Venus Envy (31 page)

(I tried that one for a day. Sheikh Somebody was so annoyed by me he put a fatwa on my boss, so that was the end of that.)

And Not Thinking About Tom Drummond. That was a fulltime career in itself. Trying to squish the memories of myself at Carrefour: ignoring Ellen and ruining her life, whilst helping a prostitute to run off with Tom’s brother. I hadn’t looked in The Times for the announcement of the cancelled wedding. I didn’t dare.

What a bitch I’d been. Oh why, why didn’t I tell Tom the truth about me and Seamus? He must have

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thought I was jumping his bones right there in Tom’s house. I’d let the coven annoy me so much that getting my own way was all that mattered. And I’d blown it with Tom. Not that he was interested anyway, he’d only wanted my help in getting rid of Snowy.

You see? I hardly thought about him at all. I didn’t think about him as I tramped through snowdrifts to another crappy job agency. I didn’t think about him as I filled in the forms offering to work Christmas shifts in Selfridges. I didn’t think about him as I took my new sculptures to every gallery that hadn’t yet split its sides laughing me out the door. I didn’t think about him as I contemplated waitressing at the National

Gallery caf, so at least I could see art on my breaks. ‘What can you offer me?’ I asked them morosely. ‘What can you offer us?’ they asked me.

Well, if.you’re going to hit me with trick questions .. I slunk off to Piccadilly, pieces in my bag, and tried to find someone, anyone, to take me seriously.

I failed. And failed. So I tried and tried again, and what do you know, I failed some more.

I wouldn’t say it got you down, but even Anthea Turner would have come home depressed.

‘Cheer up, Alex,’ Keisha said, ‘you’ll come through.’

‘It’s OK, Alex, you’ll find somebody to buy the ferrets,’ Bronwen said kindly.

‘They’re owls,’ I pointed out. Bronwen blushed and said she meant owls.

Gail tossed her blonde hair and smiled patronisingly. ‘I think you should seriously consider working

for Dad, you’re not going to find anything here.’ ‘Thanks a bunch, Gail.’

‘I’m only being honest,’ Gail said nastily. She was always being ‘honest’. You want to watch out for your friends who say that: it mostly means ‘I’m only being spiteful.’

I slunk off to bed. I looked like rubbish, my snappy

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haircut had grown straggly and my expensive cosmetics had run out, and I couldn’t afford to replace them. It was back to the seven ninety-nine blow-dry special in the unisex salon (by Safeway), and Boots No. 7, and then only if I was lucky. Even scrimping every penny I was still behind in my subsidised rent. Signing on was a total ordeal - try telling your dole police you want to be a sculptor some day.

I was getting desperate. And Not Thinking About Tom got harder every day.

The Ted Younger Gallery on Ship Street was the last on my list that Friday, so I tried to put some effort into it. One more hurried door slammed in my face and I would be done for the week. It was a grey-skied afternoon, with dirty, slick snow crammed on the pavement. The Ted Younger Gallery had an empty Coke can rattling around on the pavement outside. Dull landscapes in antique frames and a boring brass figure, like a rubbish Henry Moore.

.I entered. I had unwrapped one of my owls before the door had been opened properly. Sometimes they would throw you out before you even opened your bag.

‘Don’t tell me,’ a waspish voice came from behind the counter.

I looked up to see a flat, flabby old geezer with a burgundy velvet smoking-jacket, soft white hands and a sardonic smile. The white hair on top of his head was sort of bushy and his cheeks were florid. He was so camp you could have rented him out to the Boy Scouts for an overnight stay on Dartmoor.

‘It’s the new Damien Hirst. The next Rachel Whito read. I’m being offered to see a work that generations will one day admire in its glass case in the Tate.’

‘It’s the first Alex Wilde, actually,’ I said, rather miffed. I mean, spit in my face all you want, bu.t don’t

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compare me to Damien Hirst. Chopping off a cow’s head and letting flies eat it isn’t my idea of art. More a matter for the Health and Safety Inspectorate. Or possibly the RSPCA.

I limped up to the counter and shoved my owl under his nose. Bastard. He was going to look at my bloody owl if I had to jam it into his eyeballs. My shoes were pinching my toes, I think they’d shrunk from all the water they’d taken in. So I could get Tarantino about this, if pushed.

‘Interesting,’ he said.

