A Polaroid of Peggy

by Richard Phillips

And then I told her about all the phone calls to London and my upcoming promotion and return to the London office. And then I said, “Look Peggy, I know this is a bit sudden, but the thing is, you say you totally like me, and believe me, I totally like you back, no, more than that – I fucking love you.” There, I’d said it, if not quite as romantically as I might have done. “And Peggy, I know all the stuff about you needing space and time, but why don’t you come with me and” – I almost said ‘marry me’ but, perhaps, it has subsequently occurred to me, fatally, I stopped short of that and went on – “we could get a flat in London and have the most amazing time. You’d absolutely love it there.”

  “Wow,” she said, looking confused – astonished but also perplexed. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Well,” I said, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” She frowned and then looked up at me and smiled, but with a tinge of sadness. I couldn’t work out what that meant but I didn’t have time to ask her that, or what her second reason might have been either, because, at that exact moment, the noise in the bar got even louder and in burst Bart and Brett and Laverne and Noreen and Christo and all the rest all simultaneously screaming at the tops of their voices that, after much heated argument about the permitted level of hand flatness and several hotly disputed appeals, the World ‘Scissors, Paper, Stone’ Series had been awarded to Bart, but that Bart, that most gracious of victors, had given the ticket for the Robert Palmer Dr Pepper concert back to Brett.

  “Sorry boys,” I yelled, “but neither of you can have it. Peggy’s coming with me after all.”

  And what could Peggy do but go along with that, and being, as they say in the States, the stand-up guys they were, Bart and Brett just laughed it off and ordered more drinks all round.

  “But I tell you what – if you can’t be there, you can have the next best thing.”

  “Yeah, really,” Bart or Brett, yelled back. “Like what?”

  “You,” I screamed over the din, “you will be able to see exactly how much fun we had, the very next morning. Or on the night itself, if you would like to hang around outside. Because I shall be recording all the key moments on my faithful Polaroid.”

  *

  From the bar of limitless noise, where we had stayed for a good part of the evening and got in some fairly serious drinking – apart from Peggy who had remained steadfastly abstemious, not that I took much notice of that because she was never much of a drinker – we went en masse down to another bar in the West Village that was a particular favourite of Christo’s and from there, wandered – a joint or two being passed around as we went, not that I had more than one or two very tentative tokes – to a restaurant in Mott Street in Little Italy. It was one of those places where you imagined that if you climbed on to the lavatory seat and felt behind the cistern above, you would find a Beretta taped there, so, as well oiled as we were, we had the sense to behave and not upset the locals. Neither the decor, the waiters, nor the menu made any concessions to modernity. So after one or other of the house specials, spaghetti and meatballs or Veal Parmigiano of course, and a few straw bottomed bottles of some rasping Sicilian red, we emerged once more into the still steaming Manhattan night. I asked Peggy if she wanted to come back with me, and she said, sure, why not, what’s the worst that could happen. (Ironically, as recently occurred to me, the very advertising line that Dr Pepper was to use many years later.) This what-the-fuck kind of response was so un-Peggy like – she was usually so decisive about things one way or the other – that I remember having contemplated whether I shouldn’t ask if she was absolutely sure she wanted to come. But I was so absolutely sure that was what I wanted, I wasn’t prepare to take the risk of her changing her mind. So we hailed a cab, shouted arrivederci to the others and they shouted it back – yes, of course, we really did, we were young, stupid, drunk and in Little Italy – and then climbed in, fell back on the sticky plastic seat and bumped our way over the potholes and home.

  That night was the last I spent with her in my apartment on East 9th. Once again I have a moviemory. This time the camera is outside my first floor window – second floor, of course, in the States – so I suppose it must be on a crane or something. It is looking in through the window and with the pink neon light from the bar across the street blinking on the ceiling, and the ceiling fan whirring above us, there we are, Peggy and I, modestly covered you will be happy to know, under the solitary white sheet that was all we needed in the heat of that night. Peggy is lying on her back, asleep, her face peaceful and serene. And I am beside her, but not asleep, leaning on my elbow, looking down at her, just looking, unable to believe my luck. After the horrendous mess of things that I had made, incredibly, unbelievably, against all the odds, I was still in the game.

  In the morning, over coffee, I asked her again about coming to London. The cat, for some reason pretending to be domesticated, sat by my kitchen chair, tailed curled under its bottom gazing up at Peggy as though it was as interested in her answer as I was. Perhaps it thought that if she said no, I might change my plans and stay, an outcome I doubt it would have welcomed.

  “I’ll talk to you about it tonight,” said Peggy, and refused to say more.

  *

  A mild hangover allied to demob happiness ensured that I avoided anything that might be called work that day. News of my imminent departure may not have been generally known but the powers that be were, of course, fully up to speed and no new projects were coming my way. So there were only the odd bits and bobs to clear up and neither bit nor bob received any attention. All my energy, such as it was, was focused on the Dr Pepper concert tonight. And, more so, on the life changing conversation with Peggy that would come after it. I was already imagining the cosy little flat in Camden or Maida Vale or Islington or Notting Hill – South of the Thames might have been Outer Mongolia as far as I was concerned – that we would soon be sharing. I reminded myself to remind Peggy to get an international driving license so that she too could drive the company car that I had by now convinced myself I would be entitled to in my new management position.

