Maestra (8 page)

‘Off you go then, Judith.’

I thought of Colonel Morris. I thought of the skivvying I had done for Rupert, fetching his suits from the tailor, picking up his laundered shirts, phone calls I had fielded when he’d skived off, pissed after lunch, extra hours I’d spent in the library and the archives, trying to prove that I was better, that I was smarter, that I could run faster, that I could take more and do better. I had been humble and diligent. I had never allowed it to show that I felt slighted and excluded. I had never let any of them – Laura, Oliver, Rupert – see that I even noticed the differences between us. My Oxbridge degree was a better degree than any of theirs. I had actually believed that with time and hard work I could make it, that I could get up there amongst them. I’d never pretended to myself that Rupert respected or valued me. But I had believed I had been useful, and that I was worth something. Pathetic.

‘I suppose you’ll be giving my job to Angelica?’ I hated the way it sounded, whining, bitter.

‘That’s not your concern. Please leave now.’

I looked him in the face, knowing that my own was grubby with tears. I thought about how it would feel waking up in the flat and not getting up to go to Prince Street. The cool lobby, the reassuring grain of the banister under my hand. This had been my chance. I might not have got much beyond the gate, yet, but I was in, I was part of the world that I belonged to and every day I had thought I was climbing a little higher. I thought about how I would have to send out my CV and where that would get me. I had fucked it up. I had lost control, I had let myself want too much, been over eager, thoughtless, stupid,
stupid
. I had let myself stop being angry enough, had been tripping around like Pollyanna thinking that goodwill was everything and we could put the show on right here in the sodding barn. Rage had always been my friend, and I had neglected it. Rage had kept my back straight, rage had seen me through the fights and the slights. Rage had propelled me from my no-mark comprehensive to university; it had been my strength and my solace. For a moment I felt the white heat of it deep in my body and had a flash of Rupert’s bloodied face sagging over his computer. Come, Rage beckoned, just for once. Come on. My tatty briefcase had brass hinges on the corners; I imagined swinging it at his temple, but I wouldn’t need it. I could feel the ache in the sinew of my arms, in my teeth. I wanted to savage his throat like a dog. He watched me, and for a tiny second I saw a flicker of alarm in his eyes. That was all I needed.

‘You know, Rupert,’ I said, casually, ‘you’re a cunt. A fat-arsed, overprivileged, talentless, bent cunt.’

‘Get out.’

I didn’t know which of us I despised more.

*

To make up, I took Rage drinking. Good company, Rage, matching me glass for glass. By the time James arrived at the club I was halfway down a second bottle of Bolly with another client and this time I was swallowing. I didn’t bother saying goodbye, just left the john looking surprised and plumped myself down next to James while Carlo did the business with the Cristal.

‘I think I might drink some of this tonight, if you don’t mind.’

‘Rough day?’

I nodded. This wasn’t going to be a happy drunk. I felt cold and cruel and reckless. I raised my bowl in a dry little toast. Sure, I found him obscene, but we were drinking in the last chance saloon, Rage and I.

‘James. Let’s cut to the chase. How much would you be willing to pay to fuck me?’

He looked bewildered, then rather disgusted.

‘I don’t need to pay for sex.’

‘Why? Is it less important to you than money?’

‘Lauren, what’s the matter?’

If this had been a movie, it would have been a montage moment. A swirl of memories, plucky little Judith getting her degree, Judith plodding home late from work, sitting up over her catalogues, a tear sliding poignantly down Judith’s cheek as Rupert fired her, the wide-eyed recognition that here she was in a sleazy basement believing that this filthy old punter was her only hope.
That
Judith would have got up and politely walked away into her fabulous future because she didn’t need to compromise her integrity for anything. Yes, well. I was all over new fucking beginnings. This felt like my only hope. If this was what I was born to do, then I would do it properly. Me and Rage, we were going places.

I let the tears I had been suppressing for hours well prettily to the brims of my eyelids, that wet hyacinth effect, a little tremble and bite on the lower lip. I lifted up my face to him.

