Upgrading

by Simon Brooke

  Maria suddenly whispers, “Gotta go—Debbie’s back.” The phone goes dead.

  I put the receiver down. Suddenly there is a tight feeling in my throat and a pressure behind my eyes and I realize I’m about to cry. Oh, Sami, perhaps if I’d been there I could have helped. You could have told me about what was happening with Wheatley. I could have calmed your brother down. I could have helped you sort out your life. Perhaps instead of your thinking about me all the time and about the mess I was slowly getting myself into I could have been there for you a bit. Poor, poor Sami.

  I arrive early at Joe’s and order a bottle of Badoit with lots of ice because I’m still dehydrated from the night before. Marion arrives just as I’m downing my third glass.

  “Hi, sweetie.” She’d rung me an hour earlier, all love and kisses, to ask me if I would have lunch with her. The complete character U-turn had spooked me a bit. I agreed to have lunch partly because I want to get this wedding thing sorted out, well, all right, tie up the money aspect after the way Jonathan has ripped me off so royally—and partly because I’m hungry and there is no food in the fridge and, as usual, I don’t have enough cash to buy any.

  I smile. It must be pretty unconvincing.

  “Aw, poor baby,” she says, putting her bag down.

  “I feel terrible.”

  “You boys. You must have been really bad last night.” I look at her for a moment, wondering how she can do this. Aren’t I the one thing in her life that isn’t perfect and is screwing everything else up? She’s either being sweet to me as part of some sadistic mind game or she really just does not have normal emotions. I begin fingering my fork, looking at my Picassoesque reflection in it. A shattered, distorted face.

  She knows perfectly well that I didn’t go out with Vinny last night.

  “How much did you drink in the end?” I just look at her for a moment. “You were still at it when I came back, weren’t you?” She waits for me to say something. “Channing says ‘Hi.’” There is another pause. “You must feel bad. You needn’t have come if you didn’t feel up to it.” She reaches across and runs the back of her hand down my cheek. I turn my face away from her and tell her to get off me. Two Prada princesses on a nearby table turn to look at us and then carry on talking. Marion looks disapproving.

  “Are you going to eat something? It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I’d better since I’m here.” I’m starving actually.

  “Well, don’t force yourself.”

  Marion begins to chat a bit about how funny Channing was last night and about how there was a boy called Tony there who was so adorable and so funny and so cute she’d invited him to dinner next week. Then we eat just one course—bangers and mash for me, caesar salad for her—in silence.

  As we wait for the bill, Marion says, “Don’t forget your wedding is on Friday.”

  “I know.” Of course! So that’s why she’s being so nice to me, she wants to make sure it’s all going ahead.

  “I thought you might have forgotten.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve given Ana Maria the morning off.”

  “Very kind of you.”

  “Have you thought what you’re going to wear?”

  “Christ, no. Just a suit, I suppose. Do you want to buy me one as a wedding present?”

  “We’ll see. Charles and Victoria have agreed to be your witnesses.” Marion looks down at the table and smiles.

  “You think this is funny, don’t you?”

  “No,” she says, hurt. “This is a big commitment for me.”

  “For you?”

  “Yes. To make sure the Home Office believes your story, you’ll be married to Ana Maria for at least a couple of years.” I look at her for a moment. Which is worse—having your lover married to another woman for two years or having your maid shackled to a no-hoper like me for that long? And, more importantly, which of us is she planning to get rid of first? She raises her eyebrows quizzically. “Besides, I don’t think you realize what kind of effect it’s having on me.”

  “What kind of effect is it having on you?”

  “I’m quite cut up about it.”

  “You’re cut up about it?”

  “Of course, seeing my lover marry someone else. That’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow.”

  I laugh. The Prada princesses and some other customers turn round.

