Free Upgrading by Simon Brooke Page B

decide that I need some fresh air. I tell Marion that I am just stepping outside.
    “Oh, OK,” she says. “But don’t go far, I don’t want to be here too long.” I see the assistant exchange a glance with her colleague—offended or relieved?
    Despite the heat it feels good to get outside. Two Japanese girls with Chanel bags walk past me, as if they were carrying Sainsbury’s plastic carriers. I walk down the street and then turn into Knightsbridge. People on the top decks of the buses gaze down at me or point things out to their uncomprehending children. I tell myself that this is better than work. It is ten to three on a Monday afternoon. Normally the street is out of bounds to ordinary working people like me at this time of day. What, I wonder, are all these people doing? Don’t they have jobs to go to?
    As I look across to the Hyde Park Hotel I see a tall, dark-haired guy in a leather jacket and jeans walk out of the front door and slowly down the steps. He stops to light a cigarette and as he takes a drag, he looks up and sees me. After a moment’s recognition he smiles, waves and hops across the street, playing matador with the cars. It’s Mark from the Claridges do.
    “Hey!” He shakes my hand firmly. “How are you?”
    “I’m OK. How are you?”
    “Good. You have fun the other night?”
    “Erm, not really.”
    “ ’Orrible, wasn’t it? I really hate that place. Still, you got her to Knightsbridgge, then?”
    I got her? He obviously doesn’t know Marion.
    “She wanted to do some shopping.”
    “For you?” he says, as much suggesting as asking.
    I remember my clumsy attempt to interest Marion in an Armani jacket for me. What must that assistant have thought? A kept man? Well, they probably get them all the time but I’m just a rather crap example of the species.
    “Yeah, yeah, we’ve just been to Armani,” I say casually.
    “Very nice,” he says looking around for a bag.
    I consider making up some story about the chauffeur taking it or yelling “oh my god, it’s been micked,” but then decide to come clean.
    “She didn’t like the jacket I tried.”
    Mark laughs at my pathetic failure. I realize he would probably have had half the shop if he wanted it.
    “You’ve got to lead them to it subtley. Embarrass her into it. She wants you to look good because it makes her look good, right? So you make sure you look scruffy until she buys you something new and then wear it a few times and then find something else old and scruffy so that she has to buy you something else new. No problem.”
    “If you say so.”
    “Tried Harvey Nics?”
    I shake my head.
    “Take her to the men’s department downstairs. Clown around a bit. Pick up some stuff. Ask her what she thinks, what she likes. You’re here to entertain her, don’t forget.” I laugh but he says, “No, really, you’ve got to lead her by the nose but make her think she’s in charge.”
    “Easier said than done,” I say, but nod.
    I ask what he’s been doing at the Hyde Park Hotel. He glances down the street and then looks down at the pavement, tapping some imaginary ash off his cigarette.
    “Oh, yeah. Just visiting someone. Another American,” he says, looking past me at the shop windows and then taking another drag.
    “Americans your speciality?” I ask.
    “Not really. It’s just that there are a lot of them around at the moment—always are in the summer. Anyway, it’s so easy to give them that English gentleman bullshit. I tell them I play cricket and they say things like ‘Mmm, I’d really like to see you in all that white gear.’ They love it. All that shit. Then I mention I went to Eton, that my family’s lived in the same house for four hundred years, stuff like that. I’ve usually turned into Hugh Grant after half an hour.”
    I laugh. “They believe it?”
    “Yeah, ’cause they want to.”
    “Perhaps I should try it.”
    “Works a treat. I tell them that I’m reduced to selling my body because my