To the Devil - a Diva! (13 page)

Sally was less prone to dark moods than Effie. This was because Effie lived in that poky flat and Sally was up in the sky with all that light and air. Sally was sure of this. And when Effie had one of her moments of despair, Sally tended to leave her to her own devices.

Tonight, out on the ring road, at the long tables of Harry Ramsden's restaurant with all the old dears, it was Sally who was slipping into a funk. She was grateful that Effie had enough respect not to try to pull her out of it.

‘You're not having much fun, are you?' was all she said. ‘You're not exactly the life and soul.'

Sally just glowered. She was finding it hard to join in with the others, singing along with Alma Cogan, Frankie Vaughan. She felt a fool, sitting with these people her age, dolled up in her new black dress. Most of them were paired up and being quite exclusive, opening and closing their mouths; warbling along with their emptied plates set out in front of them. Dirty plates smeared in chip fat and tomato sauce.

And, Sally thought, I made a mistake in having those spicy pickled onions. She'd ordered this speciality side dish here before and knew full well they repeated on her. Now she had biliousness to add to her list of woes. But she knew
her trapped wind was just a symptom of something deeper, and worse.

These people around her embarrassed her. She felt daft for thinking this would have been a good night out. She felt silly in advance, thinking of how she'd be telling Colin, later, that they'd had a lovely time. Even the food hadn't been
top-notch
. They must give the substandard fish to block-bookings, she thought: all the black bits, all the soggy batter.

She was looking at Effie and the cronies through Karla Sorenson's eyes. That's what she realised. She was wolfing down pickles that made her eyes water while everyone sang with Peggy Lee and she was wondering bitterly what Karla would make of this lot. Karla, who had managed to escape from her own generation. Karla, thinking that she, Sally, was done up too flashy, too cheap.

‘Are you having a pudding?' Effie asked her. She watched her friend crunching the last of the pickles and dabbing her fingers on a paper napkin. Sally shook her head quickly. ‘That's not like you, either.'

Thankfully the music had subsided as everyone set about deciding on their sweets. Besides Effie, Sally hadn't talked to anyone tonight. Usually there was a bit of backchat, a bit of banter. Maybe some harmless flirting with the likes of that Trevor. But Trevor looked proper thick with his skinny wife tonight. He was all brushed up in a navy blazer, on best behaviour. Talking his wife into a knickerbocker glory.

‘Do you ever wish you had a regular fella, Effie?' she asked, suppressing a small belch.

Effie's lips pursed. ‘I do not. I've tried that once and I wasn't overly keen.'

This surprised Sally. ‘When was this? Who was it?'

Effie sighed. Self-disclosure. This was the price of drawing Sally out tonight. ‘It was years ago. He was the son of my mother's best friend. They set us up. He was a big soft thing who spent his time putting model warships together. A bit simple.'

‘I take it it didn't last long.'

Effie shrugged. ‘Almost six years. We all went to Mass together, as a foursome. And into town on a Saturday afternoon. Mam and Mrs Barnet were good neighbours for years, so I had to tag along, and so did this great gallumphing lad. Daniel. When Mrs Barnet passed away it fizzled out. Daniel wouldn't leave the house. I think he went funny. Mam didn't think I ought to go round anymore, not even to check on him. Yet she had been the one pushing us together. Trying to get me off her hands. When he went a bit daft and you didn't see him out and about and his net curtains were looking dirty and shabby, well, then she nipped it in the bud. She called the Social Services on him.'

Sally was staring at her friend. She had never heard any of this before.

‘They put him away in the end. Led him out into the street. He was in his pyjamas and they were too small for him. We went out to look and I didn't know whether to wave or what. He had all of this grey hair poking out through the gaps in his pyjama top. He looked really startled, standing in the daylight, out in the street.'

‘Well,' said Sally. ‘That story's really cheered me up.' Then she touched Effie's hand gently. ‘Sorry. But that's an awful story. How old were you?'

‘I was nearly forty when they led him away,' Effie said. The singing was starting up again. ‘It was my last proper
chance, really. That's what I realised, a long time after.' Sally poured them both another dribble of tea. ‘He was my first and my last.'

‘Were you intimate together?'

‘Just a bit. He was ever so careful with me. Scared he would damage me. I remember his hands had all these scars from his modelling knife. And dried bits of that flaky Airfix glue.'

‘Effie,' Sally said, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘What's to be sorry about? It mightn't have been the romance of the century, but it was my little bit of excitement. It was mine.' Her mouth twitched. She smiled. ‘I haven't lived much, have I?'

Sally laughed. ‘Who has, really? How do you measure these things?' Sally was wondering: just how much have I lived? Can I really say I've had more excitement than Effie has? More chances?

‘I'll tell you who you can measure against,' Effie said. ‘And none of us have really lived, compared to the life she's had.'

