by Simon Brooke
“You see that? Cor, bloody hell.”
I laugh. There is no point asking Ted what he is on about—you only get dragged further into it. It’s like sinking sand. The best thing to do is not to struggle so I laugh knowingly.
“I tell you, I thought I needed my eyes testing,” he adds, shaking his head and rocking on the balls of his feet. Fortunately the lift arrives. I laugh again and mutter something about new glasses as I get into it. I press the third-floor button and then jab frenziedly at the “Close Doors” button. Ted starts to tut and turns round to look out across the empty lobby for the next four hours or so, which is probably why he is so bonkers.
I try to sneak my dinner suit into the office but Sami sees it through an irritating little clear plastic window in the bag and asks, “Oooh, where are you off to tonight?”
“Er, nowhere,” I say quietly.
“Quite formal at home are you, then?” says Andy, a Scouse comedian who has recently joined what is laughably called “the team.” “Always black tie and canapés for EastEnders?”
“Oh, sod off,” I tell him, not unkindly. Just at that moment Debbie storms out of her office, sees me with the bag and looks up at the clock on the wall. She had not bothered to say anything about my late return on Wednesday but I know she noticed it. “Oh shit,” I say softly and sit down. Sami is leaning across her desk, her face lit up with innocent wonder.
“Are you going somewhere exciting tonight?”
I love Sami. She had been here three months when I arrived. She is just so good. Her parents came across from Uganda when Idi Amin threw the Asians out of the country just before she was born. They don’t speak a word of English—the first time I saw Sami talking to her mother on the phone I thought she’d gone mad. It was like she had turned into another person in front of my eyes. Then she put the phone down and said, “Christ! Parents! Who’d have ’em?”
She works in the family shop on Saturday and Sunday and looks after her grandmother most evenings. She’s got millions of A-levels and O-levels and she always empties the dregs of her plastic coffee cup in the Ladies instead of just chucking it in the bin half-full and watching it leak onto the floor like I do. She’s so virtuous that I should hate her but actually, like I said, I love her.
“Oh, Andrew, where are you going? Tell meeee,” she begs now in her little girl’s voice. I laugh.
“Oh, God. Look, it’s just a ball.” Wrong answer.
“A ball! How exciting.”
A few other people look across, including Debbie, who clearly thinks I am trying to make myself and my new exciting social life the centre of attention, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
“Don’t tell everyone,” I say.
“I won’t,” she says, missing my sarcasm. “Where is it? Who are you going with?”
“It’s at Claridges.”
“The hotel?”
“No, the pub,” I explain.
Sami pulls a face and then asks again, “Who are you going with?”
“Er, I’m just going with a friend.” What else can I say? Girlfriend? No. Partner? Definitely not. Lover? Older woman? Benefactor?
“Ah, waiter!” says Vinny from Couch Position B in front of the telly.
“You can sod off. Is this thing straight?” I ask, fiddling with my bow tie.
“Left hand down a bit,” he offers, squinting at me. I try and do what he says.
“Why the hell did I let you talk me into getting a real one? That ready-tied thing would have been so much easier,” I moan. Vinny said I looked like a footballer off to Stringfellows when I appeared with a neat little pretied bow tie five minutes earlier.
“Yes, but are you a ready-tied bow-tie person?” asks Vinny with deep sincerity. I think I know what he means. “Oh, Christ. Here, let me have a go.” He hauls himself off the settee, which I do appreciate—other than a naked Jennifer Lopez or a serious housefire, there isn’t much that will persuade Vinny to leave his sofa. He fiddles with the tie, grimacing with concentration and then stands back to admire his handiwork. “There. That’s better. You know you could have borrowed my pistachio- and salmon-pink-spotted number—genuine Crolla circa 1983. Quite a style icon.”
“Either that or the revolving one.”
“Great conversation piece.”
“Yeah, but what kind of conversation?”
“Where is it tonight, then?” he asks but I smile enigmatically and slip out of the door without answering him.
