Golden Boy

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘Delighted.’ Charles chuckled. ‘I had to buy her both. You know Bingo.’

  Freddie cursed himself for blowing his opportunity. He opened his mouth to try again, when the computer king caught up with them.

  ‘What’s the buzz amongst you guys on the great depression?’

  ‘Recession,’ Freddie corrected him, willing him to go away.

  ‘Recession, depression, what does it matter as long as you love your mother. Our trade went down for the first time in twenty-three years. Two point eight billion dollars into the red, $124 million in UK sales alone.’

  ‘Recession is quantifiable…’

  ‘Dick’s the doom and gloom merchant,’ Charles said. ‘“The breakdown of order, the collapse of house prices, the disintegration of capitalism…”’

  Weston trotted after the long-legged Richard as they approached the second tee. ‘Didn’t you say you were a shrink?’

  ‘Charles…’ Freddie began.

  ‘He won’t get anything cheerful out of Dick,’ Charles chuckled. ‘He specialises in brewer’s droop! A woman goes to the dentist. “I’d rather have a baby than have my teeth filled,” she says. “Well, make your mind up, madam,” the dentist tells her, “because I have to alter the position of the chair!”’

  Freddie played like one possessed. Over the next six holes he and Charles didn’t drop a single shot while their opponents vacillated between playing badly and managing to get a par by using their shot.

  On the ninth tee, while the others waited impatiently, Weston gave an extended performance before deigning to address to ball. Stopping in mid-swing, he glared at Freddie.

  ‘Do you think you could stop rattling those ruddy beads?’

  They were again all square by the time they reached the seventh, a short par three.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ Weston said, ‘two guys who had played golf all over the world found themselves in central Africa. Guy was about to tee off when he was charged by a water buffalo. His caddy shoots it between the eyes. The other guy finds himself in the bunker, looks up and sees a lion. Caddy takes his rifle and shoots it between the eyes. First guy slices his shot and finds himself on the edge of the water. He’s about to hit the ball when a nasty-looking alligator makes for his leg. “For Christ’s sake shoot the bloody thing!” he tells the caddy. “Oh no, sir. You don’t get a shot on a par three!”’

  Freddie, still with the honour, floated his ball onto the green where it landed a couple of yards from the pin. Charles fluffed his drive which flopped 30 yards from the tee.

  ‘My family motto…’ he replaced his club in his bag ‘…neither up nor in!’

  Scott and Weston both made the green, but didn’t manage to sink their long putts. This gave Freddie the chance he had been waiting for. Going down on his haunches, he squinted at the hole. Reading the green as having a 2-inch borrow right to left and slightly downhill, he was standing very still and psyching himself up to putt when Scott said: ‘Take your time!’

  It was an old ploy. Freddie was not fazed. Rolling his ball easily into the hole, to make them one up, he grinned at Charles. They halved the next four holes.

  The twelfth was a long par five. Freddie drove his ball again straight down the middle. Charles was 50 yards short of him, and Scott and Weston ahead. Good second shots left Freddie a bit to the left of the green, with Scott and Weston 80 yards short. Freddie hoped that his long distance hitting, which today seemed faultless, might save him an extra shot. Scott pitched his ball high. Hitting the side of the bunker it bounced to the left and rolled gently up to the pin.

  ‘“The more I practise, the luckier I get!”’

  Freddie’s putt was a give. He was down in four, a birdie, but Weston’s shot had left him in a similar position.

  ‘This is where we get that one back!’

  Freddie had forgotten that this was a stroke hole. Once again they were all square.

  At the sixteenth it was anybody’s game. At the approach to the seventeenth, Freddie realised that the round was almost finished, and he still had not managed to speak to Charles. He took out his worry beads, and catching Weston’s eye put them away again. It was now or never.

  ‘Not rushing off anywhere afterwards, are you, Charlie?’ Freddie said. ‘I’d like to have a bit of a chat with you.’

  ‘As long as it’s not about my game.’ Charles contemplated the hole which was a very short par four. ‘We’ve got to win this one.’

