Gigolo

by Ben Foster

  Rudy drove out to Southley when he had completed his research. I knew from that time when I gave free massages at the gym that he was a raging heterosexual and arranged a freebie with Dee-Dee. Was this karma in action? She had learned how to monetise her assets and was also saving for a deposit to buy her own flat.

  We met after the session in the café for lunch. He had good news. He would be able to arrange a mortgage and had come up with an alternative plan he believed would suit me better. By going out a little further from London, to Guildford, I would be able to buy, not one, but two one-bedroomed flats at £195,000 each with a ten per cent deposit – the £40,000 I had saved. As Rudy put it, if you are going to get on the property ladder, it made sense to climb two rungs rather than one.

  The building was on the point of being completed. More than half of the eighty flats had been sold off plan, four of them to Rudy’s clients. He had a relationship with the developers. They guaranteed the mortgage through the Royal Bank of Scotland ‘the safest bank in the world.’ To arrange it all, his fee was £4,000, which I didn’t have, and I could pay at £1,000 a month for four months interest free.

  He counted on his fingers. ‘No papers. No contract. Just a handshake,’ he said. ‘And one more thing, Ben, I wouldn’t do that for everyone.’

  He gave me a brochure with photographs of the building, the flats with wide balconies, white walls and built-in appliances, landscaped gardens, underground garage spaces.

  ‘Looks fantastic,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a great development. Good architect. Nicely finished. You have a good think. Talk it over with you wife.’

  ‘I don’t need to. The time will never be just right. Let’s do it.’

  ‘There’s my man.’

  We high fived, slapping palms. We ate quiche with green salad and toasted with sparkling water. I walked him out to his car. As he was about to get in, he tapped his head and reached into his inside pocket.

  ‘Almost forgot,’ he said, and handed me two tickets for Les Misérables.

  In six weeks, I was a property owner with two flats, both let out through an agent in Guildford with the rents covering the mortgage. I had my wages and tips from the spa for maintenance and shortfalls between renters. To say I had a new spring in my step would be an understatement.

  Rufus had bought another buy-to-rent flat, not in Guildford, in Knightsbridge, but now we were both men of property, his superiority complex was less pronounced. We occasionally had lunch and played tennis at his club. I was fast. I had developed a powerful serve. But he had been playing since he was a child and it pleased him that he always won.

  On a whim, Rufus had ordered a new silver Range Rover Sport with a walnut dash and pale grey upholstery. I went with him to the dealership so I could drive his old car back to the house. It was the first time I had been behind the wheel of a Range Rover and appreciated the acceleration, the feeling of owning the road.

  Annabel and Kate had been riding when we left the house. When we got back, the groom had taken charge of the horses and they came out to greet us.

  ‘What are you going to do with the old one?’ Kate asked her son. I had met a few billionaires and they tended to be practical people.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a spare.’

  ‘You already have the old green one parked in the stables. There isn’t room for any more. You’re turning the place into a junk yard.’

  ‘Then I’ll sell the damn thing.’

  ‘If you do, I’ll make you an offer,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, really! And how much are you going to offer?’

  As he looked back at me with a sour expression, Annabel took my arm and pulled close. It was odd, like we were a couple.

  ‘Rufus, you sound like a cad.’

  ‘Cad,’ he repeated. ‘No one says that anymore.’

  ‘It just happens to be the right word. Whatever the opposite is, that’s how you should behave.’

  ‘What, give the thing away?’

  ‘I can’t see why not. Ben does so much. It’s the least you can do.’

  ‘That’s a super idea,’ added Lady Catherine.

  ‘Hang on, wait a moment,’ I said. ‘I did say I’d like to make an offer.’

  ‘An offer I can’t refuse?’ said Rufus. ‘I don’t want to end up with a dead horse in my bed.’

  We laughed. Even Kate laughed. And she never laughed. Rufus appreciated that and threw up his hands.

  ‘Free massages for a year,’ he suggested.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Annabel on my behalf.

