Blood Lines, page 9
He enlarged on this. Gil produced a cookery programme for television and he began telling her about a soufflé that kept going wrong. At the fourth attempt the star of the programme, a temperamental man, had picked up and upended the spoiled soufflé over the head of one of the camera crew. Alison listened and laughed in the right places and told him about the latest developments in the Grimwood account. He said he’d give her a shout when the food was ready and she went away into the bedroom to change.
Every evening, if they weren’t going out, she changed into jeans or tracksuit pants and a sweatshirt. The irony was that these were old, she had had them for years, while the cupboard groaned under the weight of new clothes. There was barely room for the new dress and the sweaters to squeeze in. When would she wear any of them? Perhaps never. Perhaps, unworn, they would join the stack that must soon be packed into her largest suitcase and be taken to the hospice shop.
They loved her in the hospice shop. They called her Alison, they knew her so well. ‘What lovely clothes you always bring us, Alison,’ and ‘You have quite a turnover in clothes, Alison – well, you must have in your job.’ They could probably run the hospice for a week on what they raised by the sale of her clothes.
It was an addiction, it was like alcoholism or drugs or gambling, and more expensive than drinking or the fruit machines. Last week, when she was coming in with a bright yellow bag and an olive-green bag, Gil had caught her in the hall. Caught her. She had used the words inadvertently, without thinking, and inaccurately. For Gil was the kindest and best of men, he would never never reproach her. The worst thing was that he would praise her. He would tell her it was her money, she earned more than he did anyway, she could do what she liked with it. Why shouldn’t she buy herself some new clothes?
She had imagined telling him then, when they came face to face and she had those bags in her hands. She imagined confessing, saying to him, I’ve something to tell you. His face would change, he would think what everyone thought when they heard those words from their partner. She would sit on the floor at his feet – all this she imagined, building an absurd scenario – and hold his hand and tell him, I do this, I am mad, it’s driving me mad, and I can’t stop. I keep buying clothes. Not jewellery or ornaments or furniture or pictures, not stuff to put on my face or my hair, not even shoes or hats or gloves. I buy clothes. A dress shop is a wine bar to me. It is my casino. I can’t pass it. If I go into a department store to buy a box of tissues or a bathmat, I go upstairs, I buy clothes.
He would laugh. He would be happy and relieved because she was telling him she liked buying things to wear, not that she’d met someone else and was leaving him. Kisses then and reassurances and a heartening, why shouldn’t you spend your own money? He, who was so understanding, wouldn’t understand this.
His voice called out, ‘Alison! It’s ready.’
They were to have a glass of wine first. This wine had been much praised on the programme and he wanted her to try it. He raised his glass to her. ‘Do you know what today is?’
Some anniversary. It was women who were supposed to remember these things, not men. ‘Should I? Oh, dear.’
‘Not the first time we met,’ he said. ‘Not even the first time you took me out to dinner. The first time I took you out. Three years ago today.’
She put into the words all the emotion with which her thoughts had charged her. ‘I love you.’
Gil scarcely knew what clothes she possessed. He never looked in her cupboard. Sometimes, when she wore one of the new dresses or suits or shirts, he would say, ‘I like that. It’s new, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve had it for ages. You must have seen it before.’
And he accepted that. He didn’t notice clothes much, he wasn’t interested. But when he asked, she should have told him. Or when the credit card statements came in. Instead of paying the huge sums secretly, she should have said, ‘Look at this. This is what I do with my money. This is my madness and you must stop me.’
She couldn’t. She was too ashamed. She even wondered what the credit card people must think of her when month after month they assessed her expenditure and found another thousand pounds gone on clothes. The shop assistants wrote ‘clothes’ in the space on the chit and she had once thought, stupidly, of asking them to put ‘goods’ instead. It was because of what she was that the humiliation was so intense, because she was clever and accomplished with a good degree and a dazzling cv, at the top of her profession, sought-after, able to ask fees that raised eyebrows but seldom deterred. And her addiction was the kind that afflicted the football pools winners or sixteen-year-old school-leavers.