  “It’s a pretty bitter pill for me to swallow,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “I think it’s the least you can do for me,” she says coldly, her dark eyes narrowed. “I’ve given you a home for the last few weeks, taken you on trips and how have you repaid me? Getting drunk, abusing my staff. Cheating on me—yes, I know about that Australian slut. You’re certainly making plenty of money out of it.” Her tone lightens. “Which reminds me, I’ll give you a cheque this afternoon.” I don’t answer for a moment. “If that’s OK with you?” I still don’t answer, wondering whether to tell her to stuff it and walk out now. “Unless you don’t want it.”

  “Thank you, thank you, I’m very grateful.”

  “If you want cash it will take a bit longer,” she says, looking around the room to see if there is anyone she knows.

  “No, a cheque is fine,” I mutter. Cash would be safer, but makes it all even more demeaning. But this is the last time she’ll taunt me like this. And somehow it makes me all the more determined to get that money, her money. I know now what I’m going to do with it. I’m going to use it so sensibly, invest it, make every penny work for me. It’s small change to her, a couple of trips to New York, a shopping trip to Paris, but it’s a massive sum to me and I’m going to use it to start a business or put down a deposit on my own flat, something worthwhile, something laudable, something that will give me some security so that I never have to do this, never have to beg again. Something that even Jane couldn’t disapprove of even if she would be appalled by how I got it.

  The bill comes back and as Marion signs the slip for the first time in our relationship I get a close look at her credit card.

  She goes off for a seaweed rub and I wander down Fulham Road, window shopping as usual, until it occurs to me that the only way I’m going to get one over on Marion, the only thing that will really spook her is if she realizes I know who she is. If she knows that I know she told me a pack of lies on our first lunch date and that I know she is not the Upper East Side aristo she pretends to be but … who is she? Someone else. I’m sure it won’t help me get anything out of her financially but it will just make feel better. Besides, I think I deserve to know the truth: father in the discount furniture business, dodgy South American hubbies, Kremer Holdings and all. Not least I want to know why her credit card has “Mrs. J. Martinez” written on it. The only person who can help me and corroborate Davina’s story is Victoria. I can’t go to Channing because he’ll just go running back to her and besides, I can’t stand the sight of him. I didn’t get to ask Victoria the other night but now might be my chance.

  I grab a taxi with the £20 Marion has given me.

  “Where to?” asks the driver and I give him Victoria’s address.

  Victoria arrives back at her house just as I do.

  “What a delightful surprise,” she says, taking off some huge dark sunglasses with massive gold coins on the arms and then triple-kissing me. Bending down so far makes me feel a bit queasy again but I recover myself. “I was having lunch at the Collection with an old friend from Spain. We used to live in Madrid, you know. Guess who she is staying with in London?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I say quite truthfully.

  “Her sister! Can you believe it?” Well, very easily actually, but I manage to look suitably surprised. “Will you have some tea?” says Victoria as she lets us in.

  “Thanks very much, I’d love to.”

  Victoria says something in Spanish to her maid and then we sit down in her tiny living room. She chats about some people I don’t know and then asks how things are going in the hotel business. I look at
her for a moment and then realize that’s supposed to be me.

  “Oh, I’m not in the hotel business.”

  “I thought you worked in hotels,” says Victoria, totally unembarrassed.

  “No,” I say in a friendly way. “I’m … Well, I’m just deciding what to do next.”

  “Very sensible,” she says seriously. “It took me many years to decide what I wanted to do with my life.” We both sit in silence for a moment trying to think what she must have plumped for. A career in lunching, perhaps?

  “Victoria,” I say, leaning forward in the ridiculously small seat I’m squashed into. “I was just wondering something.” How am I going to put this? “About Marion.”

  “Oh, Marion,” says Victoria, laughing and clapping her hands together. “I love Marion, she is my best friend in all the world.”

  “Yes,” I laugh as if to say “Isn’t she everybody’s?” “Well, Marion and I were teasing each other last night—”

  “Oh, Marion! Always teasing, always joking.”

  “Yes, always. Erm, well, we were joking about our previous lovers, you know. She was trying to guess who mine were and I was trying to guess who she had been out with or, you know, even married to before she started going out with me.”

