High society (10 page)

THE PRIORY CLINIC

M
y name is Emily and I am a cocaine addict…’

Emily reviewed the circle of faces, a mixed group, of screw-ups. Druggies, alkies, eating disorders and even a sex addict — a compulsive masturbator to be precise. Emily knew one or two of them slightly — the supermodel and the American actress. Not, she was glad to note, the masturbator.

‘…So I’d got to where Tommy kicked me out of the cab, hadn’t I? I suppose I should be grateful to him. In fact I am grateful to him, because it wasn’t until I found myself sitting in the gutter on Brixton High Street that I realized how mightily I was ruining my life. Well, if I’m honest, the realization was not immediate. Brixton High Street wasn’t quite the road to Damascus, but it would eventually turn out to be the road to recovery of sorts. The road to here. Of course, as the lights turned green and Tommy’s limo pulled away I was absolutely transfixed with terror. I’m not going to lie to you and say it wasn’t about colour, because it was. I’ve met very few black people in my life, and when I have it’s been mainly abroad — servants and hotel staff in Africa and the Caribbean, you know the sort of thing. There were two black girls at my school. One was royalty and the other a president’s daughter. They seemed like nice enough girls, but I never really spoke to them, and I’m ashamed to confess that we called them the Coco Pops. They said they didn’t mind, that they thought it was funny, but I doubt they did. Anyway, there I was in the gutter, and suddenly almost every face I could see was either black or brown and there were plenty of them because, let’s face it, when a girl in a tiny little Gucci number falls out of a stretch limo and rolls into the gutter, flashing her G-string and shrieking obscenities, you’re going to stare, aren’t you? I had no money, no cards and no phone and that alone would be enough to make me feel utterly naked (which I practically was anyway), but on top of that I felt like I had been parachuted into an entirely alien land. I was suddenly in my own private chapter of Bonfire of the Vanities. I was terrified, absolutely shitting myself. Of course, the fact that my system was saturated with cocaine was not helping my state of mind. It makes you paranoid, you know. Well, I expect most of you know that.

Anyway, a few people, kids mainly, were sniggering and laughing, but mostly people seemed surprised. I don’t blame them. After all, I was the alien, not them. Anyway, I must have sat there for as long as a minute before a big man with dreadlocks leant down and reached out his hand to me, but instead of taking it I shouted at him not to touch me. He didn’t care, he just shrugged and walked away. Then there was a screech and a shout and a little bell ringing behind me, and I turned to see a bicycle courier, the chunky front wheel of his machine barely inches from my nose. He was one of those superb specimens that these guys always are, just a great streak of muscle in a Nike bodysuit, plus, blessed relief, he was white. Yes, I’m being honest. That was the thing that mattered to me most at that moment. Pathetic and terrible, I know.’

The supermodel nodded. She was generally considered to be one of the most spectacularly beautiful women on earth, but she had lost count of the magazine covers that had gone to white girls when by rights they should have been hers. Emily avoided her eye.

‘I looked at this young man all sheathed in shiny purple as if he had been sent to me by the League of Superheroes. ‘Please can you help me? I’ve lost my phone. I need a phone,’ I said, fluttering and pouting and generally turning it all on. ‘Get out of the fahkin’ way, you stupid fahkin’ cow,’ he replied. ‘This is a fahkin’ cycle lane, not a fahkin’ chill-out room.’ With that he stuck out a hand to stop the white van that was about to pass us and to the accompaniment of much hooting and shouting he rode around me.

‘Tears were coming now and then I heard this deep friendly voice. ‘You’d better get up, girl.’ It was the big man who’d first reached out his hand. He’d heard the commotion and turned back. ‘You’re blocking the road.’

‘I let him help me up and the little crowd that had begun to gather started to disperse. A few boys continued to gawp, but, let’s face it, I’d worn that tiny dress with the express purpose of making boys gawp, so I was hardly in a position to complain when they did. I asked the man if he knew where I could get a taxi and he smiled and pointed to three different minicab places within fifty metres, the ones with the orange flashing lights, the sort you go to at three in the morning in Soho, feeling rather brave, because there are no proper taxis.

‘ ‘Take your pick, girl, but make them tell you the price before you start.’

‘He laughed and then I laughed too. This wasn’t an alien nation at all, it was just five thirty in the afternoon on just another London high street. I wasn’t going to be raped or killed and there were three separate cab companies within a minute’s walk, any one of which would have been delighted to take me back over the river to where my money and my life lay waiting, any time I wanted.

