Upgrading

by Simon Brooke

  Despite the heat it feels good to get outside. Two Japanese girls with Chanel bags walk past me, as if they were carrying Sainsbury’s plastic carriers. I walk down the street and then turn into Knightsbridge. People on the top decks of the buses gaze down at me or point things out to their uncomprehending children. I tell myself that this is better than work. It is ten to three on a Monday afternoon. Normally the street is out of bounds to ordinary working people like me at this time of day. What, I wonder, are all these people doing? Don’t they have jobs to go to?

  As I look across to the Hyde Park Hotel I see a tall, dark-haired guy in a leather jacket and jeans walk out of the front door and slowly down the steps. He stops to light a cigarette and as he takes a drag, he looks up and sees me. After a moment’s recognition he smiles, waves and hops across the street, playing matador with the cars. It’s Mark from the Claridges do.

  “Hey!” He shakes my hand firmly. “How are you?”

  “I’m OK. How are you?”

  “Good. You have fun the other night?”

  “Erm, not really.”

  “ ’Orrible, wasn’t it? I really hate that place. Still, you got her to Knightsbridgge, then?”

  I got her? He obviously doesn’t know Marion.

  “She wanted to do some shopping.”

  “For you?” he says, as much suggesting as asking.

  I remember my clumsy attempt to interest Marion in an Armani jacket for me. What must that assistant have thought? A kept man? Well, they probably get them all the time but I’m just a rather crap example of the species.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ve just been to Armani,” I say casually.

  “Very nice,” he says looking around for a bag.

  I consider making up some story about the chauffeur taking it or yelling “oh my god, it’s been micked,” but then decide to come clean.

  “She didn’t like the jacket I tried.”

  Mark laughs at my pathetic failure. I realize he would probably have had half the shop if he wanted it.

  “You’ve got to lead them to it subtley. Embarrass her into it. She wants you to look good because it makes her look good, right? So you make sure you look scruffy until she buys you something new and then wear it a few times and then find something else old and scruffy so that she has to buy you something else new. No problem.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Tried Harvey Nics?”

  I shake my head.

  “Take her to the men’s department downstairs. Clown around a bit. Pick up some stuff. Ask her what she thinks, what she likes. You’re here to entertain her, don’t forget.” I laugh but he says, “No, really, you’ve got to lead her by the nose but make her think she’s in charge.”

  “Easier said than done,” I say, but nod.

  I ask what he’s been doing at the Hyde Park Hotel. He glances down the street and then looks down at the pavement, tapping some imaginary ash off his cigarette.

  “Oh, yeah. Just visiting someone. Another American,” he says, looking past me at the shop windows and then taking another drag.

  “Americans your speciality?” I ask.

  “Not really. It’s just that there are a lot of them around at the moment—always are in the summer. Anyway, it’s so easy to give them that English gentleman bullshit. I tell them I play cricket and they say things like ‘Mmm, I’d really like to see you in all that white gear.’ They love it. All that shit. Then I mention I went to Eton, that my family’s lived in the same house for four hundred years, stuff like that. I’ve usually turned into Hugh Grant after half an hour.”

  I laugh. “They believe it?”

  “Yeah, ’cause they want to.”

  “Perhaps I should try it.”

  “Works a treat. I tell them that I’m reduced to selling my body because my dissolute father gambled away my inheritance.” We both laugh at this one.

  “You must read a lot of Mills & Boon.”

  “Research,” he says with mock seriousness. We laugh again. “Just invent yourself a history, the posher and sadder the better. They all go for it: Americans, Arabs, South Africans, the Hong Kong lot. South Americans really dig it for some reason.” We laugh at the absurdity of it. Then Mark says, “Oh-oh, I think you’re wanted.”

  Marion is standing by the open door of the car, looking across at me meaningfully.

  “I’ve got to go.” I wish I could think of something else to say to him.

  He smiles, sadly I notice, and says, “See you around.”

  Marion gets into the car—no chance of leading her off to Harvey Nics now.

  “Who was that?”

