Sugar Mummy (11 page)

Daria, who has managed to put herself the far side of Marion,
gives a little laugh and touches Marion's hand.

'We played such an amusing game at Marina's the other night,'
she says, laughing again at something that just cannot be that funny. The two French
guys start laughing as well but this makes her nervous so she stops and eyes them
suspiciously, then she continues, 'We played a game where you have to say who from
history you would invite to your ideal dinner party.'

'Not you, that's for sure,' one of the French guys whispers
to the other.

'Who would you invite, Marion? I wanted Marilyn Monroe, Mozart,
Einstein, Peter the Great, Tutankhamun, and Keats. Imagine the conversation!'

'Yeah, great, except they wouldn't be able to understand each
other,' sniggers one of the French guys. I smile too at this.

'Marina always knows such great games,' says Farrah, trying to
smooth over the embarrassment.

Anna Maria and another South American girl I have not seen before
bring in plates of Parma ham and figs. We eat with Marion's huge, heavy, silver
cutlery. I look round the table. Marion, who I notice only has figs, eats slowly
using only her fork while listening passively to Daria. She gives me a slow, subtle
wink which makes me feel ten times better.

Farrah is telling David something. The French boys have their
heads down low over their plates and shovel in their food ravenously, throwing in
lots of bread. I realise that I have one thing in common with them: we have to try
and eat as much as possible tonight because it's free food. Christopher Maurice-Jackson
takes a tiny mouthful, puts his elbows on the table and forms a roof with his fingers
as he chews.

My mother always asks for small portions of everything. 'Just
a little bit for me, please. Ooh! Far too much, someone else better have this one.'
I remember one Sunday lunchtime at my grandparents. My grandfather had had his first
stroke and was 'not quite himself', as everyone put it. I didn't know quite who
he was now but whoever it was, he wasn't very nice. He had never been very affectionate
or even very friendly towards his grandchildren. Me and Grandpa never went fishing
together and he didn't have a mysterious shed at the bottom of the garden full of
weird, dangerous things like stuffed fish and hacksaws.

He had a car, well, a series of cars, I suppose, over the years.
Always very nice ones - Mercedes, Jaguars and I think he was one of the first people
where they lived to have a BMW. When we went over for Sunday lunch, as we did every
Sunday, he would wash his car all morning and spend the afternoon waxing it, polishing
it and hoovering the inside, occasionally shooting me and my sister a suspicious
glance as we played on the lawn or in the driveway. At the time we thought it was
the one good thing about Grandpa that he left us to do whatever we wanted and play
anywhere as long as we kept away from the car. Looking back, it's a bit sinister
really that he didn't mind us messing about in the road or with the lawn mower,
just as long as we didn't damage his precious bloody motor.

God, I hated that house. It was a mean little 1950s bungalow
on an estate about three-quarters of an hour's drive from us. It always smelled
stale and musty. My grandparents' huge, ugly old furniture was crammed into it,
ridiculously out of proportion, hopelessly out of place. Doors wouldn't open properly
because there wasn't room. Wherever you stood, you were in the way of something
or someone. It was cold and empty and at the same time stifling and overcrowded.
When we arrived Grandma would check us over, trying to hide her disappointment and
we would kiss her very quickly on the cheek. I think she had seen Prince Charles
do something similar to the Queen when he was young. Grandpa would pass through
as quickly as he could. He died before I could tell him, 'I know how you feel. I
don't want to be here either.'

Their stuff had been brought back from India where they had 'stayed
on', as my grandmother called it. I realise now that she hoped to give the impression
that they had been part of the colonial service or that they were old army types.
In fact, my grandfather had worked for an electronics company out there until, as
with the colonials they always pretended to be, the Indians decided that they could
do it better themselves and needed no more help from the British.

This particular lunchtime we sat in their dining room as usual,
their large, grim dresser casting a menacing shadow over me and my sister as we
ate Grandma's thick, tasteless food and struggled with her huge, unwieldy bone-handled
cutlery in silence. Our parents' polite conversation was stretched like worn lace
across the table, ready to break at any moment. In the end it was broken by my grandfather
or, at least, the person he became after his stroke.

