City Girl

by Michael Keenaghan

It was a typical Saturday afternoon. Hannah had enjoyed a morning breakfast with friends in a cafe near Spitalfields and now, post-hangover, found herself up in Hoxton having a drink with, as it happens, yet another set of friends. And on Saturday, what could be better – no work for a start. And God, Hannah hated work. Well, liked to say she did anyway – didn’t everyone? – and certainly at times like this. But to honest, working for a magazine was a dream, everything she ever wanted. (People asking: What do you do? – I work for a magazine – her heart always swelling with pride). But if only it were a different kind of magazine… something in the Arts or Fashion instead of plain old bloody Property. I mean – boring.

But what the hell, she cleared her mind of all that. Work was for the weekdays. Sod work. Being here was much better. Sitting back watching Sophie’s dashing boyfriend Max recount his latest escapades in the the Cote d’Azur. And my God, Max was hot. Sizzling in fact. Worked for Goldman Sachs and was even said to have played polo with Prince William. And listen to this, had not only one but two luxury crash pads, one in Shoreditch and another in Holland Park… Gosh. All the girls at the table fancied him something rotten… God, what did little Sophie have that they didn’t? Well, a father that worked senior-level for BAE Systems and was something of an aristocrat for a start… But whatever. The guy was gorgeous, totally buff…

Everyone laughed as Max rounded off his anecdote and Hannah laughed too. Nothing better. Laughing along in great company and the alcohol working its sweet wonders.

Hannah had decided a while ago to just enjoy herself – to stop taking life in general so seriously. Fun was number one. Had to be. Nothing else mattered, basically. And why would it? I mean, God – looking back on her student days was like recalling a total stranger. Her head always stuck in some boring textbook, staying in like a swot while everybody else drank, took drugs and had a bloody wail of a time. God, it was embarrassing.

Before coming to London she hadn’t really known anything. My God, hadn’t even lived! She looked around the bar at everybody relaxed, smiling, at ease. These days life was good. Terribly good. Good for her and good for everybody she knew. And sometimes, (certainly at times like this) it felt as if this wonderful goodness counted for everybody everywhere. As if the whole of London was one big happy place without a care, a worry in the world. Everybody out there networking, prospering, doing well.

But reading the London papers the cynicism often startled her. It was always one big cynical moan: the city awash in crime, chaos, disorder. Nonsense. London was great, dazzling, brilliant – what was the problem? Blacks – crime; Asians – terrorism; Innocent asylum-seekers fleeing war and torture – oh, let’s blame them for every other problem that exists. I mean change the record, man. Boring. Hannah had no problem with coloured people or foreign people whatsoever. And you can include lesbians and gay men in that bracket too. Some of her work colleagues were coloured – black, brown – what was the problem? A lack of acceptance for other cultures was alien to her, exclusive only to ignorant uneducated people who hadn’t travelled and who believed in… gosh, a Little England or something. Thankfully she didn’t know any of these people (and wouldn’t want to either) and took pride in the circle of friends and acquaintances she did know; each intelligent and witty and breezing through urban living with unequivocal ease…

The thought came back to her. The other day glancing through the nation’s favourite tabloid. She was proud to say she didn’t do this very often, but some moron had left it behind on the tube (and in London everybody travels on the tube – God, you’d be a little weakling if you didn’t) and, well, she must have been bored. Paging through an over-large spread on Crime in the Capital, page after page of hysterical scaremongering designed to justify and boost the ignorant racist attitudes of its white uneducated moronic readership – and God, thinking about it now it was outrageous! Mugshots of black faces everywhere. Inner-city crime is out of control, it screamed. Right, okay, so let’s put all the blame on the vulnerable and voiceless ethnic-communities shall we who not only enrich our culture with vibrant diversity but work damn hard for the economy too. I mean it’s like white people never do a thing wrong. Yeah, right. What about Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet by any chance? What about Le Pen? Fred West for Godsake! Very perfect indeed. And harping on about crime, crime, boring crime – I mean, durrr! – this is London for Godsake, if you can’t handle it move to – I don’t know, Barnet or, like, Watford or somewhere…

