Confessions of a Sugar Mummy (13 page)

‘I shall inform my solicitor immediately', I say.

Don't ask. I've no idea where the extra hundred thousand will come from after the sale of my flat, to pay for dream house. Maybe the bank will lend it to me, ha ha. But I still consider my luck to be ‘in'—even if the owners of dream house are really the ones having a lucky day. They might as well stay in Ireland and dance with the leprechauns after finding a Crazy Jane such as myself who is willing to hand them a crock of gold.

Holding my head high, and after assurances to Crookstons that I will be in touch shortly, we continue on one of the lengthy but tiny distance
drives which takes us back home.

And I'm right; good fortune smiles on us when we're there too. For one thing, the house is empty and I mean the whole house. The builders have gone, leaving a half-boxed-in new staircase leading upwards, and, through one of the holes in the ground-floor ceiling, a spiral staircase in imitation ‘old' cast-iron (in fact, plastic). This is clearly meant to service the lower maisonette and I can use it to ‘access' my room.

But I don't want to. With a new confidence I stride ahead of Alain to the kitchen—which has no one there, too: no Howie, no Molly, no Gloria back from St Lucia with her tales of woe amongst the Pitons. There is wine, both red and white, and we start in on it. Ham and salami in the fridge. Yesterday's bread.

We're going to end up being very happy indeed, Alain and me.

It's strange how love puts a kind of squeezer on the stomach so even the smallest mouthful feels like climbing (and then being forced to eat) Mount Everest. There's very little ham—Howie has clearly been at it: telltale signs are fatty, bread-crumbed edges all gone, a habit which accounts for a tubby appearance at the best of times; and salami, just a handful of slices left, rinds carefully tucked under the greaseproof-paper wrapping. A tired-looking casserole (definitely not exchanged for sexual favours, as I read is the custom amongst the literati) sits on the gas hob. Neither Alain nor I have warmed it up, for fear it's Molly's rabbit Provençale (a short description was enough to deter him,
though he's clearly hungry and I'm not).

There's even a candle, stored since the last power cut, in the drawer where a messy assortment of Elastoplast guards against bleeding in event of a minor injury (OK, the increasingly frequent stumble or fall, accompaniment of old age and on no account to be admitted) and paracetamol, which I see Alain look at in an interested way when I slide open the drawer to extract the kitchen scissors. The candles are irritatingly stuck together, perhaps the victims of a lesbian orgy in Molly's younger, Sapphic days.)

And—God, how embarrassing—there's a copy of my will. I wondered where I'd put it, last time I had a clear-out in my room, and I suppose I'm relieved to see it (I'm not, actually), but it does remind me at least that I need to make a new one. Or should I slide it under the used silver foil (really, who wants remnants of last Christmas's turkey?) and sales-bargain packets of clingfilm that must belong to Molly's Hausfrau phase shortly after the Greek passions went out of the door.

Here I am, holding the will because paralysed with indecision (what's new?), and I think not for the first time what a wonderful, calming presence Alain has. With me being a hysteric and him
practically catatonic, we couldn't be better matched.

I'm especially grateful that he makes no reference to the obvious identity of the document I'm holding as if I'm about to go down in the
Titanic
with my will clutched to my bosom. That's the thing with Alain: he's either super-tactful or he just doesn't care. It doesn't really matter which. But it would be a dereliction of my duty in writing this cautionary tale for Sugar Mummies if I neglected to extrapolate on so important a matter as a Last Will and Testament—indeed, a life or death matter for the Sugar Mummy, who must conceal or reveal her intentions only after extremely careful deliberation:

Never allow the Object of Desire to bring up the subject of inheritance/ his chances of having somewhere to live etc. after you die/bank loans and mortgage arrangements which require (a) marriage; (b) surrender of title deed to your property; (c) added clauses in incomprehensible jargon; (d) the inclusion of relatives (who turn out to be past lovers) in your list of bequests. A Venetian mirror left to Marilyn can transpire to consist of a secret code involving your estate, and rob you of all your assets in your lifetime.

