by Ben Foster
I worked the Sunday morning after the reception at the Great Hall, but was able to take the afternoon off in order to make a private call at Claridge’s, the Mayfair hotel known as the ‘Buckingham Palace annexe.’ The Perets were staying in the £4,000 a night penthouse. Hal was playing ‘big stakes’ golf eighty miles away in Sandwich and Missy Peret needed some work on the large nerve roots in her lower back.
Claridge’s provided a massage service. The hotel also kept tables for clients who sent out for massage consultants or travelled with their own masseur, not uncommon in the world of the superrich.
One evening as I was about to go home, Bethany came clacking into the massage centre on her heels. Lowering her voice as if to whisper a confidence, she told me that one of the world’s ‘biggest stars’ was flying in on her own helicopter and had asked for me personally.
‘It’ll be nice to see her again,’ I responded. ‘We met at Groucho’s.’
‘Did you now! Well, make sure you’re ready.’ She clacked out again.
Southley didn’t have a helipad. While I took a break and dipped into a tub of Greek yoghurt, Bethany rallied the maintenance staff. In less than an hour they assembled the temporary dance floor used for weddings and receptions on the flat stretch of lawn. The electricians added spotlights along the sides of the platform and the grounds looked like a scene from a Second World War film when spies land behind the lines in the dead of night. Receptionists straightened their ties. Cleaners polished the corridors. Denny should have gone home when Christian arrived, but he wasn’t going to miss this.
The flight was due at eight. It arrived exactly on time. It seems like it should be the reverse, but megastars are ruled by the clock and are notoriously punctual. The trees around the lawn rocked as if caught in a hurricane. I had never been close to a helicopter before and, as it landed, it sounded like a train crashing. The side door opened and a short flight of stairs descended automatically. She stepped out while the blades were still spinning and had to yell to be heard.
‘You learned to play the sax yet?’
‘No, but I’m still blowing my own trumpet.’
‘You go for it, buddy. No one else is going to.’
She grabbed my arm as if we were old friends and talked non-stop over the noise, her gaze focused solely on me.
Bethany blocked the way and tried to get out her welcoming speech.
‘We are so happy to have you. It’s a privilege . . . ’
‘Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot. Listen,’ she said. ‘I need two big bottles of Evian. Can you handle that?’
‘Straight away . . . ’
‘Thanks, honey, you go for it.’ She turned back to me. ‘You seen Vivienne? I love that chick.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
She stopped in her tracks. ‘That’s a good question.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Why do we feel close with one person and not another?’
‘Chemistry?’
‘Could be. Then, most people are assholes. What’s to like?’
She kept a tight grip on my arm as we entered the building and made our way down the corridor. This was not for protection, I realised, she was afraid of nothing. It was to say that she was occupied with me at that moment. She did not want to be bothered by anyone else.
She changed and we entered massage room 3 with two cups of water I filled from the cooler. I locked the door.
‘Am I safe in here?’
‘Of course . . . ’
She held up her palm. Her gaze moved around the walls. ‘Not from you. No eyes in the sky? No Cameras?’
‘No. No. Nothing like that.’ I smiled with relief. ‘Now, what about music? I’ve got some of yours . . . ’
‘You think I’m than vain?’
‘Just asking.’
Lines crossed her brow. She was pensive again. ‘People try too damn hard to do the right thing. That’s why Vivienne special. She doesn’t give a shit.’ She paused. ‘Bach. Can you handle that?’
‘Sure can.’
I played the Brandenburg concertos. She took from her robe a familiar white packet with a pinch of coke which we shared. It was one of those times when I needed it. I did the full Swedish massage, working out knot clusters and smoothing weary muscles. She found it hard not to talk. When I oiled and massaged her stomach, she leaned up on her elbows.
‘Forget the sax, stick with the sex. Do what you’re good at.’
