Venus Envy (13 page)

‘What do you mean?’ I said with horror.

‘I saw him in Quaglino’s with this very slim brunette. She was wearing an Azzedine Alaa. Really stunning plum thing with a V-cut neck and—’

‘I don’t care about the dress!’ I shrieked. ‘Maybe it was a business dinner.’

‘I dunno. Do people hold hands and play footsie during business dinners?’

A dreadful memory, ghosted up at me. A vague sighting of a stunning girl with a Louise Brooks bob, waving goodbye to Seamus outside our building.

‘And I saw him in Harvey Nicks last Tuesday. Buying underwear,’ Keisha added, ‘sorry.;

Last Tuesday he was meant to be in Hull. For a conference. He hadn’t given me any underwear later.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I gasped. Dancing visions of Dolores-like babes, with every hair colour down to punk green, except my own mousy shade, gripped my heart. How many of the sleek, moneyed bitches there

must be in the world. With more exciting jobs than mine. Younger. Thinner. Better in bed.

‘You didn’t want to hear it,’ Keisha said flatly. This was true. I didn’t specially want to hear it now.

‘He sounded pretty upset tonight,’ I ventured, stammering.

She laughed. ‘Yup. Definitely gutted.’

‘So maybe he wants to tell me that he’ll change his ways, that he’ll—’

‘Oh right. And Gazza’s going to become a feminist,’ Keisha spat. ‘I’m going to order a pizza.’

‘Double cheese. Spicy pork. Pepperoni and anchovies and prawns,’ I said morosely. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

, The pizza arrived, and Keisha lit up a stream of fags and opened one of her boyfriend’s magnums of champagne. She had bought it for his birthday and it

was sitting in our fridge, waiting for a special occasion. ‘What’s he going to say?’

‘Who gives a luck?’ asked Keisha, as she poured the ch.ampagne into a Mr Tickle mug. ‘Cheers.’

We got companionably hammered. There’s really nothing like a bottle of wine and a pig-out with your girlfriends. Or girlfriend. Snowy was on the Peruvian marching powder, so she’d probably hit Browns after the party where she would of course be swept upstairs to the VIP room. Gail would be back at Tony’s flat, cooking or tidying, arranging flowers and otherwise trying to show off her .wifely qualities.

‘AMAB. Bloody AMAB,’ Keisha said, tearing apart another slice of garlic bread and slugging down champagne. Can you believe Lennox pushing me like that? I hate famous men.’

‘You love famous men, as often as possible.’

‘I hate them,’ Keisha ignored me, ‘they think they fine, girlfriend, and they want you to do all the work.’

Oh no, she was lapsing into black American street

slang. Keisha got this from Ricki Lake and Sally Jesse Raphael. We would watch these together all the time before my cruel parents forced me into the workplace. Our favourites were the ones where black American women would shriek at each other. Keisha rocked back and forth on the sofa squealing and clapping her hands. ‘My man be with me twenty-four seven, he be givin’ me all the play, he don’t be wantin’ no two-bit hoochie with holes in her stockings!’ ‘Girlfriend, you be frontin’ like that - he is sending me flowers, he be buying me flash rocks, ‘cause I’m all that.’ ‘You be ten cents a pop and I got a dollar!’ ‘You be a ten-buck ho with a two-buck haircut!’ It was hilarious. Some of these girls had their front teeth missing and others of them weighed two hundred pounds, and they were still screaming at the top of their lungs how fine they were.

Keisha mould turn her blackness off and on as she wanted to. Normally she was colour blind, but show her a cute American black male and it was ‘Hello, my brother,’ before you could say ‘Spare me.’ She once got taken home to Mum by a Very Famous Footballer and his mum threw her out of the kitchen because she didn’t know the first thing about creole chicken, yams or red beans and rice. It was a disaster.

‘I don’t cook, darling, people cook for me,’ Keisha said superbly, but she. had to dump the footballer because she was too embarrassed to go round to his house ever again.

‘Why do you keep dating these losers?’ Keisha slurred.

‘Why do you keep running away from relationships?’

‘I just want to have some fun. They keep pushing,’ Keisha said miserably.

‘Look, thas’ no’ true,’ I objected. ‘Yorra woman. Women want love.’

‘Women - need - men - like - fish - need - bicycles,’

stated Keisha, poking me in the chest after every word. ‘Women need men like fish need water,’ I said, and then I burst out crying.

