Upgrading (28 page)

“That
is
late,” points out Vinny.

“Well, I like to do these things in style.”

“Who sacked you? That sour-faced cow you’re always moan-ing about—what’s her name?”

“Debbie. Yeah. She was trying to be really nice about it as well, the bitch.”

“Bitch.”

“Fucking
bitch.”

Somehow telling Vinny about it has brought it all home. What am I going to tell my mum and dad? How am I going to make next month’s rent? Will Debbie give me some sort of reference? I’ll have to speak to her about it. Arghh! It’s not worth it. I’ll do without. With no job, no money, no references and no way of getting together next month’s rent without going cap in hand to my parents, I’ve now got to move in with Marion. Keeping this place on as a bolthole is no longer an option either.

“Thing is,” says Vinny. I sense a prepared speech is about to follow. “Thing is, do you think
she
might have been the cause of it?”

“Who? Debbie?”

“No—her.”

“Oh, Marion.”

“It’s just that I know it’s nothing to do with me but she has caused you some trouble recently.” He pauses but I let him go on. “I mean, tell me to mind my own, but like I said to you other day, since you’ve been seeing her, you’ve been stressed out, miserable as fuck, forgetting things … the Indoor One A Side Football League has gone to pot.”

“I know.”

“Your rent cheque bounced. The landlord rang yesterday, asked me to tell you,” says Vinny sadly.

“Oh fuck,” I say quietly. “I’ll sort that out.”

I look back at the telly where a blond woman in a smart, pink suit is opening and closing a washing-machine door with a look of anger and concern on her face.

“Hey,” says Vinny. “Shall I ring Jane? We could go for a drink. The three of us. Go on, it would be a laugh.”

Oh, Jane. She’d probably find it funny or at least ironic that I’d lost my job. Mind you, at least she’d be more sympathetic than Marion. Perhaps I do want to tell her. She might even offer some helpful advice. I imagine Jane, who knows everything, telling me what to do next with my life. The thought of it makes me smile. I could get a job with her in Paperchase. Share a house at the end of a Tube line with God knows how many other people. At that moment the phone rings. I reach down and pick it up.

“Hi, it’s me,” says Marion on her mobile. “That party was a mind-bending bore so I left early but I’ve booked a table at Bibendum for nine. I’ll send the car for you at eight-thirty OK?”

“Great, see you then.”

“Oooh. Try and cheer up, sweetie.”

“Will do.” I hang up.

“That her?” says Vinny, without looking at me.

“Yeah.”

We watch telly in silence and I get us another beer each. I realize that, in fact, they are not some cool, exotic French label as I had thought but Sainsbury’s own brand. Still, Vinny won’t mind.

I change into a dark suit with a dark grey shirt to match my mood and go back to the living room to wait for the car.

“See? Table by the window. I know you like being by the win-dow,” says Marion. Do I? I really can’t remember.

“So, what happened?” she says, as the waiter unfolds a napkin and puts it in her lap.

“Well, I just overslept and when I got in—”

“What do you want to drink? I’ll have a vodka martini, very dry. Same for you?” Why not, perhaps I like vodka martini as well as sitting by the window.

“Yeah,” I say to the waiter, a French-looking guy with very black slicked-back hair and an under-lip goatee. A working man, not like me.

“Then we’ll have some champagne. A bottle of Louise Roderer.”

She begins to sound less like she is trying to cheer me up and more like she is celebrating. “So, you got into work and they fired you?” she asks, looking around the restaurant to see if there is anyone she knows. Obviously disappointed that there isn’t, she turns back to me.

“Well, I overslept.”

“I called and you weren’t there.”

“I know, I didn’t get in till half-past three.” This time it doesn’t sound so funny.

“Well, you can’t blame them, then.” Very logical.

“Marion, it wasn’t just that. It was all the other time I took off work, going shopping and things with you.” Marion is silent for a moment, letting the full patheticness of this little whinge sink in.

“My
fault? Andrew, you didn’t
have
come to New York and Paris.” I sigh and look down at the table for a moment. Logical again.

“I know, I’m very grateful and I had a wonderful time but since I’ve been going out with you it’s been just one thing after another.”

“What? Like presents, foreign trips, pocket money? Great sex? Stuff like that?” says Marion, taking an olive stone out of her mouth as if someone were about to give her a prize for finding it. “Andrew, you
wanted
to get fired.”

“What?”

“You know you did. You kept pushing it until finally they fired you.”

“Oh, bollocks.”

