Zelda’s Cut

‘I do. It is romantic,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘The hero has a dimple in his chin.’

Troy let out a squawk of laughter. ‘I bet he hasn’t even got an M A!’

‘I don’t mention his academic qualifications,’ Isobel said with dignity. ‘But he does have something extraordinary in the sex department.’

‘What?’ Troy asked, utterly fascinated.

‘That’s the difficulty,’ she said, lowering her voice to a whisper and glancing at the closed study door. ‘I’m not entirely sure. I want him to have something remarkable about his genitalia.’

Troy had a sense of an Isobel Latimer that no-one had ever seen before. He kept his voice very level, he did not want to frighten away this new side of her. He thought she might prove to be delightful. ‘Oh, any reason why?’

‘It’s clearly a feature of the genre. In those books you sent me, a number of the heroes have – remarkable attributes. They’re generally very well endowed, but they also have some kind of gimmick.’

‘What about a couple of rings?’ Troy asked. ‘Like an earring, a hooped earring. Only inserted …’ He broke off. ‘Inserted not in the ear.’

‘In the genitalia?’ she demanded.

‘In the foreskin, I believe.’

There was a stunned silence.

‘So I’m told,’ Troy added hastily.

‘And who does this? Do you do it to yourself?’

‘Oh no! You go to a body-piercing studio.’

‘A studio?’

‘Not like an artist’s studio. Like a beauty salon.’

‘And why would a man do this?’

Troy hesitated. He had known Isobel for six years but he had never had a conversation like this with her before. He had a sense of exquisite discomfort. ‘Partly it’s fashion,’ he said cautiously. ‘And some people take pleasure from the experience of inserting the ring. I’m told that it enhances sexual pleasure once it is, er, fully operational.’

He was afraid that he had shocked her, perhaps even offended her.

‘D’you know anyone who has done this? Would he show me?’

Troy could not repress the giggle. ‘I know one guy who’s very proud of it. He would probably show you. But – ’

‘I’ll come up tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Let’s have lunch. I’ll buy him lunch. Tell him that Zelda Vere would like to meet him.’

Zelda Vere turned out to look and dress exactly like Isobel Latimer, except that she wore her hair down around her shoulders and had dark glasses hiding her eyes.

‘Would you have recognised me?’ she asked Troy hopefully.

‘Instantly,’ he said. ‘As would all of literary London. You’re going to have to transform if we’re really going to do this.’

‘I thought wearing my hair down – ’

‘Zelda Vere would have big hair,’ he said certainly. ‘I mean huge bouffant blonde hair. And loads of makeup, and ostentatious jewellery, and a suit in acid green with enormous gold buttons.’

Isobel blinked. ‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ she said. ‘And I don’t have anything at all like that in my wardrobe.’

‘We’ll start with the suit,’ he said. ‘Come with me.’ He strode out of the office, calling to the assistant: ‘Cancel Freddie for lunch, would you, darling? Say I’ll catch him later.’ And then ran down the steps and summoned a cab.

‘Are we serious about this?’ he asked her as they slammed the cab door. ‘The book’s going to be finished? You really intend to be Zelda Vere?’

‘Are you sure Zelda Vere can earn a quarter of a million?’ she countered.

He thought for a moment. ‘Yes. If the book’s as good as you say.’

She nodded. ‘I’m sure it’s that good.’

‘And you’re sure you want to do it? It’s going to cost us some serious money to get you dressed. Worse than that, it will have to be my serious money. And it’s my reputation on the line when we start approaching publishers. You really want to go through with this?’

‘I have to,’ she said flatly. ‘I can’t provide for Philip any other way.’

He leaned forward. ‘Harrods,’ he said shortly to the driver.

Isobel touched his arm. ‘Did you say your money?’

He gleamed at her. ‘I’m trying to think of it as venture capital.’

‘You are lending me money?’

Troy nodded briskly. ‘Have to,’ he said. ‘You have to be styled and buffed and polished and that’s going to cost serious money. You haven’t got it – not till we sell the book. So I’ll lend it to you.’

She hesitated. ‘What if nobody wants the novel? Or what if they don’t pay that much for it?’

He laughed shortly. ‘Then I shall share your disappointment.’

Isobel didn’t speak for a moment and he saw she was trying to control a rush of tears.

‘You are putting your own money in to help me?’ she confirmed.

He nodded.

