Girl on the Landing

by Paul Torday

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Anyway, he’s the only one of Michael’s ghastly club friends I actually like.’

  ‘Then have a word with him,’ suggested my mother. ‘Talk to him. Ring him when you get back to London.’

  ‘I think I will,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  My mother acknowledged this with a faint smile, and then said, ‘Now, darling: do you think Rupert would like to try some of Charlie’s dog food? His coat really has lost its shine, you know. I’m sure it would help.’

  Two days later Rupert and I drove back down to London. I had arranged to meet Michael in the Italian restaurant that evening. He had a meeting at Grouchers that was going to run late, he thought. There seemed to be a lot of meetings at Grouchers: did none of these men have proper jobs to go to? They spent all their time forming committees about this, and committees about that.

  When I returned to the flat, at first everything seemed normal. Then, after a while, it didn’t seem normal at all. To start with, the flat felt cold. I checked the radiators, and the central heating had come on as it was meant to in the late afternoon, but it didn’t seem to be warming the place up. I looked in the bedroom to see whether Michael had left a window open, as he sometimes did when I wasn’t there - I hate draughts - but the window was closed. The bed looked as if it hadn’t been slept in, although there was a slight depression in the bedclothes on Michael’s side, as if he had lain on top of the bed. I went into the kitchen. There were no unwashed dishes, nothing stacked in the dishwasher, nothing much in the fridge. It didn’t look as if he had eaten much while I had been away; perhaps he had eaten all his meals at his club. The standard bottle of wine that was usually in the fridge was still in the fridge: he hadn’t touched that, either.

  I hugged myself, shivered and went into the sitting room. The desk was covered in sheets of paper with notes scrawled on them. So Michael had been here, after all. I was beginning to wonder. I picked up one of the sheets and glanced at it. In Michael’s tight, precise handwriting were the names:Stephen Gunnerton.

  Alex Grant.

  Stephen Gunnerton.

  Alex Grant.

  Stephen Gunnerton.

  Alex Grant.

  repeated dozens of times. On another sheet, in a more looping straggly script, was the word ‘Lamia’.

  I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Why would Michael write Alex Grant’s name over and over again like that? And who was Stephen Gunnerton? The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember where I had heard it before. Writing down someone’s name once might serve as a reminder. Fifty times seemed a bit odd.

  Why - apparently - hadn’t he slept in the bed, or eaten, or drunk, in the last two days? What had he been doing with himself? Had he been out all that time? If so, where had he been, and what had he been doing? Michael’s behaviour was becoming decidedly odd. I shook my head to try to dispel the feeling that there was a wrong note somewhere, a disharmony hanging inaudibly in the air.

  I took Rupert out for a walk and then brought him back to the flat, put him in the kitchen and shut the door. He curled up in his basket with a sigh of relief. Home at last. Rupert was more relaxed about coming home than I was. There was something about the flat that made me feel uncomfortable, that made me want to go out and be with other people.

  I tidied myself up and then went out to meet Michael. He should be at the restaurant by now. He never switched his mobile on, so there was no point in ringing him.

  I walked down the street and crossed over, then took the turning that led to the restaurant. Like any girl, I hated the idea of sitting in a restaurant on my own, so I took a cautious look through the window. Yes, there was Michael. The place was already quite busy, even though it was only just eight o’clock. Michael, was sitting at a table at the back, talking to someone. I couldn’t quite make out who. Was there a person sitting at his table? I was curious as to who it could be.

  I walked around to the door and went inside. Alfredo was standing by the reception desk and, as soon as he saw me, he went into his standard ‘Ah, la bella signora’ routine. I didn’t mind Alfredo, really.

  After he had taken my coat, I went into the restaurant. There were a lot of people moving about, as another party had arrived just before me. Did I see someone getting up from Michael’s table? No, perhaps not. He was still talking, only now it rather looked as if he were talking to himself. I felt hot with embarrassment. Did he not know how bizarre he looked, chatting away to an empty chair?

  As I approached his table he saw me, and an odd expression crossed his face - a look of confusion or disappointment. Then he jumped to his feet.

  ‘Hi, darling,’ he said, smiling. ‘How are you?’ He kissed me on the cheek, and Alfredo, who had been following me, pulled back a chair. I saw that a glass of white wine had already been poured for me. Michael had drunk most of his glass, but that could not account for his sudden animation, the laughter in his eyes.

  ‘God, I’ve had the most absurd set of conversations at Grouchers,’ he told me. ‘I’ve been longing to tell you.’

  He started to laugh, and then checked himself.

  ‘Let’s choose something to eat,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll tell you all about it.’

  8

  She Left Her Glass of Wine Untouched

  ‘Come into the office,’ said Verey-Jones when the committee meeting had finished. ‘I want to show you something.’

  We went to the back of the club and into Verey-Jones’s office, where he pointed at a brown paper parcel on his desk.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘look at that.’