“Don’t say that to me. You hated it, you kept telling me how much you hated it and now you’re free of it. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. That is what people kept saying to me when I left Edward.”

“It’s hardly the same.”

“It’s
exactly
the same. Life is what you make of it and you were never going to do anything in that crappy little office. Besides,” she says, taking my hand, “have you ever thought of it from my position? How embarrassing it’s been for me?”

“Eh?”

“Andrew, what am I supposed to tell my friends? That my lover sells advertising space at some sleazy tabloid?”

“It’s not a sleazy tabloid, it’s a broadsheet with the second highest ABC1 readership in the country. Oh, for God’s sake, who cares now? Look Marion, the thing is I’ve got no money.”

“I know, I was thinking about that,” she says kindly. What did she say? Is she finally going to give me some cash? I decide to push it a little more.

“I’ve got rent to pay, food, all kinds of stuff.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem, you’ll be living with me from now on, right?” Oh, yes, of course. That’ll solve everything.

“Yeah, but there are other things. I can’t just live without money.” I’m just inches away from grabbing her by the lapels of her jacket and yelling at her: YOU GOT ME INTO THIS MESS, YOU MAD BITCH, NOW YOU GET ME OUT OF IT.

“I know,” she says, folding her arms on the table. “Listen, I’m going to make some sort of arrangement for you. You’ll have your own cheque book and bank account just to tide you over. Besides, you’ll need to get a new suit, a more fashionable one than that awful thing you’ve been wearing since I met you, and some other new things.” I don’t believe it. Could this be it? Could this finally be what I’ve been working for for all these months? At last I might get “that ice.” Is this the deal? I’ve finally sold out completely, hit rock bottom, shown to myself that basically I’ll do anything for money and now I’m finally getting some of it. The champagne arrives—perfect timing.

i
feel rather hungover when I wake up. Marion is in the bath. I can hear her splashing around gently and humming to herself. The bedroom is beginning to smell of her luxurious bath oil. I turn over, duff up the pillow a bit and then find a cool place for my feet. The upside of getting the sack is that I don’t have to go to work today. I don’t have to put on a suit, get that fucking Tube and suffer that Tube smell: aftershave, shampoo, stale alcohol from the night before (or this morning?) and perhaps a smothered fart from a hastily eaten breakfast.

And—this is the real relief—I don’t have to worry about finding an excuse for being away from the office or what kind of welcome I can expect when I do get in there to face Debbie. I’ll miss seeing Sami every day, though. But we’ll keep in touch. I’ll give her a ring and we’ll go out for a drink or something. Or I’ll take her somewhere nice for lunch with Marion’s money. We’ll definitely see each other. She could meet Vinny. They’d get on like a house on fire.

I get up and walk into the bathroom to see Marion. She looks up at me and smiles sweetly.

“Hi, honey.” That reminds me that we made love last night. It was pretty good too—fast and passionate, ripping our clothes off (not that I’d actually dare rip anything of Marion’s but she didn’t tell me to hang anything up, which is pretty devil-may-care in her book) and then slowly, like we didn’t care whether we climaxed again or not. Amazing what a powerful aphrodisiac the promise of a cheque book can be. Especially when you begin to associate sex so closely with money.

“Hiya,” I say and kiss her gently on the lips. She splashes some water around her and leans back, closing her eyes.

“What are you going to do today?”

“No idea,” I say, sitting down on the loo. “Absolutely no idea.” She lifts her foot out of the water and puts her big toe with its perfect, pink shiny toenail up to the bath tap which is in the shape of a golden dolphin. It spews a few drops of water which drip down over her foot.

We both look at it.

“I do have nice feet, don’t I?” I nod. “I have a meeting this morning with my lawyer about my residency or something. Honestly, the amount I spend in this country, you’d think they’d be begging me to stay.” I smile. “We could have lunch some-where and then go to the bank and sort things out if you want.”

“Sure,” I say casually. I’m genuinely very laid back about this, partly because I can hardly believe it’s happening and partly because somehow I believe it isn’t. Something is bound to go wrong.

“I do want to help you, you know that,” she says, taking my hand. I smile. “I know you haven’t had all the advantages in life that I have.”

I get into the bath water after her and then have a quick shave. Anna Maria has coffee, orange juice and warm croissants waiting for me downstairs. Marion is sitting at the table, reading the
International Herald Tribune
by holding it at some distance from her and tutting. It’s nearly half-past ten and I really could get used to this.

