Spitting Feathers

‘A cardboard box?’ Jemima quipped.

‘Hampstead,’ I said with a lazy sigh as I heeled my shoes off my aching feet.

They glanced at each other, then glared at me.

‘Hampstead!’ they repeated as one.

‘’Fraid so,’ said I with a sigh. ‘But someone’s got to live there, I suppose.’

They naturally assumed that this was an example of northern humour.

‘Where are you really going?’ Fiona wanted to know, trying to smile now.

‘Hampstead,’ I repeated patiently, crossing my budget-trouser-covered legs. ‘That place with the Heath—surely you know it?’

They did another quick exchange of glances, and then seemed to lose the use of their tongues for a while. Except as an aid to swallow large gulps of wine. I watched as they fumbled for something to say, and was glad I was me and neither of them. They might have nice clothes and well-paid jobs, but they were essentially soulless. And my hair might need a trim, but at least I didn’t have to touch up the roots every three weeks. At least my almost-though-not-quite blonde hair was natural.

‘I expect there are bad parts even in Hampstead,’ Jemima eventually said, but she didn’t sound quite so cocksure now.

‘I expect there are,’ I agreed as I stretched my arms over my head. ‘But where I’m going isn’t one of them.’

It was getting on for six o’clock now. I was later back than I should have been, due to the fact that I’d spent a couple of hours mooching around what was to be my new stomping ground. Before that Mrs Audesley had shown me over the house and assured me that I was welcome to use as much or as little of it as I liked. I think she was a bit hurt at first, to discover that her one-woman African Grey had taken a shine to another. She kept glancing at me curiously, as if trying to work out what it was about me that had captured Sir Galahad’s heart. She told me he’d only taken to one other person in his thirty-nine years. This was her gardener, whom she’d said she would contact later in order to fix up a time for us to discuss our shared parrot-sitting duties.

And then she said something about her great-nephew, the one who worked at the bank with Sophie. And I’m not sure why but it was still bothering me even now.

‘So when exactly are you going?’ Jemima asked, interrupting my thoughts.

‘Saturday morning. You could give me a lift over in your car, if you like.’

Normally there would have been a stock reply to such a wild suggestion that included words like ‘dreams’ and ‘in your’, but I could see she was battling between her natural inclination to be rude and unhelpful and desperate curiosity about my apparent turn of fortune. She skilfully managed to overcome the dilemma with her eventual reply.

‘Well, if it will get you and your junk out from under our feet any quicker I don’t see why not.’

Fiona, who didn’t have a car and was a little less sharp than her partner in malice, looked and sounded appalled. ‘You’re not really going to help move her awful stuff in your car?’ she demanded of Jemima.

‘That way she gets to see my new gaff,’ I answered for her. ‘But it’s okay, Fiona, you don’t have to come.’

She got it at last, and twittered a bit before insisting on helping with the move, at which point Sophie got back and, shocked at this display of co-operation, asked what was going on.

I hadn’t got round to ringing her yet, to telling her the outcome of my interview with Mrs Audesley, and she was clearly delighted when I told her my news. But I didn’t want to go into details with the two Cs around, so I suggested we went and had something to eat at Felix’s Place. ‘My treat,’ I insisted, ‘as a thank-you for tipping me off.’

The café is handily placed on the corner of the street. It’s a genuine old-fashioned greasy spoon, which Sophie and I loved a lot because there wasn’t a bagel or French stick in sight. Just proper bread baps, the size of a side plate, that we had filled with chips and washed down with huge mugs of tea. It’s a sort of endangered species really, Felix’s Place. Somewhere you can fill yourself up for around a quid and where no single item contains less than one thousand calories. It is heaven on earth.

Felix, who runs the place with his wife and whichever one of his seven children happens to be available at any given time, has been there for twenty-two years, ever since he arrived from County Donegal with his lovely wife Angie. They live in the flat over the café and it is not unusual to hear Angie bawling at the kids, which just kind of adds to the homely atmosphere of the place. It was John on duty with his father tonight, a fourteenish-year-old Arsenal fan who flaunted his allegiance with his red and white shirt.