  ‘No, no, I can’t . . . ’

  ‘Oh, but you can, my dear,’ said Kate, and no one says no to a billionaire.

  I had planned to ask Ahmed, my taxi driver mate on the estate, to take me out to Kempton to collect the Range Rover from Rufus. Then I had stroke of genius. I asked Kelly instead. Carly looked after the kids and we drove first to Southley so I could show her where I worked.

  Bethany was expecting us. She played the role of Mother Superior at a convent and Kelly would never have guessed that she was the Madame in the biggest brothel in the Home Counties. Denny was his charming self and Anastasia actually smiled.

  The trees were in full leaf. People in towelling robes drove golf carts along the curving paths. We went to see the parrots in their tropical enclosure.

  ‘Now I know why you spend more time here than you do at home,’ Kelly said.

  If she was impressed by Southley, I am not sure what the word is to describe her reaction to Lady Catherine’s story book castle. She clamped her hand over her mouth as we entered the gates and her eyes almost popped out of their sockets. Horses in the meadow stopped to watch as we approached over the gravel drive, the countryside stretching out around us unchanged for a thousand of years.

  ‘I thought we were doing well, Ben. The way these people live . . . ’

  The liveried servant at the open door lowered his shoulders in a bow as if he was appearing in a documentary and led us through to the Great Hall where Kate was waiting with Rufus, Annabel, Maggs and James Chipping, the Labour Minister in his trademark white suit. We were expected but I had not been expecting a welcoming committee.

  Girls in pink gingham served tea with miniature cupcakes. The sun fell through the leaded windows lighting the threads in the carpet and the portraits on the wall. Kelly was wide-eyed, especially coming face to face with Annabel Lee Hartley. It is an odd sensation meeting someone you think you know because you have seen them on TV. It must be even odder for famous people having strangers imagine they know them, something I would witness several times in the months ahead.

  The conversation tinkled like the tea cups. Maggs admired Kelly’s white summer dress. It was simple, unadorned. It made her appear young and ingenuous, which she was. Kelly was prompted to talk about herself and our children. When it’s your first time amongst the rich and famous you can’t help but feel inadequate. Kelly sat stiffly as if at an interview, knees together, back straight, jaw stiff from her being uncertain when and whether to smile. It seems as if the things they find amusing you find anything but funny.

  Kelly’s eyebrows shot up when Rufus plunged his cigarette butt into a half-eaten cup cake and exchanged a glance with Lady Catherine, one mother to another. Kelly didn’t pretend to be anything other than what she was. I was proud of her and pleased to have given my wife a glimpse into this other world.

  Lord Aberstone made a cameo appearance, his cane tapping as he approached across the ancient floorboards. Kelly lowered one leg in a curtsy as they shook hands.

  ‘It is such a pleasure to meet you, my dear. I do hope they are looking after you?’

  ‘Yes, they are. Everyone’s so kind.’

  ‘And how is the tea?’

  ‘It’s really lovely.’

  ‘I’m so pleased. It’s jolly annoying if it isn’t.’ He took her hand again. ‘What a pleasure.’

  He looked vague and lost as he made his way slowly past his painted ancestors into anothe
r room and the tall door closed behind him.

  There was a maze at the back of the house that I had never seen. We went for a tour and Maggs made sure she and I were lost for a few minutes.

  ‘She’s perfectly lovely,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘What a shame you won’t be able to bring her to the City of Light.’

  ‘Where?’

  She smiled. ‘We’re going for a junket. Make sure your passport is up to date.’

  That day when I had arrived home in the new Golf, it had not been easy to convince Kelly that it was a tax fiddle, that the car hadn’t really cost anyone anything. Now we had become a ‘two car’ family, she took it in her stride.

  Passing her driving test had been more important to Kelly than I could have imagined. She had started to believe in her right to make the most of herself – a right working people often don’t realise they have. As well as facing the constant grind of making ends meet, she had been held back by a lack imagination as well as confidence. Finally, she had found her wings and was learning to fly.