Sally knew what she was going to say. ‘Karla.' The word made her shiver. That name was the one behind all her gloom and dread tonight. It was that name that had put her out of sorts.

‘She must have lived enough for all of us,' Effie said. ‘She's had all of our lives and more to spare.'

Sally said, ‘I would like to see her again. Just once. Just to see what she's like now. After everything. And to see if that's true. See how much life she's really had. And what it's all done to her.'

Lance still hadn't spared his scripts a glance. He had tried watching telly and, even though he wasn't exactly expert with the remote control for all his digital channels, he had whizzed through what seemed like a hundred different programmes and nothing had grabbed him or diverted him for more than a couple of minutes. Now the sound was right down on a show in which six celebrities appeared to be swapping lives with six members of the UN inspectorate for weapons of mass destruction. All Lance could think was: no one asked me to take part. I'd have been good at that. In fact, it seemed like months since anyone at all had phoned, begging him to take part in a celebrity reality show. All those requests he had so graciously turned down had petered out completely. Maybe they all thought he was overexposed. Maybe everyone was sick of the sight of him. And maybe it was time he stopped gracing their screens altogether. Even late night TV had seen enough of him.

He shuffled back to his kitchen to lug out a second bottle of Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. He liked saying the name to himself, savouring the clipped consonants as he jiggled about in his striped sleeping pants, his bare feet on the stone floor.
He had to wrestle with the elegant, wholly impractical bottle opener.

Exactly as the cork went plunk, there came a knock at his french windows. He froze, almost dropped the bottle and his heart palpitations started up. He imagined edging up to the glass doors and hissing querulously like an old woman: ‘Who is it?' He coughed, ready to ask in a loud, hopefully intimidating voice. But someone outside, banging again on the panes, beat him to it.

‘Lance! It's me! Let us in!'

He crouched down and did a kind of commando scramble through his own front room, barking his shins on the coffee table. There was one looming silhouette on the window: darker where its forehead and palms were pressed on the glass. Behind, two indistinct shapes – one tall and slender, the other much shorter – were hanging about like spectres.

‘It's me! Colin! Open up, Lance. We're a bit worried about you!'

Worried about him? For a moment he couldn't even make sense of what was being said. No one worried about him. There was no one left around to even do such a thing.

‘Who is it, did you say?' he asked, and his voice didn't come out as terse and confident as he'd wanted it to be.

‘Colin! From Slag!'

He remembered. ‘What do you want?'

‘We were waiting for you next door, in the bar tonight. We thought you'd come out for a drink. I've got two friends …'

Colin's voice was all breathy and gabbling. Lance couldn't keep up. Well, at least it wasn't anyone threatening and dangerous. Just that little lad from next door. He'd
seen him this morning. Colin had served him with his first drink of the day. That seemed like months ago now. Even then Colin had been trying to blag his way inside Lance's apartment, angling for an invite up here. Lance couldn't really understand why. And now here he was. But in Lance's mind Colin was associated with that first, crisp twist of gin and morning consolation.

‘Who have you got with you?' Even to himself Lance sounded paranoid and mad. I've got a Sunset Boulevard default setting, he thought, amazed.

‘Two pals,' Colin hissed. ‘They were desperate to meet you. I wouldn't have knocked otherwise. But they're both colossal fans of yours.'

Fans? Lance swallowed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, just imagining the inky lipstick he'd be wearing from the wine. He couldn't let fans in when all he had on were his old housepants. He'd be making himself far too vulnerable and available. He looked down at his bare chest. His nipples had gone hard as football studs. Fans. Coming to see him.

He went whirling back to the settee to fetch his dressing gown. ‘Hang on, Colin,' he said. ‘I'll let you in.'

The hotel management had been kind enough to ask if she wanted a private room for dinner. They could sort something out, themed in her honour if she liked: something Gothic and sepulchral. They liked a creative challenge at the Prince Albert and assumed she wished to be secure from prying eyes. Karla had already said that she wouldn't eat alone in her suite. She had never liked doing that. It seemed too much like being in hospital, or a care home, and made her think of sitting up with a tray on metal legs. Stains down her nightie.

No, tonight she wanted to be downstairs. She wanted to be swish and aloof and maybe mysterious. She wanted to dine in public and let them all look at her. Let them get an eyeful of who was back in town.

So that was how the resplendent, servile Kevin came to be leading the voluptuous, silver-haired vampire lady across the foyer. Shoulders back, bust thrust straight out, drawing stares from fellow guests at eleven o'clock. She was eating late, as was her habit. She took tiny, painful steps to the main dining room. She paused in the doorway and let the maitre d' go into a kerfuffle of praise; let him busybody and fuss and waft her with the huge, handwritten menu to the best table in the place, up on a kind of podium.
Everything was accomplished with a flourish. Kevin even looked theatrically dejected when she sent him off for a break. She could see how pained he was to leave her and that gratified her.

