Playing with the Grown-ups Read online

  'What if someone sees us?'

  'Who do you see, darling?' She laughed. 'Don't be frightened, there's nobody here.' She was right. There were two jets next to each other. 'Move up,' she said. 'I have to get the angle right. One, two, three, go.'

  Kitty kept her eyes wide open in case someone was watching. The feeling she had was deeply impersonal; she felt removed from it, and how quickly it happened.

  'I can't believe you beat me,' Candy said, splashing her as the cherubs looked on. 'Oh that was lovely. Let's go out tonight, but don't tell your mum.'

  'She's away anyway,' Kitty said. She saw her chest was flushed.

  'I wondered why she hadn't rung me. Normally she rings me for a chat?' Candy said like a question.

  'Can you lend me a dress? I don't feel like going home. Where do you want to go?' Kitty didn't want to talk about her mother; she wanted to revel in having Candy to herself. In those brief moments it was like normal life was suspended, and by talking about them, real things would break the spell.

  'I'm Rusty Lude.' He held out an elegant hand. He had long fine fingers like a painter. He was very old, but he wore it well. He looked distinguished.

  Kitty felt excited. Maybe she was being discovered. Maybe he was a talent-spotter. She tried to make her eyes look tragic.

  'My name's Scarlet,' she said.

  He had kind eyes. Kitty looked over at Candy who was kissing a boring Swedish student from the LSE with straight teeth. The nightclub passed them by like a cami-val. She sighed.

  'People aren't going to understand you till you're older. I bet boys your own age don't get you. I bet that it's primarily older men who chat you up. Am I right?' He gazed at her intently.

  'How do you know that?' Kitty said. She felt quite giddy and drunk. 'Are you psychic?'

  'Yes, I am. You should be drinking champagne. Shall we order a bottle?'

  'Can it be pink?' she said.

  'You're adorable. Yes, it can.'

  The waiters were cleaning up around them. Rusty Lude lit her cigarette.

  'I don't know whether your girlfriend's going to be going anywhere with you.'

  Candy was in a banquette with the Swede, who had his hands in her knickers. She arched her back and bit his neck. The waiters muttered excitedly. Kitty felt ashamed for her.

  'Do you think we should go home?' she asked Candy. 'Everyone's left.'

  'No. I'm having a really, really, really good time. I'm going back to mine. You can come home with me if you like, in a bit.' Candy's lipstick had slid around her face.

  'I'll take her home,' the Swede leered.

  'Who is that man, darling?' Candy squinted at Rusty Lude. 'He's ancient.'

  'He's really nice,' Kitty said severely. 'And he's giving me a lift.'

  The lights of Albert Bridge shone on the water so it glinted and danced like there were mermaids in it.

  'What a beautiful view to have. If I were you I'd never stop looking out of the window,' Kitty said.

  'Yeah, it's great. Shall we smoke a joint?'

  'I don't know. I get paranoid and hungry. I don't know if I really like the way it makes me feel.'

  'It's good stuff. You won't get paranoid. We'll relax.'

  'You could go out with my mother.'

  They sat on the floor listening to Cat Stevens. Rusty Lude made a face.

  'I don't know about mothers,' he said.

  'You should. She likes Cat Stevens too. She's really pretty, and young.' Much younger than you, Kitty thought.

  Rusty's Siamese cat wove around her legs. He had his eyes shut.

  'My daughter doesn't speak to me,' he said. 'I really miss her.' He passed her the bottle of champagne. Kitty took a greedy gulp and it went up her nose.

  'Why?'

  Tears ran down his long cheeks.

  'Says I was a bad father. I bet you speak to your dad.'

  'I don't, actually. He's dead. I didn't know him,' Kitty said.

  'That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.' He reached for her hand.

  His hands were soft, like a woman's. He traced an invisible line up her arm, and she squirmed. A memory as wispy as old leaves tried to struggle through her foggy head.

  'I want to know you,' he said.

  'I have to go to the loo,' Kitty said.

  His bathroom belonged to a seventies film. Brown carpet, smoked brown mirrors, and misty photographs of a little girl with serious dark eyes. He had a lot of hairspray and Badedas. Kitty imagined him getting ready for a night out and she felt a bit sick, then guilty, because it wasn't his fault he was old and lonely.

