Authors: Simon Brooke
'Your table is waiting, signora,' he smiles and leads us into
the restaurant. It is plush, spacious and silent. It smells of money. As we sit
down I glance around quickly. There are a few suits talking quietly or nodding with
interest, a beautiful dark-haired girl eating in silence with an enormous greyhaired
woman and two old dowagers both obviously slightly deaf, attacking huge Italian
ice creams with furious concentration, as if they were performing brain surgery
on their worst bridge enemies.
A waiter asks if we would like anything to drink, his heavy Italian
accent bulldozing through the English consonants. Marion orders a glass of champagne
and so I do too. Then she looks at the menu, her brow furrowed more in contempt
that concentration.
'You should have the calves' liver,' she says. It seems like
a reasonable idea, so I nod.
'No, wait, it comes with that awful polenta shit – you know,
like corn meal mush?'
'Oh, OK.' Feeling brave, I suggest spinach and ricotta ravioli
and then osso bucco. She thinks for a minute and then agrees. Immediately an older
waiter appears and takes our order, nodding approvingly.
Marion is searching for something inside her tiny handbag so
I look around the room again. Some of the suits are now looking at pieces of paper.
I can overhear the others on a table next to us. Two English businessmen are listening
to a German colleague. He is telling them in clear but heavily accented English
about how he can drive to his apartment in a leisure complex near Kitzbhul on a
Friday night if he leaves the office at about 3p.m. and he can ski and then drive
back late on Sunday night, having had a weekend of skiing and winter sports which
is like having a holiday and if anything urgent happens over the weekend he has
a fax and email in the apartment and so he need never be out of touch with the office.
The English guys, bored out of their palm pilots, nod, smile and raise their eyebrows
with feigned interest and enthusiasm. They're obviously trying to sell to him.
Marion, still searching in her bag, is talking to me. 'Sorry?'
'What was it you said you did again at your office?'
'I sell advertising space in a newspaper.'
'Is that good?' she asks, still ferreting in her bag.
'Erm ... well ...' I say to the bag.
'I mean, good prospects?' she asks, finally re-emerging.
'It could lead to other things.'
'That figures, most things could lead to other things. I meant
is the salary good - but obviously not otherwise you wouldn't be working for your
friend.' She grins wickedly.
'Jonathan? No, exactly.'
'Did you go to school?' she asks, making a bridge of her fingers
and resting her chin on it. Fortunately I realise that she is talking about college.
'Yes, I did Business Studies at Warwick ... University.'
Marion says, 'Well, that sounds useful.'
'I suppose it could be.'
'Mind you, I think men learn about business in the real world,
not cooped up in some school room. My father went to Harvard and they taught him
things but he always said the best classes were the ones on Wall Street.' I nod,
just like the suits on the next table. 'He said he got to be CEO of his firm by
what he learned in the job not in class.' She smiles. 'I think you'll find the same.'
'Probably,' I say, drunk with flattery. Not only is she referring
to me as a 'man' and comparing me to her father but suggesting that I could become
CEO which, as everyone knows, means 'boss' in American. 'Did you grow up in New
York?' I ask. Pleased to have this opening question, Marion watches the waiter serving
her salad with theatrical skill and then begins her life story.
She was born, the eldest of four, in Manhattan, in a quiet street
just off Park Avenue in the east eighties. Her father worked on Wall Street while
her mother devoted her time to the children. Her two brothers went to Harvard and
then Westpoint and have now followed in her father's footsteps, working for investment
banks. Her sister married a highly respected doctor and lives just a few blocks
from her mother. They have two little daughters, the sweetest things you've ever
seen, one of whom is named after Marion.
She, however, has not been so lucky in marriage. Her first husband
was considered a great catch in New York society at the time. Edward Gordon was
from an old Connecticut family which owned land all over the States and Canada and
had interests in everything from oil and minerals to sugar and cotton. Their wedding
at St Patrick's on Fifth Avenue was the happiest day of her life and all the society
magazines were full of it. People stood on both sides of Fifth Avenue to watch and
wish the young couple well.
