Venus Envy (7 page)

‘But life’s not like that,’ Keisha said wisely.

‘It is like that,’ I replied staunchly.

‘Well,’ said Gail, delivering the coup de grace, ‘not for you.’

We set to like the four dwarves for Snowy. Only it wasn’t so much ‘Whistle While You Work’ as ‘Out of my way, you fucking bitch’. But we meant it nicely.

‘This your bloody KFC?’ Gall screeched at Keisha. ‘So what’s this, you slut?’ Kisha roared back, holding up two empty cartons of wholemilk four-grain goat’s milk yoghurt, kiwi fruit flavour, with teaspoons stuck to their insides.

I was standing there in my clay-spattered dungarees, bin liner in one hand and empty box of Marks & Sparks red in the other, when the doorbell rang.

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‘It’s the pizza,’ Gail said gleefully, for we’d ordered in for tidying provisions.

It wasn’t the pizza. It was Snowy.

‘Gail,’ she said sweetly to Gail’s squeal of excitement, pressing her back in a ghost of a hug, as if afraid she might get homespun wool stuck on her nail polish.

Snowy looked fabulous. Not in my most disgruntled nightmares had I expected this: Olivia White standing there in what looked like a cream silk Versace shift, gathered at one shoulder with a gold clasp in the manner of a Greek goddess. Her lips were slicked with something massively expensive; her face, even close to ” me over Gail’s shoulder, was flawless, her perfect pores tiny. As was her nose. Snowy’s once distinguished Roman job had vanished under some skilled scalpel, leaving behind only a tiny, fairy little nose that looked as though she never needed to blow it. Behind our open door I could see piles of Louis Vuitton monogrammed luggage in the hall. I hoped it was a fifty buck Hong Kong rip-off, but somehow I doubted it. Sngwy’s earlobes were groaning under two rocks of sparkling ice big enough to sink the Titanic. Her skin was buffed and tanned and she was so bloody thin she was in danger of disappearing down the plughole every time she took a bath.

She probably bathed in asses’ milk or champagne. Or dissolved pearls

‘Gail, do introduce me to your friends,’ Snowy was purring. ‘I’m Olivia White.’ She held out one slender hand to Bronwen, who shook it almost mesmerised.

‘I’m Bronwen Thomas,’ Bronwen said, then blurted out, ‘I hear you can get backstage passes and that.’

Snowy smiled graciously. ‘Mmm. What were you thinking of? Reading? No problem, I’ll get you some biked round tomorrow.’

‘And this is Keisha,’ Gail said triumphantly, shooting I told you so looks at me.

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‘What a gorgeous shirt,’ Snowy said. ‘Clements Ribeiro, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ Keisha agreed with a small smile.

‘I can get you wholesale at Harvey Nicks. Or Harrods - Mohamed AloFayed’s such a dear sweet friend …”

Keisha’s reserve evaporated. I felt a bit jealous, actually. Snowy was already bonding to her like Superglue.

‘And Alex.. ,’ She gave me a faint smile, but didn’t bother getting too close. She surveyed my dungarees and bin liner and scrunched-up hair and tired face.

‘You look just the same as ever,’ Snowy said.

‘I like your nose job,’ I retorted.

Childish, but it made me feel better. Snowy stiffened a fraction, then gave us a grin so white you needed sunglasses. God, her teeth were bleached white as an American soap star’s.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I see the body as a work of

ar.’

I looked down at my own squidgy midriff, thought about my beige teeth and pale skin and non-gleaming hair, and tried not to despair.

Of course Seamus hadn’t meant it when he called me pretty! There were women like Snowy and Dolores in the world. Girls like me were just there to make up the numbers.

Bronwen and Keisha were now looking at me, waiting for a snappy comeback, but my venom had deserted me. Dorothy Parker would have been ashamed.

‘I’m going to go and work on my sculptures,’ I said defiantly.

‘Oh, your sculptures,’ said Snowy pleasantly, ‘of course. You must have sold thousands by now and be really famous.’

There was a dead quiet in the room.

‘Alex works in the City,’ Keisha said defensively. ‘Alex is a secretary’s assistant,’ Gail butted in.

I seethed inside as Snowy digested this little tidbit. ‘Oh,’ she said sympathetically, ‘so that’s why you’ve got so many … laugh lines already, it must be the stress.’

‘And what do you do?’ Bronwen asked eagerly.

