Love @ First Site (14 page)

Sixteen

My name is Tom, I'm 48, and very solvent, with homes in France, an apartment in London, and a 15th century listed home in the country. I'm marketing director for a major PLC and describe work as "playtime." I don't have any hang-ups, quirks, or kinks, I'm just a well-traveled, well-brought-up man of the world who never "goes Dutch." I have a GSOH and listen well, even on my pocket phone. I like a lady to be educated and independent.

O
K, Olivia, this one's for you. Consequently, I have chosen someone who talks of "pocket phones" and "ladies" and sounds more mature than the piece of cheese that fell down the back of my fridge three weeks ago. Memo to self:
must
retrieve.

This is a concerted attempt by me to move away from the potential, roguish flibbertigibbets, as my father might refer to them, and steer myself towards someone more obviously straightforward and a better long-term prospect.

During our subsequent, brief e-mail exchange, Tom suggested sharing a bottle of champagne at the Ritz. And as he was so emphatic about never going Dutch, how could a girl refuse?

"It could also mean he expects the
woman
to pay for everything in these enlightened times," teased Madeleine, when I spoke to her on the phone earlier today.

"In which case, I'll be washing dishes at the Ritz for the foreseeable future," I replied. "He's forty-eight and calls women 'ladies.' He'll definitely pay."

"Oooh, old and grateful," said Madeleine. "Perfect!"

Forty-eight? Hardly old, but for a woman with a penchant for "young stud muffins," as she calls them, I suppose it's positively ancient. Madeleine always says the reason she avoids older men is that, when it comes to sex, they just don't have the stamina for the sex marathons she adores but most ordinary women find unappealing in the extreme.

Having agreed to partake in a bottle of champagne, I have made the date for a Saturday lunchtime rather than midweek, when I'd run the risk of returning to the office slightly worse for wear.

And as it's the Ritz, I have plucked what can only be described as one of mother's emergency outfits from the back of my wardrobe. Last worn to Emily's christening, it's a beige linen skirt suit, teamed with a cream, short-sleeved cashmere top underneath. I look like I'm going to a job interview.

In the photo Tom jpeg'd to me, he seems to be on holiday. Sitting on a plastic garden chair with the backdrop of a swimming pool, it looks like one of those generic Spanish apartment blocks you see on the news when there's been an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease or listeria. Wearing just a pair of pale yellow drawstring swimming shorts, he looks in pretty good nick for his age, with thick dark hair just starting to go gray at the sides.

I can see him now, occupying a corner table in the Ritz tearoom and, surprise, surprise, he looks just like his photograph, although slightly paler.

"Jess?" He smiles and stands up, his hand extended towards me. His cheeks have the mottled pink hue of someone who likes a drink.

"Hi." I shake his hand and stand to one side as he wrestles with a chair, trying to pull it out from the under the table.

"There we are!" he declares triumphantly. "Do sit down."

The bottle of champagne is already on ice, in a freestanding bucket to one side of our table. I notice his glass is empty.

He raises his hand towards a waitress. "Would you be so kind as to pour the champagne now?" he asks.

Nice manners with the waitstaff, I note. That's a tick in the "good" box. "I hope you haven't been waiting long?" I say, in my best heroine-from-1940s-film voice.

"No, not at all. I come here a lot on my own anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered."

To me, people dining alone is such a sad sight. Whenever I see it, I silently imagine how they have come to this. Perhaps their wife has recently run off with another man, leaving them bereft and devastated, hating their own company. Or maybe she has died and their children have all grown up and lead their own, active lives, with little time for their lonely, old dad.

"I stay here on business a lot." Tom's voice interrupts my thoughts. "So rather than sit in my room, which I find rather claustrophobic, I bring a book or some paperwork and eat down here."

Ah. Never thought of that option.

I raise my glass of champagne. "Well, it's lovely to meet you, and thanks for this." I notice it's Krug and must have cost him a fortune.

"My pleasure." He smiles warmly. "Would you like something to eat as well? They do a fantastic kedgeree with smoked salmon, if you like that sort of thing."

"Sounds great," I enthuse.

"Shall I order for you?" He looks at me questioningly.

I nod. "Yes, please do."

"What
don't
you like?"

"Um . . ." I think for a moment. "Broad beans. That's about it."

He reaches to his side and picks up the suit jacket carefully laid there. As he rummages through the inside pocket, I notice the label is Armani, without an "Emporio" in sight.

I could get used to this, I silently muse. Chilled, top-of-the-range champagne at the Ritz, and a well-dressed, well-mannered man who takes control
and
pays for everything. I'm starting to understand why some women prefer the company of older men.

He takes out a small case and opens it to reveal a pair of rimless glasses. Putting them on, he takes a cursory glance at the menu, then gestures to the maitre d', who is hovering a couple of tables away. While he orders, I take the opportunity to study the roomful of privileged travelers who enjoy a way of life with which I have little or no experience.

The next table to ours is occupied by "ladies who lunch." Dripping in diamonds and the latest Chanel outfits, three of them have identical Hermes Birkin bags in red, costing a few grand each. The fourth is sporting a classic Chanel bag, but with a chrome strap rather than gold, proving it's the very latest. All four, without exception, have hair that looks like it's been injection molded on a conveyor belt. Highlighted blonde bob, side parting, sprayed to such rigidity that when they turn their heads, not a hair moves. Their nails are all perfectly uniform, hands unsullied by the housework of the common woman.

Tuning in to their conversation for just a few seconds is compellingly dreadful. One is berating her son's boarding school for refusing to keep him there over a long weekend, lamenting that she and her husband will have to forgo their planned skiing trip, whilst another is complaining about the Filipino nanny who looks after her toddler daughter.

