Can We Still Be Friends (8 page)

‘
Vorsprung durch Technik
,’ he said, giving a mocking military salute in reference to BBH’s Audi campaign.

‘This is Annie. She’s one of Tania’s team.’ Annie felt Jackson moving closer to her.

‘Aha. Tania. Do you remember her covered in gold paint at that party at Morton’s. She was a real goddess then,’ Mungo recalled, smiling amiably at Annie, who was surprised to feel, at that moment, the touch of Jackson’s left hand on her leg, while his right refuelled her glass. She wondered whether Mungo would notice.

The juxtaposition of the intensity of Jackson’s attention on her and the obvious entitlement he felt to being a central figure in this world gave Annie an immediate sense of inclusion. Jackson was
adept at making her feel as if she had a rightful place there, rather than being the neophyte she was. As the hours passed, her nervousness was replaced by ease. The bar which had appeared so threatening when she first arrived had become a luxurious cocoon.

‘Tania, good to see you. Thank you for sending me this gorgeous Annie,’ said Jackson. Annie looked up to see Tania in a huge white ruffled shirt and flowing trousers.

‘Not at all, Jacko. Not at all. Just part of the service. I’m meeting Chris for a nightcap.’

‘Chris, now where’s he been? I haven’t seen him in ages. Good guy. Is he still with whatshername, Calliope? Nope, that’s not right. Names aren’t my thing …’

Tania exerted unusual restraint in resisting pointing out that girls’ names weren’t Jackson’s thing because so many of them passed his way, but she was fond of Annie. Let her enjoy tonight; it probably wouldn’t go further than his mattress. Gosh, she looked a real beauty sitting there. Luminous even in the low light, her only make-up, maybe mascara? It had been years since she’d been able to get away with that. She wouldn’t walk out for a pint of milk without her slap nowadays.

‘See you tomorrow, Annie.’ Annie watched Tania sway back down the bar, a white tanker parting the waves of drinkers.

Zanzibar was becoming yet more crowded when at midnight Jackson suggested that it was time to move, rising from the table as he spoke. Although it was September, the night was still warm enough for them to be coatless and, as they walked down the street, Jackson’s arm was around Annie’s waist, the fabric of the blue dress sliding under his hand. The kiss, when it happened, was impeccable.

‘You are so beautiful, my lovely Annie,’ Jackson whispered, his hand caressing the nape of her neck as he unlocked his car.

They drove along the London roads. Looking down at herself, she saw stripes reflected from streetlights moving along her flesh with their shadows. She was aware that they were heading towards Regent’s Park rather than in the direction that would take her home
to Cranbourne Terrace. At each red traffic light Jackson kissed her again, seamlessly combining gear shifts with caresses. As she returned his kisses, there was a part of her watching, in thrall to what was happening to her.

They drew up at a large red-brick building and Jackson led her up the steps to the front door and then inside his ground-floor flat. An enormous dog bounded up against her.

‘Buster, she’s mine – out you go. Catch you later.’ Jackson opened the double doors at one end of the large room they had entered, pushing a recalcitrant Golden Retriever through them. Annie could see the shape of trees in the garden. She walked towards them, horribly unsure how to behave. The confidence that had grown throughout the past hours had evaporated in an instant. She could feel the magic of the evening seeping away as unwelcome self-consciousness took hold. What on earth was she doing there? Was this going to be a one-night stand? But as Jackson turned to her, sweetly kissing her face, then her neck, then her eyelids, as he lifted her dress off and bent to kiss the side of her hips, moving back to just look at her in obvious admiration and then returning to her lips, her worries faded. He took her hand to lead her to the bedroom, laying her on the large bed as if she were the most precious object, never taking his eyes off her.

Marisa Rootstein was adjusting the display of books on the enormous glass coffee table that sat before the fireplace in her drawing room. Kendra watched her mother place the thick catalogue raisonné of Andy Warhol’s silk screens on top of the slim pamphlet from the Francesco Clemente show at the Mary Boone Gallery. Then, deciding against it, she left the Clemente catalogue visible and positioned alongside it instead Salman Rushdie’s just published
Shame.
The Rootsteins’ coffee table was a carefully edited display of contemporary culture, and its obvious artifice and ostentation made Kendra want to vomit.