  Deciding to take a chance on the section of out-of-bounds ahead, Freddie drove right over it. He was about to congratulate himself, when his ball, which had landed on the fairway in front of the green, hit a mound, bounced off to the right, and rolled straight into a bunker. The others had fairly good drives, but had to play second shots to the green. It was their chance to put the boot in.

  Standing in the bunker, Freddie noted that the sand was reasonably soft and dried out. His only hope was to take a full shot about 2 inches behind his ball, which was buried in a heelmark, and attempt to blast it out. Taking his sand iron, he hit the ground with an almighty thwack in which was incorporated all the rage of the past weeks. Followed by three astonished pairs of eyes, the ball rose like a white bird, dropped onto the green, performed an elegant backspin, and settled comfortably 6 inches from the pin.

  They had no difficulty in halving the last hole.

  In the clubhouse, Weston raised his glass to Freddie. ‘Cheers, Lomax! I don’t know how you score in banking, but you should be playing off scratch.’

  Richard Scott drank to Freddie and Charles, before buttonholing Weston and returning to his hobby horse. ‘What you have to look at is the convergence of five economic cycles…’

  ‘You look at it.’ Weston sipped his double brandy appreciatively, ‘All I need to know is when’s it going to bottom out?’

  ‘It isn’t going to bottom out. That’s the mistake people make. This so-called recession is the precursor to the end of the world as we know it…’

  ‘Sounds like good news for shrinks.’

  Scott ignored the comment.

  ‘…It happened in Greece. It happened in Rome. Now it’s happening here. We show all the symptoms of a civilisation at the end of its tether. A top-heavy bureaucracy, economic and financial crises, dramatic fall in population growth, widespread complacency, decline in traditional values, rise in mysticism, science on the defensive, and a decadent art.’

  Leaving Laurel and Hardy at the bar to toll the bell for Western democracy, Freddie drew Charles aside. He wondered if it was his imagination or if it seemed suddenly to have gone quiet. The only way to say it was to say it.

  ‘You may not have heard the news.’ Freddie knew perfectly well Charles had not. ‘Sitwell Hunt has been “forced to reconsider things…”’ He used the chairman’s idiom.

  Charles raised a curious eyebrow.

  ‘I was asked to leave. I am no longer with the bank.’

  No matter how many times he repeated it, no matter how elegantly he wrapped it up, the reiteration of his story still made him feel physically sick.

  Charles was visibly shaken. Not knowing quite what to say to Freddie, he came up with an anecdote in a clumsy attempt to mask his distress. ‘Funnily enough, there’s another friend of mine, an accountant actually, quite a senior man… He was getting into his Jag. About to go home. The personnel officer stuck his head through the window. “By the way, old chap, we shan’t be needing you any more after next week.”’

  Redundancy was like backache, Freddie thought. Everyone knew someone who had it worse.

  ‘What about your service agreement?’

  ‘There isn’t a service agreement.’

  Charles almost spilled his drink. ‘Come off it! Someone in your position would not have been so idiotic as to leave himself without a cast-iron –’

  ‘I admit I was negligent.’

  ‘Negligent? Bloody hell! What I would do, Freddie – if I were in your situation – I’d screw Sitwell Hunt for everything they�
�ve got.’

  ‘With no service agreement?’

  ‘Bugger the service agreement.’ Charles finished his beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Get yourself a damn good lawyer. Knowing Gordon Sitwell and his insistence on keeping a low profile…’

  Charles obviously hadn’t seen the headlines in the News of the World.

  ‘…he’ll be only too pleased to keep such a high-level dismissal out of the courts.’ Shaking his head, Charles held out his hand for Freddie’s empty glass. ‘And I always thought you were such a hot-shot banker!’ The words were caustic but the voice was sympathetic. ‘On second thoughts, old cock, maybe you should stick to golf.’

  On their way to the car park, Charles took Freddie’s arm. ‘I was having a bit of a think in the locker room. There’s this client of mine, Harvey Peters. He wants to buy into the food business. I’ve got rather a lot on my plate at the moment. Any chance that you could meet him?’