If the existence of a will is leaked or the document inadvertently discovered by your man,
destroy it in front of him and immediately write another in which everything goes to him, his name appearing in large letters at every possible opening in the will. Leave this around the house (suggestion: on hall table, unmissable as it will lie there with the mail; in your boudoir, i.e. on your dressing-table, engagingly smeared with mascara and eye shadow; or (yes, he'll only find it if he helps around the house, but its positioning may urge him to do housework at last, depending, of course, on how long he thinks you have to live) in the kitchen drawer. Ensure your actual will is safely with your solicitor.

This leads to the most crucial point when discussing the Last Statement of Your Intentions towards your Object of Desire.
Do not leave
anything sharp or dangerous lying around, for obvious reasons. Lifers are released after only a brief period of incarceration these days, and taking that route may well be considered worthwhile by him, depending, of course, on the extent of your wealth.

So it's a candle-lit dinner in the kitchen of what I will look back on one day with nostalgia (maybe, what for?) or possibly amnesia, as it occurs to me
that I've been here eight years but can't remember anything of significance about the period. (Maybe, when you grow old, there's nothing memorable about
you
, so that same blurring of fact and fantasy occurs when you try to look back at the past.

But I don't feel nostalgic tonight. Alain has succeeded in making very strong coffee—God knows how, when the Nescafe I give Molly (mean, I know; I keep freshly roasted beans for myself alone, when I can afford them) and a bag of something with a chicory smell (Howie) seem to be all there is. But Alain's French, so he probably unearthed the Real Thing in some untouched cupboard—along with a half bottle of cooking brandy, which tastes surprisingly good. I've slipped the will back into the drawer, under a porn mag (must be Howie: how
dare
he?) and I have to say that I wondered a bit at the way the paracetamols had all gone, with the exception of half a panel. I didn't take them, unless I've really become scatty, so it must have been Alain: do they plus brandy plus two bottles of supermarket wine account for the smile (that smile again) which he's beaming across the table at me?

I don't care. Tonight, even if it means the plastic spiral, we're going up to my room. Even if Molly has set up
Gone
… I'll simply smash the plasma screen
and live happily ever after with Alain …

Well, you were expecting it, weren't you? No, the doorbell didn't ring—not then, anyway. Nor did the phone, which sat on the kitchen table looking as if it had a spell on it, a strict instruction from ‘on high' not to ring.

It was Alain. He was still sitting smiling and gazing (it was thrilling at the time) straight into my eyes, when he suddenly leapt to his feet and started pulling something out of his pocket, and then he went off like an alarm clock, if you can imagine such a cool person leaping in the air and emitting bell-like peals—and then I saw that what he'd pulled from his pocket was an air ticket.

And then I remembered, he'd said perfectly clearly in the little red car as we drove back that he had to go back to Bandol. Of course, he hadn't said when; how could I have dreamt it would be tonight?

But it is. Alain has gone. And the only words he said as I ran desperately up into the ruined hall after him were ‘I'll be back'.

But will he? And when?

‘No peace for the wicked!' May's favourite saying and now I see why she'd mutter it whenever I'd done what most children/ adolescents do, i.e. run away (OK only as far as the local shop selling ice-creams and then run back again) and, more serious, run away to Soho aged fourteen (arrested half-way there and driven back) while my parents were away and May had to answer for the consequences.

It's being bad from the very start of your life that makes you extra depressed at a time like this. God questions me as I lie in bed and wish (a first, this) that Howie and Molly were in the spare room and there was some human life on the planet. As the Civil War shows Scarlett in deep widow's weeds and
Ashley walks about exhausted (rather like Alain, I can't help thinking, but that makes me cry again) I try to answer the Almighty's interrogations (this section to be skipped by Sugar Mummies, out of pure boredom if nothing else).

God: You knew Alain was married. You had even accepted hospitality from his wife. Did you not foresee the trouble that would arise if you insisted on trying to make him end his marriage?

