Meeting the English (26 page)

‘Seal,' she hissed, ‘if Jake does call you, you won't listen to him, will you? He is a bullshit merchant, you know that, don't you?'

‘This'll be too small,' Celia said, pointing at the garment.

‘Bollocks,' said Juliet, examining the label, ‘it's a ten.'

Ding Dong! Juliet popped out the changing room again. The raincoat lady was gone. Juliet dashed to the scarf shelves, started counting the Von Estorhofs. She thought one was gone: £150. There was a whimpering noise from the changing room.

‘Help, Ju,' said Celia. ‘Help me, I'm stuck.' Juliet popped in. The trousers or whatever they were stuck halfway up Celia's minimal thighs.

‘It's too small,' gasped Celia.

‘Don't rip it,' said Juliet. ‘Stay still.' And she carefully teased the black tubes down her friend's legs. ‘Lift,' she said. ‘One foot, then the other.' Celia's skin was so thin, you could see the veins, like her father's feet when she put on his socks. Juliet shook out the garment and appraised it.

‘But I can't get it on,' said Celia, ‘I've put on weight.' And honestly, the way she said it, it was as if she expected to be shot for crimes against humanity, and Juliet even felt sorry for her. She actually thought, just for a minute, that maybe being anorexic was not so much fun. She looked again at the black thing. ‘Juliet,' said Celia, ‘do you remember that night in the pub, with Ron and Jake? Do you think, that night, I was flirting? With Ron, I mean?'

Ron popped up in Juliet's mind, round-eyed, cheery, and on the edge of his feet, Ron following directions to raves, anxiously and solemnly, Ron buying rubbish drugs and pretending they worked; Ron talking bollocks to the wind and passing her a sandwich. Juliet thought, maybe she wouldn't chuck him, after all, or not quite yet.

‘Why would that matter?' she said. ‘Ron wouldn't care. I wouldn't care.'

‘You see?' said Celia. ‘It's true. I was flirting.' And then she came to a sort of stop, and whimpered, just once. Briskly, Juliet shook out the garment.

‘It's a jumpsuit,' she announced. ‘It's got a wrap top, see? It's Japanese. You had your legs down the arm-holes. Try this.' She opened up the jumpsuit's waist band, and obediently Celia lowered one long bony leg in, then the other. Juliet pulled up the odd, stiff, cottony material to her friend's waist, and fastened the elaborate soft belt.

‘There,' she said. ‘Loads of room. You could be an eight.' Celia whimpered again. Juliet wished she could cheer her up. She said: ‘Look, Seal, what about Struan? I thought you really liked him.'

‘Struan doesn't like me,' said Celia, mournfully fiddling with the jumpsuit cuffs.

And Juliet said: ‘Maybe he does. Struan's told me, he's got a crush.'

‘Did he?' said Celia, smiling a little, sliding her arms into the puffy sleeves. Juliet adjusted the pads on her shoulders, and started the business of wrapping up the fancy ties and pulling down the weird padded bit in the front. Ding Dong, said the shop bell, and Juliet added, all the same:

‘Struan said, did I think, if you loved someone, you should just tell them, even if you know they don't love you.' Celia's eyes were sheenless as buttons in her remnant of face. The jumpsuit suited her a lot, with its padding and cuffed legs and wee waist.

‘So it could be you, Seal,' said Juliet, ‘that Struan's keen on. I mean, I don't think he knows many other girls. Come on. You look great. Let's look at you outside.' And she took her friend's cold hand, and led her out to the big mirror.

And there was Shirin, in the shop, looking at the Comme des Garçons rail. She'd just popped in on her way back from Harrow.

‘Wow,' she said, ‘look at Celia, straight from the catwalk.' And they all did.

‘Shall I wear it to the zoo?' said Celia.

25

And so, on the day that Struan Robertson came of age, he stood under the central signpost of London Zoo with his English friends at three in the afternoon. They were waiting for Ron and Celia. Bill was explaining they should all have a wander before regrouping for tea. Phillip's ambulance was due at five.

Bill was rather in charge. He had organized the ambulance, for instance, and a taxi for Celia, and a whip-round for the picnic, and Giles had said to Struan he was sorry if it was a bit much, but Bill had recently been entirely exiled from his nearly-dead lover's flat, life, and hospital bed by his lover's long-divorced wife: he needed someone on whom to exercise his kindness. ‘And he can stay with me, of course,' said Giles, ‘but I'm not sick enough, you see. Not for all that.'