  Kelly had gone monochrome, greys and blacks, simple lines, solid colours. Her name as well as mine was on the deeds for our two flats in Guildford. She had quit her job at the laundry and signed up for a photography course at Richmond College. After spending the best part of two hours in the camera shop in the High Street, she had settled on a new Olympus, the same model Flippo had used to take our passport photos. Her shots of the kids were zany, odd angles, offbeat. She had an Apple laptop and was learning how to use Photoshop. Her goal was to build her own website and set herself up as a children’s photographer.

  It was no big deal going to a West End show, thousands of people did it every day. But when we jostled along with the crowd entering the Queen’s Theatre to see Les Misérables, it was a first for us. They were good seats in the tenth row. Kelly wore a new Armani suit with a pleated skirt and a fitted jacket with wide shoulders and one big button, something Vivienne could have chosen. Rudy was right, we came out crying and dancing all the way to Romilly Street where, at his advice, I had booked a table at Kettner’s for dinner. A pianist played jazz and, driving home in the Range Rover, it felt as if we had moved up the board on life’s game of snakes and ladders.

  Kelly wasn’t unique on the estate. A lot of our neighbours were starting small businesses. The streets of London were paved in gold. Everyone was staking their claim. Well, not everyone. When Pete Taylor saw me step out of the Range Rover one morning he said in his dour way that the whole world was living on credit and we were heading for the biggest crash of all time.

  ‘Better enjoy it while it lasts,’ I said.

  ‘Thing is, son, it won’t.’

  I nodded, although I didn’t agree. I liked Pete, but he was living in the past. He was old Labour. Tony Blair had promised that Things Can Only Get Better and it was true. The evidence was all around us. My flats were worth another fifty grand. London’s financial services sector had become the biggest in the world. In the previous four years, the Stock Exchange had grown faster and reached the highest levels in history. I read that in the Daily Mail.

  The Iraq War still dominated the headlines, but the end was in sight. President Bush had ordered what they called a ‘surge’ with an extra 20,000 troops. The Taliban were scuttling back to the mountains and the American civil authority was establishing a democracy. I had always been against the war. But in 2007, it looked as if Bush and Blair were right after all. By getting rid of Saddam Hussein, they would bring peace to the Middle East and more security from terrorists at home.

  23

  IT GIRLS

  Being a property owner wasn’t as straightforward as I’d thought. If a tenant moved out and it was a month before someone new moved in, I still had to find the money for the mortgage. The flats were going up in value. But I was working more hours than ever and Kelly no longer had an income from the laundry. She had done some photo shoots with families on the estate. To launch the business, she charged barely enough to cover the costs, but she was becoming more confident in herself and her ability. That was the upside. It made me happy for her.

  The downside was that I was losing sight of the core principles of massage. All through those years when I didn’t have any money, I wasn’t obsessed by it. We struggled, we went hungry, we got by. Now, I had plenty of money but always needed more. I had thought of myself as a healer when I started work at the spa. I had turned into a total slut. I played every client until they let go of their inhibitions and submitted to their secret fantasies. Ladies who left the massage suite after an unexpected orgasm dug deep into their purses. They helped pay the bills. Vivienne once said every time you sleep with someone all your partners are in bed with you. If that were true, I would have needed a bed the size of Crane Park.

  When I wasn’t at Southley, I was driving out to the Great Hall to escort Kate to discreet dinners. I rarely missed a week at Frowley, where Maggs had introduced a new kink to our couplings: James Chipping watched the massage, then followed us up the creaking staircase to observe us testing the joints on the old four-poster bed where Oliver Cromwell had dreamed of a chaste and Puritan England. The first time it happened, I felt like a performing chimp. But in all matters carnal, it is surprising how quickly the novel becomes normal. I had never been keen on the Four-Hands Massage. Now, it was just another source of income.