‘He’s no’ worth it. ‘Sss a scumbag,’ Keisha said firmly.

I didn’t say anything. I knew Seamus must have an answer. I held on to that. All that love must have meant something, the champagne was making that so clear!

The door creaked open. It was Bronwen, soaked to the bone and in floods of tears.

‘He’s left me. He made me pose for all these pictures with my clothes off,’ she sobbed, ‘and then he said I , was a frigid bitch and he was leaving me anyway!’

No

‘Jesus,’ said Keisha, suddenly sober.

I blinked at Bronwen. It was like a lance jabbing through the numbing fog of the booze. Pain came back, waving a spiteful hello - hers and mine: How selfish. For a second I was just glad nobody could read my mind: that my flatmate’s telling me something like this and I’m thinking about Seamus and how badly I want him to be mine.

‘He took me back home and made me get undressed - he was kissing me everywhere,’ Bronwen sobbed. ‘Then he - he - got out this camera. I said I didn’t want to but he told me to relax, it was just for him, because he loved me and I was so gorgeous.’

Now I was not thinking about Seamus. Now I was angry, so bloody angry I could have put this asshole in thumbscrews. But it also struck me how someone like Bronwen would actually do this. It’s one of the great shitty things about being a girl. They never mention that when they talk about the joy of motherhood and everything else. Or even when they mention labour and periods and thrush and the menopause. ‘Being a woman means you will some day fall in love. This will surgically remoce your spine from y6ur body. You will talk tough but if push comes to shove you will also do

absolutely anything to hang on to your man.’ ‘How many pictures?’ Keisha asked flatly.

‘I don’t know,’ Bronwen choked. ‘Lots. It was so quick - he’s got one of those big pro cameras with a flashlight and he was just clicking. So fast.’

III

‘So why was he angry?’

‘I kept trying to close my legs. He kept forcing them

open, so I started to cry - I couldn’t help it,’ Bronwen wept pathetically. ‘Then he got so mad. He went upstairs and took my stuff out of the bathroom and put it in a carrier bag. Made me give him back the keys…’

At this point she dissolved and couldn’t say another word. Keisha went into the kitchen while I sat there rubbing her shoulders. Keisha came back with some brandy and made Bronwen swallow it, so she was coughing and choking, but it restored her a little bit.

‘He said I was a frigid cow and he was tired of it.

And I was too skinny for good sex anyway, he hated

, scrawny women. He knew - he knew I loved doing all those things really because I was that sort of girl and he was tired of me playing coy, so I could just luck off. I begged him to stop and think about what he was saying, but he just laughed at me.’

She put her head in her hands. ‘And then I told him to,give me the film, and he laughed again and said at least it would be good to have something to show to his mates,’ and then she sprang up and rushed to the 1oo, didn’t even have time to shut the door before she was puking her guts out.

Keisha and I stared at each other. Ten pints of coffee couldn’t have sobered me up any faster. I’d never been quite as close to Bron as I am to Keisha, but right now I felt like she was flesh and blood. I couldn’t have been any angrier if this guy had done it to Gail.

We think we’re so in control, us ‘nineties chicks,

that nothing like this could ever happen to us. Bronwen is a feminist like me - not an Andrea Dworkin nutcase, but into her independence and workplace equality. So how, bow could she have been in love with this abusive bastard?

If Bronwen had dropped Dick, she might have been

IIZ

able to cope with it. We’d been trying to talk her into leaving him for six months at least. And sometimes we even got her to say yeah, she knew he wasn’t treating her right… I’d hoped she was thinking about making a break. Cutting him off. There were enough guys ringing up hopefully for Bronwen all the time, but they were all from her world - straight fashion designers, photographers, models, bassists. It didn’t take a shrink to see that there was some kind of screwed-up thing going on with Dick. Why would a girl like Bronwen, who looked like she’d time-travelled here from Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, circa I968, go for a bank manager? Who drove a Volvo? And kept his pension fund up to date and his suits dry-cleaned? She must be looking for a father figure. Or stability, or some goddamn thing. But the trouble was, she’d picked a first-class, perverted prick to fixate on.

I know. ‘Thank you, Dr Alexandra Freud. But really, man. What did it say about Bronwen’s childhood? I probably didn’t want to know.

‘OK, that’s it,’ Keisha said quietly. This was ominous, because when Keisha’s quiet she’s really dangerous. ‘I’m gonna call Stella. Her cousin Rashid knows some boys who can sort this out.’

