The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted (23 page)

It was the only high spot of the evening. For some reason, whether it was my clothes or my ‘sod you' demeanour, women shunned me. There were quite a number of pretty women there, in their mid-twenties, killer heels, and doubtless fancy jobs too. I must have been exuding some toxic vibe, because there was no one there who wanted to chat. I even presented some champagne to the beautiful blonde in the clinging grey whose glass I had knocked over.

‘Thanks,' she said, before turning back to the man in the suit. Beyond my dazzling conversation, I had nothing whatever to offer her, and we both of us knew it. She wanted reliability, dependability, and above all, she wanted me to have prospects, and in my jeans and my floral shirt, my prospects must have looked dire.

Cally was making a short speech and I lingered at the back of the room. She had made two little jokes and was now going about the business of thanking everyone who needed to be thanked.

Greta sidled up to me and slipped her arm through my mine. She was drunk and she was all but using me as a leaning post. ‘She's good, isn't she?' said Greta. As usual, she was in pink and black. ‘You're lucky to have her.'

‘I certainly am.'

She squeezed my bicep and sighed. ‘I do love young boys,' she said. ‘Cally got there first.'

I blurted out the words while they were still only half formed. ‘Cally was always going to get there first.'

She did not like it. She was drunk and it took a moment or two for my words to sink in, but once they had, she very quickly withdrew her arm from mine. ‘You're very hoity-toity, aren't you, for a jumped-up waiter boy?'

I wish that I had heeded Cally's lesson. I wish that I had bitten my tongue. But I didn't. In my callow youth, I was incapable of soaking up an insult; rather, insults had to be met with further insults, the more hurtful the better.

‘If I'm a jumped-up boy, then what does that make you, Greta?' I asked. ‘A raddled old dotard?'

It was a nasty thing to say, and it was an awful time to say it; Cally was still talking.

‘The sooner that Cally is shot of you the better,' spat Greta, and doubtless I could have come up with an equally acidic rejoinder, but she immediately turned on her heel and went to the bar.

I should have gone home then and there. I could have caught the train from Waterloo and been back in my bed at midnight. Hell, with all those fifty pound notes that my father had given me, I could have spent the night at the Ritz. But I didn't, I stayed, and my anger eked itself out through the easiest outlet. Anger is like that. It is rarely assuaged on those who deserve our wrath; rather, we let it steep until eventually out all that lush bile pours, raining down onto the head of the benighted sap that happens to have fallen in love with us.

Cally toasted us all with her glass, and revelled in her moment. Yet all I could think was how much I wanted to get out of there. There was a part of me, also, who was eyeing up all those well-groomed men and who was wondering just how many of them knew Cally quite as well as I did.

I watched as she worked the room. She was brilliant; for every man and every woman, there was the kiss, the laugh and the perfectly chosen word.

She gave my hand a squeeze. ‘Will you join us for dinner?' she asked.

‘I'd love to,' I lied. ‘Where are we going?'

‘The Caprice. There's a table booked.'

‘Shall I see you there?'

She squeezed my hand. ‘We'll go together…' But as she looked at me, she tailed off. Perhaps she had already divined my mood. ‘I'll see you there.'

If I was angry before, by the time I'd been in the Caprice ten minutes, I was scorching. I was mildly drunk. I was hurting. Who the hell was Greta anyway, calling me a ‘jumped-up waiter boy'? And who the hell were all these suits with their show-pony girlfriends? And… and… What does it matter? The point, anyway, was that I was a young man nursing a grievance.

Cally had booked a table for twelve at the Caprice and I was the first in. I took the prime position, back to the wall and in the dead centre of the table, and then set about drinking the red wine. It was beastly behaviour.

The restaurant, or what I remember of it, was very formal, with sleek waiters who seemed to glide on well-oiled casters. White linen, white napkins, flowers for every table, the quiet intense conversations of the well heeled and the well mannered. I had a sudden yearning for the Knoll House's pudding table and plump dads weaving their way over for a third helping of trifle.

By the time Cally and the others had arrived, I was already well away on the second bottle of wine.

Cally led the rest of the guests into the restaurant. She looked at the empty bottle on the table and then she looked at me. ‘My,' she said, ‘somebody has been drinking.'