  Was I more blasé? More cynical? Had I forgotten how lucky I was and how far I had come? Absolutely. But it is easier to see how we were when we look back; not so easy while we are living the moment. I was surrounded by rich people growing richer as the value of their investments went up even beyond their overheated imaginations. The BIG topic of conversation in 2007 was house prices. I was part of that conversation. A rising tide lifts all boats and I was a Lowestoft trawlerman riding the wave.

  Annabel was in pre-production with her movie in Paris. We often met when she was back to London. She could have jumped into bed with her acclaimed co-stars, the film director, every good-looking set designer and cameraman. But she was too canny to get into casual entanglements and feed the tabloid press. Sex for Annabel was less passionate than physical. I could have prided myself on being an Olympic champion between the bedsheets, the greatest fuck on the planet. But it was more likely that she called me for the same reason as men call escorts. I would arrive smiling and in a good mood, sometimes faked, usually not. We’d make love, sprinting to a noisy finish, then rush out for pizza or pasta in one of the restaurants close to her flat off the Earls Court Road. She disguised herself behind dark glasses, but people recognised her and came up, some asking for autographs, most just to blurt out stupid things like – ‘Hey, I know who you are.’ Annabel had a tic in her neck. It vibrated every time a fan loomed over the table, but she remained courteous no matter how crass and inane the public.

  When I was with Annabel, it was hard to believe Angela Hartley was her mother. They shared the same genes, but their early lives had been set on different planets. Annabel’s father was an Old Etonian who did something in the City. She had grown up with a French nanny, attended the best schools and started acting with the Footlights in Cambridge. Annabel, Vivienne, Maddy, Zara Swift and their friends were the It Girls of the new millennium, chic, beautiful, highly sexualised while appearing naïve, innocent, virginal.

  By contrast, Angela’s dad had been a plumber in Maidstone, her mum a nurse; good people, I imagine, the sort Angela despised. She had gone to a grammar school and got a scholarship to Oxford. She had come up the hard way and become more snobby and condescending than those like Annabel, for whom every door was open. Angela was strident, narcissistic, anti-NHS. Like Maggie Thatcher, she believed there was no such thing as ‘society,’ and had that distorted conviction: If I can do it, anyone can, which is patently absurd. There was room for only one Angela Hartley in the Shadow Cabinet and she occupied that place.

  It was inevitable that Angela and I would come to blows. I must have given her a
dozen massages – I had the scars on my back to prove it – and there was always some reason why she didn’t pay me. I had let this go because the other women in her circle were so generous and, the truth is I was afraid that if I crossed her she would stab me in the back.

  It all came to a head when I drove one evening to see her after I had worked nine hours with barely a break at Southley. I arrived with my table as she was about to leave. Her car was waiting outside the building in Lambeth with her driver standing beside the back passenger door.

  ‘Something’s come up, we’ll have to reschedule,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me, or send a text?’

  ‘Are you telling me what to do?’

  ‘I have driven an hour to get here and spent half an hour finding somewhere to park. You have to pay me.’

  ‘You want to discuss money in the street?’

  ‘I can’t afford to keep wasting my time . . . ’

  ‘So you think your time is more valuable than my time?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Angela . . . ’

  ‘How dare you . . . ’

  She gritted her teeth. She was shaking. Her driver was facing me. I could see by his expression how happy he was to witness the exchange.

  ‘I have heard you on television talking about fairness. You’re not being fair,’ I said.

  ‘You people are all the same. Only out for what you can get.’

  ‘I’d say it’s the absolute opposite.’

  I was the first time I had ever raised my voice. She responded by poking me on the chest.

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  I stood aside. I was pleased I had stood up for myself. The driver opened the car door and we exchanged quick glances. I could see he felt sorry for me and I felt sorry for him.

  It wasn’t unusual when I had a booking with Angela that I would get a call from Vivienne. It happened that day. She asked me to come as quickly as possible in a voice that sounded as if she was at the bottom of a well. I was glad to go. I was as tense as a clenched fist and couldn’t face going straight home.