Further Under the Duvet (2 page)

I’ve never been comfortable asking for something for nothing, even though, as Aoife kept reminding me, I was
offering coverage and thereby saving them a ton in advertising. And the weird thing was that there was no correlation between how fabulous the brand was and how generous they were. I had thought that the more expensive and exclusive the products, the less chance I had of getting them. But it didn’t work like that at all. Truly yummy brands, brands that I had, in the past, paid good money for, like Prescriptives and Clinique, were phenomenally generous and staffed by lovely, friendly girls who didn’t make me feel one bit like a greedy scuzzball. And Jo Malone, one of the most beloved and beautiful brands on the planet, sent stuff so delicious I had to lie down in a darkened room. Whereas Chanel told me to fuck off. Okay, not those words exactly, but when I explained my mission to some French wan at their press office, she said dismissively, ‘We do not do zee: “tried and tested”.’ This was my cue to sneer, ‘Oh yeah? Afraid you can’t hack it, eh?’ But because I saw the chance of free Chanel stuff slipping from my grasp, I kowtowed shamelessly, promising ‘lovely coverage’. Alas, compromising my journalistic integrity came to nought; and nothing, not even a sample-sized eye cream, came from Chanel.

But for every knock-back, someone else came through. The day the Decléor lorry showed up, piled high with gorgeous French skincare, was another high spot, a memory I take out and polish every now and then, when I’m feeling blue.

Even when the product was all wrong for my skin type and colouring, I welcomed it anyway, then, when I’d amassed enough, had a big giveaway party for friends and family.

It was like nearly every day was my birthday. And
never knowing exactly what was going to be in the envelope was so exciting – it could be anything: a hot new perfume, night cream that I would read about in
Vogue
next month, must-have nail kits, glittery lipglosses, hideously expensive serum, or, as happened on one unhappy occasion, cold-sore ointment. Each morning saw steady increments in my adrenalin levels as I awaited the arrival of the postman. I was bad-tempered and ratty if nothing came, or, worse, a press release but no product! Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. But some of the companies used couriers so even if the postman had been, I got a rush whenever the doorbell rang. No matter who it was – chancers offering to clean our gutters, my father looking for the return of his hostess trolley – every one of my senses went on high alert as I prepared to welcome another inbound parcel and give it a happy home.

All in all, this beauty column was the nicest thing that had ever happened to me. When I was a child, I lived in pitiful hope that my father would give up his job as a civil service number-cruncher and open a sweet shop instead, so that I’d have yummy things on tap around the clock. I was now living the adult version of that dream.

Himself watched anxiously from the sidelines. ‘When you say that it’s the nicest thing that ever happened to you, you don’t mean it’s nicer than getting published?’

‘Nicer!’

‘Nicer than getting sober?’

‘Nicer!’

‘Nicer than… nicer than meeting me?’

‘Nicer! Sorry.’

He accused me of having gone weird, of behaving like ‘a
lady’. ‘You take ages to get ready now,’ he said. ‘You used to be as fast as a man.’ And yes, he had a point. I now had so much stuff to put on my face that preparing to go out took a lot longer. Once upon a time, tinted moisturizer was all I used, but now I had eye cream, day cream, skin-evener, makeup primer, concealer (both yellow and green), base, blush and powder glow. ‘You look like a toffee apple,’ he said.

Things came to a head a couple of days later. Almost a week had passed without anything arriving and, as I’d been pestering several PRs, I knew stuff was due but was afraid it had been nicked. It wouldn’t have been the first time; a consignment of Laura Mercier’s finest had disappeared only a short time before.

I was in my bedroom trying to think of another word for ‘eyelash’ when there was a commotion at the front door. Then Himself marched into the room, bearing a blue plastic crate crammed with padded envelopes. Loads of stuff. From lots of different companies! My ship had come in! Joyously I stretched out my arms and said, ‘Gimme.’ But Himself clattered the blue milk-crate yoke on the floor. ‘It wasn’t the normal postman. They had to bring it in a special van. This,’ he yelled, ‘is getting OUT OF HAND.’

