Upgrading (12 page)

“Aren’t I?” She is thoughtful. I vaguely remember the tense, dull Christmas party.

“Ken Wheatley gave you a glass of champagne which was only for senior management and you said—”

“I don’t like champagne very much,” she says quickly. She takes another sip of Coke. “But I like white wine. Really. Must say, though, since Kelly filled my rucksack in Rome I’ve never really been able to eat lasagne.”

That night, just before 2 a.m., which makes it Wednesday, I suppose, but I’m slightly losing track of the days now, I get out of a taxi and walk up the path past the bins and the nettles and crisp bags to the front door of a small house in Clapham. I had gone home after dinner at Marion’s because I didn’t have any spare clothes at hers and also because I knew that somehow, whatever time I set the alarm for, or however fast I shot out of the house I would end up being late yet again. And that would be once too often.

As I was just nodding off, the phone rang. It was Jonathan with a job.

“Bit late,” I said, half-joking.

He laughed as if this was terribly funny actually and then said briskly, “Look, I won’t bullshit you, this is a sensitive one but I think you’re just right for it.”

“Oh, OK,” I said unconvinced.

“Thing is, Andrew, when she called she was upset and vulnerable and so I just thought you’d be the right person to talk to her. You know? I mean I’ve got older guys on the team but you seemed perfect for her—young and a good listener.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.” I know when I’m being charmed but there is a possibility Jonathan actually means this. Besides the money would be useful so here I am.

“Shit!” Three door bells.

I don’t believe this. In the taxi on the way over I kept reminding myself that it was supposed to be rich women at casinos not sad girls in Clapham that are my “target market.” My plan was to be setting off to an address in Chelsea again or even Knights-bridge or somewhere in time for dinner. Not some miserable little street in South London in the early hours. At least the sex thing is very unlikely to arise here so I won’t feel guilty about cheating on Marion.

In the meantime, though, I really need this money. And if Jonathan gives me some crap about credit card companies not being ready to pay, like I said, I’ll just pop round to his little place in Fulham and take the money—after I’ve folded up his Habitat director’s chair and shoved it up his arse. Not an ideal way to get paid but I’m desperate.

Desperate and knackered.

Oh God, I’m knackered. Anyway, concentrate. The top bell has two names on it so that’s out. I take a guess at the other two and end up pressing the bottom one. I hear a buzz just the other side of the front door.

After a few minutes it is opened by a girl with quite a bit of metal face furniture and long blonde hair half-covering her eyes. She looks swollen with sleep and not quite with it. I am just about to apologize, assuming that I have got the wrong button and woken her up when she says, “Er, from the agency?”

I nod and half-smile and she lets me in.

“Andrew,” I say, squeezing past her.

“Erren,” she says. The place stinks of pot and a gently maturing dustbin. This is going to be even worse than I suspected. “I’m really sorry about the mess,” she mutters in a little girl voice. “My brother was staying for a few days and he, like, wrecked the place. I can’t believe it. Look.” As if to prove it she opens the door of the living room where a glass coffee table is shattered. Next to it is a guitar with some of the strings hanging off it and a tinfoil take-away food container, the remains of a scruffy spliff and some cig-arette ends on a dinner plate.

She thinks for a moment and then says, “Perhaps we’ll use the kitchen, yeah?” The hallway is a mixture of half-converted flat and post-party carnage. We edge past some pine shelves leaning against a wall and go into the kitchen. I nearly trip over something and look down to see two empty plastic cider bottles. The kitchen is tiny and misshapen—hacked out of a broom cupboard or something when the place was one house. A smell hits me from a pile of plates in the sink and the overflowing bin. She looks around as if trying to decide what to do next. “What do you want to drink? There’s Scotch or cider or here’s some beer.” I’m not keen. Then she moves a cardboard box out of the way of the fridge and takes out a very expensive-looking bottle of white wine with a yellow convenience store price label on it. “We could have this.” I open it while she rinses two dirty glasses under the tap.

