Girl, Woman, Other. Bernardine Evaristo

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      she was the least lucky of their group in attracting women, and sadly, stupidly, thought she’d be on her own forever

      many a night out ended in tears with Georgie saying she was too ugly to pull, which wasn’t true, they all endlessly reassured her how attractive she was, although Amma considered her more Artful Dodger than Oliver Twist

      which in the lesbian world wasn’t such a bad thing

      Amma can never forget the last time she saw her, both of them sitting on the kerb outside the Bell as the revellers drifted drunkenly off while Amma forced a finger down Georgie’s throat to make her regurgitate the pills she’d taken in the toilets

      for the first time in their friendship, Amma actually showed her frustration with her friend for being such a hopeless case, for being so insecure, for not being able to cope with adulthood, for getting off her face all the time, it’s time to grow up, Georgie, it’s time to grow the fuck up!

      a week later she went over the top floor balcony on the Pepys Estate in Deptford where she lived

      to this day, Amma wonders how Georgie died

      did she fall (accident), fly (tripping), throw herself off (suicide) or was she pushed (unlikely)

      she still feels guilty, still wonders if it was her fault

      Sylvester always shows up on first nights, if only for the free booze at the after-party

      even though a few days ago he accused her of selling out when he cornered her outside Brixton tube station on her way home from rehearsal

      and persuaded her to have a drink with him at the Ritzy where they sat in the upstairs bar surrounded by posters of the independent films they’d been going to see together since they first met as students at drama school

      films like Pink Flamingos, starring the great drag queen, Divine, Born in Flames, Daughters of the Dust, Farewell My Concubine, Pratibha Parmar’s A Place of Rage and Handsworth Songs by the Black Audio Film Collective

      films that inspired her own aesthetics as a theatre-maker

      although she’s never admitted her equally lowbrow tastes to Sylvester, who’s too much of a political purist to understand

      such as her addictions to Dynasty and Dallas, the original series and their recent incarnations

      or America’s Top Model or Millionaire Matchmaker or Big Brother and the rest …

      Amma looked around the bar at the other alternatives who’d moved into Brixton when it was crime-addled but affordable

      these people were her people, they’d lived through two riots and were proud of their multiracial social circles and bloodlines, like Sylvester, who’d gone on a pilgrimage here to visit the gay community centre that came and went and met the man who became his life partner, Curwen, newly arrived from St Lucia

      they used to make such a striking couple

      Sylvester, or Sylvie, was then blond and pretty, he spent most of the eighties wearing dresses, his long hair flowing down his back

      he was out to challenge society’s gender expectations, long before the current trend, he’s taken to complaining, I was there first

      Curwen, freckled and light brown, might wear a turban, kilt, lederhosen and full make-up

      when he felt like it

      to challenge various other expectations

      he said

      Sylvester’s now grey, balding, bearded, and is never seen in anything other than a threadbare Chinese worker’s suit

      which he claims is an original from eBay

      whereas Curwen wears a retro donkey jacket and denim dungarees

      two young men sat at the table next to them, awkward and incongruous with their office haircuts, smooth cheeks, crisp suits, polished shoes

      Amma and Sylvester exchanged looks, they hated the interlopers who were colonizing the neighbourhood, who patronized the chi-chi eateries and bars that now replaced a stretch of the indoor market previously known for stalls selling parrot fish, yam, ackee, Scotch bonnet peppers, African materials, weaves, Dutch pots, giant Nigerian land snails and pickled green eggs from China

      these upmarket places also employed security guards to keep the locals out

      because while their clientele loved slumming it in SW2 or SW9

      they couldn’t hide the fact that SW1 and SW3 were in their DNA

      Sylvester was very active in the Keep Brixton Real Campaign

      he’d lost none of his revolutionary zeal

      which wasn’t necessarily a good thing

      Amma sipped her seventh coffee of the day, this one laced with Drambuie, while Sylvester slugged beer from a bottle, the only way a revolutionary should drink it, according to him

      he still ran his socialist theatre company, The 97%, which toured to fringe venues and ‘hard-to-reach communities’, which she should also still be doing

      Amma, you should be taking your plays to community centres and libraries, not to the middle-class bastards at the National

      she replied that the last time she took a show to a library, the audience was mainly made up of homeless people who were sleeping at best, snoring at worst

      it was about fifteen years ago, she vowed never to again

      social inclusion is more important than success, or should it be called sick-cess? Sylvester replied, and Amma couldn’t convince him she was right to move on to bigger things as he kept knocking back the beers she paid for (well, you must be earning a lot now you’ve hit the big time)

      she argued it was her right to be directing at the National and it was the theatre’s job to make sure they attracted audiences beyond the middle-class day-trippers from the Home Counties, reminding him this included his parents, a retired banker and homemaker from Berkshire, who came to London for its culture, parents who supported him, even when he came out as a teenager

      he’d once let slip while drunk that he got a monthly allowance

      (she was far too nice to ever remind him of this)

      the thing is, she said, while troublemaking on the periphery’s all well and good, we also have to make a difference inside the mainstream, we all pay taxes that fund these theatres, right?

      Sylvester offered up the smug expression of a tax-dodging outlaw at least I do now, she said, and you should

      he sat back, his eyes watery from the beers, silently judging her, she knew that look, the drink was about to bring out a viciousness otherwise absent from her good friend

      admit СКАЧАТЬ