Playing with the Grown-ups Read online

  You seem to be proficient at sport; keep up with the netball. Sports are good for keeping the mind straight.

  With all my best,

  R. Fitzgerald.

  ' "Proficient at sport", that's a good one,' Rosaria said.

  Mr Fitzgerald wrote her short informative letters every week, in neat, measured writing. Anna, the secretary, wrote cheery postscripts on his letters that made Kitty laugh. She noticed he never mentioned meeting her. When she wrote back she tried to impress him with her words, to create a technicolour version of herself that leapt off the page to meet him, but her letters felt pallid and bland like school rice pudding, and after writing them she felt like an imposter.

  Kitty owned one photograph of Mr Fitzgerald in which he looked happy, rich and slightly baffled, with a beard. The beard was distracting because she couldn't find her face underneath it. She studied the picture obsessively looking for a clue. There was the merest suggestion of a dimple on his left cheek, and that was it as far as she could see. Rosaria told her she had his smile, but as it was obscured by the beard in the photograph, Kitty told her to shut up if she didn't have anything constructive to say.

  Mr Fitzgerald lived with Mrs Fitzgerald in a huge white house in Eaton Square. Kitty knew this because she copied its address down from his letters, and one Saturday half-term afternoon on their way to Miss Selfridge she and Rosaria peered through its windows.

  'Looks cold and miserable,' Rosaria said.

  'Poor him. Shall we send him an anonymous dressing gown? Or break in, like in The Little Princess . . . His life should be less bare than this. Do you think she's foul to him?' Kitty sought out signs of a colourful internal life, a record, a bunch of flowers, an ashtray, but she saw nothing that revealed him, just the plush antiseptic of a show home.

  'Pussy-whipped, most likely. Let's go.' Rosaria spun round on her small heel.

  Her mother was fearful of the cold. She loved squashy overstuffed sofas and paintings, and the rooms to be filled to bursting with flowers, molten with fires roaring. She said she liked comfort. She understood better than anyone that school was cold, and she sent Kitty beautiful thermal pyjamas from New York, and a cashmere-covered hot water bottle with her initials on it.

  Mr Fitzgerald never minded that men were after her mother, she said it herself. The part she didn't say out loud was that it was because he understood that she was beautiful and impetuous and men would always love her. Kitty didn't mind either because it meant she got bountiful presents from people she'd never met, who were just trying to get into her mother's good graces. One Christmas, she got £500-worth of vouchers from HMV. Inexplicably, the one after, lingerie from Janet Reger, which her mother deemed inappropriate and hid until Kitty was 'old enough'.

  June proved triumphant, the Federal Express man was kind. Kitty received the ultimate benediction: a letter, Smyth son writing paper covered in her mother's childish curly hand. With that same familiar hand her mother released her from purdah. Marina explained that Swami-ji had appeared to her in a vision and informed her that all of her children should be in the same country, and she had written him a letter to check it wasn't a spiritual crossed wire, and he had written back confirming that yes, it was a good thing, he had meditated upon it. Kitty should come to New York.

  Swami-ji was temporarily Kitty's hero, and during prep she ran up to the empty dormitory and cradled his photograph, whispering, 'Thank you, thank you.' She took to sleeping with it under her pillow, like a charm.

  Maybe her letters had made her mother miss her. Maybe her mother had noticed how brightly Kitty's shoes and hair shone when she saw her at half term. Evie had laughed when, on the rare Friday nights her mother was in England, Kitty wore face masks and rag curlers to bed like a spinster aunt with no one to take her out on a Saturday.

  'Are you getting ready for your boyfriend?' she hooted as Kitty lay carefully on her pillow, head upright.

  'No, my mother,' she wanted to say. But who could understand why she wanted to have curly hair and flawless skin for her own mother? Why she cared what knickers she wore to go home in and how she begged Imogen Holliday to lend her a pale-pink bra made by Sloggi? She knew it was strange, but she thought maybe a bit of Imogen Holliday would rub off on her, permeate through her white skin, all the way down to her bones, until they were shiny and new like a Christmas ten-pound note.

  She smiled at everyone. Nothing could touch her. At suppertime when Veronica poured salt in her tea she didn't care.

