Eat My Heart Out. Zoe PilgerЧитать онлайн книгу.
me of Allegra’s performance back in my dorm room all those years ago. Three years ago.
“Sit down!” I commanded.
He sat next to Freddie, who was repeating: “I want a drink. I want a drink.”
“I was born to be a DJ!” said Samuel, with passion. “Or a lifestyle—a style consultant.”
“Samuel’s an Enlightenment polymath,” said Freddie, darkly. “I’m going to make him a star.”
Samuel turned to Freddie with the light of true love in his eyes. He buried his face in Freddie’s neck and said again and again: “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
I had agreed to buy the drink, but I had no intention of going all the way to Gerry’s because I was due in Soho in two hours anyway to start my shift. I considered trying to find Vic’s house after work and using Freddie’s drink money to pay him to go out with me. I had £150 in cash in my hand. I had never felt so free. But soon my freedom became a burden again.
I walked around the pond on Clapham Common, eyeing the men in tents. Their fishing rods trailed in the freezing water. A tree bent its gnarled body all the way over so that its branches disappeared in the depths. Yuppies walked their dogs despite the adverse temperature. One mongrel bounded toward a collie of some kind; they yelped at each other and then sniffed each other’s backsides in a circular dance of mysterious sweetness before their owners appeared in running gear and ruined the friendship. I passed the fenced-off zone where feral cats and feral children roamed. Like voyeurs at a peep show, young couples stared at sumptuous images of semidetached houses in the real estate agent’s window. The public housing buildings soared to the right, wrecking the dream. I passed the local crazy woman, parked outside Specsavers. She wore her hair in bunches and she carried a mangy Cabbage Patch doll. Her whole ensemble was bricolage.
I stopped and counted out fifty pounds. I gave it to her.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she said. “It’s something I didn’t put in my memoir because they made me censor it when I had Betty.” She gestured to the doll.
I waited.
“Soon the snow will come. The snow will cover us.”
“Do you mean as in global warming?”
She shook her head. “No. I said snow. Not sun. It will freeze.”
“Do you mean the world or just in London?”
Her teeth were black. She rocked her baby and told me that I was a good girl, really.
“What do you mean, really?”
“Really,” she said. “Really you are.”
I headed to the only vintage shop in Clapham, which was also a coffee shop. Yuppies were sitting around with their iPads and their real babies. I decided not to use the money to pay Vic to go out with me. Instead, I bought a cream satin blouse with a pussy bow and a black pencil skirt, perfect for work, then headed over to Sainsbury’s and stocked up on Bio-Oil to counteract the aging effects of smoking. I bought a bulk pack of Golden Virginia too. I threw the rest of the money—seventeen quid—down the drain outside Snappy Snaps.
I had to go back to the apartment; I needed to get my ballet flats for work.
I tried to discern a sign in the clouds that meant Vic would definitely Skype me. But there was nothing. I saw a black cat cowering behind a trash can but it didn’t cross my path. I counted seven crowlike birds fighting over a scrap of food. But then another crow appeared. Eight is fucking useless to me. The grand old doors of the church where William Wilberforce had once preached against slavery were being shut and locked at just the moment that I tried to enter. I wanted to pray for Vic to text me. I got really excited when I passed the pond again and saw two white swans, their necks gracefully arched together, swimming in perfect symmetry. They looked utterly in love.
When I got closer, I realized that they weren’t swans at all—just two white plastic bags, floating aimlessly across the freezing water.
“Yah ’cause it’s a gay thing,” Jasper was saying, spread-eagled on the chaise longue, fondling one of Freddie’s uncle’s bejeweled daggers. “That’s why he wrote it. ’Cause he wanted this guy in, like, Copenhagen in the 1830s or something ridiculous. And the guy was like, no. I’m not a homo. I’m getting married. So Hans Christian Andersen was like, fine. I’m going to write a story about it instead and make, like, a shit load of money.”
“Who let Jasper in?” I demanded.
They were all dead drunk. Two empty bottles of champagne were standing on the painting of my face. The bust of Freddie’s uncle seemed to shake its head in horror. Samuel was as alabaster as Allegra now; he looked like he was going to be sick.
“Jasper,” I said. “Get out.”
“Ann-Marie, charmed to see you as always,” said Jasper. He tried to kiss me on the mouth but I blocked him. He stank of musk.
“I’m allowed to have friends over,” slurred Freddie. “We don’t have to live like fucking hermits in a cave anymore. Exams are over.”
“Yeah, so over. Hey.” Jasper had a widow’s peak. He had the frigid elegance of the international technocratic elite. “I’m so sorry to hear that you didn’t get your degree.” He tried to get his arm around my waist; again, I blocked him.
“It was a gesture,” I said. “Of emancipation.”
“Yeah right,” said Freddie.
“You only got a third!” I shouted at him. “Tell that to your fucking father, then see if he lets you curate a bloody show!”
“I think it’s fabulous,” said Jasper. “Artists shouldn’t have degrees. They should be renegades.”
“I’m not an artist,” I said.
“Yeah, what are you again?” asked Freddie.
“Oh, shut your mouth,” I told him.
Jasper collapsed onto the chaise longue. “So actually that cartoon is like a gay allegory. Because Hans was dreaming of being a human née heterosexual instead of a mermaid née queer in order to be, like, part of their world.” He swigged from his flute. “It’s about yearning.”
“I know about yearning,” said Samuel.
“So do I, so do I,” said Jasper. “I was yearning to smash Sebastian’s fucking face in last night when he started doing that preposterous whirling dervish dance.”
My heart stopped.
“Yeah, and she was there, clapping and shit.” Jasper looked at Samuel. “Your sister.”
“Shouldn’t hold a grudge, old man,” said Freddie.
“Was it a party?” I said.
“Yah.” Jasper grinned. “Ann-Marie, I’m surprised you weren’t invited.”
Freddie laughed.
“It was their going-away bash,” Jasper went on.
“Where are they going?” I said.
“Sebastian and Allegra are going to Mexico for six months to do some theater thing about Aztec sacrifice,” said Samuel in a rush. “Allegra’s going to rip out someone’s heart at the top of a pyramid and eat it.”
“Yeah, while Seb waits to ask her permission to use the toilet,” said Freddie.
The cigarette smoke in the room seemed to move inside my brain, fogging all thought.
Then I was striding over to the mantelpiece and crushing the seven brittle wishbones that I had saved and dried every time Freddie and I cooked Nigella’s roast chicken.
FOUR
MICHEL THE SOUS-CHEF was simulating