by Simon Brooke
“Obviously.” I survey the foliage. “Very nice.”
“What would you like to do?” she asks, wandering into the bedroom.
“I don’t know.” I’m not sure if I feel jet-lagged or just overcome by the fact that I’m here, in New York, in this ritzy hotel. She decides we’ll go for a walk down Fifth Avenue which is only five minutes away. The Upper East Side is leafy and lazy and sunny as I look down the cliff faces of the buildings narrowing down into the horizon.
“Isn’t this near where you were brought up?” I ask as we walk back to the hotel in the late afternoon sun.
“Quite near,” she says quickly.
Marion arranges for us to have dinner with her friends Charles and Victoria. I would have preferred to taste a bit of the night life in Times Square or the Village or SoHo but Marion tells me that all those areas are really disgusting and are full of the kind of places that I should not be seen in, so that settles that.
Charles and Victoria live not far from the hotel and I manage to persuade Marion to let us walk there. We arrive at a block with a dark blue awning and gold lettering. The doorman, a huge black guy, smiles broadly at Marion, asks her how she is doing. He lets us into the marbled hallway and we get into a huge lift. I begin to feel sick, partly with the motion and partly with nerves. I’m in New York, for God’s sake. I’m going to be fired on Monday—I should be trying to enjoy myself while I’m here.
When the lift doors open Charles and Victoria are waiting for us. He is tall and thin and she is small and almost round which is strange because I didn’t think Marion knew anyone that shape— most of her female friends are so skinny you can almost see their insides working.
They both kiss Marion and ask how she is, as if she has suffered some horrible accident. Then they turn to me.
“You are Andrew,” beams Victoria.
“Yes,” I say, trying to match her enthusiasm.
“I am Victoria,” she explains in a strong South American accent and offers me a cheek. I kiss it, grateful for a moment to think what I am supposed to do next. She turns her head and I kiss the other cheek. Single kiss, double kiss, triple kiss, miss kiss. Oh, I give up. I can’t remember who does what. Fortunately she starts talking as if we are old friends.
She is dressed in a black and gold Chaneltype suit and though she is not very pretty, she makes the most of what she has got, as my mum would say. Her thick black hair is scraped back and held with a huge gold slide. She has a kind smile, probably the most genuine one I’ve seen amongst Marion’s friends.
“This is my husband, Charles,” she says.
The tall guy bows slightly and then offers a hand but extends it only a bit. I shake it and end up taking just his fingers which feel cold and soft. I am sure my dad’s books have something to say about this, about Charles making me step into his territory, or something.
Victoria grabs my arm and leads me along the dark, thickly carpeted corridor to the living room. The walls are painted dark red and hung with impressionist and abstract paintings. I don’t look too closely but it occurs to me that they are probably originals. Victoria explains that she and Charles know Marion originally from New York, but when Marion came to London they followed her and now, here they are, all in New York again.
“Do you like London?” I ask, glad no one else can hear this ridiculously banal question.
“Oh, it’s lovely. So old,” she says as we sit down. A waiter offers me some champagne and I sit back and listen to her while she goes on about her favourite shops, the time she went to a real English pub and their visit last summer to the country.
“Where did you go?” I ask.
Her grin fixes slightly. “The country.”
“Er, right, whereabouts?”
Still smiling wildly, she looks to the the ceiling for inspiration. “Outside of London.”
Some other people arrive a bit later and we sit down to eat. I suddenly want to go to sleep very badly. My eyelids weigh half a ton each. I think about excusing myself and going to the loo but decide that not only is this not the done thing but I will probably fall asleep on the pot and this would be even more embarrassing.
One of the women is wittering on to us about some people I do not know and so as to appear the slightest bit interested I ask who she is talking about.
“Pardon me?” says the woman and looks across at Marion as if she is supposed to be in control of me.
“Sorry,” I say, panic whipping drowsiness away from me like a duvet on a cold morning. “I just wondered who that woman was. I, er, think I know her.”
I look across at Marion, who is both smiling and frowning quizzically.