The?’ Snowy gave a tinkling little laugh. ‘I party, darling, what does it look like?’ We spent a wonderful girly evening together. No really, it was marvellous. Snowy and Gail treated Keisha and Bronwen to fabulous stories of my happy schooldays. Like the way I would never get any letters tnless they were from my granny. Or the time I was attempting to serve a tennis ball and knocked myself out cold in the middle of the forehead.

‘And really, Alex was such a loner,’ Snowy laughed, ‘always hanging out in the pottery room, all her blouses always had mud on them.’

‘.True,’ Gail said eagerly, ‘and do you remember how she always hung out with Ellen Jones?’

Ellen Jones! Ellen had been my only friend at St Mary’s, if you can call it that. Ellen and I didn’t have much in common. She wasn’t too bright and even plumper than me. But we were both Norman No mates, as the other girls would say, so we hung out together. I was always grateful for Ellen on Valentine’s Day.

It’s funny, how people bang on about Christmas and the suicide rate and they never say a word about 4 February. Each year I dreaded it more and more..The red roses that flooded the lobby, beautifully wrapped in tissue and ferns and white frothy babies’ breath, teddy bears and chocolates and phones ringing off the hook. And the girls running barefoot down the corridors, flinging themselves on their beds squealing.

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‘Look what Crispin got me, Vanessat’ ‘Isn’t Robin so sweett’ ‘Oh, it’s real silver, Tim’s so darling!’

The dorm mistress was never troubled with post, flowers or anything else for me and Ellen on Valeno tines Day. We stayed in our rooms under siege, pretending to study and slagging them all off for being bimbos. We were utterly miserable. I would gladly have swapped the odd A-minus in pottery for just one card, no matter how spotty or speccy the sender. And poor Ellen felt even worse, not even having talent to console her. Once, on r x February, I caught her by the post box in the hedge outside the school, her jumper snagging on a blackberry twig, as she attempted to stuff a gift-wrapped box of chocs, addressed to herself, through the slot. I talked her out of it. Everybody knew her handwriting and Snowy White would have been merciless.

‘Ellen ,as all right,’ I said grumpily.

‘Just as well,’ Gail laughed, ‘since no one else wanted to hang out with you.’

‘Gail, did you realise you’ve got a huge zit on the end of your nose?’ asked Keisha sweetly. ‘It must be too much tofu.’

But they were still hanging on Snowy’s every word.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I announced, getting up and leaving the table.

I don’t think anyone.even noticed.

I flung myself into my work.

OK, then, I flung myself into my drudgery. Filing. Typing. Coffee Making. Faxing. Photocopying. There was a massive variety of different things to be done, and each one as boring as the last. On the other hand, it was a routine. I knew where my life was going ,(nowhere). I got into a desperate sort of rhythm. Waking up a few seconds before my alarm clock. Jumping into the shower with a commando-like ferocity that dared the others to make a fuss - Bronwen would still be bopping in her bedroom at that hour, and Gail didn’t need to be in her office until quarter to ten, and nor did Keisha, for she’d landed that job at Up and Running and the BBC didn’t want her until midmorning.

‘Your letter worked, I’ve got an interview,’ Keisha

said last week.

Then, being Keisha, she went into one of her infrequent bouts of workaholism and came up with a pretend running order for the show. It was a slam dunk.

I danced round with her and bought her a cheap

bottle of sparkling wine, but I felt like a top grade ratbag because it made me feel so miserable.

It’s tough to be happy for your mate when your own life is going downhill faster than an Olympic skier.

One morning I caught myself daydreaming about winning the lottery - like, would I march straight into Jenny’s office and blow a big raspberry in her fa.ce, or

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would I work one last day in this hellhole, showing up in a limo and pink Chanel suit, and do my typing in fingers dripping with diamonds?

That’s when I knew it was all over. I was living the same life, doing the same scuzz work, and dreaming the same dreams as the whole rest of the world. I was nothing. Zero. A big fat zip. I would have won the Brownie badge for ordinariness in a heartbeat.

I used to fantasise about the six months I had spent in the fleapit in Hackney, before I’d given in and taken my parents’ ‘Live in our flat, live by our rules,’ so called generous offer. However, they weren’t very frequent dreams. Not even this numbing boredom could make that roach-infested dump seem romantic.

So I switched to sculpting. It could still happen, I told myself. You were born to do it. You could get discovere, d by some avant-garde Japarese scout …

But I couldn’t make that one sound convincing, even in a daydream. So, I’m sorry to report, it was all down to Seamus. I was supposed not to be thinking about my boss, but what could you do, when he was there every morning in his slouchy, daring-coloured suits and flashy ties, with all the City boys laying the full-court press on him, and his rakish body moving about, and his aftershave and his dreamy greeny eyes …

Jenny never let him. near me. Oh, she was subtle about it. She would quite often send me into his office.

