Upgrading (38 page)

“And she told me her second husband, your father, was so jealous that she had to divorce him, she couldn’t stand it anymore. And then she said she had never been married again.”

“Yes.”

“But this friend of hers told me that she married this British lord and then the other South American—Carlos.”

“Yes.”

“Victoria, sorry, it’s all a bit confusing, that’s all. Marion tells me one thing but then her friends tell me another.” Victoria laughs and then looks at me sweetly. “So the thing is,” I carry on slowly.
“Was
she married twice or was she married
four
times? And
does
she come from the Upper East side or is she from Scarsdale?”

Victoria shrugs her shoulders.

“Do you know?”

Her expression changes, “Why you want to know?”

“Why do I want to
know?
Well, it’s obvious isn’t it, I want to know who Marion is.” Just then the maid brings in the tea and Victoria concentrates on pouring it, offering lemon or milk and then handing me a tiny, china cup with a silver teaspoon. “You understand, don’t you? She’s lied to me and it’s all a bit weird.”

Victoria sighs and looks at me. “You
know
who Marion is.”

“No I don’t.”

“Of course you do. You see her every day, talk to her, make love to her. Why you want to know who her parents are? They are not
her.
Does it
matter
who she is married to before she meet you? It’s so English. You’re so, so concerned with history, always thinking in the past. All you ever want to know is where people come from, who their parents are, where they go to school. Does it matter? It’s the person you know here and now that counts. Like that song: was it Ethel Merman? Do you remember Ethel Merman? No, probably too young. ‘It’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.’ Marion once say to me ‘You gotta hate where you came from and love where you’re going to.’ Understand? Marion has made bery nice life for herself—very American really. Let her be whoever she wants to be, why shouldn’t she? The important thing is she is in love with you and you are in love with her and you guys are happy at the moment. Make the most of it while it lasts.”

I set off to walk back to Marion’s. Some children are coming out of a junior school in the next street. A little girl is walking along in a very busy, grown-up manner while holding her boater on with one hand and struggling to carry a painting in the other. White socks pulled right up and children’s sandals—heavy and comfortable. It’s a painting of a big red boat on a thickly painted wavy blue sea. The sky, hanging above, is also blue and thick and wavy. I smile at such solid childish certainties. “Then we had music and movement with Mrs. Jackson and then we had sausages for lunch and, Mummy, Emma didn’t eat all hers …” she is saying.

She looks up at me, sees me smiling and smiles back. Looking away, I catch her mother’s eye—cold and suspicious.

I get home and ring my old Fulham flat just in case Vinny happens to be home. I’m glad to hear that my voice is still on the answer machine. I don’t leave a message.

Then I find a piece of writing paper and begin to write to Jane care of Vinny. I don’t mention the wedding, of course. But even though I try various versions nothing sounds right. When I look again at what I’ve written for a fifth time I notice Marion’s address at the head of the paper.

m
arion is sitting in the living room on the phone with a towel on her head. A woman with red hair in a messy bun and “Miami Beach” sweat top is painting her toenails while Marion watches intensely. The woman looks up at me and says “Hello” in a slightly uncertain way.

I nearly rang Jane on the way back but I chickened out. I’ll ring her when I’ve got this crap out of the way. I did ring my mum and dad. Thank God I got the answer phone. I left a message saying that I had moved into a new flat and that it didn’t have a phone yet but as soon as it did I’d give them the number.

“Where have you been all afternoon?” asks Marion, still staring at the woman working on her feet.

“Oh, I just went for a walk,” I say, dropping down on the settee and putting my hands behind my head.

“Where did you go?” Marion is obviously mystified why anyone would want to do such a thing since it doesn’t involve people

or money or expensive things.

“Just round Chelsea,” I say.

“You sure that’s Mustique, Dawn? It looks much darker on the colour chart.”

The pedicurist looks up in terror at Marion, mumbles something and then shows her the bottle. Marion squints at it for a moment. “Doesn’t this look too dark? You can hardly see my tan,” she says.

I open my mouth but realize that I can’t be bothered to answer so I shut it again.

“Mmm.” Marion considers it for a moment. “It’ll have to do. It’s just because I’m wearing sandals at Marsha’s thing tonight. Come round tomorrow morning and take it off, though, will you?” Assuming she is talking to the pedicurist and she hasn’t found some new task for me, I channel surf for a moment—a woman wearing a sweatsuit, standing in a huge American kitchen is tearfully telling a man she is going to get her daughter back whatever it takes, then there’s a woman cutting up a kiwi fruit and telling us how easy something is, a woman sitting on a settee asking another woman how she felt when she heard the news. Marion is talking to me again.

“Sorry?”

“I said you’d better start getting ready.”

“What for?”

“For Marsha’s.”

“What time does it start?”

“About eight.”

