The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride (17 page)

‘
D
oes Luke have a grandfather called Robert?’ Dora asked one morning as we had coffee in the penthouse and my heart missed a beat just at the sound of Luke’s name. Was it ever going to stop doing that?

‘Possibly. He has a grandfather, but everyone called him Grandpa when I was there.’

‘Well, he sent you an email, care of me.’

‘Grandpa did?’

I took the email from her and read it. It was an invitation to lunch from ‘Robert Lewis (Luke’s granddad)’.

‘Posh lunch venue,’ Dora said as I read it. ‘Old-fashioned gentleman’s club, better wear a frock. Want me to accept for you?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Now my heart was really thumping, like I’d drunk six espressos on the trot. It was great to hear from the old boy, because I had liked him a lot, but it was really great to hear from anyone who had anything to do with Luke. I had tried as hard as I knew how to put him out of my mind. Gerry was so sweet to me, and such a good man, but I just couldn’t shake Luke out of my thoughts. Hearing from his grandpa felt like hearing from my own family, like a call from home.

The taxi driver who dropped me off at Grandpa Lewis’s club a few days later also seemed to think it was a bit too posh for me – I could tell from the look he gave me when he asked if I was sure I’d got the right place. The doors at the top of the steps leading up from Pall Mall must have been twenty foot high, deliberately designed to put the fear of God into peasants like me, sending us scurrying round to the servants’ entrances and kitchens at the back. If the doors were high, the ceilings in the entrance lobby were even higher, more like a cathedral than any club I’d ever heard of. It was like I’d stepped through a time warp, or walked on to the set of a costume drama, complete with flunkeys in black tailcoats. Every man in sight was wearing a suit and tie and there weren’t many women to be seen.

‘Can I help you, madam?’ one of the flunkeys enquired.

‘I’m meant to be meeting Robert Lewis for lunch,’ I said, horribly aware that my voice sounded too high and was echoing off the dark marble walls.

‘Ah yes,’ he purred, ‘the General is waiting for you in the drawing room. If you would care to follow me.’

The General? Fuck! No one had ever mentioned that.

My heels were making a silly little clacking noise as I tried to keep up with him. Even the tilt of his shoulders looked disdainful, but maybe I was just being paranoid. To my relief, the sound changed as we passed through glass doors and on to wooden floors and finally fell blissfully silent as we stepped on to the thick carpets of the drawing room. Bookcases full of leather tomes stretched up to the vaulted ceilings above, and giant busts of dead statesmen stood on
highly polished tables among well-tended piles of newspapers and magazines.

Grandpa looked very different as he rose from the chair he had been waiting in. His suit was immaculately pressed and his tie tightly knotted, nothing like the sloppy jumpers and baggy cords he wore when he was at home. He looked every inch the soldier, from his highly polished shoes to his gold cufflinks and neatly brushed hair.

‘My dear,’ he said, as he stepped forward, his hand outstretched for mine, leaning forward to peck me on the cheek, leaving the faintest whiff of cologne in his wake. ‘It is so nice to see you again.’

‘Really? ’That didn’t sound like quite the right response, but I was still genuinely surprised to have received his summons.

‘Shall we have a sherry before we go through to the dining room?’

He gestured for me to sit beside him and nodded to the flunkey, who slid away to fetch the drinks. I’d never had sherry before but I didn’t quite have the nerve to ask for a Diet Coke under the circumstances.

‘I’m afraid the food here leaves a little to be desired,’ he said, leaning close so no one else would hear. ‘Some of us have been lobbying for a change in the menu but I’m afraid we are going to have to wait for a few more people to die before we start getting our way. I don’t suppose you ever saw me as a moderniser.’

He gave a bark of laughter at his own joke and I smiled politely, not having a clue what he was on about.

‘I was interested to read about your mother turning up like
that,’ he said once the sherry had arrived. ‘Must have been a bit of a shock.’

‘Yeah.’ That really was the best response I could manage.

‘I’ve got a feeling I met her once. If you see her again, ask her if she ever worked at the Stork Club. Sure I remember a Maggie there.’ I should imagine my mouth was hanging open at this stage of the conversation. ‘How’s the sherry?’

