Confessions of a Sugar Mummy (4 page)

If one meeting is all you have, enjoy it.

Live in the present—it's about all you've got anyway.

So here I am, a desperately cheerful, postmenopausal woman leaving the house in W9, with the Sugar Mummy and her young husband still there in the kitchen—laughing and touching and doing all the things I have completely forgotten how to do—and Molly sitting watching them with a sardonic expression, as always. I know all the way down the road that she knows somehow that I am going to meet Alain and everything will go pear-shaped; she's like that, Molly, she always knows best.

I am trying not to think negative thoughts, but by the time the Trellick Tower has sunk before my advancing steps (a visual trick I have never understood but am always surprised by) I am in a state of gloom not experienced since at least last year.

Shop windows and mirrors. Please! The Who's-that-old-woman-it-can't-be-me syndrome.

The man my age (snowy hair, a cane) who carefully swerves to the outside of the pavement and allows me to walk on the inside, reminding me, as if I needed reminding, that women of my generation
are supposed to be living in the eighteenth century. Pass the wig and crinoline …

The happy young couple … how good and well-matched lovers at the same time of life appear when you're looking out for Sugar Mummies and their protégés! (Is that the right word: will Alain be my protégé when I can find a way to help him out of his present difficulties?)

By the time I've run through the pleasureless experiences that can happen to the woman of a certain age (that is, should she dare venture out at all), I've crossed the magic borderline between sad but now increasingly valuable W9 and the Hollywood of West London, Notting Hill (no matter that the grey, grim streets of both neighbourhoods seem much the same: Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant trod here and they're actually paved with gold).

La Speranza is only a stone's throw from the bookshop Hugh Grant languidly presides over in the movie. And as a result a lot of tourists come here. How am I supposed to know the latest trendy eateries? I come here
en famille
—that is to say, if my sister-in-law comes up from Gloucestershire with her kids to visit the dentist, we make it a treat afterwards to lunch at La Speranza—how boring is that?

But there he is: Alain, ten times more handsome than Hugh Grant and sitting in the window as if the best table must by rights be his.

Alain in the pale blue shirt last worn in Bandol. Hair washed, dark and slightly fluffy (sweet!) and face bearing no sign of the haggard gauntness etc. demonstrated last night. I notice his hands, smallish and well shaped, as I enter the restaurant (
don't
peer around like an elderly person who has lost their specs in the library: you've seen him already, you goof), because he's smoking (a Gauloise, natch) and a waiter is rushing up with a glass ashtray and he's drinking—yes it must be, it's all cloudy and white—a Pernod.

He sees me. He reacts perfectly. He knows how to look as though he's standing up when you arrive, but he isn't really. He's just so pleased to see you that you think you are both walking on air.

That's when I remember what day it was, that hot and sunny and deluding date in the Calendar of Love. Midsummer's day, that's what.

The trouble with meeting your Object of Desire and finding yourself sitting with him in the perfect restaurant is it's the end of the fairytale. What did Prince Charming and Cinders do when their wedding party was over and they'd made love in the beautiful rose-filled conservatory and toured the royal gardens and waved to the crowd? Get back to work? Try all over again for the video? If they were happy ever after, how did they fill the time? While I'm thinking these (frankly unhelpful) thoughts, Alain is ordering our lunch, and I nod every time he glances across at me with his great dark eyes and seems to be imploring me to agree with every single thing he decides for the rest of my life.

‘The Burrata', Alain says. ‘Mozzarella from the Abruzzi. Shall we have that? And the Fiore di Zucchini, would that be alright?'

I nod and almost gurgle ‘I do' before marrying this man. (It only occurs to me later that he must come to La Speranza pretty often to know their specialities: this Claire's cousin is perhaps the eater of the creamy buffalo cheese from the Abruzzi, Claire's cousin the nibbler of the baby marrow flowers in tempura, which look like a country fête decoration made by witches.) I'm jealous by proxy, and remind myself crossly that I might as well stay jealous of the wife.

