Aphrodite's Smile

by Stuart Harrison

  I continued to offer Irene long-distance advice as if she were the one who was ill. ‘Make sure that you eat something,’ I told her. ‘Don’t worry too much.’

  There was a short silence and then she said, ‘Robert, you understand that your father is very ill?’

  I realised that I hadn’t mentioned my father. I hadn’t questioned anything that she had told me. ‘But didn’t the doctors say he’s in no danger?’

  ‘They say that he will recover if he rests. But he will need to take medicine and he will need to change the way that he lives.’

  ‘He’s a tough old bird. He’ll be fine, Irene.’

  ‘He is not so tough as you think, Robert. He is getting old.’

  I detected a vague censure in her voice. It was several years since I had last seen him. I counted back in my head and surprised myself when I realised that it was actually closer to eight. He’d seemed robust enough then but a lot could happen in that length of time. I had to admit that I had picked up on the changes in him during our infrequent phone calls. There was a time when he’d always put on a cheerfully optimistic front. He’d talk about some dig that he was working on or about the museum he ran, and pretend not to notice my lack of interest. When he asked what I was doing I gave monosyllabic answers. After every call I would feel tense and physically drained. But for a couple of years now it had begun to seem that keeping up the pretence had become too much for him. His enthusiasm for his work had waned. Occasionally he’d even been drunk when he called and I’d been subjected to long self-pitying monologues about his life being a failure.

  ‘How old is he now?’ I asked Irene.

  ‘Seventy-two.’

  I was eleven when he left England, almost twenty-five years ago. He would have been about my age when I was born. Seventy-two didn’t seem so old, I told myself.

  ‘I thought perhaps you could come and see him,’ Irene suggested.

  I leaned my forehead against the wall. ‘I’d like to. Things are busy at the moment. But I’ll see what I can do.’

  A heavy accusing silence reigned over the phone line. I felt a pressure building in my head. A hiss of static prompted the temptation to replace the receiver quietly as if we had been disconnected, a notion I dismissed instantly.

  ‘He is your father, Robert,’ Irene said gently.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He needs you.’

  My eyes stung and my chest felt tight, as though I was being constricted by an iron band. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I said. I coughed, a choking involuntary sardonic laugh. My father needing me. That was almost funny.

  Alicia was there when I hung up the phone. ‘What is it?’ She put a hand on my arm, a gesture of concern. As I looked at her I experienced a sudden tidal flow of tenderness mixed with gratitude that she was there. I had never seen her look more beautiful. She was wearing a long nightdress and her hair was mussed from sleep, a crease in her otherwise flawless skin where she’d lain on the edge of the pillow. She was a little pale I thought, and there were faint smudges beneath her eyes.

  ‘It was Irene.’ I put my arms around her and hugged her tight. I was a head taller than her and she felt slight against me. There was something of the wide-eyed innocent about her even though she was almost thirty. The first time I saw her I thought she’d looked lost, which in fact she had been. Literally. She was studying a street map with a worried frown. That had been three years ago.

  She laid her head against my chest. ‘What did she want?’

  I breathed in the scent of the shampoo she used and her face cream mingled with the early morning sexiness of her skin. I’m an inch short of six feet, but holding Alicia always made me feel taller somehow. It was the way she sank into me. Surrendered. Her body moulded against mine. ‘My father had a heart attack. He’s in hospital.’

  She drew back a little so that she could look at me. ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Alicia had never met him, or Irene, but she had spoken to both of them on the phone. I’d explained early on in our relationship that I didn’t get on with my dad. She knew the history. ‘I’m sorry.’ She rested her head against me again. She didn’t offer advice, she didn’t question me and she didn’t try to comfort me except by her presence and I loved her for that.

  ‘Families,’ I said wryly. I smiled and kissed her. ‘Who’d have them?’

  As I turned away I glimpsed Alicia’s quick anxious frown and I realised my mistake. She wanted children and I was fairly sure that she was afraid that I didn’t. When she’d moved in with me we’d agreed that if we were still together and felt the same way about each other in a year’s time then we’d get married and start a family. The year had come and gone, but when we talked about it I always found a reason to delay things. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her. I just thought it was a big step.

  I went back and kissed her again. She looked surprised. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  She studied me intently. ‘Do you? Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  She kissed me back. ‘God. I love you too. I really do.’

  At the weekend, I decided. At the weekend I’d ask her to marry me.

  I spoke to Irene on the phone twice over the next forty-eight hours. My father’s condition continued to improve and the doctors were ever more confident that he would make a full recovery providing he made the necessary changes to his lifestyle. Every time I called, Irene asked me when I was going out there. I told her as soon as I could. I decided that since he was out of danger I should wait until he’d regained his strength, besides, there were things that needed my attention at work. She didn’t completely buy it, but she didn’t push the issue. She kept telling me that she would take care of him when he was allowed home. She’d make sure he kept to the doctor’s regime. I thought it was a little strange the way she kept assuring me, almost as if I doubted her, but I put it down to tiredness.