It is nearing the end of the month and the suit cost a fortune, considering that it was just for one night—the bastards must have known I was desperate—but I can’t get the bus to Marion’s so I invest in a mini cab. Sixty-five pounds outlay so far. Sitting in the furry seat of an old Nissan Cherry I realize the bus might have been more stylish. The driver looks me up and down out of the corner of his eye and asks where to.
“Eaton Terrace Mews,” I say. He drives in silence and I begin to wonder how much this guy will earn for driving all night and putting up with drunken abuse while his wife lies in bed at home wondering whether tonight’s the night she’ll get the call from the casualty department or a visit from the police. I feel like a stuffed shirt, a Sloaney pratt sitting next to him.
So I am glad to get out at Marion’s. Anna Maria answers the door and giggles.
“Good eebning, Mr. Andrew,” she says.
I say, “Good evening, Anna Maria, what do you think?”
Before she can say anything Marion’s voice calls down, “Anna Maria, fix Mr. Andrew a drink. I’ll be right there.”
She pours me a glass of ice-cold champagne and I sit down on a tiny chair and fidget with my tie again. Then I get up because I must look ridiculous perched on this piece of dolls-house furniture. I find another chair with its back to the stairs. This means that I can listen for her approaching and can spin round dramatically. After about half an hour I hear her coming down the stairs. I turn round and shoot her a cool, narrow-eyed James Bond look which she completely ignores.
She does look great—a simple black dress with a thin gold chain and a small diamond broach. I whistle, almost accidentally, and she tuts, “Don’t do that, it’s vulgar.” But she can’t help smiling. Since we’re both loosening up I wonder whether to kiss her but decide to play it safe. I’m still her escort, her walker, after all, well technically, anyway. Besides, she actually looks too good to kiss, like I might break something or mess something up.
She looks at me for a moment with her big dark eyes, almost embarrassed, and then stands back and checks her lips in the mirror over the fireplace.
“Let me look at you,” she says. “Not bad.” Then she sighs. “We’ll need to get you a proper one, though.”
“OK, thank you,” I say, not sure how to react to this offer.
It does sound like a very good idea, though.
* * *
Moving through the Park Lane traffic up towards Upper Brook Street I begin to feel that this is what it’s all about. A family in a Volvo turn to look at us as we draw along side them at the lights. It makes me think of our trips up to London when we were children: shopping at Hamley’s (one present each to a value of ten pounds, according to my mum), sightseeing at Madame Tussauds or the Tower of London, sometimes a film at the Odeon, Leicester Square and then tea at Fortnum & Mason or McDonalds—both were equally exciting somehow back then. My sister liked the milk shake at Fortnum’s but I preferred the ones at McDonald’s and besides you could dip your chips in when Mum and Dad weren’t looking.
I sensed my mum’s unease in town and her general disapproval of everything around her, which she saw as dirty, expensive, noisy and foreign. “You never hear another English voice in London these days,” she would say—still says. My dad still wears his discomfort like a badge bearing the inscription “I’m from Berkshire where we still do things properly.” God, I just wanted to get away from them and disappear into the crowd, integrate myself into London. I wanted to exchange my self-consciously up-in-L
ondon-for-the-day clothes for what the hip Londoners were wearing.
When we reach the hotel a doorman opens Marion’s door and I leap out of my side and nip round to meet her on the pavement. For once the chauffeur sits tight. Got you, you bastard. We join the throng of dinner suits and evening gowns in the lobby. Marion is frowning, looking round for people she knows.
“What’s this do for?” I ask her when I catch up.
“It’s a charity thing,” she says, still looking round.
“Which charity?”
“How should I know? Some charity.”
We deposit our coats and go further in. Finally an old couple appear through the crowd and Marion says “Hello.” They exchange a few “How are you’s” and then Marion introduces us. They are old friends from New York.
We meet other old friends of Marion’s. Handshakes and names and “Nice to meet you’s” merge into one another as Marion advances through the crowds, like a whale sucking in the waves of people and filtering out the plankton she feels it worth acknowledging.
