Being Alexander

by Nancy Sparling

  “The tie’s in the bedroom,” says Sarah.

  Is she feeling nervous? Guilty? Does she want to pretend that this is all an innocent situation? Is she hoping that later she’ll be able to excuse her behavior to herself and pretend she didn’t know what was going to happen, that we merely got carried away by our lustful memories of the past?

  As we enter the bedroom I imagine I can smell vomit in the doorway and it makes me feel nauseous, but I know it’s only in my imagination.

  The last time I was in this bedroom with Sarah she was naked. In bed with Jed.

  I imagine the sight of Jed coming home early from work, a headache pounding in his ears, and his shock at entering the bedroom and seeing me in the bed with Sarah.

  It’s time for a little revenge.

  Sarah withdraws a tie from her lingerie drawer and hands it to me. It’s an Alex tie: I’ll never wear it again. Even if I liked it I’d never wear it again, forced, as it was, to spend hours in a drawer with that whore’s knickers. I’d never be able to get rid of the smell.

  I nearly run my hand down her cheek, but I catch myself in time. I like touching a woman’s face, but this is Sarah. I don’t want to touch her face. I don’t want to look at her face. So I pull her to me and kiss her hungrily, making her want me, making her miss me.

  We’re tearing one another’s clothes off and it’s like I haven’t had sex in weeks I’m so eager. It’s not that Sarah’s brilliant in bed, she’s fine; I’d rate her alongside Kate, but she comes nowhere near Camilla’s expertise.

  (I won’t even compare the harlot in my arms to Amber. Amber deserves better. I shouldn’t even be sullying Amber’s good name by thinking of Sarah in the same breath.)

  It’s the consequences of this act that are so exciting.

  I push Sarah on to the bed and flip her over on to her stomach. I don’t want to look at her face. I want to keep my eyes open, I want to savor the moment, but I don’t want to have to look at her and I don’t want her to look at me.

  I take out a condom (I brought my own along, always prepared like a good Boy Scout) and slide it on. I haven’t used condoms with Sarah in nearly two years, but we’re no longer together and neither one of us is exactly monogamous. I don’t believe in unsafe sex. It’s not like I know where she’s been.

  Sarah is ready, waiting in the doggie position she likes so well.

  Said she was in heat.

  I pound into her. With each thrust I curse her for what she did to me. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, I chant to myself.

  Traitorous whore.

  When we’ve both come I withdraw immediately and discard the condom. Let her worry about hiding it properly. It’s not up to me. I don’t care if Jed finds out she’s been screwing around.

  I’m not satiated. I could do with more, but once is enough with Sarah. I never want to fuck her again. Not ever.

  I’m glad my bags for the weekend are already at the office. I wouldn’t want to head home and bump into Amber. I’d have to make up some excuse to explain why I didn’t want her to touch me until I’d had a shower.

  And what of Camilla? I shrug. I’ll think of it as her just reward for blowing me out last night. I won’t be able to have a shower, but I’ll have a wash in the toilets at work. She’ll never know.

  I start to dress. Sarah lies in bed, naked and wanton.

  “When will I see you again?” she asks.

  “Soon,” I say, and smile. I should win an Oscar for this performance.

  “Alex?”

  That’s not my name, you slut.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I’m sorry about Jed.”

  It’s Alexander, whore. Didn’t you hear me?

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “I’m glad we’ve been able to put it behind us. I’m glad we can still be friends.”

  I manage to get that out without bursting into hysterical laughter. I feel like I’ve just been forced to swallow ten peeled, juicy lemons; it’s an effort to keep my face straight.

  “Maybe I made a mistake,” she says.

  No? Really?

  Sarah continues when I don’t respond. “We were good together.”

  I’d better say something. “We were,” I say, and that much is true. We were good together. Alex and Sarah were good together. But Alexander and Sarah have no future.

  “I’d like to see you again,” she says.

  “Let’s take things slowly,” I say. I don’t want her to break up with Jed, not yet. I’m not ready. Not all of my plans are in place.