  In fact it wasn’t a good time for me to be leaving London. I had started my company when I was still in my mid-twenties, having come out of university with a BA and not much idea of what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to spend it in the present rather than in the past like my dad. After a few years of intermittent travelling, and having tried banking and marketing, I decided that I didn’t really mind what I did so long as I didn’t have to work for anybody else. I raised some money and bought a run-down flat in North London which I fixed up and sold on for a profit. Since the work had been easy enough and the rewards surprisingly good, I did it again, so next I could afford to do up two places at once. Then I bought a big old house in Chingford that had been let as bedsits and tiny flats with shared bathrooms. With a daunting amount of debt, I set about converting the place into three apartments, each occupying a single floor. I sold two for what it had cost me to buy and renovate the entire building. The third one was pure profit, and London prices were about to take off.

  By the time I was thirty I was worth several million on paper, but a year later I was not only broke but badly in debt. I’d invested heavily in an office tower but the main contractor had cut corners on a previous project and one of his recent buildings had been declared unfit. A whole morass of corrupt dealings with suppliers and officials had been exposed by one of the national newspapers, and when the contractor filed for bankruptcy nobody would come within a mile of the half-completed building I part-owned.

  In the five years since then I had clawed my company back to profitability. I was more cautious about where I invested and for the most part I followed a strategy of developing a broader range of smaller properties. In another year or two I could begin to relax a little.

  My company offices were within walking distance of my house. The day after Irene first called with the news about my father I arrived at work early. Tony Allen was the only one there. I had a small team who all had a stake in the business, and Tony had been with me the longest. He was ambitious and ha
rd-working and was usually at his desk around seven. I’d given up telling him he didn’t need to burn himself out a long time ago.

  That morning he didn’t know that I was there. His office door was open and, as I went to the coffee machine, I could hear him talking on the phone. He mentioned the name of a warehouse property that we had been trying to buy in Fulham. We already had plans to turn the building into the kind of trendy offices favoured by advertising agencies and the like who didn’t mind paying high rents. It was a big project and I had taken a lot of convincing, but Tony had been chipping away for a long time. He thought I was too conservative and, though I reminded him that I’d almost gone under once, he told me that was in the past and I shouldn’t let it hold the company back. In the end I’d relented enough to agree to the deal, but a couple of weeks ago Tony had told me the seller had suddenly upped his price by a third and he didn’t think we were going to be able to reach agreement. The last I’d heard the deal was dead in the water. I wondered if something had happened to resurrect it. The way Tony was talking it sounded that way.

  Back in my own office I forgot about the Fulham project. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad. Part of me wanted to fly out to Ithaca but another part looked for excuses not to. I was thinking about Alicia too and my decision to ask her to marry me. I loved her, but I wondered if this was the right time to be making that kind of decision. Half an hour later Tony passed my office and when he saw me he looked surprised, even startled. He started to come in, but my phone rang and as I reached for it he pointed to his watch and mouthed that he’d see me later.

  It was some time in the afternoon when we crossed paths again. As we chatted I recalled the phone conversation I’d overheard that morning and I was about to ask him if things had changed when he said that he’d heard again from the company that owned the warehouse.

  ‘Might as well forget that one for now. They’re not going to sell,’ he said.

  I said that it was a pity and he joked that I was probably secretly relieved. I smiled but didn’t say anything. After he left I remembered his expression when he’d seen me that morning and I thought about the call. I went to my office and sat down. After a while I called a friend of mine and asked him to do me a favour.

  That night at home Alicia came and sat beside me on the couch. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Liar.’ She play punched me. ‘Is it your dad? Did you speak to Irene today?’

  ‘Yes. She said he’s improving. I can speak to him tomorrow probably.’

  ‘That’s good. Do you think you’ll go out there?’

  ‘I don’t think I can. Not right now.’

  ‘OK.’ She yawned. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to go to bed. Are you coming?’

  ‘You work too hard,’ I told her.

  ‘Tell Mitchell that.’ She pulled a sour face.

  I knew she hated Mitchell. He was the worst kind of boss. The kind who is so insecure about himself that he resents anybody who might be a threat. Alicia could do his job in her sleep and he knew it and so he made her life a misery. It was a shame because she was talented and she gave herself heart and soul to her career, but now she hated it.

  When I went to bed an hour later the lights were off in our room. I cleaned my teeth and tried to put Tony out of my mind. Alicia had left her birth control pills on the vanity top. I thought about the doubts I’d had earlier and it occurred to me that if we got married she could stop taking her pills and she could tell Mitchell to shove his job.

  When I got into bed, Alicia wasn’t asleep. She turned and snuggled up to me and I realised that she was naked, which always meant one thing.

  ‘I thought you were tired,’ I said.

  She kissed me and her hand slithered over my belly and took hold of me. ‘Not that tired.’