To his surprise she gently touched the back of his hand with her fingertip, a gesture as soft as a kiss. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘That means a lot to me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because no-one has helped me with anything since Philip became ill. I’ve been completely alone. You make me feel as if this is a shared project.’

Troy nodded. ‘We’re in it together,’ he promised her.

They did not trouble themselves to look for the clothes they needed. Troy said a few words to the chief sales assistant on the designer floor and they were ushered into a room which looked like an ornate sitting room in a private house.

‘A glass of champagne, madam, sir?’ a sales assistant offered.

‘Yes please,’ Troy said calmly, and nodded to Isobel to conceal her awe.

The mirrored doors opened and another assistant came in, pushing a rack of hanging outfits.

‘We’ll also need an appointment for makeup, and hairdressing,’ Troy murmured.

‘Of course, sir,’ she whispered back. ‘And first, the outfits.’

One suit after another was whipped off the rack, stripped from its protective plastic coating and swung like a matador’s cloak before Isobel’s gaze.

‘Try the pink,’ Troy advised. ‘And also the yellow.’

Isobel flinched back from the garish colours. ‘What about the grey?’ she asked.

‘Will madam be colouring her hair?’ the sales assistant asked.

Isobel glanced at Troy.

‘Bright blonde,’ he confirmed.

‘Then the pink will be wonderful,’ she said. ‘A pity not to maintain a high presence. The pink and the yellow both have a very high presence.’

They hung the suit inside the curtained changing room. Isobel went reluctantly inside and the curtain was dropped behind her. A pair of high-heeled gold sandals and a pair of high-heeled pink mules were inserted discretely underneath the curtain. Isobel regarded them with suspicion.

She took off her cream linen dress and flinched slightly at the sight of herself in the mirror. She was wearing a bra and a pair of pants which had been machine-washed so often that they were a creased grey, and a thread of elastic was fraying from the seam. Her hips were rounded, her thighs a little slack, her belly was podgy. Under the uncompromising lights of the fitting room there was no concealing the fact that she was a middle-aged woman who had not taken care of herself.

She shrugged and slipped on the pink jacket. It fitted perfectly. At once the upper half of her body looked tailored, constructed, somehow ordered. The skirt glided up over her hips and she fastened the zip at the waist without difficulty. It looked startlingly slim but it was generously cut. The hem of the skirt skimmed her knee. Isobel had not worn anything shorter than mid-calf length for the last ten years. She stepped into the pink mules. At once her legs looked longer. The pink of the jacket gave a brightness and a colour to her face. She tossed back her hair and tried to imagine herself blonde.

‘Come out,’ Troy begged. ‘Let’s see.’

Cautiously she drew the curtain to one side, almost apologetically she stepped out. Troy, glass of champagne in hand, regarded her with sudden, flattering attention.

‘Good God, Isobel,’ he said. ‘You are a knockout.’

She flushed, and teetered slightly on the high heels. ‘It’s so unlike what I usually …’

‘It’s very easy to get set in our ways …’ the sales assistant remarked gently. ‘Very hard to keep up. And it is difficult if madam lives in the country …’

The junior assistant stepped forward with a large tray of earrings and matching necklaces. Isobel was gently guided towards the mirror and the sales assistant scooped up the mass of light brown hair and piled it on Isobel’s head with two deft pins.

‘Just to give you an idea,’ she whispered.

Isobel’s ears were not pierced, but the sales staff put a Perspex band over her head and hung the earrings at ear level. They chose massive chunks of glass which looked like diamonds, and big, bright enameled flowers. They draped the matching necklaces around her neck.

‘Madam has such a long neck, she could wear almost anything,’ the sales lady said, as if genuinely delighted with the discovery. ‘I’m surprised you have not had your ears pierced.’

‘It’s just not my sort of style,’ Isobel said weakly.

A shame not to make the most of that lovely neck,’ the sales lady remarked.

Isobel found she was dropping her shoulders and raising her chin to her own reflection. She had never before considered the length of her neck, but with her hair swept up and the pink shedding a rosy radiance on her skin she did indeed think that she was blessed with a rather special feature which she should exhibit more often.

‘I want to see you in the yellow too,’ Troy said. ‘And perhaps a cocktail dress? Something for parties?’

