Murder Most Fab (5 page)

I
remembered Catherine’s advice: ‘If you can appear to be enjoying the sex even
when it disgusts you, you’ve got it made. They’ll come quicker and probably pay
you extra.’

So I
made all the appropriate noises and, sure enough, had Mr Smith spurting like a
geyser within a couple of minutes. I was back on the tube within half an hour.
I got my genuine thrills when he pressed a sizeable tip into my hands as I
left. Money, it appeared, made everything worthwhile.

I continued to attend
college, although my heart was no longer in it. One highlight was the
Shakespeare’s Sonnets workshop. I already knew the famous ones by heart and
gained the momentary admiration of my peers for my faultless recitation of
Sonnet 94 within minutes of the task being announced.

I
declaimed with much feeling:

‘But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity.’

For an instant, I was in
the sunshine but soon I was relegated to the shadows. I committed the cardinal
sin of not showing up for rehearsals and, as a result, I was regarded as the
devil’s accomplice. I didn’t care. My life outside was much more entertaining
than anything drama school could offer me, and I regarded the other students as
tedious neurotics lacking any real sense of humour.

Over
the following months, after I’d turned a handful more tricks and was what
Catherine called ‘broken in’, I felt relaxed about it. I seemed to have a bit
of a flair for this career — perhaps I’d found my true calling. As an added
bonus, it seemed to ease the pain of my aching heart — anything that did that
was worth taking notice of. I’d been miserable for long enough, I told myself.

The
money was wonderful, of course, but what I loved most was the gratitude I
invoked. Like an acupuncturist or a hairdresser, I put a spring in men’s steps
and sent them smiling and happy on their way.

I
explained this to Catherine late one night when we got in from our respective
jobs. Catherine’s Gucci handbag was bulging with the contents of her punter’s
mini-bar, and over a few neat Bacardis we reviewed our performances.

I had
been to a private house in Chalfont St Giles, where I had been booked for a
‘Mix and Mingle’. This turned out to be a geriatric gay orgy in which I was
the central attraction.

Catherine
had been wined, dined and taken roughly from behind by a visiting Italian
diplomat. ‘Unfortunately he was no stranger to a bowl of pasta. If I look a bit
like a pug, it’s because I’ve been face down on the shag pile for over an hour
with nineteen stone of Italian porker on top of me.’

I was
drunk and very pleased with myself. ‘Do you know what, Catherine? I think I’ve
truly developed as a human being from this line of work. Whatever sexual role
I’m cast in, I feel completely confident I can play my part well. I’ve already
learnt to watch for the defining moment when need is transformed into nature.
The breathing, the biorhythms — even the colour of their eyes changes as
something in their souls opens up and they lose themselves in the moment. You
know, I’m
proud
of my work.’

‘Steady,
Cowboy,’ she cautioned. ‘If you start talking poncy bollocks I shall go to bed.
Success in sex is measured by the grunts and the tip. Nothing else. Your
development as a human being is of no interest to me — let’s not pretend
otherwise because you’ve got a few too many miniatures down you.’

‘But
don’t you ever feel that way? As though you’re truly helping another human
being?’

‘Of
course not. And this isn’t a support group for sex workers. At least, I bloody
hope not. What shall we drink next? Whisky or Baileys?’ She was only ever
interested in facts and figures and what the next drink would be.

‘Well,
I do,’ I said, a trifle sulkily.

‘We’ve
all been there, sweetheart. But never mind — in years to come you can say you
were scarred by your reckless youth. Or that I lured you into it. I don’t care
what you say — just shut the fuck up about your vocation and your desire to
heal the world before I kill you.’

I had
learnt that Catherine couldn’t tolerate serious conversation and always
brought me back to earth if I started to bare my soul, but I was determined
that, for once, we would have a proper conversation about the reality of our
lives. Maybe now I would tell her about Kent and the things that had happened
to me there. The time felt right.

‘What
would your mother say if she knew you were on the game?’ I asked.

“‘Snap”,
I expect,’ said Catherine. ‘Oh, God, here it comes. You’re quite the public
speaker tonight, aren’t you? Remind me never to pour Bacardi down you again.
You’re going to force me to listen to the story of your life, and it’s all
going to be rather dreary. I can feel it in my water.’

“‘So
many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be”,’ I quoted.
‘That’s Tennyson. And yes, I am about to tell you my life story. I insist. So
listen carefully.’

My mother looked like
Julie Christie and I was her adoring only son. Her name was Alice and we lived
alone in an isolated cottage on the outskirts of a tiny windswept village on
Romney Marsh in Kent. My mother enjoyed a carefree life, smiled all the time
and was always humming. In fact, she was so relentlessly happy that, as a
child, I doubted any tragedy that might befall me would cause more than a
hiccup in her joyful disposition. After all, this was the woman who had gone
along to my grandfather’s funeral in a floral dress and a straw hat with a
broad smile. ‘How lovely to see you!’ she’d greeted friends and relatives.
‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’

Because
I was an only child and we lived in the middle of nowhere, my mother and I
depended on each other for company. She played with me like an older sister and
was never preoccupied with housework or any matters to do with the real world.
We didn’t have a television and she never listened to the news on the radio.
Instead we played ‘chase’ round the house and garden, had dressing-up parties
and midnight feasts. I remember we whispered, too, as if anyone might hear us.
When the weather was good, she took me tramping across crusty fields, her long
sandy hair blowing across her face.

