The Girl Who Came to Stay Read online

‘Hush, Paul, you’re making an exhibition of all of us. Do you have to go around looking so camp? I don’t mind people wondering about you. I wonder about you all the time. But I’d rather my reputation for good, honest heterosexuality was unbesmirched, if that’s all right with you.’

  Giggles from Press-Studs.

  ‘Benedict, you’re such an angel.’

  Insults dripping like scent off a fairy’s wings.

  ‘Give us a kiss, Titania!’

  ‘Benedict, meet Stella Levigne. I told her how you were longing to meet her. And Polly, I can see you’ve already made a bid for, you randy creep. Hands off, I saw her first.’ Ignore the offer—let him solve his own identity problems. ‘Hello Stella Levigne.’

  Hello Stella Levigne. I know all about you, you and your money, and connections and I don’t believe a half of what I’ve heard about you, although indeed I’d like to. Yet here you are, in that absurd wide-brimmed blue hat, pulled down over those purple-tinted glasses, a hat laden with bunches of fruit, of cherries and grapes and now I see there’s also a peach tucked in behind the lot. How fortunate to be Stella Levigne now that we’re liberating our women, and are lapping at the feet of eccentric femininity. You and your beauty, and all those brains, and your name on all the right Times petitions; your even teeth on the television chat shows, your body unfolded for pin-ups in men’s magazines, your books on womanhood, your haute couture spreads in those snooty fashion magazines. And yet, who would have taken you for thirty-six? What a sophisticated eccentric you are, highlighted hair round that perfect face. What an immaculate conception of ultra-chic: once a courtesan to a couple of politicking-upwards newspaper editors and junior cabinet ministers, once a rock and roll singer’s superlay, and now Miss Activist Chic, with your Maoist boyfriends and house in Edwardes Square. And I still don’t believe those lies they tell about your alleged sexual aberrations, and that liking you have for odd numbers in your bed. Seems to me that that is a very depraved way for a lady of your impeccable breeding to wish to conduct herself. But then they do say that there are none so depraved as the much blessed. And you were well blessed, though I have heard it said that your great-grandfather, to whom you owe so much of your position and wealth, contracted a rather nasty social disease while building a trading empire in Bengal and died a rather unhappy and painful death. And again, it is said, although rumour is such a lying toad, that ever since then there’s been a certain element of insanity pumping around the blue arteries of the whole Levigne kinship structure. Which all goes to show, as great-grandfather would no doubt have said, India was indeed the white man’s burden.

  ‘I think we met once before, Benedict.’ Stella looking up over her glasses. Eyelids heavy. Expression assuming and just a bit imperative. It was at a party for something or other, I think.’

  ‘It was at your party for the publication of that book you wrote about liberated woman in China. The one where you complained about the poor facilities for social research because you were unable to find any comparative statistics on the incidence of orgasm in the Chinese female …’

  ‘… now I remember …’

  ‘… yes, I asked you if you thought the orgasm had a revolutionary role to play in the new political and economical structure of China, and you said you were going to write a ten-thousand-word thesis on the matter and offer it to Chairman Mao as an appendix for his Little Red Book. Whereupon I thought you were a drag and went home.’

  ‘How silly we both were.’ Eyes down behind those protective spectacles, a slightly supercilious dimple appearing in her left cheek, fingers dabbling delicately in oysters. Paul pouring wine. Press-Studs Polly licking vinaigrette from her fingers. Paul looking a bit perturbed that his nice jolly friendly lunch might be getting a bit draughty. And now me ordering steak and chips, with a pot of tea. Now. With the meal. All right? Yes Sir.

  Paul talking to Stella and Polly so that people three tables away might hear: ‘Benedict likes to imagine himself as the working-class hero who came down second class from Leeds or Manchester or somewhere on the last train and was an overnight sensation in our city of sin. Unfortunately he was born about ten years too late to be an angry young working-class laddie with a chip on his shoulder, and secondly his background is more petty bourgeoisie than working class. He’ll never forgive The Beatles for making him passé.’

  No point in arguing. It’s true. Time I grew up really. It’s just that these complacent bastards get up my nose so much. But I may as well be pleasant: ‘How’s business, Paul?’ Paul, the owner of several antique shops with little windows and white walls in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, could always be diverted towards the marginally less bent of his two passions.

