Virtue Read online

  ‘Good,’ I reply. ‘And what do you do for Wellcome?’

  ‘Research,’ he says.

  ‘What sort of research?’

  ‘Pest control.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He nods. Doesn’t elaborate. Sometimes being around scientists is like being at a convention of spies: everyone is so possessive of their intellectual copyright, so scared of industrial espionage, that they practically tap the sides of their noses and say ‘Walls have ears’ if you try to ask them anything in detail.

  ‘I’m not actually interested!’ I want to scream. ‘I don’t give a toss about your new insecticide recipe! I don’t want to know about your human genomes or your hairy aphid contraceptive programme! I’m a waitress! I like pop music and staying up late and action movies and going on package holidays and getting chatted up in dark corners and dancing and lying around all day reading OK! magazine!’ Instead, I say, ‘I hear they’re good to work for.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says, then continues with something so up its own bottom that I want to smack him. ‘Their remuneration package is quite satisfactory,’ he says.

  Aaargh. Get me out of here.

  A waiter is suddenly hovering at my elbow. ‘Excuse me, miss,’ he says, and from the expression on his face I can see that he feels a deep, raw pity for me. ‘Your mother wants you.’

  ‘Ah. Okay—’ I correct myself. ‘Certainly. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  I take the opportunity to return my half-drunk vinegar to his little electroplated tray and squeeze between knots of people to where my mother stands clutching her glass of plain mineral water. Arrive and stand politely, obediently, awaiting acknowledgement. You don’t interrupt Grace Waters. It would be like hugging the Queen. I swore I wouldn’t do this, but I just have to check my watch. Immediately wish I hadn’t. It confirms to me that what has felt like three hours has actually only been twenty-five minutes.

  Even as Grace’s conversations go, this one seems to have reached the apogee of stiltedness. For The Woman Who Expects to Be Listened To seems to have hooked up with The Man Who Listens to Nothing. Grace isn’t a great one for small talk herself, but the man who stands beside her is one of those who assume automatically that anything anyone says to him while he’s standing up must be small talk and must, therefore, instinctively be tuned out. So Grace says, ‘It seems as though the Harvard chair will go to Jenkins, then,’ and he, gazing over her shoulder, sighs and says, ‘Evidently,’ before blinking into space a couple of times. And when, after a silence that suggests that she is hunting for something more to say and he is thinking absolutely nothing at all except that he would like to be somewhere else, she observes that she had been expecting the dean of studies to put in an appearance this evening, it seems like the effort of replying ‘Really?’ might actually kill him.

  Look: I have conflicts about my mother. And in situations like this, I feel sorry for her as much as I feel the fear. I mean, look at her. This isn’t like going to a parental cocktail party and trying to behave well in front of their friends. Grace doesn’t have friends. She has colleagues, and admirers, and sponsors, but she doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have people she kicks around with making up stupid puns, she doesn’t have drinking buddies with whom she can shrug off her woes by having a big night out, she doesn’t have anyone to ring up and sob on when the going gets rough. People don’t seek her advice about their love lives or their frustrations, or come to her with that emptiness lurking inside us all that occasionally just needs to be filled with stupidness: if Grace’s phone rings, it’s someone who wants her input on committee structures, or cell structures. And that’s why I keep my end up for her. I know it’s weird, but I know that how I perform matters intensely to her. I’m not here to give her back-up, to save her from dullards or gather stuff to gossip about later: I’m here as another part of her success story. You know how all parents want to show their children off in their best light? With Grace it’s much more than that. Grace wants her daughter to show Grace off in her best light.

  So after another pause where each of them twiddles their glass and holds an arm folded across their body, she turns to me and says, ‘This is my daughter, Anna.’

  ‘Richard Jones,’ he says, sticks a hand out behind his back to shake mine.

  ‘How do you do,’ I ask, and receive no reply.

  ‘Richard,’ my mother announces, ‘is looking for a head librarian.’

  Oh, bugger. She will keep trying to push my career ahead. ‘Oh, yes?’ I ask politely. He nods. My mother names a university in the north of England and I quail. It’s a good university: with a famous library full of papers donated by famous people, one that no one in their right mind would turn down. Unless, of course, they weren’t a librarian at all.

