‘We’re taking you to theatre, Mrs Lomax. We have to remove the child.’
Remove.
Something was wrong. There had been no pain for some time.
The room and the faces revolved. She was on the trolley.
‘No! No!’
The ghost train, carrying a white mound on a stretcher, rattled along the corridor.
‘Stop!’ The woman on the stretcher shrieked. The convoy did not lose speed.
‘It’s coming.’
Still they rattled. Approaching double doors.
‘The baby’s coming!’
The woman pushed, strained, scarlet in the face, devoid of modesty. Between her legs a baby’s head threatened to cleave her in two. The walls rang with the woman’s exhortations. The procession halted. The masked men gathered around. The baby’s head was pushed back inside her. She’s right. I want you to breathe now, Mrs Lomax. Pant. Like a dog. And push! Push! NOW!
Lilli expelled her son. Her son. He came, with a titanic slither, into the world. She heard his cries.
She called him Frederick after Chopin. Had it been a girl she would have been Frederica. She had had no idea of the extent to which the arrival of her child, this imprint of herself upon the sands of time, would alter her perceptions, change her view of the world.
Half sleeping, half waking, she waited for Hugh. A smile transformed her face. A sensation no man could ever know, engulfed her in peace and perfect love.
Lilli picked up the photograph of the smiling, middle-aged Freddie, golden hairs on a golden chest, legs manfully apart, taken last Christmas on the beach in Barbados, from the table beside her chair. She held it out to Mrs Thingamajig.
‘This is my son.’
‘I’ve met Mr Lomax, of course.’
Replacing the silver frame, Lilli wondered how her new carer could possibly know Freddie.
A golden boy. From the day he was born when she had put away her music and devoted herself to her son. The harsh realities of his birth were as nothing compared with the punishing physical labour of the first two years of Freddie’s life. The remorseless round of backbreaking days, followed by sleepless nights, were mitigated by the sight of his rounded limbs as he slept, the touch of his flesh against hers, his first smile, his first tooth. She fed him until he was a year old, not wanting to give up the sweet sensations as he sucked rhythmically at her breast. When the time came for him to start nursery school, she helped him hang up his coat on the peg identified by a brown egg in a blue eggcup. Abandoning him amongst the other children, amongst the plasticine and the colouring books, it was as if she’d left him on his own to drown. Freddie was always happy. She and Hugh called him their ray of sunshine. He had only to come into their bedroom in the mornings, to run towards her out of the playground when she collected him, to brighten up the day.
Lilli immersed herself in books on child care. Later, on child guidance. She steered Freddie away from unsuitable toys and games, substituting those which would promote his mental and physical growth. She supervised and shaped him, like a young tree to be espaliered, nipping out unhealthy buds and encouraging the strong ones. Dedicating herself to her son, she instructed him in creative play, supervised his reading, and taught him how to swim. Leaning over his shoulder as he pored proudly over his paint box, she amended his damp offerings in which the rivers were yellow, the trees blue, and the meadows red. She took him to museums and art galleries where she was his eyes, to concerts where she was his ears. Conscious of the fact that he was an only child, she invited school friends to the house, making sure that he was never alone.
Hugh’s death, out of the blue on a summer’s day, was the end of what Lilli realised had been an idyll. Numb with shock, she played weeping fragments from Fauré’s Requiem for Hugh, but did not let Freddie attend his father’s funeral.
When she had pulled herself together she put an advertisement in the local paper offering piano tuition, and kept a home together for herself and Freddie. Her energy was consumed by her pupils. While Lilli was instructing them, Freddie played by himself in the kitchen. He preferred it to his nursery, notwithstanding the carefully chosen toys. He set places for the two of them for dinner, climbing up on a chair to the drawer, and putting the cutlery on the table upside down. Lilli chided him for handling the sharp knives and recited her favourite limerick about the ‘Old Man of Thermopylae’, who never did anything properly. When Freddie was 8 he made her a chocolate cake from the recipe corner in his comic, and by the time he was 10 he could turn out a passable meal. His school reports were poor. Could do better if he tried. Lilli drew up a timetable for his homework and declared the kitchen out of bounds.
Life as a single parent was an uphill struggle. Being the breadwinner was a Sisyphean task for which Lilli prayed daily for health and strength. She would have liked Freddie to follow his father into medicine. Freddie did not accept the assignment. As far as his musical education was concerned, Lilli tried to interest him in the piano, playing Chaminade’s ‘Autumn’ so that he could identify the rustling of the falling leaves, and Grieg’s ‘Wedding Day at Troldhaugen’, with its unmistakable ‘clip-clop’ of horses’ hooves which he pretended not to hear. When she struggled with him over ‘Für Elise’, he was heard to mutter, ‘Bloody Beethoven!’ – the only occasion on which she slapped him – and stubbornly refused to practise. She gave him a quarter-size violin, a set of drums, and a recorder, with the same result. When he came home from school with a mouth-organ from which he produced cacophonous sounds, she threw it away.
