Gigolo

by Ben Foster

  ‘One hundred pounds, James?’ she suggested, and he looked back at me with an expression that was impossible to read.

  ‘If you insist. Two days?’

  ‘Make it five hundred guineas, then?’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ he replied, and left the Great Hall.

  Lady Margaret moved closer on the sofa and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Now, how much do you charge for a massage?’

  ‘With a twist?’ added the woman in the antique chair.

  There was another ripple of laughter. I could feel a flush rise up my neck and was thinking: ‘Play it cool, don’t be an idiot, don’t undersell yourself’ – something Kelly said I always did. I gritted my teeth and tried to look casual.

  ‘Fifty pounds for a forty-five minute session,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Fifty pounds,’ one of the women repeated.

  ‘And how much for the night?’ said Lady Margaret.

  I was unable to speak. My throat had tightened and I was saved from making a complete fool of myself by Kate, Lady Catherine.

  ‘Leave the poor boy alone, Maggs. You’ll scare him off.’

  Maggs stroked the back of my hair. ‘You’re not scared of me, are you?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ I managed.

  That’s what I said, but it wasn’t what I felt. I wasn’t exactly frightened, but had that feeling working blokes have when they come face to face with what my Gran would have called ‘their betters.’ We feel clumsy. We’re not sure what to say and know whatever we say will sound ignorant. We may know deep down no one is better than anyone else, but people with posh voices who always say the right thing at the right time make you feel awkward and uncouth. My brow was damp. There was nervous sweat under my arms. But there was a nagging little voice that kept saying ‘Play it cool, this could be your lucky break’.

  Maggs was still stroking my hair when the maid I had seen cleaning the chandeliers appeared as if by magic.

  ‘Bring some Perrier, dear,’ Lady Catherine said, and the girl left again.

  The sun was bright through the open windows, but my eyes had adjusted to the light and now it occurred to me why the women gathered around the fireplace had at first appeared to be posing for a photograph. That was where I had seen several of them before, on television and the newspapers.

  One was an actress, better known for being in the papers than for her film roles. Another was a model whose face with high cheekbones and an unnerving expression appeared in magazine ads and on hoardings all over London. The woman sitting on the high-back chair like she ruled the world was often on television, a Conservative MP with a strident voice who talked over everyone and didn’t listen to the questions when she was being interviewed. Her brow was faintly lined and she watched me like someone watching a cat waiting for it to do something funny.

  These people were famous, important, titled, rich. I charged Rufus £25 for a massage and felt guilty asking for twice as much, but I had no doubt they could afford it. I glanced down at my trainers. They were scuffed and scruffy. I’d been meaning to get a new pair and fifty quid was what they cost these days.

  I glanced up as the maid returned pushing a trolley with bottles of Perrier. She added ice and lemon slices to tall glasses, served everyone and slipped away again. The women continued to study me, they looked at each other and then one of them, younger than the rest, all in white like a bride with white flowers in her hair, held up her Perrier as if making a toast.

  ‘He is like a glass of clear water,’ she said, not looking at me, but Maggs, who softly clapped.

  ‘You always say the perfect thing, Vivienne,’ she remarked.

  I swigged down the Perrier like a man who had just crossed the desert and Lady Catherine refilled my glass. As she did so, Rufus arrived in riding clothes and brown leather boots.

  ‘What a pleasure. How’s the back?’ Maggs asked and he shrugged as if bored.

  ‘It’s getting there.’

  Before Maggs could continue, the politician spoke over her. ‘Have you been in touch with Annabel, by any chance?’ she asked him.

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘She’s avoiding me. I don’t know why. Tell her to give me a call, will you?’

  ‘If I remember,’ he replied. He brushed his hand over his combed back hair and turned to me. ‘Do let me save you from the committee of over-excited hormones.’

  ‘He doesn’t need saving, darling, he’s perfectly happy where he is,’ his mother responded.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said, coming to my feet. ‘But I really should go. There’s always so much to do.’

  ‘And never enough time to do it,’ Rufus said sharply.