Marion sets off to her meeting at just after eleven, leaving me two twenty pound notes to tide me over until lunch. I spend the morning reading the papers and some old copies of
Vanity Fair
and watching the cable channels on her telly. I look in the fridge to see if there is anything else to eat.

Marion’s fridge is so different to mine and Vinny’s. Not only is it smaller and sparkling clean but all it contains is a carton of orange juice and one of semi-skimmed milk, a box of Belgian chocolates, some strawberries and some greaseproof paper with Parma ham in it.

At any one time our knackered, smeary old English Electric fridge in Fulham will harbour: two bottles of drinkable milk, one packet of cheese, a half-eaten kebab/pizza/Indian, an open tin of baked beans which has formed a buffalo hide skin on top and a lump of butter still in its sliced-up packet, dotted with toast crumbs and going transparent with age around the edges. There will also be something sinister in a jar or open tin in the back that predates history and that we will have to draw lots to remove and take straight outside and throw in the bin. Or over the wall into the garden of that ghastly Sloaney couple next door who are always having barbecues and talking loudly about good prep schools.

I polish off the strawberries, even though I’m not hungry and mooch about the house, wondering what to do next. I pick up an American magazine but then realize I’ve already read it. I decide to go for a walk but realize I can’t find my keys so I stay at home.

I ring Sami’s number at the office but it is engaged. Then I ring Paperchase in Tottenham Court Road but put the phone down before they answer because I just don’t know what to say to Jane. “Hello, you know I said I’d finish with that American woman? Well, I’ve moved in with her instead.”

Shit. Give it a month.

At just after twelve Marion rings from the car to tell me she’ll see me at Cibo in Albermarle Street at 1:15 p.m., which certainly beats a sandwich at my desk. Poor Sami will be trying to decide whether to queue at the sandwich shop round the corner with its sweating margarine tubs of tuna and processed chicken roll or the grimly claustrophobic office canteen which opens at noon and runs out of anything worth eating at 12:01. Ice-cream scoop of Smash, anyone?

Even though I’ve stuffed my face all morning I’m starving by the time I arrive at the restaurant and the risotto sounds good. Marion is not there yet so the waitress brings me a copy of the
Standard
with my beer. I’m just reading about a really hip new men’s shop in the Fulham Road, which I’ll check out as soon as I get my money, when Marion arrives. We double kiss which seems odd since I only saw her two hours ago but never mind, that’s Marion.

“Fucking lawyers,” she mutters, patting her hair into place as she sits down.

“Bad meeting?” I ask.

“Oh, you know what they’re like. Telling you what you can’t do, how they can’t help you and then charging you the earth for it.”

“What was it about this morning? Your residency?”

She looks up at me from the menu. “Well, mine’s probably OK because of a corporation I’ve set up here and because I spent quite a bit of time abroad recently but it’s poor Anna Maria.”

“Anna Maria? What’s the problem?”

“She was working for her own country’s embassy before she came to work for me so that was all cool but apparently it’s a real pain in the ass if she’s working for a private individual.”

“Why?”

“Because she just can’t, basically. She doesn’t have a green card or a work permit or whatever it’s called. As soon as the authorities catch up with her she’ll have to leave and go back to Ecuador.”

“Where?”

“Ecuador, South America. It’s where she’s from.”

“Poor Anna Maria.”

“You can say that again. Imagine swapping Belgravia for a mud hut halfway up the Andes or wherever. Have you seen those women’s skin? Like an alligator’s ass.”

“That’s awful.”

“Andrew, you have no idea how these people live. Moisturizers and exfoliation are a totally alien concept to them.”

“No, I meant just having to go back there. Poor Anna Maria, what a crap life. Can’t she get a work permit or something?”

“Well, she could but it would take months and she’d have to leave the country while they do it for some dumb reason and I just can’t live without her. Even then it would be pretty unlikely because she doesn’t have a skill that’s in demand or something.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, the only thing we can do is get her to marry a Brit.”

“Right. That way she’d get British citizenship.” Marion is looking at me again and suddenly it hits me. “Hang on a minute. You want
me
to marry her?” Marion looks sweetly at me. “Oh, no.”

“Andrew, it would really help.”

“Yeah, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” says Marion quietly. Yet again she has asked one of those simple innocent-sounding questions which are completely unanswerable.

“Because … because I just can’t. I’d be caught out. You probably go to jail for something like this.”

“No,” says Marion, reaching for an olive. The waiter arrives and we give our orders. I’ve lost my appetite slightly but I go for the risotto anyway. For once Marion doesn’t tell me what I should have.