"I came home from the hairdresser's on Thursday afternoon, and Araminta greeted me with the words 'Herro, Mammy,'" she says, mimicking a Filipino accent. "I mean, can you
imagine
? The nanny will have to go."

Or better still the mother, I think mutinously, astonished that this woman could relay such a damning story against herself without the slightest trace of irony.

"All done. It'll be here in a few minutes." The waitress has disappeared, and Tom has removed his glasses again and is now following my eye line to the next table. "Hideous, aren't they?" he whispers. "I see them in here a lot. It's
Sex and the City
with the whiff of formaldehyde."

I laugh and take another sip of champagne. "Sometimes I think I'd like a life like that," I muse. "You know, swanning around shopping all the time, meeting my friends for lunch . . . but I know I'd get bored."

"Worse,
you'd
be bor
ing,"
interjects Tom. "They have absolutely nothing to say that's of any interest, and believe me, I have overheard plenty of similar conversations whilst I've been eating alone."

"What do they talk about?"

"Hair, nails . . ." He holds up a finger for each subject. ". . . clothes, their kids--when they can remember their names--and lastly, their husbands."

I take a furtive look sideways again. "I wonder what their husbands do?"

Tom purses his lips. "They'll be company directors, something big in the City . . . that kind of thing. They will also spend a lot of time away from home under the pretext of work, but find plenty of time to cold call on their warm mistress installed in an all-expenses-paid little pied-a-terre somewhere."

Initially, I grin at what I assume to be his little exaggeration, then swiftly realize he's deadly serious. "Really? How do you know?"

He shrugs. "I don't know about
them
as such." He jerks his head towards the next table. "But I know an awful lot about women like them. I was married to one myself."

"Really?" I really . . . whoops, there it is again . . . must think of a new word to utter in such circumstances.

"Yep." He nods sagely. "We didn't even have any kids, so all my wife did all day was drink coffee with her equally idle friends, go shopping and play tennis. On the rare occasions I came home in time, dinner would be something heated up in the microwave whilst our relationship just went cold. So I had a mistress, too. You have to do something to relieve the monotony, don't you?"

My mouth drops open. Attractive, I know, but I can't help it in the face of such top-notch, revelatory gossip from a man I've only just met. "Blimey," I splutter. Well, at least it's not "really."

In true soap opera cliffhanger style, two steaming plates of kedgeree arrive as our very own ad break.

"Tuck in," he says breezily, "this is my favorite thing on the menu, so I hope you like it too."

He shows absolutely no sign of returning to the fascinating subject of his checkered past . . . well, I
assume
it's in the past . . . so I take the conversational rudder and steer it back.

"You were saying about your mistress . . ." I say casually, as if asking him to finish a story about his car breaking down.

He stops eating for a moment, fork poised in midair. "Oh, that was all a long time ago. I'm a good boy now, though more through lack of opportunity than choice." He smiles, presumably to show it's a joke.

"So, no mistress and no wife either?"

"Some would say you can't have the former without the latter," he replies, arching an eyebrow. "But no, I don't have either. The wife found out about the mistress and ran off with her tennis instructor. And once the subterfuge had gone, I found myself tiring of the mistress very swiftly, particularly when, knowing my wife was no longer on the scene, she started nagging me to make a commitment."

I loathe and detest the word "nagging," mainly because it's never used in referring to men, but I decide to let it pass on this occasion. The conversation is too good to get sidetracked.

"So you ended up with nobody?"

"Indeed." He smiles ruefully. "But I'm at an age when I'd rather be on my own than with the wrong person."

"But you're still shopping around on the Internet, I see."

He nods. "I'm hopeless at hanging round wine bars, not least because I hate that loud, ubiquitous rap music that sounds like Pam Ayres on steroids. And I tried a couple of traditional dating agencies, but after parting with a small fortune and being introduced to one nymphomaniac and a couple of bunny boilers, I felt it was better to trust my own judgment and use the Internet."

"Nymphomaniac? Sounds like every man's dream date." I laugh.

"Sorry, I forgot to mention she looked like Marlon Brando in a dress." He winces at the memory.

"What about the bunny boilers?" Enjoying myself immensely, I take another swig of champagne.

He narrows his eyes in thought. "One was just plain bonkers and carried a small rodent-like dog everywhere with her in a basket. She never left the house unless her daily horoscope was a positive one, and said the only reason she'd met with me was because she'd got my date of birth from the agency and our star charts were compatible."

I chuckle encouragingly and shake my head in disbelief.

"The second one," he continues, "was really attractive, and we had a lovely time on our first date. I remember thinking, 'Wow, I've hit the jackpot here.'" He stops briefly to finish off the last of his kedgeree.

"At some point during the evening, I must have mentioned I liked doughnuts, because the next day a basket of them was delivered to my office with a note that read: "Thanks for a lovely evening. Here are a few of your favorite things."

I raise my eyebrows slightly, curious to know how that makes her a bunny boiler. Because from where I'm sitting, it's an impressively stylish and original gesture. He notes my skepticism. "Which, of course, was a nice touch," he adds, "and I rang immediately to thank her . . ."

He pauses for dramatic effect, gesturing for the waitress to remove our plates and taking a couple of mouthfuls of champagne. "Then a basket arrived the next day . . . and the day after that . . . and the one after that. In fact,
every
day for the next two weeks." He shakes his head. "And all the while, she's bombarding my office with calls, issuing instructions to my PA about making sure I get a doughnut with my morning coffee as that's what I like best." He makes a circling motion around his temple with a forefinger.