My
mother cooked wonderful food: big hearty casseroles in the winter and fresh
fruit cocktail with real cream, served in the garden, during summer. After
dinner she liked to lie on the sofa, or in the garden hammock if it was fine,
and listen while I read poetry or novels to her by candlelight. We would lose
ourselves in long, lovely books by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Charles
Dickens. Sometimes we couldn’t wait until the evening for the next instalment
and would get up half an hour early to have a chapter after our porridge before
I went to school. I think we’d read all of D. H. Lawrence by the time I was
ten. Parts of
Sons and Lovers
made me blush.

My
mother thought it was important to memorize poems. ‘That way,’ she explained,
‘they’re always in your head, and you can get to them at any time. What
beautiful thoughts you can have as you lie in bed, waiting for sleep to come! Tennyson,
Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde …‘

So,
with her encouragement, I committed as many poems as I could to memory, and
then it became our habit to recite couplets or sonnets throughout the day. She
made it fun. The more our repertoire grew, the better able we were to pluck a
poem from our heads appropriate to every mood or occasion. For example, if my
mother was hanging out the washing and I hurtled down the path on my bicycle,
she’d stop me by declaring:

‘Tread lightly, she is near

Under the snow,

Speak gently, she can hear

The daisies grow.’

I had to guess that she
was quoting from ‘Requiescat’ by Oscar Wilde, and reply with the next verse.

‘All her bright golden hair

Tarnished with rust,

She that was young and fair

Fallen to dust.’

Or, if I couldn’t remember
the next verse or wanted to express a different point of view, I would quote
from another poem that seemed apt, perhaps some of my favourite nonsense by
Lewis Carroll:

“‘Will you walk a little faster?”

Said the whiting to a snail,

“There’s a porpoise close behind us

And he’s treading on my tail.”’

My
mother’s rustic image was hard to square with the few facts I knew about her
own childhood. They seemed to imply a certain poshness. I knew that she had
originally come from London, because that was where my grandmother Rita lived,
and that she had been privately educated and brought up as what they used to
call a lady. I also knew that she had turned her back on all that, running away
from school and embracing a life that rejected material trappings and social
status, which meant nothing to her. A pastoral existence had been trapped
inside her, waiting to get out. Now she was a real country girl and happiest in
our garden or pottering about our tumbledown Kentish cottage, which was always
cheerful and clean.

One
spring we took on an orphaned black-faced lamb, which we called Saucy, and she
followed Mother around, nuzzling her and making her laugh even more than usual.
Saucy nibbled at the lawn while chickens pecked their way round the yard;
potatoes, beans, radishes and garlic grew in our half-acre of garden, protected
from Saucy by a white picket fence. My mother wore gingham or white lace blouses,
with the sleeves rolled up, pinafore dresses or flouncy skirts, the perfect
picture of a country lass. She even spoke with a non-specific rural burr, which
may have been Suffolk but certainly wasn’t London or Kent; as she had never
lived anywhere else, its origin must remain a mystery. She loved to be
outdoors, tending the flowers or watering the vegetable garden, or trying to
cajole Saucy into chasing her and being lamblike and carefree once more. But
Saucy, by the age of two, was a dour and boring sheep, refusing to play, just
widening her eyes a little and glaring at my mother disdainfully. We loved her
nevertheless, lavishing her with affection and attention that she blankly
endured.

Mother
gave the wild birds in the garden names. She greeted and recited Keats to every
robin or blue-tit:

‘You live alone on the forest tree,

Why, pretty thing, could you not live with me?’

She
waved at departing swallows, wishing them a safe journey, and stretched her
arms skyward to migrating geese. Young and enigmatic, she exuded earthy
glamour and heads would turn as we cycled through the village to the shops or
to church each Sunday.

I was seven or eight, I
think, when I realized my mother wasn’t quite right. Her consistently benign
demeanour wasn’t normal. A child needs to find the boundaries of acceptable
behaviour, which are demonstrated by parents for the little one’s ultimate
good. Dear Mother couldn’t have got cross if she’d wanted to but that wasn’t
the Utopia it might sound. I grew up more than a little confused about the
difference between right and wrong, and I was terrified when other people were
angry because I’d never known anything like it at home. I also had a sneaking
feeling that my mother never got cross because she didn’t care what I did. If I
ever want an explanation for my later outrageous, exhibitionist behaviour, I
won’t have to look very far. I found it so hard to get a reaction from her
that, in the end, I became frustrated — bored, almost — with her unchanging
pleasantness. It was like living in a shopping centre and having to listen to Muzak
twenty-four hours a day.