‘Fine,’ I said, taking a quick gulp, grateful for the warm glow it left in my chest as it passed through.

On the way to the dining room he paused in a room filled with old portraits, some of them bigger than life size. ‘Bit of a family gallery, this,’ he said, looking up at a picture of a man in black. ‘That was my mother’s father. One of Queen Victoria’s Home Secretaries. A lot of people thought he would make it to Prime Minister, but he died. The pox, probably.’ Another bark of a laugh. ‘That one, there, the Bishop, he’s a great-great-uncle of Luke’s; wrote a book that was considered the last word on how the world was created, then along came Darwin and blew his whole theory out of the water. And that chap built many of the railways that allowed the British to take over India and the rest of the empire. These chaps, for better or worse, were the celebrities of their day. The equivalent to youngsters like you and Luke. Now they’re just a load of gloomy old portraits. Hopefully you chaps will leave the world with something a bit more cheerful to look at.’

‘I’m not sure
The Towers
is exactly cheerful,’ I ventured, the glow of the sherry spreading pleasantly through me, settling my nerves. 

‘A few nice songs would be a good legacy to leave,’ he said, before striding on towards the dining room.

‘Seen young Luke recently?’ he enquired, once we were seated in the dining room and he had ordered for both of us, writing our choices down on a pad left on the table and handing them to the waiter.

‘No, not recently.’

‘What about this chap you’re being seen around town with?’

‘Gerry?’

‘Is he?’

‘No, I mean that’s his name.’

‘Ah.’ Another bark and this time I was laughing too. ‘So, is it serious?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘Well, I don’t think the girl Luke’s hanging around with at the moment is the one for him either. Personally I think you’re the one for him, but the rest of the family tell me I have to mind my own business and let him make up his own mind.’

A few sips of red wine had now joined the sherry and I felt extraordinarily happy. ‘What’s she like, this model?’

‘Don’t you know her, then? I assumed all you celebrities knew each other.’

‘No, we don’t,’ I laughed. ‘Our clubs aren’t run quite like yours.’

‘No, I suppose not. It was a smaller world in my day, a lot easier to find your way around, I dare say.’ He paused to take
a slurp of soup, dabbing his chin carefully with the thick white linen serviette before going on. ‘She’s a pretty enough little thing, but if you ask my opinion – and I appreciate that you haven’t – the boy’s as much in love with you as you are with him. Just my humble opinion, of course.’

I concentrated hard on the soup, not sure what he expected me to say. No matter how much I spooned into my mouth, the bowl didn’t seem to get any emptier. My head was whirling, all the emotions I’d been trying to keep a lid on rushing back to the surface.

‘He was a bit hacked off that the record company wanted to record me without him,’ I said eventually.

‘I know, he told me. A bit old-fashioned of him, don’t you think, in these days of equal women’s rights?’ He smiled mischievously. ‘What you have to understand about Luke is that he’s a bit on the competitive side. His brothers have been rather conspicuously successful, made pots of money in the City or whatever. He really wants to impress them all.’

‘But he’s successful too,’ I protested. ‘He was in one of the biggest-selling groups ever. And we reached the Christmas number-one spot.’

‘I know all that, but I have more time than the rest of the family to keep up with these things. It’s not a world they know much about and I’m afraid they have rather an old-fashioned attitude to the whole thing, so they don’t always give him the credit he’s due.’

‘Snobbish, you mean,’ I said, blushing at my own forwardness.

‘Yes, I think you could say that. Pompous, even!’

We both barked together and one or two heads turned
very slightly in our direction. They probably thought I was his latest young mistress, which was fine by me. I no longer cared much what anyone thought. By the time we had reached the brandy (for him) and port (for me) we were both laughing pretty much constantly.

‘Did you ever work at a place called the Stork Club?’ I asked Maggie next time I saw her, having invited her down to Docklands for supper.

‘The Stork Club?’ She sounded surprised. ‘There’s a name from the past. Why do you ask?’

‘A friend of mine said he thought he knew you from there.’

‘You have a friend who knew the Stork Club?’