  “Okay.” She smiles at me and I wonder suddenly if I would have been content to spend my life with her if she hadn’t messed everything up.

  I think I would have. I think Alex would have been happy. Alex would have liked to grow old with Sarah.

  Am I wrong to be punishing her?

  Hold on. Wait a minute. What am I thinking? Am I starting to feel sorry for her because I loved her once?

  Screw Sarah. She doesn’t deserve my sympathy.

  But I don’t let her see I feel that way.

  Not yet.

  The time isn’t right.

  drama queen

  Camilla took the day off so she’d be packed and ready to leave midafternoon.

  She took a day’s holiday to pack for a weekend away. Not a long weekend. A weekend. When she told me I decided not to comment.

  After the foodless lunch with Sarah I return to the office and chat to the temp. I send her home early, then drive to Camilla’s, arriving exactly on time at three.

  “Thank God you’re here,” says Camilla, and drags me into the apartment.

  Clothes, more clothes than I would have thought it possible for a single person to own in a lifetime let alone all at once, are strewn left and right, in piles and bundles, tumbling this way and that.

  “I don’t know what to wear,” she says.

  In the future I’ll encourage her to start packing a week before any trip, and if we go away for an entire fortnight she’ll need at least three weeks to prepare.

  I run a hand down her back. “You need to relax,” I say, pulling her close for a kiss, planning to rub her shoulders.

  Camilla breaks away from me, she stalks across the room, and I let my hands drop.

  “All you ever think about is sex,” she says. “I don’t have time. I’m not interested. Can’t you see that I’m busy? Can’t I ever have a little time on my own? It’s always sex, sex, sex with you.”

  She runs into the bathroom and slams the door behind her.

  I leave. I walk out and leave. I don’t say good-bye. I say nothing. I don’t care if she’s a family friend of Charles St. John, I don’t care if she’s his precious goddaughter. I won’t put up with this shit. Not from her. Not from anyone. I didn’t become Alexander so I could be a punch-bag. Alex would have taken it, but I won’t be treated like that. I bloody well won’t allow it. I don’t need her: she would have made things easier, my progress would have been faster with the support of her family and friends, but tough luck. I’ll survive on my own.

  I reach the street and head toward the meter where I left my car.

  “Alexander.”

  It’s Camilla. She’s run out on to the pavement without any shoes. Maybe she’ll step on some glass. I take out my keys, press the unlock button, and open the driver’s door.

  “Alexander. Wait. Please. Wait.” She runs up and throws her arms around me. Tears stream down her face. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t return her hug, but I don’t shake her off. She would come in useful. And she’s awfully good in bed.

  “Oh, God, I’m such a bitch,” she says.

  I don’t argue. Even Amber wouldn’t argue and Amber’s like Alex, she likes everybody.

  “You must hate me.”

  I sigh. I don’t like seeing a woman in tears. “I don’t hate you,” I say.

  “You do.”

  She’s pushing her luck. She’d better not ask ag
ain or I might be tempted to remain silent out of spite.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t hate you, Camilla.”

  “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” she says. “It’s no excuse, I know, but I just get so stressed when I have to decide what to wear. Everyone always expects me to look my best.”

  Here comes reassurance time. I know. I’ve seen it all before. Why are women so insecure?

  Noreen would say it’s because society judges women by their looks alone and that we’re constantly bombarded with pictures of perfection and that no real woman can compare. That even the supermodels must submit to five hours of makeup and hair before they can represent the ideal.

  “But you’re beautiful,” I say. “You’d look good in sackcloth.”

  She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”

  Is it me she really wants? Or doesn’t she want to turn up without a boyfriend?

  meeting the parents

  I allow Camilla to drag me back inside her apartment and she says that there isn’t time for sex, that she’s sorry, that she’s ever so much to do before we can leave. But to make it up to me, to soothe me, to make me forget her fishwife impersonation, she gives me the best blow job of my life.

