Upgrading (24 page)

I feel slightly sick and shivery although it’s stifling in the room. Am I coming down with something? I must have fallen asleep. I close my eyes and move my head to ease my stiff neck. Suddenly I see Jane again, looking impassively at me across the dinner table.

I wonder a moment if I called out her name in my sleep. Did Marion hear me? No, she’s in the shower.

Later, I have a shower myself and get dressed. While Marion is putting on her make-up I go down into the living room and open another bottle of champagne, even though we haven’t finished the last one. Finally she comes down and she does look gorgeous. A pale blue dress that I haven’t seen before, her hair is slightly different. She flops down, slowly crosses her long slim legs and asks me to fix her a vodka on the rocks.

“God, it’s warm this evening, huh? I can’t ever remember London being this warm. We should get you a lightweight suit, maybe. Something in linen. You’d look great. You’ve got the height, Andrew. You should be a little bolder with your choice of clothes. You’re not a kid anymore, you can go for a more mature approach to your apparel.”

My what? I don’t say anything but hand her her drink. “I’ve booked the restaurant for eight-thirty.” I nod and smile. “What’s the matter? You seem very quiet.”

“No, it’s just that I was thinking about this moving-in idea.”

“Good.” She smiles kindly. “I’ll have Anna Maria and Chris go over to Fulham and pick up your stuff.”

I laugh in exasperation and sit down opposite her. “Marion, I don’t think you realize that it’s quite a big deal for me.”

I know we’re risking another row but I just want her to be aware of the sacrifice I’m making for her.

“You mean it’s a commitment,” she says patronizingly. Despite her tone it does sound very grim, very final. I’m being committed.

“Well, perhaps it is,” I say. “I’m just a bit nervous about it. I’ve never lived with a girl before. Except at college and that doesn’t really count.”

Marion asks, “Worried about what your parents and your friends will say?”

“Well, I—”

“Just tell them that you’re moving in with your girlfriend.” It sounds so strange to hear her say it. Is that what we are: girlfriend and boyfriend? She gets up to put some more ice in her drink. “When I announced that I would be marrying my second husband it was a huge step. I was terribly concerned about what people would think, but if you always worry about such things, you’ll never do anything. If we are having a relationship, Andrew, it’s only sensible that you live here, as much for practical reasons as for anything else. I don’t want people knowing that my lover lives in Fulham.”

“Eh?”

She looks surprised and then comes to sit down next to me on the settee. “Andrew, I have a certain reputation and certain standards to maintain. No one, for example, knows how we met.” Her face changes for a moment. “If anyone asks, by the way, it was in Fortnum & Mason—you helped me choose some tea as a present for someone.”

“Oh, OK.” I think I am being insulted but it seems to have happened so often to me recently that I just can’t tell anymore.

“We just got talking. It was Orange Pekoe.”

“Sorry?”

“The tea. It was Orange Pekoe.”

“Sure.”

There is a pause.

“Where was I?” She looks down at the floor for inspiration. “Oh, yes. You have to remember, Andrew, that you are moving in a different circle of people now. People with expectations and a certain degree of style. They would be very surprised to find themselves in the same room with—” she shrugs her shoulders and looks up at the ceiling—“with an office boy living in a tiny apartment in a place like Fulham.”

Apart from “fuck off” I can’t quite think how to respond. In a way it’s all to the good: the more poor and pathetic I seem, the more I’ll appear in need of expensive food and clothing. She seems to take my silence as agreement. “So I’ll arrange it. You can get packed up with Anna Maria and then the driver can bring your things over here. OK, now let’s go eat.”

In fact we eat at Charles and Victoria’s that night because they ring us in the car on the way to the restaurant and tell us that they’ve just got home from New York and they’re dying to see us.

“Home?” I say to Marion as we execute an elegant U-turn and set off in the direction of Kensington Church Street. “I thought they lived in New York.”