  The sitting room was darker, and Barry White lowed from the stereo. She looked down at the floor, where a pair of leather trousers lay like dead slugs in the rain.

  Rusty Lude, pale and blue as skimmed milk, was naked, clutching his flaccid penis in his long fingers.

  'Oh my God,' Kitty said. 'What are you doing?'

  'Waiting for you, baby. Can't you feel the sex magic? Scarlet, baby, please?' He sounded like he was begging.

  'That's not even my name,' she said.

  'Rusty Lude, Rusty Lude, penis in hand, pallid and nude. Rusty Lude, Rusty Lude, jailbait in his house and he wants to get rude.' Tommy gave a lascivious wiggle at the end of the rhyme, which he sang all the way to Clapham on the night bus.

  'You're lucky I was around,' Tommy said. 'I could have been with a girl and I might not have answered the phone. Then where would you be? Stuck with no money outside a naked elderly man's house wearing hooker shoes, that's where.'

  'Shut up, OK? It was a traumatic experience. Don't mock me.' Kitty glared at him.

  'You're such a fool. Some octogenarian with a ponytail picks you up in a nightclub, tells you that you have STAR stamped all over you, and you go HOME with him? What's wrong with you?'

  'I thought he was interested in my mind,' she said tightly.

  'Your mind! Ha! That's brilliant. Brilliant.'

  Honor and she were walking down Kensington High Street, their heels clacking companionably like horse shoes. Kitty was trying to merge her two groups of friends.

  'You'll love Tommy, now you're meeting him properly,' she said. 'And Ollie and Naim. They all go to college together, they're so funny. You and Tommy are my best friends.'

  They linked arms and she pulled up the collar of the Afghan coat she had bought that morning at Camden Market. She felt like Julie Christie in it.

  Honor's mum laughed at them as they got ready.

  'Why don't you wear blusher? You look like you have moon faces, with all that pale foundation. Kitty, does your mother mind if you go out in a dress that short? I don't think it's safe. It sends a message. I don't know how I feel letting you leave the house in a dress like that . . .'

  'She says it's fine as long as my coat covers the dress.' Kitty smiled.

  'Oh Mum, you couldn't possibly understand,' Honor said. 'We look wildly glamorous.'

  Naim and Ollie eyed Honor up.

  'All right?' they said.

  'Yes.' She looked around the room.

  'What do you want to drink?'

  'Sea breezes,' they said in unison.

  The first taste was syrupy sweet, and then you got used to it. Her mother said Kitty had a predilection for Essex-girl drinks. Her mother was a considered drinker of serious drinks, gimlets and Martinis. Kitty liked things with childish frivolous names - fuzzy navels, sex on the beach - or peach schnapps with fizzy lemonade, which made her eyes bum.

  She stood and tried to look bored, her lips thrust forward. Honor and she spent many hours practising their pouts; Honor thought a pout was crucial to looking both truculent and alluring.

  'Why are you making that stupid face?' Tommy asked.

  'Other people may not find it stupid,' Kitty said mysteriously, pointing her finger to a group of suited bankers who were looking her over with some vague muttering interest.

  'They're not looking at your face; they're looking at your tits, which are hanging out for all to see.' He pointed to th
e top of her scarlet dress, festooned with roses.

  'Can you just stop it for one minute?' Kitty hissed. 'You may not find me sexy but other people miraculously do sometimes. You make me feel really bad, like I'm dirty or sluttish and you disapprove of me.'

  'Sorry,' Tommy said.

  'You should be. Honestly.'

  'I think we should have a fashion show, or a play,' her mother said lazily. She was in bed wearing a silk peignoir, and her hair curled damply around her face. 'If you're all going to come rattling in here in the middle of the night, the least you can do is entertain me. I could report you to Major Nora. Then you'd be in trouble.'

  The others laughed, but she said it in a mean way. Her pupils were very small.

  'I bet you've got some grass, Tommy. Why don't you make a big joint?'

  'Mummy!' Kitty said.

  'Oh come on. Don't pretend you've never done it. I thought you all longed to be grown-ups. Well I'm inviting you to a party in my bedroom, and we're going to have fun at the party. Come on, Honor, don't look so disapproving.'

