Upgrading (39 page)

I wake up after what can only be ten minutes or so with a headache and the makings of a stiff neck. Literally in the cold hard light of day I’ve decided not to do it. I’ll pack my stuff and sneak out. Poor Ana Maria—left in the lurch. Still, it won’t be the first time it’s happened to a bride and not many grooms could have as good a reason as I have for not turning up. I’ll never have to see any of them again. I’ll get out of this, out of this whole mess. I wish I had someone to talk to about it. Someone normal.

I go upstairs to have a shower and a shave and by this time Marion is awake. It’s just gone eight. I can smell bacon frying downstairs. Ana Maria has obviously decided that her husband needs a hearty breakfast. Or is that the condemned man? A thought strikes me: isn’t it unlucky to see your bride the day of the wedding? I look at my foamy face in the mirror and laugh. How unlucky can I get? Marion calls to me.

“Yeah?” I carry on shaving.

“You all right in there?”

“Fine.”

“Nervous?”

Am I? Not really, not any more.

“No, fine.”

“Good.” Marion comes to the bathroom door and I look at her. Is this one of the last times I’ll see her? She catches sight of herself in the mirror and ruffles up her hair.

“I’ve arranged for Chris to take Ana Maria. He says to leave here at ten fifteen to be safe. You should leave maybe a little earlier—why not walk? You’re very keen on walking at the moment.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then we can all come back here and have a glass of champagne.”

“OK. Are we having lunch after the, er, the thing?” There is a pause. Marion ruffles her hair again, still gazing at her reflection.

“Do you think I should go shorter this Fall?”

I walk downstairs and there is a scream and a giggle from the kitchen. The door slams shut and then a moment later another Ana Maria emerges.

“Hello, Mr. Andrew,” she says, as if reading a script. “I am Ramona, Ana Maria’s friend. I cook you breakfast because you must not see Ana Maria this morning.”

I look at her for a moment, noticing that she is almost identical to my bride. “I just want a cup of coffee and some Rice Krispies, please,” I tell her. I wander over to the settee and switch the telly on again. The girl goes back into the kitchen.

“Now
I’m
feeling a tad nervous,” says Marion, coming into the room. Somehow this is obviously supposed to be my fault. I carry on staring at the telly. “Is that the suit you’re going to wear? Well? Stand up and let me look at you.”

I glance up at her. Immaculate in a bright yellow suit with black brooch and necklace.

“Oh, Marion, for God’s sake.”

“Stand up and let me look at you.” I do as she says. She tightens my tie and picks some imaginary fluff of my shirt. “Where’s your jacket?”

“Over there.”

“Don’t leave it on the settee. It’ll get crumpled. Hang it up.”

Ramona creeps into the room with a tray.

“Ana Maria, pick up Mr. Andrew’s jacket and hang it somewhere, will you,” says Marion to her. “Oh, and I’ll have a coffee—decaff and some of my special herbal detox pills.”

Ramona pauses, looking confused and frightened for a moment. Then she whispers, “Yes, madam.” Leaving the tray on the coffee table she makes a dash for the kitchen.

“No, forget the coffee,” says Marion, still picking fluff off me. “Just some of that organic Chilean honey in hot water.”

“Yes, madam,” says Ramona, now in abject terror.

“Oh, and make sure it’s mineral water. Not that cow piss out of the tap.” She carries on patting my shirt and adjusting my tie. “You want to look your best even just for this wedding—” She stops and looks at me quizzically. I give a little snort of laughter.

“It’s Ana Maria’s friend,” I explain. “Ana Maria doesn’t want me to see her this morning.”

“Oh, OK. Sweet. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yes. I know it’s not a real wedding but it’ll be good practice anyway. I have to tell you, I was so much better at my second wedding. Everyone said so.”

“What about about your third and fourth?” I ask, looking her straight in the eye.

