Читать книгу The Girl Who Broke the Rules - Marnie Riches, Marnie Riches - Страница 17

Laughter trilled from somewhere along the hall, carried laterally to the sleeping, dreaming girl along with a rotten perfume of cigarette smoke and alcohol. Though it was ring-fenced beyond several thick walls, the tendrils of this throbbing organism – her mother’s own experiment in grafting rare cultivars with exotic pond life and social climbers, fed by hedonism and infamy – crept under her bedroom door nonetheless.

The Police were in attendance, reggae beats syncopating badly with the even rhythm of her dream. Sting’s voice ushering her towards wakefulness. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Daddy’s home: sitting with his legs crossed in the modest garden of their large Mayfair townhouse, reading a medical journal in summery warmth. Watching him intermittently, revelling in his presence, she frolicked with her mother’s beloved terrier, Rudi, beneath the whippy branches of their small maple tree. Helping Gretchen to pour into glasses the cloudy lemonade, which, standing on a chair, she had helped to make and which she and her father would now drink together.

Except Daddy wasn’t home. And the thud, thud, thud of Blondie’s beating glass heart pushed sleep further and further away from the girl on unforgiving waves of sound, until she realised that this was neither their London house, nor their Berlin residence, nor the villa in Juan les Pins.

More laughter. Men’s this time. Deep and throaty. Glasses clinking.

Consciousness had taken a hold of her fully, now. The comforting dream had slipped beyond her recall. Soft Cell were complaining, instead, of having to endure ‘Tainted Love’. Staring at the high ceiling of that New York apartment, she considered that she might have liked that music, given half a chance. She was at an age, after all, where she had just started to take an interest in the charts. Top of the Pops on their television in London. American Billboard’s Hot 100. Full of new, exciting bands. Boys with lipstick, wearing black. Cheap-looking, stubby keyboards sporting mysterious names like Roland and Yamaha, that were a world away from the grand piano in the music room, at which she sat for hours every week, having Mozart drummed into her reluctant fingers by that stern old hag, Frau Bretschneider. Both instrument and teacher had been imported all the way from Berlin, like Mother’s favourite dinner service. But Mother and her friends were greedy. They had claimed the youthful synthesised beats as theirs. Though in truth, some of Mother’s younger friends had created those songs, thereby distorting even the soundtrack to her childhood with her mother’s notorious celebrity and her cronies’ sycophancy. How she’d like to run away, get away from the pain it drove into the heart of her.

Advancing in her pyjamas and dressing gown down the hall, the music thudded louder. The smells became ever sharper. Those tendrils beckoned her forwards; pulling her in towards the melee. On the other side of the door, beyond which she had been expressly told by Gretchen that she must not under any circumstances venture after lights-out, she beheld the writhing organism. A gathering, at least two-hundred strong, that stretched from one end of the vast, wood-floored drawing room to the other. Semi-naked men. Suited men. Men dressed as women. Women clad in outlandish, futuristic outfits. Some, barely dressed at all, breasts jiggling as they danced. Wearing incongruous hats. Dwarves carrying platters of food on their heads which some guests stuffed lasciviously into each other’s mouths. Pyramids of white powder, which most guests were snorting enthusiastically through small tubes. Dancing, smoking, kissing and more. The sort of thing the girl did not want to see and yet, driven by an eleven-year-old’s avid curiosity for all things grown-up, a scene she was compelled to gawp at and consign to memory. It was horrible. It was wonderful. She was not sure what it was.

To the left, beneath the apartment’s tall windows, with the towers of downtown Manhattan glittering in the background, the old guard sat in their off-the-shoulder dresses, sipping champagne with their stuffy-looking husbands. At odds in this uptown Babylon. She recognised them from the photos of her mother that often appeared within the pages of Vanity Fair. Lunching at Le Cirque with other thin, bouffant women.

But her mother was not seated among them. Where was she?

The girl’s gaze wandered to a far corner of the room. And there she was! Sporting enormous shoulder pads and a tiny, cinched-in waist, chatting animatedly to a man dressed in black, whose heavy spectacles and bushy white hair marked him out as some famous artist or other.

