Upgrading (14 page)

“That’s why she always acts so grand,” hisses Davina from beside me, almost making me jump.

“Does she?”

Davina rolls her eyes, a rather risky manoeuvre given the number of nips and tucks there probably are around them. “Marion acts more grand than anyone I know. Your Queen could learn something from her.” Davina takes a long slurp of champagne. “And that’s why she always surrounds herself with pretty things. You, sugar, are a case in point.”

“Am I?” I really only ask to break the tension and move the conversation on a bit. She looks at me as if I’m the stupidest thing that she has ever come into contact with.

“Course you are. You must know that. But I bet she hasn’t told you.” She takes a prawn and cream cheese pastry thing, removes the prawn, scoops out the cream cheese, sucks it off her fingernail and then squashes the prawn back in the pastry and puts it back down in front of her. Then she spends some time running her tongue round the inside of her mouth to clear it of cheese. I watch repulsed, fascinated, suddenly feeling stone-cold sober.

She looks round the room with her hard little eyes and starts to tell me a story. “Marion’s father sold furniture out of a big warehouse in Brooklyn. I mean, it was supposed to be a store and her mother had pretensions about it being, you know, Bergdorf Goodman or something but the point is her mother never went there. The only people visited Marion’s father’s store were people who had been to the fancy stores and realized that they couldn’t afford the fancy prices. They would sneak into that place,
praying
that their friends and neighbours wouldn’t see them there, see where they had ended up just trying to save a few bucks when they wanted a new sofa or a chair or something. And the reason why Marion’s mother had pretensions about it was like I said, because she never went there. Oh no, she sat in that house in Scarsdale and took tea and spoke to her friends on the telephone. All very nice, all very proper. Wishing her husband was a society doctor or a big shot lawyer or something.”

“I thought her father worked on Wall Street,” I say. Davina cackles, boy am I ever stupid! Anna Maria comes back again with the champagne. Davina swipes another glass. I smile at Anna Maria and help myself as well. She beams back, unaware that her mistress is being ripped apart and her guts left out for carrion on the sun-scorched hill tops of Manhattan society. On the other hand, if she did know, would she care?

Davina is off again, half-finishing her glass in a single slurp. She ignores my contribution—obviously I am too dumb to bother with.

“And do you know why she has no children?”

Oh Christ! I hope this is not going to be too gynaecological. I want Davina to stop but at the same time I desperately want to hear more. Thing is, I know that Marion will be able to tell with one quick glance at my innocent face that I know all.

I look around the room quickly to check that she isn’t looking. Nowhere to be seen. Probably upstairs adjusting something.

“Well
do
you know?” Davina punches my arm.

“No,” I gasp, in some pain.

It is the answer Davina is looking for. She raises her painted eyebrows slightly and looks shocked. “She doesn’t want the competition.”

“Competition?”

“Sure. She doesn’t want to have to compete with anyone. What if she had a daughter and what if the daughter was pretty and popular? What if she outshone Marion? What then? Or worse still”—Davina stares even more fiercely—“but what if she didn’t? What if Marion had a kid that was plain and boring—you know, mousy hair, bottle-bottom glasses and braces like a railway siding. OK, she could have a little surgery. Oh sure, a little cutting and tweaking here and there, we’ve all had it but if you ain’t got the raw materials in the first place, bone structure and all, not even the best surgeon in the world can do anything and don’t tell me he can.

“No, she doesn’t want the competition so she figures it’s much better to use surrogates. Surrogate children. Like you. Choose them, parade them around like a poodle and then, if they fail to impress, or, if they impress too much you can always ditch ’em and get another. Oh, yes,” she says, shaking her head, “Marion has had plenty of those.”

Nice to hear.

“Of course, I don’t suppose you’ve heard about the husbands.” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “Now, I must confess, I did like the first. You couldn’t help liking Edward. A bit dumb, a bit of a bore but basically a nice guy. What he did have going for him, though, was potential. You know? Potential. And that’s what Marion liked about him, his potential. He was potentially very rich. His father had made a fortune as an oil broker, well, he was a broker in anything. He was the complete opposite of Edward—a devious little scheister. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, in business. But the problem was that he hated Marion. God, he hated her.” Davina takes another great slurp of champagne and, for some reason, hands me her empty glass. I look around for a passing tray and then put it down between us. There is a pause while Davina’s intense stare draws over another waitress with more champagne.

“Hated
her, absolutely hated her.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She takes another gulp. “He thought she was stuck up and had airs and graces. But cheap all the same. Which is what she is. But what Edward’s father really hated about her was that he thought she was a gold-digger. And she thought he was rude and vulgar and rough as a stevedore’s ass, which he was. What really got him, though, was when Marion tried to ban him from the wedding. She figured she needed
her
father, who was not exactly smooth as a kid glove, to give her away but she sure as hell didn’t need Edward’s.”

“This was the wedding at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral?” I say, hoping this will earn me some credibility. Wrong. Davina looks at me in disbelief.

“Saint Patrick’s? Saint Patrick’s Fifth Avenue? Not exactly, sugar. They couldn’t exactly afford that. It could have been their local church, but Marion figured that didn’t look none too good so she broke her family’s heart and found a hotel. Sure, it was a pretty hotel but Fifth Avenue it was not. Anyway, however pretty the goddamn hotel is, if the atmosphere is ugly, the wedding is ugly.”

“Ugly atmosphere?” I ask a little unnecessarily.

“They needed Henry Kissinger to negotiate the table plan.”

“How long did the marriage last?”

“Oh, a couple of years and then she realized that he was going no place and didn’t have a nickel to scratch his ass with and so she dumped him.”

“I thought he, er, committed adultery,” I say, trying not to sound too suburban about it. I needn’t have bothered.

