make a break. To go abroad for the first time in my life. To help Kim-Jim. To do the work I loved doing. To have a great time, staying with Natalie Sheridan, in her hideaway house in Madeira.
Of course I said yes. Nothing warned me. The only man who could have warned me had been in a wheelchair.
I flew to Madeira in April.
Madeira, so my mother said, was a place you used to take your aunty to in the winter.
It depends what sort of aunty you’ve got, but I wouldn’t take one in April: not if she’s easily shot.
You can’t wear wool there in April either, so I had clothes to buy first, and a passport to apply for, and my accountants in Glasgow to visit.
A passport, because I’d never been overseas before. Britain for Rita, I’d sworn. I felt a traitor, going now. Not afraid, but a traitor.
I had a story all ready to spin my mother, but I didn’t need it. When I got to the nursing home, they said she had gone a bit confused again, and I wasn’t to mind if she was bad-tempered.
She wasn’t, and she knew me, although she thought I was still at school. It wouldn’t be Robina to be bad-tempered. We talked about hockey.
The rest of my things were in Troon, including my tape-recorder and radio and cassette-player, and all the make-up stuff I’d need for Natalie Sheridan. I went to pick them up, not liking the house without my mother in it, and had words with my Geddes aunt, as I always do.
That’s one aunt I wouldn’t take anywhere. She wouldn’t go with me anyway. She has a motto as well: ‘Your Dad, God rest his soul, would never have let you.’ But she runs the house while my mother’s away, and sees the gutters don’t leak and the taps have washers on them. And takes messages for me, on the telephone.
The night before I left Glasgow, I went on the town in Byres Road with a bunch of old pals from show business. Two were girls I’d been friends with at school. One of them was a singer and the other had become a producer.
Put together, they earn half what I do, and that’s leaving out my investments.
They can spell.
They liked these clothes I’d bought, and my hair. I’d had my hair cut and made a new colour. It finished up quite a nice shade of chrome with some blue in it.
They asked about the new job, and I told them.
Natalie’s villa had a swimming pool, Kim-Jim had said. He never had much time to swim, but I wasn’t to let her work me so hard. I would be there as her beautician, and anything else I did was up to me. The most I might have to do was book the odd plane or hotel, or phone up people with messages. There were English girls Mrs Sheridan could hire for dictating. Everyone else spoke Portuguese.
Phone up people with messages.
I was glad that Natalie had had no more chats with Johnson Johnson before she left London.
Ferdy, who was busy on the artwork for a big, glossy book on Sexual Strategy in Flowers, to be printed in Luxembourg, reported that Johnson was apparently still making great strides considering, and had mentioned something about a bill for phone calls to Troon and Glasgow and Lisbon, as well as blue and magenta stains in the bathroom.
I thought of the blond boyfriend, and the security men, and all those bloody phone calls and the perfectly good quiche I’d made him, and told Ferdy that if his pal Johnson was fussed over anything, he could get Lady Emerson to pay for it.
Once, on my way past from Claridge’s, I’d seen a po-faced woman out walking Bessie past the flats, and another time, Bessie with Mrs Margate. Then, just before I went north, I saw Mrs Margate ouside a coffee-bean shop by herself.
I didn’t ask Ferdy, but it looked to me as if the capable woman had soon got her books.
And maybe even that old Bessie had got hers as well, if the Owner had crawled from his expensive new sickbed and coped with something apart from mail orders.
Male orders?
It was, luckily, none of my business. I was going to a new job, a rather special new job, in
Of course I said yes. Nothing warned me. The only man who could have warned me had been in a wheelchair.
I flew to Madeira in April.
Madeira, so my mother said, was a place you used to take your aunty to in the winter.
It depends what sort of aunty you’ve got, but I wouldn’t take one in April: not if she’s easily shot.
You can’t wear wool there in April either, so I had clothes to buy first, and a passport to apply for, and my accountants in Glasgow to visit.
A passport, because I’d never been overseas before. Britain for Rita, I’d sworn. I felt a traitor, going now. Not afraid, but a traitor.
I had a story all ready to spin my mother, but I didn’t need it. When I got to the nursing home, they said she had gone a bit confused again, and I wasn’t to mind if she was bad-tempered.
She wasn’t, and she knew me, although she thought I was still at school. It wouldn’t be Robina to be bad-tempered. We talked about hockey.
The rest of my things were in Troon, including my tape-recorder and radio and cassette-player, and all the make-up stuff I’d need for Natalie Sheridan. I went to pick them up, not liking the house without my mother in it, and had words with my Geddes aunt, as I always do.
That’s one aunt I wouldn’t take anywhere. She wouldn’t go with me anyway. She has a motto as well: ‘Your Dad, God rest his soul, would never have let you.’ But she runs the house while my mother’s away, and sees the gutters don’t leak and the taps have washers on them. And takes messages for me, on the telephone.
The night before I left Glasgow, I went on the town in Byres Road with a bunch of old pals from show business. Two were girls I’d been friends with at school. One of them was a singer and the other had become a producer.
Put together, they earn half what I do, and that’s leaving out my investments.
They can spell.
They liked these clothes I’d bought, and my hair. I’d had my hair cut and made a new colour. It finished up quite a nice shade of chrome with some blue in it.
They asked about the new job, and I told them.
Natalie’s villa had a swimming pool, Kim-Jim had said. He never had much time to swim, but I wasn’t to let her work me so hard. I would be there as her beautician, and anything else I did was up to me. The most I might have to do was book the odd plane or hotel, or phone up people with messages. There were English girls Mrs Sheridan could hire for dictating. Everyone else spoke Portuguese.
Phone up people with messages.
I was glad that Natalie had had no more chats with Johnson Johnson before she left London.
Ferdy, who was busy on the artwork for a big, glossy book on Sexual Strategy in Flowers, to be printed in Luxembourg, reported that Johnson was apparently still making great strides considering, and had mentioned something about a bill for phone calls to Troon and Glasgow and Lisbon, as well as blue and magenta stains in the bathroom.
I thought of the blond boyfriend, and the security men, and all those bloody phone calls and the perfectly good quiche I’d made him, and told Ferdy that if his pal Johnson was fussed over anything, he could get Lady Emerson to pay for it.
Once, on my way past from Claridge’s, I’d seen a po-faced woman out walking Bessie past the flats, and another time, Bessie with Mrs Margate. Then, just before I went north, I saw Mrs Margate ouside a coffee-bean shop by herself.
I didn’t ask Ferdy, but it looked to me as if the capable woman had soon got her books.
And maybe even that old Bessie had got hers as well, if the Owner had crawled from his expensive new sickbed and coped with something apart from mail orders.
Male orders?
It was, luckily, none of my business. I was going to a new job, a rather special new job, in
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