  ‘Anna,’ she says, never one to beat about the bush, ‘is a senior librarian at King’s College.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ he asks, as though she’s just told him I work in a hardware shop.

  ‘Anna,’ says my mother, ‘needs to move up to head librarian.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Richard Jones seems to have something stuck in his back teeth. Either that, or this conversation is making him dyspeptic.

  He suddenly asks me a question. Academics, I’ve found, generally don’t regard librarians as being part of their own, more as people who man the specialist hardware shops they patronise. ‘Like being a librarian, do you?’ he asks. I blink a couple of times, say, ‘Yes. Very much.’

  ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘would anyone want to be a librarian?’

  Well, I don’t bloody know, do I? Mel seems pretty content, and she gets to go home at five most days, which is pretty rare in itself these days. ‘It’s a privilege,’ I reply, ‘to spend one’s days surrounded by the works of great minds. And a privilege to help people further their own knowledge.’

  God, I can talk bollocks when I want to.

  ‘Know Siegfried Marriott?’ he fires.

  Hah. Trick question. Mel told me about this guy, who retired last year after a small scandal concerning marker pens. ‘I haven’t seen him since he left,’ I say. ‘But they hope to restore the Donne to close to original condition.’

  Richard Jones nods at the air. ‘Send me your CV,’ he says.

  ‘I will,’ I lie, ‘thank you. I’m most grateful.’

  ‘I haven’t given you the job yet,’ he says.

  And you never will. Grace turns to me. ‘Who have you spoken to this evening?’

  ‘Um, I—’ A load of blokes in cardis who haven’t seen me since I was twelve. ‘Several people.’

  ‘Names?’ she barks. Mother is wearing a fetching ensemble printed with forget-me-nots, frilled at neck and cuffs for extra coverage.

  God, what does she do that turns me into an amnesiac? I can’t remember a single person I’ve spoken to, a single conversation I’ve had. Well, I can, but they’ve all consisted of brief and stilted attempts at getting me to tell them what my mother is up to while keeping what they themselves are up to quiet. I take my specs off and start to polish them on the cuff of my shirtwaister to give myself a moment to think. ‘Dr Lewis said he enjoyed your lecture very much,’ I venture. Lewis has to be common enough a name to get away with.

  Grace snorts. ‘Dr Lewis? Jack Lewis?’

  ‘Yes,’ I try.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘I thought – I thought—’

  ‘I do wish you would make an effort to get things right,’ says Grace. ‘If you mean that fool Roger Lewis, I’m hardly going to be pleased to hear his opinions.’ She stops, narrows her eyes and stares at the side of my nose. ‘What’s that?’

  Oh, bugger. I play dumb. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say “what”,’ she says automatically as though I’m still five years old. ‘On your nose. Have you had it pierced?’

  ‘Mother!’ I protest. I’d thought the hole was pretty inconspicuous.

  ‘You have! You’ve had it pierced!’

  ‘Don’t be sil
ly, Mother.’ Think fast, girl. ‘It’s a blackhead,’ I explain. ‘I know it’s huge, but I didn’t think it was that huge.’

  She is unconvinced. ‘Really,’ I start again. ‘I’ve used everything on it and nothing works. Ghastly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Please don’t use florid terms like ghastly,’ she says.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say humbly. Change the subject as fast as I can. ‘Can I get you another drink, Mother?’

  She looks down at her half-drunk water. ‘I have plenty, thank you.’

  Aaaargh. Oh, God. ‘It must be warm by now. Why don’t I get you a fresh one?’

  She looks suspicious. Grace finds all solicitous behaviour suspect. Then she pushes her glass into my hand and turns away.

  I trot off and find a waiter. Pop behind a pillar and down a glass of vinegar in one. It doesn’t do to get drunk at things like this, but you need back-up. Then, thanking my lucky stars that my mother is only in the country three or four times a year, I bring her a new glass of water, a couple of chips of ice still visible on the surface.

  Grace is talking to a different bald bloke with specs. This one has, poor woman, a twittery wife in tow, a cuddly-looking, countrified woman who should, by all the laws of nature, be wearing a hat with fruit on it.

