Sugar Mummy (6 page)

I've been wondering what it would be like to go out with someone
like her, someone so exotic, exciting, so much older, so rich and just so very,
very different from anyone I've ever met before. What is she doing tonight? I doubt
she's watching telly like me - do the seriously rich watch television? Probably
something to do with finance or luxury travel on cable. More likely she is out at
a dinner party with other rich people. Maids serving, champagne flowing, heavy silver
cutlery clattering on thin china plates, cars waiting outside with chauffeurs sitting
on bonnets gossiping, ready to leap up and open doors for the rich people who will
shortly sweep out of the party and silently get into their cars to go home.

I've been thinking as well about Marion and me going places together,
other posh restaurants, smart shops, casinos, hotels. Places I've never been before
and would never get to even see the inside of as a mere Media Sales Executive from
Reading.

I've also been imagining what it would be like to go to bed with
her. Smell her strange, different perfume again as I rub my face through her hair
and feel those long, slim arms around my neck. Feel the woman with the Belgravia
house, two ex-husbands and the BMW Seven Series lie back and give in to me.

'How's it going?' says Vinny as we watch Emmerdale.

'What?' I ask over my Marks & Spencer stir-fried salmon with
courgettes and Mediterranean peppers.

'Your new job,' says Vinny. 'Mr Lurrrve For Sale.'

'All right,' I say after a while. I'm not really sure that I
want to discuss it with him.

'Well?' He looks at me. I look back at the screen where two women
are holding mugs of coffee and talking across a kitchen table. Then he switches
off the telly and stares expectantly at me, controller in hand. 'I was watching
that.'

'So? Answer my question.'

'It's going very well indeed, thank you for asking. Now can you
put Emmerdale back on.'

'Details, please.'

I laugh, exasperated. 'Oh, all right, for fuck's sake. Yes, I
have met some interesting women. No, I have not kebabbed them. Yes, I have earned
some money ... well, a bit ... not that I've actually got it yet. No, they have
not kidnapped me and dragged me off to an exotic love nest on a tiny island off
the coast of Mustique, which is why I am sitting here, eating this muck and trying
to watch Emmerdale. Now will you put the bloody thing back on again?'

Vinny looks at me sceptically for a moment.

'Mmmm,' he says, a smile playing over his lips. I shrug my shoulders
and gesture towards the TV screen.

On Monday she rings me at work to tell me, all in one breath,
that we are going to a ball that night at Claridges - do I have a dinner jacket?
I say 'No'. She tuts and says she can't believe it. I say I am very sorry but I
just don't have much reason to wear them. I wonder if she'll offer to buy me one
but she just tells me to get one and be at hers by 7.30 p.m.

I nip out at lunchtime and try a few hire shops in the West End
until I find something that doesn't make me look too much like a night club bouncer
or Jimmy Tarbuck at a Royal Variety Performance. As I walk into the building, Ted,
the mad security guard, strikes up a conversation with me as he often does.

'You see that? Cor, bloody hell.'

I laugh. There is no point asking Ted what he is on about you
only get dragged further into it. It's like sinking sand. The best thing to do is
not to struggle so I laugh knowingly.

'I tell you, I thought I needed my eyes testing,' he adds, shaking
his head and rocking on the balls of his feet. Fortunately the lift arrives. I laugh
again and mutter something about new glasses as I get into it. I press the third-floor
button and then jab frenziedly at the 'Close Doors' button. Ted starts to tut and
turns round to look out across the empty lobby for the next four hours or so, which
is probably why he is so bonkers.

I try to sneak my dinner suit into the office but Sami sees it
through an irritating little clear plastic window in the bag and asks, 'Oooh, where
are you off to tonight?'

'Er, nowhere,' I say quietly.

'Quite formal at home are you, then?' says Andy, a Scouse comedian
who has recently joined what is laughably called 'the team'. 'Always black tie and
canapes for EastEnders?'

'Oh, sod off,' I tell him, not unkindly. Just at that moment
Debbie storms out of her office, sees me with the bag and looks up at the clock
on the wall. She had not bothered to say anything about my late return on Wednesday
but I know she noticed it. 'Oh shit,' I say softly and sit down. Sami is leaning
across her desk, her face lit up with innocent wonder.

