Bookings by Occasion · Hotel outcall companionship
The calling hours: a London escort for an hour or more at your hotel door in W1
In the old Mayfair sense, calling hours were the afternoons on which a household received visitors, and a footman carried their names upstairs. The Society keeps its calling hours around the clock and turns the custom about: the visit comes to you. A room at W1K 2AL, a suite at W1K 1PN, a house taken for the month behind Grosvenor Square. Name the door, and Cressida sends a companion to it.
It is the simplest occasion on the list and the one that most other evenings grow out of. The Society works outcall only: nobody on the roster receives guests, and no companion's address is ever given out. The shortest call is one hour at £600, and every longer length is printed once on the rates page. It is what most guests mean by hotel escorts in London, done the Society's way: one message, one room number, one knock.
At 20:00
The occasion
Arranged around the evening you describe, never around a menu of extras.
Who suits Hotel and residence calls
5 companions Cressida would propose first for an evening like this. Everyone else on the roster may be asked as well.
Minutes from the square
Most calls land a few minutes' walk from Berkeley Square, which is why so few of them run late. W1J 8LT occupies the corner of Stratton Street at the square's southern end; W1J 5EB is a minute west on Charles Street; two more share Half Moon Street, a little nearer Green Park. W1S 4BP, on Albemarle Street, is closer than most visitors expect. We give the address rather than the name.
Westward, the grander addresses of Park Lane look across Hyde Park: W1K 1QA with W1K 1PN beside it, then Hamilton Place, where W1J 7DR and W1J 7QY look towards the arch at Hyde Park Corner. Anywhere in W1 the wait after Cressida's confirmation is usually about an hour, longer when the evening traffic is at its heaviest or a Friday has filled the West End, and a call agreed in the afternoon for later that evening arrives at the minute you chose.
The single question
Before your companion sets out, Cressida asks once for the name the room is reserved under and the room number; at a private address she asks for the street and house number instead. The question protects her and reassures you, it stays in the thread where you answered it, and nobody asks it a second time. The booking page lays out the rest of the exchange.
Arriving without ceremony
She dresses for your plan rather than for the lobby: something that would pass at dinner downstairs, a coat over it, nothing a night manager would look at twice. In the lift she is one more guest going up, and if the evening begins with a drink below, she will already have found a table by the time you come down.
Houses, flats and a borrowed key
A hotel is not a condition of the call. A family house on one of the garden squares, a serviced apartment on Park Street, a friend's flat lent for the week: each is visited in the same unremarkable way. Inside Zones 1 and 2 the tariff is the whole of the cost, her car included. Further out, the only addition is a taxi there and back, and Cressida sets it beside the fee as one sum before you say yes.
How long a call should be
One hour is the shortest length the Society arranges. It holds a drink, an honest conversation and an unhurried goodbye, and nothing is ever priced on top of it; there is no half hour either.
Many guests find that an hour closes too soon and begin instead with ninety minutes at £900, or with two hours at £1,100 when a supper is coming up from the kitchen. If an evening is going well, mention it to your companion before the time is up. Should her diary allow, Cressida confirms the extra time in writing and nothing else changes.
Who is sent when time is short
Two of the circle live in Mayfair itself. Angelika is free from seven on most evenings and seldom strays far from the square. Luna takes calls from Monday to Thursday and tends to arrive with an opinion on whatever the minibar holds. Michelle replies quickly on almost any night and can settle a nervous guest before her coat is off. After nine, Jasmin is glad of plans made the same night, and Tina says yes at short notice more often than anyone. Michelle, Jasmin and Tina are among the brunettes of the roster.
For guests still deciding where to stay, the After Dark Notes cover hotels with a private entrance habit and weigh up the new grand hotels of Grosvenor Square.
Hotel and residence calls, asked
Cressida sends a line before she leaves: what she is wearing and where she will sit. The Donovan Bar on Albemarle Street and the Vesper Bar on Park Lane both suit a first drink, and the hour begins when she sits down.
Yes. The desk is open at every hour, and the tariff does not move after midnight or at weekends. An early morning call in W1 is still reckoned at about an hour from Cressida's confirmation, and the exact time reaches your thread when your companion leaves.
Only at the airports: a Heathrow or Gatwick hotel is booked for three hours at the least, her journey counted within them. Elsewhere an hour is an hour, and past Zone 2 the cab fare is simply added to the quote.
If she is free, gladly. Give Cressida her name and the new hour. A second call is arranged exactly like the first, and she will already know where the lifts are.
Notes for the occasion
- 5 min readDice after midnight: backgammon, cards and the games-room hour in W1Berkeley Square has a gaming past, and the late hour still suits a board and a pair of dice. Backgammon openings, cards for two, stakes that cost nothing, and company who plays well enough to beat you.
- 6 min readAround the old embassy square: Grosvenor Square's hotels, weighed after darkThe square once called Little America now deals in hotels. W1K 2HP, W1K 6TF, the house that keeps a club and their neighbours, judged by lobby, bar and lift for an evening in W1K.
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Hotel and residence calls, arranged
Tell Cressida what the occasion is, what to wear and when it begins. She proposes companions who suit it and settles the rest in one thread.