“It’s only quarter to five,” I say.

“Well, we don’t want to be late.”

“How is it going to take me three hours to get ready?”

There is a pause as Marion stares at the woman whose hands are now visibly shaking. Then she says, “Once you get in that bath.”

“What?”

“Well, maybe you should go and rest up a little. You know how wine goes to your head when you’re tired,” says Marion. “I don’t want you embarrassing me again.”

“Again?”

Marion says nothing. I look at her for a moment but she is concentrating again on the pedicurist who is literally keeping her head down. I get up and walk to the door.

“Where’re you going?” says Marion. I don’t answer, partly because I can’t be bothered and partly because I don’t know. I really don’t know.

I walk around Eaton Square and up to Sloane Square where lines of traffic are gradually moving around the traffic islands and disappearing down the King’s Road and Sloane Street like a knot slowly being pulled undone. The light is low and yellowy and autumnal. It feels like the end of the summer holidays.

I decide to sit at a café in the square and have a cappuccino. After half an hour of idle origami with an empty sugar sachet I order another one.

By now I feel tired and sticky and want to have a bath. Marion is actually right—I could spend a couple of hours in there. I catch the waitress’s eye and do some air writing. She smiles and moments later brings me a saucer with the bill. It is £6.40. For two cappuccinos? Bloody hell! Ridiculous! God, I sound like my dad. I reach into my trouser pocket and know immediately that I haven’t got enough. I find a fiver, a twenty pence piece and a penny. Fuck! The taxi fare plus a couple of magazines and a bag of Maltesers have used most of the twenty Marion gave me.

I look round and immediately the waitress, a French girl with long black hair in bunches and thick black eye make-up, is at the table.

“Hi, look, sorry, I’m a bit short of cash. I’ll just dash across the road to the cashpoint shall I?” The girl looks and smiles and I realize that she hasn’t understood a word I’ve said. I take my card out of my wallet and start thrusting it into the air.

She laughs and says,

“Oh, OK.” I laugh too and get up to leave. On the way out I walk into the manager who has been watching us.

“Can I help you?” he says, obviously meaning the opposite.

“Yeah, I’m a bit short of cash so I’m just going across the road to get some more. Won’t be a minute.” He nods sullenly and turns away. By the time I get to the cashpoint a queue has mysteriously formed and I get stuck behind some daft old biddy in an anorak who, when she is asked whether she wants a receipt, tries to calculate to the nearest tree the effect it will have on the world’s non-sustainable forests. I’m just about to reach over her shoulder and press “no” on her behalf when she does it herself.

Then it’s my turn. I jam in my card, stab in my PIN number, choose “Cash” and the machine blinks back at me: “Card retained—refer to bank.”

I have to walk round the square, down the King’s Road a bit, behind Peter Jones, across Sloane Street and along to Eaton Terrace Mews to avoid the café and its justifiably suspicious manager. It’s nearly seven when I ring the bell and so Marion, who opens the door to me, is furious.

“Where the
hell
have you been?”

I can’t be bothered to argue.

“Just walking.”

“Walking? What is it with all this walking suddenly?”

“I dunno, I just like walking.”

The next morning I’m watching TV while Marion gets ready to go out. Our usual morning routine.

“What are you doing to today?” she asks, looking in her bag for something.

“Dunno, really.” I keep my finger on the remote so that the telly flicks through one channel after another.

“Will you turn that off while I’m talking to you?” says Marion, interrupting her ferreting. I hit the off button and we’re both slightly stunned by the sudden silence.

“That’s better,” say Marion after a moment. “You watch far too much TV for a young man. You should be out doing things. How do you expect to be able to make the kind of money you need to live in this style?” Well, that’s where you were supposed to come in, I think, almost laughing out loud at the idea of it. Did I ever really believe that?

Instead I say, “I don’t know.”

“Such a waste of a life,” says Marion sadly. I let her consider this tragedy for a minute. Then I switch on the telly again.

“Andrew?”

“What?”

There is a pause.

“I said what are you going to do today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The usual. I might go for a swim a bit later.” I swill the last of the coffee around my cup and wonder if it’s too cold to drink.

“That’s a good idea. I’m going to arrange for you to join the gym I go to down the street. It’s extremely good.”

“Thanks,” I say, switching the TV on again.

“They have a very good swimming pool and someone to swim alongside you all the way.”

There is a pause as I notice a girl in a swimsuit and hope for a moment that I might have unwittingly stumbled on the porn channel. It’s not—she’s actually modelling some white plastic garden furniture on a quiz show.

“What’s the point of that?”

“What’s the point of what?” says Marion, now scraping around in a drawer in her desk. There is another pause. This time I’m sure I’ve found it. No, it’s an American advert for “Sports Illustrated—the Swimsuit Edition.”

“The point of having somebody to swim alongside you,” I murmur vaguely.