The huge room, with its elaborate cornicing and tall windows looking out on to several acres of communal garden, was rarely used by day, functioning mostly at night, when the Rootsteins would regularly fill it with crowds of what Art liked to call ‘folk’, a term which deliberately downplayed the professional and social networking their soirées were renowned for.

It was in preparation for one of these regular Thursday-night open houses that Marisa was styling the table. The word ‘open’ was misleading. Naturally, these gatherings were not remotely open, but Marisa and Art preferred the casual notion that
folk
would
swing by
, ideally accompanied by suitably interesting new blood. They aimed to achieve a sense of spontaneity for these carefully orchestrated evenings. A successful Thursday night would find a group of artists, writers and socialites, with a spattering of celebrities who were in town from New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, drinking Art’s favourite white, Gavi di Gavi.

‘Darling, I know that it’s your life’s ambition to cause your father and I maximum anxiety but, surely, this idea of yours, of being a kind of
childminder
in a poor kids unit, is taking self-destruction just
a step too far.’ Marisa continued to tinker with the placement of the things on the table as she spoke, avoiding eye contact with her daughter. She adjusted the arrangement of white hydrangea.

For several weeks, Kendra had avoided telling her parents that she had taken on the job at the Chapel. Their house was large enough, and the Rootsteins immersed enough in the whole business of being the Rootsteins, for the fact that Kendra was working to have escaped them. The hours Gioia needed her were irregular, and the family structure loose enough, for Kendra’s absence during the day not to be noticed.

However, that morning, Marisa and Kendra had coincided in the kitchen, a rare occurrence, since Marisa’s early mornings were usually spent in the company of Stephen, her analyst on Fitzjames Avenue, immediately and unrelentingly followed by a Pilates session. The combination, Marisa maintained, set her up perfectly for the trials of the day ahead. ‘An early start,’ Kendra heard her say, frequently, ‘is crucial if you want to get things done.’

‘We must find you some better clothes, Kendra. You haven’t been a student for over a year now, and those old T-shirts look terrible. You’ve got great legs but, God knows, you do your best to disguise them. There’s a Jasper Conran private sale next week where we could find you some nice pieces. His grosgrain jackets would look terrific on you. The cut would suit.’ Two decades of her daughter’s rejection of Marisa’s offers of stylish clothing had not deterred her from continuing to try to wean Kendra from her chosen look, which, in its hippie drabness, never failed to frustrate her mother.

‘Thanks, Mum, but I don’t think I’ll have much use for them at the Chapel. You know those kind of clothes aren’t really my thing.’ Kendra waited for her words to impact, visualizing them like weapons lobbed from a PacMan game.

‘The Chapel?
Qu’est-ce que c’est
, the Chapel?’

‘It’s where I’m working now. I joined a few weeks back, helping underprivileged kids. It’s run by a really inspiring woman called Gioia Cavallieri. It’s a proper job, Mum.’

Marisa drained her canarino, leaving the twist of lemon peel in the china cup, and moved towards the door.

‘I’m running late, and have no time for this. I have to do Laila’s list for tonight. The Schnabels are in town.’ Kendra could see her mother’s shoulders, prominent from the back in her slim-fitting black cashmere sweater, tighten with restraint and the effort of not engaging in an argument with her completely incomprehensible daughter.

During the school week, the Chapel still had a few of the regular kids hanging around. Although they were meant to be in class, Gioia took the view that if they were going to play truant it was better they were with her than causing mischief on the streets. She would talk the talk, try to get them back to their desks, but she considered that task number one was to provide a refuge rather than add to the rejection colouring most of their lives. Andy, a lanky, near-albino teenager, was shooting a ball into a hoop on the wall, the endless drumming of the bounce almost soothing in its repetition. At the far end of the room, a large table was backed up by a range of metal filing cabinets.

‘Gioia, what time is the concert starting?’ Kendra haltingly typed words into the battered Olympus typewriter. ‘Christ, it’s impossible to get the “r”s into alignment; they keep jumping.’

‘Just get the words down – don’t fuss about how it looks,’ Gioia replied from where she was kneeling on the floor, the filing cabinets rattling as she opened them.

