by Simon Brooke
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 realise 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 realise 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. Imput 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-full 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 chi) 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.
For both these kinds of people, money is a terrible affliction. It makes a disgusting, ugly mess of their lives. I, on the other hand, offer another option, a third way: I would be a perfect balance, I could spend it so well. My whole lifestyle - clothes, houses, cars, holidays, parties, whatever - would all be in the best possible taste. I would be the prime example of how to live and spend. A human advertisement for gracious living. I would become a sort of wealth performance artist. All I need is someone (and somehow I'm beginning to think it's not going to be Marion) to provide me with the raw materials - the cash to prove it and I'll be well away.
I come back to her as she is telling me about a family holiday in Barbados where her dad held her brother's head under water, nearly drowning him, while the other holiday-makers on the beach watched in horror and nearly said something to someone.
After she has been talking for a while, I look down and say 'Oh God' sympathetically. I scratch the back of my left hand and discreetly look at my watch. It is nearly three forty-five. I've got work tomorrow. I'll give it till four and then I'll go.
*
Suddenly I wake up with a hot, sharp pain down in my neck. My cheek is stuck to the table and my left arm has gone to sleep. As gently as I can, I peel my face off the sticky not-soscrubbed pine surface and drag myself up, wincing in pain. Every muscle in my body is pinched tight. I stretch and shiver and breathe deeply. I feel faint for a moment.
The girl is still asleep opposite me. I blink and roll my eyes and feel the pain from my neck move up into my head. I am tortured from a weird, unnatural sleep full of sad, violent dreams. The girl is out for the count, snoring gently, her eyes more red and swollen than ever, her mouth slightly open. How often does she end up doing this? Falling asleep pissed after crying and damning her father to people she doesn't know? I look around for something to put over her shoulders but I can't find anything.
I decide to make for the door. The fresh morning air revives me slightly. All around curtains are closed. I look at my watch, it's six-twenty. I suddenly realise that I haven't got a cheque from her. I can't wake her. But I really need that money. I have to give £50 commission to Jonathan anyway. If I get the cheque I will be a hundred and fifty quid better off (minus taxi fares). If I don't, I will be fifty worse off (plus taxi fares).
I've got to do it.
I walk back into the house, deciding that brisk and business-like is the best approach. Nothing to be embarrassed about, it's just a commercial arrangement, after all.
She is still out cold. Oh, shit. I can't do this. I groan and breathe out heavily, half-hoping it will wake her up. I just can't do this. I walk out again into the hall and consider for a moment. The wreckage looks even uglier in the daylight through the curtains. And the stink is worse. My stink. I've contributed to this, I'm part of it now. I realise I am standing on a broken CD. How weird, I've never seen a broken CD before. I didn't know you could break them.
Oh fuck! That's it. I didn't come here in the middle of the night to listen to this pathetic girl's stories and pay fifty quid (plus cab fares) for the privilege. Fuck it, you've got to be tough in this business.
I march back into the kitchen and cough loudly where the combined smell of rotting rubbish, booze, stale cigarettes and sleep almost makes me retch. She stirs slightly, but that's it. 'Excuse me.' Nothing. I say it again louder. She stirs slightly and then looks up at me, squinting, trying to focus. 'Sorry to wake you, but, er, I've got to go and, er, you know.'
She sniffs and frowns, obviously trying to remember who I am and what happened last night.
'I'll need a cheque,' I say quickly.
'Hey? Oh, yeah, right.' She straightens up, pushes her hair back and looks around her. She begins a pathetic attempt to find her cheque book while I stand, hands in pockets, casually looking out of the kitchen window. After a few minutes I suggest that it might be in her bedroom. Or the living room. Or under that pile of magazines over there. Oh, shit - this is hopeless. In the end I stumble around the flat, swearing softly and throwing things left and right, looking for anything that she could use to pay me - credit card, cashpoint card, anything.
Finally I find a couple of credit cards behind a pizza flyer on the mantelpiece. I choose the one with the latest expiry date and fill in my credit card slip. I put £200 on and ask her to sign it which she does in silence with big childish letters.
The chances of it going through all right are minimal but by now I don't care.