Not like her. No way. Hannah lived in Hoxton. And God, she even liked the word. She said it again: Hoxton. Ooh, a shiver of delight down the spine – gosh. She’d wanted to live here for years, had read about it and longed and pleaded. And here she was. But now, sadly, there were whispers that Bethnal Green was the place, and one or two of her friends had even de-camped in that direction. Ssss. Cheapskates! But Hannah was a fighter, a survivor, a true Hoxtonite! Hoxton, Inner-London. Oh yes: and proud! And Hannah just LOVED London: had a tube map pinned over her bed in her bedroom back in Surrey dreaming of the time when she’d be free… free atlast to live her urban dream. (Fair enough, there were one or two things she did miss, her horses and her parents included, especially Daddy – but she could handle that – she made regular trips down after all…). But God, the city, she loved it. The multiculturalism – walking around Brick Lane with the scent of curry and spices, all that ethnic attire, people haggling for trade outside restaurants and… feeling like she were in some ramshackle little town somewhere in Bangladesh. The mystery… the romance of it all. And the grit. Oh God, yes, the grit. That’s like what London’s about. And My God, it warmed her heart with pride. This was the coolest, hippest city in the world. Even better than New York. And that city took some beating…

Suddenly one of her friends, lovely Tabby who worked in PR, asked Hannah what she was daydreaming about – nudging her – You deep thinker you. And Hannah nodded over to Max who was leaning over the bar ordering drinks and mischievously said: That – smiling at the sight of his sexy little arse; Tabby looking mock-shocked then quietly issuing hearty agreement; laughing together as Max’s little girlfriend Sophie chatted away to Alexa magnificently unawares.

Max walked over with their drinks and Tabby suggested Hannah join her for a ciggie outside. On their way they smiled at a couple of dishy indie-looking guys on their way in, the girls comically checking the back view, but no, those rags don’t fool us, boys – Tabby saying she recognized one of them, had snogged him once in Fabric or somewhere, and he worked as a lender or something for CityBank. Phwoar! And they stood in the sunlight smoking their ciggies (nothing stronger yet – maybe later!) musing upon where they’d be heading to later, what club, party, event etc. and Tabby said she was getting hold of some pure top-grade MDMA so wherever they went they’d be the wildest craziest chicks there, and Hannah laughed and said, Wow, looking forward to that!

When they went back inside, Alexa, who worked for Sony, was entertaining the table with one of her tales of wild rock’n'roll excess. The other night she’d gone to a Chemical Brothers aftershow in Brixton and was coked off her head, one venue leading to the next and suddenly it was almost dawn and she was smooching with one of the guys from Razorlight at a roof party somewhere and, well, actually they went the whole way – and Hannah quickly asked if it had been the singer Johnny, but Alexa shook her head – and thank God because Hannah would have envied Alexa something rotten… I mean, Johnny Borrell, my God, he was so hot, she’d had a crush on that guy for, like, years… Alexa cutting in to say, Oh, but on the subject of Johnny, my brother was actually in his year at Highgate, mmm, they were both in the cricket team. And, gosh… my God… things like that made Hannah love London even more! Wow! Everybody knew everybody, connections everywhere! Max joining in to ironically say he’d actually gone to Harrow with one of The Libertines and they’d played rugby together. Alexa saying, That’s nothing, darling, I’ve smoked crack naked at an orgy squat-party in Dalston with one of Babyshambles, and everybody laughed out loud… but knowing Alexa with her hard-partying credentials and working for Sony and everything, she probably wasn’t lying. And Hannah, feeling the luscious effects of her third wine, dreamily decided that one of these days maybe she’d try and get in with Alexa, try a little of this rock’n'roll excess cavorting-with-the-stars stuff herself….

Monday morning and the world was a different place. Hannah was seated on a packed tube carriage and was sweating profusely. Oh god…. here we go again. Her mind was racing. Heart pumping. Tube travel was still a challenge. A big challenge. Cattled in with all these strangers – My God never in her life had she known anything like it. Within sight a foreign-looking man was picking his nose and the overweight human bundle sitting next to her reeked of last night’s garlic. Ugh. People – so close. People – everywhere. People, with their habits and bodily odours and germs – right in her fucking face. Arrrr. Go away. Piss off. Die, every one of you…

She tried to immerse herself in her book. Head down, get stuck in. But Godgodgod this was awful. Instead of getting used to the commuting-thing across London, if anything, it was actually getting harder. Initial blind romanticism gradually sporting cracks, unable to hide the sheer reality, sheer grime, sheer ugliness of it all. The intrusion. The physical disgust. God. Feeling the heat and sweat and breathing the same breath as all these complete strangers made her want to retreat inside herself, curl up like an animal, disappear. Ohgod ohgod ohgod get me out of here…