‘James, I’m sorry. That was vulgar of me. It’s just this place – I can’t bear to think you would think I was – like that. I was testing you. You see, you’re so wonderful, and I – I –’

Even his gargantuan ego might balk at the word love, so I had a little sob instead. Another one, Jesus. He gave me his handkerchief, which was large and white and smelled cleanly of Persil. I remembered my mum, on one of her good days, giving me a bath and wrapping me in a clean white towel that smelled just the same, and after that the sobs became real. So then we had a chat and I told him I was frightened, that I had lost my job (as a receptionist in a gallery) and when he proposed that I might like to get away for a weekend I pretended I’d never been to the South of France, and wouldn’t that be heaven, but we’d better take my friend too, to show I wasn’t really that sort of girl. Or not entirely. I did a bit of whispering about how he might persuade me otherwise. In truth, it was the possibility of having to share a bed with him that made me want someone else along. Plus if he felt like a threesome it was better to come equipped. It wasn’t hard to hint that the persuasion might involve, say, £3,000, just to help me along until I could find work. So when he left there was a thousand on the table, to cover two tickets to Nice, and I lurched over to Mercedes and told her we were going to the Riviera.

‘Christ, Jude,’ she said admiringly, ‘what’ve you got up there? Crack?’

8

I’d used some of James’s fifties to get together some gear for the trip. A tan braided leather weekend bag and matching tote from a little shop in Marylebone that could pass for Bottega Veneta, a black Eres tie-side bikini, Tom Ford sunglasses, a Vuitton Sprouse scarf in turquoise and beige. When we landed at Nice airport, I was pleased to see that the accessories meant I looked like many of the other women coming in for the weekend: super-groomed but not too effortful. Mercedes (we said we’d try to use club names so as not to slip up) was uncharacteristically restrained in simple jeans and a white shirt. James was waiting for us in the café next to the arrivals lounge. I took a deep breath as I saw the unselfconscious sprawl of his bulk, the patches of sweat on his pale pink shirt. Sure he was fat, but did he have to be such a slob? There was something conceited about it, as though his money meant he could afford to disregard the effect he had on other people – which of course it did. I took a deep breath. I had a sudden weird longing to be back in my horrible flat. I’d spent so many hours there, planning, dreaming, safe in the fantasy that the future was going to happen. But this was it. This was the future. Or at least, in the absence of a better plan, the next few months. I could do this, I told myself. More than ever now, I
had
to do this. It was just about control.

A young Moroccan-looking man in a dark jacket with ‘Hôtel du Cap’ on the breast loaded our bags into a long black car. James heaved himself into the front and the car immediately sagged like an old bed on his side. I couldn’t look at Mercedes.

‘
S’il vous plaît, Mesdemoiselles.
’

I slipped through the door he held for me and sat back on ivory leather seats. The car was cool, the windows tinted, the engine had a low purring hum. This was what it felt like, then. James was fiddling with his phone so I didn’t need to try to make conversation. When we arrived at the hotel, Mercedes squeezed my hand excitedly.

‘It’s gorgeous, James,’ she breathed, giving me a nudge.

‘Really lovely,’ I added enthusiastically.

We waited discreetly in the black marble-tiled hallway while James checked in. One of the receptionists asked us for our passports, and I told her quickly in French, with a calm smile, that they had gone up with the bags and we could bring them down later. I didn’t want James to have any chance of seeing our real names; it would spoil the mood.

‘Your French is dead good!’ said Mercedes, surprised.

I shrugged.

‘We’d probably best not let James know that.’

We were shown to a suite on the second floor. Two bedrooms opened off a huge drawing room with white sofas and a vast arrangement of calla lilies. Double doors opened onto a balcony over a long lawn that dropped down to the famous pool I had seen in so many magazines. Beyond that, to the right in the direction of Cannes, a pod of giant boats swarmed the old port. Big seemed to be a theme.

Even amongst those giga-yachts, one in particular stood out, its vast hull rearing up like the Kraken. I had seen that in photographs, too. Mikhail Balensky, ‘The Man from the Stan’, as the English papers called him, was an Uzbek industrialist whose career, according to even sober reports, read like something from a comic. Beginning in oil fields, he’d diversified into the arms trade but, finding that there weren’t enough wars going on to make a decent profit, had decided to start a few. Fund some disaffected rebels in a small country of which we knew nothing, arm both sides, sit back and let them slug it out, then buy up whatever hard assets remained in the hands of the government he’d helped to install. Very efficient. That was two decades ago; nowadays Balensky appeared at galas with heads of state, popped up at the Met Ball or the Serpentine summer party, or was photographed sloshing out a couple of million at whatever repellent philanthropist’s shindig represented the cause
du jour
. It’s amazing what you learn by keeping up with
Hello!