  'Why are you looking so pleased, you little whore? Did you get ten per cent in your maths instead of five?'

  'I'm moving to New York. I'm going to live with my mother,' she answered dreamily.

  'No you are not. You're a liar.' Veronica's face became an angry ham, red and pulsing with arterial veins.

  'She is, actually,' said Rosaria, pouring sugar on her white bread and butter.

  Veronica paused.

  'I don't believe you. Everyone knows your mother doesn't want you. Why should she suddenly want you now? If she wanted you why did she take your brother and sister to New York and not you? I heard Ma'am Rachel say two illegits are enough to travel round the world with like suitcases. She says you'll be here for the duration, because you're difficult and your mother can't cope with you.'

  Ma'am Rachel was their matron. She was a real bitch.

  'My mother didn't want to disrupt my education,' Kitty said, parroting what she knew. 'And Sam and Violet are not illegitimate.'

  'Perfectly sensible,' said Rosaria in a grown-up way. 'If I was your mother, Veronica, I would have sent you away at birth. To live with a Hottentot tribe. Perhaps they would have liked you. But probably not. They certainly would have wanted to eat you, you're so juicy and fat.' She took a measured bite of her bread and sugared butter.

  Veronica was rendered speechless, and purple-faced she lurched off to torture the African toads in the science block.

  'Oh Kitty,' Rosaria said, 'I can come and stay in the Christmas holidays and we can ice skate in Central Park where we'll bump into Johnny Depp and Luke Perry and they can take us to see The Nutcracker, after which we'll go to Studio 54 and dance all night.'

  Kitty had a feeling Studio 54 was closed but she said nothing. She would love Rosaria for ever. Her haughtiness always made people stand down, even the foulest teachers. When Kitty had babies Rosaria would be their godmother, she decided, and Kitty's children could wear her shoes when they played dressing up.

  The night before term ended, they played truth-or-dare. Kitty always chose truth, because she didn't have anything to lie about yet.

  'What turns you on?' Laura Hill asked.

  'Oh you know, the usual things,' Kitty said in the dark.

  'No, we don't know; it's specific to you, which is the whole point of the game. Don't be a bad sport.'

  'Fine, well, OK, the usual things like that bit in Lady Chatterly, uh girls on page three who wear stockings and suspender belts, Seal and Adamski, that feeling when you go over a bridge, and um . . . trains.'

  The silence felt infinitely longer in the dark.

  'Very strange, Kitty,' Imogen said. 'Very strange indeed.'

  Kitty flushed.

  'Well, what turns you on?'

  'It's not my go, but, boys with blue eyes and dark hair, and Chris the Australian tennis instructor when he fingered me behind the music room.'

  'Gross, Imo,' Olivia said.

  She and Rosaria perched awkwardly on Kitty's bed.

  'Do you think you'll meet Mr Fitzgerald when you move to New York?' Olivia whispered.

  'Unlikely. Besides, it would spoil his mystery.'

  Rosaria and she held hands and cried as if the world would soon end.

  'Promise you'll write every week.'

  'I will write to you every week,' Kitty said.

  Bestemama and Bestepapa had gone to a wedding in Sweden, and the local taxi driver drove her to the airport, after promising Mrs Phelan he would see her to the door. The year's worth of belongings i
n her trunk felt insubstantial, as she pushed it to the check-in desk.

  Kitty felt nothing as the plane took off. Swami-ji had deemed it so and that was proof. The living, breathing, spiritual proof that she had to come home. Perhaps he knew, in his infinite wisdom, that she would be a devoted devotee now, no longer mocking his chanting, or thinking sexy thoughts while she meditated. If it meant she got to stay at home, Kitty decided she might even shave her head, like his friends in the photographs.

  She saw England beneath her, in miniature like a toy town.

  Her mother would make up with Bestemama and Bes-tepapa, they would all have breakfast at Tiffany's. Rosaria could come for the holidays. She would love it. Kitty knew it would all be fine, though she wished she had had her split ends trimmed in the advent of seeing her mother. New York was magic, her mother had made this clear.

  New York, home of the English muffin, the Beastie Boys, Central Park muggers and Victoria's Secret, and now Kitty. She turned on her Walkrnan and smiled.