‘You look as if you’ve lost a euro and found a fiver,’ Felix said to me as I rolled up to the counter. Sophie had grabbed the last available table, which happened to be our favourite, and waved to Felix as she slumped triumphantly into a seat. He is one of those men who will insist on living a lie as far as his hair is concerned. The central area of his head is completely bald, but he grows the remainder just long enough to draw it up over the bare patch and then he secures it with a dab of something that could well be chip fat, but I very much hope isn’t—for Angie’s sake. With their pale skin and curly rust-coloured locks, most of the children are clones of their father, and with John at his side it was easy to imagine how Felix must have looked before most of his own hair sadly forsook him.

‘I’ve found somewhere to live,’ I told him, then ordered two of our usual specials.

‘Around here?’ he wanted to know, and I said that it unfortunately wasn’t. He seemed a bit sorry for me when I filled him in, especially when I mentioned the parrot.

‘An ould aunt of mine had one of them fellers, and her life was never her own after he cem through the door. Ruled her with a rod of iron, he did, and he had the foullest mouth that side of the Shannon.’ He’d belonged to a sailor, according to Felix, and as he piled chips into heavily buttered baps, and poured steaming tea into horizontally striped blue mugs, he gave me some milder examples of the parrot’s revolting way with words. ‘T’would make a maiden blush, some of things that he said,’ Felix concluded, ‘so it was lucky, I suppose, that my aunt was as deaf as the hinge on a gatepost.’

Felix had a fine turn of phrase that was all part of the colour and charm of the place, and even though I’d only known him a couple of weeks I felt a bit sad that I would no longer be seeing him on a daily basis. I popped in every morning for a cup of tea, and although I could rarely face cooked food at the start of the day Felix had let me take the odd snap of his mega fry-ups by way of keeping my hand in.

‘But you’ll come back now and then,’ he said as he took my money, and it sounded more of a prediction than a question.

‘For someone with your particular ambitions, you’re not exactly a gastronome,’ Sophie said when I’d squeezed past tables and put the tray down on ours. It was positioned right next to the window, which was, as usual, misted over with condensation.

Her statement was a perfectly true one but I didn’t see why it mattered. ‘Food’s food,’ I told her blithely, ‘and I’m as happy to take pictures of the humble fish finger as I am of squid à la Up Yer Posh Bum.’

‘So,’ she said as she lifted the lid of her bap and squeezed brown sauce over the pile of golden glistening chips, ‘how did you manage it? I’ve heard that the parrot is a hard bird to please.’

‘Which I note that you failed to mention,’ I said sternly when I’d slipped into the seat opposite her.

She smiled at me slyly. ‘I thought if you knew in advance you’d have chickened out.’

‘I would have done if I’d known how vicious he can be if he takes a dislike to someone. Mrs Audesley said that three of the previous applicants are threatening to sue.’

‘So what is your secret?’ Sophie asked me curiously. ‘I didn’t know you had a way with parrots.’

‘African Greys,’ I corrected her as I, being a tomato sauce person myself, coated my chips accordingly. ‘Which his proud owner assures me are a cut above your average parrot.’ To be honest I was just as bewildered as Mrs Audesley had been as to why Sir Galahad had liked me so much. But there was no denying that he did from the way he’d clung to my shoulder and nuzzled into my neck as he made shockingly perfect imitations of all manner of sounds, from an old-fashioned telephone ringing to a toilet cistern being flushed. He also had a lot to say for himself, in Mrs Audesley’s own imperious tones. ‘Do take a seat,’ was one of his favourites, as was, ‘One lump or two?’

‘Maybe I was an African Grey in a previous life,’ I suggested wildly, at a loss for any more reasonable explanation. Then I remembered something—the something that had been bothering me. ‘Mrs Audesley said that he was being very polite today, but that he had a much wider vocabulary which, and I quote, “includes some very extreme vulgarities”, that she blames entirely on her great-nephew.’

‘Who? Jerome?’

I nodded as I pressed down on the butty to make it easier to put in my mouth.

‘She doesn’t seem to like him much,’ I said as I looked over at Sophie now. ‘In fact she was at pains to make sure I understood that he wasn’t to be admitted into the house while she was away.’

