Confessions of a Sugar Mummy (8 page)

If, of course, there were no profits, Alain would receive nothing. But the market is going up, isn't it? And surely poor foot-loose Alain would at last be able to place the proverbial foot where it so badly needs to be, on the property ladder.

On my side of the deal, if there's a slump I hang on to the flat and let it, selling when prices rise what is basically a developed property without having had to pay for the renovations. Alain would get nothing.

And I find—as the moon shines imperturbably on and I explain what ‘equity' means (the money invested in a property)—that I'm veering away from a percentage of possible profits to handing Alain a slice of equity.

It is, I decide, worth the risk on my part after all.

I mean, suppose Alain and I were to live together in the investment flat and use the other half of the sale proceeds of Saltram Crescent for having a wonderful time …

It was Midsummer Night alright. ‘It sounds a good idea', Alain agrees, and who wouldn't think that when handed the value of twenty-five percent of a prime area flat? ‘There's Claire', he goes on, ‘do you know, we've been together for twenty-four years—imagine, she was thirty-four and I was twenty-four when we met …'

I say nothing, because there really is nothing to say. Am I supposed to house this couple, people I hardly know?

‘We'll find a compromise', Alain says, staring past the candle straight into my face.

The drive back to W9 was over—so it seemed to me at least—in a second or two, with Alain just as cheerful as he had been at dinner and me trying to fight amazement and disappointment together. What had I done? I didn't want to think about it yet.

But I wasn't surprised to hear Howie's snores when I let myself in (the little red car darted off even before I had clambered painfully up the steps).

Howie was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. Molly's kicked-off Oxfam sandals lay on the floor nearby—but, as I knew, this didn't necessarily mean intimacy had taken place. She and Howie had probably been discussing the huge offer on my flat.

I can trust no one now. Property is death.

‘It's the plot of
The Wings of the Dove.
' Molly lies back on the sofa, sandals still abandoned on the floor, a statement which declares that I, Scarlett, may go out to dinner if I please—but look how it's ended!—and she, happy, I-know-what-age-I-am Molly, will show who's the best one here by enjoying summer nights walking barefoot to her flat in the next street (and probably, not to put too fine a point on it, also turning down a drunken Howie last night). Molly has the advantage of having been wanted and having refused, whereas I—well we don't need to go into that.

‘You know', Molly pursues her point. It's obvious I'm depressed and low in self-esteem and this is just
the moment to rub in my minimal knowledge of Henry James. I nod, looking blank and mutter something about Helena Bonham Carter in the film—at the time, as it comes back to me, I'd thought the rich heiress should have been murdered for being so genteel, unable to declare her feelings: why should we all wait for her to die of TB?

‘You see, Kate Croy was a new type of young woman.' Molly sits forward, eyes shining. Abstinence has made her hair grow blonder, I think nastily, and then wonder if she dyed it when Howie stumbled into W9.

‘What was new about Kate Croy?' I say. ‘She just wanted to get married, didn't she? And she wanted to be rich. What's new about that?'

‘She wanted desperately to get away from her deadly Edwardian aunt's control', enthused Molly. ‘She wanted to marry Merton Densher, who edited a radical newspaper …'

All this is coming back to Old Leftie Howie again. ‘Where does this become like what's happened to me?' I snap.

‘Because when the American heiress Milly Theale turns up', Molly spells out, ‘Kate grabs her opportunity. Like a modern girl might. She'll engineer a way to get the American's money.'

‘And who's playing the part of Milly Theale?' I enquired. (I loathe and detest the Creative Writing lectures Molly gives.) ‘Why the hell should I be interested in
The Wings of the Dove?
What can it have to do with me?'

‘You're Milly Theale', my editor friend pounces. Now, as if overcome by a modest self-satisfaction at her superior knowledge of The Master, she reaches for the sandals and slips blotched and swollen feet into them. Then, unable to resist, she glances at me to gauge my reaction.

‘Milly Theale? Me?' I've fallen into a trap I know, but what on earth is Molly on about?

Me, Scarlett, ex-wife of a man so poor that my ‘pay-out' from the divorce consisted of half the mortgage payments on the horrible Hammersmith flat we had miserably shared. In order to avoid my having to fork out, the flat was sold, the mortgage paid off, and precisely zero funds remained.