  As they make their descent she sees green fields unfolding before her, the Thames curling its way through London, Windsor Castle peering up from the mist. She has always imagined, from this vantage point, the London of Shakespeare, with boats carrying people to where they are going, pickpockets and courtesans, streets screaming with mud and human traffic, the Rose Theatre filled to the eaves with a jostling rowdy throng. Until they get closerto the cars and motorways, superstores and redbrick houses spreading out as far as she can see, an industrious ant village beneath her, stamping on her fantasy.

  Violet is pacing under the arrivals board. She is wearing a scarlet coat, and her thick black hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Kitty marvels at how beautiful Violet is, and how unalike they are. Violet looks as though she has skipped off the pages of The Arabian Nights, and Kitty feels, watching her, blonde, pale, pedestrian and very pregnant.

  'Violet!' she calls quietly.

  'Oh my God, Kitty! Here you are! And you're really truly pregnant!'

  'I really am,' she says, and they hold one another.

  * * *

  Violet's car is a mess. Kitty squeezes herself in amidst Coke cans and magazines. Violet lights a cigarette, then she looks stricken.

  'Oh Christ, I forgot,' she says, going to stub it out.

  'No please, breathe it all over me, it's been so long, and I could really use a vicarious fag.' Kitty breathes in the air deeply, and fans the smoke towards her. 'See? I'm already treading the path of bad motherhood,' she says.

  'You're going to be brilliant. You were born to be a mummy,' Violet answers, placing a placatory hand on her sister's belly.

  Chapter Three

  The limestone house was as anonymous as a hotel. Kitty expected men in tails to appear from behind every corner with a handful of Martinis or Earl Grey at teatime. It was just her mother and she though, swimming through the slippery heat of New York in July. Violet and Sam had gone home with Nora to County Kerry, where they were, no doubt, eating soda bread piled thick with Nora's mammy's gooseberry jam. Kitty discovered that in New York you could order food from a million different countries, and it would show up on the doorstep within fifteen minutes.

  'Mum, what's eggplant parmigiana?'

  Her mother lay on the sofa in a lavender slip, slick with heat.

  'Uh. Don't speak to me of food. It's so hot the thought of it makes me feel sick. Eggplant parmigiana is something that will make you fat. It's deep-fried aubergines covered in cheese.'

  Kitty thought it sounded delicious.

  Her mother turned her head and looked at Kitty.

  'I meant to tell you before, Kit-kat. You've grown a little chubby this past term. It would be good to lose it before school starts in September.' Her eyes wound around Kitty's body.

  'I don't think I have,' Kitty said, her voice echoing in the furnitureless room. 'I didn't mean to. I think it's this dress.'

  'No, it's not the dress, it's definitely you, Magpie. Don't worry, we can lose weight together. I need to lose seven pounds.' Marina poked at her washboard stomach critically.

  In England they didn't have staff. They had Nora, who was family, and Mrs M from the village, who 'did' the cottage once a week after she'd 'done' Hay House. In New York Vladimir, the silent Russian trainer, came every morning to define her mother, as MTV blared in the background. Kitty put on a tracksuit and watched as he stretched and moved her mother like putty.

  'You won't join?' he said, casting his melancholy black eyes at her.

  'No, I'm going for a run actually,' Kitty said.

  She hated running. She walked up and down Lexington Avenue, and bought Tasti D-Lite, the fat-free frozen yoghurt that was everywhere in Manhattan, and sat on a step savouring each creamy mouthful.

  Fat was to be avoided. Anything fat-free was acceptable. She read it in Mirabella. She counted calories voraciously. Her mother, at Vladimir's insistence, had bought a treadmill, and it had a built-in calorie counter. As you ran, it told you how many calories you burned. Kitty loved to watch the numbers go up, so definite and sure. One hundred, that was the bagel she had for breakfast; fifty, the apple she had for lunch. When you finished, it gave the final calculation, with a red CONGRATULATIONS! that ran across the screen like a banner.

  In the morning, Precious would come to clean the house, and bring her mother fruit on a tray. Precious was from Jamaica and she thought her mother was really funny.