  Maggs took my arm. ‘Do you have a card?’ she asked, and I thought: Oh, no, I’ve blown it. My shoulders sagged.

  ‘No, I don’t, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Never complain, never explain and never apologise,’ said Lady Catherine. ‘A gentleman never carries a card. He writes his number down on a slip of paper.’

  As Lady Catherine spoke, the politician reached for her bag and that instant I remembered her name. Angela Hartley was bursting with repressed energy, small, tense, fine-boned, a woman who really needed a massage. She gave me a pen and a spiral notebook in which I wrote my mobile number.

  Rufus walked me out to the van. My table and bag were leaning against the back and I opened the doors to slide them in.

  ‘Do you ride?’ he asked.

  ‘No, never tried it.’

  ‘Oh, well, see you next week,’ he said and strode off towards the stables.

  As I fired the motor, the woman in white floated out from the main doors like an angel in a nativity play. I switched off the engine and got out. She stopped, feet together, head to one side, a look of concern in her blue eyes.

  ‘It must have been awful being grilled like a sardine, poor thing,’ she said and held out her hand. ‘Vivienne Raynott.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You were very brave in there. Like a soldier in the trenches.’

  She stood motionless beside the van, quiet for a moment. There was something serious and sad about her, which made her all the more attractive.

  I wasn’t sure what to say and said stupidly: ‘This is my old banger. I should take it to the dump, really.’

  ‘It’s just an A to B machine. It got you here.’

  ‘But it might not get me home again.’

  She took a breath and thought about that. ‘Then it will be an adventure,’ she said and put her hand on my arm. ‘It’s like meeting a stranger. It’s always exciting when something happens that you don’t expect.’

  ‘As long as it’s not the car breaking down,’ I replied and she smiled.

  ‘You know something, Ben, I have a feeling we are going to be friends for the rest of our lives.’

  She turned and wafted along the line of black cars to the yellow Ferrari. She shot down the drive and I remained where I stood watching the dust settle. In the field alongside the house, I saw Rufus moving in a slow trot. He was bent to one side as if to avoid falling from the horse. The air was hot and still. I stepped into the Red Beast and set off, the gravel drumming under the wheel arches. I’d only had two glasses of Perrier, but my head was spinning. My heart thumped in my chest. The smell of Vivienne’s perfume was in my nose like a narcotic. Like an aphrodisiac.

  The women I had met in the Great Hall were refined, striking, each beautiful in her own way, chic and sexy with tanned slender legs and their breasts popping over the tops of their dresses. They didn’t hide their sexuality, they exploited it, exposed it. They had acted as if they found me attractive, but they could have been making fun of me. I’d felt like a clown with my red cheeks and big scruffy shoes.

  ‘I have a feeling we are going to be friends for the rest of our lives.’

  That’s what Vivienne Raynott had said, but what did it mean? People didn’t say that sort of thing, not the people I knew. Was I reading more into the encounter than was really there
? It wouldn’t be the first time. Kelly said I was naïve, that people took advantage of me. It was probably true, but better that than taking advantage of other people.

  I had been turned on by Vivienne, what normal man wouldn’t? But relations with a woman like her was a fantasy, a daydream. If I could earn some cash for the occasional massage that would be great. More than great. It would be life changing. Beyond that, I loved Kelly and my kids and had no intention of jeopardising what we had.

  I glanced at my watch, a plastic Casio, £5 from Mr Singh at the Indian stall in the market. It had just gone five. I drove straight to my six o’clock shift. The van rattled along. The Beast was like a drum kit, I knew every beat and jangle. The traffic was building up. Road rage was in the air. Horns blasted. City boys in Porsches raced by. The sun through the windscreen was like a laser beam.

  The van bounced over the ruts as I swung into The Lodge, the trees bedraggled, the paint fading on the grey building with its iron bars, a sight that suddenly seemed unreal, or surreal, the contrast between life back in the Great Hall and life for those sad lads was so immense it was like I’d passed through a time warp in Doctor Who and arrived among people on a different planet.

