Before and After

  “Flora?” Archie croaked in amazement, pointing to the two tram lines of cocaine in front of me with a shaking hand.

  “Speech enhancer,” I said in an off-hand sort of voice, “I thought you might need it, of course you absolutely don’t have to have it, but well, it’s what Margaret Thatcher used to take. I get it from her homeopathic doctor, actually. And really, if you can’t find your notes, a couple of sniffs of this and you’ll be able to wing it like the late great David Niven appearing on Parkinson.”

  Archie looked at me with deep astonishment tinged with a desperate hope that I was telling the truth and that it was indeed a speech enhancer that his heroine, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham, used to take. The very idea of the iron lady doing a line of cocaine almost made me choke, but I managed to restrain myself. I casually put the rolled note into Archie’s hand and gestured for him to go ahead.

  “Yes, quite lucky really that I know Kevin Baker, he has a very good reputation amongst the M.Ps, of course he only did this for me as a huge favour, but, as I say, you must suit yourself.”

  Like the Duc de Lorraine facing Madame La Guillotine Archie approached the dressing table. He lowered his head to the glass and inserting the rolled note into his left nostril he sniffed inexpertly but with a degree of enthusiasm that couldn’t be faulted. I will admit to you I had a moment of concern, but really, what possible harm could it do?

  What happened to Archie next was that he felt something quite out of the ordinary:

  Normal.

  He felt completely and utterly normal. But more normal than he’d ever felt in his entire life. Within four minutes of taking his first ever line of speech enhancer, he was Archie Amble superpower. Archie Amble times ten. The normalness was seductive. If he could feel like this for the rest of the night then absolutely nothing bad would happen. At all. Ever. He’d lost the notes to his speech. So what? He could talk to a room full of people without a shoddy bit of paper, couldn’t he? Damn right he could. He was on the money. He was no longer the irritable, anxious Archie Amble, the one that had fretted over the tying of a bow tie, my god no, he was Archie. Archie the confident, the brave, the free, the ready for anything, the man who was going to wing the best speech of his life. And who did he have to thank for this feeling? He looked over to Flora and gave a delighted smile. The effect of the smile was slightly marred by his top lip sticking to his dry teeth, but that went unnoticed by him. The rush of affection and gratitude he felt for Flora was overwhelming. And for his wife. And for his children, Sir George, his workers, this hotel, this life really. It was all bloody nearly perfect.

  “Archie?” I said, aware that he’d not really heard anything for the past few seconds.

  “What?”

  I held out the note again. “Have another one, it doesn’t really last too long, and then I think the speech, don’t you?”

  Archie trustingly took the note from me and hoovered up another massive line of silicone smooth white glistening powder.

  “I say Flora, have I ever told you that you have the most marvellously sparkling eyes?” Archie said enthusiastically.

  I smiled kindly at him.

  Rule Number Eighteen

  “The only thing worse than making a speech is being subjected to one.”

  On the way back down the red carpeted stairs, I whispered to Archie probably indiscreetly, I realise only in retrospect, what I knew about Sir George and his weekly assignations to the oiled and sculpted body beautiful – Anthony Rockminster. Of course I couldn’t be sure that Archie had fully taken on board the enormity of what I’d said. His eyes had taken on an untamed quality that most civilisations in history wouldn’t have deemed appropriate to be near small children or heavy machinery. But then again, who can tell what penetrates the mind of the chemically altered? Descending the interior, was a blur for Archie, I was sure. His breathing was rapid and his brow had a sheen of sweat on it, I did so hope that he wasn’t going to be ill. I was slightly alarmed, to tell you the truth. I had taken Kevin’s assurances that this was ‘blindingly good gear’ to be one of those things that all drug dealers said, I didn’t expect him to be telling the truth.

  Lady Patricia and the cohorts that she’d bullied into drinking with her were braying with raucous laughter as we regained our seats. I sat down, managing to convey a certain physical exhaustion which would leave them in no doubt as to our sojourn upstairs had been about. At a signal from Sir George the room quietened, even his wife stopped her larking about and composed herself by dumping the remains of a bottle of red wine into her lipstick- smeared glass. I sipped daintily on my mineral water. I like a drink as much as the next person, as I’m sure you know by now - but I never, ever drink in the company of people like Lady P. The comparisons are too odious, poor soul, and other than the couple of glasses of champagne with Archie, a cocktail or two, a sip of vodka and some wine with dinner, oh yes and the tiniest measure of cointreau, I was stone cold sober.