“Cin Kettner? Cin Kettner is the thinnest woman in New York,” announces the woman as if she were presenting a prize.
“Do you know her, Andrew?” asks Marion, carefully putting a piece of lobster in her mouth.
“Er, I, er, perhaps not,” I say, deciding not to risk some cock and bull story about knowing her sister or something. The woman carries on looking at me for a moment just to check that I have completely finished thank you very much and then carries on with her story.
Charles and Victoria arrange a car to take us the four or five blocks back to our hotel.
“What was your weird comment about Cin Kettner for?” asks Marion, amused.
I yawn. I just want to sleep, not relive that horribly embarrassing moment.
“Oh, I don’t know, I just thought I’d better contribute something to the conversation,” I say. “I thought I was falling asleep.”
“Sorry you were so bored,” says Marion, looking out or the window.
“Oh, I wasn’t,” I say, taking her hand. “No, I was just so tired.”
“When people invite you to dinner, even if you’ve just flown in from another time zone, you really should make the effort,” she says, her hand cold and lifeless. I let go of it.
“All right, I’m sorry. I was just …” But I’m repeating myself now.
We go to bed in near silence but when I wake up at just after seven and find Marion sleeping with her back to me I shuffle up behind her. She half-wakes up too.
“Morning,” she whispers.
I mumble something even I can’t understand and then begin to bite her neck gently. She groans and lifts her head. I do it a bit more, enjoying the smell of her: sleep plus the remains of her perfume. After a moment she rolls over and looks up at me, her eyes searching my face. I stroke her cheek and then kiss her gently. We make love slowly and then I fall asleep again. When I wake the next time a waiter is wheeling in a trolley of breakfast things.
“What time is it?” I ask. The waiter, a young Hispanic guy in a crisp white jacket looks at me, wondering whether to answer. I notice him do a slight double-take. Yeah, that’ll give you something to talk about downstairs, I think, lying back.
It is actually just after ten. I pull on the inevitable massive fluffy white bathrobe and knock back a glass of icecold, freshly squeezed orange juice.
“I hope you’re hungry, honey,” says Marion, tearing off a piece of dry toast and popping it in her mouth.
“Starved,” I say, yawning and bending down to kiss her. She lifts a huge silver dome from off a plate to reveal scrambled eggs, hash browns and sausages.
“Here,” she says, handing me a cup of coffee. “Now, hurry up or we won’t have time for lunch.”
Not surprisingly, we still manage to do plenty with Marion in charge of the itinerary. We visit some shops at the top of Fifth Avenue where the staff are all delighted to see her. We go to Bloomingdales and she actually buys me some clothes. A pale grey DKNY suit, a white shirt to go with it and some trousers I would never wear but I don’t dare refuse. Perhaps she took on board my remark about needing some money. Perhaps she realizes that, like Mark says, if I don’t look good, she doesn’t look good. As we leave the store and look for a taxi back to the hotel, I feel that my luck might just be changing.
That night we go to see an opera at the Met
and in the interval a woman comes up to Marion and kisses her fondly on both cheeks.
“How are you?” she says, holding both of Marion’s hands.
“Good,” says Marion. “I’m good, thank you.”
“And this,” says the woman, “must be Andrew.”
“Hello,” I say, extending a hand.
“Andrew, it’s such a pleasure.”
“Yes,” I say. “I mean, it’s a pleasure for me too.” Can’t I ever get it right? The woman turns back to Marion.
“It’s so good to see you back in New York. Can we have a drink, just the three of us, before you go back to England?”
“I’d really like that,” says Marion, batting her eyelids with sincerity.
“Enjoy the second half,” says the woman, walking off.
“Who was that?” I ask.
“No idea,” says Marion, still smiling sweetly.
The next day we have brunch at a café where normally you have to book six months in advance just for coffee, according to the people at the opera the night before. They serve a mixture of Italian and native American food.