  ‘Marvellous. Stella was talking about coming in with me on a new venture, weren’t you, darling? We want to get a shop, better still, a warehouse, in somewhere like Catford or Brixton and sell really good furniture at prices they can afford in working-class areas. You know they all have to pay through the nose in hire purchase for all that shoddy modern cheap stuff that doesn’t last five minutes, when we could be selling them re-upholstered Chesterfields for more or less the same price. Who wants a nasty-looking three-piece suite that will have the springs poking through the fabric as soon as you sit on it when they can have really good solid old-fashioned furniture.’

  And now Stella: ‘Paul’s right, of course, but also we want to help retain something culturally worthwhile about the aspidistra in the window and the ducks on the wall. Well, much more so than the eternal rubber plants and pictures of green ladies and elephants. In our way we’d like to make these people have some awareness of the value of their own culture before it gets eaten up completely by the juggernauting motorways and tower blocks of flats.’

  ‘Have you ever tried getting a bloody great big Chesterfield up to the twenty-third floor of a block of council flats?’ Scoffing comes so easily to me.

  ‘Well of course that’s an extreme example.’ Paul puffing his way out of trouble. ‘We’ll have some of those beautiful old fashioned kitchen dressers, and superb porcelain water jugs, and maybe a potty or two for those poor souls who only have outdoor loos. It sounds a really viable commercial proposition to me…’

  ‘But that of course … the money thing … is really a secondary consideration. I mean, we don’t want to lose, necessarily, but we don’t want to become just profiteering capitalists like all the other furniture shops either. Ah, do we, Paul?* Stella looking cautious.

  ‘Oh no. No, of course not.’ Paul lying in his teeth. I wonder who’s taking in whom. They’ll have to watch each other like hawks. She’ll be giving the bloody stuff away and he’ll be sending the bailiffs round to reclaim it. A more unlikely business partnership I never met.

  Polly Press-Studs picking at sole meunière. Figure before pleasure, my girl. Paul having a quiet preen in the black mirrored walls. Stella now looking so directly at me again across the table. A confident smile that tells of triumphs not yet won. A gaze that’s difficult to dodge. And me into my steak and chips. Embarrassed now and ignoring the pot of tea. Clare would think me childish if she could see me now. But Clare’s for tonight. I hope.

  ‘Did you read Stella’s marvellous article in London Monthly about polar bears?’ Paul coming back from reflected adoration.

  ‘Yes. And it was about baby seals, not bloody bears.’

  ‘Beg pardon, Stella. Knew it was somewhere cold. Anyway it was great. Terribly moving.’

  ‘What did you say it was about?’ Polly! We thought you were dead.

  Stella with that look of self-effacing modesty which writers assume whenever anything they’ve ever written is commented upon. Eyes down for a full house, Stella, and let one of the gentlemen tell of your genius.

  ‘Stella wrote a very good piece in a magazine about a seal hunt she’d been on in northern Canada where all the baby seals were slaughtered so that their pretty pelts might adorn the likes of you, my pretty Polly. Our Stella is a great conservationist, anti-envi
ronmental pollutionist, champion of the fox, the deer, indeed of every manner of wildlife. Our Stella, Polly, believes in the quality of life. She is a crusader for the universe. She has copyrighted the concept of ecology in the universe.’

  ‘I see. What was it you said about the seals?’

  Stella lighting a cigarette, cheeks sucking in. Now there’s a lady of style. Supercilious smile. Marlboro Kingsize. The packet goes back into the calf-suede of her jacket. Stella Levigne cannot so easily be put down. And now she’s businesslike:

  ‘You may remember, Polly, seeing pictures in some of the papers of the clubbing to death and skinning of baby seals in Labrador a while ago. No? Well, anyway at the time there was a big hoo-haa over it and the Canadian Government was supposed to bring in laws against it, and regulations to protect the seals from man’s brutality. But then like everything else it was forgotten. So a few months ago when I was on a sort of safari fact-finding tour in Canada I went to have a look for myself, and armed with a camera I recorded a few further cases of man’s unthinking and illegal brutality for posterity and the London Monthly magazine. It really is quite the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard. You can hear the poor little pups squealing with terror as they’re dragged away from their mothers and clubbed to death. And it really is so pathetic to see the mothers trying to protect their young, while those stupid ignorant bastards slit them down the belly and rip their hides away. There really is a smell of murder everywhere. We called the article “The Massacre of the Innocents”.’