“There, that’ll do,” she says, patting down my lapels. “I’ll see you at the Registry Office.”

Chris rings the entryphone dead on ten.

“The big day,” he says.

“Fuck off,” I tell him, not looking away from the telly. Marion has gone back upstairs to shout at the pedicurist. Ramona appears again.

“Mr. Andrew, Ana Maria says you should set off.”

I’m about to tell her to get lost but then I think I’d actually quite like to get out of the house. I pick up my jacket, push past Chris in the doorway and walk out.

I’m slightly stuck for cafés so I wander into Peter Jones. Women in pearls and stripy shirts with up-turned collars are picking up crystal glasses. “Something like this would be perfect for a casual supper party in Gloucestershire,” says one to her mother.

“But will it fit in the dishwasher?” the mother points out, triumphantly. They look up at me. I must be staring.

Finally I make it up to the computer department and so I start to play patience on one of the machines. Someone asks if they can help. I say no, thank you. After losing a couple of games and finally winning one I check my watch. It’s nearly ten twenty-five. I’m not surprised. I follow a woman with a pushchair into the lift and go down to the ground floor.

Outside it’s started to rain. There is a taxi coming down the other side of the road so I dash across and grab it. Funny how you can always get a taxi when you don’t want one. I tell the driver “Chelsea Town Hall, please” and reach into my pocket. Five quid. That’ll do. The traffic inches along in a dismal line. Ahead there is nothing but rain-blurred rear lights. It takes us ten minutes but finally I see the Town Hall coming up on the left. The driver slides back the glass and twists his head round.

“Wanna geddout ’ere, mate? Might be quicker.”

I think about it for a moment.

“No, just carry on.”

“Suit yourself.”

By nearly twenty to eleven we are just yards away and there is Ana Maria wearing a bright orange suit, peeping out anxiously from the doorway. She is carrying a little bunch of flowers. Oh, God, Ana Maria, why are you making this worse? Or do you just think that you’re never going to get a chance to do it properly? With a real husband who really loves you? You deserve better than this.

Chris is standing next to her, looking around furiously. Then, behind them I notice Charles and Victoria. The witnesses, Marion said. Very kind of them. But there is Channing, wearing a Tartan suit, orange shirt and a black tie. And beside him are Farrah and her new boyfriend who looks very uncomfortable. What the hell
is
this? I notice Marion’s friend Renata and another couple we met recently from Hong Kong or somewhere. Daria is looking madder than ever with thick black, pencilled-on eyebrows and the two French boys are lighting cigarettes. A woman we were introduced to at Aspinalls is checking her face in her compact while another woman I recognize from New York is talking to her and adjusting her hat. Even the couple we bumped into after our first date are there. Scattered around them are other rich, glamorous oddballs I’ve met over the last few weeks. I see Christopher Maurice-Jackson looking at his watch and the woman talking to him is Marsha whose house we went to the other night. Standing behind them, smiling that 1000-watt smile and listening intently to a Middle Eastern-looking woman I don’t recognize, is Mark.

The whole fucking world is here.

Marion has invited everyone she knows. They’re all here to witness my humiliation, to take part in this ridiculous pantomime. “Look,” she is saying. “Look at what I can make my toyboy do. Much funnier than jumping through a hoop, don’t you think?”

I lean forward. “Just …”

“Yeah?” says the cab driver, watching the traffic anxiously.

I take a deep breath. Chris has spotted us and is moving forward hesitantly, looking down into the cab window to check it is me. He says something to Ana Maria and she looks straight across at me.

“Just keep on.”

“What?”

“I said, just keep going.”

“I thought you wanted—”

“Well, I don’t now. I’ve changed my mind. Drive on. And lock the doors, please.”

“What?” says the driver, looking round.

“Please will you just lock the doors and drive on.”

Chris has dashed down the steps, through the shoppers with their umbrellas and across the pavement to the cab. His hand reaches the door just as it clicks locked. The other side of the steamy, rainy glass, his face is a mixture of surprise and anger. We stare at each other then I throw myself back into the seat.