My grandma graciously offered my mother some pudding, guests
first, of course, making it clear that Mum would never really be family. As always,
my mother smiled weakly and said, 'Oh, just a bit for me, please.' This is what
she had said when offered the roast lamb and the packet oxtail soup before it. It
was what she said to everything. Just a little bit, just a little one, don't bother
about me, I'll make do with this. No, really.

Grandpa stood up (at first I thought he was going to the loo)
and shouted at her: 'Oh, for Christ's sake, woman, have some more. There's bloody
heaps of it. Take as much as you want.'

Then he sat down calmly and waited for Grandma to pass him his.
My mum was horrified. She turned her eyes away from him and obediently handed her
plate back to Grandma who spooned some more thin, evaporated milk rice pudding onto
it and then served the rest of us. It was actually quite frightening but I also
wanted to laugh. What was really so funny was to hear Grandpa say 'bloody'. We ate
in silence and fled soon after, leaving the old bugger vacuuming angrily under his
rear passenger seat.

In the car on the way home my mother took a tattered paper tissue
from the sleeve of her cardigan and began to sob. My dad quickly put his arm round
her during a straight stretch of road and muttered something about Grandpa not meaning
it, not being himself.

'Oh, I know he can't help it,' my mother sniffled, 'old people
get like that, especially after what has happened to him. It just took me by surprise,
that's all. It was a bit of shock, I'm not used to being shouted at like that.'

David is talking to me across Farrah. 'Sorry?' I say.

'I was just asking what line of business you're in.'

What line of business? Pissing about in an office and skiving
off to watch a rich woman shop.

'I'm in media sales,' I say instead, trying to make it sound
like a serious, heavyweight profession.

'Space,' says David. 'Er, yeah.'

'Friend of mine did that for two years. Then he went into media
buying. You know, gamekeeper turned poacher. He's making a packet, huge basic plus
commission, must be on
 
£120K by now.'

'Who's that?' Farrah asks sweetly.

'Rob,' David says quickly to her. 'And he does consultancy work
now as well. I wouldn't be surprised if he sets up on his own soon.'

'Great,' I say without enthusiasm. 'What about you? What do you
do?'

It sounds really aimless and studenty, as if I'm expecting him
to say that he is travelling a bit before starting teacher training.

'At the moment I've got a number of projects on the go,' he says,
swallowing, obviously glad I've asked. 'I deal in old cars. Not vintage ones, you
know, not London to Brighton crap but sporty little numbers from the fifties - Aston
Martins, Panthers and the like. There's an incredible market for them down here.
My dad and my brother pick them up for next to nothing up in the North East, we
drive them down, I've got a couple of lads who check them over and do them up and
then we flog 'em. Amazing what they go for.'

'Brilliant.' Part of me is, I'm afraid to say, genuinely impressed
but mainly I'm amazed, as usual, at how easy it all sounds.

'They're such beautiful cars,' says Farrah with an almost pained
look on her face. 'And my brother in New York is going to help him import American
ones as well - Buicks, Cadillacs and stuff.'

David cuts her off, 'Also me and my mate are opening a club in
South London next month and we're going to use these cars to ferry the VIP guests
to and fro. Emma Bunton and that bloke from EastEnders - what's his name? - are
doing the opening night. I'll get you and Marion on the guest list. You can use
the VIP suite.'

'Oh, right, thanks.' Yeah, thanks, but somehow I don't think
so, you flash tosser. Emma Bunton and EastEnders!

That's the kind of thing that would impress most of the people
in my office but I think I can aim higher than that now. I look round at Marion
who is listening to the French boys and grinning. I stare harder but she doesn't
see me. David has more.

'Then me and this mate of mine from the army are going to start
opening clubs in Europe, Ibiza and places. There are no licensing laws or any of
that shit and some of those clubs are huge-'

Then he is telling me that he can get me some Versace stuff,
seconds, dead cheap, all sizes when I realise that the one consolation that comes
with this wanker, other than that my girlfriend is richer than his, is that, with
a bit of luck, he might be in prison by this time next year.

