‘It sounds brilliant what you’re doing with arts in the community.’
‘Sometimes it feels like an impossible task, trying to change the culture. Not to mention years of Tory under-funding. But it’s something I’m passionate about.’ Then he said, ‘It’s the reason I’m calling you, I need to pick your brains. We’re embarking on a ground-up review of social care provision, it’d be helpful to have your input …’
‘I’d be happy to,’ she replied, instantly excited. ‘But I’m sure there are more qualified people than me to talk to.’
‘That’s just it. I need to speak to someone at the coalface, with first-hand experience of day-to-day issues. The other night you were telling me stuff about our immigrant communities …’
‘Well, OK, if you really think I could help. When do you want to meet up?’
‘Tomorrow? Supper? You know the Turkish place behind Barons Court tube?’
With Serena off the scene, this time very likely for good, Miles was feeling horribly oversexed and frustrated. Several times his fingers hovered above the keypad, deciding whether to ring her, but he was stubborn and disinclined to make the first move. Furthermore, he wouldn’t take Serena back until she capitulated. Once she’d convinced him she’d dumped the Cleggs as clients, then and only then would he contemplate forgiveness. He did not doubt Serena would come running back. He imagined her sitting by the phone in her chilly farm cottage, with poor Robin Harden and the unfortunate kid, kicking herself for crossing him, and he hoped she’d learnt her lesson.
He gave lunch to Zach Durban who was passing through town, and reported on his strategy to have Zach’s Nelson Bluff hotel voted Best Caribbean Resort in the upcoming Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Awards, and his Dubai spa hotel named winner in the Emirates category. Straker Communications staff had covertly bought up half the newsstand copies with entry forms inside, and were busy filling these out in a variety of different handwritings and pens. Zach declared himself well pleased, and discussed appointing the agency to promote his new ski lodge in Vail, Colorado.
After lunch, Miles joined his MD Rick Partington and a posse of executives for a new business pitch to represent the Kingdom of Brunei. They met with a group of bluff former British army officers and royal advisers in a conference room in the basement of the Lanes-borough Hotel. A solitary Brunei courtier, possibly a cousin of the Sultan, sat in shrivelled silence in their midst. Miles left most of the presentation to his people but intervened at the end, promising his personal involvement at every turn if they were afforded the great honour of assisting the Kingdom, and dropping the names of several big cheeses in industry and government. He left the meeting feeling confident of success, knowing his own intervention had been decisive. In the short car journey back to his office, he reminded his team that personal contacts are everything in this industry and none of them were worth their salaries unless they upped their game. Turning on a bright recent recruit to their graduate scheme, he said, ‘Martin, I heard you say earlier you’d been at the cinema last night with your girlfriend. Mind telling us what you think you achieved by that? Sitting in darkness staring up at a screen? End of the evening, who’ve you met? Useful new contacts, clients, I mean? Woman behind the popcorn counter? Big deal. You should be out and about in fashionable restaurants, attending public lectures, cocktails. For the next four weeks I want a list on my desk every Monday morning: who you’ve met, why and how they could benefit us. I can’t prop up this business all on my own, you know.’
By teatime, cocooned in his office, he experienced a violent randiness and went onto the website he most trusted in these situations. Mayfairbabes.com never let him down, with an ever-changing roster of escort girls from across the world. Scrolling the heavily-airbrushed pictures of the Mayfair babes on offer, he dialled the contact number.
‘Good afternoon, I’m looking at your website and wondering whether Danielle or Yana might be available for ten p.m. tonight. An outcall. Ninety minutes.’
He gave the address of Zach Durban’s London hotel, the Capital Grand Deluxe, where he had permanent access to a suite.
‘Name?’ said the receptionist. She might as well have asked, ‘Alias?’
‘Er, Ross,’ replied Miles, relishing the mischief. ‘My name’s Ross.’
‘I’m pleasantly surprised. Really, I didn’t expect you to be like this.’
‘Like what?’