Something tells me there are a whole lot of women who have enjoyed eating with Alain—there even seems to be one at the rear of the restaurant, half my age and waving at Alain's back view as if this will make him turn round and remember he's been madly in love with her all his life.

‘That's Esther Crane the sculptor', Alain answers my thoughts, and seems to know instinctively who sits behind him (but he was there before me: what's the matter with me?)

While I'm wondering whether or not to admit I've never heard of Esther Crane, someone comes into the restaurant and Alain changes, his face
grows noticeably pale and he pulls out the Gauloise packet—his fingers are too delicate to fumble for a cigarette but they almost do. As he lifts the lighter to it, I have to confess I see the slightest tremble as the coarse tobacco makes its first encounter with the flame.

‘Scarlett, Stefan', Alain says, inhales and coughs so the introduction seems, literally, to go up in smoke. Then, the cough turning to the laughter which accompanies anything he—or anyone else for that matter—says, the moment is smothered by conviviality, by the friendly greeting of one man to another. ‘Stefan Mocny', Alain amends. I wonder for a moment if he has forgotten my name. And to me, with one of those sweet smiles that cancel doubt, ‘we do houses … or rather Stefan does the houses and I do the tiles …'

And the laugh, self-deprecating this time, follows. A long twist of dark grey ash droops and falls on to the white linen tablecloth. Alain is rattled—and it's clear he wishes Stefan Mocny would go.

Now here is a rule for apprentice Sugar Mummies who find themselves in similar circumstances, i.e. staring down into the past of the Object of Desire and wanting—so fervently—to help:

Don't try to kid yourself that he wants the approaching old friend to skedaddle because he wishes to have you to himself and whisper sweet nothings in your ear. He can do this any time (so he believes at least) and there really is a reason why he doesn't want said old friend to hang around a minute longer. Reasons can include: (1) old friend is husband of the woman he last slept with; (2) old friend cheated on payments owed to Object etc. and this is not the time to remind about a debt; (3), but least likely, old friend might show keen interest in me and leave Alain alone and grieving for the Love Affair that Never Happened. (As I said, not probable.)

This is what Stefan Mocny looked like (he has now, by the way, pulled out a chair from the empty table for two next to us. He is ignored by the waiters—is he a frequent lunch companion of Alain, are they waiting for Alain to include Stefan in the lunch order, or what?) Anyway he (Stefan) has a strong Polish accent, fair, curly hair and an outdoors complexion so he's a builder alright and he's tall and burly and looks as if he's used to getting his
way, maybe a kind of blond mafia type.

‘The last project of Stefan's is by the canal', Alain says. He's smiling secretly at me as he supplies this clearly boring piece of info and I know somehow that we'll spend our lives—or at least this afternoon—together.

‘A
riad
in Kensal Green', Stefan says and this time he's the one to laugh while Alain thanks a waiter bearing the creamy wedge of cheese from the mountains of Italy. ‘So where …?' and Stefan turns to me now, twisting his plump, knotty body round a small chair, ‘where do you, erm …?'

As I tried to explain to Molly later, I had no idea I was going to come out with this. Words that would change my life and—as I soon realised—would change the perceptions of those around me from a dull woman of a certain age (well OK, it's the least self-loathing description I can come up with today) to interesting property owner, possible speculator, profit-seeking developer. I was transformed and if Alain was looking down at the book of matches he was pulling apart on the tablecloth, it didn't occur to me then to wonder why. All I knew was that he'd gazed down at the floor once before since our meeting in La Speranza, and he'd been staring at my left arm.

(Note to prospective Sugar Mummies:
do not
wear sleeveless tops. However proud you may be of your rejuvenated appearance, the giveaway hag's arm, with its sagging, wrinkled pouches, cannot be disguised.)

But property, I'm beginning to learn, can cover a multitude of sins. ‘I live in W9 and today my maisonette goes on the market', I told Stefan Mocny …

The rest of lunch went by in a blur. Waiters brought the crinkly courgette flowers fried in batter, and a plate of a rustic ham approved by Alain was set on the table—but I couldn't honestly say that I ate anything at all. It was more as if the whole world was suddenly determined to eat
me.