'Are you going somewhere exciting tonight?'

I love Sami. She had been here three months when I arrived. She
is just so good. Her parents came across from Uganda when Idi Amin threw the Asians
out of the country just before she was born. They don't speak a word of English
- the first time I saw Sami talking to her mother on the phone I thought she'd gone
mad. It was like she had turned into another person in front of my eyes. Then she
put the phone down and said, 'Christ! Parents! Who'd have 'em?'

She works in the family shop on Saturday and Sunday and looks
after her grandmother most evenings. She's got millions of A-levels and O-levels
and she always empties the dregs of her plastic coffee cup in the Ladies instead
of just chucking if in the bin half-full and watching it leak onto the floor like
I do. She's so virtuous that I should hate her but actually, like I said, I love
her.

'Oh, Andrew, where are you going? Tell meeee,' she begs now in
her little girl's voice. I laugh.

'Oh, God. Look, it's just a ball.' Wrong answer.

'A ball! How exciting.'

A few other people look across, including Debbie, who clearly
thinks I am trying to make myself and my new exciting social life the centre of
attention, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.

'Don't tell everyone,' I say.

'I won't,' she says, missing my sarcasm. 'Where is it? Who are
you going with?'

'It's at Claridges.'

'The hotel?'

'No, the pub,' I explain.

Sami pulls a face and then asks again, 'Who are you going with?'

'Er, I'm just going with a friend.' What else can I say? Girlfriend?
No. Partner? Definitely not. Lover? Older woman? Benefactor?

'Ah, waiter!' says Vinny from Couch Position B in front of the
telly.

'You can sod off. Is this thing straight?' I ask, fiddling with
my bow tie.

'Left hand down a bit,' he offers, squinting at me. I try and
do what he says.

'Why the hell did I let you talk me into getting a real one?

That ready-tied thing would have been so much easier,' I moan.
Vinny said I looked like a footballer off to Stringfellows when I appeared with
a neat little pre-tied bow tie five minutes earlier.

'Yes, but are you a ready-tied bow-tie person?' asks Vinny with
deep sincerity. I think I know what he means. 'Oh, Christ. Here, let me have a go.'
He hauls himself off the settee, which I do appreciate - other than a naked Jennifer
Lopez or a serious house fire, there isn't much that will persuade Vinny to leave
his sofa. He fiddles with the tie, grimacing with concentration and then stands
back to admire his handiwork. 'There. That's better. You know you could have borrowed
my pistachio-and salmon-pink-spotted number - genuine Crolla circa 1983. Quite a
style icon.'

'Either that or the revolving one.'

'Great conversation piece.'

'Yeah, but what kind of conversation?'

'Where is it tonight, then?' he asks but I smile enigmatically
and slip out of the door without answering him.

It is nearing the end of the month and the suit cost a fortune,
considering that it was just for one night - the bastards must have known I was
desperate - but I can't get the bus to Marion's so I invest in a mini cab. Sixty-five
pounds outlay so far. Sitting in the furry seat of an old Nissan Cherry I realise
the bus might have been more stylish. The driver looks me up and down out of the
corner of his eye and asks where to.

'Eaton Terrace Mews,' I say. He drives in silence and I begin
to wonder how much this guy will earn for driving all night and putting up with
drunken abuse while his wife lies in bed at home wondering whether tonight's the
night she'll get the call from the casualty department or a visit from the police.
I feel like a stuffed shirt, a Sloaney pratt sitting next to him.

So I am glad to get out at Marion's. Anna Maria answers the door
and giggles.

'Good eebning, Mr Andrew,' she says.

I say, 'Good evening, Anna Maria, what do you think?'

Before she can say anything Marion's voice calls down, 'Anna
Maria, fix Mr Andrew a drink. I'll be right there.'

She pours me a glass of ice-cold champagne and I sit down on
a tiny chair and fidget with my tie again. Then I get up because I must look ridiculous
perched on this piece of dolls house furniture. I find another chair with its back
to the stairs. This means that I can listen for her approaching and can spin round
dramatically. After about half an hour I hear her coming down the stairs. I turn
round and shoot her a cool, narrow-eyed James Bond look which she completely ignores.

