Model Guy (47 page)

 
"You're wearing a
gas mask."

 
"I know - disguise."

 
"Don't you think
it looks a bit odd?"

 
Piers gives a muffled
laugh.

 
"You're so innocent."
I sort of see what he means.

 
"Come on, let's look
upstairs. If anyone asks you to, you know, get involved just tell them you're getting
a drink and you'll be right back," Nora instructs us.

 
"Roger Willco,"
says Piers. I look round at him but it's impossible to tell now if he's taking the
piss or not. We move towards the stairs, keeping as close together as it's possible
to be without tripping over each other.

 
But before we go up we
look into another room where some people are having sex over tables, hands grasping
desperately at each other, looking to grab some new piece of flesh, some new appendage
or erogenous zone that they haven't experienced yet. Just then there is a farting
noise as an old guy is pulled by along a polished dining table by two young girls,
his skin alternately sliding and sticking on the polished, dark wood.

 
I pull Nora and Piers
out of the doorway and we go up. A woman is giving a man a blow job on the stairs
as another man takes her from behind, his thighs slapping rhythmically against her
quivering buttocks, generating waves of flesh. Without acknowledging our presence
they shuffle over to one side to let us pass. I find myself saying 'thanks' which
makes Nora laugh.

 
On the landing there are
two giant Chinese vases and a huge imposing portrait of a young girl. Obviously
recently painted her face is frozen in a look of self-conscious seriousness. The
owners' daughter? She must love coming home and seeing that. Better than coming
home and seeing this lot I suppose. I'm aware of somewhere staring at me. An older
guy with bouffant, blue rinsed hair and a black polo neck is inches away from my
face, looking at me provocatively. I step back - into Nora and Piers.

 
"Care to join us?"
asks the man, squeezing my bicep. I pull away. 'Us' seems to refer to a sad looking
young guy wearing only a pair of navy blue Y fronts. With his solid build, pale
skin and round face, he looks Russian or Middle European. He stares impassively
at me. "Mmm?" enquires the older guy, who is holding him the by the hand.

 
"Er, no thanks,"
I mutter.

 
The older guy shrugs petulantly
and leads his friend off into another room.

 
"Spoil sport,"
says Nora.

 
"It was tempting,"
I tell her.

 
"You should,"
she says, smiling wickedly. "That guy's minted, what's his name? He owns half
a dozen theatres and he's got shows all over the world."

 
It occurs to me that everyone
we've seen so far is either over fifty or under twenty five. Nora, Piers and myself
are a sort of demographic hiccup: presumably neither young and desperate enough
to be paid or old and desperate enough to be paying.

 
We look into the master
bedroom, continuing our ritual: a quick glance, a moment to analyse exactly what
is going on, a wave of relief on my part that it's not my dad, followed by another
sensation of repulsion at which I drag a smirking Nora and Piers out. Scented candles
blend with the smell of sweat and pot. A searing stink of Amyl nitrate meets us
suddenly.

 
On the floor of this huge
room, with its chandelier and elegant mahogany fitted wardrobes, a middle aged,
Rubinesque woman is riding a very thin young guy who looks more scared than turned
on, her huge legs almost crushing his thin thighs. Still bouncing energetically
she shouts across to a grey haired bloke who is jerking off furiously as he watches
two young girls kissing listlessly on a settee.

 
"Jeremy, uh, uh,
you'll have to feed, uh, uh, the meter in a minute, you know," she says. Thinking
that this might be slang for another sexual position, I look away and drag the others
out again. We turn and bump into a bloke who I've seen on the telly a few times
but I can't think when.

 
"What a fantastic
dress," he tells Nora. "I love it. Where did you get it?"

 
"Thanks, it's Hussein
Chalayan," says Nora. "What about yours?"

 
"It's a just a little
Vivienne Westward number," he says, touching her arm. Then it comes to me.
Of course - he's that rugby commentator.

 
"Don't leave me alone,"
she says to me after he's moved off.

 
"OK, let's go up
another floor," I tell her. "And then we'll get the fuck out of here."

 
We bump into a rather
drunken Lady Huntsman, her arms round two young men, one, a skinhead has a tattoo
of a spider web across his neck and the other while the other is in camouflaged
combat pants and is drinking champagne out of the bottle, letting pour down over
neck and naked torso.

 
"Huh," she says,
looking me up and down. "Changed your mind have you?" She moves on haughtily.
We pass a girl, totally naked doing coke off a marbled topped consul table.

 
"Oh, my God, can
you believe this?" hisses Nora at me as we move into another room. "I
just hope I remember all the names. Wait." She rather clumsily holds her handbag
up in front of her and fiddles with the catch. "Look, there's Josh Langdon."
Langdon, drunk or stoned or both, is with three young girls. "Oh, fucking hell,
there's Sir Peter Townsley - he owns The Informer - now that would be funny."
She holds up her bag again.

 
"Nora, someone's
going to notice you doing that in a minute," I tell her.

 
"No," she says,
"they're all too trashed. Talking of which I could do with a drink. Can you
get me one?"

 
"I'm not sure...oh,
wait a minute, there are some bottles over there."

 
"Charlie."

 
"Yes?"

 
"Get me a large one
will you."

 
"Sure."

 
"Er, yep, whatever's
going," says Piers when I ask him.

 
"Will you be able
to drink it through that?"

 
"When it comes to
alcohol, mate, where there's a will there's a way."

 
I notice a table over
the other side of the room, complete with snowy white table cloth. There are cut
crystal glasses, a huge ice bucket and a silver dish with elegant slices of lemon.
Bottles of Tabasco, Angostura Bitters and Worcestershire sauce are gathered in a
little triangle. Everything else is neatly arranged but the ultimate absurdity are
the canapés: exquisite squares of brown bread with smoked salmon and gravad lax,
little cocktail sausages and what looks like foiegras on crackers. Who, tell me,
who, is here for the food?