  “Mark, you know, he was with your friend at the ball the other night.”

  She ignores my answer. “That shop is just so gross. That’s the trouble with London these days—no one has any taste any more. All the English are running around trying to sell their asses to anyone with a platinum card.”

  She looks at herself in her compact and tells the driver to take us home. No shopping for me today, obviously. Maybe next time. I’ll just have to invest a few more hours on these little shopping trips. Anyway, she might give me some cash for taking her out this afternoon.

  We go to Aspinalls that night and I have rather too much champagne. Marion introduces me to some people, including a couple who both have exactly the same colour hair and we play roulette a bit. It’s actually very easy. I put some chips on the red panel a few times and it comes up once or twice and then have a go on the black and the same thing happens again.

  “He’s good, your friend,” says someone Marion hasn’t introduced me to.

  “He’s my lucky charm,” says Marion, pinching my cheek. We all laugh. I catch her eye for a moment and she looks away quickly. Is she blushing beneath her expertly applied make-up? A woman with a tray comes along, smiling as if she is in on the joke and asks whether we’d like something to drink later at the bar. I say “champagne” and then look at Marion, wondering if I’ve stepped out of line.

  “Good idea, bring a bottle of the Laurent Perrier. After all, we’re on a winning streak, aren’t we? Put it over there, we’ll be done in a minute.” At just before two Marion cashes in our chips and, as we wait in the lobby for our car, she pushes four £50 notes into my top pocket. More than I would have earned if we’d been doing it through Jonathan with his twenty per cent commission—just for taking a phone call from her and making another to me. I see what Marion meant: we can safely cut him out of this little equation.

  “Thank you,” I say and kiss her lightly on the lips, partly so that other people around us can see.

  When I wake up the next morning with Marion already in the shower I find them lying on the bedside table next to my keys and feel very decadent. Is this what it’s all about? I wonder.

  The first thing I see when I open the door of the office later that morning is Debbie. Or rather her eyes: narrowed with fury. She is standing over a new girl’s desk, giving her some pieces of paper. I know that all around her, they are wondering how long this one will last, whether she will hit her target and be lucky enough to stay, whether it is worth getting to know her. By the time I have taken off my jacket Debbie has finished with the new girl and is saying, “Can I have a word with you in my office, Andrew?”

  I can tell she is really pissed off because she is using my name. I suppose I’ll have to explain why I wasn’t in the office yesterday morning and also why I was late this morning. It was actually because the chauffeur was late getting to Marion’s to pick me up because of trafffic in the King’s Road but I can hardly say that.

  “Sure,” I say casually and step in.

  “Close the door.” It’s getting worse. “Where did you sneak off to yesterday?”

  “Yesterday? I didn’t sneak off. Like I said, we had a leak at the flat and I called the plumber. Didn’t you get the message? It was a disaster, there was water everywhere …”

  “Oh, I see. It’s just that Robin took a call on your phone at eleven-forty from a
woman asking where you were because you were supposed to be at hers at eleven-thirty.”

  Oh fuck! My mind goes blank. What the hell is the matter with Marion? Has she no sense?

  “No, no. She was supposed to be at mine at eleven-thirty, you know, for the plumbing … and things …” I mutter something about plumbers being useless. Debbie’s dad is probably a plumber.

  She pauses and raises her eyebrows, sceptically, “Your plumber is an American woman?”

  “No, she’s just the secretary, you know, who answers the phone.”

  There is another pause and Debbie shakes her head slowly and then says, “Don’t let it happen again.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I think they’ve fixed it,” I say and immediately regret it. Debbie looks down at her desk and I realize that the interview is over. I leave feeling furious with myself or her or Marion for making me feel so stupid.

  Sitting at my desk doodling angrily, I decide that the only consolation is that in the end Debbie is the stupid one. Yes, of course she is good at her job and well respected by the corporate squirrels that infest this place, but so what? She’s got a job that she hates and it’s taken over her whole life. She’s got a miserable little flat, which gobbles up all her income and probably suffers from negative equity as well as rising damp and rampant Ikea. She spends most of her income on DIY stuff which is what she does all weekend and the rest on River Island suits for work. I mean, what is the point of living like that? She’s got the spending power of a Tesco check-out girl and the stress and the workaholic lifestyle of a chief executive. It’s the worst of both worlds!

