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Authors: Gil McNeil

The Only Boy For Me (21 page)

BOOK: The Only Boy For Me
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I spend what seems like hours making small talk with a very irritating woman called Sophie. She seems remarkably well informed and gives me the job title and short career résumé of everyone seated at the table. She then moves on to talking about private schools. I drink too much and find sitting and nodding becomes much easier as the evening progresses. Finally the dinner finishes and Mack comes over looking very pleased with himself.

‘Just had a fascinating chat with old Bates.’

‘Oh, and that’s a good thing, I take it.’

‘Yes. He’s the chairman. I must say that cardigan is very fetching.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I especially like that lace thing. One small point, though: promise you won’t sit next to the old man. You’ll give him another heart attack.’

I glance down and see that my cardigan has unbuttoned itself and my lace vest is now barely concealing my chest.

‘Oh fuck.’

I frantically start doing up buttons, and Mack laughs and whispers, ‘Let’s go for a swim. That is unless you want to stay and flash your bits about for a while.’

‘No, thank you very much.’

We sneak off, grab our swimsuits and find the pool is floodlit and billowing wafts of steam into the darkness. I’m not sure swimming whilst drunk is entirely a good idea, but it turns out to be great. We end up kissing in the deep end, and look up during one particularly passionate moment to see that we are being watched by about twenty people from dinner who’ve wandered out on to the terrace overlooking the pool. They pretend they haven’t noticed us, so Mack shouts hello and invites them in for a swim. One or two of the men seem keen, but the women are having none of it. Mack thinks this is very funny, but I can’t help feeling I have somehow been judged and found wanting by the proper wives and partners.

This impression turns out to be correct when I’m given lots of cold stares at coffee the next morning. There’s another round of meetings scheduled, and all sorts of hideous beauty therapies have been booked for ‘partners’. Most of the women are in very smart Lycra leisure gear, and look like they are planning serious sessions in the gym. I am in a white shirt and baggy linen trousers, with sunglasses for my hangover, and look like I’m planning a nice little lie-down. It seems we missed breakfast, which was another corporate meal affair, and Mack has already missed two meetings. He doesn’t seem to care in the slightest, and tells a very keen young man who offers to give him the notes from the early-morning sessions to fuck off and get a life. I’m not sure those Panadol have really kicked in yet.

I stagger back upstairs to sleep and then crawl back downstairs at lunchtime in search of tea and newspapers. I discover a small group of women sitting in the library smoking and laughing. My kind of girls. It turns out that they’re also on the wives and partners list, but have been to this kind of thing before and tend to keep a low profile, preferably by the nearest bar. I have a lovely afternoon sitting in the bar chatting. Drink far too much, and then Mack wanders in with a couple of men, just as we are all screaming with laughter at one woman’s description of her mother-in-law. They all look faintly startled to find us there, and announce that the meetings have now finished and we’re free until dinner. We carry on talking for a bit, but the conversation is much less amusing now the men have turned up.

‘I hope you weren’t telling that lot dirty jokes.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, one of them was the chairman’s wife, for a start. Trust you to get in with the renegade bunch.’

Dinner is far more relaxed as the seating plan has mysteriously disappeared, and Mack and I sit with my newly discovered friends and their partners. I meet Peter and Georgia during the pre-dinner drinks and discover that Georgia really is as bad as I’ve been led to believe. She tells me all about the hotel we’re going to, and says, ‘Rarely, we hardly saw the children for the entire week. Of course we took Nanny, but we hardly needed her which was super.’ Quite. Mack drags me off before she can launch into a monologue about Tuscany, where they’re going this year, thank God. I almost feel like ringing the Italian Tourist Board to warn them.

We end up in the bar until the small hours, playing a game invented by the chairman’s wife Helen, a sort of rude
version of I Spy. Most diverting. Mack turns out to be very good at charades, and Helen and I win a bottle of brandy in a weird version of Twenty Questions about recent ad campaigns. Mack lodges an appeal because two of the ads in question are ones I actually shot with Barney, but he’s overruled and has to pay a forfeit for being a bad loser. We adjourn to the swimming pool, and Mack swims an entire length fully dressed, quite cheerfully as it happens. I can only hope he will still be so cheerful in the morning.