She looks up at me through bloodshot eyes as she hands back the slip.
'I, er ...' I mumble, folding it and putting it in my back pocket. 'Well, it was nice to, er ... I hope it's not too bad this weekend, you know, with your dad.'
'Mmmm, no,' she says and sniffs. I say, 'Thanks, bye.'
It's nearly seven as I head for the Tube.
It takes me days to get over my night of hell with Erren and her father. I notice that we do actually have some of his swivel chairs in our office but there is no one I can talk about it to even if I'd wanted to. They're the really cheap, uncomfortable ones that everyone pushes around to other desks and only the people who are last into the office in the morning - like me - end up sitting on.
*
Jonathan rings me the following evening as I'm tearing off to go to Marion's and thanks me for the job I did the previous night.
'I knew you were right for it. I'm conscious that things have been quite quiet recently for you,' he says, a note of concern in his voice.
'Yeah, I know, I've been quite busy with work,' I say, although why I'm offering him an excuse I don't know.
'I thought that American woman might want to you see again.'
'Er, yeah, funny that. Mind you, I think she said she was going back to the States for a while so perhaps she's just not around,' I say confidently. This obviously sounds plausible to Jonathan.
'Probably, most of our clients are international,' he says. 'Anyway, well done, mate.' He laughs. 'They're not all like that, promise. I tell you what, next: really glamorous, high rolling job that comes in is yours.'
'Sure, I just wondered about-'
'There is one woman I was talking to who's going to Rome for business next week,' he says. 'Hates travelling alone. Just wants someone to carry her bag at the airport, sort of thing, take her to dinner while she's there. I'll put you forward for that.'
'Great.' I've never been to Rome. 'But what about-'
'Business class and five-star hotel, of course. Separate rooms, just so there's no misunderstanding ...well, er, unless you wanted there to be but I'll leave that up to you.' We laugh. 'All right, bud, well done. Speak soon. Bye.'
'That cheque in the post?' I find myself half-shouting at last.
Oh, God, yeah. Sent it the day we spoke. Hasn't it arrived yet? Bloody post office.'
My mum rings me later that afternoon at work and after checking for twenty minutes that I have the time to talk to her (by which time I don't) she tells me that she and my dad will be in London the following Saturday. The daughter of a friend of theirs is getting married.
'It's only a registry office do but they're having drinks afterwards,' she says. 'Nice of them to invite us.' I hear my dad, who is already home at five-thirty mutter something in the background. 'Nothing's wrong with a registry office
, I just think churches are nicer, you know with the flowers and the music. You wouldn't get married in a registry office, would you?'
'Er, I hadn't really thought about it, Mum.' I know she is thinking about Helen and the plans she was half-making for us.
'Oh, no, I'm not pressuring you, plenty of time for all that. Sorry? All right. Your father says to hurry up, as usual. We'll be round about six or seven if that's OK.'
'Great, see you then,' I say, watching the TV with the sound down.
'If you're not going out that night.'
'No, don't worry.'
'Don't want to cramp your style.'
I laugh. 'Don't worry, you're not cramping my style. See you on Saturday.'
When they arrive my mum's face is slightly rosy with drink and my dad has loosened his tie.
'It was a lovely dress, wasn't it, Derek?' says my mum. My dad has now switched the TV on and is slumped in front of it. He grunts. 'I think her auntie made it. Which one was her auntie? The tall lady?' My dad is even less interested in guessing the identities of this girl's relatives than he is about her dress. My mum gives me a look and rolls her eyes. 'We were just going to have something to eat and then get the train back. Do you want to come? I don't want to get in the way of your plans.'
'Honestly, you're not. I'd love to,' I say, looking at my mum and realizing that I haven't seen her for nearly two months. 'Where do you want to go? That pasta place round the corner?'
'That's a good idea. Do you think they'll be able to fit us in? I know what these London restaurants are like. You have to book weeks in advance.' I laugh at the idea of the little Italian round the corner with its wipe-clean tablecloths and wax-strung Chianti bottle candle holders being booked up. Just then there is a thump outside in the hall and Vinny arrives.
'All right, Mrs C, Mr C,' he says, stifling a burp.