But no… Be positive… Think on the bright side. She had a seat. She’d been lucky. Very lucky. And, God, at first everything had been going swimmingly – at breakfast psyching herself up for the day ahead, the start of a new week co-existing with some of her more difficult work colleagues and feeling like it wouldn’t be an internally-maddening problem anymore. Latisha, a black girl who was tough and ballsy and wouldn’t take no shit from nobody (her own words), and John and Claire and Jerome (this black guy who was actually quite polite and didn’t really seem black atall – not that she could ever find a anything to say to him) …But Zoe – thank God for Zoe! – her best friend at work (and my, if it wasn’t for Zoe she probably couldn’t have handled the job atall), confident, exuberant Zoe who took her under her wing from day one, so caring, so reassuring, showing her the ropes and bringing her out for drinks with her friends in Soho, Camden, Notting Hill – her saint, her Joan of bloody Arc – God, what would she have done without her?

But suddenly Hannah felt a gush of vulnerability, a horrific thought entering her head like a flood. IMAGINE IF ZOE ACTUALLY LEFT. Moved on liked she’d hinted she might. In a month or two – gone. Hannah imagined herself stuck with Latisha and John and Jerome and all these Londoners she had absolutely nothing in common with – God, it was unimaginable… She’d probably have to leave. Declare herself a failure – A Failure! …No. No way. She had to wipe this horror from her mind right now. Right now! Concentrating on her book trying to deny the crippling acknowledgement that she needed Zoe – needed her! – Zoe’s confidence, Zoe’s strength, Zoe’s ability to deal with anything… Zoe her backbone, her tool to cling to for survival…

Suddenly the carriage shed some of its load and Hannah could breathe easier and managed to brush the thought away. God, Hannah, wake up – she had to stop feeling so bloody paranoid about everything. As Zoe said (a Brighton girl) London was the place to get fucked-up and funky. And to Hannah that had sounded good. Of course it did. You needed balls to live in London. Balls that… well, if she managed to get her head together she’d surely acquire…. of course she would… she just had to work on it. Start being a little more tough, thick-skinned. Maybe it would take some time but… certainly on Saturday night she’d felt like the most ballsiest chick on the block. So alive. Confident. Partying the night away and cavorting with boys and her REAL self shining through. Not this. Not this atall. This wasn’t the real Hannah, no way. God…Maybe she was just hungover. Of course. Maybe that’s all these panic attacks ever were – the result of excess – too much of a good time.

But no. Deep down she blamed it on something else. Blamed it on Surrey. That’s what it was. Boring, boring Surrey. Hannah had to forget that place. Forget that bloody backwater. She’d been marooned there for too long… (and if the thought of her horses made her cry at night, it was simply something she… had to fucking control!!!) Besides, as Daddy said, they were being well looked after – her sister Lucy loved them like her own… (But whoa, she had to stop thinking about this – seeing their sorrowful abandoned eyes – GOD, HOW COULD SHE DO SUCH A THING! – no no no, had to stop this or I swear she was going to start crying right now…)

She concentrated on her book. Scanned a line. Then another line. Half a page. Good Lord, her mind wasn’t absorbing a word. What was this bloody book anyway? She turned to the cover. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude. (Not surprised, knowing if it wasn’t that it would have been something by Camus, Sartre, Nabokov, etc etc…). And suddenly she felt a wave of hate, cursing herself for never being able to get into these type of books… because I mean, God, you’d need a brain as dead as a piece of wood to willingly digest this tedious shit! And it shamed her to realize she’d much rather have grabbed a Tatler or Marie Claire, even a bloody Hello than wade through this ghastly load of twaddle…

But she had to stop… remind herself that she was educated – EDUCATED!… It was all just because she was hot, stuffy, not thinking straight… Hannah wasn’t a moron… a fool… a weakling… Hannah was an educated, young, liberal, professional Londoner…

….and she felt a twinge of warmth and smug superiority at the thought of herself here at the heart of it all having finally taken the plunge, here braving the big city… and her mind formed a collage that featured the confident smiling faces of Sienna Miller, Sadie Frost, Lily Allen… Johnny Borrell! Londoners about town that made her feel… safe… assured… one of THEM… picturing trendy East End art galleries and scenes of Upper Street cafe-bars on a Summer’s day, young couples strolling through Notting Hill, Holland Park, Westbourne Grove, friendly black faces nodding their heads and passing joints; liberated asylum-seekers smiling outside ethnic cafes smoking hookah pipes; Asians offering fine cuisine, colourful Bollywood girls dancing in unison; the sound of music, life, laughter, everybody happy, free, amiable, a festival atmosphere, the beautiful gritty Capital, us the Londoners versus the stuck-up out-of-town Daily Mail readership…