  Kitty asked her questions, just so she could hear her speak, her words spilling over each other like a poem on speed.

  'Why are you called Precious?'

  'Because mi mammy tink it a beautiful name.'

  'Where did she get it?'

  'Oh you got chat, Kitty! From a perfume bottle, dat's where. Now move you skinny bum girl, you in my way.'

  'Have I really got a skinny bum?'

  'Too skinny. No Jamaican man ever want you with a bum like that. Someone tell you you fat?'

  'My mum.'

  'Your mum CRAZY. YOU not fat.'

  By the end of the summer she weighed one hundred and five pounds. Twenty-five pounds less than her mother, and she was only two inches taller. She was also fourteen pounds less than Jackie Kennedy when she lived in the White House, and Jackie, Kitty noted with satisfaction, was renowned for being a sylph.

  Her summer job was to reorganise her mother's Filofax. This was an arduous task, because her mother knew so many people. Kitty had to ring them all to check that their phone numbers and addresses were current. This inevitably led to chat she did not welcome.

  'Kitty! How is Marina? Are you having the most glamorous time in New York? Is Marina still seeing the funny Indian man with the turban? You must come and stay, darling, you're always welcome. Send Mummy our love.'

  She simpered, 'Yes thank you, well, thank you, yes, it's great, really great.' Like a good child would, she thought, displeased with herself. She started to pretend to be a French secretary to eradicate the possibility of these timely exchanges.

  'Bonjour, I mean, 'ullo, I am Francine the secretary of Marina, would you please verify your address, s'il vous plait?'

  As Francine she did not have to have the long annoying chats. As Francine, Kitty idled with honeyed voice, and spent her afternoons, and pocket money, on Third Avenue buying stripy tights from Hue.

  On the top floor of the limestone mansion lived their landlord, Mr Frazi. Her mother told her that Mr Frazi was gay but she was not to allude to it. Mr Frazi's apartment was smooth and polished and it smelled like birch trees and vetiver. He had a butler named Philip who spoke no English, and they conversed through a tunnel of nods and smiles and sighs.

  Mr Frazi usually spent his summers in the South of France or in Mykonos, but he had been hospitalised after a nasty asthma attack, and been instructed by his doctors to rest in his fragrant tomb of an apartment.

  Kitty longed for him to ask her to read the classics to him, like an old-fashioned ill person. He never did, but they spent the close mornings together, drinking te
a from bone china so thin it was almost see-through.

  When her mother was locked away in her studio, Kitty called Hay House reverse charges, Bestepapa's voice billowing down the phone, like a proud sail.

  'We accept the charges. Put her through.'

  She told him about Vladimir and Precious, tea with Mr Frazi and Philip. When she said it out loud it became full and round, she could experience it again through the telling.

  'Ibsen misses you,' Bestepapa said sadly. 'And Elsie's going out with a French pop singer with a moustache. Can you imagine? Disgusting.' Kitty heard Bestemama chiding him gently in the background.

  In New York the buildings were so high that you could see nothing about them but patches of sky. If Kitty looked up too long it made her dizzy and anxious and she thought she would pass out.

  'Don't look up then,' her mother laughed when Kitty told her.

  'I have to. I have to know there's sky and grass beyond the buildings, otherwise I feel like a little ant.'

  'My sweet country mouse, you'll get used to it. You just need to practise thinking that you're a New Yorker - they don't notice.'

  Kitty's New York bedroom, up eighty-nine steps, was white as virgin's bones. Her bed was austere, dark-painted Victorian metal. She liked it: boarding school had made her orderly. Kitty craved order and neatness and made her bed every morning with hospital corners. Her mother found this inexplicably funny. Marina's bedroom was huge and paint-splattered. The bed looked like a confectioner's dream. Frothy laced curtains and a sea of soft pillows bobbed around her head. She was a mermaid sleeping in an oyster shell.

  Kitty's room seemed naked and unformed somehow, so she bought a stencil from the hardware store and painted hearts in pink above the windows. The result, she thought savagely, looked like Heidi's room. She didn't finish it and five hearts floated, unmoored, in the glaring white. In England her bedroom had always been the creative domain of her mother. Now there were choices. She did not know what to do with such artistic freedom.