I liked it but I had some nagging concerns about the visa situation, so as I negotiated the painted ladies skittering between Gucci and Armani on the slick December pavements, I swung my attentions eastwards:
Scenario 2: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to anywhere in the European Union, let’s say … Brussels. No, no, let’s say Bologna. Never been there, but it’s probably quite nice. I teach English for most of the year and spend the autumn picking grapes for food and lodging. I screw forty per cent of my female students, and fifty per cent of my grape buddies. My life is simple, but fulfilling. I am known as Crazy Inglese. I marry the daughter of the guy who owns the winery. I end up running for mayor. I win and get the public transport system sorted out in record time.
Scenario 2 was getting a bit depressing. I was now right on top of the tube station, being offered a sprig of heather by some hairy gypsy child. I told her to piss off and in desperation flung my imaginings yet further east:
Scenario 3: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to Goa. I sleep on the beach, do a stack of acid and become very wise. By the summer I’m wearing a long white dress and Tolstoyesque beard and live off freebies from gullible backpackers for the rest of my life. I sleep with many freckled Australian girls, one of whom is actually called Noeleen.
Jesus, I couldn’t even get a decent fantasy going.
This may have been because the two grand wasn’t mine. It belonged to Bart, who owned the restaurant in which I slaved. In a fashion that was becoming habitual, he had summoned me from the restaurant in Battersea to the roulette table at the Sheraton Park Tower. A crackle on his mobile, in the background a whirring followed by the paradiddle as the ball bounced on to the wheel:
‘Get me two grand. I’m blown down here.’
The calls were now coming about twice a week. I’d asked Tony Ling, the restaurant’s Anglo-Chinese accountant, if it was OK, and he’d just laughed at me, showing his tiny unbrushed teeth: ‘It’s his train set.’
Tony wasn’t on my side either.
And so, despite the dull feeling that there was something going on I didn’t quite understand, and from which I could never benefit, here I was, in rich, clogged Knightsbridge, wondering what the hell I was doing here, having a curse put on me in Romany.
Scenario 4: Take the two grand to my boss, and be quick about it.
As I started to cross the road to the casino, a rich young mum in a towering 4 x 4 almost took me out. The gypsy curse nearly fulfilled instantly, but by a Range Rover rather than a horse-drawn wagon. I watched her as she swung through the red light, mouthing in the rear-view at the wriggling baby seat. The money, the bull bars and twelve airbags made her further away than Goa. Up there, in all that air-conditioned, insulated headroom, she was safe and sound with the object of her unconditional love: a smooth, fat midget who couldn’t keep things down. I wanted to be her husband, and look after her.
Scenario 5: Comfortable bourgeois tedium in old London town with a wife and a child and at least two cars.
That’s the one, and two grand gets you nowhere near it.
When I arrived at the casino, the door staff nodded me through with a combination of courtesy and disgust. I didn’t hold it against them: the winter drizzle had coaxed an old-dog aroma from my Crombie and glued most of my hair to most of my face. I went through to the tables. The place was pretty empty: a couple of absorbed Chinese at the baccarat table, a group of cigar-ing pinstripes around one of the roulette wheels obviously in a post-lunch tailspin.
Bart was sitting at the marble bar on a black leatherette stool manically swirling a vodka tonic.
‘Jesus, Stretch, you bin in a fuckin’ road accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, get on with it – where’s the money?’
I retrieved the money from my inside coat pocket. He took it, put it between his teeth and hitched his jeans up round his roasting-dish belly.
‘Go on then, what are you waiting for – get in a cab and fuck off back to work.’
‘It’s my evening off actually. I’m going home.’
‘In which case don’t get a cab. Well, you’re welcome to get one, but I’m not paying for it.’
‘Thanks, Bart, you’ve really made my day.’
‘Don’t mention it, Frank.’
Bart: he doesn’t make it easier.
I went into the marble-and-mood-music toilet and let the codger spritz my wrists with Czech and Speake, to take away the Airedale twang rising from my coat.
It was nearly four and already getting dark by the time I was back out on Knightsbridge. There was now no point in me going home, because I’d been invited to a pre-Christmas drinks potty in Holland Park, and was expected there at six-thirty, an hour earlier than everyone else, to ‘catch up we haven’t seen you in ages’. I wonder why that was. I decided to spend some time with a paper, in a pub, smoking. I’m the world champion at killing hours. All I have to do is look at them and they die. By the way, ‘party in Holland Park’ sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
It lost a bit in the enactment, I can tell you. I will tell you.
I bought a Standard and inserted myself in The Duchess of Kent with a pint of Pride and inspected the catering jobs. I read every single one. The best I could do was a two-hundred-quid-a-year pay rise if I went to be a trainee manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Streatham. Nice opportunity. I turned it down on the basis of the cardboard hat.
I left the pub at five, big empty bags of time banging at my knees, going nowhere in particular. As I crossed Knightsbridge Green a figure leapt up off one of the benches: ‘Frank! Frank Stretch!’
I looked into the man’s face. Gaunt and swarthy, eyes slightly narrowed, he looked at me eagerly. It took me a few moments to lock on properly.
‘Bill. Christ, how’s it going?’
Bill Turnage, an old schoolfriend. I suddenly had a strong desire to escape. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to talk him through the last ten years.
‘It’s fine. I’m just down for a couple of days, from Suffolk. On … business.’
‘Christ.’
We were both now pretty awkward. I looked at my watch and tried to look pushed for time.
‘Listen, I’m in a real hurry, actually. Got to go to some drinks party, sorry to sound like such a yuppie.’
‘No, no, that’s fine. Let me take your number.’
Shit.
‘Actually, I’m between apartments currently, but why not jot down an address. They can forward everything to me.’
‘Sure, sure.’
He took out a notebook and scribbled down my address. Then he looked at me with a curious intensity.
‘Take my card, get in touch, I mean it. I’d love to see you.’
I slipped his card into my coat and started rubbernecking for a taxi.
‘God, yeah, of course. But really I’m in a tearing hurry, Bill. Ten minutes late already; look there’s a cab.’
‘Call me, Frank.’
‘’Course.’
I lobbed myself into the cab and asked for Notting Hill, thus blowing my evening’s budget.
I decided that I’d walk from the Gate down Holland Park Avenue; I was still way too early. As we pulled away I looked back for Bill and saw him still looking after me. It started to give me the willies. When I was out