  Vinnie Castro was watching from the window and gave me the thumbs up. I was ten minutes early. Little Billy was piss free, the readers were reading and Marley was working up a sweat playing table tennis with three of the lads, the ball flying about the day room. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d felt depressed on the drive from the Great Hall, but it passed immediately.

  I went and talked to Troy, sitting on his hands as always.

  ‘Don’t you want to play ping-pong, Troy?’

  He paused from nodding his head. ‘Not today, thank you.’

  ‘You let me know when you do.’

  He stared at me for a second and carried on nodding.

  Marley gave another boy his bat and strolled towards me drying his face with a handkerchief.

  ‘Hot as the fires of Hades,’ he said. ‘How’s your day been, Bro?’

  ‘Same old, same old. I got stuck all afternoon in this big house with ten beautiful women,’ I said and he nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘Don’t forget, man, in the dark they all look the same.’

  Marley left to catch the bus home. The two lads who always stared out of the window were staring out of the window. I went to join them. The sun had gone behind some tall buildings and the light filtering through the trees made the same pastel shades as the dresses the women wore in the Great Hall.

  4

  NAUGHTY MONKEY

  The text woke me from a restless sleep at half past eleven on Saturday morning:

  Dear Ben, what a pleasure to meet you the other day. May I request your services as a massage therapist tonight at 7.30 at Frowley Manor? Lady Margaret

  My throat went dry. Adrenaline pumped through my heart. I was exhausted after three double shifts in a row. I’d felt weary. Suddenly I was buzzing.

  Lady Margaret was texting me!

  Play it cool, man, play it cool.

  Dear Lady Margaret, Very grateful for your request. Please can you text the postcode. Ben

  Dear Ben. Frowley doesn’t have a postcode. See you at 7.30. Must fly. Lady M

  Dear Lady Margaret, OK, many thanks, Ben.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy. I’d had plenty of time to reflect on meeting the ladies of the so-called Committee and had come to the conclusion that they had been making fun of me. They had no intention of allowing my working man hands to stroke their flawless white bodies and the text from Lady Margaret was another joke, egging the pudding. After all, she had not even told me where Frowley Manor was.

  Now what?

  I dragged on some clothes and went downstairs. Kelly and the kids were in the garden – old bikes, rusty tools, a wheelbarrow with the wheel falling off. Kelly was filling a Tesco’s bag with weeds she’d pulled up from around the rose bushes, the white blooms almost as big as cauliflowers. Getting the garden fixed up was on my ‘to do’ list but there was never enough time to get it sorted.

  ‘Morning,’ I called.

  ‘Hello sleepy head, you’re up early.’

  ‘I just got a text. I’m going to see if Pete’s home. I might have something on.’

  ‘Some work?’

  ‘Fingers crossed.’

  ‘Dad, dad, bring back a Crunchie,’ Ollie called.

  ‘You’re going to look like a Crunchie at this rate,’ I told him. ‘Another thing, I don’t think I heard a please.’

  ‘Please . . . ’

  ‘Too late, Big Guy.’

  Pete’s house was identical to my own. Pete and Carol’s children were grown up, so it was remarkably tidy and arranged in a way that made it look twice as big. Carol worked as a receptionist at the hospital, Jamie was doing his A-levels and Lynne was at university. Since my old Toshiba had succumbed to a virus, Pete had let me use his to check my emails.

  We looked up Lady Margaret and Frowley Manor. It was a real place not far from St Mary’s Church in Sudbury built in mediaeval times.

  ‘One famous visitor was Oliver Cromwell – and listen to this,’ he read. ‘He died in 1658 and when the Royalists came back to power in 1660, they dug up his corpse and cut his head off. That’s charming that is.’ He looked back at me. ‘So who’s this Lady Margaret, then? Have you met her?’

  ‘I give that toff out by the race track a massage every Friday. Maggs is a friend of his mother.’

  ‘Maggs?’

  ‘That’s what she told me to call her.’

  ‘Going up in the world? Won’t be able to speak to you at this rate.’

  ‘Come on, I haven’t even done it yet.’

  He grinned and sat back in his swivel chair. ‘I like the idea of you giving me a foot massage, then giving Lady Muck a neck rub.’

