Elizabeth Day - Paradise City

‘Draconian’. Another of Claudia’s words.

‘But why don’t I do a quick call-round of the newspaper editors and ask them to refrain from using it? They’ll be only too willing to play ball if it means they get more access.’

‘I don’t want to give more access, Rupe.’

Rupert tittered ‘Yes, but they don’t need to know that, do they? Leave it with me, Howard.’

Rupert had done his ring-round and, for a few weeks, the photograph had retreated from view like an unsightly child. But then, yesterday, there it was again: slap bang in the middle of a page in the Sunday Tribune, accompanying an article based on the wafer-thin scientific premise that life is kinder to optimists. The caption read: ‘Despite personal unhappiness, the self-made millionaire Sir Howard Pink has always looked on the brighter side.’

He’s sick of everyone assuming they know him. He’s sick of the caricature. He fears he’ll never be taken seriously. The BBC had never asked him back, had they? Instead, any time they needed a talking head, they got that preening old buffer with the luxuriant white hair who ran the Association of British Retail and who wouldn’t know what good sense was if it painted itself purple and jumped on his nose. Wanker.

‘They can’t disassociate you now from what happened with Ada,’ Rupert had told him once, choosing his words carefully. ‘They see the tragic backstory, not the business acumen.’

‘The tragic backstory’. Those had been his exact words.

Howard feels anger rising in his gut. He goes to the window, draws back the curtain and peers out at London’s grubby weekday glamour, looking for something to soothe his nascent agitation. A black trickle of taxicabs is beetling its way to the hotel entrance like a spreading trail of petrol. From his vantage point, Howard can make out the shiny hardness of their bonnets, the lucent yellow of each ‘For Hire’ sign reflected in the dark pool of the paintwork. Shifting his gaze along the road, he sees a young woman in high heels and a flapping mackintosh, belt knotted at the back, a copy of the Evening Standard peeking out of her handbag. She is holding a lit cigarette between two fingers and a café-chain cardboard cup of coffee in the other hand and she is walking so quickly that the coffee keeps spilling over the aperture in the plastic lid and splashing onto the checked lining of her coat. He wonders if she’ll notice soon, or if it will only be later, when she takes off her coat and is assailed by the musty smell of stale, too-sweet coffee, that she will realise. He wishes he could follow her to find out. He likes to know how a story ends.

The woman carries on walking: a brisk tick-tacking on the paving stones that echoes then fades. Up above her, a metal criss-cross of scaffolding has been erected to cover the façade of the mansion block opposite, each slotted-in pole the precise pigeon-grey of the sky beyond, each brick the damp russet colour that Howard has come to associate uniquely with his city. A builder in a hard hat and a reflective vest sends a formless shout into the street below.

Howard wishes they’d stop tampering with everything. There was so much building going on in London these days. Lumbering mechanical cranes pierced the skyline at regular intervals. Hoardings patterned with the meaningless insignia of redevelopment had cropped up everywhere. Streets were shut down, traffic diverted, bridges closed, all in the name of a frantic progress, an endless quest for more things that were shiny and new and glittering, when increasingly all Howard lusts after is the past, packaged up, preserved and honoured. Nice, historical buildings that didn’t demand attention, designed to a manageable scale so that everyone knew what they were getting.

He lets the curtain fall and then reminds himself he is not here to get annoyed by modern architecture. These monthly nights in this Mayfair hotel are meant to be his meditation space, a few hours’ holiday from himself and his memories. Only Rupert, Claudia and Tracy, his PA, know about them. Everyone else is told he’s away on business. He tells himself he must make the most of it before going back to normality tomorrow morning.

He takes slower breaths. He pushes back his shoulder blades and stretches his arms. He tries counting to ten but only gets to three before he remembers the Chablis.

Howard takes the bottle out of the minibar, unscrews the top and pours himself a healthy measure. The glass frosts up satisfyingly. Perfect temperature. A viticulturist (there are such things) once told him he shouldn’t over-refrigerate white wines. Howard repeated this to anyone he thought might be impressed and sometimes sent back cold wine at restaurants just to show he couldn’t be made a fool of. In the privacy of these four walls, however, he felt at liberty to indulge his own secret taste.

Or lack of it, as the case may be.

There is a knock on the door.

‘Housekeeping,’ comes a disembodied voice from the other side of the lustrous wood laminate.

Howard looks at the bedside clock. He is shocked to see it is already 6 p.m. and the maid is coming to do the pre-dinner turn-down. He opens the door. A black face smiles at him broadly.

‘I can come back later if you like,’ the woman says, her voice lightly accented. Howard takes in the smoothness of her skin, taught over high cheekbones, and the compactness of her diminutive frame, clad in a fitted black blouse and black trousers. She is carrying a moulded plastic basket, filled with cleaning products and mini-packets of shortbread.

‘No, no,’ he replies, loosening the belt of his robe ever so slightly. ‘Come on in.’ He holds the door with his arm so that the maid has to bend under to walk through. She giggles as she does so. Howard is encouraged.

The maid checks the tea tray and replaces a sachet of hot chocolate, then goes into the bedroom with a quick economy of movement. When Howard follows, he sees she is piling the purple and brown cushions neatly at the foot of the bed. She glances over her shoulder, catches his eye and giggles again. He laughs lightly, then takes two steps towards her. She is bending over the bed and her backside is pressing against the fabric of her trousers. Howard, who knows how these things are done, who has successfully initiated a handful of similar transactions in high-end hotels across the globe, comes up close behind her, puts his hands on either side of her waist and nudges the knot of his robe belt against the maid’s haunches.

For a second, she tenses and does not move. Then, without looking at him, the maid straightens up, letting the pillow she is holding in one hand drop onto the Egyptian cotton, 450-thread count sheets.

‘Sir … I …’

‘Shhh,’ Howard says, nuzzling her neck, smelling the sweetness of cocoa butter. He does not like to talk in these situations. Talking would make it more real.

With the maid still turned towards the bed, he unbuttons her shirt with the quick fingers bequeathed him by generations of Finks. He slips his thumb underneath the wiring of her bra, easing in his hand until it cups the maid’s right breast. He groans, in spite of himself. With his free hand, he undoes his belt, lets the robe fall open, and grips his erection. He starts slowly, rhythmically, moving up and down the shaft, all the while holding the maid’s breast, feeling the nipple turn hard underneath his touch. She is breathing more quickly now. He cannot see her face but he knows, without needing to have it confirmed, that she is smiling, that she is enjoying this, that she is loving the attention, that she is gagging for it, that she needs him to thrust against her and take her and spill his white seed across her skin … He comes with a half-suppressed sigh and a feeling of disgust. It is all over in a matter of seconds.