And she wished she were clutching a Guardian right now, digesting the day’s topical points, a keen eye upon culture and politics and far-off war, displaying her intelligence, her liberalism (I mean, Zoe at work carried her Guardian virtually everywhere, and could talk her way through current affairs with ease…)

But… HANNAH BLOODY HATED POLITICS! Hated all those tedious drawn-out articles intelligent people were forever supposed to read… Iraq, the NHS, cash for honours, cash for questions, arms scandals, human rights for terror suspects, civil wars in God knows where… WHAT THE HELL DID ALL THAT MEAN TO HER! And quite honestly how did all these people quite willingly read and digest and discuss such bloody mind-numbing codswallop…

Suddenly she flushed at her mindlessness. Felt a true sweep of shame. And it sickened her further to admit the kind of things she DID read… every week buying OK, Heat, Now, Closer, Reveal… the damn bloody lot. Sweeping up the newsagents shelf (for not even so much the boring fashion ones but the trashier the bloody better) like some kind of dumb chav miniskirted no-brain from bloody… Croydon or somewhere. Feasting on low-rent celebrity gossip while actually considering herself intelligent, my God! The other day running to hide a pile of them when a friend popped round, replacing them on the coffee table with a block of hastily-bought Russian classics…

But Hannah wasn’t stupid. Hannah had her reasons for engrossing herself in such rubbish. And the reason was her figure. That’s right. That’s what it was. Her fucking figure! The only reason why she bought all that shit was to compare herself to others. Her figure to other figures. The people of the moment. The people in the public eye. People dumb and stupid and brainless but pictured for a reason – pictured because they looked good. Because since moving to London Hannah’s eyes had opened in more ways than one. In fact, her eyes had opened wide to one excruciating fact that even now was sending her heart racing in an unbearable sense of skin-crawling insecurity…

Hannah was fat. Did you hear that? Fat! A fat fucking cow! And to think, for so long she hadn’t even known it. How ignorant! Up until London she hadn’t been body-conscious atall. Everything had been fine. She’d even liked her figure. Her body had caused no embarrassment whatsoever. But at home and right through Uni and everything she’d been living in a blind isolated bubble. It hadn’t been an issue. She’d felt healthy and normal and actually liked herself – liked the way boys would whistle or smile when she was out riding, and at night she’d stupidly imagine them fantasizing about her, and it made her feel good, made her feel… strong. And when she’d go with a boy she’d felt no shame whatsoever. But my God, she’d been living in a cloud cuckoo land! And now the only time she felt truly attractive was when she was drunk – drunk and out of her bloody mind! And she thought of what Zoe had said during their heart-to-heart when Hannah had embarrassingly broken down, Zoe assuring her that of course she wasn’t fat, she was actually slim, and very beautiful. But Hannah was insistent, shamefully lifting up her top and showing her the pouchy flesh on her tummy and her disgusting tits… But Zoe had held her and said: Hannah, look at me, there’s nothing there, you’re talking like an anorexic, imagining things… But that was all very well for her to say with her tiny chest and Sienna Miller body, a practical size zero for Godsake… Oh God… god god God….

She looked up. A man in jeans and t-shirt was staring straight at her. She sank her head low in her book, suddenly burning. Again she looked up. Their eyes locking. She quickly turned away. No… God… stop this – wanting to disappear, sink into the bloody floor. Again – now his eyes had lowered slightly, were focusing on her breasts. A fucking pervert! – lowering her eyes deep into her book, squirming in self-consciousness and feeling his eyes feasting upon her body. No… get off me… leave me alone. Mentally undressing her and tearing off her clothes and punishingly raping her with his eyes…men… Men!

She glanced up. He wasn’t looking anymore. Thank God. Thank fucking God. She looked him up and down. The man was a builder. Definitely. A no-good-for-nothing bloody labourer slumped in his seat in boots and jeans and brute ignorance. She hated him. I hate you. I fucking hate you. Then suddenly his eyes were back, planting themselves on her breasts, then darting up to her eyes, her heart jumping like she were in a torture chamber. No. No! – face down in her book – Stop staring at me you bastard, you filthy fucking bastard. And again the carriage felt hot and clammy and unbearable, a stinking cattle-run to some unknown destination for slaughter – and his eyes, his raping eyes running along her thighs and legs then up to her face! And then… then he’d look away. Yes, his little trick, his little game – look away for a few seconds, let her feel the flood of relief, then bang, back on target, relishing her vulnerability and discomfort and enjoying every bullying bloody second of it. Hannah skimmed through her book for distraction but all she could feel was the collision of two worlds, hers, his, saw him draining lager and running around a football terrace with other louts or drunkenly rampaging through run-down streets and randomly punching passers-by, and her mind formed a hell of everything squalid, ugly and reprehensible, and it frightened her… scared her to be noticed, singled-out by such an animal. Somebody who would grab her and grope her and tear her legs apart and… oh God… why her?… why always her?!!!…

