Wishful Thinking (18 page)

A bell summoned them, and they polished off their champagne and headed for the auditorium.

Afterwards, Georgie said she was ready for what she called the Herrenvolk bit, in which some king or other pushed the theme of Germany for the Germans. I'd rung an opera buff the previous day who looked
Lohengrin
up in Grove, so I'd been able to inform her that the writer George Eliot had described the music as resembling ‘the wind whistling through the keyholes in a cathedral'. But Georgie paid little attention to the lack of good tunes. Even before the (relatively brief) Nazi propaganda was over, it dawned on her that the militant monarch was dressed exactly like Queen Amidala in
The Phantom Menace
. The villain appeared, in a vast black cloak which swirled as he strode across the stage – though curiously, several of the characters failed to detect his villainy, despite that giveaway cloak. Then came the heroine, in white with earphones. (‘It was just like
Star Wars
,' Georgie assured us on Monday, ‘only the music wasn't as good.') A red-haired villainess added spice, someone called Waltraud singing Ortrud, or possibly vice versa. Lohengrin, the hero knight, arrived floating on a swan, causing Georgie to wonder if they'd switched to the ballet by mistake. He was operatically fat – about .4 on the Pavarotti scale – which was disappointing, since the rest of the cast were of normal proportions. If he had been covered in armour he might have passed for merely hefty, but the costume designer had put him in a sort of flowing tunic, full-length, which made him look like a pregnant woman in eveningwear. He and the heroine married, on condition that she never asked him his real name, so of course you knew she would. After a long wedding-night scene she put the fatal question (‘If he'd given her an orgasm she'd have gone to sleep perfectly happy': Georgie). He revealed that he was Lohengrin, son of Parsifal (see prequel), and now she had broken her promise he would have to return to the otherworldly Eden where he lived forever under the 'fluence of the Holy Grail. The swan reappeared, and turned into the heroine's long-lost brother, a character so unimportant the audience had forgotten all about him. The villain had bitten the dust in a skirmish with light sabres some scenes earlier and Lohengrin departed, leaving the heroine to collapse in a swoon or die of a broken heart, depending on interpretation and her state of cardiac health. In the stalls, Georgie found herself applauding with the rest.

‘It was wonderful,' she told Neville, to her own surprise. ‘
Star Wars
and Indiana Jones and everything. I loved it.'

During the intervals, they had sprinted up to the restaurant and wolfed down their dinner with undignified haste. ‘I should have booked somewhere afterwards,' Neville said. ‘But Wagner goes on so long it would have been much too late.'

They went to a wine bar for more champagne and Georgie allowed him to drive her home, feeling fairly confident he was neither stalker nor axe-murderer. He kissed her on the cheek by way of goodnight and didn't suggest another meeting. Damn, Georgie thought.

If Georgie's Saturday was a qualified success, mine was definitely a failure. My sister Sophie had rung on Friday, announcing her intention of coming up to London for a day's shopping and appropriating my company on her usual careless assumption that I could have nothing better to do. I didn't, which didn't make me feel any happier about it. I love Sophie: as big sisters go, she has been kind, protective, not unduly bossy and only intermittently patronising. But she has also, always, been the pretty one. She has the sort of naturally slim figure that ignores calories – quick metabolism or some other injustice of Nature – and even after two children her waistline has hardly thickened. Her face is heart-shaped, her hair a glossy bob, straighter than mine and blow-dried into sleekness. That weekend she arrived wearing the kind of trousers that show off slender thighs, her casual tan enhanced by a pink top with judicious gaps. Somehow, even with my new image and hour-glass proportions, she managed to make me feel like a lump. A short lump. She's only an inch or two taller than me, but it feels like a yard.

‘You've lost weight,' she greeted me, accusingly. ‘Looks good, but be careful you don't get anorexia. I had a friend years ago, desperate to lose a stone. She tried every diet going and ended up living off black coffee and pickled walnuts. She got addicted to them – couldn't stop – wound up in hospital weighing the same as an eight-year-old child. And it wasn't like she was ever really fat. If you ask me, we shouldn't try to conform to fashion: it's dangerous. Much better to just go with whatever Nature intended.'