  ‘How terrible.’ Polly grave. Paul ordering brandies for four.

  ‘Three, please, Paul. I must go.’ Stella shuffling up. Five foot eight. Calf-skin trousers tight around the thighs, and my eyes at that Y-level. ‘It’s been so nice to meet you, Benedict, I’ve heard so much about you. Yes, really. Paul talks about you all the time. Why don’t you come round some time.’

  ‘Yes. How nice.’

  ‘Well, if you’re interested Paul has the number. You too, Polly. Get Paul to bring you over. Not this week though. I’m going to be away, more or less until the weekend. And then I don’t think I’ll feel much like meeting anyone for a day or two.’

  For some reason I’m vaguely curious: ‘So where are you going to be this week Stella Levigne? Nipping across to Washington for a quick affair with some liberal Presidential hopeful, or off down to the Virgin Islands to worry about oil pollution on the beaches? Tell us now, Stella, what’s this October week going to bring for a girl with the world at her fingertips like you?’

  A silly bantering style and Paul and Polly enjoying the tease. Stella quiet. Loftily aloof. And then, those smoky eyes lazering down at me through her glasses: Tf you’re so interested I’ll tell you. I’m holidaying in Harley Street while a good doctor friend of mine takes one small step towards further containing the population explosion. Thank you for lunch, Paul. Goodbye, now.’

  And away and out of the doors goes our Boadicea, all heads turning to see the style of the lady.

  ‘Where did she say she was going?’ says Polly.

  ‘She’s going to have an abortion, my love.’ Paul pushes his hands into his hair, ruffling it for the first time since lunch began. ‘Oh Benedict you are a bastard. A real bastard.’

  But I was on an icing-cake icefloe somewhere in the North-West Passage, listening to the baby seals, and the screaming mothers and watching the bounty hunters clubbing open the skulls of lucrative carnage. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

  Chapter Seven

  Clare arrived at seven. Struggling up the road, bearing gifts of Safeways abundance in two paper bags, while I watched from my white wicker throne chair in the front bay window; counting the people, like counting sheep. On rainy days grandma would tell me to wait by the window and count the people coming home from work. A boy waiting for his mum, leaning over the back of the settee and staring out of the semi-detached window, over the lawn and privet hedge and following the rivers of rain roaring down the gulleys in the unmade road outside, and now and then, once in a long while, the excitement as a car splashed through the mud and bounced up the road. I never had to count to more than twenty. She was always there, riding her bike through the rain, her scarf pulled tight around her face and tied in a knot under her chin. Shoulders bent and head down into the rain, carefully avoiding getting splashed by the puddles, and slipping from the saddle to stop and open the gate, and wheel her bike into the front path. And me waiting there by the window: counting. Six. Seven. Eight. And on Friday nights maybe something in the basket on the handlebars, or the bag that hung down and banged against the front wheel: a wad of paper pinched from work for me to do my colouring on; a little notebook, with shiny blue cover, to write a new play in. A sixpenny bag of assorted foreign stamps from the stamp shop in Clifford Street. There were never any sweets. And I never missed them. They were probably rationed then. Nuts at Christmas from the Stores. Waiting for my mum. On fine days pedalling up as far as the Police Station to meet her there. Being told I mustn’t go on the main road again. Now you ride in front and I’ll follow. And keep into the side, Benedict. Be very careful. And don’t come past the end of the cinder path again. And tomorrow we’ll go blackberrying. And after they’d left her in the front room for a couple of days, lying quiet while everyone came to see her and say how peaceful she looked, they took her away to church, and Mrs Clarke from next door but one had me for the day, while they went off for their bacon and egg breakfast. And I stayed for my dinner and tea. And later on Grandma came for me. And she knelt down with me that night and we said some Hail Marys together. Sometimes on rainy days I’d go and lean on the back of the settee and watch the puddles and count the people. And look up the road, for the lady on the bike with the blue scarf, and watch for the basket to come meandering down the road splashing up the mud. And I’d count to twenty and forty and fifty and seventy. And then everyone would be home from work. And grandma would come in and stand by the door and say come on, love, you’ll never be up for school, and don’t you want to listen to Dick Barton tonight. And on fine evenings in the summer I’d pedal to the end of the cinder path and look down the road towards the Police Station. And wait.

