It was not difficult to broach the subject of sex at school. Although the conversation in the cloakroom, over illicit smokes, occasionally became sidetracked to the newest disco or the latest diet, it was rarely about anything else.
‘Did you know,’ Hannah, who had been on the front cover of Tatler and whose mother was a Marchioness, said as she came out of the lavatory cubicle pulling her knickers up, ‘the French don’t even have a word for it?’
‘For what?’ Lauren Buckman, who had been taken for an 18-year-old ever since she was 12, and could get away with not doing her homework (if not murder) because her father, Bertrand Buckman, was a well-known film director, asked.
‘“It”, darling!’ The knickers were silk, café au lait. ‘The nearest you can get is l’acte d’amour, which is not the same thing at all.’
There was not much armour as far as Rosina’s bouts with Henry were concerned. In fact she was sorry now that she had started the whole messy business.
‘When did you first find out about it?’ Pandora leaned myopically forward and eyed Lauren, who was dissatisfiedly appraising her truly lovely face in the communal mirror.
‘I was about 9,’ Lauren said. ‘From my mother – well she’s not my real mother. She told me about bonking, and about periods, and about contraception, and about babies, and about STD, and about rape. Everything you wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. She doesn’t think sex is anything to get steamed up about. She calls a penis a penis.’
‘I was at a girls’ school in Somerset,’ Henrietta who was to play Bianca in Kiss me Kate, said. ‘They showed a video in assembly when I was 12, but it was a dead waste of time because we’d all known for yonks and afterwards the staff simply refused to discuss it. I think they were all lesbians. I think most teachers are orientationally challenged. I think teaching attracts them.’
‘Maybe in Somerset,’ Lauren said. ‘Monsieur Albert put his hand up my shorts.’
‘He’s French,’ Margaret said.
‘I think I’m bisexual, as a matter of fact,’ Lauren said. ‘I think I could well go either way.’
This was a new and brazen departure. It was received in silence.
‘You provoked him,’ Abimbola, who came from Nigeria said.
Lauren raised her wild, expensively highlighted hair with her fingers and let it fall again about her face. ‘Who?’
‘Monsieur Albert.’
‘You mean about Prince Charles and Princess Di?’ Lauren laughed. She jumped up on the bench beneath the coat-hooks and held up a newspaper to her circle of classmates, their faces towards her like upturned flowers.
The front-page picture which poor Monsieur Albert had been foolish enough to show them in class, had been of Princess Di presenting a silver cup to Prince Charles after a polo match, and receiving a perfunctory kiss in return. He had asked Lauren, who had already been reprimanded for looking out of the window instead of paying attention to the fable of ‘The Fox and the Crow’, to describe, in French, what it was that the royal couple were up to.
‘Ils baisent,’ Lauren said, puckering her lips in demonstration.
Monsieur Albert had blushed from the top of his head to his boots. Patches of crimson stood out on his cheeks like weals.
‘Mais non!’
‘“Une baise” is a kiss?’ Lauren said.
‘Un baiser,’ Monsieur Albert nodded, obviously regretting that he had started the whole business.
‘Well, then…’ Lauren said.
‘Only for children. “Donne-moi un baiser.” Or in epigrams. “Dans la vie il y a l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tient la joue.” In life there is always the one who gives the kiss, and the one who gives his cheek to be kissed. Un baiser. C’est un nom. A noun!’
‘Well if “un” baiser is “a” kiss, surely baiser means “to” kiss,’ Lauren said patiently, while the class sat riveted.
Monsieur Albert shook his head. ‘In Racine, yes. But you are already three centuries out of date.’ He held up the photograph. ‘Ils s’embrassent. S’embrasser. To kiss!’
‘Okay. We get the message.’ Lauren refused to let him off the hook. ‘What does baiser mean?’
By that time it was perfectly obvious.
Monsieur Albert folded the newspaper while he collected himself. ‘I think you know perfectly well what it means, Lauren.’
