The combination of such an emotionally charged shoot, the great work we had produced together despite it all, the pleasure of spending two whole days with Paul and the high spirits at the party left me feeling pretty wired.
Things didn’t wind down in the suite until after 1 a.m. when Paul and his pals – including Nivek – decided they had to go off to some new boy bar. I declined the offer to join them and then, as I sloped off to my room, I caught sight of Gemma and Kent kissing passionately in the corridor. It was quite clear what was going to go on there and I felt a sharp pang of envy. Well, not envy exactly. The truth of the matter was I felt fantastically sexed up.
I sat in my lonely hotel room all too aware of what Gemma and Kent were probably getting up to in hers and feeling quite mad with desire. And it wasn’t random sexual desire either. I didn’t just want sex, I didn’t want sex with Kent, or even Ollie. I wanted sex with Miles.
So I did what drunk and horny women so often do, I drank – a shot of brandy from the mini bar – and dialled. I hadn’t even checked what time it was in Australia, but Miles answered straight away and sounded fully awake. Just hearing his voice say hello sent a tremor through my loins.
‘It’s Emily,’ I said.
‘Hey, Em,’ said Miles, sounding surprised and pleased. ‘How are you, darls?’
I let out a big sigh and then I told him.
‘I’m horny,’ I said. ‘Horny, horny, horny, just like the song, quite pissed, alone in a hotel room and thinking about you.’
‘Is that right?’ said Miles in a voice which was all smile.
‘You’re not in New York are you?’ I asked him, half seriously. Well, stranger things have happened.
‘If only,’ he said. ‘I’d be right there, but actually I’m here in Australia, on the beach at Seal Rock. I’ve been surfing all day, I’m just about to leave, but I can’t tear myself away from the waves. Listen…’
I could distinctly hear the sound of waves crashing on a beach.
‘Can you hear it?’ he asked me.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, wanting him more than ever. I would have done a From Here to Eternity with him right there on that beach if I could have.
‘Can you hang on a minute?’ he asked. His voice sounded more Australian somehow over the miles. And even sexier. I held on and heard what sounded like a door slamming.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’m in my panel van. What are you wearing?’
‘In your what?’ I said. ‘And what do you mean, what am I wearing?’
He laughed.
‘It’s a van-type car thing. An “estate”, I think you Poms call them. And I mean, tell me what you’re wearing – as you take it off. Have you still got your shoes on?’
I had. Very high heels, as usual. No tights, as usual. Low-rise jeans. Layered T-shirts. A bright pink Agent Provocateur thong. I described everything as I took it off, until I was lying naked on the bed.
‘Don’t lie down,’ said Miles.
‘How did you know I was lying down?’ I squeaked.
‘I could tell by your voice. Don’t lie down until I’m ready. I want you to sit up and watch me. I’m pulling down the zip on my wetsuit now – can you hear it?’
I could hear it and in my mind’s eye I could so clearly see it, I nearly fell off the bed with desire. And so it went on, until I realized I had just had what is known as phone sex. It wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it was something.
We didn’t ring off immediately, but just lay there – well, I lay there, I suppose he was in his car seat – breathing.
‘Emily?’ he said eventually.
‘Yeah?’ I answered.
‘I’m glad you called,’ he said and then he paused for a moment. ‘I miss you.’
I swallowed hard. I wasn’t expecting that. I missed the sex, but did I miss him? I couldn’t allow myself to.
‘Well, I’ll see you here in New York in February,’ I said cautiously. ‘I’ll email you, nearer the time. Or I might call you again, before then.’
‘You do that,’ said Miles and finally we hung up.
Even though I hadn’t had much sleep I woke up the next morning feeling almost as good as if I’d had live sex with Miles. Just lying in bed stretching and thinking about it made me want to ring him again. So I did.
This time, I had clearly woken him up. It took him a moment or two to come to, but when he realized it was me the smile came right back into his voice.
‘You are a horny little girl, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘Not particularly until I met you,’ I replied, in all honesty.
‘Well, what can Dr Feelgood do for you tonight – or this morning, or whatever it is with you? It’s midnight here.’
So I told him – in graphic detail.
I went out into that New York day feeling ready to take on the world. It was a bright morning for mid-November, with an invigorating chill and a bright blue sky. I had so much energy I decided to get the hotel to send on my bags and set out to walk all the way up to Ursula’s.