  The concert was due to begin around seven and I was going to meet Peggy in reception after work and we would go straight on to the show. Seeing as she was still wearing the same orange juice stained dress she’d had on the previous night, she was going home at lunchtime to change. I, on the other hand, had come dressed and fully equipped for the evening. Being far too warm for two ties or even half a tie, I had gone for a slightly James Dean look – white tee-shirt and Levis, which did, it was true, carry overtones of Christo and therefore possibly the overtones that Christo carried. Still it was bloody hot, it was 1979, and I was secure enough in my own sexuality – wasn’t I? – not to be put off by that. I had decided to take with me and sling over my shoulder a non-matching and slightly retro denim jacket just in case – unlikely in the extreme – the night temperature dropped below that of a smelting furnace. Remember, this was a time when it was said that whether you wore your earring in your left or right ear – not that it mattered to me as I no longer wore mine – or clipped your keys on to one side of your jeans or the other, it meant you were giving away tell tale signs as to which team you played for, and I’d heard said, even whether you batted or bowled. (I always kept my keys in my pocket.) It did cross my mind that if I slung my denim jacket over the wrong shoulder I might be giving off signals I definitely didn’t want to. This was the kind of thing I worried about that morning and I did think of checking with Christo but I knew that if there was such a thing as a wrong answer, he would give it to me on purpose. I also wore the jacket because it had a couple of really big pockets which meant I could carry my flat Polaroid camera in one pocket, and in the other a pack of ten spare units of Polaroid film, requisitioned that morning, free of charge from art supplies in the basement. I planned to document this very special night in detail. We would have lots to show all those little Lee-Williamses of
the future.

  By around two I was chomping through another of those monster New York sandwiches in Bart and Brett’s office when Laverne came rushing in to announce London was on the line again. The conversation turned out to be brief but significant. Stuart Price told me that they had been asked to pitch for a new piece of business at very little notice, and, being a bit short-handed, they were wondering if I would like a crack at it. (This was the rather casual way he phrased it, but I realised, of course, that it really wasn’t open to me to refuse.) From a work point of view, I could see that it was a terrific opportunity but when he told me that they needed me back in London to take the brief at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, I swallowed hard. 9 a.m. on Monday in London was 4 a.m. in New York, and if I was to get through the Monday morning rush hour traffic from Heathrow that meant I would have to catch the very earliest of the redeyes. Working backwards I saw that would necessitate leaving Manhattan by around 8 p.m. to make it to the airport. So, by my instant reckoning, plus/minus three days and six hours was all that was left of my great American adventure. Stuart confirmed this when he told me that they had booked me a ticket for the 22.45 TWA flight. As I said, I’d never had a choice in the matter. And, as international companies always do in these situations, he told me not to worry about any notice period on my apartment or shipping my stuff or my removal expenses because all that would be taken care of, and oh, there was one other thing, now what was it, oh yes, they’d put me up in a hotel – somewhere pretty decent he was sure – until I found somewhere to live. Then he said how much he was looking forward to having me back in the London office and he rang off. I’d barely managed to get a word in, let alone work my way around to asking about a company car.

  Reeling at the suddenness of this, and still trying to calculate the implications, I reported back to Bart and Brett. An ad hoc emergency leaving committee was instantly formed containing all the usual suspects and it was decided that Saturday night would be party night and that party night would continue into Sunday and that a recovery brunch would be held prior to the cab collecting me to take me to the airport. I was instructed, therefore, that I would have to pack by Saturday afternoon. Many ‘fucking A’s, ‘way to go’s and high fives were involved in the making of these arrangements. A celebratory bong was then lit, the puffing from which I declined to participate in. Apart from my usual nervousness, I was determined to keep my head straight for the negotiations ahead with Peggy. I didn’t expect – though I didn’t dismiss the possibility – that she would be ready to join me for Sunday’s flight – but wouldn’t that be fucking marvellous! – but we still had a lot of ground to cover, literally and metaphorically. I called down to her office to give her the top line on the news but she wasn’t back from her trip home to change, and then I decided it was best left until we met to go to the concert, so I didn’t call her back. Within minutes, it seemed, the news of my lucky escape – for that was the way it seemed generally to be perceived – had spread half way round the building and I spent the rest of the day fending off envious well wishers from every department. My back was sore from all the slapping and my address book full of the numbers of people I barely knew. If a tenth of the people who said be sure and keep a place for me when I come to London actually turned up, I would have a full house for the rest of my life. No, a mistake there. Peggy and I would have a full house for the rest of our lives.

  *

  We met downstairs in reception and walked up Madison and across to Fifth Avenue and then up to Central Park. I didn’t want to appear over excited when I broke the latest news – she still hadn’t actually said in so many words that she would come to London, though, by now, I’d convinced myself that Mavis and Syd, mainly Mavis, would soon be running the rule over her – so I decided that the best tactic would be to wait until we were in our seats and then coolly and calmly go through it all.