  We both looked. The parcel was an odd shape, with bits of Sellotape hanging off it, and rips in the paper covering. It had obviously been a difficult object to wrap in the first place, and this had been compounded by the incompetence of whoever had wrapped it.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if I took the paper off,’ said Verey-Jones, after we had observed the object for a moment. With a few brisk but careful movements, he tore away the paper, revealing not one but two hideous porcelain pug dogs, portrayed in a seated position.

  ‘There!’ said Verey-Jones, triumphantly. ‘Now what do you think?’

  ‘Very unusual,’ I said. I had been through this ritual once or twice before. Verey-Jones collected early porcelain from the old German and English manufactories. He was said to have a good eye.

  ‘Quite right,’ said Verey-Jones. ‘Unusual is a very good word. Braunschweig, I would think, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I defer to your judgement,’ I said.

  ‘I am almost certain it is Braunschweig,’ said Verey-Jones. ‘I can’t find the mark, but they didn’t always put it on the very early pieces. But the colouring: these blue ribbons on the collar, the yellow bells. Braunschweig, I would say, and made around 1750. I remember seeing a similar pair of pugs sold as such at Christie’s about fifteen years ago. I think that if the dealer had known what they were, the price might have been very different. Well beyond my modest means, anyhow.’ He rubbed his hands together gleefully, and then cracked his knuckles. ‘But that wasn’t why I wanted a word. Although I am very glad you like the dogs. You should consider collecting porcelain yourself, you know. You appear to have a taste for such things.’

  I made a non-committal noise and waited for Verey-Jones to get to the point. Years of service to Grouchers had rendered him incapable of direct action or speech. All subjects, and indeed, watching him as he traversed his office in the direction of his desk, all objects, had to be approached from an oblique angle. Any more obvious route would have appeared to him to be vulgar or tactless.

  ‘Yes, I entirely agreed with what you said,’ he continued, picking a porcelain inkstand from his desk and inspecting it. It was unclear whether he was still referring to the china dogs. I awaited clarification.

  ‘You were quite right at the last meeting to point out to the general that if this black man, this friend of Peter Robinson’s, has been put in the candidates book, and if six members have
been found to support him, then it is very far from being our duty to interfere with the constitutional procedure. In short, I agreed with you when you argued against any attempt to influence the process one way or another.’

  ‘I am grateful for your support,’ I told him.

  Verey-Jones shook his head, dismissing the idea of gratitude as an irrelevance. ‘I have given it a lot of thought,’ said Verey-Jones, ‘and what I have concluded is that, in the first place, David Martin is correct in suggesting that the proposal of Mr Patel for membership of this club is an issue which might yet split the club in two. That may well be the case.’

  ‘I do hope not.’

  ‘I profoundly hope not too. But what I have concluded, in the second place, is that we are nothing if we cannot follow our own rules. And we have a very clear and precise constitution and rule book, which I have played some small part in drafting over the years. We neglect these things at our peril. Without a constitution, we are a crowd, not a club. Without a rule book, we are a rabble, not a crowd.’

  I stared at Verey-Jones. There was something infinitely dignified in his delivery of this message. At the same time I felt another headache coming on, accompanied by a strange sense of detachment, as if I were seeing and indeed hearing this conversation through the wrong end of a telescope. Grouchers, and all its affairs, which for many years had been the fabric of my life, now seemed increasingly irrelevant.

  Verey-Jones put the porcelain inkstand back on the desk and gazed at me. But he was not seeing me: he was seeing the endless bound volumes in which the rules and the constitution of Grouchers were written down - prescriptions hinted at, inferred, occasionally stated with brutal directness.

  He said, ‘I deprecate Peter Robinson’s nomination of this Ugandan man to be a member of our club.’

  ‘You don’t like the candidate?’

  ‘Don’t like? My dear Gascoigne, my feelings are neither here nor there. This is a club that was founded for people who had something in common: golf, shooting, the same schools, married into the same families. Of course this Patel is a clever businessman and a talented village cricketer. I don’t doubt he could charm the birds off the trees. But he is not one of us. I understand the feelings of the members, and my own feelings. None of these considerations matter. We have a constitution and a rule book. If we don’t follow our own rules, then Mr Patel is entitled to consider us more primitive than whatever Ugandan tribe he came from.’

  ‘I think Peter said his father was a Ugandan Asian who became a British citizen.’

  ‘I dare say. My point remains. It is not a question of whether he is a suitable member or not. I don’t think he is, but that doesn’t matter. It is a question of whether we stick to our own rules, or change them every five minutes to suit the circumstances.’

  Verey-Jones had missed the point, and one day I would put him right about that, but I said, ‘We must stick to our own rules. You are quite right.’

  Verey-Jones stared at me for a moment and then said, ‘You know, Grouchers stands for a great deal. We have been going for over a century now. We are not as old as Brooks’s, or White’s, but we have an ambience of our own and a history we can be proud of. Our members laid down their lives in both world wars. We have had members who have played their parts with distinction on the national and even international stage. Think of General Keeping. Think of Overton-Brown.’