Easy to say, when Nature intended you to be a size 10.

And a bit later, suspiciously: ‘You've got an awful lot of pickles in that cupboard. Are you
sure
you're okay?'

‘Nigel liked them,' I said.

‘Well, at least you're rid of him; that's one good thing. Sorry, darling, but he
was
awful. All that phoney left ideology went out with the seventies. Nobody goes in for that stuff any more.'

‘It wasn't phoney,' I said defensively. ‘Anyway, he didn't want to conform to political fashion.'

‘What? Oh – clever little sis. But he did conform: you know he did. There's no one as conventional as an extremist.'

And the annoying thing about that, I reflected, was that it was probably true.

At school, Sophie had been very bright in an idle, don't-give-a-damn way in which minimum effort produced maximum results. But by the time she got to university (Bristol), indolence or indifference began to take hold. She flunked her degree and instead landed a job on a Paris-based fashion magazine, where she shacked up with a photographer some ten years older and enjoyed what seemed to me, then still a child, a wildly glamorous lifestyle. When I was thirteen she invited me to visit, but my parents wouldn't allow it, so I
knew
she had to be having fun, moving in a world of unimaginable glitz and decadence. (Though of course I imagined a good deal, undoubtedly exaggerating in a mist of envy and awe.) At seventeen, I was just about to leave on the longed-for trip when the relationship foundered and Sophie returned home. She didn't stay long, going to see a friend in New York and falling on her feet as usual with another magazine job and an offered flat-share in a brownstone. While she was there she met an English banker based in Wall Street – the kind with looks and money, an apartment in the Village, a house in the Hamptons. In due course she came back to England with a huge diamond and a date for the wedding. I don't think I'll ever forget my embarrassment and horror when, co-opted as chief bridesmaid, I waddled up the aisle behind her in stilettos and lilac chiffon, feeling like something that maiden aunts put on top of a loo roll. Relocated back to London, Gareth retired from banking at thirty-five, bought a garden centre near Oxford, and moved to an idyllic country house from which to run his idyllic country business. Needless to say, he made money. Sophie junked the world of magazines, had children and a maid, and frequently declared, with a certain smugness, that she was turning into a vegetable.

‘Why London?' I asked, when the subject of Nigel had been brushed under the carpet. Sophie always said the boutiques in Oxford were second to none.

‘I felt like a change. Anyway, I thought I might as well give you a bell. It's been a while.'

‘Mum been at you?' Some things needed little explanation.

‘Mmm. You know how it is. You never brought the dreaded Nigel to meet them, you're looking peaky, your job at Ransome has bad pay and no prospects. The usual.'

‘All jobs in publishing have bad pay and no prospects. As it happens, I've had promotion – in a way.'

‘In what way?'

‘I'm editing Jerry Beauman's next book. Apparently, it's a privilege. He's supposed to be the biggest bastard in the business – but that's top secret.'

‘Good,' said Sophie. ‘Who can I tell?'

‘Whom,' said the editor in me, but Sophie didn't notice.

We went to Harrods in quest of an outfit for Sophie to wear to someone's wedding, but my sister, easily sidetracked, wandered into departments of designer children's clothes and scooped up frilled and beaded miniatures of teenage gear – ‘Hermione will look
so
sweet in that!' – and diminutive macho jackets and sweatshirts for Raphael. From our last meeting I remembered him as one of those boys who manages to be grubby no matter how often you wash him, while Hermione, not surprisingly in view of her mother's attitude, was a proper little madam. ‘She's so fashion-conscious already,' Sophie cooed. ‘Mind you, they all are nowadays. I bought her a new party dress last month – the loveliest thing, yellow with sequined appliqués – and she looked at it and said: “Mummy, I can't wear that! It's so
yesterday
!” Wasn't that sweet?'

Personally, I felt Hermione's dress sense might benefit from a good spanking, and on an impulse I said so.

‘Spanking?' Sophie laughed. ‘Darling, nobody spanks any more. It's
Victorian
. Besides, she'd probably get hold of the school lawyer and prosecute us for child abuse.'

