Virtue (23 page)

‘What I’m saying, though,’ begins Harriet again, ‘is that it doesn’t matter where you came from.’

‘I know,’ I reply. I’m not stupid. Obviously she brought me here to give me a talking-to.

‘’Cause that’s what Godiva did. They may not have liked what she was, but at least she was a figment of her own imagination.’

I nod.

‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ says Harriet. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, but you’d already stopped being what you’d been meant to be years ago. It’s still the same.’

I feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes again. ‘I know, Har,’ I say.

‘She’s only telling you now because she wants to hurt you. She thought she could control you, and she can’t stand it. But you don’t have to do what she wants you to do now, any more than you did before. You don’t have to be anything anyone tells you to be. You’re doing fine as you are, you know.’

I quickly dip my head beneath the water, as the tears are starting to spill again. When I resurface, I say, ‘I know. Thanks.’

‘Thanks, arse,’ says Sweary Mary. ‘Fuck ’em, that’s what I say.’ She pushes off and splashes to the middle of the pool. ‘I don’t live here,’ she says, then shouts it out. ‘I don’t fucking LIVE HERE and I never will!’ Kicks water into my face so that the only thing I can do in response is start laughing again and kick back.

A strident, confident voice interrupts our shrieks and pushes us both beneath the water, where we crouch and look up. Three figures tower over us, dressed identically in Driza-bones, flowerpot hats and walking sticks. ‘’Scyurze me,’ says the voice, ‘you do knur that thus us priver prupty, daren’t yuh?’

‘Oh,’ says Harriet, swimming to the edge. ‘Hello, Cair. How are you?’

‘What did you say your name was again?’

‘Geraldine West.’

‘Geraldine, eh? And how old did you say you were?’

Geraldine, now an ex-Pigg, recites the magic formula that Kiki has given her. ‘I’m twenty-one, Mr Flowers.’

Rodney Flowers considers his latest applicant with narrowed eyes, says ‘Are you sure about that, Geraldine? You look younger. What’s your date of birth?’

She’s been practising this one all night. ‘Fourth of April, 1938, Mr Flowers.’

Rodney nods, pleased with the response. ‘Very good, my dear. Convincing. Now, you know, don’t you, that you have to be twenty-one to work here, or in any establishment like this?’

‘Oh, yes, Mr Flowers, I certainly do. I’ve been wanting to break into interpretive dancing for years now, so it’s been terrible having to wait.’

‘Well, your audition piece certainly showed a high degree of ambition,’ he replies. He smiles, the smile of a well-oiled gecko, swirls the brandy round his bucket-sized snifter before inhaling deeply of the bouquet. It is ten in the morning and he feels that the day is about to go well. The tiny figure standing before him wrapped in a towel is just the sort of girl his customers – and he himself – have a particular taste for: blonde, stacked in the chest department, round of buttock and very, very young – seventeen, eighteen at the most. And she’s hungry.

‘So, Geraldine,’ he says, ‘tell me a little about yourself. What about your family? What do they think of your chosen career?’

‘I’m an orphan, Mr Flowers. I’ve been an orphan since I was six-years old.’ Geraldine affects a little pout, looks up at him speculatively through her thick eyelashes. Very pretty, thinks Rodney Flowers, very talented.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, my dear. How did it happen?’

‘My mother was killed in the Blitz when I was two-years old. A buzz-bomb. They found me unharmed in my cot beside her body.’

‘All too common a story,’ says Rodney Flowers, ‘I’m sad to say.’

‘Father was an officer in the army. He died in a prison camp in the Far East a year before VJ day.’

‘Mmm. Mmm. And who raised you?’

‘Neither of my parents had any family,’ she announces confidently. ‘I was raised in a government orphanage until I was old enough to look after myself.’

A likely story, he thinks. No government orphanage I’ve ever heard of pays for the kind of elocution lessons this one’s had. Her voice still bears a slight trace of a Northern accent, but no doubt that’s something that will iron itself out in time. ‘And all this time,’ he asks, ‘you’ve wanted to be a dancer?’

‘Oh yes,’ she announces. ‘All I’ve ever wanted to do was come to London and take to the West End stage.’

He puts his glass down, smiles again. ‘And what better place to start? Why, you’ll be right in the heart of the West End working here. You do understand, though, don’t you, that the job requires more than simply dancing? We have some very friendly gentlemen through these doors, many of them distinguished in their own right, and they are looking for more than just a performance on stage. They will be wanting you to socialise with them as well. If you know what I mean.’