Me an heiress. You must be joking.

Then I remembered. I'm worth (on paper, as Stefan Mocny would inevitably term it) no less than three-quarters of a million pounds—with the odd forty-nine thousand, nine hundred etc. etc. to play around with on top of the three quarter mill. To most inhabitants of the Third—and Second and a
good few in the First—World I'm a bloody heiress. Now I'm growing a little more interested in how Kate Croy (raven-haired, scheming Helena Bonham Carter) cooked up a plan to get my fortune off me.

‘Kate persuaded Merton Densher to go along with the infatuation Milly had for him', Molly says. ‘She went on acting as a friend to the rich girl, and encouraged her to believe that Merton returned her love for him. The three of them went to Venice together.'

‘Wicked', say I. I'm enjoying myself now. ‘And did it work? Did the heiress give all her money to Merton Densher, just like that?' (I couldn't help thinking, I freely admit, that Henry James must have lost his marbles when he wrote this one. I mean, it all sounds too easy, doesn't it?)

‘She died', Molly said, and her voice is so serious I can't help thinking these people who devote their lives to literature really do believe the characters they read about exist, don't they?

Something makes me uneasy and I can't say what. I—as Milly Theale—am going to come badly out of this, that's all I know.

‘It worked', Molly goes on in her sepulchral way. ‘She left all her money to Merton. He and Kate were free to marry …'

‘And then something horrible happened to Kate I suppose', I say as lightly as possible. I've been identifying with Kate all along and it's been a shock to find I'm the daughter of a Chicago meat-packer, or whatever old Mr Theale must have been in order to enrich his daughter so splendidly. ‘Poor Kate gets a fatal illness next', I hazard.

‘No. It's quite simple. She smells a rat—Merton is a bit funny, you know, not as affectionate as she had hoped.' ‘So what does she do?'

‘She tests him by accusing him of having fallen in love.' ‘With Milly?'

‘No. It's more subtle than that. With the memory of Milly. And he can't deny it.'

To my horror I see Molly's eyes have filled with tears. Even when replaying
Gone With The Wind
or working on the sequel with the now elderly author, I have never seen Molly cry.

‘That's terrible', I say. ‘So you mean … if I'm the heiress and Alain is Merton Densher—and if I give him all my money he'll fall for me in the end?'

‘Alain and Claire made a plan together', Molly says. ‘Alain would go to London to find somewhere or someone—anything to get them housed and more secure in the future—and you just happened to be in the right place at the right time.'

‘So he plays along that he's interested in me.

‘Exactly', says Molly, ‘and he may be, for all I know. But he and Claire will use you—just as Kate and Merton used Milly Theale.'

‘So what do I have to do?' I say, and I know Molly has won hands down on this one and I should have tried harder at Holland Park comp to read Henry James (but it was always
To Kill a Mocking Bird
that we were given. I can't remember anything about that, either).

‘You need to die', Molly says. And then, as if we've actually become victims of that silly melodramatic plot, we laugh and laugh and Molly says she's late for the office and I have to go to the laundrette—so, I must believe, life just has to go on.

As I've been reminded in the short space of time since suffering the excitement and subsequent disappointment of going out to dinner (Wow! An old colleague, Henrietta Shaw, remarked yesterday when asking me round for a Scrabble evening, only to be told—rather grandly I admit—that I had a dinner date already. ‘Wow' was said sarcastically, but there was an unmistakable hint of envy there too) I've been made aware there are questions concerning Alain that urgently need to be answered. Particularly since he's called this morning with all the promptitude of a well-bred chauffeur and asked what time he should come round in the car so we can set off for a viewing of
suitable properties. Oh my God, what have I done? How much ‘equity' does he think he's getting—and does he even know what equity is? No wonder he's ready to go: my stiff upper lip at his assertion that his wife would live in any property I bought has left him as unworried as can be. Not for the first time I curse my ‘good manners' and the restraint imposed on me by some invisible martinet of a mother. (In fact, my own mother was calm and liked a good laugh and a huge gin before supper; where the hell does my good behaviour come from?)