The Chapel was regularly hired for performances by local musicians, mime artists, performance poets. But Kendra was typing a flyer for an evening that Gioia was organizing in a few weeks’ time. She had lined up a Rastafarian band, a bongo drum trio and a guitarist friend of hers on the up. There was talk that Billy Bragg might do a number.

‘Don’t ask, won’t get,’ Gioia had informed her. ‘You know, I came down here from home and didn’t know anyone, anything. But I have a voice. I use it.’

It occurred to Kendra that her mother would like some of the performers, which was an unwelcome thought, allowing Marisa, who she wanted to keep as far away from her new job as possible, to infiltrate. She couldn’t bear the idea of her turning up here. Given half a chance, she’d get the bongo trio to come round one Thursday night. But, as for Sal and Annie, she wanted them to be there, even though she was apprehensive about the judgements they and Gioia might make of each other. The knowledge of how disloyal it was even to imagine such thoughts made her stop typing. She wondered vaguely why she cared so much what Gioia thought anyway.

She watched as the older woman went over to talk to Andy. In the few weeks that she had been working alongside her, Kendra felt different. Maybe this was what people meant when they said they were fulfilled.

‘No, you
don’t
– no, you don’t
ever
– do you hear me, Andy? – speak to me like that.’ Gioia’s tone was loud but measured. Andy sprinted to the door, slamming it behind him as his critic watched, shaking her head, the heavy coils waving. ‘He’ll be back, poor kid. He’s not got anywhere much to go. His dad knocks around Camden in the pubs and his mum’s got a smack habit.’ She walked over to Kendra and smiled. ‘Hey, girl, let’s get out for a bit.’ She put her arm around Kendra’s shoulders for a moment and then quickly walked on, out to the street.

‘Coffee?’

Annie opened her eyes to see Jackson standing by the bed with a mug in his hand, a towel around his waist. He knelt beside her and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Good morning, my beauty.’

‘What time is it?’ As Annie woke, she felt the judder of a nearly sleepless night and the seep of a hangover. Jackson pulled back the sheet to look at her, stroking her breasts and stomach.

‘Shame,’ he said with regret; ‘but I’m due on set in half an hour. It’s eight. I’m going to take a shower. Stay as long as you want.’

‘No, I must go too.’ Annie pulled herself and the sheet up. She
knew it was ridiculous, but she didn’t want to stand naked before him.

‘Sweetheart, I’ve spent all night looking at your wonderful body – come in the shower with me.’ Annie felt the unfamiliar thump of a powerful jet of water cover her, drenching her hair, streaming down her face. At Cranbourne Terrace she and Sal had to squeeze a pink rubber hose over the taps to wash their hair and, invariably, the water spurted everywhere. Jackson vigorously rubbed soap into the palm of his hands, covering both himself and her in the lather. She could taste the night and wanted to keep it with her for as long as possible. As Jackson briskly soaped her body, she worried that he was washing the previous hours away. He was charming, affectionate, but she could tell he was moving on from their lovemaking to the day ahead.

She was going to be late for work, but she could hardly go to the office in the same dress Tania had seen her in last night. It would be like announcing that she’d slept with Jackson over a Tannoy. When she arrived back at the flat, Sal had already left for the day. The kitchen table showed evidence of her breakfast – two cigarettes and the dregs of a mug of Nescafé. A plastic clothes dryer was in the middle of the sitting room, with white cotton knickers and a tangle of tights draped over it, a dark mark on the matting where they dripped as they dried. Sal was infuriating. Why hadn’t she put the wretched thing over the bath?

Tearing her blue dress off, she contemplated herself in the mirror wearing just the bra and pants she had worn the night before. Did she look different? She felt like she had after the first time she had had sex, when she had been convinced that her body would surely show, in some way, that she had changed. She held her breasts, reliving the way Jackson had traced lines around her nipples. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he had said as he kissed her goodbye. What
exactly
did he mean by ‘later’? When was later?

Sal watched the wet streets on her bus ride home. In the morning, if she left late enough, the bus might be empty and she would
be able to grab her favourite spot on the top deck at the front, but that also meant she was late for work. Not that it mattered much during the early part of the week. From Thursday onwards, though, lateness was out of the question. Once morning conference was over, it was as if somebody had pressed a button, and the desks became tightly controlled operating units in search of stories.