Yesteryears Model.
Bony fingers creep from the Jasper Conran duvet. Like a
well-manicured Nosferatu, a translucent hand scrabbles for
the bedside light. A figure glances at the person still
occupying the bed. He’s breathing. She can see his limp hair
lift with each adenoidal grunt. Hauling herself up, she creaks
into a pair of McQueen slippers and wraps herself in a silk
Chrysanthemum Kimono.
Leaving the light on out of spite, she lingers by the door. The once agreeable distraction naked in her bed, is now an irritation.
The lothario, thirty years her junior, said he was doing her a favour staying. Nobody wanted to stay around a deluded old hag, sucking sustenance from the past. He was being cruel. Cruelty was his thing. She refused to play. She knew she looked good. Her recent posture problem, nothing her Chiropractor couldn’t straighten out. Apart from her hips rebelling against the cold, she’d scarcely changed since her catwalk days—Marvellous cheekbones. Eyes of a young Bette Davis, fused with a unique, haunting, ethereal presence, the agency said, sending her away to shed ten pounds and bleach her teeth.
These days’ folks were not so complimentary. Laughing as she tottered along the high street in vintage Westwood, her Boots purchased flamed-hair tight in a doughnut bun. Years of dieting leaching calcium from her bones gave her the pained look of a broken ballerina. Her willowy frame, maintained on a house sparrow diet and side serving of antidepressants. The bouncing prescription of Sertraline accounted for the slight spring in her gait.
Due to excessive Botox, her over-plucked eyebrows, hovered three inches above her glasses. . . waiting for permission to land. The aquiline nose, she’d inherited with a myopic right eye from her father, had been left in a Harley street kidney dish in the summer of 1962. Her bump surgically shaped into a more aesthetically pleasing Princess Grace of Monaco’s, at her mother’s request.
She closes the bedroom door as anger propels her down a long corridor where framed black-and-white catwalk photographs terminate at an art déco kitchen, where remnants of the previous night taunt. She sways and grabs the doorframe. A side-effect of the Syrah still pumping through her veins, mashed with a gut-flipping flash-back to last night’s singing faces.
How dare he torment her!
Staggering to the table, she thrusts a hand into the remains of the cheap supermarket birthday cake. A fractured 6 lies discarded on the floor, the 8 she ground underfoot with a pointed-toe last night. Humiliation pinks her sallow cheeks. Pushing a strand of L’Oréal 3.66 from her eyes, she composes herself and walks to the sink, stacks of Vouge and Harper’s Bazaar litter the worktop. The tap is stiff; a two-handed jerk gets the water running. She wishes the age-spots would vanish with the fondant. Hands and neck, the traitors of a woman’s body.
Outside it’s still dark, she likes the dark, imperfections go unnoticed. Life appears less harsh. The window exposes! She steps back; she avoids unplanned reflections.
Another recollection from last night, smacks! ‘No! No pictures,’ she’d screamed, hiding her face. Mindful the camera added an extra ten pounds as she cursed the accessibility of social media.
Where had Zack found those people? They were not her people.
There was no old crowd left! Those she hadn’t pushed away, withdrew, insulted by her rudeness. Gone were the poets, artists, free thinkers. The buzz of eclectic chatter, replaced with coarse monosyllabic grunts. How dare Zack mention her age in front of strangers. Wincing as the thought connects with her stomach.
Directing her rage at the silver pedal bin, she stomps open the lid. Soggy cards, lie soaked in red wine, cake, and limp spaghetti. She makes out the smeared L-o-v-of-To a Loving Mother.
They both knew it wasn’t true .
Releasing her foot, she lights the stove. Caffeine will help.
As she spoons coffee, the sunken grey eyes in the stainless-steel pot remind her of song lyrics. Time takes its toll, but not on the eyes. She huffs at the lie. The music of the 60s is more her vibe.
These boots are made for walkin’ And that’s just what they’ll do. One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
Strange, she remembers tiny details from years past, but can’t recall what she ate for lunch.
She lingers in the 60s until the scream of the kettle snaps her back to her yellow and black kitchen. Above the cream Smeg, chilling her lunchtime Grauburgunder, hangs a picture of her and Jean Shrimpton. A reminder of happier times. Her hands shake, the inconvenience of a hangover replaced by necessity. Glugging an inch of Smirnoff Blue in her coffee, she sips, repeats, waiting for what she thinks is normality. Her joints ache, but that’s more to do with the arthritis, that stupid doctor diagnosed, when suggesting she might have an alcohol problem. Alcohol wasn’t her problem, living without it was.
She shivers. Senses she’s not alone. Turning towards the door, her expression lightens, her heart quickens, as her eyes grow round with fondness.
‘Oh, you didn’t forget. Look at you! Are you exhausted? He threw me a party last night; you know how I hate that kind of party. Jennifer would never allow this to happen, if she was here, I said to myself. But enough of my ramblings, darling. Come closer, let me see. My, what a beautiful young lady you’ve become. I’m sorry I’ve no cake left, but then you were never that fond of cake.’
Stretching out her hand . . . the girl fades.
She remembers a birthday lunch in 1971. The laughter, the cocktails, the car, the never-ending scream, accompanying decades of emptiness. Bad choices, inappropriate men—the imbibed mother she’d become to her remaining child.
Removing his card from the bin, she wipes it on her Kimono and holds it to her cheek, congealed carbonara sauce smears her face.