  Has she had lessons? Is that what she was taught instead of physics? Is it a required subject at finishing school? Are there practical lessons?

  Eventually, having hit the tail end of rush hour by the time Camilla has finished packing, we arrive. (Camilla has been charming, entertaining and even-tempered throughout the drive.)

  The house is a Georgian mansion with twenty bedrooms. Camilla informs me that they retain seventy-five of the original acres of land. There’s pride in her voice. Her family built the house two hundred years ago and has lived there ever since.

  Camilla is an only child.

  We’re looking at her inheritance. (Or at least part of it.)

  I like this house. I want this house.

  I’m glad she ran after me. I’m glad I let her persuade me to forgive her for her outburst.

  Camilla’s parents turn out to be disappointingly normal. I’d have passed them on the streets of London without a second glance. No fierce whiskers, no shotguns over the arm to turn me away, no visible eccentricities at all.

  Both Rupert and Celeste hug their daughter.

  What? Not even unfeeling-family problems to keep me entertained?

  I’m not quizzed overtly about Platypus-fox, Charles will have kept them informed, but the rest of my life is poked, prodded, and analyzed, leaving me feeling like the inside of a runny egg after it’s been bounced in the back of a van for 755 miles.

  “Where are you from?” they ask.

  Translation: which swamp have you crawled out of?

  “Surrey.”

  Ah. Good county. That much is fine.

  “What do your parents do?” You’re not exactly wealthy, now, are you? they wonder. Otherwise we’d already have heard of your family.

  “Dad’s a retired doctor.” He was a GP, but I don’t tell them that. Let them ask if they want to know. “My mother’s never worked.”

  “Is she involved with any charities?” asks Celeste.

  Camilla’s mother wants to know if she’s a benefactor, if she would have heard of her.

  “Oh, lots,” I say, “she’s always helping out with one cause or another.” Mostly for the WI and the Oxfam shop. No posh fund-raisers for her.

  “What school did you attend?”

  “The local grammar school.”

  Ah. That’s a wrong answer, I can tell, but I could hardly pretend I went to Eton. It’s obvious I don’t come from the same background.

  Alex would have hated this. Alex would have broken down, crying, and apologized for dirtying their house with his presence. But I don’t care. I know that one day soon they’re going to be begging me to be their friend.

  Money is the greatest equalizer of all. If Platypus-fox does well I’ll have no trouble passing muster.

  night and day in the life of privilege

  I’m sound asleep in the blue guest room when the door creaks open and Camilla tiptoes into the room.

  “I’m awfully sorry about my parents,” she whispers, climbing into bed with me. “They can be such bores. Getting permission to date me is like a job interview.”

  “So did I pass?”

  “They never say, in case I fall in love with a man they don’t think is suitable. Daddy’s mother hated Mummy in the beginning—because one of Mummy’s ancestors supported Cromwell in the Civil War—and it caused a huge family row when they married. My parents are determined not to put me through the same thing.”

  I decide to read nothing into her remarks. She has a long night ahead to compensate me for my understanding of her earlier grumpiness and I don’t want to waste any more time talking.

  Saturday is filled with country-landowner activities: riding with Camilla’s parents, patrolling the estate on foot, sex alfresco.

  Alex would never have survived. The chasm that exists between the lives of people like Camilla and people like the old me is enormous. And it’s not just the money, it’s the centuries of breeding, not the breeding of the genes themselves, but the breeding of attitude. Camilla’s father knows—he knows—he’s superior to the vast majority of mankind and nothing anyone says to him will change that. Ever.

  I want to fit into this world. And the quickest way in is to marry someone like Camilla. I want to fit in, I need to fit in; I’ll have to marry someone like Camilla.

  an evening of revelations

  Rupert and Celeste accompany us to Charles St. John’s house in Rupert’s chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. Rupert is on the committee of the genetic-engineering charity so I can hardly accuse them of being interfering in-laws.

  It’s my first time in a Rolls and it takes a real effort for me not to pat the bonnet as I pass it. I’ll always be a car man.

