To begin with Michelle kept the modelling a secret, convinced her mother would freak out. When, inevitably, Cath did find out, she egged her on — the money was so good for them, after always having to scrimp towards bare adequacy. Michelle liked to think that it was she who'd drawn back. Much later she would say, 'It was crap, like going out with a big latex head jammed on my own.' She disavowed such caricatured regard. The truth was less heroic: Bendicks had used her up. She wasn't that photogenic anyway — she'd had her year, 1979, and her look was fossilized within it, crushed in a layer of fashionable sediment. So she retrieved her freckles and went to College. She dressed down and got her HND in Business Studies. She had boyfriends who were musicians; their greasy hair stained the tummy of her old teddy bear, brought from home to cosify a shared flat on the Wandsworth Road. The recognition factor faded until it was merely a subliminal thing that made every tenth person who passed her by in the street — and every third who met her face to face — feel certain they'd encountered her before. It was a villagey regard, quite tolerable. Michelle depended on the approbation of her good looks more than she could ever admit — that they weren't quite good enough gnawed at her.
Michelle put on a tan suede dress, calf-length, silk-lined, low on the back, high on the breast. She slung on a cream linen jacket and slipped into high-heeled sandals. She put a tiny diamond stud in each ear lobe and, after having turned back the cuffs, a chunky ethnic bracelet on each wrist … the salesgirl said they were from Malawi, I say Malaysia. On the radio a middle-aged smoothie was braking drivetime with his soft-shoe voice. The Flying Eye was summoned up, banking high over the North Circular: 'Lorry lost its load at the Welsh Harp' — an atmospheric crackle — 'tailbacks all the way back to Staples Corner …' Michelle snatched up her bag and rasped the door to. Glancing at her watch, she saw it was Seven fifteen! I can still make it.
'It's just a bloody toy of that Prince Albert,' Dave's fare expounded; 'it's not a real football team.' Dave had picked him up underneath the glass portico of the new Lloyd's Building and the getter hadn't stopped yapping since. 'I tellya that Hoddle's a fucking mercenary. He said he'd take a pay cut to go to a good European club — now he's taking a million quid to piss off to Monaco.' The fare was leaning right forward on the seat, shifting from one plump buttock to the other as the cab cornered, yet keeping his muzzle right in the conversational trough.
'Well, y'know how it is, guv, 'oddle is a born-again, so 'e's only followin' 'is inner voice.'
'Yeah, right!' the fare snorted. 'Just like Ian Rush. God said, "Pick up three mil' to go to Juventus" and Rushy replied, "Hallelujah!"' The fare waggled outstretched fingers like a nigger minstrel.
Dave was on a run, leapfrogging from fare to fare, using their pinstriped backs to propel himself across town. The bliss of driving when the only goal was money — and money was everywhere — was still with him a year into the job. Besides, he'd long since learned that just as he had to throw away his Hs, so he had to gather up the beautiful game. Dave didn't give a shit about football any more, but his mates demanded football talk, the fares demanded it, the world — itself just a bladder in space — demanded it. Dave thought the fare was a racist cunt, but his appearances before the PCO had taught him not to rise to anything. Don't rise to it. The Examiner tells you to leave the minute you've got your bum on the seat do what he says. If he tells you you're not fit to be examined 'coz you've got a cold, say, 'Yes, sir' and leave. Never argue. Always talk football. He'd enjoyed the appearances — and done well. The Knowledge was vast — yet circumscribed. The Examiners drove to the heart of it: they asked you for a run and its points. If you got them right, the number of days before your next appearance was halved — if not you were knocked back. Dave had two fifty-sixes, six twenty-eights, four fourteens. Then he took his driving test, and got his precious badge.
Michelle saw him standing right at the back of the lobby by glass cases full of headscarves and rolexes. He was looking endearingly distracted, his face empty like when he comes. She headed for him, with each pace the air-conditioning whispering the sweat off of her. Not that he minds. I-love-every-thing-a-bout-you! he'd shouted into her neck at the climax of their last rendezvous. Now, he rose into her embrace. 'Why here?' Michelle spoke into his ear, while trapping his hand in hers and dragging it between their bellies. Her nail snagged his wedding band — he winced and they broke. 'You won't believe it,' he flustered, 'but a client of my dad's did a runner from here this morning. He's asked me to come and check the room, then settle the bill. So … well … I thought.'
Michelle felt a trickle of desire descend her inner thigh as the lift urged them up. The bell tinged for the eleventh floor, and he dragged her out. The carpet shushed their feet as they staggered, pawing at each other, past a maid unloading haircare from a steel cart. The key fob clattered against the door as he fiddled for the lock, then they fell into its cigar-stunk interior. A corridor led them down to a harsh light box. The drapes had been pulled open and the sun setting over the jungly canopy of Hyde Park shone directly in on a scene of animal debauchery. Dogs and ducks have been fighting in here was Michelle's first thought, for there were bloody claw marks on the white sheet, and a pillow had been slashed open. . fighting over chocolate … because there were hundreds of tinfoil scraps strewn on the carpet … to the death, because there was an evil atmosphere in the room — not only cigars had been extinguished in here but hope as well.
'Guy's a druggie,' he said. 'I didn't think it'd be this bad, though, sorry.' He slumped against a stark armoire, on top of which empty spirits miniatures played chess.
'It's OK, don't worry, it doesn't bother me.' To show how little it bothered her she took his hand and used it to pull up the back of her suede dress. He peered through the red mist of her hair at the rear view of her in an opposing full-length mirror. 'Come on.' Michelle's tongue licked the pulse in his neck. 'Come on …' Her hand, groping at his hip, felt a wad of stuff and he recoiled, his hand going to his pocket to half withdraw a rolled-up nappy. 'Jesus,' he softly exclaimed, 'oh, Jesus … I … I …' He shrank away from her. 'I can't, Michelle.'
'Whaddya mean?' You know what he means, you stupid cow.
'I can't.' His shaky hands had lost their magic, while the nappy poking from his pocket was the ear of a rabbit conjured up by conscience. For three seconds Michelle teetered between self-righteousness and self-pity, before falling to the right, into the briny.
Come on, you Spu-urs! Come on, you Yids! Dave had sunk into a memory of White Hart Lane, where little Dave and big Benny bawled with the mob, urging on the Tottenham players, who spun, dipped and slid on the viridescent stage … Yids shouting 'Yids' — you gotta hand it to us — getting in the dig before the yocks did. 'Anywhere here — no, there!' The fare cut in on Dave's reverie. They were bumbling up Hill Street in Mayfair, swarthy types in lilac shirts were debouching from townhouses stamped with brass plates. Jet-set pikeys who live in gaffs so stuffed with glass-topped furniture they look like fucking department stores. 'Here?' Dave slotted the Fairway in between two Daimlers.