She widened her knees. I dropped my tongue over her clitoris and the most famous of the famous sighed with contentment. She liked it doggy fashion. She sucked my cock like she was trying to swallow me whole. She was naked except for a watch with a big dial. When it hit nine, she swung her legs around and sat on the edge of the table.
‘You like your job, eh?’
‘I do,’ I said.
‘How much do you make a year, 100K?’
I shook my head. ‘No, not as much as that.’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Ben, I’ll double it. I’ve got to go back to LA. I’ve got a big tour coming up, a lot of dates, and a movie. Come along for the ride.’
‘That’s the best offer I’ve ever had in my life.’
She smiled. ‘It’ll be fun.’
‘It would. But I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve got children, and a wife. It wouldn’t be fair.’
She was silent for several seconds. Big stars, the biggest stars, aren’t used to people saying no. She had to rationalise this, take it all in, decide whether to go ape or accept it.
‘You’re turning me down?’ she finally said.
She nodded for several seconds, then grabbed my shoulders. We kissed cheeks and she stretched her arms into the robe.
Bethany stood outside the door holding two bottles of Evian.
‘Grab those, Ben, I’m going to take a shower.’
Later, I walked her back to the helicopter. The rotors started to spin.
‘Wait,’ she shouted. She rooted around in the dark until she found a manila envelope that she gave me. ‘I’ll catch you next time. You say hi to Vivienne.’
‘I’ll do that.’
The door closed. The helicopter lifted into the air and vanished quickly back to London. In the envelope was £2,000.
To get back to Missy Peret, there was absolutely nothing wrong with her back. It was sexy and smooth without knots or pain. She was another of those women who liked being naked and being seen naked. She moaned and wriggled on the table for thirty minutes. Then her mobile phone rang and she leapt from the table to answer.
‘Hi, honey,’ she said. There was a pause before she continued. ‘You come right on up. I have been waiting for you.’
Two minutes later, Missy, naked, swung the door open and Vivienne swanned in dressed as a punk in a black wig with fiery red tips across the crown, a short leather jacket covered in silver studs, Doc Martens, ripped black tights with suspenders, no knickers and a short tartan skirt barely concealing a strap-on dildo.
Vivienne was whatever she wanted to be but, more than that, she was whatever you wanted her to be. The air about her hummed. The black makeup around her eyes was badly applied. Her pink lips were daubed in black and crystal tears were painted on her cheeks. She laid back in a pale blue wing chair and breathed heavily as she masturbated the black rubber appendage. The dildo was brutal and absurd, but funny, outrageous. She turned sex into art.
Missy went down on her knees between Vivienne’s spread legs. While she sucked the dildo, Vivienne stared into my eyes and did that thing with her tongue, pushing the tip into the side of her cheek, miming fellatio. It was a scene from a Mapplethorpe photograph – explicit, but enigmatic: a naked girl hidden by a bonnet of yellow hair in a sex act with a false cock that could only have been sexually exciting from the point of view of the voyeur, the eye of the camera.
With Vivienne I always had that breathless, high altitude feeling you get from running marathons and swimming under water. I connected with her in a way I had never felt a connection with anyone else. It was a
s if she knew me, understood me, that she saw something in my core than no one else could see. Even if it was only in my mind, a fiction I wanted to believe, it was still exhilarating.
She wanted a choo-choo train. Missy leaned over the arm of a sofa. Vivienne made her wet with her tongue then pierced her with the dildo. I made Vivienne wet and entered her from behind. It was like dancing. Thighs touching, knees trembling, we chugged along until the girls screamed in orgasm. Then, we went downstairs to the art deco lounge to order afternoon tea served in peppermint striped china with finger sandwiches, warm scones and pastries, a culinary tradition at Claridge’s dating back 150 years.