He pulls at the handle again and shouts something. The cab driver is also shouting. He moves forward and Chris is dragged along with us a few yards. He starts to bang on the glass.

“What the fuck’s going on?” says the driver, looking round. “Oi, fuck off.”

“Look, just drive, will you.”

Chris’s hand hits the glass again, leaving a perfect hand print. The driver stops again.

“He a friend of yours?”

“No, no. Please, let’s just get out of here.”

“You’ll be lucky. Have you seen this traffic? What the fuck you want me to do? Drive over it?”

Chris knocks on the glass hard and his face, streaked with rain, contorted with fury, appears inches away from the window, shouting for me to stop.

“Look, I don’t want no trouble,” says the cab driver, beginning to sound nervous now. “What’s the matter with him?”

“Nothing. Let’s just get out of here. Can’t you overtake or something?”

“If he smashes that window—”

“He won’t. Please! Just get going. Look, let’s turn off here.”

I look round again and there is a flash of orange. It’s Ana Maria. Her hair is flattened and scraggly with the rain and her mascara is running down her cheeks. She looks at me mystified for a moment and then starts pleading and crying, her fingers trying to push down the window.

“I’m sorry,” I shout. But it sounds like I’m sneering.

“Who’s she?” says the cab driver, trying to keep his eyes on the road. “Look, what the hell’s going on here?”

“Take this right,” I yell. “Look here, we can go now.”

I look round again and Chris has his arm round Ana Maria a few yards behind us. The driver sees this as well and seems relieved. But just then Chris and Ana Maria move aside. I know what is coming next.

Marion’s face appears, miraculously dry because someone is holding an umbrella over her. She is calm and says loudly but without shouting, “What
are
you doing?”

I look her full in the face, realizing that it is probably the last time I’ll ever see it.

“I said, what are you doing, you pathetic little piece of shit?”

Is she smiling?

It’s very faint, but she’s definitely smiling. And then it comes to me. Marion and me: it’s not about arm candy, a blank canvas for her to draw on or even sex with someone less than half her age.

It’s about sadism. And I’ve fallen for it. There are no whips or nipple clamps, here, no, it’s much weirder than that. Marion just loves torturing me: making me run around after her, poor and lonely and bored to death. She loves the thought of my making a fool of myself with her outrageous camp friend in a restaurant, looking like her lap dog in posh shops, cutting a bit of my dick off for her and now taking part in a grotesque farce in front of her friends. No wonder she is prepared to pay so much for
me
rather than anyone else to marry Ana Maria.

The cage I’ve been in for the last two months or so isn’t a gilded one, it’s one of those accessories for bondage you see on late-night television shows about kinky sex. The tight lead I’ve been on is the leather-studded one you see a corset-wearing woman in a black, plastic-lined cell using on a bank manager or a civil servant.

“ ’Kin’ ’ell” mutters the driver and does a sharp right. I keep staring ahead, not daring to look round. A few hundred yards down the street we stop.

“Right, get out,” says the driver.

“I’m sorry, can we go on?”

“I’ve had enough of you, mate.”

“Look, please. It’ll be fine now.” I apologize some more and tell him where to take me. He curses again under his breath and we set off.

When we finally arrive, the rain is hammering down harder than ever but I hardly feel it as I get out. I reach into my pocket and pull out the single fiver. The meter says £11.80. I look at it and then at the driver and dumbly hand over my only note. It takes a second for him to realize that he is not getting anything else.

“I don’t fuckin’ believe it.”

I turn round and walk through the traffic with the driver shouting after me.

She is nowhere to be seen and I’m just about to ask someone when I spot her at a till at the back of the shop, handing over some change. The customer, an old woman, says something to her and she smiles.

“Jane.”

She looks up at me and then freezes.

“Andrew.”