  ‘You’re disgusting, you know that?’

  ‘It’d make a change from them having their heels on our necks.’

  ‘They’re just people. They’re all right.’

  ‘You think so?’ He raised his finger as he stared back. ‘Be careful, Ben, that’s all I’m going to say.’

  He looked up the route to Frowley Manor and I wrote down the directions.

  ‘While you’re about it, look up Vivienne Raynott, will you?’

  ‘Another mate of yours?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, best of friends.’

  He tapped in the name, Google amended Vivian to Vivienne, and up came the Hon. Vivienne Agnes Sinclair Raynott: born 1978, which made her 28, Wycombe Abbey School, philosophy at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, author, whisky heiress. He clicked on images.

  ‘Is that her?’

  I nodded.

  ‘With the bloody Queen. I’ll tell you this, be careful, rub her up the wrong way and you’ll end up in the Tower.’

  I thought: these people aren’t just rich, they’re what my old granddad used to call the Big Nobs, the gentry.

  When I got home, I told Kelly I had a booking for seven-thirty. Her head dropped to one side as she slipped her hands over her hips.

  ‘What time?’ she said.

  ‘Tonight, half past seven.’

  ‘Half past seven on a Saturday night? Bit odd isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know, is it? These people keep different times to us.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘I met Rufus’s mum out at Kempton, you know, my regular. It’s one of her friends, a rich lady.’

  ‘And she wants you to give her a massage tonight?’

  ‘She’s probably going out somewhere special, I don’t know. I’m getting fifty quid, babe. That’s a bloody fortune.’

  She took a breath. The money had taken the wind out of her sails. ‘Just make sure you get paid before you do the massage. You know what these people are like?’

  ‘I will, promise.’

  Kelly looped her arms around my waist and pulled me close. ‘I’m so proud of you, Ben. Really proud.’

  ‘Don’t
know why. I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know how many hours you’ve worked this week.’ She leaned forward and whispered in my ear. ‘I love you, Ben Foster.’

  ‘I love you, Kelly Foster.’

  We kissed while Ollie and George hooted and whistled.

  Yuck. That’s horrible. They’re kissing.

  We went to the park so the kids could run around and burn off some energy. I watched Ollie help Claire climb the steps on the slide. She whizzed down, hands in the air, her little face beaming. It goes without saying, once was not enough. Ollie knew his sister was prone to tantrums when she didn’t get her own way and patiently joined the line so she could have another go. As I watched Kelly push George on the swings, my eyes grew misty. Our children were tanned and healthy, bright and smart. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for them.

  ‘Where do you want to have lunch, Big Guy?’ I asked Ollie when we were ready to leave.

  ‘McDonald’s,’ he said, and punched the air with his fist.

  I drew out some cash at the ATM machine and the kids were zonked out on burgers and fries by the time we got home. I managed to have a nap, then read my course notes. I hadn’t forgotten anything, but I’d had very little hands-on practice since I started work at The Lodge and, like a pianist, you have to keep honing your skills. I jogged for an hour, took a long shower, two squirts of Paco Rabanne Pour Homme, and I was ready in my best whites. The engine fired, the road was clear and Oasis was on the radio.

  Twenty-four hours had passed since I had met the women in the Great Hall. I had thought about little else in that time. It was like a dream come true that Lady Margaret had actually booked an appointment. I kept telling myself to be cool, be confident, think before you speak. It doesn’t matter that she’s Lady Margaret. She’s just a person, a client.

  If I could do a good job, perhaps she would recommend me to the other women – the Hon. Vivienne Raynott, Maddy Page, the model with one of the best-known faces in the country, the amazingly gorgeous Zara Swift, film star, celebrity, chat show regular. How did they know each other? What were they doing there that day in the Great Hall?

  It made a change to have a mystery in my life when normally it was just the same old, same old, long hours with the special needs lads, the daily battle to keep our heads above water. It’s best not to tempt fate with high hopes, but as the Red Beast rattled along the road to Sudbury, I couldn’t help thinking my luck had finally changed.