The Real Thing (13 page)

‘You always have to go to extremes.’

“What’s extreme about that?’

‘If you can’t see it’s over the top! Anyway, last time you said whenever he went abroad he took a different girl.’

‘Yes, I know. He was in Rome last week and I knew he had slept with someone though he didn’t say and I didn’t ask. Because it was not my business …’ Joan was looking so humorous that it was with an effect of shouting against noise that Sybil went on, ‘Yes. But then he confessed he had slept with someone and he felt guilty about it. Because of me. And I’ve been feeling guilty if I slept with anyone but him right from the very first time I slept with him.’

‘Well,’ sighed Joan, ‘I suppose that’s pretty conclusive.’

‘Yes, I think it is. And what about you and Derek? Is he going to wait until you get back from Bahrain?’

‘He says he will, but I have my doubts.’

They smiled at each other.

‘Plenty of fish in the sea,’ said Sybil.

‘He’s all right. But I reckon I’ll have saved up thirty thousand out there, that is if I stick it out. There’s nothing to spend anything on.’

‘And then you’ll be independent.’

‘Yes. I’ll buy a house the moment I get back.’

‘Makes sense. And Oliver and I are looking for a house. We were looking last Sunday. It’s fun looking at houses. There was one I think he would settle for, but I said to him, No, if we are going to be Upwardly Mobile, then let’s
do
it. That house isn’t good enough. You’re doing better and better all the time, I said to him. Because he is. He’s shooting up in his firm, and he gets more and more eligible every day.’

‘You always did say you would marry for money.’

‘Yes, I did. And I am. But I wouldn’t marry him if I didn’t feel like this about him.’

‘But do you feel like this about him because he is so eligible?’ enquired Joan, laughing.

‘Probably. But what’s the matter with that?’

“Would you marry him if he was poor?’

The sisters were now leaning forward, faces close, laughing and full of enjoyment.

‘No, I wouldn’t. I’ve got to have money. I know myself, don’t I?’

‘I hope you do,’ said the older sister, suddenly sober.

Meanwhile people nearby were smiling at each other because of the two young adventurers, probably feeling that they ought to be shocked or something.

There was a pause, while they attended to coffee, croissants, fruit juice.

And then, suddenly, Sybil announced, ‘And we are both going to have an
AIDS
test.’ Now the people listening stopped smiling, though they were certainly attending.
We both decided, at the same time. I mentioned it first, and found he had thought of it too. He slept around a lot after his divorce, and I have too, since I came to London. And you never know. But the trouble is, I’m going to have it done privately, because if it’s on the National Health then it’s in the records for everyone to see. Because then it would look as if you were worried.’

‘And it’s expensive.’

‘Yes. Well, I can’t afford it, I don’t have the money, but Oliver can and he’ll pay for me.’

Joan smiled. ‘Certainly one way of making him responsible for you.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘What will you do if either of you is positive?’

‘Oh, I’m sure we won’t be! We’re both as hetero as they come. But you never know. We want to be on the safe side. No, we’ll have the tests done and then we’ll give each other our certificates.’ Her face was soft and dreamy, full of love. For the first time she had forgotten her audience.

‘Well,’ said Joan, taking neat little sips of coffee, ‘I suppose that’s one way of doing it.’

‘It means much more than an engagement ring, I mean, it’s a real commitment.’

‘And he is going to have to be faithful to you now, isn’t he?’

‘But I’ll have to be faithful to him!’

Joan’s face was suggesting this was not the same thing. Then she asked, teasing, ‘Faithful for ever?’

‘Yes … well… for as long as we can, anyway. We don’t want to sleep with anyone else, not the way we feel now. What’s the point of risking it, anyway?’

She glanced around, but her audience no longer attended to her. They were talking to each other. If this was their way of showing disapproval, then …

Two and a half hours to go.

Sybil raised her voice. ‘We tried condoms, too, but God knows how people get them to work. We laughed so much that in the end we simply had to settle for going to sleep.’

‘Shhhhh,’ said Joan, in agony. ‘Shhhhhh.’