‘Robert Lewis,’ I said.

‘The General?’ She laughed with what sounded like genuine affection. ‘You know the General?’

‘He’s Luke’s grandfather.’

‘Is he? My God, what a small world. He was a character. Everyone knew the General. My God, he knew how to spend money. I think the family had to get the lawyers out to cut him off before he ruined them all. What a character.’

‘Did you sleep with him?’

‘Mind your own business, young lady.’

We both laughed at the primness of her answer, but she still chose not to say any more. For the rest of the evening she seemed to be a little bit lost in thought; lots of memories, I guess.

I
swear to God, I did not see it coming. When he turned up with his hair all brushed, his chin all shaved and a clean shirt, I thought nothing of it. When he told me he’d booked a table at a restaurant, I didn’t smell a rat, even though he’d never done anything like that in all the time I’d known him. I didn’t think anything when he fished the box out of his pocket and when he got off his chair and went down on one knee I just assumed he was doing up his shoelace, because he was wearing his desert boots as usual.

‘What the fuck?’was my eloquent response to the question because I truly hadn’t got a single part of me prepared. It was worse than winning a Bafta without having a speech ready. My mind went a complete blank. All I could think was that all the women at the surrounding tables had soppy looks on their faces, while all the men seemed to be averting their eyes from the embarrassing spectacle of one of their own making a prick of himself.

‘Will you marry me?’ Gerry asked again, opening the box and revealing a pretty ring.

‘Jesus Christ, Gerry!’

Not the most romantic of responses, I know, but he had totally knocked the breath out of me.

‘Well, will you?’

I could see that someone a few tables away was surreptitiously filming the scene on their phone, so it would probably be all over the Internet by the time we got home.

‘I dunno, maybe. Too soon to tell. Jesus, Gerry, will you get back on the fucking chair,’ I hissed.

‘That’s not exactly the reaction I was expecting,’ he grumbled, sitting back down to his food.

‘You’ve taken me by surprise a bit, mate.’

‘Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen with marriage proposals?’

‘My God, I don’t know, I’ve never had one before. I don’t think I can eat now. Why would you do it in a public place like that? It’ll be all over the fucking papers tomorrow.’

‘You’d better say yes, then.’

‘No, Gerry!’ Now I was shouting, which was really embarrassing, but I felt completely panic-stricken. I was having enough trouble holding on to my sanity as it was, I couldn’t be thinking about marriage. Gerry was my best friend, I didn’t want to lose that, but I didn’t know if I wanted to marry him. I mean, nice guy and all that; good looking, kind, generous, patient. Oh God!

‘I’ve got to go home,’ I said, standing up and hurrying to the door.

‘OK.’ He looked all crestfallen, worried he’d done something wrong, which obviously he hadn’t. He tossed a load of money on to the table as we fled from the restaurant
to find our waiting driver and I swear a couple of flashes went off but I didn’t bother to turn round.

He was taking my reaction so well, I felt like a real bitch. He held my hand tightly while I tried to pull my head together and started apologising over and over again. My head had been spinning ever since my lunch with Luke’s grandpa. I had come away from the club walking on air, but as the days had passed I’d realised that nothing had actually changed. Just because Grandpa thought Luke and I were well suited didn’t mean it was going to happen. It certainly wasn’t enough of a reason for me to contact him, especially if he was going out with someone else. That would have been a really bitchy thing to do, keeping him dangling and risking upsetting his new relationship. But what if he was thinking the same thing, not contacting me because he had read about me and Gerry looking at houses in the sodding country?

‘You don’t have to apologise,’ he said, kissing me gently on the cheek. ‘And you don’t have to give an answer yet. You never have to answer at all if you don’t want to. Just think about it, OK?’

‘You are so sweet.’

Now I felt like even more of a shit. No rushing around letting off guns for Gerry, and no stamping off in a huff and immediately going out with some bulimic little piece of modelling shit. (Sorry, getting carried away there.)

‘Hang on to the ring too,’ he said, pressing it into my hand. ‘I might lose it.’