‘I can’t think why,’ Sophie replied indignantly. ‘He seems very pleasant to me.’ Which I happened to know was Sophie-speak for, I fancy the pants off him.

‘And she’s not alone in her opinion. As soon as his name came up Sir Galahad announced that he was a “ghastly young man”,’ I said, impersonating the bird’s impersonation of Mrs Audesley’s disapproving tones.

Sophie was munching now, and managing to look defiant at the same time. ‘You don’t expect me to accept that a parrot actually knows what he’s talking about?’ she eventually said. ‘He’s obviously been brainwashed.’

I shrugged as I swallowed. ‘You’re probably right,’ I said, even though she was plainly missing the point. But it didn’t seem wise to labour the point that Mrs Audesley might have had good reason for brainwashing her bird. ‘And if he’s so “ghastly,” why is he trying to be so helpful? Good point,’ I said, deciding to let the matter drop. ‘And you must really pass on my thanks to him.’

Sophie began to thaw a little now and promised she would. We ate in lip-smacking silence for a while then, until we got to the empty-plate, finger-licking stage.

‘I’m so glad you decided to change your life,’ Sophie said thoughtfully then. ‘For a while there I thought you would fade into suburban oblivion.’

‘Me too,’ I said, and for a while there this had indeed been a very distinct possibility.

For years I’d been trying so hard to rebel against the mantra-chanting, Zen-aspiring upbringing provided by my well-meaning but flaky mother that I’d gone too far the other way. This had not only involved seven years’ hard labour in the bank, but also a series of decent, hard-working boyfriends and, finally, the joint purchase of a semi-detached starter home in a respectable neighbourhood with an insurance salesman named Malcolm—Mal, to his friends and former fiancée. It lasted almost a year, until I suddenly came to my senses and told Mal it was over. He was bewildered and angry, of course, but I was determined, and with my share of the money we made from the sale of the semi—there had been a small property boom during our time together—I paid for the photography course and kept a bit back for emergencies.

I know that Sophie still worked in a bank, but it was different for her. Quite apart from her ample chest, she had Snow White looks, with milky skin and raven-black hair, and a game plan in which starter homes had never figured.

‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Don’t look now, but I think someone’s heading our way.’

He arrived before I had a chance to ignore her warning, shoving past me to get near to Sophie.

‘Room for a little one?’ her landlord said, briefly showing a set of teeth that would make an orthodontist twitchy. He had on trainers and a grubby grey jogging suit that I’d bet had seen little of the action intended.

‘We’re just finishing up,’ Sophie said, which was thankfully true. She was wearing her smart charcoal work suit, and I was still in my African Grey-beguiling garb, and I suddenly felt that we were a bit overdressed.

He squeezed himself into the space at our table with his rear end spread well over the sides of the chair. He didn’t have any food with him, and when I glanced up at Felix he gave me a wink of encouragement. ‘John will be bringing Mr Parker’s order when it’s ready,’ he called out.

‘Mr Parker?’ I queried with a frown, before I had time to engage caution and prudence. I knew that his first name was Peter, so was this the explanation for the spider’s web tattoo on his face? Did he think he was Spider-Man? I was about to laugh, but I felt a sharp kick on my leg from under the table, and when I glanced at Sophie I realised that pursuing this particular line of enquiry might be a mistake.

He dragged his attention away from Sophie’s Double-D chest and looked at me questioningly.

‘Oh,’ I fumbled, ‘it’s just that my mum’s name is Parker, but I don’t expect there’s a connection.’ It was completely untrue, and a very poor effort as cover-up stories go, but he seemed to swallow it whole. He had very thick, very black hair that I’d never been this close to before. Now that I was it seemed strangely unnatural, and I was finding it difficult to take my eyes off it as he turned his attention back on Sophie. If I distorted my focus by narrowing my eyes it looked exactly as if a fluffy black cat had curled up and gone to sleep on his head.

‘There’s Karaoke at the Peeler Saturday,’ he said to her now. ‘Coming?’

The Peeler was a local dive that you’d only dream of going into if you were especially drunk and happened you have in your company several prize-fighting escorts, and I was curious to see how Sophie would handle turning down such an attractive and beautifully extended invitation.