Anna Maria and the other girl clear away our plates. We move
onto the next course and I realise what it is that's so strange about Marion's parties:
when her friends talk, no one actually connects with what anyone else says. Sometimes
their comments are sort of related but there is no interaction, no reply. People
just politely wait for a pause and then stick their oar in. It is as if they are
in competition with each other, trying to dominate the conversation.

'New York was terribly hot last week. We hardly went outside.
To the opera once and to a party at Vanora Fielding's.'

'The only city I visit in the summer is London. I would never
go to New York during July or August.'

'But you must have been to Judy's new apartment there?'

'If you want to see Judy you have to go to New York. She never
comes here, she hates Paris and London. I just think she hates Europe altogether.'

'We went to an amazing club in Paris last weekend - go-go dancers,
boys and girls. You'll never guess who we met there. Peter Katzberg. Oh, you remember
Peter Katzberg, you must do. Can you imagine it? Darling Peter in this crazy club?'

'Peter Katzberg decorated Petronella Bywater's first home. You
must know it, off Cadogan Square. Petronella hated it so much she sold it immediately
and stayed with her parents in Venice until she found somewhere else. That cute
kid, what was his name? Kevin? He picked up the search fee - £10,000, so the woman
he used to live with told me.'

'Veronica del Luzio has a new apartment in Cadogan Square on
three floors, which I am dying to get my hands on. Di-vine!'

'Veronica's always moving. I saw her in La La last month and
I said what are you doing here? She said "real estate".'

 
'She buys apartments the
way most women buy handbags.'

'I'm going to buy another apartment, somewhere near here. I hate
my apartment.'

'You shouldn't buy in London. The economy here's going down the
tubes. The rich people will get the hell out and then where will London be? You
know what the British are like, they just sit there waiting for someone to give
them some money. Then they look at you like they've done you a favour.'

And so it goes on, people, cities, sex, money, good times, clothes,
personal recommendations and utter condemnations. But all of them could be sitting
at home talking to thin air.

By eleven-thirty we have finished our ice cream and coffee and
I am feeling tired and slightly pissed. David has tried to sell Christopher Maurice-Jackson
some of his half-price Versace crap. Now Christopher Maurice-Jackson is trying to
sell Marion a chaise longue or something. She is picking some bits of fluff off
her skirt and saying 'Uh, huh' in a quiet, non committal way.

David is talking to the other French guy. 'I do ten reps for
biceps every other day but I never do me abs. No, never, don't have to.'

'Tell us about the Marines,' he says, 'that must have been fun.'

'Well, they certainly look after you. I learned to ski, to snorkel
... ' Then he starts showing how you fall on the ground correctly after a parachute
jump so that you don't hurt yourself. Farrah looks on and asks questions helpfully.
Well, it could be useful next time she has to bail out of Harvey Nics in a hurry.

When the two French guys leave to catch the last Tube back to
Brixton the others make a move as well. Daria's almost tearful farewell makes it
appear like she is leaving a wake except that Marion hardly looks like a grieving
widow. I find myself promising to call David for some reason. Ostrich farming, I
think. Farrah makes me promise to look after Marion. Isn't it supposed to be the
other way around?

Christopher Maurice-Jackson tells Marion that they will 'do lunch'
next week and then gives me such a frosty goodbye that I can't help laughing as
soon as the door is closed.

Marion flops down into a chair and asks for another drop of champagne.
'It's all gone,' I say, picking up the most recent of the bottles. Just then Anna
Maria comes out of the kitchen with a tray to clear the table.

'Open another bottle of champagne, will you,' Marion tells her.

I sit down next to her and she puts her head on my shoulder.

'Well, do you like my friends?'

'Yeah,' I say, 'they're fun.'

There is a pause.

'They bore me to death,' says Marion and we both burst out laughing.

I stay over again that night. We don't wait for the champagne
but go upstairs where I unzip Marion's dress and let it fall to the ground. She
stands there for a moment in just her bra, panties and high shoes, looking up at
me wide-eyed. Then I kiss her breasts and pull her towards me roughly. She gasps,
almost like she's indignant, and I push her down onto the bed.