Absolute Beginners Read Free

evening time with huge plates of chicken and peas she cooks for her Spade visitors.
    ‘Hi, darl,’ she said.
    ‘Hi, hon,’ I answered.
    That’s how we heard two movie stars address each other at a film we went to ages ago that rather sent us, in the days when Suze and I were steady.
    ‘How are the boys?’ I asked her, sitting down opposite, and under that tiny table putting my knees to hers.
    ‘The boys,’ she said, ‘are quite all right. Quite, quite okay.’
    ‘Have you had your hundredth yet?’ I asked her.
    ‘Not yet a hundred,’ Suze replied, ‘not yet, no, I don’t think so, not a hundred.’
    I ordered my striped cassata. ‘You ever think of marrying with one of them?’ I asked her edgily, as usualslipping into that groove of nastiness that affects me whenever I talk to Suze of her love life.
    She looked dreamy, and actually flipped her eyelashes in the Italian starlet manner. ‘If ever I marry,’ she said, ‘it will be exclusively for distinction. I mean to make a very distinguished marriage.’
    ‘Not with a Spade, then.’
    ‘No, I don’t think so.’ She blew a little brown nest in the white froth of her cappuccino. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘I’ve had an offer. Or what amounts to an offer.’
    She stopped, and gazed at me. ‘Go on,’ I said.
    ‘From Henley.’
    ‘No!’
    She nodded, and lowered her eyes.
    ‘That horrible old poof!’ I cried.
    I should explain that Henley is the fashion designer Suzette works for, and old enough to be her aunt, quite apart from anything else.
    Suze looked severe and sore at me. ‘Henley,’ she said, ‘may be an invert, but he has distinction.’
    ‘He’s certainly got that!’ I cried. ‘Oh, he’s certainly got that all right!’
    She paused. ‘Our marriage,’ she continued, ‘would of course be sexless.’
    ‘You bet it would!’ I yelled. I glared at her, seeking the killer phrase. ‘And what will Miss Henley say,’ I shouted, ‘when the Spades come tramping in their thousands into his distinguished bridal chamber?’
    She smiled with pity, and was silent. I could have smacked her down.
    ‘I don’t dig this, Suze,’ I cried. ‘You’re a secretary in that place, you’re not even a glamorous model. Why should he want you , of all people, as his front woman alibi?’
    ‘I think he admires me.’
    I glowered her ‘You’re marrying for loot,’ I shouted out. ‘With the Spades you were just a strumpet, now you’re going to be a whore!’
    She poked her determined, obstinate little face at mine. ‘I’m marrying for distinction,’ she replied, ‘and that’s a thing that you could never give me.’
    ‘No, that I couldn’t,’ I said, very bitterly indeed.
    I got up under pretext of spinning a record, pressed my three buttons wildly, and luckily got Ella, who would soothe even a volcano. I walked just a moment to the door, and really, the heat was beginning to saturate the air and hit you. ‘This summer can’t last,’ said the yobbo behind the Gaggia, mopping his sweaty brow with his sweaty arm.
    ‘Oh yes it can, daddy-o,’ I answered. ‘It can last till the calendar says stop.’
    ‘No …’ said the yobbo, gazing meanly up at the black-blue of that succulent June sky.
    ‘It can shine on forever,’ I hissed at him, leaning across and mingling with the steam out of his Gaggia. Then I turned away to go back and talk business with Suze. ‘Tell me about this client,’ I asked her, sitting down. ‘Tell me the who, the when, and even, if you know it, the why.’
    Suze was quite nice to me, now she’d planted her littlearrow in my lungs. ‘He’s a diplomat,’ she answered, ‘or so he says.’
    ‘Does he represent any special country?’
    ‘Not exactly, no, he’s over here for some conference, so she told me.’
    ‘She who?’
    ‘His woman, who came in with him to see Henley and buy dresses.’
    I gazed at Suzette. ‘Please tell me a thing I’ve always wanted to know. How do you go about raising