  When a suitably obsequious hush fell over the puce-faced diners, Archie jumped to his feet. I had another moment or two of misgivings, to be candid. After all, people can react so differently to drugs, can’t they? I was involved in an incident once that required the administering of morphine to an acquaintance of mine. We had suffered the indignity and sheer bad luck of a car crash on the M25. The ambulance crew attended to her on the side of the road, and although I wasn’t actually hurt, I thought that I too deserved a little palliative care. All I can tell you is that it had no effect on my friend at all, but I was romping with the fairies across a dew-drenched meadow. It could be something to do with the fact that she had multiple fractures to her legs, and I was unscathed, but I like to think that it was more my immense sensitivity to other’s pain, that had transferred the effects of the drug to myself.

  Archie tapped on the side of his glass with a spoon, coughed, sniffed and started his yearly speech. I could tell by the bored faces, suitably hushed, that turned towards him that they all had heard it many times before.

  “I should start with ladies and gentlemen but as there aren’t any here I really don’t see the point,” Archie said loudly leaning in a louche manner against the back of his chair. He loosened his bow tie and sipped at a glass of wine with careless abandon. Then he sniffed loudly, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He had a little trouble with his upper lip again, but he lubricated it with a swig of wine. There was a polite ripple of subdued laughter, and heads craned to see what Archie was going to say. This wasn’t the usual opening to his yearly drone about profits and team effort.

  “Damn, I feel good!” Archie suddenly shouted, sounding like a bad white man’s impersonation of the godfather of soul as he gazed belligerently around the room, seeking the applause that he felt he deserved. None was forthcoming. He continued.

  “Anyway, the thing is work’s work but it’s the people that you work with that make all the difference, isn’t it?” Archie confided loudly, waving his empty glass of wine to the assembled company. He faltered for a moment, then recovered his tangled but emphatic thread of thought.

  “People. You think you know them, don’t you? Then you find out that Lady Patricia here,” he bowed his head in her direction, momentarily losing his grip on the back of his chair, but recovering well, “Has been making porn flicks and her husband is knocking off a rent boy, some sort of trainer to the PM and running naked in international marathons under an assumed name. Well, it’s all the same to me, but after all, a man likes to know the company that he works for and the people who run that company, doesn’t he?” He appealed to the diners.

  The room was glacially silent.

  A pin could indeed have dropped on the thick pile of new wool scarlet carpet and it would have been heard in the hot sweaty far- away kitchens.

  I tried hard to keep to my face as neutral as possible under such trying circumstances, whilst inwardly fuming at Archie’s seemingly inability to remain in control of his senses after barely enough cocaine to stimulate a
kitten. I comforted myself with the thought that it could hardly be considered my fault after all. Blame it rather on Archie’s less than sturdy genetic make up.

  “As I said, I don’t care. But it makes you wonder doesn’t it? That nonsense about ethical trading, by the way, if you call uprooting a whole village in the rainforest and logging it to extinction, then spreading smallpox about –“

  Two men from absolutely nowhere arrived behind Archie. They were dressed in dark suits and clean white shirts, but no amount of debonair dressing could conceal their true calling, which was joyfully to kick the ribs in of anyone they were directed at. Bouncers, I believe they’re called. They moved with a slow grace, taking Archie’s wine glass away from him and carefully placing it on the table before they performed the dance of the quick and painful exit with him.

  The scandalised talk broke over my head like surf crashing against a coral reef.

  “The man’s drunk,”

  “Pissed as a fart.”

  “Porn, did he say?”

  “Perhaps he’s ill…”

  “Extraordinary, I was riveted, weren’t you?”

  “Rent boy? Did he say? I always wondered…”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “I can…”

  “Porn?!”

  “He didn’t sound drunk…”

  “Brain tumour?”

  “I wish he hadn’t been stopped.”

  “Looking for work on Monday I would think…”

  “They can’t sack him, he’s chairman…”

  “No darling CEO, there is a difference…”

  “Is there?”

  “Do you think Sir George’s gay?”

  “Well, he’s certainly not a happy bunny at the moment I’d say…”

  “Porn?!”

