Beta Male (18 page)

‘Right.'

‘For charity and for Matt.'

‘I'm not sure I see the difference.'

‘Thanks, Sam.'

*

I'd worn white-tie once before – when playing the butler in a drama school production. The people at the Albert Hall that charity evening looked as if they had been born in white-tie, as if they got dressed in it in the morning and walked the streets during the day in full regalia as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

‘Just look how the other half lives,' whistled Matt as we were ushered into an auditorium of plunging golds and reds, the silk rustle of floor-length dresses, the tinkle of glasses and animated conversation.

‘Just look how we're
going
to live,' I replied.

‘What
is
it with posh women?' asked Matt, wide-eyed. ‘Is it the breeding? The genes? The expensive grooming? The clothes? Those worldly voices that make them sound so damn shaggable? I tell you, mate, they put a lot of the girls we grew up with to shame.'

‘From my limited experience,' I replied, ‘their main attraction lies in the fact that they've spent the best years of their lives in single-sex boarding schools, with only contraband long-handled hairbrushes for company, and are therefore desperate to make up for lost time.'

‘Are you two going to gawp all evening or are you going to get busy?' demanded Claire, giving us both a little shove. ‘Come on, boys: divide and conquer. Go forth and multiply.'

There was an hour-long drinks reception before the opera started which I determined, on behalf of the charity, to make the most of. I loathe opera and I challenge anyone who professes to like it to prove that they are anything other than a snob. The fact that it is mainly attended by twats does not make it a superior art form. The extortionate ticket price does not guarantee interpretative genius. I have spent £9 and seen more artistic integrity from someone eating his own penis while playing the ukulele at the Edinburgh Fringe. I like opera's sense of occasion – I enjoy dressing up as much as the next thesp – but the performance itself is always three hours of your life you will never get back.
Fat bint sings to ugly man, then dies.
It's a complete waste of time. Opera music – now that's a different thing altogether. I love singing along in the bath to the thumping extracts on Classic FM. But fifteen of these in a row with a loosely woven plot that no one can be bothered to translate from the Italian ‘because it spoils it' (it's not the Qur'an, for Allah's sake; have you heard how facile some of the lyrics are?), when the only thing really spoiled is the sense of smug superiority felt by those in the audience who studied Latin at school? Well, no. Opera music has its place: in short clips on
The X Factor
and ice cream commercials. And the bath. Nowhere else.

Not that I shared any of these philistine thoughts as Matt, Claire and I mingled with the rest of the audience, champagne flutes in hand. It wasn't that sort of evening. There was a gentle, pleasant buzz of acceptance and belonging. Outside, anything could be happening for all we knew, for all we cared. Inside this womb we were safe, in body, mind and spirit, content that our generous charitable pounds were going towards nourishing our cultured souls, as well as helping those considerably less fortunate than ourselves. Money, wealth, exclusivity. Was this not what I had wanted all along? Role play on a grand scale, an entire theatre of possibilities, a comic cast of hundreds, a thousand potential plot twists, grand entrances and flamboyant exits.

It was an atmosphere that seemed to suit Matt as well.
Here, at last, I am in my element
, his elegantly tailored body seemed to cry as he glided effortlessly around the room, a quiet word here, a suitable nod there. Within a few minutes he was locked in deep conversation with a wealthy-looking older woman and her attractive daughter. Claire, meanwhile, had fallen in with her sister's crowd. They laughed uproariously as Claire related some amusing vignette. Her sister's dashing boss held her gaze for a little too long.

I was just warming up by talking to a nice waitress studying at my old drama school when I saw two alarming and highly unexpected sights approaching from opposite ends of the room. One was Christian Mary, accompanied by what could only be her parents; the other was Rosie, accompanied by what could only be a boyfriend.

I gawped at Rosie. I think everyone in the room gawped at Rosie. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder red dress that seemed to caress the ground as she walked. A diamond glistened at her throat. Her eyes danced with intelligence, her smile was a beam of celestial light, beatifying anyone it touched, her brown hair was piled high in the silky crown of the anointed one. No one that night would have said that her legs were a little
bit too short or her hair a little bit too long. Tonight, she was perfect.

