Persons Unknown. Susie Steiner

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СКАЧАТЬ retrospect, I realise I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers. Firstly, because I’ve always thought I’d make quite a good hairdresser, and second because of all those surveys about professions and rates of happiness. Hairdressers are the happiest people: there’s creativity, but only up to a point (too much, I’ve read, can send you demented; just look at poets). There’s craic – plenty of chat, but not that much intimacy (intimacy being a most overrated aspect of human relationships). And hairdressing also garners a great deal of loyalty. I read that the average woman stays with her stylist for twelve years. The average marriage lasts eleven.

      But primarily I should’ve bought myself a hairdressers because it would’ve limited my access to the crisp aisle.

      Did you know Britain has been voted the loneliness capital of Europe? The Office for National Statistics found we have fewer friends and that we Britons don’t know our neighbours and it’s killing us. Loneliness is as big a health hazard as smoking fifteen fags a day, and not nearly as enjoyable.

      I think it is the English way. We can’t stand too much contact. We don’t know where to look during intimate conversations. The web of connections, which is a comfort to southern nationalities, especially Latin people who love to hug and wail at funerals, pains the Englishman. I remember living with Nanny Fielding and all the kids at school were going on sleepovers or to each other’s houses, but I didn’t. I went home to my gran and we barely exchanged a word. She made baked apple with sultanas and custard and there were lace-edged antimacassars on the arms of her wing chairs. She used to smooth a tea towel across her knees, not sure why, as if she was about to dress a wounded foot or shell some peas. It was just a pointless act of fastidiousness, which annoyed me until I missed it so much. I think this is why I seem so much older than my years – the grannyish house and the solitary ways. I’ve taken in Nanny Fielding and I don’t know any other way to live.

      Anyway, without us having a conversation about it as such, Angel fetched a bag of stuff and installed herself in the box room, which started to smell of Chanel Cristalle because she sprayed it about like it was Impulse. Low-level drinking – she wasn’t bladdered, but she was hugging the Lambrini pretty close. She spent a lot of time on the Internet, saving files and copying Wikipedia pages, and the rest of the time she was standing by the window, lifting the nets and watching the Killy High Road. She was furtive. When I said something, she jumped. And when I called her name, she didn’t turn around.

      I said, from the kitchen, ‘Angel? Cup of tea?’ But I had to walk into the room before she realised I was talking to her. I took it as proof that Angel was a made-up name. The question was why?

      And what was her real name? What was with all the curtain twitching and mystery? And also, if I was going to make up a name for myself, I don’t think I’d pick Angel, d’you know what I’m saying?

      But she wasn’t totally self-absorbed. I could see she was trying to make herself a pleasant house guest. A couple of days later, for example, she stood in the doorway, holding aloft two Sainsbury’s bags and smiling. ‘Thought I’d make burgers,’ she said. ‘I’m assuming you’ve got ketchup.’

      ‘Do I look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have ketchup?’

      ‘You look like the sort of person who wouldn’t have vinaigrette,’ she said.

      We decided to watch The Hotel on telly – one of those documentaries where people act like they’re not aware they’re being filmed, when in fact they’re completely aware but pretending, and the programme’s main aim is the Ring of Truth, as if you’re peeping in unseen. Fixed-rig cameras is how they’re made. Rigged and a fix, I call it. I love those shows. I love watching people without having to spend any time with them.

      Angel and I had a recliner chair each, the sofa being too uncomfortable to spend an evening on. I keep it because it was Nanny Fielding’s. I have always had two recliners; I bought them as a pair from DFS. Don’t ask me why – I think it seemed too sad to buy one. But there’s never been anyone to sit in the second one. Talk about hopeful purchase.

      In The Hotel, you are shown round the penthouse floor of the Carlton Mayfair, ‘London’s most exclusive establishment’, according to the breathy voiceover. The penthouse floor has three marble bathrooms, including a ‘rainforest showering experience’ which plays the sounds of tropical birds and other wildlife while dappling you in a moving light show so you think you’re in a glade. The penthouse floor has two grand living rooms, each with about six sofas; a cinema; a catering kitchen, should the restaurant not suit, and a treatment room for on-site massages and facials. The penthouse floor is home to Donald Trump when he visits, and the Sultan of Brunei. The King of Saudi Arabia books it for the entire month of August and installs his family, flying over his fleet of cars, which they park all over Knightsbridge and get parking tickets they’ll never pay. They spend the month shopping at Harrods.

      Angel and I were watching all this, the smears of ketchup hardening on our discarded plates, our feet up as if our legs were paralysed – which they were, I suppose. There is little in modern life more paralysing than the recliner chair.

      ‘Been there,’ she said, nodding at the telly.

      ‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Me too. Stay there all the time.’

      ‘No, really, I have.’

      I looked at her. ‘You what?’

      ‘I can prove it,’ she said, pushing down with her ankles (you have to use some force, as if the recliner is unwilling to give you up) so that her chair moved into the upright mode. She left the room and came back with a bag full of Carlton Mayfair toiletries. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash. Even a pack of cotton pads and buds, which you’re not supposed to put into your ears. I find it almost impossible not to put them in my ears.

      ‘How come you’ve been to the Carlton Mayfair?’ I said.

      ‘On business,’ she said simply.

      ‘Right, yeah, business. What business would that be? Cleaning the rainforest experience?’

      ‘No!’ she scoffed, but she’d gone back to watching the telly and when I tried to ask another question, she shushed me.

      Couple of days later, Angel went out – for longer this time than just to Sainsbury’s, which is about a hundred yards away – and I was relieved to have the place to myself without her loitering at the windows or jumping out of her skin every time I made a noise.

      I’m not sure I’m built to live with anyone. It annoyed me when she was in the bathroom or in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea. The squeaky noise she made when she opened the door to the box room annoyed me, even though it was my door – my squeak. It annoyed me that she was hardly ever out, that she liked Laughing Cow cheese. It annoyed me that I couldn’t trump openly or walk from the bathroom in my pants. Sometimes the sound of her breathing was more than I could stand.

      Anyway, I used the opportunity of her being out to go through her stuff.

      Lots of things about this girl didn’t add up. Firstly, her holdall was Chanel – with the linked ring symbol. Now, I know a knock-off when I see one, I used to sell enough of them on the market, and this holdall, which was leather, with some animal-hide areas, like a furry cow’s back, was no knock-off.

      Second, she had all these creams – Clarins, Crème de la Mer, Kérastase shampoo. Posh bottles and lotions. How did she afford them? So while she was out, I took the opportunity to have a try – washed my hair with the Kérastase, tried the Crème de la Mer. I didn’t use the Carlton Mayfair СКАЧАТЬ