They were better than she. At least they were honest and open about it. Some could be frank and admit it, even make a joke of it. A few months back she had travelled to Edinburgh with a client to make a product presentation. They had stayed overnight. Edinburgh is not a place that immediately comes to mind as a shopping centre, while there are many other interesting things to do there, but the client announced as soon as they got into the station taxi that she would like to spend the two hours they had to spare at the shops.
‘I’m a compulsive shopper, you know. It’s what gives me a buzz.’
Alison had said restrainedly, ‘What did you want to buy?’
‘Buy? Oh, I don’t know. I’ll know when I see it.’
So Alison had gone shopping with her and seen all the signs and symptoms that she saw in herself, but with one exception. This woman was not ashamed, she was not deceitful.
‘I’m crazy, really,’ she said when she had bought a suit she confessed she ‘didn’t like all that much’. ‘I’ve got wardrobes full of stuff I never wear.’ And she laughed merrily. ‘I suppose you plan everything you buy terribly carefully, don’t you?’
And Alison, who had stood by while the suit was bought, sick with desire to buy herself, controlling herself with all her might, wearing what she now feared had been a supercilious half-smile, agreed that this was so. She smiled like a superior being, one who bought clothes when the old ones wore out.
On that trip she had managed to avoid buying anything. The energy expended in denial had left her exhausted. In London afterwards she went on a dreadful splurge, like the bulimic’s binge. It was that day, or the day after, she had read the piece in the paper about compulsive behaviour. Eating disorders, for instance, indicated some deep-seated emotional disturbance. It was the same with gambling, even with shopping. The compulsive shopper buys as a way of masking a need for love and to cover up inadequacy.
It wasn’t true. She loved Gil. She had everything she wanted. Her life was good and satisfying. The compulsion to buy had only begun when she realised she was rich, she had more than enough, she could afford it now. Only she couldn’t, hardly anyone could. Hardly anyone’s income could stand this drain on it.
Compulsive shopping was a cry for help. That was what the psychologists said. But help for what? To stop compulsive shopping?
Passing the shop where she had bought the sweaters – in a taxi, for safety’s sake – she reflected on something she had thought of only momentarily at the time. She had bought the sweaters without trying them on. It was as if she was saying, I don’t care if they fit or not, that is not why I am buying them, I want to buy, not to have.
The office was in the City, in a part where there were few shops. This, of course, was a blessing, yet she had recognised lately her dissatisfaction with the absence of clothes shops, the peculiar kind of hunger this lack brought her. Once she was outside in the street, an almost overwhelming impulse came to get in a taxi and be taken to where the shops were. She managed to resist. She had work to do, she had to be at her desk, near those phones, beside that fax machine. But as the days passed, the shop-less days, she began to think, it will be all right for me to go shopping next time I have the opportunity, it won’t be sick, it won’t be neurotic, because it has been so long, it has been a whole week . . .
There was an evening when it rained and she couldn’t find a taxi. Again she took the tube and at Knightsbridge looked for a taxi to take her that half-mile. It was quite possible to walk home by residential streets, there were many options, and it was one of the most charming parts of London. Even in the rain. But compulsive shopping began before she came to the shops, she had learnt that now, it was what led her steps to Sloane Street when she might so easily have taken Seville Street and Lowndes Square.
Her thoughts were strange. She recognised them as strange. Mad, perhaps. She was thinking that if she controlled herself this evening, she would not have to do so on the following day. Next day, after the client conference, she would find herself in Piccadilly, at the bottom of Bond Street, and if she walked up towards the tube station, her route would take her along Brook Street and into South Molton Street, into one of the Meccas of shopping, into heaven, buying country, shopland.
She passed the shop with the globular glass door knob and as she came to the next, already able to see ahead of her the gleam of a single shimmering garment isolated in its window, footsteps came running behind her and Gil’s arm was round her, his umbrella held high over her head.