The short, ugly bloke accompanying her knew that, too. He steered her towards the canapés with all the confidence of someone who knows that every other caveman wants to club him and ravish his woman. This is why some men go for trophy wives, I thought, as I looked on enviously. It's better than having a nice house or an expensive car. It says something about you that nothing else can quite articulate.
Well, well
, we think,
if
she
sees something in him, then maybe
… We might all have wanted to kill Rosie's companion but, were we to be introduced, we would probably show him a great deal more respect than we would have if he had come to the party alone.

Not that there seemed to be any chance of getting the short ugly man away from Rosie. He stuck to her side, bristling like a suspicious bull terrier whenever a potential rival spoke to her. She might have given him confidence, but he clearly wasn't confident enough to leave her alone for very long. I felt a tiny glimmer of hope. I just had to see Rosie again. Just had to see her alone.
I had to get that bloody money to pay the invoice.

It was, I think, at that moment that I began to scrape the very bottom of my moral barrel. Much of what preceded that evening was unintentional, unscripted, unplanned. But as I looked again at the incomparable Rosie caught up on one side of the room, still unaware that I was there, and saw Mary approaching me, now
sans
parents, from the other, her eyes bright with recognition and forgiveness, I suddenly had a very clear plan.
These two girls didn't know each other
… Returning my glass to the waitress and advising her that her current profession was a much better bet than the one she was training for, I turned and embraced Mary wholeheartedly.

‘Sam!' she exclaimed, flinging her arms around me. ‘I was worried about you.'

‘I was worried about me, too,' I said. ‘That church… '

‘I'm sorry. I just felt so bad when you ran out.'

‘
You
felt bad?' I took a deep breath. ‘You can't have been feeling as bad as me. The weight of sin bearing down on me. The realisation of what a bad person I've been, how bad we all are, fundamentally.'

Mary nodded understandingly.

‘But I also felt this great love,' I continued. ‘I felt that I was loved and cherished, understood and nurtured, no matter how bad I'd been. So I prayed.
Man
, did I pray.
God
, did I pray. That's why I haven't been in touch for ages. I've been praying non-stop. I've barely left my room for prayer. And I think I've seen the light. I really do. I think I now know the direction my life is going to take. And then you appear here tonight… Well, it must be a sign. It's like a prayer answered.'

‘Oh, Sam!' Mary looked up at me through tears of delight. ‘Would you like to come and meet my parents?'

‘Oh, Mary! I would like that very much indeed.'

Mary took me by the hand as if I were the prodigal son and led me off to meet Mr and Mrs Money-Barings. I was suddenly glad it was a white-tie function because if one of Mary's creators had not been wearing a tailcoat and the other a dress, I could easily have got them mixed up. They were equally tall, square and masculine. Poor Mary. If I had been her, I would have hidden her mother away in Dorian Gray's attic so as not to warn potential suitors of what she was going to turn into.

Having worked out which Money-Barings was which, the next problem was trying to follow what they were saying. I'd studied Received Pronunciation, of course, at drama school – I had been using it the whole evening – but the dialect spoken by the Money-Baringses was something else altogether. At first I thought they were speaking in tongues. Then I wondered if they were both trying to clear something from the backs of their throats or had, perhaps, brought an ageing labrador with them that evening and were attempting to call it to heel. Finally, I managed to tune my ear into their wavelength and we had something approaching a conversation.

‘Like opera, do you?' barked Mr Money-Barings. The trick to understanding him, I soon realised, was never to expect a full sentence.

‘Yes, sir,' I lied.

‘Rubbish,' shouted Mr Money-Barings. ‘Full of ponces.'

I laughed, despite myself. ‘Actually… ' I said, in a voice I barely recognised. I think I may even have pronounced it ‘Ashley'. ‘Ashley, I hate opera. But you know, all for a good cause. Rugger. That's my poison.'

Mr Money-Barings looked as if he wanted to hug me. ‘Mary,' he cried. ‘Good egg you've got here. Meet recently, did you?'

‘At a wed – '

‘At church, Daddy,' interrupted Mary with a firm smile.

‘Church, eh? Excellent.' He turned to me. ‘And what do you do, young man, when you're not in church? City? Insurance? Stockbroking?'

‘Sam's an actor,' said Mary.

