Suburban Millionaire

(i)

I sit in the conservatory. I drink gin. I go to Mass. Today I feel lucky and slap the sacred monkey.

It is my birthday. I am driven to a restaurant, placed at a table by expert hands. I’m wearing my light beige trousers, my striped Van Heusen shirt. I sip iced lemon tea pepped up with grenadine and vodka. Across the way two men flirt- size one another up. One black haired, the other a blonde. Moustachio’d. Young. They laugh together, touch one another’s hands. In the background a string quartet plays Mozart.

I feel dizzy. I click my fingers and Liu wheels me outside. It’s like that sometimes - a sudden craving for air. Years ago this restaurant catered for a different clientele. My associates came here, men who knew how to drink and spend. Big Jimmy Parkland, Little Teddy Woodsmith. I can hear their voices now - investment opportunities over the hors d’oeuvre. Long since departed, of course. (I watched as they were lowered into the ground; sang hymns; threw soil.) These days it’s different: sky blue napkins, coloured shirts behind the bar, horny young men touching one another’s hands...

It is ten minutes to two and I’m already sinking my third. At the hour my wife will arrive. In the meantime I’ll close my eyes and dream a little - this tall cut glass in her face.

(ii)

I had a friend. Her name was Alice. Catholic. Old money. Long raven hair which she dragged across my chest. She liked Mozart. We used to fuck to Mozart. This was in the old days, you understand - the mid to late 80s. I was doing well. A few shops here and there. The property-boom - I rode it. Alice liked me because I was ignorant. A charity-case, she said, ignorant about Mozart: his B flat major from his C sharp minor. She dressed me up; took me to the opera. Explained the plot. She was an educated woman, see. (Her daughter married a count.) When she rid herself of me I felt abused. Usually such things pass me by. But with her...

I went to her mansion - seventeenth century, immaculate hedgerows - and found my way in through the trades entrance. There was a scene and I trashed the drawing room: her Louis XIV furniture, her porcelain, her religious art. Stupid I know but she meant something to me. I remember driving down to the harbour and parking near the edge.

(Wait. Let me order another drink. And a word about this drink. I’ve just invented it - grenadine, iced lemon tea, lime, two parts vodka. The pleasure it gives is numbing. Some kind of chemical reaction in the brain. Not energy-draining, just strangely liberating...ridding of all self-doubt.)

Back to Alice. For a long time there was no contact. But it wasn’t over, that much I knew. Her husband: quiet, a dark horse - he had me roughed up. An MP, see. They can do things like that. Two of my shops were fire-bombed. I was in the back room at the time. That’s how I got to be sitting in this chair.

( iii )

‘We do things for big reason, Mr Pym. Our choice to make - all to happen. From moment of birth to moment of death. You and I. Everything mapped out.’

Liu says this to me. Her philosophy I suppose you’d call it. Not my philosophy, though. I tell her. ‘My philosophy different. To speak of fate nothing but weak excuse.’

Alice had me put in this chair. Or at least her husband did. Without legs I became metal. I became strong. The chair made me work harder. More money. More property - crammed full with tenants. No pity, no excuses. I met abuse with abuse...tried hard to forget about Alice.

(October ‘87 - the stock market crash. Why do I think of that now ? The uncertainty, the hysteria - Big James, of all people, going under.)

But forgetting about Alice proved more difficult than I thought. My advisors suggested I take up a hobby. That was how I met my wife.

( iv )

The manager of The Rainbow casino was a delicate ponce named Greg. Immaculate. Not a hair out of place. Smelled good too - his au de cologne. I liked Greg. We got on (we had very little to say). He’d wheel me to the roulette table - park me next to middle aged women reading the Jewish Times. I ordered spritzers and sandwiches - laid out my chips. I had a formula: Baby Milk I called it (don’t ask me why). Consecutive numbers rearranged in pairs. Multiply by two then halve - alternate black and red. Miss a go in between. Every fiftieth play zero. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. Truth is, I enjoyed losing more than I enjoyed winning.

One night Greg took my arm. ‘Come into the members' room - my special guest.’

He wheeled me past the blackjack table, past the rummy, past the girls in see-through pink blouses. The members' room was plush - velvet-red, inviting, with a sprung-floor. There were others, mostly men. Greg parked me beside a glass table.

