Sugar Mummy (29 page)

'Afternoon,' I correct him.

'Ooooh, 'scusez-moi.' He pulls the expectant, slightly pained
expression that I know only too well.

'Oi, don't you dare.' But it's too late. I throw a cushion at
him and waft away the toxic odour with the Sunday Times magazine.

'Sorry, mate. Vegetarian hangers and beefburgers have that effect
on me.'

'Sounds delicious. What you do last night?'

'Barbie, mate,' he says in a terrible cod Australian accent.

'Was it good?' I ask, flicking through the channels. There is
no answer so I look round at Vinny, wondering whether he's fallen asleep again.
But instead he's staring mischievously at me. 'I just asked whether it was good.'

'Oh, yes,' says Vinny, still smiling demonically. 'It was good.'

'Whose was it?' I ask.

'Guess,' he says.

'Whose?' I don't like the sound of this.

'I told you - guess,' he says again, delighted at my growing
unease.

'I've no idea,' I say, even though I have. 'Whose barbecue, you
stinky bastard?'

'You had your chance.'

'Jane had a barbecue last night and you went.'

'Bingo!' Vinny is triumphant. 'Are we jealous?'

'No,' I say shortly. So she left me in the car and went off to
a barbecue she didn't even mention.

'I think we are.' I look back at the telly. 'Well, you would
have been if you'd been there.' He picks up the Appointments section and begins
to scan it ostentatiously.

'What does that mean?'

'One here for you, mate - Sales Director for Durex. Both your
talents rolled into one.'

'What happened?'

'Oh, Jane was having a rather in-depth conversation with some
bloke from the local Friends of the Earth group. Bit of a hunk, according to the
females present.'

'Liar.'

'I think it was Jane's very own rainforest he was interested
in, if you get my drift.'

'Shut up.'

'OK.' He carries on scrutinizing pages of jobs that he has absolutely
no interest in. I have a vision of Jane, beer in hand, looking up adoringly at some
dreadlocked eco warrior.

'You kidding me?'

'Oh, Christ! Well, actually she spent most of the night trying
to get away from him, but the point is, Mr Love For Sale, you'd better get in there,
otherwise ...'

'All right, all right.'

'Well I'm just saying ...'

'Look, I don't need to ask you for advice on women,' I tell him.
'But I'll be all ears next time I need help on ...' Vinny's particular sphere of
knowledge escapes me for a moment. 'Erm ... stupid trousers.'

'My wise counsel is at your disposal,' he says, smiling and scratching
his bum energetically.

The person I do need to get some advice from is Mark, I decide.
I ring his number that evening and get the answerphone. 'Hi, this is Mark, this
is the tone, you know what to do.'

I start speaking but then Mark picks up so we arrange that I'll
go over and see him after work on Monday.

His flat in Notting Hill is on the ground floor of a white stucco-fronted
building. On one side a Trustafarian couple are just arriving back from a long weekend
in Gloucestershire in a Mere estate, dripping children, scruffy soft toys and car
blankets. On the other side there is what can only be a crack den. I buzz Mark's
flat and he lets me in.

'Hello, mate,' he says, giving me a firm handshake. 'How's it
going?'

He is wearing creased, very soft cotton trousers, mules and a
cream, sleeveless knitted top which looks like a Dries Van Noten. It has that casually
expensive look that I'd frankly give anything in the world to be able to do. It
shows off Mark's elegantly muscled, honey-tanned arms which, I guess, like the rest
of him, have been carefully developed for the benefit of a select, paying clientele.

The flat is huge and high-ceilinged with wooden floors, cream-coloured
walls and a white settee covered in a huge, white loose cover. I smile to myself
as I wonder how long a white settee would last at my and Vinny's place. The ornate
marble fireplace is stacked with stiff card invites and snapshots. Next to it there
is a CD player and two truly huge piles of CDs. It has a look of cavalier understated
elegance like Mark's arms, clothes, answer machine message - his whole life, in
fact.

I sit down on the settee and he takes an easy chair. He looks
at me for a moment and smiles. 'So, my little studling, how's it going?'

'Oh,' I start optimistically and then decide not to lie. 'Crap.'

Mark laughs. 'Marion not paying up, then?'

