Sinking back on the sofa, she gave a quiet laugh of settled condescension, as if enjoying a private joke, as if saying, Really, the notions some people get about themselves, and rounding it all off with a decidedly asocial grimace. Yes, the brutish off-centredness had had time to reappear (and we regret to say that he was additionally stirred to see it). ‘Look at that mosquito bite on my thigh. It itched, so I scratched it. Go on, back to the grindstone with you. Don’t shut the doors the whole way, Mart. That’d be unfriendly. But I promise, you won’t know I’m here…’
—————
Oh, he knew she was there – even in the silence barely a heartbeat passed when he didn’t know she was there. Then came sounds. The kitchen tap. The fizz of the TV (quickly extinguished). The fumble with the telephone, then her voice. Then her voice, closer, saying, ‘Forty-five minutes…Can I have a bath before I go?’
‘I thought you’d had a bath.’
‘I did, but it was only a whore’s bath. On Merry’s bidet.’ The study door opened. ‘I’m rather achey from the flight.’ Her arms were wing-shaped and her hands were occupied behind her back. ‘What I need is a good soak.’ A shoulder was bared, and a section of intricate clavicle. ‘A good soak. Don’t you agree?’
‘…Well go on then.’
‘Thanks.’ As she moved off he heard a sigh and a soft whoosh as she vacated her dress. ‘…Mart,’ she called, ‘the plug. Does the thingy go up or down?’
He waited a moment; he gripped the desk and levered himself to his feet.
‘…You needn’t look so shocked,’ she said with an affronted frown, ‘just because I’m wearing a bra. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already that planes make my breasts swell up. Well they do. They keep their shape but they go all heavy and feel as though they’re about to burst. See for yourself. See?’ She stepped back and looked down. ‘…Ah, and there we have it. Tycoon Tanya. She has curves in places where other girls don’t even have places. Shall I get it out?…Here. Give me your hand.’
He opened his eyes and sat up straight. And there before him was a male strongman in a fishnet singlet who was wiping his armpits with a pink J-cloth.
‘How do,’ he said. ‘All right?’
‘Not so bad. And yourself, Jonjon?’
He yawned, and a transient rainbow of saliva wafted from his mouth. ‘Miss Phelps is ready for you now. She’s good for half an hour, I’d calculate. Through there.’
…The etiquette of reunions – how did it go? No words, just a fond flat smile that said, I’ve changed, and you’ve changed, that is our world and our condition, that is the nature of time, but don’t concern yourself, my dear, in your case it’s nothing, it’s absolutely nothing at all…
He entered the alcove and walked the length of the passage to a waiting door, past a low window (treetops and rooftops and the unbounded city), past a wheelchair with a green shawl athwart the back of it. He knocked.
‘Ah, come and sit here, Martin, if you would. The visitor’s chair. Sit here and get your bearings…Did you happen to read about that unbelievable berk in – Hounslow? Peckham? One of those. He managed to wedge himself in his own bedsit. He outgrew it while he was still inside it. They had to demolish two walls and half a roof before they could winch him out. Dozens of people were involved, doctors, firemen, sappers, navvies. The whole operation came to six figures. He was seventeen and he weighed fifty-eight stone…’
Lying at a shallow angle with just her head propped up (framed by a thick headboard of deep-green velvet, and further braced by a pair of bunched duvets, and garnished with wispy shawls and neckerchiefs), she looked like a prodigious equatorial bloom, perhaps centuries old…She went on, in her bodiless falsetto,
‘I suppose I could claim I’ve got Cushing’s Syndrome or hypercortisolism or something like that. But my thing’s much simpler. Weight gain, Martin, occurs when energy consumed – in the form of food – exceeds energy expended. And the only time I expend any energy at all is when I eat. A slowing metabolism doesn’t help. And depression, depression doesn’t help.
‘You know, I don’t fear death any more…The other highlight of my exercise regime is going to the bathroom. That’s where the irresistible Jonjon comes in. Jonjon’s an orderly at the bariatric unit in St Swithin’s, where they have to weigh people in a kind of lift. As you know, I’ve always had a soft spot for the loo, and it’s even more fun with Jonjon there. And after a session with him, and another one to look forward to the next day, who gives a, who gives a shit about death…
‘So how about it, Mart? Shall I slip into a pair of cool pants? Or a pair of scanties I picked up cheap in the sales? Then I’ll book a table somewhere for what, nine-thirty? And then we’ll have all the time in the world.’
—————
Holy father
‘These helpers of yours, Phoebe. Jonjon, and Meg, who told me about the night nurse – Beth, is it? And you can afford them?…Mm, Maud told me you were flush. What was it you sold off exactly? Did you have a kind of fief at TFS?…You know, Transworld Financial Services. The skyscraper in Berkeley Square.’
‘Oh that. I only set foot in TFS when I was meeting you in the lobby. Or Siobhan or Mum. I didn’t bother when it was just Daddy, because he…’ She yawned without opening her mouth. ‘Bit of a chore, all this, but it has to be done.
‘Right. What I sold off was Ess Es. I sold off Essential Escorts, plus the Mayfair maisonette I ran it from, plus all the files. It was a huge business by the time I left, thousands of girls and not just young