I just stood there. I actually thought I hadn’t heard him right. His line should have been ‘Piss off or I’ll call the cops,’ but he seemed to have a different script.

‘Interesting. You’ve got a flair for motion. Although

I think it would work better with wood.’

I burst into tears.

‘But cla,’s not bad,’ he said hastily. ‘Good Lord, girl, don’t take it so personally.’

‘Oh! Sorry, it’s just the kindest thing anyone’s said to me,’ I sobbed.

‘Then you must have had a rough time. Please turn off the waterworks, you’re drenching my floor as it is. And it’s a real imitation Persian you’re ruining,’ he said, plump fingers handing me a Kleenex.

‘So do you think you can sell it?’ I asked, through a mist of tears, blowing noisily.

‘Absolutely not,’ he said cheerfully, ‘no demand for it whatsoever. I can’t imagine anyone I’m acquainted with could sell something like that.’

I burst into more tears. Although his time I tried to mop them up with the tissue. I’m not in favour of girls crying. I’m in favour of bottling up your feelings and repressing them as deeply as possible.

‘Perhaps you’d like a cup of tea,’ he said.

His name was Gordon Farrell. He was gay and

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charming and he hated his job. So I knew where he was coming from.

‘Wretched,’ he said, ‘rheumatoid arthritis. If the bloody global warming is going to fry the planet, I just

wish it would hurry up.’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘A marvellous question. Why indeed? This is little more than a bric-a-brac shop with fancy prices. Our clientele is strictly out of town, of course. Sweet old ladies from Shropshire, whom we invite once a year for private viewings. Usually one gets enough business that way to stay afloat, but it means I have to man the ship. More’s the pity.’

‘Why didn’t you stay at Sotheby’s?’ I asked curi

, ously. It’s always good to hear about other people

fucking up their lives. Makes you feel you’re not alone.

‘Some regrettable business with the chairman’s son.’ Gordon sighed. ‘All I can say is, he looked eighteen. At any rate, my career in the big leagues was sadly foreshortened.’

.You couldn’t call Glorious Thunderbum’s department the big leagues, but I told him my Seamus story anyway. He leant his pudgy body forward, fascinated.

‘Dolores Mahon’s husband? How delicious. But then you’re in the same boat as me. One really shouldn’t shit on one’s own doorstep. First rule of business.’

‘Pity you can’t use my stuff,’ I said glumly. ‘At least

I’d have been safe with you.’

Gordon cackled. ‘If I may say so, Miss Wilde, you’d

be quite safe with a straight man. You aren’t exactly

heading for the cover of Vogue.’

‘Cheers,’ I said.

‘Now, don’t pout, it doesn’t suit you. I have a proposition for you, though not a sex one, I’m afraid. It’s too boring for me to sit here all day staring at the walls. I don’t mind .paying you to do it.’

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I gaped at him.

‘Shut your mouth, dear, if the wind changes direction on the moon it’ll freeze that way. You took art at Oxford, you can blither on about Impressionism and wear long skirts.’

‘What’s the money like?’ I bartered. ‘Terrible. Slave wages,’ Gordon countered. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said eagerly.

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He wasn’t kidding.

About the money, I mean. He wasn’t kidding. It came to about two hundred and ten a week - a bit less than eleven grand a year. I tried asking for more, but all he did was look hurt and shocked.

‘ ‘Do I resemble Richard Branson?’ he would say. ‘Or

Bill Gates, perchance?’

It simplified things, anyway. I didn’t have to agonise over the sassy Drew Barrymore crop versus the kiss curled Winona look, or whether to tip my hairdresser ten quid or twenty. I would not be visiting Joel at John Frieda again any time soon. Nor did I waste time wondering whether Marks & Sparks grilled vegetables on tomato bread had enough protein in it for lunch. It was Asda all the way for me, public transport, Rimmel cosmetics and those shops by Oxford Circus Tube that sell you two sweatshirts for a river.

Who cared? My boot was stuck on. the Old Kent Road in the Monopoly board of life. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds. I just about managed to make my subsidised rent. But on the plus side, my tax bill dropped through the floor.

‘I don’t know why you bother,’ Gail said airily. ‘That shop’s bound to close soon. You might as well take up Dad’s offer, it would suit you.’

‘Why don’t you take it up, Gail?’ Keisha suggested sweetly. So Gail flounced off to Harvey Nichols and stopped tormenting me.