'Not a penny.'

'Anything at all?'

'Oh, a few clothes but I'm not really sure I even like them.'

'I told you, get it in cash if you can,' he says, walking round
to the kitchenette. 'Clothes won't pay your rent, will they?'

'No, I suppose not. The most I get is a twenty every now and
then to pay my taxi fare.'

'What do you want?' he asks getting up.

'Well, I just want enough money to enjoy myself a bit. Buy my
own clothes, go on holiday, have the kind of fun you can't when you're twenty and
you've got a crap job and just enough to pay the rent and go to the pub a couple
of times a week. You know?' I suddenly think of Debbie. 'I want to get enough to
buy a flat or even put something away so that I can start my own business one day
- I've had enough of working for other people. I mean, I'm not so naive as to think
that Marion will set me up for life but, you know, a few thou would help, if nothing
else.'

Mark looks at me for a moment, slightly confused.

'Actually, I just mean what do you want to drink?'

'Oh, er-' Shit, how embarrassing.

'There's some good white wine,' says Mark.

'Oh, yeah, wine would be great, thanks.'

'No, that sounds very reasonable,' says Mark as he pours two
glasses of perfectly chilled Orvieto. Slighty distracted by my embarrassing outburst
I walk around the room a bit looking at the photographs stuck on the wall and lying
on the mantelpiece: Mark in black tie, on a beach, at a restaurant with two older
women and a silver-grey-haired man, at Ascot, saluting the camera with a glass of
champagne: always smiling, always handsome, always good value, always working. There
is one picture of him with a toddler in a sunny garden. Mark hands me my wine.

'My son. Ben.'

'Your son?'

'Yep,' he says, picking up the picture and studying it carefully.
'This was taken ages ago. He's nearly eight now.'

'Sweet kid.'

'Thanks,' says Mark, still looking at him. 'So funny. Very serious.
Always frowning and asking questions. How does a plane stay up?'

'Search me. Wings?' I say, shrugging my shoulders. He smiles.

 
'I had to buy him a book
about it.' He looks at the photo again and then carefully puts it back, arranging
it in pride of place amongst the invitations. He sits down.

'Do you see him much?' I ask, sensing he wants to talk about
it.

'Once a fortnight, just for a few hours. His mum, who he lives
with, got a very good deal in court. Not surprising, really, given she's a barrister.'
He looks into his glass. 'Question was: should he live with his mother, who as I
say, is a barrister and has a nice house in Dulwich and a husband who works in the
City, or should he live with his father who's a rent boy? Tough question for the
judge, eh?'

'Rent boy.' I laugh, uneasily. He shrugs his shoulders. 'I'm
sorry.'

'Oh, well.' He takes a large mouthful of wine. 'Now, what are
we going to do for you? I did tell you it's a mug's game.'

'Yeah, but so's working in an office for a miserable ...'

Words fail me.

'True. How is old Marion?'

'Old Marion is OK. Well, you know, mad as a hatter.'

'Most people are. She likes you, though.'

'Well. That's nice.'

'But, you're not getting any goodies?' sighs Mark. Am I being
patronised here? Again?

'No, not really. The only thing I am going to get at this rate
is the sack.'

'Oh, Marion won't sack you.'

'I meant from my day job.'

'Is that a problem? It sounds pretty crap if you don't mind me
saying.'

'Oh, don't you start,' I snap.

'Just saying.'

'Oh, sorry, mate.' I look around the flat again. 'How do you
know what my job is?'

'Oh, someone told me. You hear these things.'

'Do you? I don't mind you knowing, I just wondered.'

'Anyway, kiddo,' he says kindly. 'Marion giving you a hard time?'

'Always. The thing about Marion is that she always knows best.
She never seems to have a moment's doubt about anything.' Or was that Jane I was
thinking about? Women.

'You've got to hate where you came from and love where you're
going to.'

'Heh?'

'That's what Marion said to me once.'

'Sounds like her. It's probably good advice. I wonder where Marion
does come from.'

'I think she fell out of the pages of a glossy magazine like
one of those perfume samples.'

Laughing at the thought, 'Probably.' I stretch my neck and look
into my glass. Somehow it feels like it's been a long day already. 'What do you
think I should do?'