I quickly learn that my place is just behind her left shoulder. We encounter another older woman with a younger man, a tall dark-haired guy. The two ladies kiss, and we men shake hands very firmly with each other. As the two ladies talk animatedly above the hubbub we watch them. It is something of a relief to see another couple in a similar configuration but it’s also a bit unnerving. I can’t help making comparisons. He is good-looking, but better looking than me? She is obviously rich, but richer than Marion? She clearly enjoys being on his arm, is Marion as pleased to be seen with me?
After a while I feel a prickling of sweat around my hairline. It is hot in here but more than that I am feeling increasingly uncomfortable, increasingly under pressure. I realize that I am here for one thing and one thing only and everybody we say hello to knows the score. We meet an Arab guy with his pretty, dark-haired daughter. It would probably be more normal if she were my date, not this woman old enough to be my mother. The dark-haired girl ignores me.
Suddenly I need to get away, not just from the noise and the crowd but from this weird situation. While Marion is listening intently to some old dear describe a party in Venice given by another old dear, I whisper to her that I am going to the loo, I won’t be long. She nods which, I realize, means that she is giving me permission as much as showing that she has heard me.
I push my way through people who are each paying a fortune to stand in rush hour Tube-like overcrowding, and slip into the tranquillity of the gents. As the door closes behind me the cool air and the gurgling of the cistern and the squirting of water in the urinals make the room feel like some enchanted spa. The feeling of relief is short-lived as I realize that there is someone else in here with me. I turn round quickly and see the tall guy who was with one of Marion’s friends.
He is leaning up against the far wall, smoking. He looks me up and down for a moment and then offers me a cigarette, which I take.
“This is about the only place you can get away from them,” he says, tapping ash into the sink.
“From …?”
“Them.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He is certainly good-looking but, in the hard fluorescent light, older than I thought at first. Early thirties, maybe. His dinner jacket is actually slightly shiny. I am not sure if I’m talking to a rival or learning from an expert. He takes a long drag and puffs out smoke rings.
“She behaving?” he asks after a moment.
“Behaving? Oh, yeah.” I don’t want to sound too enthusiastic so I add, “She’s OK.”
“How long have you two been together?”
“Oh, not long,” I say vaguely. What was his name? Mark, I think. He takes a little pill box out of his jacket pocket.
“Do you …?” I think about it for a moment but he laughs when he sees me hesitate. “Please yourself.” He taps a bit onto the back of his hand and snorts it quickly. Mark, I realize, is in another league. If I’m at the lowest rung of this weird ladder, just thrilled about getting to Claridges and knocking back a couple of glasses of champagne, Mark is sitting at the top of it, looking round, elegantly bored and blasé. I realize that I haven’t been this keen to impress someone since I was at school.
But then Mark says, “You know it’s a fucking mug’s game.”
“Is it?” I look at him in the mirror.
He laughs. “You haven’t been doing it long, have you?” he asks, scratching something off the sleeve of his jacket.
“Er, no. Not very long,” I say casually, wondering whether I should be honest if he does ask me.
“Mind you, it beats working for a living,” is all he says.
“I know,” I add, glad to hear him sound at least slightly positive.
He sniffs and then looks at me in the mirror for a moment. “Just one word of advice, young man. Make sure there’s more give than take on their part and make sure that the give is in cash wherever possible.” He turns to look in the mirror. “Like the song says, ‘Get that ice or else no dice!’ ”
He checks his tie, runs his hands through his thick, dark hair and wipes his nose quickly with a finger. “OK? Shall we join the ladies?”
I had a feeling that I had been to Claridges before that night. The next day, at work, it came to me. I hadn’t been there myself but, in an alcove in their living room, my mum and dad have a large ornamental brandy glass. For years they’ve been putting into it boxes of matches from hotels, boats and restaurants. If you dig down deep into the little envelopes and boxes you can find matches from the Canberra, the Negresco, the Moulin Rouge or the Ritz. Once when I was young I reached up and took one off the top. It was from Claridges where my mum and dad had attended some industry awards ceremony. It was a Sunday afternoon and there was nothing else to do so I took the box out into the garden and lit every match, watching it burnt down as low as I could bear the pain.