I counted it later; it was over eighty blocks, more actually, as I didn’t take the most direct route, but wound through SoHo for a while checking out the shops, stopping for coffee at Café Havana and cruising through Nolita, before drifting along Lafayette Street and up to Union Square.
I spent some time browsing in the huge Barnes & Noble, then hit Fifth Avenue to take me all the way up to 83rd Street, with detours en route into Bendel’s and Bergdorf’s. As I walked I thought about Miles. All the way. For once I let my mental brakes off and just gave in to enjoying the memories. I was intrigued by what he’d said about me being ‘a horny little girl’. It just wasn’t a way I had ever thought of myself.
I mean, I liked sex well enough, I certainly wasn’t frigid, but I didn’t obsess on it like some of my friends. Nelly was always going on about it, in gory detail, which I had always found a bit much. I was happy when it came along, but didn’t think about it much in between. Until now. When it seemed I could think of nothing else. It was quite weird, really.
Ollie rang me when I was in FAO Schwarz buying Christmas presents for his nieces and nephews, and Barbie accessories for the girls at the office. As I heard his familiar voice, I was struck once again by my total lack of remorse about what I had done the night before – and that very morning. It just didn’t seem anything to do with my relationship with Ollie, it was something that happened elsewhere; in another part of the world and another part of my head.
When Ollie commented on how upbeat I sounded, I attributed my perkiness to the success of the shoot, spending time with Paul, my anticipation of a few days cocooning with Ursa and that famously infectious New York buzz. All of which were part of it as well.
Ollie was chirpy too, getting really excited about Slap for Chaps, which had now been picked up by the broadsheet newspapers. Even the mighty ‘Today’ programme had interviewed him about it.
‘Wow,’ I said, trying to sound slightly more enthusiastic than I felt. ‘Radio 4. That is grown-up. Anyone would think it was August. Make-up for men is silly-season stuff for them surely?’
‘Well, you’d think so,’ said Ollie. ‘But there is something about Slap for Chaps that has got them interested from a sexual politics point of view and they are always looking for that angle. “Woman’s Hour” is going to do something too. Iggy’s comments about trying it out “to feel like a woman” seem to have given it some kind of intellectual credibility. They’ve got Germaine Greer commenting on it and stuff like that. Suits me, Emily.
‘Oh!’ he added suddenly. ‘Did you know our friend Iggy is going to be the new designer at Albert Alibert? That’s helped give the story legs too, because now he’s really in the big league.’
‘Wow,’ I said again, although I already knew. Like I said, I really can keep other people’s secrets. ‘So it is happening, that really is fantastic. Hey, I might be front row at that show in future, that really would be a blast. I’ll call them when I get to Ursa’s. I’m on my way there now.’
‘Well, you carry on having a good time in New York, my darling,’ said Ollie, in winding-it-up tones. ‘I’m holding the fort here. I’m going to be Phone Off a lot of the time though, with all that’s going on, which is why I’ve rung now, just to let you know I’m thinking about you.’
We said goodbye, with all the usual soppy stuff and then without missing a beat I carried on walking up Fifth Avenue, with a throb in my groin and credit cards burning a deeper hole in my pocket with every step I got closer to Barneys. By the time I had studied every floor of my favourite store in detail, picking up a few bits and pieces along the way that I wouldn’t have been able to get in London, it was after five before I got to Ursula’s.
I had planned on nipping into the Frick before going to her place, but by the time I got to 70th Street I had so many carrier bags I decided to go the next day instead. I could do the Met and the Whitney as well, pop down to MoMA and make it a total art day. Manuela opened the door and told me ‘Missis Lorimer’ was out at meetings, but would be back to have dinner with me at home.
I went to my old room and lay down on the bed I had slept on since I was eleven years old. Ursula had changed nothing in there in the intervening years. My old teddies were still there. Pictures my dad had drawn for me were framed on the wall. My Barbies were still ranked up on the bookshelves – even though I knew how much Ursula hated them – and there were pictures of my family looking remarkably happy on every surface.
I loved that room and always looked forward to sleeping in it, especially since Ollie had started making me stay in hotels when I went to New York with him. The only time we had stayed at Ursula’s place together I’d asked her if we could go in the guest room instead, because it just didn’t feel right to stay in my childhood bedroom with him. For one thing it only had a single bed, but when I was there on my own, I couldn’t wait to get into it.