Isobel disappeared back behind the curtain and tried on the yellow suit. She wore it with a sparkling golden scarf at her neck and looked years younger. The golden sandals were surprisingly comfortable. While she was changing they brought in a rack of cocktail dresses and Isobel swept through a range of blue lamé, pink tulle, black velvet and midnight blue, finally settling on a radiant Lacroix and a modest navy blue Dior which was to be worn with a silver jacket.

‘For added presence,’ the sales assistant advised.

‘And stockings and underwear and shoes,’ Troy commanded. He was on his third glass of champagne and they had brought him some sandwiches to eat while he waited. ‘Just some nice stuff. Two of everything.’

‘A fitting for the underwear?’ the sales assistant whispered.

‘Oh yes,’ Troy said.

They waited only a few moments and then a woman came into the room pushing a trolley of the most exquisite underwear Isobel had ever seen. Everything was embroidered or lace or silky with the sheen of high-tensile satin. There were bodies and teddies and bras and basques and French knickers and thongs and pants.

‘I’ve never seen …’ Isobel gasped.

Troy regarded the trolley with a certain amount of awe. ‘Whatever would suit madam best,’ he said, recovering rapidly.

Isobel vanished behind the curtain with the assistant. Shyly, she took off her bra, miserably conscious of the overstretched elastic and the garment’s air of dingy age. The assistant made no remark but merely whispered: ‘Lean forward please, madam.’

Blushing miserably, Isobel leaned forward and the assistant flung around her a smooth, cool band of silk, fastened it in a moment, and then with deft fingers tightened the straps and tucked Isobel’s breasts this way and that until the bra fitted her like a pair of perfect palms lovingly cupped and holding her firmly.

‘Oh,’ Isobel breathed. ‘So comfortable!’

‘And so flattering,’ the assistant pointed out. Isobel looked in the mirror. Her breasts were inches higher than their usual position, it made her waist, her whole body, look longer, slimmer. The profile flattened her waist, made her hips smoother. The assistant smiled. ‘It makes such a difference,’ she said with simple pride. ‘Now put the jacket back on.’

It fitted a little snugger than before, it looked even better. Isobel drew back the curtain and went out to Troy.

‘Oh yes,’ he said as he saw her. ‘Surprising. It makes a real difference. We’ll take half a dozen of everything,’ he told the assistant.

She smiled. ‘I’ll have them wrapped.’

The sales assistant opened the door for the underwear assistant and remarked, ‘The makeup artiste is ready.’

‘Oh, let her come in,’ Troy said cheerfully.

They ushered Isobel to the mirror and swathed her in a pale pink towel. The makeup girl cleaned her face with a sweet-smelling gritty cream and then wiped it all off with a scented water. ‘Your toner,’ she whispered reverently. ‘And now your moisturiser. You do cleanse, tone and moisturise every day, don’t you, madam?’

‘Some days,’ Isobel said through closed lips. ‘It depends.’ She did not want to admit that her beauty regime consisted of washing her face with soap and water, slapping on a bit of face cream and then lipstick.

The makeup artiste prepared Isobel’s face as if she were sizing a canvas, and then made the equipment ready: first laying out the range of brushes which would be needed and then spreading the palette of colours.

‘Are we wanting a natural look?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Isobel replied.

‘No,’ Troy said.

‘High presence,’ the sales assistant explained. ‘Madam requires a high-presence appearance.’

‘Of course,’ the girl said. ‘For a special event?’

Troy scowled at her. ‘Highly confidential,’ he said firmly.

‘Ah, of course,’ she said, and smeared peach foundation all over Isobel’s cheekbones.

Isobel closed her eyes at the caress of the two organic sponges and gave herself up to the sensation of being stroked all over her face with tiny feather-like touches. It felt like being kissed, very gently and tenderly, and she found she was slipping off into a daydream of Darkling Manor where the hero with the dimple in his chin laid poor Charity on the altar and unzipped his trousers to reveal … She was quite sorry when the process stopped and the makeup girl said: ‘There, madam. How do you like it?’

Isobel opened her eyes and stared at the stranger in the mirror.

Her eyes were wider and larger, a deep mysterious grey where before they had seemed pale. Her face was slimmer, her cheekbones enhanced making her look mid-European and glamorous as opposed to fading English rose and ordinary. Her eyelashes were dark and thick, her eyebrows stylish and arched. Her lips were an uncompromising cherry, a bright smile in a beautiful face. She looked like a stylised, enhanced painting of herself.