‘But, you see, suddenly I didn’t want to, because just as quickly as the paranoia had engulfed me so did the euphoria. I’m sure some of you know the feeling.’

Emily avoided the masturbator’s eye.

‘I was still drunk. I was still coked up and E’d up and I was still a wild wild naughty little miss who got what she wanted, because boys love good-time girls. I’d even got Tommy Hanson, briefly, which is gold medal stuff amongst us wild wild naughty little girls, you know.

‘No, I wasn’t going home just yet. I’d set out for a big night and I intended to have one. I was in Brixton, after all, and even though it was still only the afternoon various dub beats could be heard emanating from upstairs windows. This was real life. Tough, street, a little bit scary, but I was a wild naughty girl. Nothing fazed me.

‘ ‘Actually, I was wondering if I could trouble you for some ganja,’ I said.

‘He smiled again. ‘Where you keep your money, girl? Up your arse?’

‘It was a fair point. If I’d had any money, up my arse would have been just about the only place I could have concealed it.

‘ ‘Well, actually, I’m afraid I don’t have any money. I wasn’t trying to score, I just fancied a puff. Is that terribly rude of me?’

‘He just laughed and took my arm. As we walked together up the high street, many heads turned. It was obvious what people thought of this big rasta and the white tart who had put her arm through his, whore and pimp, had to be, and I loved it. Bad old Emily being bad again, with her long golden shiny legs the focus of a thousand eyes. Fuck Tommy, fuck the Brits. I was where the real people were, not all those rock industry fuckwits. Let’s face it, black people invented rock music, didn’t they?At least I think they did, and Elvis stole it, is that right? I know I’ve been told that. And here I was, hijacked on my way to some honkey lovey fest by a proper bro’, a homeboy. The house he lived in was pretty much like my brother’s rooms at Cambridge in as much as the curtains were drawn and there were lots of people lounging around on couches, cushions, the floor, etc. Very loud duf-duf music which could have come straight out of my bro’s collection was playing, and a thick fog of pot smoke stretched from the floor to the ceiling. In fact, now I come to think of it, the whole thing was an exact negative image of my bro’s place in that the set-ups were identical except that in his rooms everyone was white except for one black girl who was doing law and whom all the boys wanted to sleep with, and at my new friend’s place everybody was black except me and from the whistles and shouts I got when I walked in I would not have had any problem getting laid myself.

‘God, that spliff was strong. I don’t use pot at all as a rule. Charlie is my darling, as every News of the World reporter knows, but when I do have it, it’s just a bit of hash rolled up with tobacco. This was different. This was a huge trumpet-like thing filled with pure grass. I took one toke and nearly passed out.

‘ ‘Actually, I think I might have to lie down for a bit,’ I told my new friend, whose name I don’t think I ever knew, and like the gentleman he was he showed me upstairs and offered me his futon.

‘ ‘If you’re going to throw up, girl, the toilet’s through there. My sheets is silk, OK?’

‘Do you know, I think I was a little offended. Not about the throwing-up thing — I must have been bright green — but there I was in this bloke’s bedroom, a famously hot bit of totty, stoned out of her box, dressed in stunning minimalism, and yet he wasn’t hitting on me at all. I mean, he’d brought me back to his place, we were standing by his bed, for God’s sake, and the fellow was simply not making a move.

‘ ‘Aren’t you going to try and screw me, then?’ I said. I say things like that quite a lot. I’m known for it. Good old Emily, she’ll say anything.

‘He looked at me for a long time, clearly rather torn. ‘I would love to, girl, but my old lady will be home in half an hour, you know what I’m saying? She’s a meter maid and she knocks off at six. Those meter ladies are tough. She’d kill me, girl, stone dead. She’d kill you too, then she’d eat you.’

‘I looked at my watch. ‘We could be quick.’

‘Well, he was only flesh and blood, after all, and he had tried to knock me back. But I’m a difficult girl to refuse when I’m being a complete twat, so I hoiked off the silky G and we had a quickie on his crimson sheets and I felt tremendously real and brave and adventurous, and I suppose he must have felt rotten because afterwards he said, ‘I wish I’d let you find another black man to fuck.’

‘The shag at least seemed to have cleared my head rather so we went back downstairs, but it was obvious he wanted me to go before his girlfriend came home, and since a group of his friends were going off to a party I tagged along too. Still stoned, still high, still feeling very exotic.