  Tommy's eyes were on Kitty, as if he were asking her permission. She nodded. From his pocket he took the bag and a packet of Rizlas.

  'Bingo,' her mother said.

  Kitty had only smoked pot three times before. It made her mouth buzz, and her head feel like it belonged to another body.

  'Your mum is so cool,' Ollie said.

  'I am cool.' Her mother laughed. 'Now I think we should all dress up, and do a play. Honor, you can be the director. I will be the make-up artist, and the audience.'

  Tommy had velvet red lips, Naim striking bronzed cheekbones, and Ollie black-ringed eyes; he looked like Balthazar. Standing at the end of her mother's bed, the boys were no longer scuffed teenagers, they were beautiful. They began to walk differently, like peacocks.

  'Can you all remember Hamlet? Kitty, you are Ophelia; Ollie, you are Horatio; Naim is Hamlet and Honor, you're no longer the director, you're the grave digger. I'm the director now. Tommy, you can be the joint maker.'

  'Fine,' Honor said. She rolled her eyes at Kitty.

  Kitty was wearing her mother's long linen nightdress, and her hair was down.

  'Action!' her mother said. 'All right, Kitty, the carpet is the river, and you're going to kill yourself. You're in despair . . .'

  She turned the lights off, and the room was lit with scented candles. Kitty came out from behind the bathroom door with a tormented expression on her face, and walked slowly over to the edge of the carpet. She looked around at their faces, strangers in the light, and she felt the joint coursing through her, filling her with laughter. She began rocking with it. The boys and Honor all laughed too.

  'For goodness sake,' her mother said. 'That's not very suicidal. I'm going to have to relinquish my role as director and show you myself.' She ran into the bathroom.

  Kitty went to sit on the floor with the others.

  'Your mum is so funny,' Naim wept. 'She's completely mad.'

  Her mother had powdered her face until it was like a kabuki doll's, and her eyes burned out through the white. She wore her wedding dress, but it was too big, and the layers of tulle seemed like they would swallow her. Her eyes were half shut, and she sang a song, in a clear voice. She knelt at the river, looking at her reflection, and she trailed her fingers through the water. Tears ran down her powdered face, and it looked as though she was melting. Then slowly and deliberately she lowered herself in. She lay still on the carpet river and her breath fluttered from a rasp to a stop.

  The others had stopped laughing, and the room seemed to move with the heaviness of wax and water.

  'Is she OK?' Naim said in a whisper.

  Tommy looked frightened.

  Marina pulled herself out of the river, quite suddenly, jumping up, and gave a long sweeping bow. They applauded in relief.

  'Your mum is a brilliant actress,' Ollie said.

  In day's slatternly light, her mother's bedroom looked like a group of wild hijras from Bombay had been dancing there, dropping scarves and belts, cigarette butts, hats and rouge, scraps of paper scratched with poems and notes, as they surrendered to night.

  Now they were gone, and lying in the storm's eye was her mother sleeping, still wearing her wedding dress.

  'I'm going to an artist's colony in Italy. They've invited me and I thought it would do me good to go. I can't sit around and be maudlin. I have to work, and get inspired. Don't you think it would be good for all of us? I do . . .' Her mother was listening to Willie Nelson singing 'Always On My Mind'. Her lip quivered.

  'What do you mean, us?' Kitty said.

  'Us. As a family. I think it would be good for us as a family if I go and figure some things out while I'm working. I'll come back and it will all be right again.'

  'Why do you have to go away to make things right?' Kitty said.

  'I just do. That's what I have to do. I wish you could come with me, Magpie, but you've got the dreaded school.

  I'd also rather you didn't see Candy while I'm away - I don't know how good she is for all of us. Please don't make me feel guilty, I beg of you.'

  'I wasn't,' Kitty said. 'I was just asking you a question.

  Why can't I see Candy? She's my friend.'

  'I can't answer questions right now, about anything. Do you want to go shopping? Oh look outside the window, there are doves . . . a couple. Do you see them? They're cooing at one another, they're in love.'

  'Those aren't doves,' Kitty said. 'Those are pigeons. And they're screwing on your windowsill - it's revolting.'