‘You ought to buy that,’ he said. ‘You’d look good in that.’
She shuddered. He felt the shudder and looked at her in concern.
‘A designer walked over my grave,’ she said.
It was the time to say she wouldn’t buy the dress and tell him why not. She couldn’t do it. All she felt was resentment that he had caught up with her and, by his presence and his kind, innocent suggestion, stopped her buying it. He was like the well-intentioned friend who offers the secret drinker a double scotch.
In the morning she went in late, walking up Sloane Street. There was nothing to do before the conference. She went into the shop and bought the dress Gil had said would look good on her. She didn’t try it on but told the surprised assistant it was her size, she knew it would fit. High on adrenalin, she told herself this purchase need not stop her buying later in the day. The day was gone anyway, she thought, it was spoiled by buying the dress and there was no point in taking a stand today, a preliminary shot of the drug had gone in. If control was possible it could start tomorrow. In the office she took the dress out of her briefcase and stuffed it in a desk drawer.
The conference was over by three. For the past hour or more she had scarcely been attending. Once her own talk was over she lost interest and let her thoughts run in the direction they always did these days. Even during the talk she once or twice lost the thread of what she was saying, needed to refer to her notes, seemed to fumble with words. The company chairman asked her if she was feeling unwell. Sitting down again, taking a drink of water, she looked ahead of her to the great thoroughfare of shops waiting for her, full of things waiting to be bought, sitting there and waiting, and a huge longing took hold of her. She almost ran out of that building, she was breathless and she was thirsty, as if she had never taken a drink of that water.
On her way up Bond Street she bought a suit and a jacket. She tried both on but it was only for form’s sake and because she cringed under the shop assistant’s surprised look.
A taxi came as if to rescue her while she walked onwards and upwards, carrying her bags, but she let it pass by and turned into Brook Street. By this time, at this stage of her indulgence, her feet seemed to lose contact with the ground. She floated or skimmed the surface of the pavement. In the road she was always in danger of being run over. If she had met someone she knew she would have passed him by unseeing. Her body had undergone chemical changes which had a profound effect on recognition, on logical thought, on rational behaviour. They negated reason. She was unable to control the urge to buy because for these moments, this hour perhaps, she rejected a ‘cure’, she wanted her compulsion, she loved it, she was drunk on it.
Thoughts she had, words in her head, but they were always simple and direct. Why shouldn’t I have these things? I can afford them. Why shouldn’t I be well-dressed? I mustn’t be guilty about this simple, enjoyable, happy pastime . . . They repeated themselves in her mind as she floated along, aware too of her steadily beating heart.
In South Molton Street she bought a shirt and in the shop next door a skirt with a sweater that matched it. She tried neither on and when she was outside something made her look at the label on the skirt and sweater, which showed her she had bought them two sizes too big. She stood there, in the walking street, feeling elation drop, knowing she couldn’t go back in there.
She was ashamed. The fall was very swift from reckless excitement to a kind of visionary horror, it slid off her like oversize clothes slipping from her shoulders to the floor, and there came a sudden flash of appalled insight. She began to walk mechanically. Nearly at Oxford Street, she put the new clothes bags into the first rubbish bin she came to. Then she put the suit and the jacket in too. She turned her back and ran.
In the taxi she was crying. The taxi driver said, ‘Are you OK, love?’ she said she wasn’t well, she would be all right in a minute. The waste, the wickedness of such waste, were what she thought of. There were thousands, millions, who never had new clothes, who wore hand-me-downs or rags or just managed to buy secondhand. She had thrown away new clothes.
For some reason she thought of Gil, who trusted and loved her. She couldn’t face him again, she would have to go to some hotel for the night. By a tortuous route the taxi was winding through streets behind Broadcasting House, behind Langham Place. It came down into Regent Street and she told the driver to let her off. He didn’t like that and she gave him a five-pound note. What was five pounds? She had just thrown away two hundred times that.