‘The party was clearly a kind of rolling affair, because it was quite lively even so early in the evening. It was in some warehouse and I smoked people’s joints and drank their Special Brew and jabbered on and bopped for what must have been hours. By this time I wasn’t standing out quite so much, as there were a few other white people about the place and lots of girls had sexy dresses on. Mine must have been the sexiest, however, or certainly the most slutty, because while I was trying to catch my breath in the chill-out room I was approached by quite the most unpleasant person I have ever met in my life and I’ve met some horrors. A Frenchman called Francois.

‘He was a pimp and he thought I was a hooker. Simple as that. He said he’d seen me getting kicked out of the limo and walking off arm in arm with Mr Rasta, and had drawn the conclusion that I’d been turning a high-class trick in the back of the car and having concluded my business had made an unceremonious departure before rejoining my great big black minder. What Francois wanted was for me to defect to him. Francois claimed that he would never let any of his girls get treated by their clients the way I had clearly been treated in the limo.

‘And as if to demonstrate the point, he drew back the lapel of his dirty Paul Smith jacket and revealed the butt of quite a big-looking gun nestling in his armpit. Do you know, I think I was actually excited. Even without the gun I was loving the idea that this terrible, appalling man thought I was a prostitute and wanted to own me, but now that it turned out he was prepared to shoot my previous owner to get me, well, it was rather flattering. Well, flattering to an idiotic, fucked-up cokehead like me.’

A WAREHOUSE PARTY, BRIXTON

L
isten, foxy lady, sexy lady. You and me we’re better than this. You shouldn’t be getting into no cars, even if they’re limos, no way, baby. You shouldn’t be trading your ass on the street like some black ho’. You is high class, I can see that. I know about class, baby, because I got it too. I’m a main man, I ain’t like this bullshit round here, this trash. That’s why I gotta get out. I gotta get myself a ticket across the river…Don’t make no mistake, though, don’t get me wrong. Right now I’m making plenty money, fuck yes. You see this, two grand cash, no problem, any time.’

Francois briefly pulled back the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a thickish wad of fifties wrapped round his arm with an elastic band. Also revealed were the telltale tracks of the needle.

‘Oh sure, I got plenty money, I shit money, but I’m sick of running screwed-up little smackheads off the streets. Those dirty little whores ain’t got no class at all, they just dirt. What’s more, you gotta keep them high the whole time else they won’t get in the cars. What I want is to get some class, get off the streets, get in a house and run a for-real grand-a-fuck classy bitch like you could be, get out west way, work the Arabs. Man, they got so much fucking money, and they gonna like what you got, that’s for sure, oh yeah. If you and me got a place maybe round Marble Arch, we’d be digging fucking gold.’

THE PRIORY CLINIC

H
e was even more wired than me was Francois. He was positively frothing at the mouth, and his pupils were like pinpricks. I’d seen the mess he’d made of his arms when he showed me his money, and even in the gloom of the party I could see fresh track marks on his neck. It won’t be long before he’ll be looking for veins in his cock, that boy, sure as night follows day. He was a serious junkie, and by the way he was winding himself up he did not favour a very mellow high. Suddenly I was very scared again. I know a fucked-up, strung-out loser when I see one. Well, for many a long year I’ve only had to look in a mirror. I’d only known the posh ones up until that night, but the desperation crosses class boundaries. The self-delusion, the bitter anger, all that malarky. Yes, it’s the same story, whoever’s telling it, the difference in Francois’ case being that he was armed.

‘So I said to him, ‘Look, Francois, I’m really not into that sort of thing. I mean, I’m flattered and all that, of course, but really, I’m no street walker.’ Which he thought was the very point he was making and he said that he intended to go and make it to the Rasta man who he presumed owned me.

‘And with that, thank God, he buggered off, and not before time. I was sweating by now and in no mood to be heavied out, so the minute he turned his back I jumped into the middle of the dancing and bopped away like a madwoman, shrieking and flaunting it, rubbing my arse against every available crotch and shouting for drugs at the top of my voice. Of course nobody could hear me above the music, which was a very good thing as I was still pretty loaded…

‘…and then suddenly I realized that I wasn’t in the middle of the crowd any more, but right on the edge of it, and that a little gang of boys was dancing me towards an empty room at the back of the warehouse.’