  As I put Grace’s glass into her hand, I see that the poor love is making a terrible fool of herself. Doesn’t know how to dig herself out of the hole she’s stepped into. Because, trying to be nice, she’s gone and told Grace how much she admires her. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you,’ she twitters. ‘I’m such an admirer.’ You practically hear the hiss as her husband sucks air through his teeth.

  Grace looks down: cons the motherly hips, the turquoise-knit two-piece, the black patent shoes, the puffy ankles, the giant just-in-case handbag, the trusting smile, and I think, God, Mother, please don’t. Just this once, try being nice. She doesn’t really admire you, she’s only saying it to be pleasant. There’s no need to—

  ‘Thank you,’ says Grace. And for a second I think: maybe she’s psychic, maybe she’s picked up my silent plea, maybe this innocent matron will come away—

  ‘And which aspect of my work is it that you most admire?’ asks Grace.

  Balding man and I let out tiny groans, groans so small that I wouldn’t notice his if my ear weren’t so sharply attuned to the sound.

  Cosy wife looks taken aback, her mouth a little ‘O’ of shock for a moment. And then, poor fool, anxiety drives her forward. ‘Well, everything, really,’ she states. ‘It’s all your work I admire.’

  ‘All my work?’ asks Grace. ‘How nice. And which aspects in particular?’

  Cosy wife goes pink. Can’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Are you a physicist?’ asks Grace.

  Cosy wife, pinker than before, shakes her head.

  ‘A biologist, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Grace. ‘You’re a musician.’

  ‘I play the piano …’

  ‘You play the piano.’

  ‘Not very well. Just as a hobby.’

  ‘Ah, good. Well, it’s very nice,’ says Grace, ‘to have the admiration of a fellow hobbyist. I merely write music as a hobby as well. And what do you do?’

  All this time, her eyes are boring into the bowed skull of her victim. That’ll teach you to smalltalk me, she is saying. That’ll teach you to approach me as an equal. So unnecessary. So my mother.

  ‘I think,’ stutters the vanquished one, ‘I’ll powder my nose.’ She looks in her handbag, finds a folded hankie, stuffs it up her sleeve and flees to the loo.

  Mother turns to the husband. ‘I believe I remember you,’ she says. ‘What do you do?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gentlemen of the Press

  Might have guessed the lull wouldn’t last. On Wednesday – Wednesday is usually a quietish night, so when we had a rash of bookings, one or other of us should have smelled a rat – the restaurant is full of tabloid journalists. Well, it wouldn’t be Thursday, because that’s when the PR freebies happen, and nothing keeps a hack away from her freebies.

  We can tell they’re tabloid journalists because the men are wearing the sort of suits you usually only see on Egyptian policemen, the women are all in need of a meal (and a deep conditioning treatment), and they’re all sitting around muttering things like ‘… waiter pushes the door open and there she is giving him a blow job. Checked into rehab in Arizona the next day’ and ‘… doing cocaine on the table in full view of everyone when she was seven months gone. No, straight up, I’ve seen the photos’. And besides, they would hardly be broadsheet journalists; broadsheets never waste budgets on things like this when they know they can write about what the tabs have been saying the next day.

  And another way we know that they’re tabloid journalists is that Leeza Hayman is one of them. Leeza let-me-tell-you-something-Mr-Blair Hayman, scourge of the immigrant, terror of politicians, voluble single mother who seems to be out at Showbiz Parties and Trendy Nightspots so much that one occasionally wonders if she would actually recognise the child in question were they to bump into each other on, say, Piccadilly Circus.

  We catch one glimpse of them through the kitchen door and retreat behind Shahin. ‘What the hell happened?’ asks Harriet. ‘What the fuck are they doing here? How did they find out?’

  I shake my head. I’ve no idea.

  ‘You like maybe I go and hit them with my ladle?’ asks Shahin. He always has the best ideas. For a moment, I’m tempted: the idea of Leeza Hayman being pursued around the restaurant by a howling Iranian cook is almost too good to pass up on. But Shahin only says these things for effect. I go out and beckon to Roy, who is standing behind the bar rubbing his hands together. He catches my eye, jerks his head around and comes through.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out there, Roy. Tabloid journalists.’

