‘Can’t a girl go to her own flat when she likes?’
‘You’re never there either!’
‘Can’t a girl disconnect the phone sometimes?’
‘You little actress, you were off somewhere else!’
‘Are you going to pretend you don’t know why things are in this state?’
‘You’re cheating on me, you bitch!’
‘Why are you so upset? I’m trying to tell you something, don’t you understand?’
Selina unbuttoned her coat. She crossed her arms and stood there bristling with all the counter-strength of the street.
‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘aren’t you the one. For God’s sake go to bed and try and sleep it off before dinner. Where are we going anyway?’
No, I’ll be okay, I said or whimpered — just get me some tea or something … Selina, she’s turned the tables on me somehow, that Selina. I wish I knew how she managed it. Sighing, I lay on the couch with my mug. Selina established herself at the circular steel table: evening paper, teacup, a single, deserved cigarette. She turned the pages briskly, paused, frowned, cleared her throat, flexed her eyelids, and leaned forward in cold concentration. I knew what she was reading about. She was reading about the palimony trial in California. Selina’s been following the story. So have I. Palimony sounds like bad news for the boys. As I understand it, the ruling states that if a chick makes tea once a week for the same guy — she gets half his dough. Every evening now, Selina turns straight to the palimony page, and goes all quiet. I hope she won’t be wanting any palimony from me.
‘Let’s be realistic for once, shall we?’ she said, later. ‘You’re too thick to realize it but I’m your last chance. No, not those. They cut (into me. Who else is going to put up with you?’ ‘No, not those. We had them the other night.’ ‘Look at yourself. No, they need washing. I mean you’re hardly a catch, are you. You’re thirty-five. Act it.” ‘Yeah, that’ll do. With these. Put them on too.’ ‘If you’re waiting around for someone better—hang on. I’ve got it — then you’re whistling Dixie, mate. Who would take you on anyway? Martina Twain?’ ‘Wait. Take those off and put these on.’ ‘She gave you that book, didn’t she.’
‘What book?’ I asked, impressed anew by Selina’s witch radar. ‘The library book on your bedside table. The one you read the first page of every night.’
‘That’s good. That’s good. It was sort of a present.’ ‘A present, my arse. Honestly, the ideas some people have about themselves.’
‘Face the facts,’ she said, later still. ‘Grow up, for God’s sake. I’d settle for you. Settle for me. I’d look after you. Look after me. Give me children. Marry me. Make a commitment. Make me feel I have some kind of base to my life. At least let me move in here properly.’
‘All right. Yeah, okay,’ I said. ‘You can move in here properly.’
So the next morning when the crows in the square were still making their sounds of hunger I hired a van at the mews garage and off we chugged down the hill, Earls Court way, to collect Selina’s stuff. Her flatmates Mandy and Debby flitted fanciably about the place, half-dressed, serving me coffee with the reverence due to a moneyman and debt-settler. I lounged on the couch in the attic sitting-room, pyramidal in shape with deep-set windows. Through these chutes of slates you could inspect the weather, which was making a comeback of the stalled-career variety, the sun all rusty and out of condition, glowing then failing suddenly like a damp torch. Selina donned an apron and put her hair up under a baseball cap and prickled with female make-do and knowhow, while Mandy and Debby took it in turns to amuse me downstairs. Mandy and Debby, they look like nude-magazines too. They look like Selina. Modern sack-artists aren’t languid Creoles who loll around the boudoir eating chocolates all day, licking their lips and purring, their whiskers flecked with come and cream. No, they’re business heads on business shoulders, keen-sensed and foxy, not young-looking either but tough, tanned and weathered. Selina falls in and out of love with these two, as she does with Helle. She once told me, in a voice full of hatred and contempt, that Mandy and Debby have been known to do escort work, the deal being as follows: the punter pays the agency £15 per date, of which the chick gets two. That’s right: two quid. A scandal, isn’t it? So naturally the girls do a bit of business on their own account. Nothing went on here, though, in this shacky walk-up: what went on went on in interchangeable intercontinental hotel rooms, in the private suites of corrupt clubs and thriving-speakeasies, in glazed Arab flats. Mandy and Debby looked thepart all right, they looked tough enough for this, particularly Debby, who gave me so much eye-contact and hand-on-knee and dressing-gown disclosure that I almost asked for her telephone number. But of course I realized that this would be a pretty gratuitous move, under the circumstances, I already had her telephone number.