I pour the wine into the wet, smeary glasses while she lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag and looks across at me through her red, empty eyes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she says.

At first I think she is talking about the cigarette smoke hanging in the air between us. It’s the best smell in the room, so I say, “No, not at all.” But I realize that she is talking about my coming all the way over to Clapham at two o’clock in the morning.

“I just needed someone to talk to, you know.”

“Oh sure,” I say easily. But I am beginning to feel nervous about the fact that she is standing between me and the door especially with those pieces of glass on the living-room floor.

I suddenly realize that I haven’t called the agency to say that I’ve arrived and that everything is OK. I ask to use the phone. She looks at me blankly for a moment and then says, “Oh, yeah, sorry” and points to it. Thank God it’s safely fixed onto the wall—if it was anywhere else we’d never find it.

I wake up Jonathan. He says “good” and asks if she’s paid—it was going to be a cheque, wasn’t it? I hesitate and look across at the girl who is now staring into her glass, a strand of hair in her mouth. How can I ask her to write me a cheque? I tell Jonathan everything is fine. He asks if I am sure. I say “yes” again.

He says “OK. Have fun!” and hangs up.
Fun?
I sit down at the table again and I’m trying to think of something to say to the girl when I notice that she is blinking back tears. “I’ve had this, like, massive row with my Dad. He’s such an arsehole, you know what I’m saying?”

I nod and try to smile.

“He just rings up and says you’d better come over for Sunday lunch this weekend. Last week he just shouts ‘get over here now,’ because he’s had a row with my mum or something. ‘Get over here or I’ll stop your money.’ But, like, why should I? You know what I’m saying?”

“No, it’s up to you, isn’t it?”

She looks across at me for a moment. Have I said the wrong thing? “Yeah, it’s up to me.” Her mind wanders for a moment. “I just hate him. I really hate him.”

“Sure.”

“He doesn’t get on with any of us. I’ve got this boyfriend slash, you see—”

She stops for a moment.

“Sorry?” I seem to be losing it. Or is she?

“Sorry?” she says.

“Sorry, you were saying you’ve got a boyfriend slash something.”

“Yeah.”

I laugh irritably. “Boyfriend slash what? You mean boyfriend slash best friend or something?”

She looks at me again. “No, that’s my boyfriend’s name—Slash. He’s in a band.”

“Oh, right.”

We both look down at our wine and then she says, “Look, I’m sorry I just want to be with someone tonight. I hope that’s OK. I just don’t want to be on my own.”

“Sure.”

She sniffs, takes a long drag and begins to tell me about her brother who has just come back from travelling and has been staying in the flat with his mate.

“What a mess,” she says at last. “My dad’ll go mental when he sees it, yeah?”

“Not surprised. I mean, will he?”

“Yeah, mental.”

There is another pause and she drifts off again, obviously thinking about her old man. I decide I’d better try and earn my money.

“What does he do?”

“Who?”

“Your dad.”

“What does he
do?”

“For a living.”

“Oh, erm, office furniture.” She mentions a brand name and I nod because it sort of rings a bell. I put my hands down into my lap and look down at my watch discreetly. Twenty to three.

“He’s South African,” she adds, as if that explains everything.

“Oh, right. When did he come over here?”

“In the fifties. ‘I had twenty quid in cash, a half-f suitcase and the address of my mother’s aunt in Ealing,’” she says in a convincingly rough South African accent.

I laugh. “Very good. The accent, I mean.”

She looks at me and then smiles for a moment. Amusement? Pride? Either way I’m just glad I’ve made her smile.

“It should be. I’ve heard it a million times.” She flicks her ash into the ashtray. “He used to clean Tube tunnels.”

“Clean tube tunnels?”

“Yep. Bet you didn’t know anybody did that. They need to clear away litter, all the fluff from people’s clothes and shit. Could cause a fire.”

“What a crap job.” Not like media sales.