  Life became monotone, black-and-white. Honor and Kitty went to Fanelli's on the Fulham Road, which is where they met Romeo the Russian. He had an incongruous mop of shaggy curls, and a underbite that gave him the look of a very old Jack Russell. He was surrounded by a group of thin, very blonde girls. Their eyes were glazed as if they had had too much cake at a tea party. Romeo was having fun, though. He danced vigorously on the table, shaking his corpulent hips. The girls laughed politely.

  Honor and she laughed impolitely. He sent them over a bottle of Cristal which they drank, leaving their twenty pounds of Saturday pocket money crisply virgin.

  'Well, now we won't be on the night bus,' Honor said.

  'Hurray for us and our teenage appeal,' Kitty said.

  Romeo the Russian came over.

  'I'm Romeo, like Romeo and Juliet. I'm a lover, not a fighter. Any time you want to go out, call me. I'll take you anywhere you want to go and send you home with my driver. Tramp, Hanover Grand, Iceni . . .' He listed nightclubs like he was reciting verbs.

  'Thank you so much for the champagne. It was very generous,' Kitty said.

  'Nice manners.' His eyes were moist. 'I love English girls. I love all girls but especially English ones.' Then he asked with great hope, 'Do you go to public school?'

  For once they didn't have to lie about their ages; Kitty realised their illegality was the whole point. She felt like she was on the brink of discovering some vital truth about life, that she was participating in a huge social experiment.

  'Why are we meeting up with those girls AGAIN?' Honor asked her. 'I don't like them, they make me feel weird. My mother would be furious if she knew we were going out with a man in his sixties. I don't like lying.'

  'You're not lying, Hon, you're withholding information. We're not doing anything wrong - she just wouldn't understand. It's not harmful. It's interesting. We're seeing all walks of life. It's anthropology. It's one night.'

  'I don't want to be like those girls,' Honor said, and she sprayed lily of the valley on her ears, tossing her shiny hair in Kitty's direction.

  She half wanted to be like them. They were so polished and hard. Laetita was Romeo's favourite. She was fourteen. She was the only one who wasn't blonde. She looked like Ava Gardner's baby sister.

  She told Kitty that on Saturday mornings, every weekend, Romeo gave her his platinum card and she went to Sloane Street and bought whatever she wanted. Kitty was repulsed and jealous at t
he same time.

  'Do you have to have sex with him?' she whispered, fascinated.

  'No. He just likes me to wear my school uniform and call him Daddy.'

  'Doesn't that make you feel sick?'

  'A bit, but then we go to Cartier and I feel better.'

  Kitty had stumbled upon a group of baby women, and she was completely enthralled. It wasn't like going out with boys her age, because everything you could ever want, and what you had yet to discover you wanted, was paid for. There was a Bentley with soft leather seats, and buckets of champagne.

  She and Honor went to Iceni and had a table that was roped off, and their own security, because Romeo didn't want any other man to talk to them. She perfected dancing at the table with a look of vacancy, sexy as the others. It was easy, in a leather bustier she borrowed from Charlie, the hardest of all his girls. Charlie had the biggest bosom Kitty had ever seen, golden skin that she maintained at the Electric Beach, and people looked at her with a mixture of envy and disdain. Kitty didn't know girls like this existed outside of pulp fiction. Nice girls didn't accept presents from strange elderly men with a penchant for rap music. By association did this mean she wasn't nice either? Dancing and winding, hands reaching up through her hair, touching the others, because everyone knew men liked to watch girls touch each other when they danced. She knew the curve of Charlie's waist like her own because she held it as Charlie moved against her. Her fingers felt the heat of skin through the moulded rubber Charlie wore. Her sweat was sweet, and her hair as it brushed against Kitty smelled of American shampoo and cigarettes and bleach.

  Kitty was scared of her, because she seemed numb inside.

  Kitty made Romeo the Russian laugh. He said she reminded him of his English nanny.

  'So strict! It's spectacular.' The others rolled their eyes.

  One evening she found herself sitting next to him, and he was serious for the first time.

  'You know, you are going to be a great beauty when you're older,' he said. 'You're going to get better with age.'

  'So everyone keeps telling me,' she said. 'I wish it would hurry up and happen soon. I feel like a wine.'