If only she had the balls to stare the bastard back – stare him away!  Go! Go away! Like Latisha at work… get up in front of everyone, head going left and right like some diva in a music video and ask him just WHAT THE FUCK ON EARTH HE THOUGHT HE WAS LOOKING AT? But no. No way. Hannah wasn’t like Latisha. They were a… breed apart. A different species. Human and… something else. And a terrible violence shuddered through her as she recalled the rap event in Stratford that Tabby had brought her to which, when she thought of it now, had been a FUCKING scary experience. In fact, Stratford was an area of London she never ever wanted to visit again. Especially at night. The place was like hell, Bedlam….

And suddenly she thought of Kate Moss. Everything cool, urban, nonchalant. Saw the model right-here-right-now (the phrase looping in her head) eyeing the starer back hard and watching him shrivel to the floor like a writhing little maggot. Kate smirking as she effortlessly crushed him beneath her stiletto heel… Kate so beautiful and confident and breezing through London without a care… and she blushed recalling those nights she’d touched herself to Kate’s pictures and… god god God, she hadn’t gone the whole way with a man in ages because of all this… this bloody inferiority… always at that crucial moment when it was time to remove her clothes having to make excuses, finish off in other ways… all because Kate was perfect and she wasn’t, and Kate represented everything she wanted to become but never could. Because look at her. A silly country girl playing out this urban bloody fantasy that she just couldn’t handle – A FRAUD – yes, a bloody fraud with a SWEATY PIG staring at her (his eyes now glazed over onto her thighs like a model in a wax museum) …and she tried to concentrate on her ridiculous book – tried reading it instead of tearing it to shreds in exasperation – looking up as a pretty office girl sat down opposite, took out a cheap gossip magazine and didn’t give a bloody shit…

Hannah eyed her up and down. Envied her. Why couldn’t she be like that? Why couldn’t she not give two flying bloody fucks? Ah, but look at her. The cow probably wasn’t even English. That was it. The cow was probably a damn foreigner straight off the boat from Slovakia or Poland or the Ukraine or some other bloody backward wasteland… And come to think of it, the labourer probably wasn’t even English either – of course not, staring at her like that! – how ignorant… What was it with London? Black, brown, even white – damn bloody foreigners in your face everywhere you bloody go – staring, grunting, smelling… My God, getting from A to B was like travelling through a cesspit of every displaced race in the whole fucking world…

But God… Lord… God. She was trying… trying so hard… trying to get into the swing of this… trying to be liberal… modern… loving her neighbour, loving strangers, loving everyone… trying to escape the bloody snobbishness of her embarrassingly backward Tory bloody parents who didn’t have a clue, not a bloody clue. But here again, the guilt killed her (especially with Daddy pulling strings with the job and providing the flat and everything, and she loved him, loved him!! and Mummy too! Loved them both!!!) But the sense of failure – Failure!!! Thinking she could simply up and leave and go it alone and… God Jesus God she felt sick… sick sick SICK… saw Kate watching down and arrogantly blowing smoke in her face like she were a total weed, a silly inept little girl who shouldn’t even be here – wasn’t made for all this SHIT… THIS FUCKING SHIT… her head swirling in a whirlpool of shame and her body slipping into a black hole of defeat, a quicksand of emotion rising around her, bubbling up, boiling to the surface and she brought the book to her face to hide her shame as the tears burst forth… tears of abomination, tears of hopelessness…

This was it. Finally it. Her breakdown: public, for all to see – hiding her face in crippled humiliation knowing if she pulled the book away, if she revealed herself and opened her eyes then the laughing hordes would be right there, homing in, pointing fingers and roaring in mockery because she wasn’t wanted here, wasn’t welcome, never should have left home, never should have fucking left…

But suddenly a woman was asking if she was okay, and a man too, offering her a tissue, offering words of care, what’s wrong, are you okay… human faces… caring faces… and she took the tissue, said thanks, I’m fine, dried her eyes, just a little emotional this morning, and they smiled, and Hannah was shaking her head and smiling too, and suddenly – gosh – it was her stop.

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~ This piece was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 and was filed under Blog, Featured, Poetry, Writing. You can make comments on it below. ~