I WORK PART-TIME IN ONE of London’s plusher hotels, the Olivier in Covent Garden, and it was there at my post behind the reception desk that I first met Alden, on June 21st last year. At eleven that morning I had checked in a Mrs. Matilda Weiss and her party. She traveled with a posse of three—nutritionist, personal trainer and lawyer. She had booked into our Premiere Suite, 406, the others into cheaper rooms on the second floor. Mrs. Weiss was a botox-happy Manhattan matron and socialite in her fifties, passing for her thirties, newly divorced, slim as a rake; dressed in taupes with heavy gold hung here and there. She was not a pleasant person, and caused trouble from the start, demanding instant personal access to the chef for her nutritionist; and installed in her suite, sent down to demand black grapes instead of the white ones in the complimentary fruit bowl, banging on that they were too acid. Takes one to know one; she’d know all about acid. Some guests never feel at home until they have registered a whole string of quite ingenious complaints.
Two hours later, at ten to one precisely, Alden came toward me in his wheelchair, broad-shouldered, energetic, cheerful, brown floppy hair, a man with bright-eyed film-star looks, though rather more in the square-jawed manly Warren-Beatty mold of yesterday, than today’s softer, more troubled Tom-Hanks-ish look. Late thirties, I thought; wealthy. His suit was good, his wheelchair Italian and custom built. He had a paid companion to push it, a pasty young-old little man with an egg-shaped head, over-large, dark, watchful eyes and clammy hands, whom I was eventually to know as Lam.
I paged Suite 406 to tell Mrs. Weiss that Mr. Alden X was here for lunch and for my pains was rewarded with: “Lunch—with that fucking crazy? He is joking? Tell him to shove his interior designs up where no sun shines, is that interior enough? Or can’t he reach, sitting in a wheelchair?” and further words to this effect.
I held the phone further away from my ear but the contemptuous voice crackled on, the others now hearing it the better before I realized what I’d done. Lam frowned in concern—his lugubrious eyes seemed even panicky—but Alden just smiled and said quietly, “Don’t worry about it, kid. Just put the receiver down.”
So I did.
“It’s an ill wind,” said Alden. “Perhaps you’ll have a drink with me instead?”
I had to say yes, but not because he was disabled and might have interpreted any reluctance on my part as insult. I was curious. This is embarrassing, but I’m going to say it anyway: faced with a good-looking and vigorous man in a wheelchair one’s mind instantly goes to practicalities: can he, can’t he? Was he born like that or was there an accident? Will he get better or is it permanent? How does he manage? Does he confine himself to oral things; was the important part of him permanently limp, or even altogether gone? Perhaps it was part of his minder’s remit to hoist his master on to all fours so he could perform? Or did he just lie on his back? Or… what? I wanted to know. I needed to find out. Because I’m a philosopher, and trained to ask questions about the world of phenomena? Or my natural curiosity, like that which killed the cat?
I said we’d have to wait for the concierge to come back. Max was down in the kitchens trying to soothe the chef, who was still miffed because of the earlier insult to his white grapes, a special purchase—they had a particularly fine flavor and delicate skins—flown in from the Andes or wherever they grow them in June. My shift was technically over at one o’clock, but if Mr.—?
“Call me Alden,” he said. “Alden X.”
—If Alden didn’t mind waiting five minutes or so, my shift would be over and I’d be free, I said. Conversation with someone in a wheelchair is difficult. You have to talk down to them, as if they were a child. I rather wished I hadn’t said yes, and then felt guilty for wishing it. Also, I was slightly miffed because he hadn’t asked me to lunch but only for a drink. I know the girl behind reception can hardly expect to be treated with the same courtesy as a guest, but even so these social distinctions can make you paranoiac if you’re on the wrong side of them.
He asked me what my name was and I said “Joan Bennet,” and added that I was only temporary staff. I had a proper profession. He asked me what that was and I said I was a nursery school teacher. I was working extra hours at the Olivier to pay for a course in teenage counseling. He said that sounded very virtuous and I said I was.
What else was I to tell him? The truth? That my name is Vanessa d’A. and I have a double first in philosophy, and while working toward my PhD I earn money best as I may? Nothing puts most men off like too much class or cleverness in a woman. It’s still true: they need to feel they’re your superior. Best to come over as a nurse or a teacher, and there are no disappointments; everyone knows where they are and cocks rise uninhibited.
I am virtuous enough, in my way. My mother once told me that the only difference between a professional girl and the others is that the first take money for sex and the rest don’t. She’s a lady vicar in the Church of England with her own vocation, so I take her word for it. She could even be a bishop one day if Synod ever gets its act together about female equality. I do not sell my body for a living. I see it as the temple of my soul, as my mother explains to me that it is, and so I respect it accordingly. It’s just that a temple will need its roof mended and its doors and windows painted and the rest, which requires money. I am not cut out for regular employment. I’m useless with computers, and offices make me claustrophobic. I could set out to marry a rich man but that might have to limit my sex life, and I’m not ready for that quite yet.
I am what Max the concierge describes as a vocational, rather than a working girl. I like sex; I’m good at it, and sometimes I feel it’s what I’m best at; what I feel I’m for.
Unaccompanied men, especially when in a strange land, are often at a loose end sometimes of an evening. Max the concierge will point them in my direction: not too often—but once or twice a week or so is acceptable. I am a nice girl, a good girl and an educated girl: my face stays soft and vulnerable and the corners of my mouth turn upward, not down. I am a rosy sort of person: friendly: people stop me to ask me the way, knowing I can be trusted to give a true answer. Rather too rounded for a catwalk model, though with a little help from a seamstress I know I can get into their cast-offs: I have friends in the fashion houses. A little waist, full breasts, very long legs, shiny reddish hair—people ask me if I use henna but that’s just the color it is—slim thighs, little feet and pretty hands. I have not much to complain about.
If men care to give me gifts for services rendered that suits me very well. A couple of hours a day behind the desk at the Olivier pays peanuts but is a good way of making contacts. The hotel gets an excellent class of clientele—prices range from around £400 a night for an ordinary room without a river view, up to £2,000 for a suite. We are a favorite with EU officials, NGO senior staff, wealthy Americans, UN magnates and Japanese tourists; nothing too flashy or corrupt.
If I had been born Japanese, my natural habitat would have been in a tea house, as a geisha. Nothing too vulgar, nor up-front, but if the clients feel like sex as well as conversation—well so do I, and should they like to give me presents, I don’t have a problem with it: my rent is high and I have to fund my own way through college. In the long term the only place I see for myself is in academe. Meanwhile there are my clothes to pay for—I have a princess’s taste but a commoner’s income. I hope I don’t sound too defensive here. Because I frequently have sex without requiring or expecting payment: although, oddly, men often prefer to pay than not to pay. The transaction is less value-loaded: no sense of emotional obligation is left drifting in the air. It is more like paying one’s psycho-therapist: then it is clear that “friendship” has been bought, and with a time limit.