Press-ups, knee-bends, and further sexual callisthenics. Complete body-service (sorry about all this): pits clipped, toes manicured, pubic hair permed and styled, each tooth brushed, tongue scraped, nose pruned. (The next day I would have time only to run back after school and scorch my rig under the hot tap.) I read two early Edna O’Briens and annotated my sex-technique handbooks. Horlicks at nine o’clock.
Nor did Rachel stand me up.
That afternoon, over boiling pink tea, ruddered by perceptive questions, encouraging smiles and apt generalizations from myself, Rachel Noyes told the story of her life.
It read like dingily enlightened ‘sixties fiction. She wasn’t Jewish at all (thereby cutting out any You-marry-white-boy? gambits). Born in Paris nineteen years earlier (one month older than me). Of course, her father had dutifully ‘gone off’ when Rachel was ten (‘He just couldn’t be bothered any more, I suppose’), and her mother (who ‘had some money of her own’, let’s be thankful for small mercies) moved to London almost straightway.
For what it’s worth:
‘I spent most of the time with Nanny Rees when I wasn’t away at school. She was lovely. I still go and see her in Fulham. Mummy had to let her go when I was sixteen. Huh, I cried for a week. Then Mummy married Harry, which was probably a good thing because he’s sweet and she was getting terribly lonely by herself. She knew him for ages before, and I suppose they were lovers for quite a long time. He’s so sweet -you’d love him, everyone does. He’s a very steady … sane sort of person, and Mummy needs that because she’s a bit neurotic about some things. She can get herself into awful states. I don’t think she ever quite got over Daddy. He was such a bastard to her. Then they [her mum and sponger Harry] got the house in Hampstead and I left Lawnglades and here I am.’
I asked about her real father.
‘I see him every now and then. He’s an artist, still lives in Paris, in le seizième [full accent] with his “mistress”. They haven’t married. I stayed with him for two weeks this summer. She was there. I liked her. She’s a sculptress, much younger than him. I can’t see why he still insists on seeing me, he’s only beastly to me whenever I do see him. He keeps on ringing up home when he’s drunk and shouts at me.’
I asked what sort of thing he shouted.
‘Oh – why haven’t I written, when am I coming over again, am I getting my A Levels out of the way. And he says nasty things about Mummy, that she’s a liar and things. But that’s only natural, isn’t it? – for divorced parents to be at each other’s throats over the children. There’s bound to be rivalry … don’t you think?’
I did.
‘He rang last week, actually. Wanted to know whether I was on the pill or not, can you believe. I said, “Look, mate, if I get pregnant I won’t come running to you!” That shut him up.’
I betted that it had. The pill. How sexy.
‘We never mention him at home. No point. That’s one of the sweetest things about Harry. Never mentions him. We’re all very lucky to have him [Harry], stops us all from going crazy. His wife left him, too, so they’re rather a. good pair. She left him with Arnold, when he [Arnold] was fourteen, which is a terribly difficult age to leave a boy. Have you met Archie?’
‘No, I haven’t.’ I didn’t say that I had seen ‘Archie’ at the party and already nourished much hatred for him.
She looked at me as if in reappraisal, almost certainly the result of being allowed to talk about herself for so long.
‘You must come up and meet them.’
I fluttered my eyelashes.
‘Shall we go?’ she asked.
I thought for a second that this was a gentle, rather Whit-manesque invitation to come and meet them right away. But it wasn’t. I picked up the tab. Meanwhile Rachel blew her nose into a ragged tissue and put on some camp round sunglasses: both actions made her nose look big and red.