“He never got chance. She beat him to it. But one thing’s for sure, if he had of, she’d have been juggling his balls.”

“So who was Marion’s second husband?” I mention her name in the hope that we have been talking at cross purposes and this is not Marion I have been hearing about. She takes a long breath. “He had more going for him than Edward. At least, he did till Marion got hold of him. He was rich, good-looking and had a sort of savoir-faire, know what I mean? Josef. He was Colombian. They gave the best parties.” She looks disparagingly around her. “Their apartment in New York was so beautiful it had a swimming-pool in the dining room. Models, actors, fashion designers. Drinking, fucking, snorting coke off each other. God, it was beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” I say, trying to imagine this little splosh ’n’ nosh love nest.

“And then they had the apartment on Ipanema Beach.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Honey, it was,” says Davina, looking up at me longingly. “It was beautiful. And she used it to very good effect. She met her third husband there.”

“Third? I thought there were only two.”

“There were four altogether. Plus a little snacking in between meals, you know what I’m saying.”

“So who was the third?”

“Henry somebody. He was an English lord. Looked a bit like you, sugar, only a bit older.”

“What was he like?”

“Boring, boring, boring. I think someone must have told him to go to Rio to loosen up a bit, you know? Learn to have a good time.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, sure, he learned to take off his tie on the beach. Rio is where Marion developed her taste for younger men. Unfortunately so did lordie.”

“He left Marion for a younger man?”

“Some beach bum.”

“Oh, God. And then she married someone else?”

“Yep. Lordie was boring and, fatally, not as rich as Marion first thought. He had this cold, draughty old pile miles from anywhere in the English countryside which didn’t appeal. Ten bedrooms and only two bathrooms. Not only that, it seemed almost everything the family owned would go in tax when his father checked out. So then she met Carlos. He was probably the best of the lot: nasty, ruthless but great fun to be with. And he was the richest. Used to sleep with a Smith & Wesson under his pillow at night. What a guy!”

“Sounds like quite a character.”

“Oh, he was. They gave even better parties than when she was with Josef.” Her face hardens. “The only bad thing was that she met that bitchy little fag Channing there and they’ve been together ever since. Marion says he’s more faithful than a husband.”

“I met him just now.”

Davina is staring across the room at Channing, hatred screwing up her face as much as her surgery will allow.

Intrigued, I ask, “You’ve crossed swords in the past, then?” “Crossed swords?” I sound like my dad.

“I’d like to cross his fat neck with a sword,” says Davina.

Just then Marion appears.

“Marion!” I gasp.

“Are you guys having fun?” she says.

Before I can think of something to say and say it innocently, Davina says, “Beautiful party, Marion,” and smiles warmly. I do the same except that I must look like a grinning idiot. Marion looks at us both for a moment and then touches my arm. I get up and she tells me there are some other people she wants me to meet.

“See you later,” I say to Davina. She just smiles knowingly.

“Was Davina boring you to death?” asks Marion.

“Oh no,” I say casually. “Just chatting.”

“She’s getting on a bit. Sometimes I think she’s losing it—too many heated rollers when she was young. I only invite her to things out of pity.”

Just after one o’clock people start to leave and within a few minutes the room is empty. Some woman with heavy eye makeup comes up to me and says: “Andrew, there you are. We never got a chance to talk all evening.”

“No,” I say. “We’ll have to do it next time.” By which time I might have worked out who she is and thought of something to say to her. Everyone triple kisses Marion and thanks her so much you’d have thought she’d saved their lives.

When we are alone together I put my arms round Marion and look into her eyes. “Nice party,” I say softly.

“Thanks. I throw better ones in New York but there’s just no room in London.” She kisses me on the lips and runs her hand through my hair. “Let’s go to bed.”

I look at her carefully for a moment, wondering if what Davina said was true. “I’m just going for a quick walk to clear my head,” I say, already thinking about the hangover I’m going to have the next morning.

“Oh, must you?”

“Just quickly.”

I wonder out into the mews trying to avoid any last guests in case they think I have been chucked by Marion. At the gateway I take a deep breath and stretch my arms above my head and bring one of them down on Louise, the Australian girl.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you standing there,” I say, wondering what she is doing lurking around by the gatepost.

“No problem,” she says. There is a pause. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I say, remembering what she is like at conversation.

There is a pause. “Could you see me home?”

“Er, well …”

“Look, here’s a cab.”

Before I can say anything more she has rushed over the street and thrown herself at a taxi which stops just inches before it makes contact with her. She turns and yells across to me to come on. I run over as well and get in.

“Where do you live?” I ask, trying to make it sound like a casual opening line of conversation rather than a panicked enquiry about where the hell we are going.

“Kensington High Street,” she says and suddenly yells with laughter. “It’s not far.”

Louise leads me along a silent, empty corridor of her block in West Kensington. The whole place has probably not changed much since the seventies—Hessian wallpaper, brown swirly carpets, groovy orange lightshades, some of them slightly melted. She is giggling and breathing heavily. Suddenly she throws herself against a front door and says, “Home sweet home.”

“OK,” I say, hopelessly. “Well, good night then.”

“No,” she squeals in protest, and lets us both in, flinging the door wide open and rushing over to switch on a small table lamp. The room is empty apart from a large scruffy sofa bed. Everything else is lying on the floor: the phone, some magazines, a CD player and CDs, clothes and a horribly ugly, terminally ill house plant.

“Look, Louise, I must be getting back.”

“One quick coffee,” she says, so I close the door behind us and walk round the flat while she goes into the tiny kitchenette. I look down on the headlights of the traffic moving slowly below us and open one of the creaky metal-framed windows for a moment to get some air but the noise is deafening so I close it again. She asks what I want to drink.