‘Take this cup of coffee in to Mr Mahon, could you, Alexandra?’ or ‘These papers need Mr Mahon’s signature,’ or ‘Here are Mr Mahdn’s hotel vouchers for Prague.’ All innocent, like, there you go, you can see the big man, little girl.

The problem was, she always sent me in there when he wasn’t alone. There’d be some junior Hamilton Kane quant in there, eyeing me up as I completed my mission.

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So I’d say, ‘Here you are, Mr Mahon,’ or ‘Sign here please, Mr Mahon.’

What sparkling dialogue, eh? Oscar Wilde couldn’t have done any better!

Oh, and a ‘quant’ is City speak for a ‘quantative analyst’, or ‘number cruncher’ in English. I was getting fairly up on the old jargon by now. I was a bit of a veteran.

‘If they recruited one called Mary, they could call her Mary Quant,’ I suggested to Jenny, and she actually smiled, so she clearly was human and not some fiendish robot after all.

Anyway, the luscious, pouting Seamus would say, ‘Thank you, Alex,’ politely, but like I wasn’t even ,there. Like you thank the newspaper man for your change.

In fact, have you ever noticed how polite we English are as shoppers? My weekly basket of cheap wine, frozen ready burgers at ten per cent off and a packet of discount strawberries, usually a false economy because th bottom layer’s all bad, goes something like this: put down the basket. ‘Thanks.’ ‘Thank you,’ says Dwayne on the checkout listlessly. ‘Six pounds fifty, thanks.’ ‘Thank you,’ I say, handing over the tenner. A bit reluctantly. ‘Thank you,’ he says, snatching it from me. ‘Thanks,’ he says, handing over three fifty. ‘Thank you,’ I say, pocketing it, grabbing my carrier. ‘Thanks,’ says Dwayne.

God knows what it mfist be like in Japan.

Of course in Keisha’s case not a word is ever exchanged. Even taxi drivers don’t launch into their life stories. Nobody would dare.

It wasn’t all boredom and frustration in the office, though. Sometimes it was embarrassment and annoyance, too. This sprang mostly from Kevin Harvey in Admin. Kevin held the title of Administration Clerk. He was actually the oldest postboy the world has ever

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nown. Thirty-five, with thinning sandy hair he used to comb in wet strands across his bald patch, a pudgy body with breasts that needed a Cross-Your-Heart, and a nice line in cheap, see-through white shirts, always dark with sweat despite the air conditioning.

Kevin was sweet on me. As my mother and Jenny liked to put it.

He lingered at my desk. He handed over each of Seamus’s letters individually, very slowly. He tried out different ‘manly’ scents every day (Superdrug Super Saver Fresh Pine, Old Spice or Bad Boy Rum being favourites). He used to try and impress me with his big schemes.

‘I’ve an idea for Federal Express,’ he said one day.

‘That’s nice, Kev,’ I said, burying my nose in my papers.

‘Coloul:ed envelopes. The ones they use now are so boring.’

‘I’m busy right now, Kev,’ I said witheringly.

He flushed. ‘Sure, right. I’ll see you tomorrow same time, same place, huh huh huh.’

Jenny scowled at me after Kev’s overloaded cart had trundled round the corner. ‘Poor man! You needn’t be so foul to one of God’s fellow creatures, Alexandra.’

‘Well, I don’t want to encourage him,’ I said sulkily. She needn’t make Kevin sound like a kitten with a broken leg.

‘You could try being kind. Looks aren’t everything,’ Jenny retorted. It was about the most personal thing she’d ever come out with. Why should I care what the old boot thought? But I did venture down with my soggy bap to the post room at lunchtime, God knows why. Kev was thrilled to see me. So then I felt sulky and guilty, and lunch with Kev became a once-a-week deal.

‘That’s a nice girl, Alexandra,’ Jenny said approvingly.

k

And I’m sorry to say I was secretly quite pleased. As I was when she praised my typing. Or my answering, or anything really.

‘You’re getting quite.., competent,’ Jenny told me briskly. Well, you take your praise where you can get it.

This morning I’d been bashing away at the PC when Personnel rang up to tell me Jenny was off sick. For a second I felt worried about her. What was wrong with me? I was going bonkers.

‘It’s only flu,’ Personnel said reassuringly, ‘but she wants to knock it on the head. So we’re sending somebody along from the typing pool downstairs to take over your work. Jenny wanted you to handle her tuff.’