  “Oh, Marion has had lots of husbands. She love them.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she did love them—”

  “Yes, Marion love husbands.” That is not quite what I meant but never mind.

  “There was Edward, wasn’t there?”

  “Oh, yes, Edward.”

  “Yes.” There is a pause. “Did you know him?”

  “Oh, no, she is diborcing Edward before I know her.”

  “Oh, of course. What about the South American guy?”

  “My father love Marion, she’s so funny, so beautiful.”

  “Yes, I know. But who was the South American guy?”

  Victoria looks at me. “My father.”

  “What? Marion was married to your father?”

  “Yes, that’s how I know her.”

  “Your father’s … what was his name? Josef?”

  “Yes, they meet in a restaurant in Rio and fall in love.”

  “And was your mother still alive, then?”

  “Oh, yes, she was in the ladies’ restroom.”

  “Right.”

  “Then she married British man.”

  “Yes, Lord something or other.”

  “Right.”

  “Then she married another South American? Carlos or something?”

  “Yes, Carlos. Bery nice man. Bery funny. Bery generous. Bery good shot.”

  “Good shot?

  “With a gun, you know.” She aims an imaginary fire arm at me.

  “Right. Very useful. Do you know what her father did?”

  “Her father? Oooh, what did she say her father did?”

  “Was he a lawyer?”

  “Lawyer, that’s right. Very good.”

  “It’s just that someone, er, one of her friends told me that he sold furniture or something.”

  “Ah yes, so they say. In Scarsdale or Queens, I think.”

  “So he wasn’t a lawyer?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember,” laughs Victoria.

  “And she told me her second husband, your father, was so jealous that she had to divorce him, she couldn’t stand it anymore. And then she said she had never been married again.”

  “Yes.”

  “But this friend of hers told me that she married this British lord and then the other South American—Carlos.”

  “Yes.”

  “Victoria, sorry, it’s all a bit confusing, that’s all. Marion tells me one thing but then her friends tell me another.” Victoria laughs and then looks at me sweetly. “So the thing is,” I carry on slowly. “Was she married twice or was she married four times? And does she come from the Upper East side or is she from Scarsdale?”

  Victoria shrugs her shoulders.

  “Do you know?”

  Her expression changes, “Why you want to know?”

  “Why do I want to know? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it, I want to know who Marion is.” Just then the maid brings in the tea and Victoria concentrates on pouring it, offering lemon or milk and then handing me a tiny, china cup with a silver teaspoon. “You understand, don’t you? She’s lied to me and it’s all a bit weird.”

  Victoria sighs and looks at me. “You know who Marion is.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “Of course you do. You see her every day, talk to her, make love to her. Why you want to know who her parents are? They are not her. Does it matter who she is married to before she meet you? It’s so English. You’re so, so concerned with history, always thinking in the past. All you ever want to know is where people come from, who their parents are, where they go to school. Does it matter? It’s the person you know here and now that counts. Like that song: was it Ethel Merman? Do you remember Ethel Merman? No, probably too young. ‘It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.’ Marion once say to me ‘You gotta hate where you came from and love where you’re going to.’ Understand? Marion has made bery nice life for herself—very American really. Let her be whoever she wants to be, why shouldn’t she? The important thing is she is in love with you and you are in love with her and you guys are happy at the moment. Make the most of it while it lasts.”

  I set off to walk back to Marion’s. Some children are coming out of a junior school in the next street. A little girl is walking along in a very busy, grown-up manner while holding her boater on with one hand and struggling to carry a painting in the other. White socks pulled right up and children’s sandals—heavy and comfortable. It’s a painting of a big red boat on a thickly painted wavy blue sea. The sky, hanging above, is also blue and thick and wavy. I smile at such solid childish certainties. “Then we had music and movement with Mrs. Jackson and then we had sausages for lunch and, Mummy, Emma didn’t eat all hers …” she is saying.

  She looks up at me, sees me smiling and smiles back. Looking away, I catch her mother’s eye—cold and suspicious.