Lilli’s efforts were not completely wasted. From the age of 12 to the age of 18, Freddie’s pocket money was spent on records – Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck – his passion was for jazz.
When Freddie left home for Cambridge, for Lilli it was like losing a limb. When, at his graduation, he had eyes only for Jane, it was a knife turning in her heart. The fact that he seemed unstoppable, that he progressed in what seemed no time from his first job in a bank to becoming vice-chairman of Sitwell Hunt International, compensated a little for the fact that he had grown up. As the years went by her relationship with her son altered. Whereas she had always looked after Freddie, now it was Freddie who looked after her. She knew that she was a trial. She could not be left alone because she was inclined to put the gas on and forget to light it. Sometimes she wandered out into the corridor and found herself unable to remember the number of her flat. It was Freddie who bore the burden of keeping her supplied with carers and was responsible for their salaries. Freddie who paid the rent.
Mrs Whatsername was peering at a photograph of Lilli. She was trying to reconcile her snowy-headed charge with the young pianist, her hair flowing like a dark waterfall onto her naked shoulders, her scarlet dress brightening up the platform of the Aeolian Hall. Lilli pointed towards the other photographs.
‘That’s me at the Albert Hall, after the Queen’s Hall was bombed…’ She hummed a few bars from a Strauss waltz. ‘Me in uniform, entertaining the troops during the war…’
The telephone bell wrenched Lilli from her past. She picked up the receiver. Freddie rang every morning to see how she had slept. Nine times out of ten she had not the slightest idea. She remembered that today was Freddie’s birthday and wished him many happy returns, then held her hand over the mouthpiece and eyed Mrs Williams. ‘My son wants to know what sort of night I had. What did you say your name was, dear?’
Four
Having decided upon Der Rosenkavalier, a young man’s opera, as being a suitable choice for his birthday, Freddie stood naked before the full-length mirror in his dressing-room, beat time to the music with his hairbrush, and considered the significance of reaching the age of 40. He felt no different now from when he had first come down from Cambridge, although before him was irrefutable evidence that this was not entirely true. His waistline had thickened and he no longer had 20/20 vision, but if he narrowed his eyes slightly and remembered to hold in his stomach, he could, albeit with some assistance from Charl
ie and from Douggie Hayward, forget about his age with its implications of mid-life crisis. Physically he was in good nick, and his effect upon women confirmed the fact that he was still sexually eligible. Although in financial terms he was living at the limits of an extremely large overdraft, the balance sheet of his life was healthily in credit. He was crazy about his wife, was proud of his children, loved his work and his home (in that order), and his 84-year-old mother, although increasingly a liability, was still going strong.
Humming to the ‘Walzerlied’, he opened the mahogany wardrobe in which his suits hung side by side, and selected a dark grey flannel with which, in honour of the day, he would wear a pink silk handkerchief and pink tie.
Jane, relying on the opera music, as she did every morning, to bring her back from the dead – Freddie said she had a PhD in sleeping – opened her eyes and watched his brisk movements with affection through the open door of the dressing-room.
‘Happy birthday, darling.’
Buttoning his shirt with one hand and reaching for his socks with the other, Freddie blew her a kiss.
‘Aren’t you going to open your cards?’
It was ten to eight. Freddie’s life was regulated by the clock. His internal alarm was accurate, and he checked only for affirmation as he divided his day into precise instalments. He was never late for an appointment. Never kept a client waiting. Never let his meetings run over. Having just successfully defended the high-profile, hostile takeover bid for Corinthian Hotels, he was anxious to get to the bank.
‘You open them for me.’
There was another matter, extremely serious, which had been brought to his notice while he had been locked in battle with Corinthian, and which now needed his most urgent attention.
‘You remember Bretton Corporation…?’
Jane held up a scalloped-edged birthday card bearing a picture of a cottage garden. It was dedicated to ‘darling Freddie’ in an unsteady hand.
‘From your mother.’
‘…one of our most valuable and longstanding clients…’
‘“For You Dad…”’
Freddie stopped what he was doing.
‘…A picture of a golfer. He looks a bit like you. Love and kisses…’
Freddie waited.
‘…from Rosina.’
‘Bretton Corporation suddenly withdrew all their business from Sitwell Hunt and moved it to another bank…’
‘“They say you’re only as old as you feel”, and inside…’ Jane opened the card. ‘…“It’s a lie!” James and Dos. Why?’
‘My guess is an alleged leak of confidential information…’
‘“Many Congratulations on your Fortieth Birthday”. A man fishing…’
‘…to a third party…’
‘Gordon and Margaret Sitwell.’
‘…Which has cost the bank several million pounds. At a time like this that is not good news.’
‘Who would do a thing like that?’
‘That’s what I intend to find out.’
Silencing Baron Ochs, and erupting into the bedroom with his two briefcases, his microcassette recorder, his telephone and his worry beads, Freddie flung them down on the bed while he riffled through the rest of the cards which were scattered on the quilt. Jane knew that he was looking for a card from Tristan.