“It’s so simple,” she says when the waiter has gone. “You just go to a Registry Office and then send all your paperwork—mar-riage certificate, passports, birth certificate—to the Home Office naturalization department in Croydon and then they send back

her passport a few weeks later lifting her residency restrictions.”

“You’ve worked this all out then.”

“Of course.”

“That’s what you were doing at the solicitor’s this morning.”

“It was one of the things we discussed.” There is another heavy silence between us then Marion says, “Look, I’ll give you five thousand pounds.” It catches me off guard slightly. Five thou-sand quid would be very nice.

I line up my cutlery and then slowly polish my bread knife with my napkin. I could divorce Anna Maria as soon as possible afterwards. No one need know anything about it. Apart from the police. I was reading the other day about how all the official computers in the country are secretly being connected to each other. I’d be paying for a shirt with a credit card one day when the store detective would arrest me for fraudulent marriage.

Even if I did get away with it legally, how would I tell my wife-to-be in five years’ time or whatever that we can’t get married in that idyllic little family church because I’m actually divorced. Who from? she’d gasp, putting down the wedding list. Oh, nobody, don’t worry, she didn’t mean anything to me, darling—I just did it for the money. Oh, that’s all right then, what about pink for the bridesmaids?

No, I can’t do this.

The waiter brings our first courses and we claim them in silence. Then I say, “Marion, I just can’t.”

“OK,” she says quietly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Can’t you find someone else? What about Mark? He’d do it.”

“Fraid not,” says Marion.

“I’m sure he would.”

“He’s already married,” she says irritably, stabbing her
gamberoni
in the eye and pulling its tail off.

“Already
married?”

“Yeah, to Arabella della Schierra’s hairdresser.”

“Really?”

“Yeah—no! Wait a minute, that was last time. They divorced around Christmas. Now I think it’s Victoria’s manicurist. Sweet girl. From the Ukraine or someplace. Mark’s made a lot of money out of that,” she adds temptingly. He’s also made a lot of money out of shagging old women in front of their husbands and getting sucked off by old men in the Hyde Park Hotel. I’m still not enthusiastic. Marion is talking again. “I think Mark normally charges £5,000, that’s why I suggested it, but since it’s you and I’d like to do you a favour in return what if I double that? Make it £10,000? I’ll pay it into your bank account this afternoon.”

I swallow hard.
Ten thousand pounds.
That’s six months’ salary at a stroke, tax free. I poke at my risotto for a moment.
Ten thousand.
God, that would be useful, so useful.

“OK,” says Marion. “I know this is a big decision for you, I certainly don’t much like the idea of you marrying another woman but it wouldn’t mean anything, of course, it’s only for practical, legal reasons. It would be huge favour to me, honey, and I’d really appreciate it.”

What’s she saying? If you really loved me, you’d marry another woman?

Then she says, “How about I triple that—£15,000?”

My head is swimming with these figures. With £15,000 I could put down a deposit on a flat. Start a business, like we were talking about the other day. Or just bank it.

“Think about it,” says Marion, sipping her wine. “Don’t decide immediately.”

We finish the rest of lunch in an awkward silence. The risotto has filled me up and I can’t be bothered to eat my fish. Marion pushes her salad round her plate and starts a story about her friend Renata in New York who found her husband in bed with a seventeen-year-old dog walker and shot him in the leg but got off because her lawyer convinced the jury that she was on some diet pills that affected her judgment. We skip pudding and coffee. Marion double kisses me again outside the restaurant.

“I thought we were going to the bank,” I say quietly, looking down at the pavement. Marion rubs the side of my arm gently.

“That’s up to you,” she says earnestly. “Remember what I said. Fifteen thousand pounds. Most boys would jump at the chance. Look, here’s my lawyer’s number.” She takes a card out of her bag and stuffs it into the breast pocket of my jacket. “Call him and he’ll explain all the legal stuff. It couldn’t be simpler. People do it all the time. See you tonight.”

She gets into her car and I begin to walk down the street towards Piccadilly. I knew it was all too simple. Just let’s slip into the bank together and I’ll give you a huge wad. Fifteen thousand pounds. I’ll have to think about it. Fifteen. Thousand. That’s nearly a whole year’s basic salary. And I’m also helping poor, long-suffering Anna Maria. Suddenly it does sound tempting.

In the Tube station I pull out Marion’s lawyer’s card and go to a phone to ring him but find myself dialling Sami’s number. It rings for a while and I decide to tease her about not picking up after the third ring as our performance targets demand. But when someone does answer, it’s not her.