He came back to the penthouse with me and we finished
off a bottle of wine between us, just sitting staring at the view, not talking much, like an old married couple really. I found a slim silver chain for the ring and put it round my neck. He was as good as his word and didn’t mention it again, didn’t use it to make me feel guilty, just acted like the perfect gentleman, which made me feel like even more of a bitch for not being able to give him an answer. But marriage! I mean, shit! All I could see was me in one of those bloody integral laundry utility whatever rooms in the suburbs, trying to get dogs’ hairs off my designer jeans.

‘Do you know what I think?’ he said a week or so later. ‘I think you should have a go at mending some bridges with your dad.’

‘I’ve tried. I rang and he just hung up on me.’

‘Well, maybe we need to try again. Go round and see him.’

‘You don’t know what he’s like. Once he’s made his mind up about something nothing will change it.’

‘It’s worth a try though, isn’t it?’

‘I’m quite scared of him, to be honest. He can be fucking nasty when he’s had a few.’

Gerry was being so reasonable and kind hearted; I was starting to feel like I was the one being unreasonable. Was I? Perhaps I was.

‘But now you know how much he wanted you when you were a baby, that he wasn’t going to let Maggie get rid of you, or put you up for adoption. Doesn’t that change things a bit?’

‘I know, I know.’

There was never a day when I didn’t think how great it would be to be able to go back home, to just sit around the
flat with the others, like we were still a normal family. It was the fear of how Dad would react if he found me there that stopped me from doing anything about it. But Gerry was right: I was an adult now, I should be the one making the decision to keep in contact.

‘Why don’t we go together?’ he suggested.

‘Would you do that for me?’ I was touched.

‘Of course I would. I’d like to meet him anyway. I liked your mum.’

‘He’s a bit different to her.’

My arguments were sounding more and more feeble and eventually they petered out altogether. I tried to pretend to Gerry that I had no worries about us just turning up on Dad’s doorstep out of the blue, but actually I was bricking it as we drove down to the estate. I was expecting Gerry to be fazed by the sight of the gangs of kids hanging around in the shadows with their hoods up; we even passed an abandoned sofa that was smoking gently by the side of the road. But I guess when you’ve filmed in the slums of South America and Africa, and in war zones in the Middle East, a south-London estate doesn’t seem so scary. Whatever the reason, his easy confidence was rubbing off on me a bit. Maybe spending the rest of my life with this guy wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. I mean, I was sure he wouldn’t make me live anywhere I didn’t want to live, or do anything I didn’t want to do.

I led the way up to our landing and held his hand tightly as I knocked on the door. I could hear shouting and swearing inside as they argued about who was going to answer it and
then Mum’s anxious face appeared behind the chain. The sight of me brought a flicker of a smile, swiftly followed by a frown of anxiety.

‘Your dad’s here,’ she hissed.

‘That’s OK, Mum,’ I said, annoyed that my voice was cracking with emotion. ‘We’ve come to see all of you.’

She glanced behind me and saw Gerry, giving him a nod of recognition, but still looking worried.

‘Who is it?’ Dad shouted from the kitchen.

‘Tell him,’ I said, when she hesitated.

‘It’s Steffi.’

There was silence behind her as everyone in the flat waited to see what would happen next. After a few moments his face appeared above hers.

‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I said, trying to sound like this was a normal family visit. ‘We thought we’d pop in.’ ‘Hi, Mr McBride.’ Gerry stepped forward, putting his hand through the gap in the door, risking having it slammed on him. ‘I’m Gerry, it’s really good to meet you at last.’

Dad ignored the hand and Gerry retracted it without showing any sign of discomfort.

‘What do you want?’ Dad repeated.

Mum seemed to lose her patience. ‘Oh my Lord. Can we have this conversation inside without all the neighbours staring?’

She flicked the chain off and opened the door so quickly Dad didn’t have a chance to protest. Gerry steered me in before anyone changed their minds. It felt strange to suddenly be enveloped in all the familiar smells of Mum’s cooking and
the various aftershaves and perfumes my brothers and sisters wore, mingling with cigarette smoke.

‘Hi.’ Gerry tried again with the handshake. ‘I’m Gerry.’