Not a hesitation. ‘Yes, Mr Flowers. I know what you mean. And I think you’ll find that I can be very – sociable.’

He throws an arm over the back of his chair, relaxes, all formalities taken care of. ‘Well, I’d say that you might well fit in here. We like a nice sociable girl in this club. It’s what we’re famous for. There’s just one thing …’

She leans forward in interest, and a curve of bosom reveals itself elegantly before him. A practised little minx, he thinks. She’s spent years in front of the bedroom mirror getting that one right.

‘The name, Geraldine. It’s hardly the name of a West End star, is it?’

Geraldine looks reluctant, then certain. ‘No, I suppose not. I don’t mind changing it. I’ll do anything to get this job. What do you think I should call myself?’

‘Well,’ he considers his latest acquisition. Very nice. Very nice indeed. ‘We generally like to give our girls names that are as close as possible to their original ones as we can. Saves confusion.’

‘Absolutely, Mr Flowers.’

‘Let’s see – ’ he looks away from her, as if to pluck inspiration from thin air. His eye runs down the rows of bottles behind the bar, lights on the gin section. He has thirty brands of gin, from the obscure to the tawdry. And in the middle, a flask of Geneva Spirit.

‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘Geneva. That’s nice. Has a ring to it. Classy. Geneva, like Jennifer, only not. How does that suit you?’

Geneva squeals with pleasure. ‘Why, it’s wonderful, Mr Flowers! I love it! Geneva West! Couldn’t be better!’

‘Well, Geneva it is,’ he smiles again. Picks up the snifter once more, breathes deeply through the nose and sits back.

‘So, Geneva,’ he says, ‘what would you do to get this job?’

He sees her make little fists with her fingers, sees her eye his belly, his old man’s chicken legs, breathe in the aroma of dinner jacket worn night after night in a cloud of cigar smoke. Then he sees her breathe in and plaster a beautiful, angelic, willing smile across her face as she replies, ‘Why I’d do anything, Mr Flowers. Anything at all.’

‘Anything?’

‘Yes, Mr Flowers,’ she says firmly. ‘Anything.’

The lazy lizard smirk reappears, and his tongue flicks ever so lightly across his lips. ‘Call me Rodney,’ he says.

Life at Belhaven has a surreal quality as it is. And yet we always make the mistake of getting wasted before we enter the fray, which makes things totally wild and woolly. There was no chance, once the Inbreeds uncovered our presence, that Gerald wouldn’t bring a couple of retrievers down to bully Henry, and take the opportunity to issue a three-line whip on dinner. Sadly, he did it after Harriet produced a Tupperware box of hash brownies that Shahin cooked up for us as a bon voyage present. So by the time we actually make it to the two-hour pre-dinner drinks, neither of us is really able to communicate at all, which is not such a bad thing, as neither are our hosts.

As we’re staying at the Kennels, we enter Belhaven Great House through the kitchen door, so it’s not until we’re actually going in to dinner that Harriet notices that the chinoiserie cachepots in the hall seem to have sprouted a pair of Swiss cheese plants. Even I notice them, and I’m practically impervious, having grown up in surroundings whose appearance was dictated by practicality, to these obscenities of style that put others’ teeth on edge. This doesn’t look like a Geraldism to me: it’s rather more the style of Sofe, his wife. Sofe, after all, once tried to carpet the long gallery.

We’re all following each other in a large group, and everyone apart from me is bellowing with hilarity at a story a man called Neil is telling about an encounter with a group of anti-foxhunting demonstrators in Newbury, so I’m the only one to notice the slight hiss as Harriet spots the offending plant-life. She develops a sudden and exaggerated limp, hops along a couple of paces and then drops to her knee beside the first cachepot. ‘Sorry,’ she says to Roof, who scarcely notices, ‘stone in shoe. Have to get rid.’ The more time Harriet spends around her relations, the fewer words she uses. It starts with the pronouns and works its way down through adverbs and adjectives until pretty much all that comes from her mouth is a jumble of nouns peppered with minimal verbs and the odd conjunction. ‘Gin, tonic, fag,’ she’ll say, ‘and bed.’ ‘Walk, lake; take dog?’

I kick her ankle as I pass, which has no effect at all, glance over my shoulder as we go into the dining room and see that her hand is deep in her bag. Poor old Swiss cheese plant. We will never see your like again.