  In the morning I was at work early. I went to Tony’s office and closed the door. He saw something was up, and his grin lost some of its lustre.

  ‘You remember that Fulham deal?’ I said. ‘David Jones talked to the company yesterday. Apparently they’re developing the site themselves. They’ve got a new partner.’

  Tony didn’t say anything. We both knew who the new partner was. I waited for him to deny it, but he didn’t. I had thought of Tony as a friend. But not any more.

  ‘You’re fired,’ I told him calmly. ‘Get out of here and don’t ever set foot in this building again.’

  He stared at me, surprised I think by my coldness. But then he stood up and began to gather a few things together. ‘It’s business, Robert. Nothing personal. You don’t want the high risk projects. I’m only trying to do something for myself. Maybe I could’ve done it differently, I’ll admit that.’

  He didn’t seem to be too concerned. He was losing his job and I knew he must have leveraged everything he owned to make himself a partner in the deal he’d done with the owners of the site. He stood to make a lot of money if things worked out. He would have quit his job with me eventually anyway, but he wanted the security of a salary for as long as possible.

  When he had packed up his things he looked around the office. ‘I’ll send somebody around for the rest of this stuff.’ He looked as if he were wondering whether to offer to shake hands.

  ‘You should know that after I spoke to David I had him make an offer on the building,’ I said. ‘Twice the original price.’

  Tony’s face fell. ‘You can’t be serious. It isn’t worth that much.’

  ‘You’re right, it isn’t. But the way prices are going, in a couple of years I’ll be able to sell it on. Until then, I’ll just sit on it and pay the interest.’

  He smiled. ‘You wouldn’t do that. You still stand to lose a lot of money.’

  He was right about losing money, but I had found that all lessons in life come at a cost. In business I wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting anybody the way I had trusted Tony again. When I didn’t say anything he realised that I was serious. He looked ashen.

  ‘Your shareholding in this company of course reverts to me for the price you paid,’ I reminded him. ‘There’s a loyalty clause if you remember.’

  Since he hadn’t actually paid anything for his shares, in effect he had to gift them back. It was all legal and above board. He probably hadn’t even read the small print when I had made the transfer. At the time he hadn’t been planning to try to cheat me. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said desperately. ‘I’ll contest it. You won’t fucking well get away with it.’

  ‘That’s your right,’ I said calmly. ‘But I’d consult a good lawyer if I were you. Now get out.’

  He wavered, indecision raging in his expression. I thought for a moment he would try to plead with me, invoke our friendship and the years we’d worked to build the company together. But there was no friendship any more. As far as I was concerned he didn’t exist.

  TWO

  My father sounded tired when I spoke to him at the end of the week. But underneath his fatigue I detected a spark of his old resilience.

  ‘The gods haven’t finished with me yet, Robert,’ he said when I asked him how he was feeling. ‘They work in mysterious ways. In the face of peril they struck me down. A peculiar method of saving my wretched life, but effective nevertheless.’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but I assumed that he was referring to his heart attack being a wake-up call. ‘The doctors told Irene you were lucky,’ I said. ‘You have to listen to their advice.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Don’t eat this, don’t drink that. I know all about it. A life of medicines and abstinence awaits me.’

  Despite the curtailments he faced he sounded cheerful enough. I thought he wasn’t taking it seriously, which annoyed me because it was Irene who would have to take care of him. I told him how worried she had been and that he should think of her instead of himself.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, sounding suddenly regretful. ‘Poor Irene. I’ve put her through a lot. But I’ll make it up to her now. I’ve always loved her you kn
ow. She’s a remarkable woman.’

  He was rambling, I thought. I wondered if it was the effect of his medication.

  ‘She tells me that you’ve been phoning,’ he said. ‘That’s very good of you.’

  ‘I was concerned about her,’ I said pointedly.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he murmured, the hurt evident in his voice.

  I regretted being cruel, but my father had always brought out the worst in me. I tried to make amends by telling him that I was glad that he sounded better. We spoke for another minute or two and then, preparing to hang up, I said, ‘I should let you rest.’

  ‘Irene mentioned that you might come out some time soon,’ he said quickly.

  The hopeful note in his tone made me uncomfortable. ‘When I can get away,’ I said.

  ‘It would be wonderful to see you. It’s been quite a long time hasn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe in a few weeks,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know. In the mean time just remember to do what the doctors tell you.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You know, Robert, it’s funny but it’s true what they say you know. While I’ve been lying here I’ve had a lot of time to think. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Things I regret. I’ve always wanted to try to explain.’

  ‘You can do it when you’re stronger,’ I cut in, but he wasn’t listening.

  ‘I thought I was doing the right thing when I left England. I never meant to leave it so long before I wrote to you. I suppose I thought it was for the best …’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said. I had heard this before, but it hadn’t made any difference then and it wouldn’t now. What was done couldn’t be undone. ‘We can talk when I come over.’