‘I expect it will come in the second post.’
‘I expect he’s forgotten! Too damned lazy.’
‘He is in the middle of exams…’
‘You don’t have to make excuses.’
Employing diversionary tactics, Jane took a narrow box, wrapped in gold metallic paper, from beneath her pillow and handed it to Freddie. On the accompanying card which he removed from the envelope, a young couple sat beneath a palm tree on a desert island. ‘I can go for a long time without a lot of things but I can’t last a day without you.’ Jane’s signature was encircled by what he imagined – but had no time to count – were forty kisses. Inside the box was a chronograph engraved on the back with Freddie’s name and the date and ‘La Vie en Rose’. Jane fastened it over the golden hairs on his wrist as she explained that the watch, the very latest, had a perpetual calendar and moon phase up to the year 2499; that it could stop the time to an eighth of a second and calculate how many days there were in the month for centuries to come.
The warm, animal smell of her as he held her tightly to him and slid a hand beneath the ‘Happy Birthday’ T-shirt, made Freddie wish that he didn’t have to rush off. He released her reluctantly, touching her face still warm from sleep.
‘I’ll take a rain check…’ He was already in office mode.
Freddie’s credo was that if he served his clients well success would automatically follow. From the moment he arrived at the bank in the mornings, he operated hands-on throughout the day, and often, when he was engaged in an important transaction, stayed at his desk into the small hours. On call seven days a week, much of his weekend was spent either immersed in paperwork or on the telephone, which led Jane to accuse him, as he paced up and down, both of wearing out the carpet and being married to the bank. It was partly true. Much as he loved his family and derived comfort and satisfaction from the certainty that they were there when he needed them, his work was his life’s blood and he was content to leave the day-to-day decisions to Jane.
This did not bother Jane in the least. She did not find it demeaning to put a meal on the table for her husband and children (she used prepared foods tasting of cardboard boxes only in extremis), to make sure that their clothes were clean and ironed, and that there were always fresh flowers in the house. It never occurred to her to think of herself as just a housewife, and she saw absolutely no reason to sell herself short because the full-time job she did was voluntary with no tangible end product. Running a home required managerial and financial skills, a knowledge of cooking (and in her case corporate entertaining), a modicum of first aid, nursing and teaching, some understanding of psychology and philosophy and the ability to drive a car. She had no desire whatever to improve herself at evening classes, to follow an Open University course, or to don a suit with padded shoulders and pursue a career. She accepted as no big deal that women must make allowances for the psychological needs of men – in much the same way as they accommodated their bodies and their babies – and considered such accommodation to be the natural consequence of anatomy and destiny rather than the programmed responses of a slave.
Since they had moved to Regent’s Park, she had got the house to her liking, and now Tristan was away at school, Jane had turned her attentions to those in need. She was much in demand as a fund raiser by charitable organisations, to whose distinctive profiles she brought not only her personal charm but the techniques of the boardroom, and the use – with Freddie’s blessing – of her beautiful home.
Jane rearranged the pink handkerchief in Freddie’s top pocket as he leaned over the bed to gather up his belongings.
‘Don’t be late for the party –’
Freddie stopped her by covering her mouth with his own.
‘As if I would!’
‘Seven o’clock. Latest. Promise?’
‘Cross my heart,’ Freddie said.
His eyes met Jane’s in mutual understanding. He would ring her during the morning. No matter how busy he was.
He always did. Even his mother had had to admit that her beloved Freddie could not have chosen a better wife. From the early days of their marriage, by making her own clothes, wild and colourful (worn with outrageous hats or scarves twisted round her forehead, and tights which she dyed to match or clash with what she was wearing), running up curtains and cushion covers from material bought in Portobello market, and concocting inventive meals out of inexpensive ingredients (which they shared with appreciative friends who always returned home from an evening with the Lomaxes with the rosy glow of conviction that the world was a better place), Jane had managed not only always to look stunning, but to turn the two rooms of their rented flat into a home.
&nb
sp; By the time they moved to Regent’s Park and there was money to complement her skills, she had got interior decoration down to a fine art.
The house in Chester Terrace behind its Nash exterior had been derelict when Freddie bought it. Under the aegis of the Crown Surveyor, Jane had devoted eighteen months to the renovation of its five floors. She had replaced the roof tiles, renewed rotted timbers, installed new electrical and plumbing services, and damp-proofed the basement. Together with her architect, keeping him up to scratch, she had ensured that the proportions of cement and sand used for the plastering were in accordance with requirements, that the joinery was accurate and the floorboards of the correct thickness. She had stood by vigilantly while the random workmen removed the original ironmongery, the keys and escutcheons, and carefully preserved them for eventual replacement. When the windows were finally refurbished, the floors relaid, and the skirtings replaced, she had set about the final embellishment.
Golden Boy Page 3