Carrying only her briefcase, she went into a department store. She caught sight of herself in a mirror, her wild hair, her staring eyes, the whiteness of her face: a madwoman. Something else struck her, as she paused there briefly. She wasn’t well-dressed, almost any woman she passed was better-dressed than she was. Every week, nearly every day, she bought clothes, mountains of clothes, cupboards-full, clothes to be unloaded on charities or thrown away unworn, but she was dressed less well than a woman who bought what she wore out of the money a husband gave her for housekeeping.
She hated clothes. Understanding came in migraine-like flashes of light and darkness. Why had she never realised how she hated clothes? They made her feel sick, the new, slightly bitter smell of them, their sinuous slithering pressures on her, surrounding her as they now did, rails of coats and jackets, suits and dresses. She was in designer country and she could smell and feel, but she saw very little. Her eyes were affected by her mental state and a mist hung in front of them.
Fumbling, she began to slide clothes off the rail, a shirt here, a sweater there. She opened her briefcase and stuffed the things inside. A label hung out and part of a sleeve when she closed the case. She snatched a knitted garment, long and sleeveless and buttoned, and a blouse of stiff organza, another sweater, another shirt. No one saw her, or if they did they made no attempt to intervene.
She pulled a scarf from a shelf and wound it round her neck. Pulling at the ends, she thought how good it would be to lose consciousness, for the scarf quietly to strangle her. With her overflowing briefcase, too full to close, she began to walk down the stairs. No one came after her. No one had seen. On her way through leather goods she picked up a handbag, though it was unusual for her to be attracted by such things, then a wallet and a pair of gloves. She held them in one hand, while the other held the briefcase, the bigger garments over her arm.
Between the inner glass doors and the entrance doors a bell began ringing urgently. The security officer approached. She sat down on the floor with all the stolen things around her and when he came up to her, she said quite sanely, though with a break in her voice, ‘Help me, someone help me.’
Unacceptable Levels
* * *
‘YOU SHOULDN’T SCRATCH it. You’ve made it bleed.’
‘It itches. It’s giving me hell. You don’t react to mosquito bites the way I do.’
‘It’s just where the belt on your jeans rubs. I think I’d better put a plaster on it.’
‘They’re in the bathroom cabinet,’ he said.
‘I know where they are.’
She removed the plaster from its plastic packing and applied it to the small of his back. He reached for his cigarettes, put one in his mouth and lit it.
‘I wonder if you’re allergic to mosquito bites,’ she said. ‘I mean, I wonder if you should be taking anti-histamine when you get bitten. You know, you should try one of those sprays that ease the itching.’
‘They don’t do any good.’
‘How do you know, if you don’t try? I don’t suppose smoking helps. Oh, yes, I know that sounds ridiculous to you, but smoking does affect your general health. I bet you didn’t tell the doctor you had all these allergies when you were examined for that life insurance you took out.’
‘What do you mean, “all these allergies”? I don’t have allergies. I have rather a strong reaction to mosquito bites.’
‘I bet you didn’t tell them you smoked,’ she said.
‘Of course I told them. You don’t mess about when you’re taking out a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of insurance on your life.’ He lit a cigarette from the stub of the last one. ‘Why d’you think I pay such high premiums?’
‘I bet you didn’t tell them you smoked forty a day.’
‘I said I was afraid I was a heavy smoker.’
‘You ought to give it up,’ she said. ‘Mind you, I’d like a thousand pounds for every time I’ve said that. I’d like a pound. You smokers don’t know what it’s like living with it. You don’t know how you smell, your clothes, your hands, the lot. It gets in the curtains. You may laugh but it’s no joke.’
‘I’m going to bed,’ he said.
In the morning she had a shower and washed her hair. She made a cup of tea and brought it up to him. He stayed in bed smoking while he drank his tea. Then he had a shower.