They moved into a large apartment on Park Avenue and began the
rhythm of their married life: the office for him, lunches, bridge and fund-raising
events for her. Parties, dinners and balls for both in the evening. She was happier
than she ever thought possible, she says, biting a bread stick.
But after a few months she noticed a change in Edward. He seemed
preoccupied, irritable, secretive. One day she called him at the office to suggest
they dip out of the party they were supposed to be going to that evening and have
dinner, just the two of them, at home. She would have the cook prepare his favourite
food. But his private line rang unanswered all afternoon. Finally his secretary
picked up and explained that Edward was in a meeting. Marion didn't mention it to
him but when she called a few days later, the same thing happened again. In fact,
every time she tried to call him at the office he wasn't there and his secretary
couldn't or wouldn't tell her when he would return. She didn't want to challenge
him, not wanting to cause a scene. 'And, I suppose, not wanting to learn anything
nasty,' she explains, running her finger around the rim of her champagne glass.
After this had been going on for some weeks she confided in her
mother who told her not to worry, there was probably some rational explanation.
But she did worry and she became ill with it. When he asked her what the matter
was the only thing she could say for some reason was that she was pregnant. She
waited anxiously for his reaction. But he just poured himself a drink, apparently
completely uninterested in the news. 'Aren't you pleased?' she asked.
'We'll be late for dinner,' was his reply.
So one morning, she took a taxi down town to Wall Street and
sat at a table in a diner opposite her husband's office. She waited there all morning
drinking coffee. 'If he makes you that unhappy, he ain't worth it,' said the waitress
at one point. Marion was just wondering whether she ought to forget the whole thing
when she saw Edward walk quickly out of the office building. She got up and left
too, her heart thumping all the more because of all the caffeine inside her.
He hailed a cab and got in. She looked around for one but there
was none to be seen. Suddenly, across the road she saw that an old man had flagged
down another cab. She dashed through the traffic and begged him to let her take
it - it was a matter of life or death. Obviously concerned for this distraught young
woman, he let her. She thanked him and asked the driver to follow Edward's cab which,
fortunately, was stuck at the lights.
They went up town until they came to 40th Street. There his cab
dropped him off on a corner where he looked around quickly before setting off down
the street. Her cab followed him along a bit further as he walked along quickly
until he went into a shabby hotel. She got out and paid the cab and was just wondering
what to do next when she saw one of her best friends slip into the hotel entrance
as well. What would she be doing in a dive like this? Marion did not hang around
to do any more detective work. She went home and waited quietly for him to return
that evening.
Just then our main course arrives and Marion smiles weakly at
the waiter in gratitude. He is slightly surprised but mutters 'Prego' and leaves
us.
When Edward did return he was obviously drunk. Marion told him
what she had seen and they had an enormous fight. He did not bother to deny it.
How could he? She respected him for that at least. He said he did not know how it
had started or why. He promised to end it immediately and never see the woman again.
Marion was so desperate to keep him that she took him at his word. After a few weeks
things were almost back to normal. In fact she was beginning to forget the whole
affair when inside the pocket of a suit she found a receipt for a hotel room. That
was enough!
She confronted him with it but he simply told her to leave him
alone. He took a bottle of whisky from the side board and stayed in the guest room
that night. And so it continued until he hardly bothered to hide his liaisons. Sometimes
when she answered the phone someone at the other end would hang up. Once the caller
even asked if she would have him call Julie but would say no more than that. Some
nights he would come home in the early hours or occasionally not at all. Finally
she could stand it no more and they were divorced two days short of their second
wedding anniversary. At the end of it she just rolls her eyeballs, looks at me and
shrugs her shoulders as if to say, 'What can you do?'
'I'm very sorry,' is all I can think of to say.