And now it was raining: but only off and on, rags of rain, by Cuik standards. Struan was wearing Phillip's cast-off sixties Burberry trench coat: Shirin had come up the attic stairs with it this morning. It was short with a big belt and collar and a cold silk lining. It made his shoulders enormous and his legs very long. Struan could see that it suited him, but he felt odd in it, like someone else. He had a card in the pocket from his gran, and he fingered the edge, for reassurance.

Bill had equipped himself in a hooded cagoule, and the wheelchair with a snugly tucked cycling cape affair. He was in charge of Phillip: Struan, he said, should have the afternoon off. Giles was beside him in an ancient fishing Barbour. Shirin was tightly belted in a transparent mac, tiny transparent wellies, and a transparent dome-shaped umbrella over her head.

‘I am keen,' she said, through her screen, ‘to see the marmosets.'

‘Twilight World of the Small Mammal,' said Giles. ‘You wait, fantastic.'

‘Moonlit,' said Bill. ‘It says Moonlit. They're nocturnal, you see.' But Giles refused to be disappointed.

‘The small mammals are,' he said, ‘for ever in the warm twilight of my heart. We'll take you there, Shirin, right after the black-handed gibbons. I also adore the black-handed gibbons.'

And here at last were Mr Fox and Celia, struggling through the gate with a large box. Celia was wound in a mohair shawl; Mr Fox was already soaked in a pakamac. Bill officiously grabbed the box and stowed it under the wheelchair. Mr Fox rushed over to Juliet and kissed her warmly.

‘Elephants,' he said. ‘Aren't you excited?'

All this was done so that Struan would wander off with Celia. Bill had arranged it; Juliet had agreed; but now Juliet watched them go regretfully: Struan tall and handsome in the square-shouldered trench coat; Celia trotting beside him, her shawl so huge and ruched over her thin legs, she looked like a hermit crab. She could have told Struan about the crab and he would have laughed his big snorty laugh. She missed that.

Ron, she thought, eyeing his too-short pakamac, didn't like her being funny. Or maybe she just wasn't very funny when she was with him, owing to the constant pressure of the knickers-off, sex thing. Which she would have to sort out. Soon.

Ron was ahead of her, leaning on the wall surrounding the tiger's cage. Or crouching, really, his hands arched on the concrete, his head flung back. He was feeling something sensitive and he wanted Juliet to notice, as usual, and ask what it was. She decided not to.

The tiger was pacing his cage, just up and down, up and down. He did look fed up. Juliet said: ‘He's got Indian ink stripes,' which he had, they were gorgeous, black and shiny as if they'd just been applied. And Ron put a wet hand through his wet hair, and looked at her with his poppy brown eyes, and shook his head; he didn't like her saying the sensitive things, either. Juliet marched him off to the elephants before he could start going on about dreams deferred and raisins in the sun.

‘Do you know,' said Juliet, remembering as they walked along the concrete path, ‘I think my dad used to take me here. He had this friend called Melissa, she was a theatrical agent, she put Jake on telly, and she lived just over there, in Little Venice, and she used to bring us here and get us ice-creams.'

‘Your dad wrote a story about that,' said Ron, pulling up his hood. It was starting to rain in earnest: rivulets were pouring off his nose.

‘Did he?' said Juliet. ‘The things you know.'

‘It's actually quite affecting,' said Ron, ‘about, you know, a gorilla, and cages, and marriage. It was in the
New Yorker.
'

‘That's right,' said Juliet, ‘Guy the Gorilla. Dad liked him. He died.'

And Ron took her hand and she let him. It was occurring to her suddenly that Melissa must have been Dad's girlfriend, a long-term one, like Linda. And that she must have been serious about Dad, because she was bothering with the children, with Juliet in particular, who was no good for BBC dramas. Buying them ice-creams. And that that was probably a poor tactic with Dad, who most likely wanted to have a girlfriend to forget all about his children, or about Juliet at least, he was pleased with Jake being on the telly, so it wasn't surprising that Melissa vanished suddenly from their lives.

When they reached the Enclosure, the elephants had all retired into their doleful, composty stable. So Ron and Juliet stood meekly in the dank observation passage, watching the creatures pacing and chewing their hay, and Ron got his cold hand under Juliet's mac. And Juliet thought that Melissa and Linda and all of the others couldn't have been so much fun for Myfanwy, not really, the poor old moo. It must've been a bit like being jealous of Celia. Melissa, she was certain, had been very slim. She wore trouser suits, like Purdey in
The New Avengers.