It’s a relatively small dinner party for the size of the table; twelve of us strung down the sides with Gerald at the top and Sofe hanging off the end like a good hostess. There’s me, Harriet, the Inbreeds and Aird, the Master of Foxhounds and his wife and a pair of men who go round in a Range Rover with Gerald, shooting things. My ears are adjusting gradually, tuning in to a world without consonants, so it only takes me a couple of seconds to translate and reply when one of the shooting buddies, the one who’s not Neil, turns to me as we take slices of bread and butter for our smoked trout and says, ‘Wurra view cu’fra thea’?’

‘London,’ I say, ‘I share a house with Harriet.’

He looks at me. ‘Lyki’ there?’

I think for a second, weigh it up and say, ‘Yes, I do, actually. It’s—’

But he’s barked out his own judgment – ‘Burry awfore place’ – and turned his back to engage the MFH’s wife in conversation. I squeeze a mingy slice of lemon over my trout and settle back to another Belhaven dinner. Shooting buddy is booming, ‘Marvlus day. Fifteen brace a head, nobody hit a beater, had to plough the lot under or we would’ve knocked the bottom out of the game market up that way.’

‘Fantastic,’ says Mrs MFH. ‘Not too much trouble with the Krauts, then?’

‘Five thousand pound a head I think I’ll put up with a bit of trouble,’ says Shootist, and they both collapse in laughter.

Other Shooter, next to Harriet, is shouting up the table. ‘Good trout, Gerald. Come from the estate?’

Gerald laughs. ‘Marks and Sparks,’ he replies. ‘No point in using fish from here when we can package it up with the crest and sell it at double the going rate. You won’t believe what people will pay for a bit of packaging.’

‘Associative glamour,’ interjects Harriet, but her words fall on deaf ears.

‘Very good,’ Shooting friend says. ‘You’ve got a good business brain there, Gerald.’

‘Oh,’ Gerald says modestly, ‘not really my idea. Got it from the Duchy of Cornwall. They’ve been turning a profit from bran sweepings for years.’

‘Bright chap, Wales,’ says Shooting pal reflectively, and I manage, just, to suppress a snort of laughter.

‘So, Gerald,’ says Harriet, who knows that the answer is a souvenir Godiva plate with scenes of her life and interment, ‘what are the best-selling lines in the shop at the moment?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ he replies blithely. ‘Leave that to the accountant people. So when did you get down? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?’

‘Oh, I was going to,’ she lies, ‘but we came down in a hurry and thought we might get in a couple of days’ sleep before we bothered everyone.’

‘Nonsense,’ says Sofe. ‘It wouldn’t have been a bother. I mean, you’ve balanced the table for us tonight.’

I’m not quite sure what she means by balanced. The scales seem still to be firmly dipped to me. Harriet and I look at each other and, because we’re both thinking the same thing, giggle like stupid teenagers who’ve invented a secret language to annoy the grown-ups. I polish my plate with my bread, take a sip of wine, take a sip of water, glance at my watch. Probably only another couple of hours to go.

The man next to me turns reluctantly from the MFH’s wife and has another go at conversation. ‘D’you shoot?’ he booms.

Oh, yeah, I think. I’m dressed from head to toe in black, I have a small tattoo of an ankh on my left breast, a pierced nose and live in London. Good question. ‘No,’ I reply.

‘Oh,’ he says, turns away once more.

A plate of something that looks vaguely like overcooked beef lands in front of me, then a pot of jam. I take some jam, pass it on, help myself to a couple of roast potatoes, take a third because I realise that I’m going to need something to do with my hands, then a fourth because I’ve developed a serious case of the munchies. Think about fiddling with my cutlery, realise that there must be some green stuff on the way and clench my hands together in my lap.

‘Jolly nice-looking venison, Gerald,’ says Harriet’s shooting partner. ‘This come off the estate?’ God, they’re obsessed. It’s like listening to allotment bores comparing marrow yields.

‘Oh, yes,’ says Gerald, ‘Can’t sell deer for tuppence. Great British Public won’t touch the stuff. Venison and rabbit. Got this one denuding a young chestnut in the park. Bang, single shot to the head, had to get it inside before the gates were opened or there’d’ve been hell to pay. Eat nothing but bloody deer in season. Deer for breakfast, deer for lunch, deer for dinner, deer pie, deer pâté, deer pasties, deer fricassée, deer curry, deer Wellington, deer with prunes, deer in cider, deer à la mode …’

Once Gerald gets started on a theme, there’s little stopping him. Aird helps himself to frozen peas from a Sevrès serving dish and, as I take a couple of tablespoonfuls myself, starts to cross-question me.