So, for potential Sugar Mummies (those without the self-abandon of, say, Gloria, who cries and throws herself on the sofa or at the feet of her teenage husband, Gloria who has divorced four times and thrown a party to celebrate each time), here is How to Avoid Being Like Me, i.e. giving it all away before you've even got it and suffering Regret:

Find out more about the Object of Your Affections before you proceed. Any murderers, crooks etc. in the family? Any neuroses, well-known to others but not to you, i.e. anal retentiveness (taking your gifts and
tidying them away so they can never be seen again, OR changing locks on the door of the apartment you thought you were going to share with him), or binge-spending, using the Sugar Mummy's credit card for pretended dinner
à deux
ingredients (oysters, pheasant etc.—how can you refuse?) and in fact making a beeline for Turnbull & Asser in Jermyn Street and snapping up a dozen fabulously expensive shirts.

Bigamy—or polygamy—a picture rises in the mind of a line of Sugar Mummies, all thinking they are this one's one and only S M, and all wanting a refund on their investment.

Relationship with his real mother. This is crucial. Does he hate her—as so many sons seem to do (at least those of a certain age reared on D H Lawrence and the fearsome influence of F R Leavis). If his mother is alive, does he refuse to talk about her or go and visit her? Do you find Bates Motel flashes occurring frequently when you bring up the subject of maternal relations and he maintains a twitching silence? If so, as soon as you are
established as his next Mummy—well, need I say more?

These are just some of the risks associated with jumping into the role too soon. (On the other hand, if you wait for a relationship to mature before committing any cash or valuables to a shared scheme with the Loved One, he will have aged and you will have lost your love for him.)

All this takes me back to the coffee I allowed myself with my friend Henrietta before setting off to discover the hidden bargains of W9. Alain will pick me up at the Notting Hill Coupole at 12 and we won't have too long, so I reckon, before his need for a drink steers us away from whichever ‘cheerful' (cheap) or ‘well-appointed' (has a bathroom) flat we are going to inspect. I need time—God do I need time, more than sex by now, so I realise—to work out just what I
am
prepared to spend and how much, if anything, Alain actually wants from me. I confess I have no problem with Henrietta seeing Alain when he draws up in the red car. At our age, her glance at me will say everything. (Perhaps it will turn to a look of admiration: the Manolos have magically slimmed my legs and the new Diane Furstenberg
wraparound has taken about a mile off my hips!)

But things don't work out quite like that. Henrietta is sitting outside La Coupole, puffing a verboten (indoors) cigarette into the Ladbroke Grove traffic fumes. Maybe she's decided that indignitas, hacking to death with a foul cough, is the best way to go, or perhaps her business is doing so badly she can't afford the trip to Switzerland, the loving medical care and the costly final cocktail? Who knows? But I do feel sorry for her—I mean, she looks so
old.

‘He's trying to find somewhere to park', Henrietta says, blowing a blanket of smoke into my face. ‘I had to give him three pound coins.'

‘Who?' I'm irritated already that a woman I worked with, doing up those horrible little houses in North End Road, and then graduating, thanks to my superior taste, to South Ken and almost up to Holland Park, hasn't noticed my transformation. It must have been maddening to the Devil, I can't help reflecting, when one of his supplicants sold their soul in return for eternal youth and no one commented on how great they now looked.

‘Why, Alain of course', Henrietta says while I gaze frostily at her and order a café-au-lait (it is French here; at least the waiters will appreciate
Alain's laid-back Godard-esque manner, shades, shirt and all).

‘He had a pretty rocky childhood, poor Alain', Henrietta says with enjoyment; and it comes to me that my List for Potential Sugar Mummies badly needs rewriting. I'd rather
not
be told all about my—well, my what?—my property I was about to say, because I need to know it all myself.

Before Henrietta has time to go on, Alain rounds the corner of Cornwall Crescent and is almost on top of us, while Henrietta is finishing a brief anecdote detailing the sadly impractical tiles from Bandol installed in Eaton Square in the flat of a publishing peer. ‘The design simply washed off when the cleaner ran her cloth over the walls. I mean, it just wasn't good enough.