This time Dad gave in and shook his hand. Other faces were appearing at the doors along the corridor as everyone’s courage seemed to build.

‘Hey, Steff.’ Jeremiah was the first to speak up, then the others found their courage too.

Mum led us into the sitting room, with everyone else crowding in behind us. It all looked just as I remembered, but I’d forgotten the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia, so many bodies in such a small space, so many personalities vying for dominance.

Gerry looked entirely comfortable, settling into a chair, introducing himself to the rest of them. It was as if Dad was being upstaged as the alpha male of the pack and I wasn’t sure how he was going to take that. He was standing quietly in the background, but I felt he was brewing up like a volcano.

‘I was just making a meal,’ Mum said. ‘You will both stay, won’t you?’

‘That would be great,’ Gerry jumped in before I could answer. ‘Steff has told me so much about your cooking.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ Mum almost wriggled with pleasure. I hoped Gerry wasn’t laying it on too thick.

‘Would there be time for Mr McBride and me to go for a drink and get acquainted before tea?’

I couldn’t believe it. How was Gerry finding the nerve for this?

‘We’ve got time,’ Dad replied. ‘Come on, then.’

‘Your dad likes him,’ Mum said as the door slammed behind them, sounding as surprised as I was.

By the time they came back, Dad was nicely balanced on the edge of being too drunk – just at that point where he was at his most amiable. One more and there was a risk he would tip over into anger and violence. Maybe he’d just had a few beers and no spirits. Gerry was pretending he was at the same point, but I knew he wasn’t. The chances were he’d managed to only have one drink to Dad’s three or four. If the others had been planning to go out, they had all changed their plans now, all wanting to be there for the meal to get to know the wonderful Gerry. I can’t deny it was an incredible relief, but I was also a bit pissed off that they were all so keen to hear about his adventures behind the camera and seemed totally disinterested in everything that had happened to me since I was last home. I mean, did a Bafta mean nothing to these people? (Only kidding. Well, mostly.) I couldn’t believe it; we were all sitting round the table like we were the fucking Waltons.

‘So, Gerry,’ Dad said, as if the two of them were the oldest mates in the world, ‘when are you going to be making an honest woman of our Steffi?’

That silenced the room at a stroke as everyone turned to stare at him. Gerry didn’t look remotely bothered.

‘I’d do it tomorrow if I could persuade her.’ He grinned in a way that they no doubt thought was ‘boyishly charming’ but I thought was a bit slimy.

It suddenly dawned on me why he had insisted on coming to meet the family: he was recruiting them to his fucking cause.
My best friend, the shoulder I always used to cry on, was consorting with the fucking enemy. ‘Pull yourself together, Steff,’ I told myself, ‘they are not the enemy, they are your family and Gerry is doing a great job at reuniting you with them.’

‘You marry this man, Steffi,’ Dad boomed, like some jovial shopping-mall Santa. ‘Or I’m going to want to know the reason why not.’

It probably would have sounded like pub banter to anyone who hadn’t lived with him for twenty-odd years, but I knew it was a direct order, and so did all the others. Mum, bless her, immediately started bustling around giving everyone second helpings and everyone else found something fascinating to stare at on their plates.

I hauled as much oxygen in as I could manage, trying to quell the rising panic in my chest. I couldn’t find any words to make light of the situation. It actually felt as if someone had tied my tongue up. Mum did her best to cover up the tension, but it didn’t work. After that things went from bad to worse as I suggested we should leave because I had to be up early in the morning and Dad insisted on taking Gerry back down to the pub for a few more drinks. As the hours ticked by I began to feel angry as well as fearful of what state Dad would be in by the time they finally rolled back. If Gerry was too drunk to drive we would have to spend the night on the couch and the whole horror would stretch out to the morning. I was desperately craving the peace and solitude of the penthouse. The angrier I became, the more I realised I didn’t have to put up with it if I didn’t want to. I was an adult. I could make my own decisions about what I wanted to do. I phoned a taxi
company and gave them the address. An hour later I was back in the penthouse, feeling horribly alone. I had so wanted to be accepted back into the bosom of the family, but when I was I’d felt like I was going to suffocate.