Extract – Part 1

Hot Pink of Notting Hill

Her house was big.  If it had been in the middle of the countryside it would have looked substantial but in the middle of Holland Park, with it’s double gates, double garage and double front door with two large brass knobs, it seemed vast.  There were box trees on either side of the doors set in glass cubes, the trees shorn to rigid topiary to match the cubes.  A pair of stone greyhounds sat in heraldic pose in front of the trees.

Each time I lugged one of the baskets of pashmina from my car up the steps to the front door, a security camera swivelled and blinked at me.  When I rang the bell another camera opened and its shutter flashed.

A well-dressed woman answered the door, I introduced myself.  She looked down on me from the top step.  Her trousers were well cut and she wore a good pink cashmere cardigan.  I was wearing clothes suitable for lugging around baskets of pashmina.  My outfit did not impress the woman in pink cashmere.  She watched as I carried the baskets, one by one, through to where I was supposed to be setting out my wares.

The sitting-room was the size of my whole flat.  Everything was large, swollen sofas banked up with too many cushions and investment paintings on a grand scale on the walls.  Most of the furniture looked as if it had come straight from the cabinet-maker who had recently been the darling of London’s interior designers.  The exception was a low oriental table in front of the fireplace.  On it lay four piles of books, one to a corner, each a squared-off stack of hardback catalogues from art exhibitions around the world.

While I gawped, the housekeeper came back with a black lacquered tray.  There were matching bowls of Japanese rice crackers and out-of-season cherries, plates of sushi and some tiny blueberry muffins.  She arranged them carefully and symmetrically between the four piles of art books.

‘Please, do help yourself,’ she said in a tone implying the contrary.

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Extract – Part 2

Hot Pink of Notting Hill Continued…

Hot-pink New York came in as I was about half way through unpacking the baskets. In contrast to her house, her box trees and her housekeeper, New York was looking casual. In fact she was one of the scruffiest dressers in the neighbourhood. It was one of her redeeming features.

She was talking on a portable telephone. She mouthed ‘Hi’ and ducked down to collect some sushi and a couple of the dolly-sized blueberry muffins from their black lacquered bowls. With the telephone squashed between her ear and a hunched shoulder, and the sushi and muffins in one hand, she began to whip shawls out of bags at speed. The sushi and the muffins went into her mouth and now, with both hands free, she began to wind shawls around herself. Once draped she went over to a mirror above the large fireplace to inspect herself.

‘This colour is terrible. It does nothing for me. Look, it just dies on me, it makes me look so washed-out.’

She was washed out. The pretty summer sky shawl was cast aside.

‘Now this I quite like. No I change my mind, it’s not there, it’s just two steps off the colour I need.’

Crushed raspberry joined sky blue on the floor.

‘You know, when I say hot pink I mean really full on. That is just kinda ugh.’ She poked her toe at the now very crushed raspberry.

I gathered up the rejects and started to refold them.

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Extract – Part 3

Hot Pink of Notting Hill Continued…

‘Oh, don’t bother with all that stuff. Everyone will do exactly the same as me.’ She took the shawls from me and threw them on to the nearest sofa.

‘God, they look fantastic! I’m gonna have to buy a few that I can just throw around the place. You know, just muzz them up on the furniture.’ She muzzed sky blue and crushed raspberry around the cushions.

‘See, now how great does that look?’

Two crumpled shawls on an over-stuffed sofa.

Half an hour later there were about thirty crumpled shawls muzzed together on the same sofa. I was crouched in one corner over an invoice book, trying to pick squashed blueberry muffin out of the fringe of a bleached lemon shawl while writing out an invoice for Belle from Austin, Texas. She had bought three shawls.

‘The cream one is for me so you do not have to pack it up all fancy and such. It works with ma face. The pink is for my brother Henry and the lilac is for his significant other, Charles. He just looks a dream in all those mauvey things. I’m just gonna get mad if I only have one. I’m gonna have to buy a whole load more.’

She pronounced lilac as if it were two words and most of the others she managed to stretch to about four. It was a long time since I had been around a Texan drawl deep enough to swim in.

‘Ma family has a ranch, you know. It is one of the most renowned in the state. Night times when we are out it can seem awful cool. You know these pashminas are gonna save ma life.’