‘I’d love to,’ she answered sweetly, ‘but I’ll be helping Tao move into her new place, I’m afraid.’

He glanced at me dangerously, as if I was personally responsible for all the troubles of the world. I was tempted to say that I could manage without her help, but I could feel the daggers being aimed at me across the table.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m depending on her.’

There was an almost audible sigh of relief from Sophie, who stood up now and gave me the nod. ‘Another time, maybe,’ I heard her say, and after wishing Felix a fond farewell we left the place, trying not to giggle till we were well out of sight of the café.

‘Is that a wig he was wearing?’ I eventually asked, and it set her off all over again.

‘Of course it’s a bloody wig,’ she finally managed, ‘but the secret is to pretend not to notice. The way you were looking at it I was afraid you were about to give it a tug.’

We took a little diversion on the way back and bought a bottle of Château Cheapo from the local offy. And, because neither of us was in the mood for the Cs, we drank it in Sophie’s bedroom—her sprawled on the bed, me in the lotus position. (Some things die hard, I’m afraid.)

We talked for a while about my prospects, and I got the feeling that Sophie didn’t think all that much of them—at least not on the strength of my work.

‘But then you’ve always been a good bluffer,’ she said, trying to make amends now. ‘And in this town that’s far more important than actual talent.’

I thanked her a bunch, but didn’t take this vote of no-confidence to heart. I was hopeful and optimistic after today and I had a good feeling about the future.

And then, just as we were finishing off the wine, just as we were at that rosy, happy stage where nothing in life seems impossible, she went and spoilt everything by telling me that she might just have met the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. The only crumb of comfort I was able to take from this alarming statement was the fact that she almost certainly wasn’t referring to someone who wore a dubious wig and had delusions of being an arachnified super-hero.

3

There is always a price to pay for a chip butty, and I paid it next day by missing out on lunch as well as breakfast. Having been brought up on an apparently healthy but deadly boring macrobiotic diet, I am nowadays an enthusiastic eater of junk food, but I know that I have to be careful. Despite the faddiness of my mother’s former regime, she now weighs fifteen stone and, much as it suits her, I don’t want to end up the same way—not for a good few years yet anyway. But, rather than eat a sensible, balanced diet, I eat what I want with big gaps in between.

I took a call from Mrs Audesley first thing that morning, with instructions for me to go to the house at three o’clock ‘sharp’ in order to meet her gardener. Since that meant I had about six hours to kill, I decided to take the tube to Covent Garden, so that I could have several rolls of film developed at the photographic lab recommended by the agency. I knew how to process the stuff myself, of course—just about—but it was such a faff, and I didn’t think the Cs would appreciate me turning their bathroom into a makeshift chemical-filled darkroom.

The Linford Laboratory was in a fairly run-down-looking building in a side road off King Street, and for a moment I thought I must have the wrong address. I was used to labs on industrial estates, and although there aren’t too many of those in central London, I was still very surprised. I wasn’t really sure what I’d expected to find, but since many top professionals apparently used the place, I suppose I thought it would appear a little more on the up-market side. There was just a small, unimposing shop front, and inside a dizzy-looking chilli-pepper redhead behind an old-fashioned oak-topped counter. She greeted me with a hugely welcoming smile, however, and before I’d even opened my mouth asked me what kind of work I did.

‘Food,’ I said, and the smile immediately turned to an expression of disappointment. She was wearing a deep V-necked red sweater that revealed rather desperate-looking breasts that were squashed together by a ferocious up-lift bra. She was heavily made up, and it occurred to me that she was working there in the hope of being ‘discovered’.

‘Are you a model?’ I asked, in an effort to cheer her up.

‘If only,’ she said unhappily.

‘Have you tried the agents?’ I asked as I dug five rolls of film out of my bag.

‘A couple,’ she replied gloomily, ‘but they seem to think that my look is too strong.’

And they could have a point, I thought as I passed the film over the counter. But it was very possible that if she removed some of the slap, and maybe stopped using the chilli-pepper dye, she could look pretty good. She was the right height and weight, and her features looked fairly photogenic.

‘You should try toning things down and then go somewhere else.’

She gave me a What-the-hell-would-a-food-photographer-know? sort of look, and without any response to what was meant to be a helpful suggestion she asked me my name and address so she could write it down on a slip.