She laughs. “He wanted a job that was so fucking horrible he wouldn’t end up doing it for the rest of his life.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He met a man in a pub in Kilburn. He wanted to shift some stolen office furniture. So he bought it off this guy for a tenner or something and hasn’t looked back.” She takes a sip of wine. “Hasn’t looked back since.”

“He must have shifted a lot of office furniture.”

“Tons of it. He’s five foot nothing but he’s built like a fucking fire hydrant.” She takes another mouthful of wine and tops up our glasses, slopping it on the table. “He used to stack it up to the ceiling of this warehouse in Southwark. He had to cover it with plastic sheets because of the damp running down the walls and the rain coming in through the roof. Then he’d put on a suit and visit all these offices around the City flogging it.”

“Made a lot of money?”

She sniffs. “Fucking minted it.”

“Sounds so easy.” She ignores me. “Then what?”

“He decided he wanted a wife, yeah? The best money could buy. Started moving in the posh circles, you know? Ascot, Henley.” Sounds good to me. “Load of fucking wankers. That’s when he met my mum.”

“Really? She’s …?”

“Posh? Yeah, fucking posh. Went to Benenden? You know? The public school? Used to go out with a lord. She showed me the cutting from
Tatler
or wherever. Pretty too. You know? Not like movie-star looks but beautiful cheekbones. Doll-like.”

“What did
her
mum and dad think about her marrying—?”

“Some rough-arsed foreigner with a chip on his shoulder the size of a plank? What do you think? They didn’t speak to her for twenty years,” she says matter-of-factly.

“Fucking hell.”

She sniffs, flicks more ash off her cigarette. “Yeah, well, you gonna sulk, you may as well do it properly. I remember when they came to stay once. I knew something was going on because my mum was behaving weirdly. Kept rowing with my dad, well, even more than usual. Dressed us up one day in our best clothes. I said, ‘Are we going to a party?’” She laughs again. This must be good therapy. Now I’m earning my money—if I ever actually get paid. “A party! My mum looked like she was going to be sick. She told us to go and sit down in the living room and watch children’s telly or something. Half an hour later she brought this old couple to meet us. He had a really disgusting red nose, I remember that. She said ‘This is Grannie and Grandpa.’”

“What did you say?”

She shrugs her shoulders like it’s an irrelevant question. “‘Hello’ or something. Went back to watching telly. I’d never met my dad’s parents so I didn’t really have a clue about grandparents. I thought it was like getting a new teacher at school or a new nanny or cleaning lady. Big deal.”

We both look down at our wine. She has nearly finished her glass. I pour some more. She murmurs, “Cheers.”

“I hope you don’t mind me going on like this,” she says, staring me in the eyes.

“No, ’course not. It’s what I’m …”—paid for?—“… here for.”

“Sorry, it’s just that I’ve got to go and see them this weekend and they’ll be at each other’s throats the whole fucking time.”

“Where do they live?”

“Surrey. My dad had it built. The locals call it Dynasty Towers.”

“Tasteful.”

“Very. The evenings are the worst. He gets so drunk. Starts telling my mum about how she thinks she is so grand because of the way she talks and the way she holds her knife and because she wanted the children to do French exchanges, piano lessons and go to university, you know all that shit. He always ends up telling her she thinks she is so grand but she owes everything,
everything
to him, from the clothes she stands up in to, I don’t know, the car she uses whenever she tries to leave him. Then he’ll start on us—how we owe everything to him, including life itself. We think that because we’ve gone to posh schools and mixed with the right people that we’re better than him now but we should never forget who put them there in the first place, blah, blah.”

While she is talking a thought occurs to me. There are two sorts of people who have money, serious money, I mean. Some people inherit it, which leaves them soft and rotten and pathetic so they turn to drugs and act like life has done them a terrible disservice. Then there are people who make it and that turns them hard and angry—too mean to spend it themselves and too bitter to give it to anyone else, like Paul Getty installing pay phones in his homes.