‘So sincere and idealistic. And getting it.’ Greg was eyeballing her over the mezze, uncomfortably intense, almost like he was placing her under hypnosis. He lent across the formica tabletop, invading her personal space, and Mollie didn’t know whether to feel intimidated or flattered. It was peculiar.
The whole evening was peculiar in fact, starting with the fact she was sitting here at all with Greg in this restaurant. Well, more of a café actually, six tables behind a Turkish takeaway with a big doner kebab on a spit in the steamed-up window and a counter where people queued to place orders. Beyond the counter were tables, metal legs bolted to the vinyl floor so you couldn’t shift them back or forwards; which was a pity, since she’d like to have retreated a few inches further from Greg.
At the same time, there was something forceful about him she found impressive. Unlike most people she knew, who were apathetic or totally oblivious to the realities of the world she worked in, Greg actually wanted to do something about it. And furthermore he seemed to know how to set about it, and how things worked in local government. He talked about the local education authority in such a dismissive way, unlike her headmaster who was terrorised by them, saying, ‘Listen, if they won’t or can’t change, we’ll have to change them. Simple as that. We have the statutory powers and they’re going to have to get with the programme.’ He was similarly derisive about social services, implying they were entirely answerable to him, and he would brook no obstruction. ‘I asked them for the ethnic split on Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot families across the borough, and they said they don’t have that information. It’s not good enough. They’re asleep on the job.’
As the meal progressed, Mollie attempted to introduce the subject of her experiences in the classroom, and explain the incremental steps by which she’d helped—or hoped she had helped—her most disadvantaged pupils, for whom English was often not even a second language. Greg nodded away, but she sensed he wasn’t engaged, which was strange since that was the whole point of the supper. The times she felt he was most alert was when he cross-questioned her about her family. He seemed surprisingly curious about Sam. Mollie hadn’t realised they even knew each other, and she had to admit she hadn’t seen her for a while. ‘She hardly ever rings up. I think she’s living with her fat boyfriend.’ Then, blushing, because Greg was a bit overweight himself—not that she was fattist or anything—she hurriedly said, ‘Not that it matters, of course. It’s just that Sam’s sort of drifted away from the family. Dad doesn’t approve of Dick—Sam’s man—which doesn’t help.’
‘It must be difficult having a father like yours. I’m interested how you handle it, ethically I mean.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know, his support for questionable regimes, capitalism, consumerism. His entire job: it’s being paid to lie. You’d have to feel ashamed, acting as spokesman for arms dealers and Pendletons and that dodgy billionaire with the de-luxe hotels. I visited one of his hotels once with my folks—we’d won a free trip—and the place stank, nothing but rich people frying on sunbeds.’
‘It isn’t just lying,’ Mollie said, defending her dad, even though she half agreed with Greg’s analysis. ‘It’s more giving advice to the clients, helping them handle the media.’
‘Alright, not lying. Spinning then. You could argue it amounts to the same thing. It’s all about helping big business crush the little guy while pretending to be doing him a favour. Take Pendletons. Take Freeza Mart for that matter. What do you think they pay their checkout staff per hour?’
Mollie knew the answer to this, since the mo
thers of several of her pupils had part-time jobs on the tills.
‘Precisely,’ said Greg. Four pounds eighty. And what did so-called Lord Pendleton take home last year, including dividends? Best part of thirty million quid. Is that fair? Is it equitable? I don’t think so. But do we read about it? No, because guys like your dad are paid squillions to keep it out of the newspapers. If people found out there’d be a revolution. Not that I’m advocating revolution, there are other forms of affirmative action open to us, through legislation and progressive taxation. That’s what I entered politics for, to create a fairer society.’ He stared at her, eyes blazing with self-righteousness, challenging her to disagree.
Mollie, it so happened, did agree with him, and found his speech inspiring and slightly shaming, to hear the part her father played in the cycle of oppression. Greg put it all so damningly. She felt she ought to apologise, realising everything her family enjoyed—the two big houses, their private education and comforts—were rewards garnered from the oppression of others.