‘Mama!’ the girl shouted, advancing past a sweaty, topless man. He almost knocked the teddy bear clean out of her hand, as he danced with abandon with a sequin-encrusted he/she/it guest.

When her mother caught sight of her, her fury was self-evident. Instead of responding in their native tongue, Mama chided her in English; her transatlantic drawl made sluggish and clumsy with alcohol, the girl knew.

‘Veronica! You were told to go to bed and stay in bed.’

‘But I got woken up.’

‘Get back to bed this instant, young lady! You are very disobedient.’

Her mother grabbed her with bony, iron fingers. Dug her red nails in. The champagne stink of her rancid breath bore down on her. ‘Naughty little girl. What were you told?’

‘I miss Papa.’ The girl looked up at her mother with imploring eyes. Part of her acknowledged that she would rather be tucked in bythe homely, loving Gretchen. But she had needed to see what lay beyond The Door. And this was Mama. Her mother. She could not stem an instinctive, primal craving for maternal reassurance after a disconcerting dream, though she realised it would not be forthcoming. Mama took her parties very seriously. Mama had to look glamorous. Mama had to dedicate herself to her friends. It was expected.

‘Papa’s at Harvard,’ her mother shouted over the music, digging her nails in deeper. ‘You know that. He’s back next week. Then, we fly home.’ Her affected smile turned into something sinister, making the sinews in her thin, dancer’s neck seem taut and stringy. Speaking to her daughter through gritted, white teeth that seemed somehow sharper, nastier, reptilian. ‘But right now, little miss,’ the glossy brown tresses of Mama’s hair coiled and squirmed like the snakes on Medusa’s head that Veronica had peered at through parted fingers during the premiere of Clash of the Titans, ‘I am having a very important conversation with Andy, here, about my fundraiser for the Museum of Modern Art.’ Mama turned around and beamed warmly at the white-haired man. Gorgon’s head gone.

Back to bed, annoying little cunt. Veronica found herself being dragged by the belt of her dressing gown. The long walk of shame across the makeshift dance floor, past the great and the good and the downright rotten of New York high society, was punctuated by several photo opportunities. Red light. Hold the front page. And pose! Whenever a flashbulb popped in their faces, Veronica registered that her mother had instantly rearranged herself into a photogenic shape. Hand on hip. One foot forward. One to the side. Knee slightly bent. Easy smile. Arm draped around Veronica’s shoulder, as though she were a novelty prop. It had been the same on the red carpet at the premiere. The blinding glare of flashing bulbs, illuminating bleach-white grins of her mama and papa. Gretchen had shown her the photos in the gossip columns the following day, above a caption that identified their family trio as ‘mining heiress and former Broadway star, Heidi Schwartz, with plastic surgeon husband and daughter’. Veronica had recognised herself in one of the photos, trudging behind Perseus, looking downright glum. Too shell-shocked by the press attention to feel excited about being close to the star of the film.

Together, they stumbled away from the party, back down the hall, Veronica being dragged and at the mercy of her mother’s unsteady gait. Reeling. Bursting into her room. Harsh light on. Pyjama bottoms yanked down around her ankles.

‘Don’t…let… me…see…you…come…out…of…this…room…again!’ Mama said, slapping the words out onto her thighs with the flat of her hand like the drummer in a military tattoo. Yanked back up, once the skin was livid. ‘Horrible girl. Into bed!’

‘I’m so sorry, Mama,’ Veronica wept, climbing under her blankets and clutching her knees. Making herself as small as possible. Thumb in. Teddy next to her heart, at first.

‘You’re not sorry. You’re never sorry!’ Mama screamed. She removed her thick, red leather belt with its deep, jewel-studded buckle. Brought it down on her hard, so that it whistled through the still air and cracked as it made contact with her shoulder. The blankets provided a merciful barrier for its sting, at least. ‘Go to sleep! Go to sleep, you fucking pain in the ass!’

Veronica shut her eyes tight, though the tears leached onto her face and coursed freely into her ear. She was careful to hold her teddy protectively over her head, as the belt buckle found its mark again and again. The light of a Manhattan morning seemed a long way off.