Without Keisha and Bronwen I think I might have gone mad. Bronwen kept me decently clothed by deliberately ripping the odd shirt in her photo sessions, then she got to keep them. And Keisha implicitly let me nick her shampoo and musk bath oil by leaving them out when I was due for a shower, and then not bawling me out when they were an inch lower in the bottles. She wouldn’t overly give me permission, of course. It’s the principle of the thing. Her Kanebo Milky Facial Soap was sacred, though, you have to know where to draw the line.

But it was tough. Gail flitting in and out on her endless round of parties, constantly speculating on Snowy’s whereabouts, and what Tom might be doing, until Keisha told her to shut her face or she, Keisha, would shut it for her. And Keisha and Bronwen off to their exciting jobs and new boyfriends. Bronwen had finally hooked up with Clan, Clan the Man (actually Clan the Dentist), who treated her nicely and ignored her efforts to shock him by popping ‘e’s in the Met

Bar.

In fact, Clan told Bronwen that most people stopped taking drugs at twenty-six, and he supposed she wanted to cling to it. He said very sweetly that that was fine, some people needed a bit more time than others. Then he chuckled and said wouldn’t it be funny if she wound up an old pop-picking fart like Jonathan King.

Bronwen came home that night and threw out every Class A substance she possessed. If there were any spiders lurking in our plumbing they were a happy bunch that night, I can tell you. She also ran round like a madwoman, ditching the tartan mini and the long purple skirt with the mirrored circles, the ‘Mad for It’ T-shirt, everything emblazoned with ‘Girl Power’ and ‘Design for Life’.

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Tony Blair should get him in as the drugs czar, is my opinion.

Anyway, Bronwen got some new styling commissions and got herself a whole new image. She was still funky, but now she was funky in favouring Alexander McQueen and John Galliano over those rock-wife staples of Prada and Gucci. She asked for a raise and got it. And her skin improved, since she occasionally slept during the night-time now.

Keisha was kicking ass at Up and Running, where, amazingly enough, she had spent one full season without telling her bosses they were useless pieces of shit. She got good guests and started talking about doing something different next season, ‘Because I don’t

, want to get pigeon-holed into kids’ telly.’

‘Heaven forbid,’ I said heavily, looking at her schedule, which read things like ‘Pick up Spice Girls at Hotel. Write questions Alan Shearer. Film report on Doom 4.’

She had also dropped the teeny popstar and started dating a record company executive. He wasn’t sixteen and he wasn’t famous and Keisha never spoke about him. This gave me the sinking feeling that it might be serious.

So the girls weren’t that useful. I mean, it’s great when your mates are having a good time. But do you really need them to be lucky in love, lucky at work, stylish and rich, when your own life is going down the 1oo faster than Bronwen’s ‘doves’ and ‘elephants’?

Well, do you?

The lead cloud did have a silver lining. A very, very small one, almost as small as Seamus Mahon’s penis. Small enough to require the old microscope. But it was there.

I was working in a gallery. OK, it was indeed a bricbrac shop, full of schmaltzy pictures of unidentifiable

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ancestors, and rural church spires. But it was better than Hamilton Kane. Better than typing Seamus’s letters, and better than organising rotas for Personnel.

I learned a couple of things. How to tell the browser from the buyer. How to make anybody with even a couple of hundred quid feel valued. It was disgusting,

actually, what a good sucker-up I was. I didn’t let the

hours drag. I couldn’t, because that meant thinking about Tom, and having the horrid despair start dragging at me all over again. I organised their dreadful records, and badgered Gordon until he bought an Applemac, and started to log profit and loss and provenance and things like that. I cleared the backlog of post, and looked up few likely London prospects to invite to a new private view. I also got the window-cleaners in, and hung a new sign outside the front door, in suitably sombre navy lettering.

I was a° one-woman revolution in that shop. I switched the window display every week and wrote price-cards in calligraphy, in case a Japanese tourist came past and wanted to impulse buy. I designed smart new boxes to put our stuff in, pale blue cardboard like Tiffany’s, with silky sheets of tissue paper.

‘Darr-ling, I don’t know why you bother,’ Gordon said kindly.

I liked being creative. OK, so it wasn’t exactly Oscar Wilde, but what the hell. If we ever sold anything, maybe I could work my way up to a pittance.