Lauren, whose boyfriend was a busker in the underground at Marble Arch, shook her head.
Monsieur Albert, 32 years old, looked at the innocent faces of his class of 15-year-olds, and realised that there was no escape. He was in bondage. They were not going to let him go. He made for the cover of his desk and when he was safely behind it, held on to it with two white-knuckled hands. ‘It means…’ he looked Lauren in the eye ‘…it means “to fock”!’
‘It means…’ Lauren said from the cloakroom bench where she towered above her classmates in their bizarre assortment of garments, largely worn above skintight leggings, which passed for clothes. ‘It means…’ she adopted Monsieur Albert’s heavy French accent “… to fock”!’
‘I’m not surprised he put his hand up your shorts,’ Hannah said, amidst the howls of laughter, some of it accompanied by hysterical tears at Lauren’s performance. ‘He’ll be putting something else up them next.’
‘He would if he got half a chance. All that baiser business gave him a hard-on. That’s why he had to hide behind the desk. You’re very quiet, Ros.’ Lauren turned her green eyes on Rosina.
‘She’s joined the Rosebuds!’ Henrietta shrieked, and flung her arms round Rosina. ‘Welcome to the fun factory.’
Blushing, like poor, persecuted Monsieur Albert, Rosina admitted that she was now ‘going out’ with Henry, which qualified her for membership of the club. The girls gathered round her.
‘Tell us…?’
‘Where did you do it?’
‘How many times?’
‘Did you come?’
‘What was it like?’
Rosina imagined them all, Lauren, and Hannah, and Henrietta, and Abimbola, and Christianne from Belgium (who boasted that she was almost engaged to be married, as if putting your nose into that male chauvinist noose was something to be proud of) falling into their lovers’ arms, their lips parting in deep passionate kisses – as their clothes melted miraculously into thin air and they achieved simultaneous orgasms – and of herself accommodating the engorged member of the eager Henry which worked her inert body like a piston and riddled her like a fire.
She wanted to ask them what it was that was supposed to be so wonderful. Whether she was meant to have some feeling for that great, throbbing, ugly swelling, which seemed to have a life of its own, and of which Henry was so inordinately proud. Whether their boyfriends concentrated on their nipples, or massaged them with baby oil. Whether they did not think, in all honesty, in the final analysis, at the end of the day, that the great Nirvana of sex had let them down.
She picked up her Coach bag containing her school books and slung it nonchalantly over her shoulder. Meeting the expectant eyes, the curious faces, awaiting her reply, she put on her enigmatic, heavy-lidded Kim Basinger (The Color of Sex) smile.
‘It was like…seeing…and feeling…all the colours of the rainbow,’ she lied. ‘It was great!’
Standing on the stage in the Pfeiffer Hall, donated to the school almost a hundred years ago by Mrs Ida Pfeiffer, and filled with rows of chairs inscribed with the names of past students (an idea filched from Harrow), Rosina listened to Mrs Drummond telling them, as if it was something extraordinary, that they were actually going to have boys – violins, a viola, a cello and a saxophone – in the orchestra, and banging on about the tempo di valse of ‘Wunderbar’ and how, after the introduction, the refrain, ‘Wunderbar! Wunderbar!’ must be lively! – lively Rachel! lively Rosina! – and that they must give it their all.
Rosina was happy at Queen’s with its dogma: ‘We shall be glad to improve our practice every day, but not to alter our principles’; the fact t
hat there were no marks and no prizes; and that the aim of the liberal education they were given, as laid down by the founder, Frederick Dennison Maurice, was as much to bring out native intelligence as the acquisition of knowledge. Rosina would have liked the opportunity to question Frederick Dennison Maurice on the one matter which was troubling her and about which he had not thought to utter. In his preoccupation with the education of women, in his desire to raise their consciousness, he had quite overlooked the question of sex.
A reason that it failed, according to one bashful journalist (who had referred to the pudenda as ‘the secret garden’), was because of worries about home or about school.