“And London,” says Marion casually, putting her phone back in her bag. As soon as she says it, I realize, of course, that I’m being naive. I still have the idea that people live in one place and, at most, have a timeshare in somewhere like Wales or Spain. But all Marion’s friends seem to live in at least two or three cities around the world.

It’s quite a fun evening—or at least it starts off that way. Victoria rabbits on endlessly and seems quite pleased, albeit surprised when she makes me laugh—because she
is
very funny. Marion spends some time, well a long time, actually, cursing the French and announcing that for moisturizers Paris is actually worse than London. Or is it vice versa? London is also pretty crap for a lot of things. I try to defend it but Marion gives me a look that says, What would I know, I’ve got no terms of reference.

Charles, whose grey-flecked, wavy hair matches his charcoal grey pinstripe suit perfectly, I notice, asks if anyone would like some charlie. He smiles at me and very gently raises a professionally plucked eyebrow above a dark, hooded eye. I say yes, don’t mind if I do, mainly to annoy Marion.

“Are you sure you won’t, Marion?” says Victoria, carefully putting a rolled twenty into her left nostril, her diamond-ringed little finger sticking out elegantly.

“No, thank you,” says Marion primly, “and Andrew, I think you’ve had enough, you’ll never sleep tonight.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say, indulging again.

“Sure, until you wake up one morning and find you’ve only got one nostril,” she says.

Charles, Victoria and I sit back and enjoy the sensation. It blots out Marion’s wifely nagging.

“That’s good stuff,” says Charles, vaguely.

“Mmm,” says Victoria. She calls the maid who tops up our glasses of champagne.

“I was saying to Andrew that he should start his own business,” says Marion to Charles. I look at her, wondering if this is her revenge for my doing charlie. She ignores my expression of irritation and continues, “I’ve told him that he’s never going to make any money selling advertising space for some two-bit tabloid—”

“It’s not a two-bit tabloid,” I tell her.

“Well, is he?” says Marion, ignoring the fact that Charles is high as a 747. “I said he should try a little private enterprise. Get out and do something on his own.”

“Mmm,” says Charles in his usual non-committal way. Part of me hopes this will be the end of it but I would also be quite glad of Charles’s input. He’s absolutely loaded—of course—so how did he make it? Zapping through my coke-charged brain comes the thought that perhaps he needs an assistant or that he might have use for a sharp, presentable, enterprising … person.

Marion, clearly not in the least discouraged by Charles’s total lack of interest, ploughs on. She keeps selling me to him, painting me out as a desperate, hard-up, no-hoper with a dead-end job and no prospects. I know I sold this story to her when we first met and it’s probably true but I don’t really want her to relay it to everyone.

Why doesn’t she just ask me to do a jig and rattle a collecting tin at them? I’m sure we could find a stupified baby to shove in their faces while we’re at it. Marion is studiously ignoring my protests and looking expectantly at Charles. Oh, for God’s sake. It’s one thing for Charles and Victoria to know that Marion pays for my dinner and travel but quite another to ask them to chip in.

“Marion, I don’t think—”

Ever keen to pour oil on troubled water, Victoria chimes in, “I’m sure Charles would be delighted to help. He knows lots of people in the business world.”

“Mmm,” says Charles, holding up his glass by the stem and watching the bubbles rise and burst.

We leave just after midnight and walk back home in silence. Marion knows she doesn’t have to say anything more. Even more infuriatingly she is right—I can’t sleep. I switch on the telly and tell her I’ll be up a bit later.

“Look, I don’t want you waking me up, tossing and turning all night.”

“OK,” I say, still looking at the telly. “I’ll go home.”

She waits for a while and then says, “Just be quiet when you come up.” She turns off all the lights so that I’m left in darkness, apart from the harsh, ghostly glow of the box, and then goes up to bed.

After half an hour an idea comes to me. I decide to go back and see Charles and Victoria. I could do with some more fresh air anyway, so I pick up my keys and slip out. Without Marion giving the impression that my job at the paper consists of dragging a millstone in the basement to generate electricity for the building, I might be able to talk seriously to Charles.