  “And who is she…”

  “How old do you think she is?”

  “Thirty?”

  “Fifty if she’s a day, we must find out who her surgeon is…”

  “No, more like thirty five…”

  It hadn’t gone unnoticed by me that none of the delightedly shocked conversation mentioned ethics or marathons. Still, that’s the world that we live in and I dare say we deserve it. I demurely stood up and, allowing myself a soft glance of appeal to the company, followed on the heels of Archie. I took control of him once we were outside the room and assured the two gentlemen guarding him that all would be well once Archie was upstairs and had had his medication. They kindly accompanied me to the bedroom door, and remained lounging against the corridor wall looking distinctly trigger-happy, as only men who have been thwarted of physicality and have adrenaline flowing around their veins can.

  Archie was delighted with himself. Like a child that has behaved badly but is reassured that he is loved by his parents and all will be forgiven, he had dismissed any niggling doubt in his mind that he’d over-stepped the mark. Yes, he’d told a few secrets perhaps, but they were all friends there, weren’t they? And frankly, he felt good. Damned good. He looked wildly round the room and saw that I was sitting demurely on the sofa, my hands in my lap, waiting. Waiting for what he wasn’t quite sure of. Did all women do that? The pose reminded him forcefully of Sylvia, but with chemicals running wildly through his body that too was a thought that could be dealt with later. Right now he wanted to talk, that was it, he wanted to talk with a hilariously expensive glass of wine in his hand and an even more expensive cigar in the other, then – then he wanted to – well, he didn’t quite know but something grand was called for. His admiration for Margaret Thatcher grew by the second, and he needed to talk about it. Flora would listen.

  I sat waiting for Archie to ask me for some more speech enhancer. That’s the trouble really with drugs, the nice effects wear off so quickly, the vile dreadful ones take so much longer. Soon, Archie would begin to fall sadly back to his old self.

  I let Archie talk to me for ten minutes about a variety of subjects, mostly revolving around the fatal consequences that Margaret Thatcher had made in her long and glorious reign. After I could bear no more, I guided Archie from his pacing of the room and sat him down in an armchair.

  “Now Archie dear, do listen to me for a moment. You have increased levels of natural substances which circulate in the blood, called catecholamines. The dopamine that exists in your neural pathways has been captured and no doubt taken hostage by the free dopamine that’s been released and romping freely in your synaptic terminals. In short Archie, your pleasure pathway has been stimulated. This of course can cause brain lesions, hypoxia, strokes and heart infractions, but you are no doubt not thinking about any of the nasty things at the moment. Now, I suggest that we avail ourselves of this lovely room,” I glanced doubtfully about the place, I’d had second thoughts about the joi de tuille after all, but gamely continued. “After all, Archie, Sylvia would want you to enjoy yourself, wouldn’t she?”

  I patted the sofa next to me in an encouraging way. Really, were all Englishmen so dense? Did I have to spell it out for him? Here I was, Flora Tate, in my prime, a fine figure of a woman, if I say so myself, ready willing and able to… well, doubtless to be bored out of my mind for at least two hours (chemicals do affect men’s sexual performances in a horribly enthusiastic sort of way), and what was he doing?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

  I rearranged my legs, allowing the dress to ride further up my thighs and slowly ran my tongue over my top lip.

  Surely this would do the trick?

  I glanced over at Archie who had the definite air of a snake being transfixed by a mongoose.

  Good grief, I thought crossly, surely I’m not going to have to resort to the old courtesan’s parlour tricks?

  Just as I was about to order some crushed ice and goldfish from room service, Archie, with a start, jumped to his feet.

  And about time, my good man, I thought to myself, smiling in as warm a way as I could muster.

  No sooner had the smile reached my mouth than Archie left the suite, slamming the hotel door behind him.

  Well, well, well. A bolter. I wouldn’t have believed it. I was flummoxed as I don’t mind admitting to you. This sort of thing doesn’t happen often to me as you can imagine.

  Of course, I do overwhelm the faint hearted lover, that point I concede willingly.

  Meanwhile I had a large, swanky hotel suite, pre-paid for the night. What could be nicer?