‘Did you look at the elephants, when you were little?' Ron Fox was murmuring. ‘Did you like their trunks?'

‘Did you ever watch
The New Avengers?
' asked Juliet, and wriggled away from him, forward into the stable.

‘They are cute, though,' she said. ‘Look at the baby one.' For one of the elephants was very small indeed, and fluffy on top, like Ron himself.

Ron grabbed Juliet's hand back, and kissed it. The little elephant caught some hay in its clever trunk, and stuffed into its flat slot mouth. Ron pulled her hand down to his pocket, tried to stuff it in. Juliet sighed. He was always doing this, always rubbing her fingers over his knobbles, and sometimes she liked it, and sometimes she didn't.

‘Do you think,' she said, inching her hand away. ‘Do you think Struan really does fancy Celia?'

‘You have to stop thinking about Celia,' said Ron. ‘You're not Celia.'

‘Well then,' said Juliet, ‘you have to stop thinking about my dad. I'm not my dad. I'm not Hampstead. OK?' She'd said this before. This was their row. Ron sighed and dropped her hand. Juliet shrugged, sourly, and wandered out into the rain, thinking glumly about her fat ankles under the silly wet boots. She'd thought, if someone fancied her, she'd stop worrying what she looked like, but this didn't seem to be true. She blamed Ron. There was something so general about his lust, she just couldn't take it seriously.

The little elephant plodded out of the stable and stood in the outer enclosure, trunk down. Juliet waved to it, stared at its sad little eyes. Along the covered passage, on the edge of his feet, came Ron Fox.

The little elephant looked at him, upraised its trunk, and trumpeted, an extraordinarily loud mechanical noise, like a siren. Solemnly, Ron raised his arm, and trumpeted back: but terribly well, with such uncanny similitude that you'd think he'd been imitating elephants all his days, that that was his job. All of sudden, Juliet liked him.

The little elephant stared, and trumpeted again, and from inside the elephant house echoed the calls of his parent. Juliet started to laugh. Then lumbering out of the stable came the enormous shape of an adult elephant.

‘Myfanwy Prys!' trumpeted Ron. ‘Please! Let me give your daughter a poking! You know she needs one!' The mother elephant leaned over the concrete wall, stamping her feet, swishing her dangerous trunk.

‘Run!' called Ron, and they dashed out of the enclosure, leaned against the railings, weak with laughter. He grasped Juliet's waist, both mackintoshes crackling, and she leaned against him, a familiar yielding.

‘Doctor Dolittle,' she said, and she let him kiss her.

‘Look,' said Ron Fox, ‘I am keen on you, Juliet. Really. You're a sexy little thing. You drive me nuts actually.' And he put his hand back up under her mac as they walked on towards the Small Mammal House, where Giles had gone.

‘I don't think Struan does fancy Celia,' said Ron, suddenly. ‘I don't think you're going to get a result there. Struan is not at all stupid. I'd say he has an eye for Shirin.'

And Juliet, who knew the truth when she heard it, looked at him, amazed.

*   *   *

In the aviary, Celia's pigeon claws clutched Struan's Burberry sleeve. Her wee face peeped over the shawl, peaky and pink. Raindrops settled on the cobwebs of mohair.

‘Happy birthday!' she said, and she handed him a little parcel, tied with a flat silk ribbon. ‘I shouldn't open it,' she said. ‘It's a book. It will get wet.'

So Struan tucked the book under his coat, next to his breast.

‘It's
The Waves,
' said Celia, ‘a third edition. One of my favourites – have you?'

‘I've read it, aye,' said Struan, ‘most of it.'

‘It's so,' said Celia, in her whispery voice. ‘Everything. Isn't it?'

Struan remembered the copy of
The Waves
Mr Fox had lent him, sitting on his gran's table in Cuik, the wide-eyed blotchy portrait on the front, like Celia, now he came to think of it.

‘I couldnae get on with it, Celia,' he said, truthfully, ‘all those posh folk. They didnae seem much like the waves to me.' And, when Celia gazed up at him, mutely offended, ‘But I'll give it another go, eh?'

Then they walked on, through the disappointing, low, brown-roped aviary, the barges and cyclists of the Regent's Canal within spitting distance through the damp trees and railings.