She does look great - a simple black dress with a thin gold chain
and a small diamond broach. I whistle, almost accidentally, and she tuts, 'Don't
do that, it's vulgar.' But she can't help smiling. Since we're both loosening up
I wonder whether to kiss her but decide to play it safe. I'm still her escort, her
walker, after all, well technically, anyway. Besides, she actually looks too good
to kiss, like I might break something or mess something up.

She looks at me for a moment with her big dark eyes, almost embarrassed,
and then stands back and checks her lips in the mirror over the fireplace.

'Let me look at you,' she says. 'Not bad.' Then she sighs. 'We'll
need to get you a proper one, though.'

'OK, thank you,' I say, not sure how to react to this offer.
It does sound like a very good idea, though.

Moving through the Park Lane traffic up towards Upper Brook Street
I begin to feel that this is what it's all about. A family in a Volvo turn to look
at us as we draw alongside them at the lights. It makes me think of our trips up
to London when we were children: shopping at Hamley's (one present each to a value
of ten pounds, according to my mum), sightseeing at Madame Tussauds or the Tower
of London, sometimes a film at the Odeon, Leicester Square and then tea at Fortnum
& Mason or McDonalds - both were equally exciting somehow back then. My sister
liked the milkshake at Fortnum's but I preferred the ones at McDonald's and besides
you could dip your chips in when Mum and Dad weren't looking.

I sensed my mum's unease in town and her general disapproval
of everything around her, which she saw as dirty, expensive, noisy and foreign.
'You never hear another English voice in London these days,' she would say - still
says. My dad still wears his discomfort like a badge bearing the inscription 'I'm
from Berkshire where we still do things properly'. God, I just wanted to get away
from them and disappear into the crowd, integrate myself into London. I wanted to
exchange my self-consciously up-in-London-forthe-day clothes for what the hip Londoners
were wearing.

When we reach the hotel a doorman opens Marion's door and I leap
out of my side and nip round to meet her on the pavement. For once the chauffeur
sits tight. Got you, you bastard. We join the throng of dinner suits and evening
gowns in the lobby. Marion is frowning, looking round for people she knows.

'What's this do for?' I ask her when I catch up.

'It's a charity thing,' she says, still looking round.

'Which charity?'

'How should I know? Some charity.'

We deposit our coats and go further in. Finally an old couple
appear through the crowd and Marion says 'Hello.'

 
They exchange a few 'How
are you's' and then Marion introduces us. They are old friends from New York.

We meet other old friends of Marion's. Handshakes and names and
'Nice to meet you's' merge into one another as Marion advances through the crowds,
like a whale sucking in the waves of people and filtering out the plankton she feels
it worth acknowledging.

I quickly learn that my place is just behind her left shoulder.
We encounter another older woman with a younger man, a tall dark-haired guy. The
two ladies kiss, and we men shake hands very firmly with each other. As the two
ladies talk animatedly above the hubbub we watch them. It is something of a relief
to see another couple in a similar configuration but it's also a bit unnerving.
I can't help making comparisons. He is good-looking, but better looking than me?
She is obviously rich, but richer than Marion? She clearly enjoys being on his arm,
is Marion as pleased to be seen with me?

After a while I feel a prickling of sweat around my hairline.
It is hot in here but more than that I am feeling increasingly uncomfortable, increasingly
under pressure. I realise that I am here for one thing and one thing only and everybody
we say hello to knows the score. We meet an Arab guy with his pretty, dark-haired
daughter. It would probably be more normal if she were my date not this woman old
enough to be my mother. The dark-haired girl ignores me.

Suddenly I need to get away, not just from the noise and the
crowd but from this weird situation. While Marion is listening intently to some
old dear describe a party in Venice given by another old dear, I whisper to her
that I am going to the loo, I won't be long. She nods which, I realise, means that
she is giving me permission as much as showing that she has heard me.

I push my way through people who are each paying a fortune to
stand in rush hour Tube-like overcrowding, and slip into the tranquillity of the
gents. As the door closes behind me the cool air and the gurgling of the cistern
and the squirting of water in the urinals make the room feel like some enchanted
spa. The feeling of relief is short-lived as I realise that there is someone else
in here with me. I turn round quickly and see the tall guy who was with one of Marion's
friends. He is leaning up against the far wall, smoking. He looks me up and down
for a moment and then offers me a cigarette, which I take.