‘I feel ashamed, I’ve never thought of it that way before.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ Greg said. ‘They’ve gone to great lengths to ensure you don’t think of it that way. That’s part of the conspiracy. Prevent the proletariat from having access to knowledge, keep them acquiescent through ignorance. Why do you think the Tories wilfully underfunded the state education system for so long? It was government policy, made in Cabinet, not that it was allowed to be minuted of course. No incriminating fingerprints. But it was policy: the preservation of an underclass to buy cheap food from Tory-funding supermarkets, to be given the “choice”—“choice,” what a clever, pernicious concept that is, worthy of Goebbels at his finest—between “independent” energy providers, all owned by profit-driven utility companies. I could go on.’
Mollie stared in earnest admiration, feeling for the first time in her life she’d met someone of real moral worth, and wanting above anything to earn his respect. ‘Will you make big changes? The Labour government, I mean, now you’re in power?’
‘Well, we hope to,’ he replied. ‘We’ve started off quite cautiously, because everything we inherited—the economy, the infrastructure—was in such bad state through decades of neglect. But we’re going to step it up, get more radical, we just can’t tell anyone yet. Come the third and fourth terms we’ll be renationalising the railways, the utilities, banks, supermarkets. The whole supply chain, in fact. It’ll be bad news for people like the Pendletons—Ross too—but that’s tough.’
42.
Eight months out of university and Archie knew he should be finding a job. Miles was pressing him to join Straker Communications but it felt too predicable, nor did he want his dad breathing down his neck. From what Peter told him, it was a pretty futile existence doing PR in any case, writing press releases and sucking up to clients, not that Peter was a good judge. It crossed Archie’s mind that, were he to join the family business, he’d quickly overtake his elder brother. But, for now, he’d rather have his freedom.
He was living in Holland Park Square in his old bedroom; from the window he could see right across the communal garden and into the Cleggs’ place. From the bathroom you got an even better view, directly into the first-floor drawing room but also down into the kitchen in the basement. Quite often, while taking a shower, he saw Dawn pottering about unloading the dishwasher, or Dawn and Ross having supper at the table in the alcove. The kitchen looked really modern and flash, much cooler than their own kitchen which was traditional and old fashioned.
Archie started off thinking he’d like to be a futures trader, and met up with a few old college contacts who were doing it already, but it didn’t actually sound that great the more he heard about it, and you had to poll up unfeasibly early miles away in the city. Instead, he took a temporary sales job at the Lexus showroom on the Old Brompton Road, and later helped out on the door at a mate’s nightclub in South Ken, Thurloes, which was crawling with cool chicks and guys he knew from school. His job was to stand behind the velvet rope checking names on a clipboard, saying who could come in and who couldn’t. Not that he consulted the list much, you could tell by looking who was suitable. Then, around two am, the door would be locked with everyone inside, and Archie went in to join the party. There was an incredible cocktail you could order, which cost like a hundred quid, consisting of champagne, rum, vodka, Grand Marnier, coconut water and eight straws, and you sat in a booth hoovering it up. Four sucks and you were bladdered. At such moments, the idea of a nine-to-five job was a joke.
It surprised him, while preparing to go out each evening, how often the Cleggs entertained in their new house. It seemed like every fortnight they had some big event going on, generally a supper with all the food laid out in the kitchen and loads of hired waiters and waitresses handing round. The four sash windows in the drawing room would be lit up and you could see about sixty people milling about or sitting on sofas, or sometimes coming outside onto the balcony to smoke. Trained by Miles to despise the Cleggs, and assured they were social pariahs, Archie was surprised by how classy some of the guests looked.
When he mentioned this to his father, Miles replied, ‘I can assure you, Archie, the Cleggs largely mix with the frozen food set. If there really is such a thing.’
But Archie wasn’t convinced and even wondered whether Miles entirely believed it himself.