'My mother was distraught but I had no alternative,' she says,
putting her fork down on her almost untouched veal escalope and wiping the corners
of her mouth with a napkin.
'And did you marry again?'
'I did, yes,' she says, slowly. The waiter takes our plates.
'He was much older than me, Andrew. I think I wanted some security, some stability.'
I nod, understandingly. 'He was originally South American but had lived in New York
for many years. He was a kind man and we had a beautiful home in Sutton Place and
another in the Hamptons. Life was very good to us and I can't complain but he soon
developed a terrible insecurity and became obsessively jealous. It was simply dreadful.'
She squeezes my hand. 'Andrew, I could not look at another man,
be it in a restaurant, at a party, even at the theatre without him flying into a
rage. I think on reflection that a man of his age with a pretty young wife begins
to feel that he has something he cannot control as easily as he controls money and
employees, objects and possessions. I was like a bird in a gilded cage, I couldn't
go out on my own, I wasn't allowed friends or interests. After a few years of this
I felt I was going crazy. He wanted to put me in therapy, but the point was I would
never get better while he was standing over me, trying to control me like, like
a puppet master.' I nod again, realizing what a good listener I must be. Then I
look down very discreetly at my watch. Shit! It's two fortyfive. Debbie will already
have clocked that I'm not there. The Tube! I popped into town to do some shopping
and there was a delay on the Tube. That'll do. Back to Marion.
She divorced husband number two and became a free woman, which
is what she is today. 'I choose my friends, where I want to live, how I want to
use my time and I am beholden to no one, you see? No one.'
'Very good idea,' I say, assuming we won't have pudding which,
given the time, is probably a good thing. While we wait for the bill she signs my
credit card slip for Jonathan without any embarrassment and then adds: 'You'd better
give me your numbers. We don't need to trouble Jonathan any more, I don't think,
need we?'
I think about it for a moment. Freelance. Well, Jonathan introduced
us, which is what the agency is all about but we can't keep going back to him every
time we want to meet, can we? OK, so I won't get paid his £200 or whatever for the
next time we meet but there could be greater rewards here than the occasional cheque.
You've got to look at the bigger picture, I decide.
'Up to you,' says Marion, obviously slightly annoyed that I haven't
responded immediately.
'Sorry, of course, here you are,' I say and give her all my numbers
- home, work and mobile - what the hell?
'I can still make it worth your while financially,' she says,
reading my thoughts as she puts her tiny gold notebook back into her handbag. 'I
don't want you to be out of pocket because of me.'
'No, I mean, yeah, don't worry.'
'Why are you English so coy when it comes to talking about money?'
She laughs disapprovingly. 'If you're going to be a gigolo you'd better get used
to it.'
Is it just me or did she say that rather loudly? Two people at
the table next to us suddenly stiffen and half-turn round.
We leave at a quarter-past three. I'm now so late back it's ridiculous
but somehow, after this lunch and the promise of a few more, I just don't care.
As we walk outside the rain has stopped. I thank Marion.
'You're very welcome,' she says coolly, her nose in her bag again.
'Do you need some money for a cab?'
'Erm .. .'I realise that I had better get used to this. Besides,
I have one fiver in my wallet which won't quite get me back to the office so I say:
'Well, that would be very nice,' and immediately, without saying anything, she hands
me a twenty. She offers me both cheeks which I kiss, feeling her super soft skin
under my lips and smelling her perfume.
She says: 'I may call you this evening, I don't know what my
schedule looks like yet.' She adjusts my tie for me and then smiles. 'You never
know, though, I might get a cancellation.'
'Sure,' I say with what is supposed to be cool enthusiasm but
comes across as puppy-like excitement.
Marion doesn’t call me that evening so I spend it watching TV
with Vinny and thinking about her and this new business, if that's what it is, that
I seem to have got myself into. I keep thinking about that brief, business-like
kiss on the cheeks as we left the restaurant. I remember her perfume and how different
it smells from any perfume I've smelled on my mum, in the office and even on Helen.