  Thinking about Debbie makes me more determined than ever to get something better than this. And I’ve got a new plan now. I was playing with those lovely crisp £50 notes on the way into work in the chaffeur-driven car this morning and it occurred to me that there are plenty more where these came from.

  Every evening at my mum and dad’s, it’s the same: both of them sitting in front of the telly, my mum knitting or flicking through a magazine and kidding herself she isn’t watching, my dad tutting at the news or complaining how whatever he’s watching is a waste of the licence fee and how much is this guy getting paid, anyway?

  Sometimes when I was still at school, when there was nothing worth watching or I couldn’t face my homework, I would leave my parents sitting in front of the set, drift upstairs and, for want of something better to do, sit on my father’s side of the bed and flick through his self-help books. If he ever looked in and saw me reading he would join me, pulling one out of the stack and finding some chapter that he thought was particularly relevant. He referred to them by their authors, square-jawed, slick-haired Americans with button-down shirts whose weird names were followed by a string of qualifications from the University of God Knows Where.

  “If you’re thinking of going into advertising you ought to read Gierson,” he would say, running his finger down the ever-increasing pile. They all had titles and subtitles like: Close That Deal—How to Make Them Say Yes or Busting The Block—Taking On The Corporation And Winning. Each one was such a hard sell that one title was not enough. There were new ones he’d picked up in the discount bookshop and dog-eared old friends that he turned to for comfort every night, reading the patronizing, reassuring advice. Don’t worry, bud, leave it to us—we’ll look after you. In my dad’s case, reading them and repeating their simplistic, cocksure advice like a mantra was a substitute for actually doing any of the things they advised.

  Not that it was that easy to work out what they were advising you to do and whether it would be relevant to the purchasing department of a tool hire company based in Slough. “It always seems to me like they’re generally in favour of virtue,” mused my mum one day.

  The central theme of one of his favourites was: Live Each Day at the Office As If It Was Your Last! “There are two types of worker in every corporation,” boomed the blurb on the back above the price in dollars. “The Doers and the Done-tos. Have you ever noticed how your boss and his boss are both a world apart from the geek sitting at the desk next to you? ’Course you have. And what’s the difference? Your Boss is a Doer and the geek is a Done-to. So, how do you get to be a Doer? Simple.” (It always was.) “Live every day in the office like it’s your last. Like you don’t mind getting fired this very afternoon.”

  I don’t mind getting fired in the very next ten minutes but apparently if you could wait until this afternoon, the way to act was to: “Devise and implement operational programs that you want regardless of budgeting prerequisites!” and “In meetings initiate multi-directional interfaces regardless of hierarchical command criteria!” Eh? Lots of exclamation marks and quotes from Done-tos who had managed to become Doers followed to back this up. What it boiled down to was: be a rebel, cut a swathe and you’ll be promoted.

  I’ve tried being a rebel, living as if I didn’t mind getting fired whenever convenient. But the way I’ve done it is to come into the office late every morning, to leave early and to spend half an hour going to the coffee shop down the road where a pretty Italian girl flirts with me and her crazy old father whips up cappuccino like a deranged magician, rather than be a good boy and use the coffee machine by the loo where a thin trail of instant stuff pees into a flimsy plastic cup like a long overdue oil change. And funnily enough, it’s done me absolutely no good whatsoever.

  Neither has it helped my dad. None of the books have helped him. I think they just hold out the promise. Like those women in that play we once saw at school, who are always crapping on about pissing off to Moscow, knowing that they will never get round to it. My dad finds refuge in his self-help books, knowing that some day he will find the perfect solution to his life and rise up, a Doer not a Done-to! One day, dad, one day. Before you retire, perhaps.

  seven

  When I get home from work that evening Marion has left a message on my answerphone: “Andrew, it’s Marion. I’m having a little dinner party tomorrow night and I would very much like for you to come.”