  ‘Really?’

  Roy is so surprised, looks so innocent, that I know immediately who the culprit is. And so does Harriet. She starts swearing. ‘Roy, you really are the biggest shit I know. You’re a treacherous scumbag and I fucking hate you. What do you want? You want me to go out there? What the hell did you think you were doing? You’ve thrown me to the wolves, Roy, you bastard.’

  ‘Harriet! Harriet!’ Roy tries the soothing-voice-of-reason act. ‘What makes you think they’re here for you? It could just be a coincidence.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right, and my arse is a coincidence,’ she snaps. ‘You total gobshite pig-bastard. You’ve got another think coming if you think I’m going out there.’ She starts pulling on her coat, heading for the back door into the alleyway. Roy comes round the counter to block her passage. ‘Don’t be silly, girl. Come on. You can’t just walk out!’

  ‘Just fucking try me!’ she snarls.

  ‘Harriet!’ Roy jabs a finger at her face. ‘If you go and leave me understaffed when we’re full, you’re not coming back. Do you understand?’

  ‘Well, you should have bloody thought about that before you rang every paper in the country,’ she says. ‘Get out of my way.’

  ‘I mean it,’ he warns.

  ‘Tough titty,’ she shouts. Steps round him and stalks into the night.

  Oh, great. Just when I think things can’t get any worse, I find myself facing the mob alone. For a moment, I’m tempted to go with her. Very tempted. I can’t believe he’s done this to us. But I look up and see his face, and I think: Christ. We’ve not been paid for a fortnight. We’ll both end up with nothing to live on if I walk too. So instead, I say, ‘You’re a bastard, Roy,’ and vacillate by the door.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ says Roy.

  ‘Oh, yes you do,’ I reply.

  ‘’S up to you,’ he says. ‘Believe me, believe her. Just remember, you’re never going to earn like you earn here anywhere else.’

  So I think: what do I do? I can’t afford to drop out of this job, not with all that money owing. And something naive and optimistic and stupid in me m
akes me think that maybe I can throw them off the scent. Leeza will recognise me, knows I live with Harriet; maybe I can make out that there’s been some sort of mistake, that it’s only me who works here. And I’m not a story in myself: or not at the moment, anyway, while Godiva’s so hot.

  I shake my head.

  ‘There are people in there want drinks,’ says Roy. ‘Either you get out there and serve them, or you get out. It’s your choice.’

  ‘Fuck you, Roy,’ I reply, and stalk out into the arena.

  Leeza is her usual voluble self. Patting her striped-blonde bob, and fingering her glass of dry white, she’s saying, ‘I’m going to have to sack that nanny. Now she’s come over all employment laws with me. Says if I want her to babysit I’ve got to pay her overtime, if you please. And now it’s National Insurance this and minimum wage that. I said, “Well, I’d like to see you get National Insurance in Kosovo, madam,” but it’s like talking to a brick wall.’

  She’s sitting next to a man, of course. He sups his lager, says, ‘Well, you don’t want to give her too much time off. She’ll only be off begging at Marble Arch.’

  ‘Probably takes my kid with her as an accessory,’ Leeza snarls. And all the time she’s saying it, she’s watching for Harriet.

  I think, well, might as well get it over with. Go over and say, ‘Hi, Leeza. What a surprise.’

  Leeza hams up the least convincing show of astonishment I think I’ve ever seen. Well, apart from Godiva’s when she won Woman of the Year in 1979. I may be sour on Grace, but I’ll say this for her: she doesn’t bother pretending she didn’t expect to win things. Actually, I’d love to see the camera on her face the day she doesn’t win a prize: now, that would be worth seeing.

  ‘Why—’ She bats her eyelashes. Leeza’s eyes are robin’s-egg blue, enhanced by blue eyeliner and copious amounts of glossy white highlighter on the lower lids. Batting her eyelashes must have got her a long way before she turned forty. ‘It’s …’

  I don’t bother to say anything. She knows who I am. I know that she knows who I am and she knows that I know that she knows who I am. So it’s hardly worth the waste of breath.