Conversations stilled when we entered. We had not taken showers, on Vivienne’s command. Missy Peret had dressed in tight white jogging shorts and a cropped top revealing her flat tummy and playful breasts. I was in Hugo Boss whites. Vivienne, in her short skirt without underwear, the dildo tucked in her Lulu Guinness bag, kept crossing her legs in the way made famous by Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct. Sex is a drug. We reeked of it. Every eye strayed to our table, the image multiplied endlessly by the bevelled mirrors and lit by the antique chandeliers above our heads. We ate every finger sandwich, scone and pastry and Vivienne ordered more.
22
THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER
The 13th of April 2007 happened to fall on a Friday. Unlucky for some. Not for the Proclaimers. I’m Gonna Be 500 Miles was No 1 in the charts and I was beginning to get bored hearing it every time I turned on the radio. Jessica Alba was declared ‘the sexiest woman in the world,’ a fair call, and Kelly had her driving test.
She hadn’t eaten for two days. Her stomach was in knots. Even the massage I gave her didn’t help. She did three hours of extra lessons the day before the test and arrived at the test centre pale and trembling. It was muggy with light rain and grey smears on the windscreen.
‘You can always cancel and try again in a few weeks,’ I said, and she shook her head.
‘Best to fail now and get it over and done with.’
‘You’re not going to fail. You’re going to pass. Be positive.’
‘I’m not the eternal optimist like you.’
‘The worst thing you can do is worry about it. In the end, it doesn’t matter.’
Her voice dropped. ‘Oh, but it does,’ she said.
The examiner was a short tubby man in a flat cap and glasses as thick at the bottoms of champagne bottles. He rubbed some warmth into his small hands, then sneezed and blew his nose. I watched them climb into the car. The engine fired. The indicator flashed and Kelly drew into the stream of traffic.
I had forty minutes to kill. I went to Starbucks and flicked through the photos of the kids on my iPhone, the boys playing football, Claire chasing a little brown dog. If I got to jog around the lake once a week these days it was a miracle. I sipped my coffee and scrolled down the list of contacts. I stopped at Rudy Johnson. I had been planning to call him for a long time. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to say, even when I pressed the call button.
‘Ben Foster. My man. How’s it going?’
‘As good as it gets, I guess . . . ’
‘I’ve been expecting you to call. When do you want to meet?’ he said and I laughed. He was two steps ahead of me.
We settled on the Picasso, a café in the Kings Road, at four that afternoon, and I sat back relieved that Rudy had made it so easy to set up a meeting. I remembered that time when I entered the Great Hall after giving Rufus a massage and saw Rudy studying the oil-painted generals on the wall, his wide smile, the way he dominated the space.
I sipped my coffee and enjoyed sitting there doing nothing.
Starbucks was full of young mums with push chairs. Toddlers high on the smell of caffeine ran in circles between the tables, knocking their heads and crying. I read in the Daily Mail that Westminster Council planned to scrap all its parking meters so people could use mobile phones to pay for parking. More jobs down the drain. Still, it least it would make life easier for Vivienne.
The rain had stopped and steam was rising from the pavement as I strolled back to the test centre. I arrived just as Kelly left the building and my heart dropped. Tears streamed down her red cheeks. I hurried towards her.
‘Jelly Baby, I’m so sorry . . . ’
She sniffed back her tears. She could barely speak. ‘I did it,’ she gasped. ‘I passed.’
‘Then what are you crying for? I knew you’d do it.’
‘I’ve never passed anything before.’ She held up the certificate. ‘This is a first.’
‘And it won’t be the last. You can do anything you put your mind to.’
She dried her eyes and stared back at me. ‘You know something, Ben, I think I can.’
The sky had cleared. Her hair had broken free of the clips and was tossed about in the breeze. The stress and strain had gone. I’d never seen her look so beautiful.
‘I’m so proud of you,’ I said, and we kissed.
On Sunday, George turned five and Kelly drove us to Lowestoft to visit my mum. I sat beside her with Claire kicking my seat.
‘Sweetheart, stop keep kicking the back of my seat.’
‘No. No. No.’
‘Oh, no, she hasn’t started that again,’ I said and everyone burst out laughing.