Another tough New Yorker, currently soaring in business circles, was holding court on the other side of the room. Her baby daughter was keen for her attention but was being held in check by an au pair who, the New Yorker explained, was from Bosnia. Bolting handfuls of Japanese crackers, her large diamond ring clinking against the lacquer bowl each time, Ms Corporate New York launched into her experiences of recent house-hunting in Manhattan and Notting Hill.

‘You all just have no idea the stuff that I have been through. It’s disgusting the way you get treated by these realty kids. God, I mean I’m old enough to be their mother. What do I get to show me around a place with a two-million tag? Some spotty geek with a rah-rah accent who tells me exactly how bad his hangover is. Then he deigns to take off his shades and he thinks he can smell money and he goes all humble and apologetic. So I say, “Listen honey, get in the car, get over your hangover and remember I know that you work on commission. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to work out the percentage on two mill.” He was a perfect pussycat after that.’

Ms Corporate New York and Austin Belle eyed each other across the lacquered tray of blueberry muffins. Belle smiled the frosty smile of an iced daiquiri. Ms Corporate responded with a deal-crunching, investment-capped teeth.

A tall, beautiful woman arrived. She was late and apologetic, and greeted everyone in the room including the Bosnian au pair.

Most of the women did not warm to her. She was too thin, too pretty and too polite. As she admired the shawls she asked about India, Delhi and the slum children.

I asked whether she had any children.

‘I have a boy and a four-month-old baby daughter.’

She was from Poland and had married an American whom she had met while modelling in New York.

‘I just don’t buy it that you’ve got a baby. You’re too skinny. What did you do, get liposuction?’ Ms Corporate New York smiled as she spoke, but it was not a warm smile. ‘Come on, we need proof. Where’s the kid?’

‘My husband has her, and my son,’ replied the Polish woman.

‘Oh great, perfect body, perfect life and a husband who likes to child-mind. I guess you never had zits and you’ve got a law degree.’ Ms Corporate New York was joking now but the Polish woman did not smile.

‘We are getting divorced and he has taken the children because he has a very clever lawyer.’ She gave the facts in a flat voice.

The Bosnian au pair started to cry. Most of us had assumed that she did not speak much English because of the way her employer spoke in front of her. But she had been listening, understanding and absorbing it all. The Polish woman went to her and touched her face.
‘I am sorry, I did not mean to upset you.’

‘No, no, you are very beautiful woman and it is so sad for you.’

The Bosnian girl hugged her small charge to her.

‘She’s so freaky sometimes. She doesn’t say a thing for weeks and then she suddenly goes and cries all over everyone. Her brother was killed in Sarajevo by the bad guys,’ whispered Ms Corporate New York, loud enough for me to hear on the other side of the room.

Everyone fell silent. A mobile phone rang and was answered immediately, a note of relief in the reply. The mood in the room relaxed.

‘God, I have to have more pashmina parties. They are just so much fun.’ My hostess popped one more blueberry muffin into her mouth and draped another shawl on top of the one she was already wearing.

A pretty woman who had made much less noise than the others rolled her eyes at me. She had been waiting quietly as I wrapped, packed and wrote for the less patient members of the gathering. As the others began to leave at various decibel levels she remained on one of the over-stuffed sofas, picking up crumbs from a blueberry muffin that her little boy had thrown over the fat cushions.

Our hostess left the room with the final flight of pashmina purchasers. The pretty woman and I were left alone in a nest of muzzed shawls and tissue paper.

‘Not quite how we behave at shower parties back home.’ She said. Her soft accent rolled like a Bondi Beach spume.

‘Hasn’t pashmina fever hit Sydney yet?’ I asked.

‘It’s just starting, but the prices are only for the truly rich and vacuous at the moment.’

She wore virtually no make-up, her skin was clear and her eyes were as blue as the shawl that she had picked out.

‘Can I have this one please?’

‘Of course you can.’

I had sold sixteen shawls. Ms Corporate New York with the two-million pound house hadn’t bought any, though she had tried them all on.

‘Well, I bought a whole load from Nicole’s guy a few months ago.’

Of course she was a friend of Nicole.

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