Rebecca Campbell - The Favours and Fortunes of Katie Castle

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A Paperback Original 2002

Copyright © Rebecca Campbell 2002

Rebecca Campbell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007117895

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007571581

Version: 2016-08-03

Cover

Title Page

Part One: the razing of katie castle Part One the razing of katie castle

chapter one: the way we were

chapter two: in matching knickerbockers

chapter three: cavafy, angel, and the loading bay of doom

chapter four: a technical interlude, concerning

chapter Five: visceral couture

chapter six: how can i deny, she’s mine, i’m hers?

chapter seven: the deed of darkness

chapter eight: a short chapter, punctuated by a colon

chapter nine: zenith

chapter ten: in which katie doesn’t cry

chapter eleven: the house of mirth

chapter twelve: the second time as farce

chapter thirteen: katie looks back in languor

Part Two: the three metamorphoses of the spirit

chapter fourteen: katie’s dead-dog bounce

chapter fifteen: nadir

chapter sixteen: katie goes native

chapter seventeen: tea with the ayyubs, a gaudy bullfinch, and other festivities

chapter eighteen: strange meetings

chapter nineteen: a winged victory

chapter twenty: ending in a colon

chapter twenty-one: and ludo

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part One

the razing of katie castle

chapter one

the way we were

At five past six, every day, the same question:

‘Katie, what have you done ?’

For some people that might have been a question filled with foreboding. You know, what have you done with your life ; or look what you’ve screwed up now . But from me, at this time, it always got the same answer, a smart answer:

‘Made coffee, chatted to the girls, tried (and failed) to make the printer print, had my nails done next door at the NY Nail Bar, went for a latte at Gino’s (flashed my second best smile at the divine boy, Dante, but I wouldn’t tell Penny that), chatted some more to the girls, thought about the collection, phoned the factory (why can’t they learn to speak English?), got a sandwich from Cranks, puked it up in the bog, had a spat with the French, sent reminders to Harvey Nicks and the new shop in Harrogate. Just the usual.’

And Penny, breathing exasperation into the phone, always came back with, ‘You know exactly what I mean. What did you do ?’

And so I’d give up. ‘Three and a half.’

‘Not bad for a Tuesday.’

‘Bloody good for a Tuesday. But today’s Wednesday.’

‘Well, not bad for a Wednesday either. What did you say you did?’

‘Three and a half.’

‘And what about Beeching Place?’

‘Just one and a half.’

‘Oh. Still, that’s … six thousand for the two shops.’

‘Five.’

‘You know I’m no good at fractions. What did you say you did?’

The miracle is that I managed to stay sane for so long.

I suppose when I first went to work for Penny she was pretty good. After all, she’d built Penny Moss up from not much more than a market stall into a perfectly respectable business, a business that people had almost heard of, even if they sometimes got us mixed up with Ronit Zilkha, or Caroline Charles or, heaven forfend, Paul Costelloe. Two shops and a wholesale side that had taken off, and was cruising at a comfortable altitude. People had worn our clothes on daytime telly. Penny, conspicuously without Hugh had been in Hello! . Well, okay, OK! . But, as Penny pointed out to anyone who’d listen, it’s got a bigger circulation anyway. A cabinet minister wore one of our suits at the party conference (a coffee tussah silk affair, like a funked-up Chanel) and, for the first time, looked more feminine than her male colleagues. Professional women who want to look chic and chic women who want to look professional wear our clothes. The next time you’re at a wedding look around you. There, amongst the neuralgic pink and monkey-puke yellow, you’ll see our clothes: subtle, perfectly tailored, elegant.

Where were we? Yes, just as we were beginning to make some real money, Penny started to get battier. She’d always had tendencies. Odd flights of fancy, a fondness for viscose. But now she was forgetting things. Losing things. The usual signposts in the foothills of senility. If I sound callous it’s because she’s not my mum. She’s Ludo’s. O God! It’s all getting complicated already. I’ll have to set it out straight, or you’ll never catch up.

My name is Katie Castle, and this is the story of how I had everything, lost it all, and then found it again, but not quite all of it, and not in the same form, and, if I’m perfectly frank (which, I have to confess, doesn’t come naturally) not, in every single particular, quite so good. The story’s mainly about me, but it also involves, in no special order:

Penny, my employer, the wife of Hugh;

Hugh, the husband of Penny;

Liam, my Big Mistake;

Jonah, who was nearly an even bigger mistake, but who turned out to be a Good Thing;

Veronica, my loyal and faithful servant, up to a point; and

Ludo, who is the adored child of Penny and Hugh and who was, at the very beginning, the point at which you came in, my beloved, my betrothed.

There’re lots of other people as well, friends and hangers-on, but you’ll meet them when you meet them. I’ve decided to be honest, so you might find yourself thinking me a madam or a minx, but even if I do some bad things, and some silly things, you must try to stay on my side, because in the end I turn out to be quite good, I promise.

In the beginning. Like everybody else I live in London. Like almost everybody else, I live in Primrose Hill, the bit of London where Camden stops being horrid and Regent’s Park stops being boring. Like not quite everybody else, but like an awful-lot-of-body-else, I work in fashion. So I’m not really a designer, but anyone who works in fashion will tell you that the most important person in any fashion company is the production manager. We all know that. What’s a designer anyway? A tricky East End nonce who knows what to steal and who to screw. Or who to be screwed by. Not even an original thief, but a parasite on parasites. A magpie collecting bits of tinsel other magpies have thieved. Art-school losers too good at drawing to make it as artists, too vain to be teachers, too thick to be anything else. I love them, but I wouldn’t want to be one. And anyway, we don’t really have designers in our company. We have Penny. And Penny has me.