'Well,' says Mark, getting up and standing by the fireplace like
some Victorian father giving advice to his wayward son. 'You've got to decide what
you want. Marion will probably give you a bit of cash, cufflinks, a watch, something
like that. You can sell them after a while, I know a jewellers near Victoria station
- great for that sort of thing. Never asks questions. Mention my name, they won't
rip you off. Then Marion will get bored of you after a while-'

'I thought you said she liked me.'

'Yeah, but she'll still get bored, like your favourite Christmas
present when you were a kid. Were you still playing with that in February?'

'Can't remember.'

'Course you weren't.'

'But if she really likes me won't she give me things?'

'Little bits and pieces, yes, but she's not going to shell out
a huge great wad so that you can go off, do your own thing and leave her, is she?
She wants to keep you on a short lead, just a little bit at a time.'

'Oh, Christ.'

Mark laughs and refills our glasses. 'Marion's not stupid, she
knows a gold-digger when she sees one.'

I'm suddenly really offended by that phrase. 'I'm not a gold-digger,
it's just that if they - Marion or any of her friends - have got all that money
and they want to spend it on me, why shouldn't they? Anyway, what am I saying this
to you for?'

'I know exactly what you mean. I'm just saying Marion isn't going
to pay out and let you run off, she wants something for her money.'

 
'I do like Marion,' I
say, looking into my drink. 'She's funny and she has been very kind, taking me to
Paris and New York. It's just that - well, like you said, there's no longterm future
in it, is there?' I remember Channing's words over dinner.

'She knows that too.'

'It's just a bit of fun. To be honest I'm just beginning to go
off her a bit. She's starting to drive me mad at the moment always picking, always
complaining. And we always do what she wants to do.'

'But that's the deal - she's paying,' says Mark, laughing at
my naivety.

'I can't do this much longer,' I mutter, almost to myself. 'Well,
then what's a better bet? Let me think. You might get something off some other old
dears I know. I'll introduce you, you'll have no problem. But the thing is if you
really want to earn some decent money and see the world ...'

I look up at him. 'Yeah?'

'If you really want to earn money to live on, you know, comfortably,
it's going to have to be sex - with men buying.'

'What? Oh, I don't know about-' I'm startled.

'Hang on, I didn't say sex with men, although if you can put
up with it there's always work there. No, it might mean sex with their wives or
girlfriends or with a hooker while they watch or something.'

'What? Do you, you know, do a lot of that?'

'Bread and butter, mate.'

'Why do they want to watch?'

Mark rolls his eyes. 'Derr! They get turned on by it. Like having
a porno movie live in their bedroom.'

'Weird.'

'It's a weird world, mate.'

I try and imagine the scene but give up when it all becomes part
of a movie I saw at a friend's house when I was sixteen and the video got stuck
and I panicked thinking I heard the police downstairs and we'd been raided and what
would I tell my parents?

'And you don't have any problem with that?' I ask.

'No, not at all.'

'And you don't ever find that you can't, you know, get it up?'

'Hardly ever. It's quite a turn-on, really. Especially having
those crisp fifties pressed into your hand afterwards.'

I nod uncertainly and look up at the ceiling. I don't want to
meet his eyes. And I really don't want to hear what he's saying. I certainly don't
want to hear what comes next. 'Truth is that women will buy you little presents,
let you live in their house or something and give you enough cash to tide you over
but it's men that actually pay up,' he says. It sounds as much as if he's confessing
as giving advice. 'When I met you in Knightsbridge a few weeks ago, you didn't think
it was a woman that I'd been seeing, did you?'

'Wasn't it?' I say rather unnecessarily. I look across at him;
for once he looks slightly off his guard.

'You've got a lot to learn, mate.'

'That I do know. But with men?'

'It pays cash, it pays the bills,' says Mark urgently. 'Dinner
with a woman might be fun but look at the balance sheet: four, five hours and a
hundred, a hundred and fifty quid. Big deal. I can earn more in just one hour with
... other clients.' He regains his composure slightly. 'Oh, don't look so shocked,
you must have known it happens. It's the ultimate fantasy for them - a Hugh Grant
they can actually have sex with.'