It still was very much my room; it even said so on the door in the bright china letters Ursula had glued up the day I had arrived from England, a shell-shocked little casualty of the bad places unbridled creativity can take people. At least that’s how I saw it. My father’s death was just a ghastly stroke of fate, but I felt somehow that the unbearably intense atmosphere in our home had hurried it along. He was only thirty-eight when it happened, after all.
Living with my mother’s moods and excesses would have put a strain on anyone’s health and he had a fair dose of ‘artistic temperament’ himself – which as far as I was concerned was a euphemism for too much drinking and too much thinking about yourself. In my opinion, my mother’s mental illness was another version of the same thing.
And that was how I had come to see the catastrophe of my parents’ lives. Death by emotional self-indulgence. Living death in my mother’s case. There is no doubt they were both intensely creative people; my father was truly gifted, my mother I wasn’t so sure about in that regard, but she was a published poet.
The problem was, as they were both also blessed with financial security, they had no reality checks to keep them earthed and they just disappeared up the fundament of their artistic endeavours – and their pot pipes. Not even having kids was enough to ground them. They had too much freedom to express themselves.
Most of the artists I knew who were my contemporaries had to do other jobs to fund their ‘real’ work and it seemed to keep them relatively normal. Ossie and Polly were a case in point – they were rich kids, much better off than my parents actually, and they never really did anything. Without the balance of an innate work ethic, or some kind of fundamental humility, I had come to the conclusion that inherited wealth could be a curse for the naturally creative.
It was great how I could analyse all of that now in a relatively detached way, I thought to myself, as I lay there looking at a lovely black and white photo of my father holding me up – a chubby smiling little girl – in front of one of his paintings. It was the one that was now in the Tate Modern, I realized. Time was when I couldn’t even look at that photo, let alone think about it all, but since being with Ollie, doing well at work and starting to feel relatively secure, I had gradually been able to allow the memories of those times – good and bad – to seep back into my conscious mind and I seemed to have assimilated them in some way.
Of course, I did sometimes feel racked by guilt and wonder whether I should go and see my mother again, but I always came to the same conclusion. It would upset me horrendously – and she wouldn’t know who I was anyway, so what was the point? I had once asked Ollie if he would come with me to see her, but he had looked so horrified at the prospect I had never brought it up again. Suited me, really. I was jogging along very nicely in my life as I was and I didn’t see the point of upsetting myself for nothing. It worked for me as it was.
Although Ursula had urged me constantly over the years, I hadn’t ever had any therapy or counselling; I hadn’t even ever discussed what had happened with my brother – in fact, that was the main reason I didn’t see much of Toby. If I didn’t see him, it couldn’t come up, easy. I had found that on the whole, the less I disturbed all those memories the better I was and without needing to resort to the prop of therapy, I had sorted it all out in my head, in my own way.
Ursula never seemed to believe me, though. She had mother issues of her own – which was understandable when you’d met her terrifying parents – and because it had worked for her, she was convinced it was the answer to everything and everyone’s problems. It was just about the only thing that really got me down about her.
The ‘you’re too thin’ nagging was just an irritation, which I actually found quite amusing, seeing how overweight she was. I found it hilarious that she could tell me that it was ‘emotional blockages’ that made me so ‘obsessed’ with staying slim – or thin, as she always called it – when years of therapy had failed to sort out whatever was keeping her fat.
Then there was the baby thing. She just refused to believe that I had made a free and happy decision that I didn’t want to have children. She was convinced that somehow Ollie had brainwashed me with his own ‘selfishness’, as she called it.
So although I had been annoyed when she had dragged Paul into our squabbles about these things, I was pretty much used to them, but the therapy thing really got me. People like my mother – mad people – needed therapy. Not me. I was fine.
As we sat down for dinner that night in a cosy little nook off her huge Fifties kitchen, I wondered how long it would take her to bring up her favourite subjects – particularly Dr Claptrap, or whoever her latest brilliant, perfect-for-me, analyst discovery was.