My mum was furious. Looking back, it wasn’t just the fact that I could have set light to myself that upset her so much. The thing was that now she would have to wait until they went to Claridges again before she could get another one and that might not be for years to come. These silly little cardboard boxes were her only connection with a world of glamour and wealth, proof that they had been to these places, that in their own little way they had made it.
Fortunately I don’t have to dance with Marion, something that had caused me huge anxiety and even prompted me to tiptoe around my bedroom, arms held aloft in an imaginary embrace, because she announces immediately after dinner that we are leaving. On the way out, we pass Mark and date. The women kiss and the old dear spends so much time telling Marion to take care of herself that you’d think she was going up the Congo with a backpack, not returning to Belgravia in a car.
Mark kisses Marion’s hand and then says something that makes both women laugh but I can’t catch above the noise. He shakes my hand firmly and says “Seeyaround,” like he doesn’t care whether he will or not.
“Thank God that’s over,” says Marion as we get back into the car.
“Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“No! Did you? Things I do for charity. I’ll get my reward somewhere, I suppose.”
Although she hasn’t said anything to the driver, I discover that we are going back to hers. She hardly speaks as we set off through Hyde Park Corner and Belgrave Square. I suddenly feel that I should be saying something. I’m not being paid for tonight, I suppose, but I am being paid for so I should still entertain. Or, at least, break this huge, overwhelming silence.
Just then the driver overtakes a coach aggressively and we pass a bus. A couple of the passengers look down at us.
We are on for sex, aren’t we, Marion? I give her a sideways glance. There is tension in the air that has nothing to do with exhaustion after the non-stop chat and introductions of the last few hours or the state of the late-night traffic. She is clutching her evening bag as if it were a life jacket.
We arrive at hers and Marion mutters good night to
the driver. She lets us into the house. The lights are on and it seems more comfortable, more inviting than when we left it. She asks me something.
“Mmm?” I say, raising my eyebrows quizzically.
She rolls her eyes unnecessarily, like “don’t make this even more awkward for me.”
“I said, do you want a drink?”
I look at her. We are standing very close. She suddenly seems very small, very vulnerable. I shake my head. Then I cup her face in my hands and kiss her. She accepts my tongue and I hear her moan slightly. She puts her arms round me and pulls me nearer. Then I pull away and begin to move down to her neck, enjoying the softness of her skin, the mixture of smells: that expensive perfume plus alcohol and someone’s cigarette smoke. She gasps again and starts to push my jacket off my shoulders. I bite her neck gently, messing up her immaculate hair. She gasps again and I realize I’ve done the right thing. Whatever our relationship is, and at the moment, I really don’t care how you’d categorize it, this just feels good. I can’t rationalize now, partly because I’ve never been in this situation before but mainly because I’m thinking with my dick.
I begin to get an erection and push my groin into her as I kiss her neck further. She mutters something. I move round and begin to kiss the top of her breasts above her dress. I wish someone could see this: her beautiful dress being crushed and pulled, my smart dinner jacket, my mouth caressing her smooth, tanned breasts, me grinding into her, the effect I’m having on her, a man young enough to be her son.
She pushes my head away from her and then leads me upstairs. Once in her bedroom, she begins to unbutton my shirt. Thank God I got a real bow tie, not a false one. Good old Vinny, he talked me into it. He may be from Birmingham but he’s got style. What the hell am I thinking about Vinny for? Quickly I get back to matters in hand and reach round to the zip of her dress. It slides down and I finish taking off my shirt. Marion looks up at me again. Her body is in incredibly good nick for a woman of her age—whatever that is. I bend down and kiss her again. She reaches round and takes off her bra. Her breasts are small and round and well shaped with large, dark nipples. She pulls my head towards her and I kiss them.