Rudy was waiting with a white wine spritzer at one of the tables outside the Picasso. His flat was down the road. He loved Chelsea and had started buying a season ticket for the football club in 2003 when Roman Abramovich bought the team and made it glamorous.
‘Black on the outside, blue all the way through,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘Norwich City, man and boy,’ I replied. ‘Chelsea’s all money over passion.’
‘That’s what makes football sexy.’
‘Sexy,’ I said. ‘I didn’t take you for a football fan.’
‘Never miss a home match.’ His white teeth gleamed as he smiled. ‘That’s where I do most of my business.’
He called for two more spritzers. He was wearing a grey suit, blue shirt, loafers without socks, smart but casual, hard to place, like his accent, his tenor voice that was a pleasure to listen to. He reminded people he was black, not that he was. He was mixed race and had got the best of both worlds with small solid features and coffee-coloured skin.
Foreign tourists filled the Kings Road with its noisy traffic and damp diesel air. A man went by riding a penny farthing. Only in Chelsea, I thought. A bus stopped, the side sprayed up with an advertisement for Les Misérables. Rudy pointed.
‘Have you seen it?’
‘No, is it good?’
‘I came out dancing and weeping at the same time.’
The drinks came. We clinked glasses and got down to what we were there for. I had saved £40,000. I had been following property prices and every month they went up. There was a new build behind Twickenham Park House with flats going for £265,000. Would I have a problem getting a mortgage – bearing in mind I lived in a council house and had not declared the money to the tax man?
‘The only problem you have between you and reaching your goal,’ he observed, ‘is believing there is a problem.’
‘Sounds about right.’
‘I’ll remind you of something else, Ben. A goal is a dream with a deadline.’ He pointed at the watch on his wrist. ‘The time on the clock is now.’
He explained that the Government turned a blind eye to the property market. Hidden cash from offshore trusts, drug money and dirty money was pouring into London from all over the world. Banks were bursting with cash. The economy had never been stronger. Every free space was being ‘monetised,’ a new word to me. Buildings were shooting up. I’d seen it with my own eyes. Everyone was getting rich.
‘If you’re a crooked politician with your hands in the till in Africa or Jamaica,’ he said, switching to a Jamaican accent. ‘If you’re selling publicly owned land and skimming off a percentage in Asia, or robbing the oil and gas money in Russia, what are you going to do wi
th it?’
‘Invest in property?’
‘You get a bolt hole in London so you’ve got somewhere to run to when they come looking for you.’ He leaned forward. ‘There are mansion blocks in Kensington filled with old African generals and old mafia bosses. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They sit around in the same bars talking about the good old days when they were throwing their enemies out of helicopters. And what do Revenue and Customs do about it? We’ve got their jewels in our safety deposit boxes; we’ve got their money in our bricks and mortar. What do they do? They have another gin and tonic and look the other way.’
Rudy made it sound so intriguing, the group of older guys with thinning hair and nice accents at the next table had shut up to listen. He pulled an imaginary cord in the sky.
‘Toot! Toot!,’ he hooted. ‘The gravy train’s coming. If you don’t get on board, it’s leaving without you.’
He took a slug of wine and glanced through the property brochure I’d brought along to show him. I visualised the smoke from the gravy train slipping into the distance. My pulse was racing.
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘We could make it work.’
‘You reckon 40K’s enough?’
‘To get a mortgage?’ Again he tugged at the air above us. ‘I just have to pull a few strings.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘I’ve been meaning to call you for ages. I didn’t want to, you know, waste your time . . . ’
He lifted his mobile from the table and held it in his palm. ‘We’re all connected now, Ben. I do something for you. You do something for the next person. They do something for someone else. Karma in action.’ He swallowed the last of his drink and mimed tapping the digits on his phone. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
As we were leaving, one of the guys at the next table asked Rudy for his card. In the old days, when ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ was more clearly defined, a gentleman wasn’t in business and didn’t carry a business card. It wasn’t the old days any more.