‘I’m … I’m …’

Troy rose from the sofa and came to stand behind her, his hands reverently on her towelled shoulders, looking at her in the mirror, meeting her reflected eyes and not her real ones.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re not just making money here, we’re making a person. Zelda Vere is going to be beautiful.’

‘Hairdresser?’ the sales assistant inquired. ‘A colourist and a stylist?’

‘No!’ Isobel exclaimed with sudden determination. She turned to Troy. ‘I can wash this off in the train on the way home,’ she whispered. ‘And I can hide the clothes. But I can’t go home blonde. It’d be too awful.’

He recoiled as he realised what she was saying. ‘You’re never thinking of keeping this a secret from Philip?’

Isobel glanced around. The sales assistant withdrew to a discreet distance and the makeup artiste was absorbed in packing her brushes.

‘I have to,’ she said. ‘If he knew I was writing a book like this at all he’d be heartbroken. If he knew I was doing it for him then he’d feel completely ashamed, it would be unbearable to him. He hates books like that, and he hates authors like this. It’s got to be a complete secret. To the whole world and to him too. He would be completely mortified if he knew. He …’

‘He what?’ Troy demanded.

‘He thinks my books are still doing well. I haven’t told him that we’ve been in trouble for years. I can’t tell him now. And I won’t tell him about the new book.’

Troy whistled a silent arpeggio. ‘He thought you were doing well? He didn’t know?’

Isobel’s desperate eyes looked out of the serene, beautiful mask. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Worry is really bad for him, I couldn’t risk him worrying. When he first became ill he handed over everything to me to look after. I just cashed in all our savings, and told him that it was all right. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘So everything hangs on this?’ Troy queried.

Isobel nodded. ‘But I can’t change how I look permanently,’ she warned him. ‘So I can’t go blonde.’

‘Well, OK by me,’ Troy said with a sense of the stakes in this gamble growing greater by the minute. ‘OK by me, if you think you can get away with it. The bank account was going to be secret anyway so it makes no difference to me. As long as you think you can keep it up at home.’

‘But I can’t have my hair dyed.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘What about a wig?’ He turned to the sales assistant. ‘Wigs,’ he said firmly. ‘Blonde wigs.’

‘Of course if madam does not wish to alter her own style, that is an ideal solution,’ the sales assistant said smoothly. She nodded at her deputy and the woman slipped from the room. ‘Perhaps just a little trim, just to enhance the profile, would be a good idea?’

‘I’ll have a trim,’ Isobel said. ‘But I won’t colour it.’

The sales assistant nodded and stood aside as the rack of wigs came in with the fitter behind them.

‘Another glass of champagne Sir?’ she asked Troy, who settled down on the sofa once more as the hairdresser came in and started to trim Isobel’s hair into a neater shape.

‘Yes please,’ he said.

Isobel faced the mirror, ready to be fitted with her wig. First they crammed her own hair into a flesh-coloured skullcap as tight and uncomfortable as the bathing hats she used to wear for swimming at school, and then they forced the huge mane of hair on top. Isobel felt so mauled by the struggle to get them on that she was scowling when she looked at the mirror to see the effect.

She saw a petulant beauty, a spoiled, glossy, golden woman who could be almost any age from mid-twenties to forty. The brightness of the hair enhanced the perfect colour of her skin, made her eyes darker, made her eyelashes dramatically thick and black. The wide bouffant style made her face look slim and elegant. She had the look of all the women who gaze from the pages of the society magazines, the women who feign unawareness of the photographers, who share a joke laughing but never screw up their eyes when the flashbulbs pop, who are always there at the parties, at the awards nights, who ski in winter and sail in summer, who know New York and go to the Paris fashion shows, who call each other ‘darling’ and kiss without lips touching cheek. They are the women who once married rich men and are still managing to hold on to them. They are the women who organise the charity balls, who launch fragrances, who own racehorses, who put their names to bestselling autobiographies created by ghost writers about imaginary events.

‘Bingo,’ Troy said from the sofa. ‘Cinderella.’

‘A very high presence,’ the saleswoman said approvingly. ‘Delightful.’

Troy rose up. ‘We’ll take it all,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it all now.’

‘Madam should really take two of the wigs,’ the hairdresser advised. ‘When one is being washed and set she can use the other.’

‘Oh I suppose so,’ Troy said.