‘Why? What’s the matter, no, let me tell you, if the safety of the nation is going to depend on condoms, then …’

At this point a young man who had been sitting near them, listening, got up because it was time for him to be off on his way to somewhere or other in the world. He tapped Sybil on the shoulder and said, ‘If you can’t get the hang of condoms, then just get in touch with me … no, no, any time, a pleasure!’

His words were far from an invitation, were more of a public rebuke, and on his face was the look that goes with someone taking it on himself to keep things in order. But from the door he sent them a glance and a grin and disappeared for ever with a wave. As for Joan and Sybil, they sat half turned to watch him go. They looked like a couple of teenagers, their hands half-covering scandalized and delighted smiles.

I want to tell you something, I have to tell
someone. I have to talk.
I suddenly understood you are the only person left who will know what I’m talking about. Has that happened to you? You suddenly think. My God, that was twenty, thirty years ago and I am the only person left who knows what really happened?

Do you remember Caesar? Remember I worked for him? Do you-most people have forgotten. We called him Caesar … he never knew it of course. Because he used to say, I’m going to conquer Britain-remember that? If you do, then you and I are the only people left who do. Well, Caesar’s son married my daughter last weekend … yes, exactly, you can’t improve on life, can you, Life: God’s little script-writer. But you only know the half of it,
listen.

Did you ever meet Robert, Caesar’s son? If you did, he must have been an infant. Well, he’s turned out a charming boy, sweet, but really, really nice.

Ten years ago he rang me at the office and asked me out to dinner. He was fourteen. I was struck dumb. Well, as far as I can be struck dumb. I was so
tickled
-of course I said yes. But wait until you hear where. It was at the
Berengaria. Yes, quite so. I don’t know what I expected, but he did it all perfectly. He might have been thirty-five, this kid, this
baby
, he called for me in a taxi with flowers, in a hired suit. He had booked a table and gone in to discuss it all with the head waiter. The waiters were hovering about like nannies, they were tickled out of their wits, because of this kid and me-of course they knew me for years, I used to go there with Caesar, or I went in to arrange special dinners for him. He used to talk as if it was his restaurant … are you getting the picture? Not by a nod or a beck did the waiters embarrass him, they were wonderful. I sat there going mad with curiosity.
Fourteen.
Then I thought. All right, we are all mad at fourteen, forget it. And I was busy then, as usual. But it must have cost him fifty quid. Where did he get it? Not from his father, that mean old …

The next thing, he writes me a letter on best quality ivory vellum notepaper, with his name printed on it, Robert Meredith Stone, asking me to go for a walk in St James’s Park, and then tea at the Ritz. Wait a minute, I thought, just wait a minute … it’s time to do some thinking.

Dinner at the Berengaria fair enough, it was Caesar’s place, but a walk in the
park?
Caesar has never set foot off a London pavement. He probably doesn’t know a daffodil from a rose. In his old age he sits like a sour old goat grumping at 1930s films on the video, don’t imagine he limps about the garden philosophizing while he prunes the roses. Marie has always done the gardening.

I thought it all over, but really
thought
, and then I asked Marie for lunch. I needed to talk to her without Caesar knowing, I didn’t want to give poor Robert away.

I hadn’t seen Marie for years. We always got on, if you can call it that, having nothing in common but behaving well. She’s old these days, she’s decided to be an old
woman. I’m damned if I will yet. I mean, it’s a lot of effort to let yourself get old, you have to change your clothes, your style, everything, it’s all right for her, she’s got time for all that, she’s never had to work in her life. Of course she was curious to know what it was all about and I didn’t know how to start. As soon as I saw her I realized I couldn’t ask. What was I to say? Tell me, does your Robert think that your Caesar and I had an affair and if so, what’s all this about strolls in St James’s Park and feeding the ducks?