We spend most of Sunday in bed, reading the papers, and I talk to Charlie who says Nana has made a tragic mistake with the breakfast cereal again – this time the culprit is Cheerios – but apart from that he’s having a brilliant weekend. We have lunch in bed, and then spend most of the afternoon in the bath soaking the bathroom floor. We leave just after tea, bidding fond farewells to our new friends. We manage to escape just as Georgia is heard in the distance barking at Peter to hurry up. I sleep during most of the journey back to London, and Mack helps me retrieve my car from the agency car park with the help of his special card which opens all the gates.

‘Thanks for a lovely weekend.’

‘My pleasure, Moneypenny. My pleasure. I’ll pick you up next Friday ready for the off, then, shall I? Kids, cases and Valium. Got that?’

‘Yup. And buckets and spades and fishing nets. Charlie won’t go anywhere without his fishing net now. It’s really tricky in Safeway’s.’

I get home to discover that Charlie has made a camp in the garden, and slept in it last night. Mum and Dad were up half the night peering out the window and checking he was alright. In the end Dad slept out there with him, and now has a terrible crick in his neck so he has to talk with his head
on one side, a bit like a parrot. Mum’s done all the ironing and given the house a good tidy. I must go away more often. They depart, with much kissing and waving, and Charlie runs down the lane after them. Then he saunters back and says, ‘I’m starving.’ I make bacon and eggs, which we eat inside the tent in the garden. I stupidly put the pond pump on and it goes into hyperdrive and nearly flattens the tent with a torrent of water. Charlie is outraged and we have to spend ages restoring his camp to its former glory.

Packing for our holiday with Mack turns out to be something of a challenge. Charlie wants to take all his toys, but finally settles for one rucksackful, and his fishing net. But the combination of clothes and other vital supplies fills up an enormous suitcase, and then I spend the entire journey remembering things I forgot to pack. The children all sit fairly happily in the back of Mack’s car, which is enormous and has three seats and three seatbelts, and listen to different story tapes on their Walkmans, in between falling asleep and having the occasional light bicker. But nobody is sick, and we only stop twice. The motorway service stations are hideous as usual, and Mack spends ages in a video arcade on a ski-simulator game, hurling himself down mountains while the children stand and watch him and yell useful hints like ‘You idiot, you’ve just skied into that cliff’. Then they all insist on having a go, and all score higher than Mack.

We arrive at the hotel just in time for tea, and are ushered up to a palatial suite by a very obsequious man who turns out to be the assistant manager. He keeps calling me madam, and insists on showing me how to operate all the remote controls. One is dedicated entirely to opening and closing the curtains. The children run about yelling, and
then discover the balcony, spot the pool, and beg to go for a swim. As if by magic there’s a knock on the door and a woman announces she’s come to take the children for their first swimming lesson. I can’t help but be impressed by Mack’s arrangements. The phone rings, and Mack’s PA says she’s just ringing to check we’ve arrived safely, and to let us know she’s faxing through the itinerary as she knew Mack would lose it, and reception are bringing it up now. Do we want fax in our room, since this can easily be set up? Christ. I realise what I’ve needed all these years is a really good PA.

I study the itinerary over tea, and it turns out we have half an hour a day with the children, if that. But a window of family time has been scheduled for the last day, with an alternative activity pencilled in just in case this proves too much for us. I suggest we talk to the children over supper and see what they’d like to do. Mack thinks this is a very bad idea, but eventually relents. The children come back from swimming, and we get them changed and go down for supper. The dining room is enormous and full of families who are clearly not used to eating together. There are high chairs everywhere, and lots of toddlers hurling food about. One man looks like he’s gone into shock, and sits staring into the distance while a small girl sorts through the food on his plate and helps herself to anything she likes the look of. The family on the table next to us are in the midst of a bitter dispute about broccoli: their small boy is sitting looking very determined with his arms crossed and his lips tight shut.

It turns out this is children’s supper time, and the Adults Only meal is available later. This sounds like the food will be cut into rude shapes or something, which makes me laugh. I share the joke with the children who all adore it, but
Mack is less pleased and says please can we get on, because all the noise is giving him a terrible headache. We eat pizza and ice-cream and study the timetable for the next few days. The children are keen to do all the activities on offer, and we promise a few trips to the beach as well. God knows what all this is costing; I’ve offered to contribute but Mack won’t hear of it. Which is a good thing really, as I suspect the bills here would make me faint.

