. I raise my chin and stare her out. You may be my mother, I think, and hope she’s picking up my thoughts, but you’re not my proprietor. This is what I am, and you’re going to have to get used to it in the end.

She blinks again, takes another, measured sip from her glass and puts it back in its allotted position. Then she speaks.

‘You disgust me,’ she says. ‘You are a disgusting individual. I gave you everything. You had the best nutrition, the best education, the best stimulation. I surrounded you with people who would set you good examples, I gave you everything you could ever need to take a place in the world with respect, make a decent life for yourself. And now look at you. You’ve sunk to your own level, you’re down there where you belong.’

Numb with misery, I refuse to respond. Let her. She can’t say anything she’s not said before, can’t do anything she’s not done before. I’m past this all now, Mother: there is nothing you can do to me.

Then she says something I wasn’t expecting. ‘I should never have got you,’ she says. ‘I should never have tried this experiment.’

Oh, Christ. This is one step too far. I leap onto the moral high ground. ‘Parenthood is not an experiment, Mother.’

And she gives me a small, twisted smile of triumph, the sort of smile that makes your heart lurch in your body. Sips once again from her glass, specs glittering, then smiles again.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘but in our case, it was.’

I do what anybody with any sense would do under the circumstances. I go out and get stocious. Catch a cab, raging, to Brewer Street, drop into the loos at Jennifer’s, put on some smudgy, red and black face paint, change into the black Lycra shift I keep balled up in my bag for emergencies, stuff the detestable shirtwaister into the bin with the paper towels, replace my nose ring, sink a couple of Manhattans in one and, bawling into my mobile, set off into the Soho night. Because, fuck it, I’m young, I’m bright, I’m in London and I just don’t give a damn.

Nobody is answering their phone. Harriet, Dom, Mel, Shahin and everyone has their phone switched off. Stand outside a knocking shop that advertises ‘Geniune Schoolgirls!’, and shout messages begging them to call me onto their answering services. And then, because I’m not drunk enough yet, I stop off at the offy and buy a half-bottle of vodka to swig in the street like a wino, and go shopping to rid myself of the last remnants of my hateful news.

The shoe shop in Old Compton Street is still open and I blow eighty quid on a pair of blue sequinned slippers that I know are going to disintegrate the minute I hit a patch of spilled beer, and drop my sensible black T-bars into a passing wastebin. From a guy with a felt-lined metal suitcase, I buy rings: lots of rings; huge, chunky, primary-coloured plastic things with seahorses and glitter and neon flowers preserved for ever in their depths, and he throws in a pair of big, bobbly earrings made from Christmas tree baubles which bang against my cheeks as I walk and will no doubt have turned my piercings green by morning. Thursday night: Soho is wild with overexcited queens and tarts and strippers and beggars and Muscle Marys and office workers and media players and restaurant people and minicab touts and students drinking absinthe and grubby old blokes in raincoats and ladies coming out of the side doors of the musicals tying up their headscarves to save their hairdos from imaginary rain and coffee addicts jittering on the pavement of Frith Street and sturdy beggars and bridge-and-tunnellers and fourteen-year-olds from Hampstead in designer boob tubes and heavy-eyed kids from Staffordshire staring hungrily at the video arcades and Greek fellas licking their fingers and counting mysterious wads of cash held together with rubber bands and City boys looking to get their braces twanged and fashion PRs trying to stay upright on shoes that were made for window displays and huge men with ponytails and dark suits crossing their arms outside low-lit doorways.

I buy a double espresso from Bar Italia, drink it standing up on the pavement with a thousand other people, set off to wander the area, hopelessly looking through bar windows to see if I can see one of my friends. Oh, God, where
are
you? I know you’re around here somewhere: the whole world goes to Soho on a Thursday night unless they’re working. My feet hurt, my head hurts, and there’s a ball of red-hot metal working its way through my guts up my throat. I try to put it out with a swig of vodka, get a look from a yuppie couple on their way to a yuppie fucking restaurant with white tablecloths and five sorts of bread. Well, fuck you too. Can’t you see through your privilege to spot that I’m in pain?

Try Harriet again. Still on answerphone. Get through the message and shout, ‘Where
are
you? For God’s sake, where
are
you? Call me. For God’s sake call me, I need you!’ and hang up.

Seconds later, my phone rings. It’s Mel. I can scarcely hear her over the background bedlam. ‘Where are you?’ she bellows.

‘Oh, God. In the middle of Greek Street.’

‘Oh, right. Why? What are you up to?’ she asks.

‘I’m getting drunk,’ I reply. ‘I really need to get drunk. Have you seen Harriet?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I spoke to her earlier. She said she might come out but she wasn’t sure.’

‘She’s got her phone switched off now. I don’t know where to find her.’ I really need to talk to Harriet. My friends are kind, sweet people, but Harriet is the only one who actually knows.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Mel, ‘I’ll text her. Are you okay?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I’m not. I’m stone cold sober and I’ve just had one of the worst nights of my life.’

‘What happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, though of course I do.

A slight pause as Mel takes this in. Then, ‘Okay. We’ll come down. We’ll meet you in the Steam Room. Give us an hour.’

I hang up, cut down Bateman Street and hang a right down Frith. Outside the Pitcher and Piano, a group of schoolboys is laughing and pointing at one of their number, who is throwing up noisily and generously. Not, naturally, in the gutter, or against the wall, but in the very centre of the pavement. I think that this must be some masculine rite-of-passage ritual I’ve not been let in on; you’re not a man, my son, until at least three thousand people have had to take flying leaps to avoid your vomit. I hang a right back into Old Compton, walk west to Wardour, wiggle through into Brewer Street.

Pause on the corner of Great Windmill Street and send another text message to Harriet. ‘Where are you? Am distraught. Call me. Going to Steam Room. Find me. Please.’

Not the best place to pause. When I look up from the phone display, the bloke with only six fingers is grinning toothlessly at me from less than two feet away, saying, ‘Big Issue.’

‘How did you know?’ I ask. He looks blank.