The lights dimmed. A woman entered, partially naked. Two men lay her on the floor. It was nothing special. She was nothing special. They applied the oil, gave it to her front and back. Afterwards she came round, started and ended with me. I asked for her number and she obliged. I thought she might be useful, see, entertaining clients.

( v )

There’s a scent in here. The heavy scent of dead musk. I turn and see her standing before me. Accompanied by a fourteen year old if he’s a day. She pecks me on the cheek. She is wearing sunglasses - hiding her worn-out face. Close to this woman I feel nervous. My breath stops short, waiting for the knife in my back.

When she left all those years ago she managed to prise the mahogany secretaire bookcase, estimated value: twenty five thousand pounds. I kept a collection of ceramic starlings on the shelves. Not worth the clay they were moulded from but mine all the same. She said they were degrading. Dropped each one on the floor. (I smile now at the thought: degrading - her favourite word.)

The fourteen year old excuses himself, goes to take a piss. I say nothing - snap my fingers for another drink. The queers get ready to leave. I take a long slug from my tall glass. My throat singes with lime. I notice heavy gold braid wrapped around my wife’s wrist and I think: Everything I ever worked for has been cashed-in, melted down, traded for your sparkling pig-iron.

The kid returns. I tell her to get rid of him. There’s an uneasy silence. I smoke. I snarl. (Booze does that to me - sharpens me up.) She sighs and sends him out, fills the laguna of her mouth with vodka and iced tea.

( vi )

I am not a bad man. I sit here now, after Mass, Liu standing nearby. Every day She takes me to a restaurant. The Four Seasons, perhaps. Or The Regency. I like fish - salmon consomme. I eat fish and I listen to Mozart.

My new friend is Arabella. Her hair is long and straight. Her body taught and bronzed. I pay for her piano lessons. In return she swims in my pool. I throw strawberries to her from the side and drink gin. Arabella removes her bikini top. I applaud. Liu waits with a towel.

I like Arabella because she reminds me of Alice. A different Alice - the Alice I never knew. Arabella is eighteen. I met Alice when she was thirty five.

( vii )

My wife’s lawyer. Fourteen years old. What does he know ?

Reproduction was always a problem. My condition, see. ‘Not conducive to the sexual act’ one doctor said. Tests were carried out, money was spent. Photographs arrived by post - a transparent globe impaled on a needle. I asked the doctor what it was. He laughed and said: ‘Your son.’

My wife lights a cigarette. Her face is gaudy now. She is old. Firmness replaced with boredom. I think: she is untoward in her manner. She is punishing me again.

(How warm it is nowadays. The buildings - all glass and steel. And the intense heat of the human body. I have built much in the surrounding district - shopping arcades, motorway services. Now, they tell me, it’s all being pulled down. An age of frivolity is being replaced with an age of trial and terror.)

‘Shall we order ?’

Our marriage was a sham. Once she had secured me I was a prisoner to her demands. I enjoyed her demands, in the same way that I enjoyed losing money. To watch a person change is to inhabit a dream (a favourite quote of Alice) and I was the one who changed. I showered her with gifts. She wanted more. I gave in. I neglected my company. Orders were lost. Embezzlement on a grand scale. Still I aquiesced.

Food is served. The wine is too sharp. I snap my fingers and Liu has it replaced. My wife’s lawyer begins to talk. His words tumble onto the startched white cloth and evaporate. He produces documents. I study my wife’s eyes - difficult behind those glasses. I wave my hand. Her lawyer stops mid-sentence. Liu says: ‘Mr Pym tired’. Liu is from the Philippines. It makes his fall complete.

( viii )

I retire at midnight. A habit formed many years since. The house lies in fifty acres. Alice suggested I buy it. Historical, she said. Something to do with Shakespeare. (Alice knew about such things, see.) Since then nothing much has changed. Just the barbed wire I laid along the rim of the garden walls.

I summon Liu. She tucks me up. Sometimes there’s warm milk. But not tonight.

Whenever I took Alice up West I would offer her her fur coat. After the performance - Rigolleto, The Magic Flute - she would turn her back to me and I’d slip her beautiful coat effortlessly over her shoulders. I think of that now. Those times with Alice. The fur...and Mozart...the lime against my throat...