Twenty-six
The bad news was that Tristan und Isolde assaulted Jane’s ears from morning to night causing her to flee from the house on the slightest pretext, and the good news was that Freddie had agreed to come to her Ball.
Selling every available ticket at a time when the downturn on the charity scene mirrored the crisis in the economy at large was no mean achievement. Businessmen were no longer keen to dole out company largesse in support of worthy causes (even in anticipation of a knighthood), and the time had long passed when the glitterati could be persuaded to fork out for any fashionable soirée or film première which happened to be going. The pledged appearance of a show-biz name – or even a royal – at a function made very little difference, and one had to be seen to be extremely careful with other people’s money.
In order to entice the ‘men in suits’, who had tightened their belts and were no longer in a position to give as freely as they had previously done, many of the organisations had had to rethink their appeals.
Jane’s idea for raising funds for her PET scanner, from those still in possession of them, was to make her Ball strictly by invitation – an appeal to élitism – and give the invitees the signal honour of taking out a covenant or giving a specified donation to the cause, a privilege which would, she hoped, add to the cachet.
Freddie’s promise to accompany her had been extracted on the high of the Bowker & Page transaction, on which, having been made a non-executive director of the company by Dennis Bowker, he had recently been working flat out and on which contracts were about to be signed. His euphoria about the deal, worth £75,000 in fees, had replaced the bout of depression (during which his alcohol intake had increased dramatically), which had followed his rendezvous with Sidonie.
The morning after Tristan und Isolde, Freddie had caught the first train to Manchester to spend the day with Charles Holdsworth’s client, Harvey Peters, a 35-year-old whizz kid (who sported a gold Rolex and drove an Aston Martin) with a chain of teenage fashion shops, who was now looking to diversify into food. As Susan had intimated that he would over their lunch at the Café Royal, Freddie’s old client Dennis Bowker (having been tipped off by her) had contacted him at home. After Freddie had introduced Bowker to Harvey Peters, a meeting which had been followed by further discussions and extensive investigations by his client, Harvey Peters had agreed that Bowker & Page – a monument to private enterprise – was exactly the solid, family business he was looking to buy.
Dennis Bowker had once been a Manchester insurance agent, and his wife, Barbara, a Home Economics teacher at a prep school.
Barbara’s sister, Clare, married to Anthony Page, a moderately successful surveyor, taught Maths at the same school. Every June, for the annual Sports Day, Barbara and Clare had been responsible for making the cakes which accompanied the polystyrene cups of tea and which were sold by the slice to the school parents. Barbara’s specialities were cheesecake and carrot cake, while Clare’s were an orange-flavoured chocolate log, and a white-iced walnut cake reminiscent, to those old enough to remember, of the popular pre-war ‘Fullers’.
When the prep school folded, Barbara and Clare were unemployed. Neither of their husbands was doing particularly well, Clare had young children, and they were both keen to make some money. They reviewed their resources and came up with the only asset (apart from their teaching diplomas) which they shared: cake-making. It was Barbara’s idea to take her carrot cake to the Arndale Centre and try to sell it to a wine bar.