  Freddie was damned if he was going to accept charity from an embryo banker. He was used to dealing with senior people.

  ‘Pay only on results, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Charles took the keys of Bingo’s Daimler out of his pocket. ‘There’s money involved.’

  Freddie swallowed his pride. One good deal was all he needed. He had no option. He could not afford to turn down the offer.

  Twenty-two

  ‘I need to use the phone,’ Freddie said.

  Jane was in the kitchen, her Filofax open on the table, telephoning round to make the final arrangements for her Ball. She put her hand over the receiver.

  ‘You’ll have to use your mobile.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m expecting a call.’

  ‘I’m talking to Sir John Pawsey…’

  ‘Who the hell’s Sir John Pawsey?’

  ‘Pawsey and Filtness,’ Jane hissed. ‘He’s sponsoring one of our bands. I’m sorry,’ she spoke into the receiver, ‘I didn’t quite catch that.’

  ‘Are you going to be long?’ Freddie consulted his watch.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s about to leave for Tokyo, on business.’ She saw a shadow cross Freddie’s face. ‘No. I’m sorry, Sir John. I was talking to my husband…’

  ‘I have to call Susan.’ Freddie mentioned his ex-PA. ‘It’s important. I need to catch her before she goes out.’

  ‘No, do carry on, Sir John, it’s perfectly all right,’ Jane said into the telephone.

  ‘Jane, this is very important!’

  ‘I’m expecting the brochure proofs from the printers tomorrow,’ Jane said. ‘“Sponsored by Pawsey and Filtness” will be printed in bold above the name of the band.’

  ‘If Susan goes out that’s another day lost!’

  ‘I’m just coming! I think that’s about it, Sir John, and the committee is extremely grateful to you. Yes, I will. Thank you. Not at all.’

  ‘Listen, Freddie.’ Jane banged the receiver down.

  ‘No, you listen, Jane. Let’s get our priorities straight, darling. If I don’t get a job pretty quickly there’ll be no money coming in. If there’s no money coming in, not only will I be unable to pay your household bills…’

  ‘My household bills!’

  ‘…but I will be unable to keep up the mortgage payments on this house. If I cannot pay the mortgage on this house, the bank will foreclose. I will have no choice but to go bankrupt. Bankrupt. Do you realise what that means? Surely my getting work is more important than some damned charity hop –’

  ‘The “damned charity hop”, for which I am pitching for all I am worth, is to buy a PET scanner…’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A PET scanner. A positron emission tomograph, for research into things like brain tumours, for the Hammersmith Hospital. John Pawsey’s daughter died from a brain tumour. She was 10 years old Freddie.’

  ‘You’re not reading me, Jane.’

  ‘I am charging £250 a ticket for this Ball, for which I have absolutely no ideological anguish, and I have no intention of blowing it. Our £125,000 may make the difference between having a PET scanner and not having a PET scanner.’

  ‘I appreciate that, but I have to get a job.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

  ‘You don’t seem to.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You do nothing but put obstacles in my way. How can I make contacts, follow up my leads, if you’re always on the telephone?’

  ‘I am not always on the telephone.’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘It’s not easy getting money out of people. The more they have the harder it is to extract it from them. There are skills to it, you know.’

  ‘You seem to be pulling against me…’

  ‘Freddie, that’s not fair.’

  ‘Well, you’re not trying to help me.’

  ‘Didn’t I offer to go out to work?’

  ‘Christ, Jane, how many more times? I do not need you to go out to work. I am quite capable of salvaging this situation. Provided I can have access to the means. Provided you do not tie my legs and expect me to dance.’

  Jane was in her sewing-room, surrounded by a sea of green velvet, when Bingo, wearing a 1920s cocktail hat, burst in on her.

  ‘Darling, why didn’t you tell me about Freddie?’

  Jane, arranging pleats, had her mouth full of pins, but Bingo didn’t wait for an answer. Taking off her hat she stuck it on Jane’s dressmaking dummy.

  ‘I couldn’t believe Charles when he came home from golf. I thought he was kidding. What did Freddie do?’