I supplied the information and asked how quickly I could have the prints back.

‘It’s usually a day, but you can pay extra, if you like, and we can have them ready in three hours.’

It was a curt response, and I wondered if it was time for some toning down myself. My plain speaking clearly wasn’t going down too well in this town. ‘I’ll pay the extra,’ I said, ‘and I’m sorry for being so blunt. It’s just that you really are very pretty, but it’s kind of hidden behind all the make-up.’

She softened visibly now, and I made a mental note to engage sensitivity before offering any further advice to strangers.

‘Standard E6 okay?’ she said, and I nodded that it was.

‘Do you do the processing here?’ I said curiously as she deposited my films in a large envelope.

She shook her head. ‘This is just the drop-off and collection point. A despatch rider picks up every hour and takes them on to the lab.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘He’s due any minute, so with a bit of luck these might be back in two hours, not three.’

I thanked her, and looked forward to picking up the prints. As well as Felix’s wonderful fry-ups, I’d taken quite a few shots of the Brick Lane Sunday market with my brand-new Hasselblad, and I was hoping they’d turned out well. They certainly should have if the price of the camera had anything to do with the quality of the finished product.

All through the photographic course I’d managed well enough with an old Pentax my father had given to me, but since it was pretty old I’d recently sacrificed an arm and a leg for a brand-new Hasselblad 201F. And that, plus a digital camera, a computer, and all the rest of the paraphernalia required by a present-day pro photographer, had just about cleared me out of what was left of the sale of the semi. But I kept telling myself that it was an investment, that it was necessary to speculate to accumulate, and, having now done a great deal of the former, it seemed high time I started to get some rewards. Which was why I headed straight for the Front Page Agency after dropping off my film.

Naff name, I know, but they seemed a pretty pukka sort of set-up—smart offices, cool-looking people working in them. A bit too cool, though, if you ask me. The receptionist, for example, wasn’t the most approachable person in the world. I’d tried being friendly with her when I first landed in London, in the hope that she’d keep me in mind if anything good came in, but it had been like trying to befriend a refrigerator. Poker-thin—and faced—I think she was afraid to smile for fear of disturbing her magnificently applied make-up. Either that or she’d had radical Botox treatment that had left her incapable of using her facial muscles.

‘Hi, Amber,’ I said. ‘Remember me?’

She cast me a vaguely hostile look and pursed her full, beautifully lipsticked lips disapprovingly. She was sitting behind a glass-topped desk which had on it just a phone, a slim-line computer screen and a cerise leather appointment book. She herself was dressed in matching cerise that, because she’d been wearing it before, I assumed was a uniform.

‘We haven’t got anything for you, if that’s why you’re here,’ Amber replied in an accent that was supposed to be posh but didn’t quite cut the mustard. There was a hint of twang there in her vowels that I think I recognised as Midland in origin.

‘Well, I think I’d like to see someone who’s a little more senior in the organisation, if you don’t mind.’ It wasn’t a comment designed to win favour, exactly, but I was getting fed up with nasty, bitchy women, and I was wondering what had happened to all that sisterhood stuff my mother still gamely talked about. I certainly hadn’t seen much evidence of it in the past fortnight.

She seemed taken aback by my remark, but soon recovered her icy equilibrium. ‘You’ll have to make an appointment,’ she said, opening the diary in front of her, ‘but I don’t have anything available for at least a month.’

‘A month!’

She seemed pleased by my dismay, and delighted with her own power. She might just be a receptionist, but she was God as far as appointments were concerned. I was debating whether to take the appointment or tell her what she could do with it, when a door to the left of the desk opened and two men appeared in the foyer.

They were clearly at the end of a meeting, and as they shook hands I recognised one of the men as Taylor Wiseman, the famous American chef. He had his own hit TV show and a legion of adoring female fans, and while I wouldn’t have counted myself amongst their number, I had to admit that he did look pretty good in the flesh. He was tall and dark and lean, and although I was used to seeing him in the sexy kitchen whites he wore so well to present his shows, the smart suit he’d donned for the meeting gave him a nice touch of the urbane that certainly did not go amiss.