  The house of Charles St. John, a sixteenth-century manor house, is more than a match for Rupert’s, and I wonder whether they would have formed some feudalistic marital alliance to join their estates together if either of them had had a son rather than only a daughter apiece.

  Charles and Grace stand just inside the Great Hall, greeting their guests as they arrive. And as Charles is shaking my hand, who should arrive but Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Wilmington-Wilkes. The Fates are smiling on me still.

  With a twinkle in his eye, Charles greets them and then indicates me. “You remember Alexander Fairfax,” he says.

  He’s enjoying this. He’s looking forward to the showdown.

  “Ah, yes, Alexander,” says Kenneth, shaking my hand.

  I knee him in the groin and kick him while he writhes upon the floor.

  Or do I squeeze his hand a little harder than I should?

  I certainly do one of the two.

  As we shake hands I can see that he doesn’t know who I am. Kenneth is wearing a blank but friendly expression on his face; he doesn’t associate Alexander with the Alex he left quivering in the office on the day of the sacking.

  Elizabeth Wilmington-Wilkes clearly finds me familiar for she studies me closely and then she gives a gasp of outrage. (She remembers me now.)

  Some people have no manners these days.

  Charles is smiling faintly as he claps me on the back and I know, at that moment, that he’s aware of the story of my ignoble departure from Wilmington-Wilkes. And he doesn’t seem to care. If anything, he’s using me to get at Kenneth. Charles must really hate that smug bastard.

  But does he hate him as much as I do?

  “Alexander’s your competition, Kenneth,” says Charles.

  “Competition?” He looks confused.

  Elizabeth looks like she’s about to pee her pants she’s so desperate to have a quiet word with her husband.

  Poor woman. Does she think I’m soiling the air she’s breathing? If her glares are anything to go by she clearly disapproves of a person such
as me being at this gathering. Or who she thinks me to be. For Elizabeth and Kenneth don’t know the new me. The real me.

  But they’re about to.

  Charles smiles broadly. “I thought we’d better hear two proposals. Wouldn’t want to let the charity down. Wouldn’t be fair. Even if you are on the committee.”

  So Kenneth is on the committee for this new charity along with Charles and Rupert and most of the other people here tonight. But if Charles is leading the show, why did he invite Kenneth to participate if he despises him so? Could it be that Kenneth doesn’t know Charles dislikes him? Is Charles planning some kind of mass public humiliation for my old managing director?

  As these thoughts are whirling through my head I exchange small talk with Grace and Elizabeth. A moment later Harriet enters the room, accompanied by a very tall, very thin young man. His skin is riddled with acne and he has that awkward look about him that shouts out adolescence. Harriet’s three or four years older than Camilla, probably my age or thereabouts, which makes this man, this boy, about ten or eleven years her junior. Suddenly I feel sorry for Harriet if this is her date. She’s a bit loud and brash and horsy, but she seemed decent enough when I met her.

  With the money her family has I’d expect a number of hot young bloods after her.

  Harriet greets Camilla with a glad cry and a hug, and even hugs Rupert and Celeste. She’s polite to me and flashes Camilla a little grin, as if to say, Ha, you lucky devil, you’ve still got him. (It’s not conceit. I simply know that look.) As Harriet turns to Elizabeth and Kenneth her eyes lose their sparkle and her smile is fixed and frozen. “Elizabeth. Kenneth. So good of you to come.”

  Elizabeth murmurs a polite reply but her face flushes a deep red. You’d think it would add color to her pale complexion and make her more attractive, but it merely draws attention to the heavy layer of makeup she’s spread over her face in an attempt to disguise the years.

  Charles looks like a man bent on vengeance and I have to repress my smile. It’s all beginning to make sense. No wonder Kenneth suspects nothing. It was Elizabeth all along, Elizabeth who insulted the St. John pride and joy. Poor Harriet. The wicked witch of Wilmington-Wilkes can be very fierce.