  Clare at the door now. Making faces through the window. Number nineteen she is. Blue scarf pulled round her face and under her chin. Come on, let her in.

  In the hall. Taking the bags: What? A duck, frozen solid like a lump of smoothly sculpted ice, potatoes, brussels sprouts, a wheel of camembert, with the lady’s face on the front, two bottles of Burgundy, peeping purply out from the ice cream and crackers and chestnuts and honeydew melon, out of season, too, early tangerines, minty chocolates in a green packet, great phallic truncheons of French bread, and pretty red candles, short and stumpy. And what’s this? Joss sticks!

  ‘Joss sticks? Do my feet smell or something?’

  Clare embarrassed, while I hold the packet, incredulously, and begin to laugh. Both standing in the hall, the bags half-scattered at our feet. Clare’s eyes shiny and the corners of her mouth dipping.

  ‘I thought that was what you’d like. I thought people like you liked them burning around their houses. Well, it doesn’t matter, I’ll throw them in the bin. ’

  Down on her knees putting her goodies back into the bags. Avoiding my amusement.

  ‘Let me help.’

  ‘No. I’ll do it.’

  ‘I thought we were going out to dinner.’

  ‘Yes. I think we should. It just seemed a good idea at the time. I mean, I thought it would be nice for you to stay in, and I’d cook for you here. Well, as you haven’t got anyone to look after you, and I know you eat out all the time … but yes, we’d better go out somewhere, I think…’

  ‘Oh no. Please. This is a lovely surprise. I’d rather stay in. I just didn’t expect all this. It’s all a nice surprise.’

  And now she’s cheering up and I’m helping her off with her mac. Same jeans and sweater as yesterday.

  ‘You didn’t want to go out?’

  �
�Silly girl.’ Carrying the bags down to the basement kitchen. ‘Rather have you to myself than share you with a restaurant full of voyeurs. And we’ll light the joss sticks, too. Make a nice rancid smell to cover the dankness of the dry rot down here.’

  ‘No. We’ll throw them away. It was silly of me. I suppose I was just trying to get what I thought you might like. Or expect. I was silly. Don’t mention them again, please.’

  Bags down on the vinyl kitchen tiles. Kissing her in the gloominess down here, and pushing her head into my left shoulder. Left arm pulling her close. Right finger raking upwards through her hair at the back of her head. Nuzzling behind her ear. Smoothing hair down again now. Wonder how big was the temptation to bleach it blonder than this. Wisely resisted, I think. New perfume, today, and I recognise it ‘Y’ by St Laurent. How’s that for a bloodhound then? Expensive testes for a nurse. Once knew a girl who wore ‘Y’ like a certificate of sexworthiness. Only the cologne. Swore that the perfume gave her a headache. And she me. Clare pulling apart. Fiddling with pots and pans, while I nip outside to the front to drop the joss sticks of some contention into the bin. Clare’s sweater sleeves rolled up. Towel tied round her tummy as an apron. Strands of hair are falling into her eyes, and nimble hands pushing them back. Mouth occasionally biting loose hair that’s worked its way across her face. Now pulling it away from her face and up at the back into a pony tail, tied together by the rubber band used at the supermarket to bind the six-egg crate together. And now I see them: those ears, little shiny baby ears, sewn close to the sides of her head. And now, a neck in profile. See how long it is, arched forward like a swan’s. Nefertiti lives. And here I’ll sit, while my lady cooks for me. Peeling potatoes, putting the duck into the roasting tin, making orange sauce, looking for plates.

  ‘For a single man who claims that he always eats out you appear to have every single pot and pan that a housewife could wish for.’

  ‘Yes.’