  Jane removed the pins from her mouth. ‘He didn’t “do” anything. These days it just happens.’

  ‘To other people, not to Freddie. Charles is mortified. He looks up to Freddie. You’re so clever with your hands. I can’t even sew a button on. I don’t think green velvet is quite you, darling!

  ‘It’s for Rosina. Her Kiss me Kate costume.’

  ‘How does Freddie feel about it?’

  ‘Kiss me Kate?’

  ‘Being unemployed.’

  ‘I don’t know. Freddie talks about his overdraft. He talks about his network. He talks about “drawing up guidelines”. He doesn’t talk about feelings.’

  ‘What will he do?’

  ‘He’s looking for a job,’ Jane glanced up from her sewing, ‘along with thousands of other people, including hundreds of corporate financiers…’

  ‘You should have told me. I know Freddie didn’t want you to. They have this amour propre. It’s no good keeping things to yourself. I never keep anything to myself.’

  Jane was glad to confide in Bingo, a loyal and generous friend who had managed – helped recently by a kaleidoscope of pills extracted from an army of doctors – to charm her way not only through several husbands, but through life. She had romped her way through school and RADA, and later through several Robertson Hare farces where dressed in camiknickers she had been chased in and out of bedroom doors.

  ‘Poor Freddie.’ Bingo shook her head. ‘Poor you! I came to take you out for lunch.’

  ‘I can’t. Freddie’s downstairs.’

  ‘I know. You can hear his signature tune a mile away…’

  ‘Tannhäuser.’

  ‘Oh! I thought someone was being murdered. Surely Freddie can get his own lunch. He knows how to open the fridge. He’s quite capable of fending for himself.’

  ‘Of course he can open the fridge, of course he can fend for himself…’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  Jane broke a length of green thread with her teeth. ‘Having Freddie around all day has brought home to me the fatal flaw in the feminist argument. What these militant women tend to overlook is the existence of love in a relationship, the existence of goodwill. Sometimes I think it’s like going to sea in a sieve.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Marriage.’

  ‘You and Freddie seem to have made a pretty good job of it.’

 
‘Until Gordon Sitwell put the boot in.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘We fight. We’ve just had a row.’

  ‘“Tension in a marriage is as necessary as yeast in a loaf of bread.” One of my ex-mothers-in-law.’

  ‘This isn’t tension. This is dynamite.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Freddie. Everybody knows Freddie. Freddie’s a high-flyer. He’ll be gobbled up.’

  Jane tried to explain to Bingo that Freddie’s legendary self-confidence covered a pathological fear of being dependent, that while he was able to function in top gear when he felt that he was needed, he had no self-start capacity and was equipped with absolutely no mechanism to cope with failure. Jane could cope, as the oldest of the copperknobs she had had to, but the more she tried to help Freddie bounce back again, the more he withdrew from her. Faced with the brick wall of his intransigence, she realised that the situation which he had to confront, disastrous as it might well turn out to be in financial terms, touched deeper levels. It was not simply an economic problem, but his problem.

  ‘Freddie misses his work.’ Jane’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He misses his boss, he misses his personal assistant, he misses his colleagues. Where Sitwell Hunt used to be there’s now a great big hole…’ The tears overflowed onto the green velvet of Rosina’s skirt. ‘I’ve never seen him like this. He’s like a stranger. I don’t know him any more.’

  ‘Maybe you never knew him.’

  ‘He won’t let me help. I could do a hundred and one jobs. I could work for you. I could be a manager in the voluntary sector – I’m talking serious money – okay, maybe it goes against the grain but I don’t see why he has to be so damned obstinate!’

  ‘Freddie’s angry.’ Bingo handed Jane a drawn-thread handkerchief. ‘He’s been kicked where it hurts. He wants you at home. He’s afraid of losing control. He wants everyone to revolve around him as they did at the bank.’

  ‘I have never revolved around him.’

  ‘He doesn’t know that, sweetie. He’s always been out all day. He doesn’t know what you are capable of. He imagined you were at home revolving.’