‘Mademoiselle?’

The bellboy, discreetly distracting me from my Riviera reverie. I had a ten-euro note already folded in my hand. I gave him his tip and told him to put our bags in the bedroom to the left, and monsieur’s to the right. Whatever James had in mind I had no intention of sharing a bed with him. In case he had anything to say I stepped onto the balcony with my back to him and looked determinedly at the view. I felt him come up behind me and his hand reached for mine.

‘Happy, darling?’

Darling. Oh God.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, with wondering hesitancy.

‘And I bought you this,’ he added, handing me a crumpled plain black plastic bag with what he obviously thought was a roguish grin. ‘Something to slip into. Later.’

I wondered what horrors it contained, but I managed to give him a little tiptoe kiss on the clammy slab of his cheek. ‘Thank you, darling. That’s so thoughtful of you.’

‘I thought we’d have lunch at the pool and then go to Cannes for a bit of shopping. Thought you girls might like that.’

‘Super. I’ll just get changed.’

Mercedes was whirling round the bathroom, examining the Bulgari toiletries.

‘Oh my God, this bathroom is bigger than my whole flat!’

‘Find the minibar,’ I hissed. ‘I need a fucking drink.’

*

James appeared for lunch at the Eden Roc, the hotel’s cliffside swimming pool, wearing a vast pair of garish Vilebrequin swimming trunks under a white hotel robe, which hung meekly on either side of his milky gut. From behind my sunglasses I saw two blonde children in the water, pointing and giggling until their nanny shushed them. We all ordered lobster salad and Perrier water. James speared whole pats of butter from their little bed of ice, cramming them onto rolls and into his mouth. A little party of crumbs descended the folds of his chin and lodged in the grey mat of hair on his chest. It was like watching an animated Lucien Freud, but that didn’t make it easier to look at. While Mercedes picked at her salad and played with her phone (I thought I’d have to tell her to stop holding her knife like a pen) I prompted James to tell me again about his patently fictional days as a Riviera playboy, pretending to be fascinated by his exaggerated stories of dancing with Elizabeth Taylor at Jimmy’z and partying with Dionne Warwick at Golfe Juan. It wasn’t that he was trying to convince me that he was quite the catch, I realised, it was that he actually believed he was.

We were driven over to the Croisette after lunch. On the beach below the Carlton hotel a group of women in burkas splashed wretchedly in the surf. The sky had dulled, it was incredibly humid and James was irritable, rudely insisting to the driver that he knew the best place to park then berating him in pidgin French when we had to drive three times round the block. I didn’t think his patience would hold out for much of a trolley dash, so I suggested we stop outside Chanel and have the car wait. I walked into the boutique first and asked the saleswoman if she could possibly bring a chair while Mercedes and I looked at the bags. She looked faintly appalled at the suggestion she might do something so menial. But then she glimpsed James in the doorway.

‘
Tout de suite, madame.
’

I knew what I wanted: the classic quilted shoulder bag in black with leather and gilt handles. Mercedes was dithering, looking through a rack of unseasonable tweed coats. They were beautiful; I would have loved to try one on, to feel the silk lining against my bare arms, the swing of the tiny gold chain stitched into the hem, but James clearly felt the role of sugar daddy was wearing a bit thin.

‘Which bag do you want, Mercedes?’

‘The big one.’

It seemed to take an age for the saleswoman to pack up the bags in their tissue paper and black cotton pochettes stamped with the Chanel C’s, finally placing them in pleasingly stiff ribbon-tied carriers. I’d gathered by now that James’s short temper sprang from the fact that he couldn’t admit to himself that the fact that he was constantly exhausted and uncomfortable was not the world in general’s problem but his, as he was too fucking fat to fit in it. Still, he gamely handed over his Amex while Mercedes and I pretended to be interested in the scarves, discreetly keeping our eyes away from the cash till. Result. But when James declined my admittedly rather cruel suggestion that we take a stroll round the steep cobbled streets of the old town in favour of going back to the hotel for a ‘siesta’, I knew I was going to have to earn it.