Longer than usual, I was thinking as we polished off the bottle of Meursault 1998. Ursa was a wine connoisseur and enjoyed sharing it with me. She’d taught me to appreciate it, starting me with one glass with dinner from when I had first arrived at her apartment. Along with books, art and music, she thought it was something civilized people needed to know about.
So far she hadn’t brought up my weight; why I should move to New York; my shallow, selfish, venal husband; my self-deluding attitude to having children; or my need for therapy to sort out any of the above – so I’d been chattering happily on, telling her all about the shoot and what I’d been up to.
We’d discussed how wonderful Paul was, especially considering his grim upbringing, I’d marvelled appreciatively about Snapdragon’s beauty and Ursula had announced she was getting bored with her. A sure sign she was going to end the liaison before Snappie cooled off on her.
I had experienced what happened after such a parting. There would be snowdrifts of daily letters, poetry delivered by hand, hung-up phone calls and the apartment buzzer going in the middle of the night – for about ten days, before the girl got over it.
Just once I’d seen what happened when Ursula didn’t end it first. A woman she had been more seriously smitten with than usual – someone closer to her own age and sophistication – had cooled off on her and told her she wanted some ‘space’. Ursula had retreated to her bed for a fortnight and it had taken her a lot longer than that to get over it fully. It was the only time I had ever seen my human rock falter.
By the time we were halfway down a bottle of 1985 Margaux to go with a hearty boeuf bourguignon, I was beginning to wonder what was going on. It never took Ursa this long to start probing me. It was quite a novelty, so I just went with the flow, telling her all about Nelly and Iggy – including his extraordinary life story, which got her quite excited about doing a book deal for him – which eventually led me on to the Sunday salon and Slap for Chaps.
Ursula listened intently, her face not betraying much, then as I was telling her about my latest conversation with Ollie, how he had been interviewed on the ‘Today’ programme about it and was going to be on a discussion panel with Germaine Greer – an old pal of Ursula’s – she finally came out with it.
‘Are you having an affair, Emily?’ she said. Just like that, out of nowhere.
I just gaped at her, I was so amazed. How did she know? And was I? Was this strange thing with Miles an affair? I had never thought of it that way.
Ursula took a long drink from her wine and raised an eyebrow at me.
‘Well, it’s either that, or you’re pregnant,’ she finally said. ‘And I don’t think you would have drunk two bottles of wine with me if you were. Anyway, having a baby might make you fat and I’m sure you wouldn’t risk that, much as I long for a grand-un-daughter. So, are you going to tell me?’
‘How did you know?’ was all I could croak out.
She threw back her head and laughed and then surprised me, by jumping up from her seat and coming round and giving me one of her special bear hugs. Hugus Ursus I called them.
‘Oh, you funny little girl,’ she said. ‘I’m so happy for you. Enjoy it.’
Then she started clearing the plates from the table and asking if she could tempt me with any of the cheesecake she had bought specially from Payard – the only pudding I couldn’t resist. It took me a moment to realize I was actually disappointed that she hadn’t asked me more questions. I got up and followed her into the kitchen.
‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘You’re going to spring that on me and then not ask me anything more about it?’
‘Well, do you want to tell me?’ she said.
‘I want to know how you guessed,’ I said, jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter while she put the things in the dishwasher.
‘You have a glow, Emily. A post-coital glow. It’s as simple and corny as that.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘When you have known as many women as I have, you can spot these things.’
I pondered for a bit.
‘Did I have the glow when I saw you on Tuesday? When we went to Elaine’s?’
‘A little. I noticed something different, but not so much as tonight. The minute I saw you this evening I knew.’ She paused a moment. ‘Is he in town?’
It was my turn to chuckle.
‘Only on the end of the phone,’ I told her.
She roared with laughter.
‘Well now, that is an affair. I was going to play it cool with you, but now I am fascinated. Who is he? Or she?’
‘He!’ I said indignantly.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Don’t stress. I just don’t make assumptions, that’s all. And it quite often takes a complete change to make someone glow the way you are. You look radioactive.’
She got the cheesecake out of the fridge, put the open box on the worktop between us and got out two spoons. She handed me one and dug hers right into the middle of it.
‘So,’ she said, pausing with the spoon at her lips. ‘Spill.’
I dug my spoon into the cheesecake and filled my mouth with the heavenly sweet creaminess. I paused for a moment with my eyes closed to savour it – and then I told her everything.