“My name is Walter,” says a very tall, improbably thin, redhaired guy as we sit down at a table beside a huge Roy Lichtenstein-style mural of an Indian chief. “I’ll be your server this morning and I’d very much like to welcome you to the Café Hueva today. If there is anything I can do to make your visit just that little bit more pleasurable please just let me know. Now, let me tell you something about the specials we can offer you. Today we have—”
“Er, Walter, honey,” says a voice. I look across the table and realize it is Marion. “Can we have some coffee and juice and then I’ll be all ears for your specials.”
Furious at having his speech interrupted, Walter hisses, “Yes, ma’am” and waltzes off.
I start laughing and Marion looks up from unfolding her napkin at me in surprise.
“What’s funny?”
“You are,” I say. She shrugs her shoulders and smiles.
I push open the door of our office and stride in, hoping I look relaxed and casual, although I feel sick with depression, jet lag and nerves. Someone has hung their jacket on my coat hanger so I carefully take it off and hang it on a peg and then put my new DKNY jacket on it. I can’t believe how irritated I feel—almost violated. Working in an office makes you so petty, so territorial.
My strategy has not worked. I am not the first into the office. Well somehow when I came to set the alarm last night I compromised on that one; seven seemed beyond endurance in my jet-lagged state so I set it for seven-thirty and decided not to bother trying to be the first. But, as I look round, I realize that I am not even one of the first! It’s eight-thirty and this shabby little hell hole is almost full, humming with activity.
I take my seat and Sami gives me her “Oh, Andrew” look. I make a silly face but my heart isn’t really in it. She finishes her call.
“How was New York?”
“It was great, really good fun,” I say quietly.
“I’m glad. What did you do?”
“Central Park, Fifth Avenue. We went to the Opera.”
“Wow,” says Sami gently. Then she says what I least want to hear: “Debbie wants to see you.”
I nod gratefully and smile.
“I bought you this, by the way.” It’s the Statue of Liberty in a snowstorm. I bought it at JFK on the way home. Sami looks up at me and smiles sadly.
My stomach suddenly feels light and empty. A couple of people look up discreetly from their desks and watch me go towards her office. She is on the phone telling someone to leave it with her and she’ll come back to them. And I know she will. I sit down and decide that sullen apology is my best bet so I stare moodily at my shoes.
“Where have you been the last two days?” she asks quietly, looking down at her desk.
“I was ill,” I say, more in the way of a suggestion than an apology. I look away—I can’t meet her eyes.
“I rang, Claire rang twice. What was the matter with you?”
“I dunno, I just felt—”
“Bullshit. I don’t care where you were, Andrew, and I don’t care what you were doing but you’re supposed to work here, remember?”
“I was ill,” I mumble again.
Ignoring me, she goes on. “It’s been really busy in this office while you’ve been running around. Our figures have been down over the last few months and this was our chance to catch up, to turn the corner. We’ve had people working twelve-hour days trying to meet the targets upstairs have set us.” She stops and then adds, “We needed you, it’s just not fair on everyone else.” That hurts.
“I’m sorry.” There is a pause, my excuse is dead and buried. “Did you meet them?” I don’t know if I really care or whether I am just being polite, trying to fill the awful heavy silence. Now Debbie seems slightly surprised and irritated by my question.
“Well, we just did it but it was tough on everyone. Paul’s dad’s been ill and Maria had to leave on Tuesday afternoon to pick up her youngest who’d had an accident at school or something. You know, it’s just not fair.” Oh God, why did I ask?
“Sorry,” I say again, getting up to leave. I’ve had enough, this is beginning to piss me off. I don’t know who I’m angriest with: Debbie or myself.
“Hang on a minute,” she says quietly. But I know it isn’t good news: this is not going to be an olive branch. “I’m giving you another warning. I’ve got to.” She hands me a letter.
“Sure,” I say quietly and go.
From all round the room eyes follow me as I make my way back to my desk. Sami looks at me sadly and says, “Sorry.”
I laugh bitterly. “You didn’t do anything. I did it.”
I pick up a piece of paper and stare at it for a few moments. I can’t bear it. I get up again and Sami says, “Andrew?” I laugh again and tell her that I am just going to the loo.