School lawyer
???

In due course, we went to lunch. I ordered salad, and Sophie reverted to the subject of my supposed anorexia, nagging me to have the cannelloni. ‘It's summer,' I pointed out. ‘Everyone eats salad in the summer.'

‘Nonsense. You don't
like
salad; no one does. People only eat it to look healthy. You've
never
lost weight, Em, it can't be good for you. You're not one of Nature's dieters.'

And so on.

By the time she went, not long after tea, when I resisted her Marie Antoinette-like urging to eat cake, I felt worn out, both mentally and physically. Who was it who said you choose your friends but your family you're stuck with? Back home I rang Georgie, who agonised at length about her outfit for the opera that night, and Lin, who inquired in beseeching accents if I and/or Georgie might consider another stint of babysitting, as Andy Pearmain was in town next week. The multi-pierced teenage tough-girl had apparently retired from the lists in an advanced state of trauma. I hedged, wavered, and finally succumbed, wondering where I could get a Kalashnikov. When I eventually hung up I found myself revising my reaction to that line about choosing your friends. The work environment cultivates an unnatural intimacy, and friendships are forced along like hothouse plants. Either that, or I was a very bad chooser.

In the evening I went out with a selection from my wider social circle, but it didn't offer much relief. We went to an Indian restaurant where I ordered very hot curry on the grounds that I don't like it much, and therefore wouldn't eat a lot. Unfortunately it was even hotter than I thought, my tongue began to blister at the excess of chilli, and I had to sit with a mouthful of milk for about ten minutes to cool it down. Then we went to a downmarket wine bar, where the first person I saw was Nigel with a couple of friends.

I hadn't seen him since that terrible confrontation in the bookshop, and my stomach quailed, my knees turned to water, my voice stuck in my throat and my heart shrank. All the standard symptoms, in fact. I hated myself for my weakness, for the horrible mixture of excitement and terror and returning shame that battered my nervous system. I was supposed to be a sex goddess, with an undulating hour-glass figure worthy of Jessica Rabbit, but the sheer panic I felt was more reminiscent of Roger. I told myself I wasn't ready for this, I didn't want him to see me, I would have my drink and leave, unnoticed, unrecognised, unacknowledged. We went to a table some distance from him and I sat down in a corner, where I could see him and hopefully remain unseen. But there was a part of me that wanted to catch his eye, wanted him to look at me, see my change of image, speak to me – that treacherous part of me that said:
This time, it will be different. This time, he'll appreciate you. This time . . . this time . . . this time . . .

We ordered a bottle, and I drank. I couldn't have said if it was white or red.

‘What's the matter, Cookie?' asked one of my companions, seeing my rigid attitude and glazed eye.

‘Nigel,' I said. ‘Over there.'

‘Oh, Lord . . .'

It was a mistake to say anything. The nudging and whispering of my friends seemed to me more noticeable than a shout. I sank back into what shadows there were, trying to change colour, like a chameleon, against the cushions of the bench. Nigel didn't seem to be with a girlfriend – an omission guaranteed to give me false hope – but was leaning forward, talking to two guys whom I'd met occasionally, a long-haired vegetarian called Rom (whatever that was short for) and a thin Asian with overlarge specs. At a guess they were rearranging the world – that, or discussing the shortcomings of absent fellow ideologues. I watched them, hawk-like, feeling queasy. Drank more wine. Ate a handful of something (crisps? peanuts?). Then back to the wine. Any minute, I thought, he'll look round and see me. Maybe it would be better to attract his attention, to have the advantage of making the opening gambit . . .

God knows how long this went on. Belatedly, I was aware of being drunk. Not too drunk, but drunk enough. Dutch courage stiffened my sinews, put the joints back in my knees. I got up, went to the loo, retouched my face. On the way back, I stopped at his table.

‘Hello, Nige.' Not a good opening line, not remarkable for cutting-edge wit, but I was sufficiently pissed not to care.

‘Cookie. Hi.'

‘How are you?'

I was conscious of him looking me over, of the other two surveying me with deadly unenthusiasm. Sobriety seeped coldly into my head.