The children spend their days rushing from activity to activity, and we meet up for lunch before they depart for afternoons of swimming and games. I go along to a couple of the sessions to check them out and they look well organised. Charlie and Alfie learn to dive, sort of, and are having a marvellous time. Daisy is less enthusiastic, and would clearly be much happier if I went home, and took the boys with me. We spend an afternoon on the beach, as promised, and Mack gets deeply involved in building an enormous sandcastle with Charlie, while Alfie runs backwards and forwards to the sea bringing water to fill up the moat. I’m lying on a blanket with Daisy when she says, ‘You’ve got a very big bottom, haven’t you, Annie?’

‘Um, yes, I suppose I have.’

‘My mummy is much thinner than you, actually.’

I’m torn between horror that she’s already part of the It is Vital to be Thin conspiracy, and outrage at her being quite so cheeky. I’m also a bit miffed to hear that I am Bessie Bunter to Laura’s sylph-like form.

‘That’s nice for her, isn’t it? Do you miss her a bit?’

‘Yes. A lot actually.’ She bites her lip and looks at her sandals.

‘I’m sure you do. What about ringing her when we get back to our room? And then maybe we could dress up for
supper tonight, and you could borrow some of my nail varnish.’

A look of pure delight flashes across her face, which she quickly masks. Thank God Kate gave me her girl-handling tips.

Supper turns out to be a bit of a disaster. Mack has been getting increasingly bored over the last few days. We’ve had a perfectly nice time, and lots of clandestine sex, which has been brilliant, but I can sense he’s had enough of Being On Holiday With The Children. He’s taken to ringing the office every morning and shouting at people for a bit, which seems to cheer him up, but it wears off by teatime. We wander down to supper with the children as we ate on our own last night. Daisy has new silver nail varnish on, but Mack hasn’t spotted it. She’s made me promise not to tell him, but I know she secretly hopes he’ll notice and be dazzled. I try to whisper to him a few times but he keeps wandering off. The restaurant is swarming with children, and Mack is clearly thrilled to be sitting surrounded by such chaos. He starts moaning about the limited choice on the menu, and then throws a fit when the melon turns up and is freezing cold. It’s obviously been in the fridge for hours, and is very icy. He sends it back, despite the fact that Alfie has already eaten nearly all of his.

Then the main course arrives – pasta, but it’s overcooked – and Mack discovers his glass has smudge marks on it. He summons the waiter, a teenage boy obviously only working for the summer and not destined for a career in the service industry.

‘I’m sorry about the pasta but there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there? Do you want me to bring you a new glass?’

Mack narrows his eyes, and says in a terrifying voice, ‘No, just get me the manager. Now.’

The manager appears and Mack launches into a blistering tirade which silences the entire room. The manager ends up practically crawling backwards in an effort to placate him. Fresh pasta is promised, a bottle of champagne is produced, and clean glasses. And is there anything else sir can think of which the manager can reasonably acquire without breaking the law?

The dining room settles back down, and Mack is triumphant. I can’t help feeling he’s enjoyed himself enormously, which annoys me intensely.

‘That wasn’t very 007, was it, James? Shaken but not stirred and all that.’

‘Oh don’t you fucking start.’

There’s an audible gasp from Charlie, and Daisy and Alfie slump down a bit further in their chairs and look at their feet.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me. These people have got to be told.’

His eyes are flashing and he looks more animated than I’ve seen him for almost the entire holiday.

‘Look. If you want to get your kicks by bullying waiters, then fine, go ahead. But count me out. I mean, it’s not exactly laudable behaviour, is it; they can’t really turn round and tell you to fuck off, can they? Much as they’d like to. So you know what, I’ll do it for them. Fuck off, Mack. You’ve half terrified the children and ruined their evening. I think Charlie and I will have our supper upstairs, and you can sit and rant down here. Oh, and by the way, you might want to take a closer look at Daisy. She’s spent hours doing her nails. I’m sorry, Daisy, but I just don’t think he’s going to notice, do you, darling? They
look lovely, by the way, but Daddy is too busy bullying people to notice.’

BOOK: The Only Boy For Me
13.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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