He stomped from the room but soon changed his tune when one of the Jiffy bags turned out to be filled with Clinique for Men stuff. Eight different products, which he ferried off to the bathroom to try out immediately. Then he turned to me, apology stamped all over his (exfoliated, hydrated, buffed) face and said, ‘Actually, I’m beginning to understand how you feel.’

Occasionally I got to put on my good clothes and meet
other beauty editors at a launch of a new product. But I soon discovered I had no clue how to behave: I was just thrilled to be in a nice hotel, having lunch, safe in the knowledge that I’d be leaving with free skincare. But the other women were like political journalists quizzing Donald Rumsfeld. They sat bolt upright, their pens poised over their pads, barking smile-free, incisive questions. ‘Does this day cream have an SPF?’ ‘If it’s so great, why does it need a serum too?’ And meanest of all: ‘Why should we use day creams when we can just have a botox injection?’

But suddenly, as abruptly as the dream started, it all stopped. News came that the magazine was shutting down; it had been doing well but the owner had decided to move into property speculation. Twenty people were out of a job and I was devastated. I tried to keep it in perspective – I was a spoilt brat and I wasn’t like the poor misfortunates who had lost their full-time job – but all the same. Something to do with the unexpected way it had stopped, totally without warning, made me feel as though I’d had a near-death experience. We know not the minute or the hour. We should live each lipgloss as if it’s our last.

Naturally, I was honour-bound to contact every beauty PR I’d been dealing with and tell them to take me off their mailing list. It killed me to do it and, between ourselves, I was hoping that a combination of my honesty and sympathy for my situation would persuade them all to keep me on anyway. ‘Sure, what difference does one more goody bag make to us?’ I had hoped to hear them say. But no.

For a few days after the terrible news, those magical Jiffy bags continued to arrive, like letters from beyond the grave.
They’d been sent before news of the magazine’s demise had got out. And then the trickle dried up completely and, after eight delicious months, it was time to resume my life again.

Previously unpublished.

If you like to shop there is nowhere in the world like New York. You can get everything in the whole world there. Here are some highlights from a recent trip.

We had to run the gauntlet of the cosmetics hall before getting to the lifts at the back.

Himself took a nervous look at the over-fragrant melee – at the marauding gangs of sharp-suited types lying in wait with bottles of Nu, ready to spray us, at the white-coated skin therapists, ready to ambush us with their special offers – and looked terrified.

‘Just put your head down and run,’ I said. ‘And whatever you do, don’t make eye-contact with any of them.’

I launched myself into the fray, Himself on my heels. ‘Stay low, stay low!’ I urged, but the inevitable happened. ‘Christ! I got got,’ he yelped.

‘How bad?’ I asked.

He sniffed himself. ‘Paul Smith for women. Not too bad.’

We kept going, while all around us voices babbled a cacophony of temptations.
Hey, gorgeous, wanna try our new spring shades? Over here, over here, spend $75 and get a free lipstick. Never mind them, what about us, our dinky travel kits
are just in. But we’re showcasing our new concealer, it’ll change your LIFE
…

Finally we reached the lifts at the back. ‘Jesus,’ he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. ‘It’s like a Moroccan souk.’

There are many posh shops in New York and the staff are not pleasant. At least not to me. I was given some advice by a regular: look evil and bored; waft; display no positive emotion; above all, don’t make a fool of yourself.

With Himself, my sister and my friend Anne-Marie in tow, we entered Miu Miu, where the first thing I saw was my favourite pair of boots – I was actually wearing a pair – at half price. Caught up in a fifty-per-cent-off frenzy, I decided to buy a new pair but first I had to check the size of the ones I was wearing. So I straightened my leg and stuck my foot up for Himself to see what it said on my sole. As he held my ankle at face height (he’s tall) I felt myself losing my balance and began that hopping, arm-windmilling thing people do – usually just before someone off stage throws in a bag of ball-bearings. My sister grabbed hold of me, but unfortunately also fell victim to the waves of unbalance, then Anne-Marie tried to reverticalize us, but she too got caught up in the vortex. We hovered between balance and falling for a few tortuous seconds then Himself intervened, but the combined weight of the three of us was too much and, in slow motion, in a tangle of limbs and coats and handbags, all four of us toppled to the floor.
Oh my God, I’m lying on the floor in Miu Miu
.