The thick, sterile air of the corridor, enclosed for weeks by fire doors feels fresh compared to the atmosphere in the office. I push open the door of the gents; the smell of disinfectant and an echo of dripping water welcome me. An older man I don’t know is finishing at the urinal. For a second I can’t decide what to do next so I wash my hands, dry them for ages under the dryer and then go into one of the cubicles and close the door. I lower the seat, sit down and put my head in my hands.
I never got into trouble much at school. If I ever did, it was a sin of omission rather than commission, as my headmaster put it. Come to think of it, I never did anything much at all at school. No outrageous pranks, no leading my classmates in rebellions, nothing to make the teachers say, “He’ll come to nothing, that boy” like they do about most millionaires and successful politicians.
I was a petty criminal, not a great train robber or a serial killer. My crimes were small, whitecollar ones: skiving games, spur of the moment cheating in an endofterm test, not giving my parents my report one year. I suppose that is why I used to receive a dreary nagging rather than a fully fledged, all guns blazing bollocking, together with a caning, which I could have taken like a man while biting my lip. Nothing I could have boasted about in later years.
Just the ancient, unanswerable question: “Why? Why did you do it, Andrew?”
“Because I wondered what it would be like, because I thought I could get away with, because I was bored, because I couldn’t be bothered not to.” Which answer do you want to hear? Which will fit best and get me out of here fastest?
I wonder what Jane would think. She wouldn’t do a thing like this at Paperchase, or if she did she would have made a better job of defending herself. Sitting on the loo, scratching the roll of toilet paper slightly so that it distorts and blisters, thinking about her, I’m embarrassed.
I ring my mum and dad that evening. It’s not something I do very often, not because I don’t like them, it’s just that I can never really think of anything to say to them on the phone. My dad answers.
“Hi, Dad, it’s me.”
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br /> “Hi, there. Good to see you other night. How’s things? Everything all right?”
“Fine, yeah. You?”
“Oh, mustn’t grumble. We were just trying to think of the name of that French teacher of yours.”
“French teacher? You mean Mr. Holden?”
“Holden! Yeah, that’s the one. We saw him in Sainsbury’s last Saturday. Couldn’t remember his name. Anyway, I’ll get your mum.” This is typical of my dad’s conversation—or lack of it.
“Hello, darling,” says my mum as if I had just been plucked from shark-infested waters after two months afloat on an open raft.
“Hi, Mum.”
“Everything all right?”
“Yeah, fine. You?”
“Me? Oh, yes. Well, you know, mustn’t grumble.”
There is a pause.
“We saw your old French teacher—”
“Mr. Jenkins,” shouts my dad from the background.
“Yes, I know, Dad said.”
“In Sainsbury’s. Last Saturday. By the fruit and veg, you know, where you come in. We didn’t say anything. We couldn’t remember his name.”
“We used to call him Twitch.”
“Oh, you are horrible. Why are boys so horrible? He does have that awful facial tick. Poor man. Do you have much opportunity to keep up your French?”
Oh, Mum.
“Mais, oui,” I say.
“Sorry?”
“No, not really.”
“Such a shame. You were very good. Remember when we went to Boulogne on the ferry that time—”
“Yeah. Ages ago.” I don’t want my mum to mention that Helen was with us. I bought her some perfume secretly from the duty-free shop on the boat and then gave it to her as we sat on the bench in the garden that evening. I can’t bear to smell it on anyone now. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’m going out tonight. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yes, come down for a weekend.”
“Will do. Bye.” I turn the sound back up on the telly.
After my mum and dad I ring Marion and tell her just how much trouble I’m in at work. How much trouble she’s got me into, more like. I’ve just got paid. My salary this month is only just over half the usual amount. I could hardly believe it when I read the computer print out. But it was right—half of what we earn is based on commission and I’ve not been around or not been concentrating for the last few weeks so it’s hardly surprising that I’ve got just enough to pay the rent, cough up for my share of the bills, get a monthly travel pass and buy a sandwich at lunchtime.