‘Cheers!' I waved a glass at her.

Cally set herself at the far corner of the table. She was looking at me as she took her seat. It may just have been paranoia, but it seemed as if the other guests were also doing their best not to sit next to me. I ended up with Greta on one side of me, and on the other was the companion of the woman whose glass I had knocked over. Opposite me was Hugh, the antiques dealer. Cally's guests were mostly men, very slick, very polished, and so wholly different from me that I might have been from another planet. Their ages seemed to range from late twenties to their late sixties. Unfortunately, I had neither the time nor the opportunity ever to discover much about them; that's rather what happens when you end up hogging the show.

Greta presented me with her shoulder and hardly said a word to me.

The man on my other side was not interested in me either, but manners dictated that he did at least have to talk to me. I had tried unsuccessfully to engage with Hugh on the other side of the table, so for five or ten minutes I sat there and seethed as I drank my wine.

The man turned to me. ‘Hi, I'm Morgan.' He offered me his hand. His fingers were small and rather pointed, as if they belonged to a plump clairvoyant.

‘Hi, Kim.'

‘So what brings you up to London?'

There were a lot of things that I could have said. I decided to lob a small grenade into this urbane millpond.

‘I'm Cally's boyfriend,' I said.

‘Oh,' he said. He looked at me anew, interested despite himself. ‘I didn't know she had a boyfriend, but of course she would. Where did you meet?'

‘In a hotel in Dorset.'

‘Were you staying there?' He'd turned to me now, lolling in his chair, arms spread extravagantly wide.

‘No, I'm one of the staff. I'm a waiter.'

‘You're pulling my leg!'

‘Or maybe I'm not.'

‘So you're a waiter at this hotel in Dorset, and Cally comes over for dinner, and then one thing leads to another! Stone the crows!'

Hugh had picked up the fag end of our conversation.

‘Did I hear right?' he asked. He was tearing off bits of bread from his roll and popping them into his mouth without looking. ‘You're seeing Cally?'

‘I suppose I am,' I said.

He crowed to himself, rocking from side to side, before turning to address Cally at the end of the table. ‘You're a cradle snatcher, by God!'

Cally looked quizzically from Hugh to me, sizing up how best to flatten him. ‘Who wouldn't?' she asked. ‘Miles more fun than being with a middle-aged man.'

And by now, the whole table was listening and was digesting the fact that I was Cally's lover, and although I didn't know what they were thinking, I was aware that Cally's guests were not really wishing me well. Perhaps incredulity, perhaps a slight amount of hilarity, and perhaps there was some envy mixed up in there, too. Cally was a very beautiful, very rich woman, and she had this extraordinary sexual magnetism.

Morgan's girl, bless her, piped up. She was sitting on the other side of Morgan. ‘I hope I have a toy boy when I'm in my forties.'

The other woman piped up, well groomed, jet-black hair, slightly older than Cally. ‘I'd have taken a toy boy in my thirties,' she said.

Hugh had finished his bread roll. He licked his index finger and very carefully swept up the crumbs on his plate. He popped his finger into his mouth. ‘They never last,' he said, ‘but they're jolly good fun while they do.'

‘They are,' Cally said. I don't think she was overly pleased that our love affair had become public knowledge, but now that it had, she was going for it. ‘If you'll forgive me, Kim,' she said, with a nod to me. ‘I think that every woman should have at least one toy boy in her life.'

‘And you've had plenty!' Hugh crowed.

‘Thank you so much, Hugh, I can always rely on you.'

I don't know whether the man was drunk or just intent on baiting me, but as the others watched, he snuffled into his drink. ‘Once tasted, never forgotten, eh?' Hugh said. ‘What was the name of the last one? Was it Martin?'

‘Hugh, please,' Cally said.

‘Don't mind me, I'm just a middle-aged blow-hard,' he said. ‘Lucky to get it up more than once a week. Not like you young bloods, eh, Kim? Eh?'

I suddenly felt liberated, relieved of an enormous weight. I didn't care what I said, in fact the more outrageous, the more shocking the better.