  I recognised the name of General Keeping, who had served in the Khyber Camel Corps in the Indian Army and had later led his men, and his camels, to destruction during the Battle of the Somme. The other name was unfamiliar to me.

  ‘Who was Overton-Brown?’

  ‘He was a leading contributor to the design and engineering of the tram system in Oslo, when it was installed at the turn of the nineteenth century.’

  Verey-Jones shook his head. For some reason, I sensed that he was suddenly close to tears.

  ‘Now we will have to change, because our own laws, and the laws of Europe, will force us to do so. We will have to elect Ugandan bankers as members. Polish dentists. French management consultants.’ Verey-Jones turned away from me. He said, in a hoarse voice, ‘Sic transit gloria Grouchers’.

  There was a moment’s silence while he groped in his pocket for his handkerchief. He blew his nose and then turned back to face me.

  ‘Anyway, Gascoigne, whatever happens, you and I must ensure it happens with dignity.’

  I nodded. I did not know whether to laugh or cry myself. My conscious mind was full of sentiments, that were, if not the same as Verey-Jones’s, at least an echo of them: regret, dismay, a determination to go down with the ship if going down with the ship were to become necessary. But beneath all those feelings was a growing sense that I was slipping away from Grouchers, losing my grasp on its orderly world. Maybe that was not a bad thing: it was beginning to look to me as if Grouchers itself might not survive for ever.

  With an effort, Verey-Jones changed the subject.

  ‘I say, Gascoigne, you may use my Christian name if you like. Please call me Alwyn. After all, we have been colleagues for quite a few years.’

  ‘I will,’ I promised. ‘Please call me Michael.’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Well, I expect you will want your lunch now, Michael.’

  ‘Yes, Alwyn, I think I will go through to the dining room. You won’t join me?’

  Verey-Jones indicated the austere-looking lunch box on his desk and shook his head. He was noted for his sense of economy.

  I headed for the dining room. Its handsome mahogany furnishings, and dark oil paintings of racehorses in the manner of Stubbs, or pictures of Springer spaniels holding down a dead partridge with one paw, always soothed me. They stood for a timeless England, an imagined England that now survived only in a few places, such as this dining room.

  The room was already quite full, and dark-suited gentlemen diners were unfolding their starched white linen napkins at nearly every table; or picking up items of silver-plated cutlery to begin their noonday repast. I noticed a more audible hum of conversation than I was accustomed to hearing in this place. Animated conversation was not common to the Grouchers dining room: there was a feeling among members that any display of enthusiasm or high spirits was not compatible with the respect due to the wine and food in front of them. Yet now there was a definite buzz.

  At one table I saw Peter Robinson deep in conversation with three other members. Mark Ansty and David Martin were dining together at another table. I hoped Mark was respecting the confidentiality of our committee meetings, but I doubted it. I went up to the buffet and found myself beside James Bass. I liked Jimmy. He was large and sleek, draped in a suit of shiny navy blue wool, and a waistcoat with a watch chain strung across it. He sometimes affected a monocle but was not wearing it today.

  ‘Morning, Michael,’ he said, as he noticed me. ‘Ah, ham. A slice of ham,’ he said to the waiter who stood by the carving board. ‘No, two slices, Antonio; and a slice of tongue; a slice of that roast beef, as rare as you like; some brawn, I think; a wing - no, a drumstick from that chicken.’ He accepted the plate from Antonio and then began spooning potato salad, saffron rice, some prawns, two or three eggs in aspic and a generous helping of mayonnaise on to it.

  ‘Let’s sit together,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  I knew it would be about the Patel affair, and my heart sank. But there was no avoiding Jimmy, so I nodded, helped myself to some salad, then went and sat at the table for two Jimmy had chosen. He was busy consulting the wine waiter when I arrived, and asked whether I would like to share a decanter of club claret.

  ‘Just water for me,’ I said. Jimmy ordered the decanter anyway, and then sent his plate back with a waiter because he had forgotten to help himself to pickled herring.

  When this omission had been rectified, and Jimmy had refreshed himself with the first half-inch of his claret, he put down his knife and fork and said, ‘I expect you will think this sounds funny, coming from me. I know I have Italian blood in my vein
s, of which of course I am very proud, even though we have lived in our part of Suffolk for the best part of a hundred years.’

  Everyone knew Jimmy’s grandfather had been the famous pasta trader Giovanni Basso, into whose warehouse in the East End of London had been imported spaghetti, tortellini, fusilli, penne, rigatoni, tagliatelle, and whose role in introducing pasta to a grateful British public had never been fully appreciated.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that I think it would be a great shame if we were to let standards slip at our club. You’re sure you won’t let me help you to a glass of wine?’

  ‘Sorry, Jimmy, I’d love to, but it will send me to sleep.’

  ‘Can’t have that,’ said Jimmy. ‘We need you wide awake at the moment.’ He diverted the decanter, which had been hovering over my empty wineglass, back to his own.