Answer: How can I tell God that I'd been perfectly happy to accept a threesome? It doesn't sound polite somehow, even if God himself is sharing a sort of Hormead Road (three levels: Heaven, Limbo and Hell) with the other two members of the Holy Trinity? (At least, if I'd gone for that dreadful set-up, I'd have been getting rent from Limbo. But, on the ground floor, I'd have been in Hell.)

God: It is a venal sin to offer bribes in return for sexual favours. You must do penance for this.

Answer: What sexual favours? Bitter laugh. Maybe God really doesn't know the difference between celibacy and clitoral orgasm. But why should he? He impregnated the Virgin Mary, after all, by sending a messenger who informed the mother-to-be that this was her new ranking.

So no more disapproval for Sugar Mummies who don't want to find God when they've just discovered sex with their Object of Desire. But an instruction or two doesn't come amiss at the other kind of time—when the Object has returned to connubial bliss and you have no idea when, if ever, he will come back to you:

Don't call him, however great the temptation. Sod's Law—and God's too for all I know—is that his wife will answer the phone and you will be caught, a bunny boiler whose paws are caught in a trap.

Do add up where your finances are at. Have you made any foolish offers recently, for things you really can't afford? Cancel them now.

I might as well own up that adhering to these two rules was impossible for me. I thought first about the dream house—I was honest with myself—a voice even said loudly somewhere above my head that of course I knew perfectly well that I couldn't afford it. I was about to be paid a fortune for my flat and I still wouldn't be able to afford it.

But I have to be there with Alain. He can sell something, surely … But then I see a handful of tiles at £3.50 each (or even a true Tuscan tile at £10) and I know we're just not going to be able to raise the money. I might as well stay here, then.

This is where all my dreams end and the lovely house just has to go up in smoke with them.

Why should I bother to go on living?

The bad thing about hope is not that it springs eternal (it's hype that does that) but that it's so hard to give it up. Every sound or remark—or, in the case of horoscopes, strange weather patterns and all the other encouragers of false hope, raisers of expectations and dashers of overflowing cups—betoken a coming joy. You are thrilled at the connections and correspondences between things; you're a magician, a pal of John Dee in Elizabethan England; you're a Neo-Platonist; you belong to the School of Night.

I'm just thinking all this—at the same time, it must be said, as discovering a wart tucked in neatly by my right eye and, hell's bells, another down on the fourth finger of my left hand (any symbolism here?—it's the wedding ring finger, natch)—I'm
just brooding on the alliance of hope and magic when the noise goes off downstairs. It's like a parakeet choking on a cough lozenge, shrill and mellifluous at the same time. What the hell can it be?

If those distinctly unhoped-for signals of old age, the warts, have made me a witch (I refuse to check yet for a grey beard) they certainly seem to have rendered me braver, less—OK—full of bathos than I was an hour or so ago just after Alain sprang into the air and ran like the last ray of hope right out of my life.

If it's a burglar down there making some kind of multicultural cry of triumph at finding the silver laid out by Howie on the step of the stair by the downstairs loo—now why did Howie have to do that? Why was I so overcome with grief at Alain's departure that I left the forks and spoons etc. ready for the next taker?—then I'm going down to greet that burglar. I'll give him a piece of my mind. And it occurs to me, as I shrug on an old tweed jacket and shout ‘Who's there?' down the plastic spiral into the hall, that my voice is lower and gruffer than usual. Is this why old women are feared and hated so much? Because under the witch disguise they've actually become men and so are rivals for power?

I didn't need to get as far as the front door, though. I hear a muffled electronic growl and then an ear-splitting click and the door swings open. I must have pressed a button, but what button; how dare Mr Nyan install this horrible entryphone without even consulting me? I could—and have—let just anybody in.

Hope gives a painful flicker somewhere inside my rib cage like acute indigestion. He's come back, he couldn't bear the thought of leaving me here even for one night—that kind of tosh. However, nothing would stop the voice and accompanying pang: It's Alain! He doesn't want to go back and pack up; he wants to start a new life with me. And, despite myself, as old novels used to say, I receive a clear picture of Dream House, border of wild lavender by the off-its-hinges front gate, side garden with shed, and all.