She thought it was ever so sweet of me to ask her for lunch, but she’s got vague, she started to talk about Caesar’s girlfriends. ‘I never minded,’ said she, ‘not after the first…’ And then she made a joke, yes, actually a joke, ‘It’s the first one that counts, you know, l
e premier pas qui coûte
, and he always had such nice women,’ paying me a compliment,
noblesse oblige.
‘And I never did like sex,’ she says, ‘or perhaps I wasn’t lucky with Caesar, or he wasn’t lucky with me.’ I swear she was ready for me to tell her how I had found her Caesar in bed, and I understood something at that moment, it struck me all of a heap, it struck me dumb-yes, all right, but I told you I had to
talk.
Now, this is the point. It was always important to me that I never slept with Caesar, but it was exactly at that moment, eating a healthful salad with Caesar’s wife … ha ha, how absolutely apropos … that I knew how important it was, a point of pride. And now it mattered to her so little she didn’t even remember I had gone to her and said. Look here, Marie, I don’t know what anyone else thinks and I don’t care, but it matters to me what
you
think: I am not sleeping with your husband, and I never did. She didn’t remember I had gone specially to tell her. She looked at me vaguely, and said, ‘Oh yes? Did you? Funny, I forget things … but I didn’t mind, you know.’ She minded all right. She’s decided to forget that. Whether she believed
me or not she minded like hell and I minded her minding. Because I was innocent. It was just the same having lunch with her as it was
then
-because the one thing I couldn’t say was, the most important, your husband is a mean, scrimping, pennywise tightfist, and he’s killed me with overwork, he always has to work people he employs to the bone, and he has to underpay them. Never mind about sleeping with me, I would have liked to say, then and at lunch that day, but working with that little Scrooge never left much energy for sex.

Have you forgotten how it was with me then? I had two kids-but
do
you remember? The funny thing is, meeting people in public life, professional life, you meet them as individuals, but what’s important about them, often, is what you don’t see. In my case it was two small children and an ex-husband who sometimes came through with a few quid but more often didn’t. I was being paid a senior typist’s wage when I ran Caesar’s office for him. I was his Girl Friday, I organized everything, and it was I who had the contacts, I knew everyone in the field when he was a newcomer in it. I used to set up whole shows for him, and he’d take the credit. I used to work from eight in the morning till eleven, twelve, one at night. I made that man and he knew it too, but if he’d paid me, he’d be admitting just what my real worth to him was. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have succeeded without me, but if he conquered Britain-because he did,
we
did, he was known everywhere and not just in this country, he was a name in France and Germany-if he did all that it was because of me. Then one day I was so exhausted I couldn’t get out of bed. I telephoned the office and said right, that was it, I was giving him notice, I couldn’t stand it. I had to get a job that paid me properly. I was in debt for the rent. I couldn’t even pay for the children’s clothes, and their father had been out of work for months-he was an
actor, it wasn’t his fault. Suddenly there is Caesar ringing the doorbell, for the first time, and I’d been working for him ten years then. He comes in, he looks around. Two rooms and a bathroom, oh yes, it was a decent little place, I wasn’t going to let the kids go without, but I slept in the living room and they had the other room. ‘Nice place,’ says Caesar, sniffing about pricing everything, ‘you do yourself well.’ And he with his bloody great house at Richmond. I got back into bed and actually went to sleep, I was so
ill
I didn’t care. ‘You can’t just give me notice,’ he says, waking me up. ‘I am giving you notice,’ I say. To cut it short, he put up my salary a few quid a month, it was enough to pay off some of my debts. I still wasn’t earning as much as a good PR girl. ‘You can’t leave me,’ he says, and I remember the tone of his voice, it was that which struck me dumb, as if J had treated
him
badly.

All those years he had been trying to get into bed with me. Particularly when we went on trips. I never would. Partly because I didn’t go for him much, and partly because it was a question of self-respect. It was more, it was
survival.
I couldn’t let him take me over entirely. He owned my working self, but as for the rest … you are still wondering why I stayed with him? I remember you asked me, why stay with him, when you could earn four times the salary? The point is-I fitted that job of his like a … I and the job had grown up together … I had
made
that job, made him. He knew I wouldn’t be able to give it up. He knew that in some funny way we stood and fell together … we matched, his talents and mine, we were a team. But he got rich, did you know? He was a millionaire. Typically he used to say, what’s a million these days? And I wasn’t going to say, If it’s nothing, then give me a little of it.
Pride.
Okay, okay, sometimes I do wonder about that … but I think what I felt was, if I can stand this I can stand anything. I felt strong … I felt indestructible.