  I double locked the hotel bedroom door and went to investigate the delights of the mini fridge. Wine, beer, fruit juices, tonic water, miniatures of spirits, honey-roasted peanuts, pistachios and a large slab of Belgian milk chocolate. I nibbled on a few snacks, having poured myself a large vodka and tonic, feeling that I had more than deserved it - I had been practically teetotal all night - then moved on to the bathroom. Tiny glass bottles of moisturiser, shower gel and shampoo were standing to attention along the sparklingly white bath, and I swooped them into my case along with a functional but useful white terry towelling bathrobe and slippers. The reading material of the room left a lot to be desired, however. A glossy magazine extolling the night life of London and a pamphlet offering me ‘bargain breaks’ at various dreary looking ivy-draped country hotels was all that there was to browse. What a shame. One of my ambitions, yet to be realised, but I shall act upon it when I am retired is to provide books for all hotel rooms. They seem to me to be the perfect womb-like interior for a good read, and often we are stranded in them alone, away from home and in a suitably accommodating frame of mind to absorb some literary gem or two. We all need sustenance for the voyage of a solitary night. An absorbing book can change the outcome of many situations, and I wonder how many lives would be altered if the right book was placed in the right hands at the right time. It could be world-changing. I once had a perfect night time companion when I was unfortunate enough to be stranded in a tartan-clad baronial hotel in Edinburgh, waiting for a phone call to be put through from Kabul, which has a tenuous communication system at the best of times. I had found, hidden i
n the back of a drawer a ragged paperback 1952 copy of the Zen-like classic by G.J. Monkhood, ‘How To Grow Flowers by Candlelight in Hotel Bedrooms’. Entertaining, informative and above all completely absorbing. It saved me from hours of tedium and anxiety. I was pleased that I had anticipated such a situation as tonight, and hoisted from my bag the equally tattered copy of Mesmerism and Mantras to Enslave. It never hurts to brush up on a little knowledge.

  I am telling you this, so that if you too should find yourself in a similar position, you can take my advice, and make the most of the here and now. After all, I had many troubles on my mind: The Ambles, Archie’s most upsetting public speech, his disappearance into the night in a condition that could plausibly be described as a trifle unwell, the lurking, but easily banished thought that I might just have overdone it with Archie’s ridiculously low tolerance levels with the speech enhancer and the upcoming necessity of The Treatments. But did I lay and worry all night? No. And neither should you.

  Rule Number Nineteen

  “Unexpected visitors are, by their very nature as welcome as a woodworm in a 17th century commode. They must be shown no mercy and granted not even the smallest kindness.”

  At ten the following morning Archie Amble was still hoping desperately for sleep to overtake his battered and strangely raw body. Every nerve ending felt exposed and vulnerable to the slightest draught or stroke of sheet and blanket. The fact that he managed to navigate his way home was proof that the training of young men in public schools by bogus para-military organisations works. He remembered the smoky hours filled in a Soho bar reminiscent of the drinking hole in Star Wars (did they ever close?) that he had felt for moss on the trees in the park, knowing that moss didn’t grow on the north side. Somehow, armed only with that knowledge and a pair of feet that seemed to want to walk to Scotland, he found his way home. It had been broad daylight and he had had just enough cash, and could quite easily have hailed a cab, but somehow he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to. He’d needed to walk. Also, the thought of encountering the supercilious or, worse still, knowing matyness of a taxi driver had been unthinkable. No, no, he would get home by god under his own steam, he’d thought. Shank’s pony. Best foot forward. Big boys don’t cry. Wonder what happened to nanny? No thinking about that sort of stuff now. Sleep, that’s what’s called for. Everything will seem better once some sleep has been had. No, no, don’t think about Sir George again, sort that out later. Why does this bloody sheet insist on twirling around the mattress like a boa constrictor? And why is it so bloody cold in here? No wonder sleep is elusive, it’s like trying to snooze on an alpine ski run. Dry, dry mouth. No water by the bed. Get up and get some? Are you mad? Sleep. How can anyone sleep when their eyes are wide open, glued apart with paranoia and doubt and rapid heartbeat that could turn into a stroke stop and Flora sitting in his hotel like a grotesquely forward and racy caricature of Sylvia (surely the woman didn’t expect him to – no, no banish that thought) and Lady Pat breast feeding small furry mammals with her oh god stop stop now sleep stop no job no job no job sleep please. God. Yes, god that was it. Please god let me sleep. Hello, is anyone there?