“Erm.” Marion apparently finds what she is looking for. “To keep you company, take your order for the café afterwards. One of them is an astrologist—like she says, you can firm your thighs and know your future at the same time.”

Perhaps I was just rather drunk last night at Marsha’s but I’m beginning to suspect that I’m becoming quite incoherent. I can’t seem to finish a sentence these days, perhaps because I never have to say anything much, really. I just have to ask for things—in shops, restaurants, from Ana Maria. Sometimes I just point or raise my eyebrows. Marion’s friends don’t really want to hear from me and I certainly haven’t got anything to say to them.

I watch the TV for a moment longer and hear the hoover start up in the other room. Then I rush upstairs into the bedroom and open the wardrobe. My two scruffy old bags have long been chucked out but there is a nice new leather and canvas holdall in their place. I pull it down and then open the drawers.

My socks and underpants are neatly folded. Who else do I know who has their undies ironed and
folded?
I pick them up and throw them into the bottom of the bag. Then I look at them—all unfurled and twisted, like bodies thrown from a car crash. I pick up a pair of socks. They are silk ones Marion had Ana Maria buy for me when I complained that all mine had holes in them. I smell them and rub them gently against my cheek. They catch slightly on day-old stubble. Poor things. I fold them neatly again and put them back in the drawer. Then I do the same with the undies. I squash down the bag again and push it back onto the top shelf of the wardrobe.

On the way to the pool I go into a call box, put ten pence in, then a twenty just in case and begin to dial Vinny’s number at work. Just for a chat. Perhaps meet up for a drink. The number rings once and I hang up. I stand and look at the cards around me, offering Strict Nurse, 50DD, Asian Babe and New to London. I realize people walking past must assume I’m trying to choose which one to call so I leave quickly.

Marion and I spend a quiet evening in watching TV at opposite ends of the settee. I suppose she doesn’t want to go out to dinner because she doesn’t really want to talk to me. The feeling is mutual. I can hardly bear to look at her these days. I think she just wants to get this marriage thing out of the way and then dump me. I was wondering why she couldn’t find an English maid but then who would want to work six and a half days a week and get treated like shit by a mad woman? Fifteen grand sounds like quite a bargain on Marion’s part when I come to think about it. Every time she opens her mouth it is to say something ridiculously offensive. I’ve asked her a couple of times about the cheque but there is always a problem with it. Once she said it would take a while to raise it and I said, “Oh, come on, you must have that much in your current account.” She told me not to be impertinent. I just laughed at her. Another time she started writing it but then Channing rang and next thing she had to get ready for dinner which takes her about eight hours. I can hardly stand over her and make her write it but it’s just such a shag to keep pestering her. How did I choose such a wrong ’un? I don’t know whether she does it to be annoying or whether she simply doesn’t understand she is doing it. Which is worse?

I don’t sleep much that night. Marion tuts every time I turn over or move. Eventually she says, “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m getting married tomorrow, remember?”

“So? Just get some sleep. You want to look your best on your wedding day, don’t you?” I can’t be bothered to get cross with her. I change my mind about going through with it every few moments. £15,000 for nothing. I’d be divorced within a year and no one would be any the wiser. What if the police find out? What if I’m thrown into a nightmare scenario of official letters, police interviews, summonses. Would I go to prison? Or would it be just a fine? Marion would have to pay it—she got me into this mess. I look across at her, apparently asleep peacefully under her eyepads. Somehow I just know she wouldn’t be around if that happened. I turn over again, away from her, and hug my pillow. No, like Jerry said—and Mark too—people do it all the time these days, no one ever finds out. No one is ever caught.

I can smell again the disinfectant and hear the squeak of shoes on those hard, polished floors in the Registry Office.

Would it matter if in years to come I say to my future fiancée, “I’d prefer a Registry Office. Why? Not very religious myself and there is something else I should mention …” Almost embarrassed to think it, I find myself wondering, in case the situation ever possibly arose, about what Jane would want. I keep replaying a conversation with her over and over in my head. “Jane, I’ve told Marion it’s over. I’ve left her. I want to be with you. I love you.” “Want to be with you?” No, that doesn’t sound right.

I nod off for a moment and then wake up to find the room bathed in a pale orange light. I realize that I’ll never get back to sleep again so I get out of bed very quietly and go downstairs. I get myself a glass of orange juice from the fridge and flick on the telly. It’s some seventies detective thing my mum used to watch.

I suddenly have another panic—what if someone
sees
me? What if someone from work or one of my friends happens to be walking down the King’s Road and sees me coming out of the Registry Office in a dark suit with a girl in a dress?

They’d just assume I’m at someone else’s wedding. Besides, who cares?

My head suddenly feels heavy and my eyelids sting with lack of sleep. I rest my head on the back of the chair and close my eyes.