‘Let me explain something to you, Hugh,' I said. ‘Men – as you well know – are at their sexual prime when they're about, I guess, my sort of age. Maybe a bit younger, but I'm not far off it. You, on the other hand, are probably a little over the hill. But women reach their sexual prime at roughly the sort of age that Cally is now. So you can see that it makes perfect sense for Cally and me to be together. Morning, noon and night, we're at it like rabbits.'

I looked over at Cally. She drank some wine, then put down her glass and massaged her forehead.

‘Are you, by God?' said Hugh.

‘Indoors or out, rain or shine, before breakfast or after tea. We're at it non-stop. We can't get enough of each other. We've worked our way through the Kama Sutra, and now we're doing it with bells on.'

‘Kim!' Cally said.

But it was way too late for self-restraint. The genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

The faces of the other guests were a complete picture. The men, perhaps remembering their glory days, perhaps imagining what it would be like to work their way through the Kama Sutra with Cally; the women, discreetly toying with their wine, glancing at me intermittently. But what they were thinking, I could not fathom.

‘And do you do anything else apart from have sex with each other?' Hugh said.

I have noticed that middle-aged men tend to have a peculiar fascination with sex in all its forms. They may not be getting much of it themselves, but they like to talk about it, as they fancifully lust after all those ships that once passed them by in the night.

‘Apart from the sex, Hugh, of which there is quite a lot?' I said. ‘There isn't time for much else. We talk. We have a laugh. We drink and sometimes we eat, and then we start having sex all over again, though sometimes we do it all at the same time. Haven't had sex on a horse yet, but it's certainly on the agenda. Anyway Hugh, enough about me, and enough about my incredible sex life. When did you last have sex during lunch?'

‘I – I…' He stretched for the bottle and poured himself another glass. ‘Not for a long time.'

I threw the question to the floor. ‘Anyone had sex over lunch?' I said. ‘Any takers? You, Morgan. You must have given it a try with your gorgeous girlfriend?'

‘No,' he said.

‘What about al fresco sex?' I said. ‘Anyone in the last year?'

‘Kim, darling,' Cally said. ‘Delightful though it is to parade our love life to the world, can we please change the subject?'

‘Change it?' I said. ‘But they're riveted! Look at them!' And one by one, I held the gaze of everyone at the table, and they were indeed fascinated. It was as though they were watching a car crash, waiting expectantly for what would happen next. ‘Look at that old goat, Hugh!' I said. ‘Still trying to get into your pants after all these years, and now doing it by proxy! He's loving it, aren't you, Hugh?'

‘Kim, please,' Cally said. She looked at me and raised her hands in a pleading salaam.

I would have left it at that. I was done. I had caused enough havoc for that night, and it was time that the conversation tipped back onto its usual adult train tracks with talk of all that is bland and safe and anodyne.

Greta spoke. It was the first time she'd spoken to me since she'd entered the Caprice. ‘But it hasn't always been by proxy, you know, Kim.'

That was a choker. The very thought of Cally with Hugh.

As ever, I did what I always do when I have been touched upon the raw: I made light of it.

‘Me and you, Hugh? We're comrades in arms!' I said.

Hugh shrugged and dabbed his finger at the plate again to wipe up a last crumb. ‘Taught me everything I know,' he said.

I was repelled. The very thought of Cally with this bloated carcass of a man. It was a stunning blow to the guts.

I raised my glass to Cally. ‘Cheers!'

A sudden and very vivid image played through my mind; not of Hugh having sex with Cally in her old four poster – I'd never much cared for that ancient bed with all its history. No, the thought that had winded me was the thought of Cally and Hugh in that double bed in the beach hut, which over the last few weeks I had come to see as
my
beach hut. But of course, she'd have made love there. It was a fantastic spot, and it was a fantastic bed, and if she'd been seeing Hugh, undoubtedly she would have taken him to her seaside haven.

‘Please,' Cally said. I think that beneath her make-up she may actually have been blushing.

I toyed with my glass, downed it in one, and then charged it right to the brim. I could feel my cheeks turning white, the blood pumping to my brain. I was suffused with anger, and like Samson would have brought the whole Temple crumbling down on my head if only to crush my enemies.