‘Yes, I'm afraid so,' I said. ‘But I'm also starting a small business in the City.'

‘'Fraid so? Nonsense. Fine living. Very fine. As long as you're not one of these opera ponces.'

As if on cue, a bell rang to announce that the opera ponces would start their poncy singing in ten minutes. Mr Money-Barings clapped me warmly on the back, ‘For whom the bell tolls, eh? Ponce alert. Great to meet you, Sam. Come and visit us in the country some time, if you're passing.'

When have I ever passed the country
, I thought ruefully as the Money-Baringses rummaged for their tickets. Still, I was confident of eliciting a proper invitation. ‘It was lovely to see you again,' I said to Mary, kissing her dangerously close to her lips in front of her parents. ‘Will you be in church next Sunday, if I come back?'

‘Oh, Sam!' said Mary, which I took to mean yes.

Another warning bell sounded. Mary rushed off to join her barking, homophobic father and mute, masculine mother, and
I rummaged around in my pocket for my own ticket. Just as I'd started climbing the stairs to the gods, searching in vain for Rosie, I heard a familiar voice behind me.

‘Max,' it whispered urgently.

I didn't turn round at first. Who was Max?

‘Max,' it whispered again, louder this time.

Oh, fuck
.
I was Max
.

I turned to see Rosie, a vision in resplendent red, all alone on the stairs, her face flushed with champagne.

‘I thought I saw you across the room,' said the vision.

‘Hello,' I said, for I was tongue-tied and the only other thing I could think of to say was,
Please come home with me now
. In the circumstances, ‘hello' seemed safer.

‘How is your friend?' asked Rosie.

‘Oh, that's just someone I met at – ' I started to say before blushing and realising she was talking about Ed. I grinned, sheepishly. ‘Oh, he's fine. Slept it off. Now he's writing drivel for the newspapers as a means of public therapy.'

Rosie laughed. ‘Yep, I read that. But it took me a while to recognise the photo from the tramp you'd introduced me to.'

‘And how is your, er, friend?' I grimaced, involuntarily.

‘Oh, Kevin? He's trying to grease up the Prince of Wales in the foyer. He's our office accountant.' She flashed a charmingly sheepish grin of her own. ‘Anyway, I only agreed to come with him because I've got a crush on Prince Harry.'

I laughed.

‘Anyway,' she continued, ‘Kevin doesn't really like opera. He only came for the networking opportunities.'

‘Philistine.'

‘Philistine.'

‘Do you like opera?'

‘No. I hate it. You?'

‘No.'

‘Philistine.'

‘Shall we go somewhere else?'

‘Yes.'

And with that, I took Rosie's hand and we hurtled down the stairs together, past a startled-looking Matt, who was now sitting with the mother/daughter combination he'd met earlier, past Claire, who was no longer flirting with her sister's boss but perched grumpily in the corner with her BlackBerry, past the waitress I had befriended and out into the glorious autumn evening.

‘I feel like I can breathe at last,' said Rosie, laughing. We linked arms and began to stroll aimlessly away from the Albert Hall.

‘Me, too.'

Rosie stopped, took both of my hands in hers and moved very close. ‘But look at us now, Max. All dressed up with nowhere to go.'

But we did have places to go. With the remaining £300 on my fifth credit card, we spent the best evening of my life, the evening to end all evenings, in which the only drink we drank was champagne, the only music we heard became our own, and the only person I cared about in the world was the girl on my arm. It ended, inevitably, in her bed, breathless, delirious, and with Rosie shouting out, at the top of her voice, the name of a man neither of us had ever met.

‘Love lasts a long time, but burning desire – two to three weeks,' said Carla Bruni, who looks as if she knows a few things about both. Until Rosie, that had always been my experience, too. Even Lisa and I, who went out for eight months, only lasted so long because neither of us had the courage to finish it. But Rosie? Well, she was different – very different. After a month, there was even more burning desire and passion than there had been at two to three weeks. After two months, there was respect as well as affection. After three, I found it difficult to imagine life without her. And after four… Well, whisper it quietly, but I think I was actually in love with her. Not head-over-heels, over-in-a-month, get-bored-later infatuation, but proper, lasting, in-depth love. So
this
was what songwriters and poets had been banging on about for all these centuries.