Just point-blank refused. He didn’t even say, ‘Please don’t make me.’ He just stood at the door, looked at the prairies of underwear within, told me no power on earth would make him go in and that was that. I told him he’d look more like a pervert hanging around outside, but nothing doing.

I was keen to see what all the fuss was about; in the ads I’d got the impression that Victoria’s Secret was a class act but when I stood too close to one of the nightdresses and it crackled and stuck to me, I wasn’t so sure. All the same I bought a couple of bras – one pink, one lilac. Later when I told my sister about the visit, she said in disgust, ‘Oh my God. You didn’t buy anything, did you?’ I fessed up the colouredy bras. ‘Well,’ she advised, ‘just don’t stand in front of any naked flames.’

Anne-Marie told me the assistants in Bloomingdales were psychic and I thought she meant that they were so knowledgeable they were
almost
psychic. So Himself and myself went into Bloomingdales looking for the Eileen Fisher range and – not expecting any joy – asked an assistant if they stocked it. Without missing a beat he not only confirmed that they carried it, but gave me the exact coordinates (third floor, two-thirds of the way back, bordered by Marc Jacobs to the north, Aqua to the east and DKNY to the south). Considering that Bloomingdales is the size of a small country I thought he was having a little joke at our expense, but went to the third floor anyway. When we got off the escalator, we stood for a nonplussed second, trying to find our bearings.
‘Where…?’ I asked but got no further because a young man, about fifteen feet away from us, called, ‘Go right for twenty-two feet, then at Aqua go left and you’ll find Eileen Fisher on the third island.’ I stared at him nervously. ‘Go on,’ he urged. Uncertainly, with much looking back over our shoulders at him, we followed his instructions and found that the stand was exactly where he’d said it would be, but how had he known what we were looking for? Walkie-talkies was the only thing I could come up with; perhaps the man downstairs had radioed up and told him to expect us? Or maybe Bloomingdales just send their assistants on courses to develop their psychic skills.

I approached the altar of cosmetics – tier after tier of silver-cylindered loveliness – and explained my mission. I wanted brow highlighter. My sister had some, I’d admired it, she’d got it from Clinique. But the glossy-faced girl knew of no such thing and I told her I thought it was called Sugar Sugar. ‘Oh! Sugar Sugar!’ she said. ‘Oh yeah, I remember that.’ Momentarily, she was overcome with silent, shuddery mirth. ‘That’s a trend item.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It is so, like, OVER.’

I love Prada. Not so much the clothes, which are for malnourished thirteen-year-olds, but I covet, with covety covetousness, the shoes and handbags. Like, I LOVE them. If I was given a choice between world peace and a Prada
handbag, I’d dither. (I am not proud of this. I’m only saying.)

Anyway, in Himself and myself go to the limestone palace on Fifth Avenue and up to the second floor to look at the accessories. I want to fling myself on the floor and sob at their beauty, but Himself reminds me of the Miu Miu debacle and I manage to contain myself.

Then I saw it. The handbag.
The
handbag.
THE
handbag.

Reader, I bought it. A Russian woman called Elena was my assistant and I think it must have been the quickest bit of commission she’d ever earned. Then I was kind of getting the hang of things and decided to see about matching sandals. But they didn’t have them in my size. Undaunted, Elena brought them anyway. It was no go, so she brought sandals that nearly matched, then sandals that didn’t match at all. And didn’t fit either. But she could not be faulted for leaving a stone unturned and, reluctantly, she let me go only when it was clear that I really wasn’t going to buy anything else from her.

Downstairs I stopped and idly admired some luggage, and Elena suddenly popped up again, two inches from my nose. Somehow she’d managed to insinuate herself between me and the holdall. ‘You would like to buy?’ I told her no thanks, that we really were leaving, but then we noticed that there was a menswear department in the basement.

Down we went, Himself picked up a shoe and a handsome young man approached and asked if he’d like it in his size. I had just opened my mouth to reply (Himself is too scared to speak in these places) when, out of nowhere, Elena appeared, did a ten-yard skid across the floor of menswear, shoved the good-looking man to the margins with her palm over his face
and arrived in front of us wearing a shark’s smile, not a hair out of place. ‘You would like to try?’