‘Wait, wait,’ I said hurriedly. I wasn’t against the idea of some gangsters kneecapping Dick, as far as that went, but the idea of Keisha banged up in Holloway on five to ten for GBH wasn’t that great. ‘Let’s call him

and see if we can get him to see sense.’

‘You’re mad.’

But I was already dialling. He Was number one on the speed dial on Bronwen’s phone. And she was still in the loo heaving up everything she’d eaten in the last month.

‘Yes?’ The clipped tones maddened me.

‘Dick, this is Alex Wilde. I live with Bronwen Thomas.’ “

113

‘Yeah, I know who you are. Forget it, I’m not taking her back. She’s a whiny bitch, and it’s over. You can tell her I said so.’

For a second I was too dumbstruck to reply. ‘And don’t bother calling here again, OK?’ he drawled. ‘It’s none of your business. I don’t need Bronwen hanging around like some godawful puppy and I don’t want interference from her ball-busting friends. Good night.’

‘Wait! You can talk to me or you can talk to the police,’ I spat, and now I’d got his attention.

‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’ ‘About those pictures, you sick luck,’ I snarled, and it felt so good to swear at him, so good to get furious. ;Bronwen’s going to press charges of blackmail unless you give us the film right now.’

‘Nothing to do with blackmail.’

‘That’s not how we see it. We’d all testify against you. And make sure it got maximum publicity. Your bank would love that, wouldn’t.they, Dick the dick? Bank Manager was Sicko Pervert? Sounds like a News of the World splash to me, mate. It’d be good to see you humiliated, you wanker. Better to see you in the dock.’

‘The police wouldn’t be interested. She consented,’ said Dick, but he sounded less sure of himself now. Almost scared, in fact. Keisha was watching me with rounded eyes, and she liked what she heard.

‘That’s not what she says.. And I’ve got three witnesses here. And the police are very interested, sunshine. Guess who I’ve spoken to? WPC Mary Baker and WPC Susan Embury. They run the sex-crimes unit round here. They hate blokes like you. Oh, and the DCI is also a woman. Eve Mensch. So, you fancy your chances, go right ahead.’

What a crock, but he was buying it. Women in uniform must be this guy’s worst nightmare. He knew

how any woman would react to this. I could almost hear the wheels slowly turning in his tiny hamster brain. ‘If we come round now and you hand over every bloody thing, we’ll forget about it as long as you stay away from Bronwen. Not for your sake. But we want you out of her life. You stink like your own bad breath.’

‘OK.’ He sounded as limp as his handshake.

‘Good. We’ll have a guy over in half an hour. Don’t go anywhere, lover boy,’ I said, and hung up on him.

‘Wow, that was amazing. You actually sounded like you got some balls, girlfriend,’ Keisha approved. She moved off to summon Rashid. I imagined that scene for a moment, this big, buff guy with muscles on his muscles and huge dreadlocks, banging on Dick’s door. Rashid would crush his camera underfoot and rip the place ap,rt. And Dick, who likes to dabble in the counterculture, would just plain shit himself when its avenging angels came down.

I went back into the drawing room to hug Bronwen, who’d come out of the loo now, her face as white as

ice-cream. She looked like she’d been bled out. ‘It’s over, isn’t it? And those pictures—’ ‘We’re on that.’

‘You’re not going to hurt him?’ and her face twisted with such concern for Dick that it broke my heart clean open.

‘No, I promise. We’re just going to destroy the negatives. Bron, please please see he was horrible to

you.’

‘I know, but I want him so bad.;

‘Sex with him was lousy, wasn’t it?’

‘But only because we liked different things.’ You can say that again, I thought.

‘Bronwen, you were always coming back from his place in tears. I know you maybe don’t see it like that, but it’s true. He didn’t make you happy.’

115

‘I just want to turn back the clock, I want it to be the

of tonight, then things could be different,’ she

start

wept, and there was really nothing else to do except put her to bed with more brandy. At least she was out like a light. Crying does that for you: it wears you out faster than a marathon run. Bronwen would sleep the sleep of the dead now.

I mean, I should know. I’m an expert.

Keisha gave me a quick kiss and said she was going

over to pick Rashid up. Someone should be there supervising who knew Bronwen’s stuff. I agreed with that, so I was on my own in the flat.