‘And of course we can deliver,’ the saleswoman offered.

He shook his head. ‘We have a car outside.’ He turned to Isobel. ‘D’you want to keep it all on? We could invite Freddie over here for tea. Try it out on him?’

The wealthy woman in the mirror smiled with perfect confidence. ‘Why not?’ she asked her reflection.

Freddie, pouring tea for the three of them on the terrace, was delighted to meet Zelda Vere.

‘An author of mine.’ Troy introduced her. ‘A new author, and a very exciting new book to be finished …’

‘Within the year,’ Isobel promised.

‘Whenever,’ Troy said. ‘Freddie is an interior designer, and man about town.’

Freddie grinned. ‘D’you take milk? Really? How can you, Troy?’ When Isobel accepted milk and sugar he looked stunned. ‘I’m so lactose intolerant you wouldn’t believe.’

‘Zelda has a professional interest in body piercing,’ Troy said quietly, with a discreet glance at the nearby tables. ‘I was attempting to describe to her a Prince Albert.’

Freddie’s bright gaze met Isobel’s. ‘You really need to see one,’ he said.

‘I was hoping that I might,’ she replied, and then realised that her voice, her hesitant politeness, was all wrong with the acid pink suit and the brassy blonde hair. She tossed her head and tried again: ‘I promised myself a look at yours.’

Freddie let out a small scream of laughter. ‘Here?’ he asked.

The new brassy-headed Isobel did not flinch. ‘If you like.’

‘Now, now, children,’ Troy interrupted. ‘We’ll go back to my flat for the Doctors and Nurses experience.’

‘But why d’you want to know?’ Freddie asked, pouring hot water into the tea pot.

‘For my novel,’ Isobel said. ‘My hero is a dark, brooding Satanist and I wanted to give him something of a … a gimmick.’

Freddie looked slightly offended. ‘A Prince Albert isn’t a gimmick,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s a statement.’

‘About what?’

He hesitated for a moment, and then decided to tell her. ‘You can either be the person that you were born to be: nicely brought up, good parents, nice job, reasonable income, polite children, agreeable home – right?’

Isobel nodded, feeling the weight of her hair give her nod an extra emphasis.

‘Or you can redefine yourself. You get to an age when you’ve done all that was expected of you. You’ve got the education that gets you the job that gets you the pension and then you look around and say – so have I lived all my life and worked all my life just so that I can have a pension when I’m old? That’s what happened to me. I was an accountant, I spent years and years getting my exams, getting my partnership, working for my clients, and suddenly I woke up one morning and thought I am so damn bored of this I can hardly get out of bed. It’s my life, and it bores me to tears.’

Isobel waited. She had an odd sense that she was hearing something of immense importance, that this man whom she had taken at first to be something of a fool was telling her something that she should hear.

‘Well, I cut loose,’ Freddie said quietly. ‘I came out. I told my mother and father that I was gay. I chucked in my job, I trained as an interior designer, and I studded my penis with jewellery.’

Isobel blinked and felt her mascara cling to her eyelashes like tears.

‘It’s my way of saying that I don’t have to sit in a pigeonhole. I don’t have to be what people think of me. I can find my own way, I can be someone else. I don’t have to have the identity my parents chose for me. I don’t even have to stay with my first choice of identity. I can set myself free.’

Isobel nodded. ‘I do know what you mean,’ she said. ‘Though it’s not true for everybody. Some people have to stay inside their boundaries. Some people take a choice, which isn’t perhaps the easiest choice, but it’s the right thing to do. Some people want to do the right thing more than they want to do anything else. Some people see the rules and stay inside them. Some people have to.’

Freddie shook his head. ‘No-one has to.’

Three

Back at his flat Troy poured pink champagne. Freddie raised an eyebrow at him and said: ‘I have some stuff on me, if you’d like it?’

Troy glanced at Isobel, who was pretending to examine an antique mirror over the mantelpiece but really admiring in wonder the sheen on her hair and the glow of her skin.

‘Excuse us for just a moment,’ he said to her.

Freddie looked surprised. ‘Wouldn’t Zelda like …?’

‘No,’ Troy said briefly. ‘Allergic.’

Freddie was astounded. ‘Allergic to cocaine? But how dreadful! You poor dear! How d’you ever manage? I would just die …’

‘What?’ Isobel asked, suddenly realising what he was saying.