All the crockery, glass and cutlery was pleasingly chunky and spotless. The tablecloth was starchy and brilliant under her trembling fingers. She examined it all: devoting special attention to the exotic frou-frou of the table's centrepiece: some ridiculous arrangement of whorled and filigreed blooms, all dewy hoods and throbbing tongues. She took in everything through a pair of tiny, jewelled spectacles she then placed back in her evening bag, and she deliberately ignored the other diners. She knew they were looking. There were whispers from young and old alike. The heads of the weekend visitors, the well-to-do, the business class, all were bobbing up like meerkats. There was a Mexican wave of discreet interest in her presence. She even heard her name whispered and those quiet voices were molten on the air: a mist of speculation that rose above the tablecloths and up to her podium. Karla lowered her glance, decorously studying the menu.

Something light. Sole Veronique. The waiter shot over to her side and craned down to hear her whisper. She sat back to wait, and sipped cool white wine and dragged on one of her beloved black Russian Sobranies. The lilac smoke scrolled about her and she smiled to herself over her choice of dish. Once she'd had a psychotherapist – years ago, when she was on the Continent, on location for some drossy horror flick – and he had divined that she was a keen cook. Which she was, in those days. He had snapped at her: ‘Tell me, what is the distinguishing feature of the dish known as Sole Veronique?'
She hadn't known what he was on about. He was a bald little man, a proper ugly brute with a beard like a shaving brush. ‘It is grapes!' he had barked triumphantly. ‘The distinguishing feature of Sole Veronique is that it contains grapes!' Karla had been none the wiser as to how that fact was meant to help with her therapy. In the end, that man had advised her to sit in a dark, silent cupboard for an hour each day and mew like a cat. She would find a solution to all her tensions that way. And he'd put her on the strongest drugs she'd ever necked in all her life.

Karla had watched a video of that Romanian horror film only recently, (English title: ‘Lick Me Out Slowly, Lick Me Out Quick') and, for the first time, she'd had confirmed what she'd solemnly suspected at the time: the viewer could tell a mile off that here was a woman living solely off fish and antidepressants. A woman who sat in a cupboard and miaowed like a cat. I've had the most ridiculous career, she thought, in both cinema and psychotherapy.

Actually, the film hadn't been all that bad. She wondered if, twenty years after these episodes of
Menswear
she was committing herself to had aired, they would hold up as well. She wondered if there would be special DVD boxed sets of them. If they would become Collectible or Cultish.

Karla had never had any idea of how her projects would turn out. It was the same with all of them. It was like playing the Wheel of Fortune, with divisions marked ‘Lost Classic,' ‘Camp Turkey', ‘Kitsch Arthouse', ‘Porno Trash', ‘Highbrow Gorefest' and ‘Nightmare Twatfest.' And there was no way of telling which way it would turn. She was always astonished at the result: what distinguished a work of art from ludicrous,
forgettable tat. As far as she could make out, nothing did. It just depended on who liked it; who could find something to say about the work. She was at the mercy of pundits in the end. Pundits and time. All she could do was her same old shtick. That never changed.

At last the waiter reappeared with her dinner under a silver salver. She was pleased to put thoughts of her oeuvre to the back of her mind and concentrate on the sight of the blue-green fish suddenly revealed on the plate before her. It was languid in a thick white sauce: a glittering state of repose. The eyes of the fish had the same milky opacity as the grapes strewn about it.

It didn't look like any Sole Veronique she'd ever had before, but she was ravenous, and didn't like kicking up a fuss in restaurants. Before picking up her knife and fork she had a glance around, to see that the other diners weren't looking anymore. They weren't. They'd had their fill of celebrity.

How to tackle this monster?

She hated being given things with faces still on. It looked like it had been asphyxiated none too carefully. Its thick blue lips were very disturbing. The fins and gills and the perfect sequins of its scales looked oily, uncooked, fresh from the sea.

What the hell had they given her?

Its milky eye juddered and puckered and flinched. It was suddenly blazing at her, orange and black. She knew it was staring right into her. Out flopped a fat, bloody tongue from between those swollen lips, and the fish licked some of the sauce thoughtfully. Then it cleared its throat.

Karla dropped knife and fork with a dreadful clatter. The fish was trying to shimmy around in its pool of grapey sauce
and when it could look her in the eyes again, it started to speak in a fluting, accusing tone:

‘So, you're back in Manchester, are you? Well, we know exactly what you're up to. We know why you're really here. You devil woman. You should never have come back.'

Karla couldn't breathe.

‘You'd better keep your hands off that boy!' the fish shrieked. ‘You leave him be, Karla Sorenson! Just you leave my boy alone!'

With that, the fish had exhausted itself. It slumped back down dead onto the plate.