It was around his fourth month working on the door at Thurloes, on a heaving Thursday night, that Archie encountered a familiar face across the velvet rope. At first he was aware only of a pretty girl in a sea of similar faces, all petitioning him to get in. Archie relished his power over life and death, able to grant entry to one group on a whim, while rejecting another, with no right of appeal. This particular group of girls, he decided, were distinctly borderline. Too bland, too unfashionable, above all too keen. Their expressions were all wrong: it really mattered to them whether they got in. At Thurloes, you were more likely to succeed with a blasé show of indifference. Archie was saying, ‘Sorry ladies, we’re full up tonight,’ when the prettiest one said, ‘Archie, don’t you recognise me? It’s me, Gemma. Gemma Clegg.’
He did a doubletake and turned crimson. God, this was embarrassing. He could see it was her now: that perky little face. Fit too, he’d forgotten how fit, quite tasty in fact. You could certainly say that.
‘Er, nice to see you, Gemma.’ He kissed her uncertainly on one cheek. ‘You alright?’
‘I’m good. Living up in town now.’
‘Across the garden from us?’ Even referring to Holland Park Square made him shifty, it being the venue for their ill-starred shag.
‘No, that’s my parents’ place. Mandy and I are living in Dad’s old house in Waterloo.’
The mention of Mandy filled Archie with further embarrassment, having not clapped eyes on his daughter since the Christening four and a half years earlier.
‘Er, that’s great,’ he replied weakly, looking round in case anyone had overheard anything. ‘Er, if you want to go on in, that’s fine.’
‘Thanks,’ said Gemma, smiling at him in a way he found sexy, as she and her friends filed through the velvet rope.
Later, with the doors locked and Archie able to relinquish his post, the first people he spotted on the tiny dancefloor were Gemma and her mates. Gemma was remarkably cute, having shed her coat and wearing a thin white tee, perky little breasts bouncing up and down to the music. A guy Archie knew was dancing with her, looking dead keen, which brought out the competitive spirit. God, Archie reckoned, if anyone had the right to first crack at Gemma it was him. After all, he’d been there first.
So he muscled onto the dance floor, cut in on the mother of his child, and found her pleasantly receptive. A good dancer too; he was mesmerised by the outline of two enticing nipples through her cotton top as she bopped about the floor. She had the sweet, uncorrupted, childlike face Archie always found alluring. Watching her, he found it unbelievable she could have given birth to a b
aby, since his idea of women who’d been through childbirth was of sagging stomachs and sloppy breasts.
After they’d been dancing for a long time, they sat in a booth and ordered cocktails and beers, and talked about the tedium of Chawbury and what a great place London was, while avoiding any reference to the living bond between them. But, just as she was leaving, Gemma blurted, ‘If you ever want to visit Mandy, it’s OK, you know? She’s five, quite a big girl now.’
Archie shrugged. ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll do that some day.’
‘You should. She’s adorable. You needn’t say who you are if you don’t want to.’ She entered a phone number into his mobile and handed it back. ‘It’s been nice catching up, Archie.’
‘Yeah, sure.’ He smiled at her for the first time all night, and Gemma thought: he’s still the most handsome boy I’ve met by miles.
Flat broke, and conscious she had exhausted the goodwill of her landlord unless she paid him something soon, Sam was ready to consider anything. At Gaz’s suggestion, she took the tube to Baker Street and found the mansion block apartment at the top end of Gloucester Place, north of the Marylebone Road, the address of which he had given her. The door was opened by a ravenhaired woman in her mid forties named Pat, sunbed-brown and English, who led her into a back kitchen and introduced her to Mike. Mike was a few years younger than Pat, stocky in a leather jacket, with an accent that sounded Essex. He was smoking a cigarette over a plate of fried food.
‘Coffee,’ said Mike, and Pat put the kettle on. On the kitchen table lay five or six mobile phones and several cartons of fags. The kitchen reeked of cigarettes.
Pat looked at Sam appraisingly, seemed pleased with what she saw, and said, ‘How much do you know about the agency?’
‘Not much at all really.’
‘Well, we only book English girls. We specialise in that, that’s what our clients come to us for. No Asians, no exotics, no EEs.’
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