“We’re still on New York time,” he said as we left and Victoria told us that we couldn’t go already. “We’ll be up for ages.”

Perhaps there are other reasons for going back. I want to show that I am not just Marion’s lap dog, that I am a person in my own right. Also, if I can get Victoria on her own for a moment and, though it will be difficult, get her to look at me and listen to what I am saying, I might be able ask her about Marion, the woman who hates where she came from and loves where she’s going to.

I pause for a minute at the end of the street wondering how I’ll introduce this subject. What
am
I doing? I consider just going back to Marion’s and going to bed but I decide to go ahead. So I walk towards the house, rehearsing what I am going to say and, more importantly, how casually I’ll say it. “Thought I’d nip back for a nightcap if the offer’s still on. Thanks, I’d love one. Left Marion sleeping. Yeah, bit of a night bird myself. Usually in bed by dawn. Ha ha.”

Just then I hear the growl and rattle of a cab coming down the street from the opposite direction. As it approaches Charles and Victoria’s I stop dead still in the darkness between two street lamps. Two people get out and the taller one pays the driver. After a few seconds the cab moves on and the couple walk up the path and ring the bell. Charles opens the door and in the flood of light from the hall I see that the visitors are both young men: the shorter one looks Thai or something but the taller one I recognize immediately as Mark.

I walk back slowly and let myself in. I pour myself a whisky, flick on the telly and begin to watch some audience show where a blonde woman with a cockney accent is shoving a microphone in people’s faces and they seem to be telling her when they’ve wet themselves in public. Then there is something with a hidden camera in a shop but I’m too tired to work out what the joke is supposed to be so I switch it off and go to bed.

The alarm wakes her up again. She swears and puts her head under the pillow. I lie back, looking at the ceiling for a moment, doing a systems check to see how terrible I feel. I’ve got a thumping head and my jaw aches as if I’ve been grinding my teeth all night. I take a deep breath, get up and go into the bathroom. In the bright light I look older, like Mark did that time when we met in the Gents at Claridges. Was he with Victoria or Charles last night? Or both? And where did the other guy fit it—literally—I wonder?

Suddenly going to the office and flogging column inches seems relatively easy and comfortable. I have a shave but realize I don’t have time to shower. Marion has bought me a couple of new work shirts which are hanging up in my few inches of wardrobe space. I pick the blue one rather than a pink striped number which makes me look like a city trader. There are a couple of rather nice Hermès ties, too. Neither shirt nor tie go with with my suit but I don’t really care.

I hack my hair down into place. Marion is now wandering around the bedroom in a huge dressing gown looking sleepy but cross.

“Morning,” I venture as I knot my tie.

“Morning,” she says, brushing her hair. “You must feel terrible.”

I decide to humour her. “Yeah, I do.” Actually, I do.

“You need some breakfast inside you,” she says as she leaves the room. I don’t feel like breakfast and I certainly haven’t got time, although the coffee and croissants smell pretty good. I put my shoes on, polish them on the back of my trousers while I adjust my tie and reach down for my watch.

It’s gone.

I look around hastily as it dawns on me what has happened.

“It needs cleaning, that’s all,” says Marion lightly when I ask her about it.

“It looked all right to me.”

“I think I’m more familiar with expensive timepieces than you.”

God, you love this, I think. She pours herself and then me some coffee.

“Can’t stop for breakfast, I’m late already,” I say.

“But you need to eat something.”

I grab a croissant and notice that she is aiming her cheek at me. I bend down and kiss it.

She says nothing.

Somehow I know that the car won’t be waiting outside for me this morning. I walk out of the mews but can’t resist nipping back a few moments later just in time to see the huge BMW inching over the cobbled street from around the corner where it has been hiding.

As a dedicated clock-watcher, I miss my Rolex. I have to keep looking round at the clock on the office wall every few minutes instead. Early in the afternoon I ring Marion and tell her that I’m going to see an old mate for a drink so I won’t be round tonight. I don’t feel particlarly guilty after the theft of my watch and her frostiness this morning.