  I’ve just opened the fridge to get out a Rolling Rock when Vinny crashes through the kitchen door, talking to a tall black guy he introduces as Malc.

  “Don’t mind if I do, squire,” says Vinny, peering round me into the fridge. “Malc?”

  “Chismate,” says Male, sitting down at the kitchen table.

  “You’d like a beer, is that what you’re saying?” I ask Vinny.

  “When you’re ready,” Vinny smiles innocently. “You could bloody die of thirst in here,” he says to Malc.

  “You’ll die of something else in a minute, shit for brains,” I tell him.

  “Andrew works in the media so he’s good with words,” says Vinny to Malc, who laughs politely. I find myself smiling too. God, he’s infuriating!

  “And Vinny works in graphic design so he’s good with er … let me think … oh, absolutely nothing,” I explain.

  “Malc’s a graphic designer too,” says Vinny triumphantly.

  “Don’t worry about it, mate,” says Malc quickly. “My dad thinks it’s something to do with coloured pencils.”

  “Sorry, mate,” I say, handing Malc a beer. “It’s just that Vinny’s not a particularly good advert for your profession.”

  Vinny has mock hysterics and then plays his ace: “And Andrew’s a part-time gigolo,” he explains to Malc.

  “Oh, right,” says Malc. “It’s you, is it?”

  I finish choking on my beer.

  “You bastard,” I say to Vinny, then to Malc, “What he means is … I sometimes … escort …” This sounds even worse than Vinny’s description.

  “Do go on,” says Vinny.

  “Hang on,” says Malc. “You get paid to go out with women.”

  I think about it for a moment. Malc looks impressed.

  “Yeah,” I say, glad to hear him put it so attractively, so acceptably. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  We kick the football around a bit, idly working out how Indoor One Aside Footy could be adapted to accomm
odate a third player. Then we give up and decide to watch telly instead. Vinny suggests we get a pizza or some dope from a friend of Malc’s. In the end we opt for a pizza because we’re all quite hungry so we have a whip-round, Vinny and I poking around on dressing tables and mantelpieces for some change and negotiating who puts in what. Then Vinny sets off up the road to get it.

  The mention of money makes me think of Jonathan. From what I remember him saying, I should be eligible for a cheque by next Monday for my first job for him with the mad woman. The thought of getting my hands on the dosh makes me feel pretty good—better than waiting for that little payment slip at the end of the month. That usual joke with Lucy from accounts that she has missed a nought off the end here. Ha, ha!

  I promised Marion that I would be first to arrive at her party and I am, feeling decidedly shabby in my Blazer jacket, button-down-collar shirt with its slightly frayed cuffs and Chinos which have seen better days. I’m following Mark’s advice: I have the air of faded grandeur you’d expect of an aristocratic son of a purchasing manager from Reading.

  Oh, and I’m also sick with nerves.

  Anna Maria opens the door with a smirk.

  “Hiya,” I say and she giggles and looks down at the floor. “How are you?” She giggles again, still looking at the floor. “Where is she?” I ask, trying a different tack. The room is full of the smell of flowers. On the glass coffee table is the habitual cloud of white lilies.

  “Madam is upstairs,” says Anna Maria and half-runs back into the kitchen, laughing. I seem to be a bit of a hit here—if she had a few million to chuck about I’d be well ahead in my new career plan.

  I help myself to a drink and go upstairs. My first instinct is to shout “hello” but then I decide that we must know each other well enough by now. I walk into the bedroom and Marion sees me in her dressing-table mirror. Without turning round she says, “Hello” girlishly and smiles.

  I say nothing. I walk over to her and kiss her neck very slowly. She gasps slightly, closes her eyes and lifts her head. Something about this room, this house, makes me feel as if I am in a movie. Being with Marion gives me a buzz that I never had with Helen, even when we first started going out. She was more like a comfortable pair of jeans whereas Marion is an Armani suit and every time I see her it’s like the first time I’m trying it on.