Here was Stefan, pointing across the road: ‘The office of Crookstons is bang opposite us, Scarlett!' (Everyone was using my name now, too. I'm used to being a no-name: it's part of being invisible, the fate of all the billions of us over-age women on the planet. We should all be called Pluto, the planet demoted, for its lack of size and importance, to the status of a minor star.)

‘I know Martin Crookston very well', Stefan continued, while Alain picked at his prosciutto (even I can recognise that—they sell it in Tesco—but this one is undoubtedly from Castel del Sangri or wherever the head waiter murmured deferentially to Alain). ‘We can go and see Martin, and on the way to your house we'll visit the
riad
', says Stefan, who must have picked up my infatuation—if that is what it is; Molly says it must be the HRT pills which somehow got stuck in my system since I stopped taking them two years back. ‘You'll see plenty of Alain's tiles there', he adds with a significant laugh.

Still, it's midsummer day so why shouldn't I indulge myself, grow rich on the proceeds of Saltram Crescent and enjoy having gone up in the world? Even Esther Crane is swivelling round and staring at me with real interest now, as if I'm a rival and not just an older relative Alain is giving lunch to before it's time to board the coach home. And—glory on glory—I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror above the banquette and hardly recognise it at first. I look much younger—I definitely do! Maybe it's the Pinot Grigio—yes, they sell it here too—maybe it's the trancelike state the presence of Alain induces in me (he's drinking a red wine that lends him that little bit of extra colour he needs. Oh
aren't we both beautiful!).

As well as catching the eye of other lunchers at La Speranza, it seems to be much easier to hear what they're saying, too. I'm floating (OK I was drunk, but I'm trying to recapture the feeling) and as I hover above the two ladies at the table by the door I hear one say to the other, ‘Well, at least none of my children is divorced.' I see her fellow-luncher wince, and I think to myself—in my moment of triumph at having just what I want, if only for an hour, and what I want is to be a person again—I think how awful for the two ladies that all they have left is the point-scoring, the bitching and all the long days and nights when no one wants to take you out, and you hate your friends and your husband if you have one—

‘Scarlett', Stefan is saying, ‘would you like to go now?' And I look round the restaurant and see at least four more young men all standing by Stefan, whom he introduces as assistants and builders, and I begin to realise something dimly, perhaps I'd had too much of the Pinot Grigio, but it seems we're all in business now, and I haven't even crossed the road to Crookstons or told Molly my plan to put the flat on the market. She'll be quite hurt when I tell her tonight …

‘I'll call you later', Alain says to me when the bill has been produced out of nowhere and my card has been pushed into the machine that half-eats it and holds on tight until I remember the PIN number and too late wonder why they've taken such a big tip.

‘You'll call me?' I say, knowing I sound like a fifteen-year-old. ‘When?'

This wasn't how it was meant to go, not at all, not at all. The long, exciting, wonderful afternoon has disappeared, sacrificed to property.

‘I've seen the tiles', Alain laughs, but he doesn't answer my question so he may not ring at all.

I'm mortified; I can think of no other word for it. Hadn't Alain said he was going to show me his tiles for my next project—has he discovered there is no ‘mansion in Holland Park' and that my life is as rickety and uncertain as his? Is it not worth his while to spend time with me in the office of Crookstons, a waste of his talent to look round the flats I shall exchange mine for? Unless …

My head is spinning by the time I cross Westbourne Park Road in the company of Stefan Mocny and his four employees and enter the definitely not air-conditioned offices of Martin Crookston. But the thought remains and solidifies as
the appointment is made. (‘Martin' is red-tied, rosy-cheeked, genial and strangely absent, unable to recall what he has just arranged only seconds earlier.)

‘Four fifteen', I say for the fifth time as the heartbreaking sight of Alain walking slowly towards Notting Hill fades as he rounds a corner by Elgin Crescent. Worse still, a Citroën with Esther Crane at the wheel slows, enters the crescent and stops to give him a lift to Claire's cousin's house. Well, they're all artists together, aren't they? I could die.