  I get home and ring my old Fulham flat just in case Vinny happens to be home. I’m glad to hear that my voice is still on the answer machine. I don’t leave a message.

  Then I find a piece of writing paper and begin to write to Jane care of Vinny. I don’t mention the wedding, of course. But even though I try various versions nothing sounds right. When I look again at what I’ve written for a fifth time I notice Marion’s address at the head of the paper.

  twenty-three

  marion is sitting in the living room on the phone with a towel on her head. A woman with red hair in a messy bun and “Miami Beach” sweat top is painting her toenails while Marion watches intensely. The woman looks up at me and says “Hello” in a slightly uncertain way.

  I nearly rang Jane on the way back but I chickened out. I’ll ring her when I’ve got this crap out of the way. I did ring my mum and dad. Thank God I got the answer phone. I left a message saying that I had moved into a new flat and that it didn’t have a phone yet but as soon as it did I’d give them the number.

  “Where have you been all afternoon?” asks Marion, still staring at the woman working on her feet.

  “Oh, I just went for a walk,” I say, dropping down on the settee and putting my hands behind my head.

  “Where did you go?” Marion is obviously mystified why anyone would want to do such a thing since it doesn’t involve people

  or money or expensive things.

  “Just round Chelsea,” I say.

  “You sure that’s Mustique, Dawn? It looks much darker on the colour chart.”

  The pedicurist looks up in terror at Marion, mumbles something and then shows her the bottle. Marion squints at it for a moment. “Doesn’t this look too dark? You can hardly see my tan,” she says.

  I open my mouth but realize that I can’t be bothered to answer so I shut it again.

  “Mmm.” Marion considers it for a moment.
“It’ll have to do. It’s just because I’m wearing sandals at Marsha’s thing tonight. Come round tomorrow morning and take it off, though, will you?” Assuming she is talking to the pedicurist and she hasn’t found some new task for me, I channel surf for a moment—a woman wearing a sweatsuit, standing in a huge American kitchen is tearfully telling a man she is going to get her daughter back whatever it takes, then there’s a woman cutting up a kiwi fruit and telling us how easy something is, a woman sitting on a settee asking another woman how she felt when she heard the news. Marion is talking to me again.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said you’d better start getting ready.”

  “What for?”

  “For Marsha’s.”

  “What time does it start?”

  “About eight.”

  “It’s only quarter to five,” I say.

  “Well, we don’t want to be late.”

  “How is it going to take me three hours to get ready?”

  There is a pause as Marion stares at the woman whose hands are now visibly shaking. Then she says, “Once you get in that bath.”

  “What?”

  “Well, maybe you should go and rest up a little. You know how wine goes to your head when you’re tired,” says Marion. “I don’t want you embarrassing me again.”

  “Again?”

  Marion says nothing. I look at her for a moment but she is concentrating again on the pedicurist who is literally keeping her head down. I get up and walk to the door.

  “Where’re you going?” says Marion. I don’t answer, partly because I can’t be bothered and partly because I don’t know. I really don’t know.

  I walk around Eaton Square and up to Sloane Square where lines of traffic are gradually moving around the traffic islands and disappearing down the King’s Road and Sloane Street like a knot slowly being pulled undone. The light is low and yellowy and autumnal. It feels like the end of the summer holidays.

  I decide to sit at a café in the square and have a cappuccino. After half an hour of idle origami with an empty sugar sachet I order another one.

  By now I feel tired and sticky and want to have a bath. Marion is actually right—I could spend a couple of hours in there. I catch the waitress’s eye and do some air writing. She smiles and moments later brings me a saucer with the bill. It is £6.40. For two cappuccinos? Bloody hell! Ridiculous! God, I sound like my dad. I reach into my trouser pocket and know immediately that I haven’t got enough. I find a fiver, a twenty pence piece and a penny. Fuck! The taxi fare plus a couple of magazines and a bag of Maltesers have used most of the twenty Marion gave me.