 
I shake my head in disbelief.
In a way this very ordinary sight seems more bizarre than anything else I've seen
tonight. I pour a nicely chilled Chablis into three heavy cut crystal glasses. As
I replace the bottle in silver ice bucket I notice a face peering up at me from
beside the table. It's a middle aged man with a moustache and neatly cropped grey
hair. He winks at me then closes his eyes and opens his mouth. Feeling slightly
embarrassed and not wanting to be a party pooper, I take the bottle out and pour
some of the wine into his open mouth. He gently squirts a bit out and lets it trickle
over his face and down his neck, before drinking the remainder.

 
"Don't you want to
piss?" he asks, sweetly.

 
"Erm, not at the
moment, thanks."

 
"Oh, well, you know
where I am if you do," he says, smiling.

 
"I'll bear it in
mind, thanks."

 
I get back to the others
and give them their drinks. Nora knocks her's back almost in one go and then looks
around again.

 
"You're right,"
she says. "I shouldn't waste my time writing this one silly article. I should
blackmail these people; I'd get a hell of a lot more for it, that way."

 
We watch a bit more, backed
up against a wall, hoping there is safety in numbers. I realise that not many people
seem to be actually enjoying themselves. Those that aren't obviously too pissed
or stoned to know what's happening are looking around to see what else is going
on and what other activities they should be involved with. It's like one of those
parties where everyone is looking past everyone else to see who else they should
be talking to.

 
"I'm going to the
loo," says Nora, after a while. "Do you know where it is?"

 
"No," I tell
her, "but there's a bloke by the drinks table who'll be happy to oblige."

 
"Oh, he knows, does
he - Oh, I see what you mean." I don't look around but I assume from her expression
that someone is indulging the guy. "Actually I just want to make some notes."

 
I catch her arm.

 
"Nora -"

 
"Oh, for goodness
sake, your dad's obviously not here and don't worry I won't mention anyone associated
with him, I told you."

 
"Look, Nora, please
don't do this. It could still get back to him."

 
She rolls her eyes and
breathes deeply.

 
"Oh, Charlie, face
it: it fucking serves your dad right - stupid cunt shouldn't have got mixed up in
all this shit, should he?" Her vehemence takes me back for a moment but then
I say: "It's not my dad I'm worried about. Don't you understand? It's my mum."
I can hardly bare to think of her, here, now. "It would just kill her."

 
She gives me a look of
what I realise is contempt.

 
"Nora!" But
she has disappeared. I turn to Piers who is chatting to a well preserved woman with
long blond hair. She's wearing a leather waistcoat, riding chaps and cripplingly
high stilettos.

 
"Hello," she
says, extending a hand. "Sabrina. I'm mistress of pleasure."

 
"Hi," I say
shaking it, wishing she'd bugger off, mistress of pleasure or not, and let me talk
to Piers.

 
"We're having our
own little thing up on the next floor, front bedroom. Hope you'll be able to join
us."

 
"Very kind. I'll
certainly try and make it," I tell her.

 
She moves off.

 
"You'll enjoy that,
all right. She gives the best blow jobs ever. Makes you feel you're sort of melting.
Her husband's very senior in -"

 
"Piers, I'm not going
to join her bloody party. I'm pretty sure my Dad's not here so I'm going in a minute
and I'm taking Nora with me but look, just to get this straight. You went to one
of these things with Guy and then blackmailed half the people you saw there to get
them to invest in 2cool, is that right?"

 
Piers looks surprised.

 
"Oh, no," he
says. "We didn't have to blackmail anyone to start with. Everyone wanted to
put their money into 2cool. They were falling over themselves to invest once we'd
described it to them and given them the presentation. But, I have to say, when a
mate brought me along to one of these and I saw half our investors here it was quite
useful for later. See what I mean? Reminding them of this when they started nagging
us about dividends and returns on investments and things and crapping on and on
about where their money was going." He tuts and shakes his head as he remembers.
"God, it was so boring but one little mention of the badger meetings and we
never heard another peep out of them."

 
I nod, taking it in.

 
"Oh, right, I see."
How sensible. Is it? I'm not sure anymore.

 
"I don't know, perhaps
it would have been better if we had listened to them nagging at us. Who can say?
2cool2btrue.com might still be up and running." He looks around the room and
nods at someone on the other side of it. "But why does the Badger Preservation
Society - or whatever it's called - meet? I mean why do these people, all these
rich, famous, influential people, do it all together like this?"

 
"Well," says
Piers rocking on the balls of his feet and finishing his drink. "In a way you've
answered your own question: they like to do it with people of equal social standing,
movers and shakers, I suppose. People they can do business with, quite literally
- so many deals are struck at these things, you wouldn't believe it - plus there's
safety in numbers, you see. No one's going to blow the gaff, if everyone's got the
same amount to lose."

 
"Unless someone does
give the game away."

 
"Ah, but they wouldn't,
would they? Besides the best lawyers in the land, some of whom are here, along with
a couple of judges too, I see," he says, he smiles a 'hallo' at someone who
I see is taking part in a manic groping session in a corner. "Yep, the legal
establishment would be down on any squealers like an avalanche on a school skiing
trip. They wouldn't stand a chance."

 
"What about the other
people? The young girls and boys?"

 
"Oh, half of them
have just arrived from Eastern Europe or Brazil or somewhere yesterday, they don't
even speak English, let alone know who these people are that they're having sex
with."

 
I'm just about to ask
who organises these events when Nora comes back carefully carrying three glasses
of wine. She hands me one, then gives one to Piers and takes a drink of her own.