  She looked absolutely gorgeous. She had changed into a plain bluey-green cottony sort of summer dress – with big buttons I remember – and although I had never thought of her as a particularly voluptuous girl, I noticed how that night she seemed to give the lie to that. I told her how wonderful she looked in the dress and she gave a despairing little laugh and said she’d just had to go out to buy it because she couldn’t get into anything she had. And I repeated that I had never seen her look better. And I hadn’t. Her black hair was shiny and bouncing about like in all the shampoo ads (another moviemory possibly, I admit) and there was a glow about her that just made me think, delirious and deluded as I was, she doesn’t just totally like me, she looks exactly the way people say you’re supposed to when you’re in love.

  My plan to speak to Peggy before the concert was, as you will have guessed, rendered useless by the fact that from the moment we got into the open air amphitheatre, we couldn’t hear ourselves think. First there were records of Robert Palmer blaring out, then roadies learning to count and ritual drum bashing and hideous feedback and then the support band came on – unmemorable but fingers in your ears loud – and then, as the sun set and night took over, on came his band, and finally Robert Palmer himself. Earlier in the year he’d released an album called ‘Secrets’ and most of the set was taken up with playing tracks from that. You might remember a couple of them. Afterwards, quite a few had an ironic resonance for me. ‘Too Good to be True’, for instance. And a song written by Todd Rundgren that Wikipedia says reached 54 – the age, coincidentally, that Robert Palmer died – in the Billboard Charts. It was called ‘Can we still be friends?’ Ouch. And, of course, they finished, and replayed during their second encore, the song that I always associate with Robert Palmer, and particularly with that fateful night; ‘Bad Case of Loving You’. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

  Then it was the ritual towel around the neck and ‘thank you New York, I love you’ and we were being jostled out with the rest of the crowd into the Manhattan night, gratefully grabbing those free ice-cold Dr Peppers as we went.

  *

  I’d taken lots of Polaroids during the evening – went through all ten in the pack in the camera and all but one of the spare pack I’d brought along from art supplies. Most of them were useless because there were no zooms on the lenses of those cameras and we were miles from the band, but I got the girl who was sitting next to us to take a couple of Peggy and me. We waited with that special mock-horrified anticipation that always preceded the moment when the image on the Polaroid finally revealed itself and, of course, ritually groaned in despair when our fears were confirmed. I have not the slightest idea whatever happened to any of those shots. Probably got left in the dark in a cardboard box that was moved from attic to attic until one day it was heaved on to a skip and thence into some landfill.

  Eventually as we got further from Central Park and the dispersing crowd got thinner and thinner, we found a bar, thankfully air-conditioned, to save us from the heat and humidity which, that night, must have broken all records.

  I ordered Peggy a fruit juice, again she refused anything alcoholic, and myself a beer. I didn’t care which kind, and that wasn’t just because of the heat. By now a Miller held no more significance for me than any other brand. Then Peggy said she’d been thinking over what I’d said, but I held up my hand to stop her. There was something about the angle at which she was sitting that made me convinced that I had to use the final Polaroid there and then. So I asked her to take off the cardie she had by now wrapped round herself as protection from the freezing air conditioning – as ever, feast or famine – then got her to turn this way and that, readied the flash, made my final adjustments, and – go on then, smile! – took the shot. A shot of Peggy – a Polaroid of Peggy – in the bluey-green dress with the big buttons. Then I put it into the pocket of my denim jacket to warm it up against my body so that it would develop quicker. And then I told her that before she said anything more, there had been some developments at the London end, and I told her what they were.

  “Sunday?” she said. “Are you serious?”


  “Look, I know it’s not ideal but can’t we go, and then get your parents or someone to send—”

  “What? No, Andy, no.”

  “Okay then, if you think that’s impossible I’ll go and when you’re ready you can foll—”

  “Andy, please. Will you please just – stop.”

  One word – one syllable even – ‘Stop.’ There was something about the way she said it, an abruptness, that really struck home. In that instant the cold truth dawned. That bit of me, the overwhelming majority of me, that knew nothing ever went right in the end, had been proved right all along. And the hoping against hope bit of me which had insisted everything was ticketyboo and that my ship was coming in and that everything was coming up roses had got everything right except that it was coming up weeds and my ship had sunk and everything was anything but ticketyboo.

  “Look, Andy,” she said and must have seen how crushed and bewildered I was, because she reached across and put her hand on mine. A horrible, well meant gesture of sympathy or compassion or pity or whatever which only served to confirm my very worst fears. As if any confirmation were required. It repelled me. I pulled my hand away and looked at her. Hard. Challenging her to piss all over my parade just like she was obviously going to.

  She gathered herself to deliver the coup de grace.

  “Andy, I can’t do it. I’ve thought about it. I really have. Maybe at a different time – if things were different – but now – no. I’d be all on my own Andy.”

  She looked at me imploringly.

  “What the hell are you taking about?” I said. “I’ll be there. We’ll be together. That’s the whole point.”

  “No, Andy, no,”

  “I mean if you’re worried about getting a job or work permits or something I’m sure the agency will help us work it out. Or I dunno, we’ll get married if we have to.”

  There I’d said it, but again, perhaps not quite as romantically as I should have done.