The manager of the wine bar, who tasted it and pronounced it excellent, said that he couldn’t possibly interest his customers in a dessert which had to do with vegetables. Barbara made another carrot cake, covered it with lemon icing, and presented it as ‘Lemon Melt’. The manager of the wine bar ordered two. Mainly to get rid of Barbara. The following day he was on the telephone for two more. Barbara and Clare spent a week, during which neither Dennis nor Anthony got any dinner, baking in Barbara’s kitchen. They packed Barbara’s Lemon Melt and Country Curd Cake (cheesecake), and Clare’s Chocolate Orange Delight and Walnut Whisper into Barbara’s car, and made the rounds of Manchester restaurants and tea-rooms. By the end of a month they had more orders than they could cope with. Each of them recruited a friend to help, and used her own kitchen, until their cooking bowls were not big enough to cope with the mixing, and they finally had to resort to the bath. They spent the days baking, working not only their own cookers overtime, but borrowing oven space from their friends. They persuaded Dennis and Anthony, who were only too pleased to get away from the ubiquitous smell of baking, to drive into Manchester in the evenings, where they commiserated with each other about their neglect by their wives over a beer, to do the deliveries. After six hectic months, Dennis and Anthony chucked in their jobs. Dennis came up to London to talk to Freddie, at Sitwell Hunt, about a loan which was to be invested in a derelict factory suitable for small-scale commercial cake-making. While Anthony, making the switch from sand and cement to flour and sugar, assessed and quantified the recipes, Dennis took over the business side of things. Japanese Ginger (there was nothing Japanese about it) and Mother’s Madeira were added to Barbara and Clare’s repertoire, and ‘Bowker & Page’, now a household name whose cakes were to be found on the shelves of supermarkets up and down the country, was born. All went well until Anthony Page, by now a wealthy man, fell in love with a newly recruited French-Canadian manageress, left Clare and the children, and pushed off to Quebec where he had started a second family. Clare took the children back to her mother in Dublin and remained there. Left on their own, their future secured by wise financial investments, Dennis and Barbara Bowker decided to get rid of the thriving but demanding business they had built up (which now comprised some 100 lines and which, despite the recession, was booming), and retire to their villa in Spain.
Bowker & Page, which had a £12 million turnover and pre-tax profits of £1.4 million, was now on the market for £4.5 million. If Freddie succeeded in securing it for Harvey Peters, his reward would be more than enough to get him out of trouble with Derek Abbott. It would buy him time to re-establish himself in banking, which was the only world he knew and which he loved.
The meeting in Manchester, at which they were to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s on the contracts, took place at Dennis Bowker’s elegant Victorian house in Hale. Lunch was served at a massive refectory table, and by the time Freddie and his client, together with the lawyers, accountants and financial advisors, had finally adjourned for tea (and wedges of Lemon Melt), a day, one month ahead, on which contracts were to be exchanged had been agreed.
An exultant Freddie had returned to London just in time to make his squash game with James and, despite the fact that James tried to put Freddie off his stoke at a crucial moment by telling him the story of the woman who gave birth to a litter of piglets (the police were looking for the swine who was responsible), Freddie won the match. At six o’clock, his towel round his neck, he had gone to phone Sidonie who, starting with breakfast meetings, was always on a tight work schedule, but who he guessed by now would be back at the hotel.
Whistling Don Giovanni’s serenade to himself as he put his phonecard in the slot and dialled the number of the Berkeley Hotel, he asked to be put through to Sidonie’s room.
When the telephonist came back to him, it was to say that the C
ountess Orsini had checked out.
Freddie felt himself break out in a cold sweat, which had nothing to do with the squash, and he had the uncomfortable feeling, due to a sudden drop in his blood pressure, that he was going to pass out. There was no way that Sidonie could have left the hotel without leaving word for him.
‘Give me the concierge.’ The concierge had been there for years and knew Freddie by sight.
‘I want to speak to Countess Orsini,’ he said when the man was on the line. ‘Room 333.’
‘The Countess left this morning.’
‘That’s impossible. There must be some mistake.’
‘No, sir, she took the hotel car to the airport.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘I saw the Countess into the car myself, sir.’
‘This is Freddie Lomax speaking. Did the Countess leave a message for me?’
‘I don’t have anything here, sir. Let me check with the message desk.’
‘I’d be obliged if you would.’
Freddie scrolled mentally through the conversation with Sidonie at Orso’s, trying to remember what had actually been said. Was it his imagination or had she in fact withdrawn slightly from him, regarded him with pity, or contempt. Sidonie was a power freak. She was not ashamed to admit it. Her background was not class-conscious Britain, in which success was suspect and excellence unacceptable in anything other than sport or entertainment. Sidonie had been reared in a culture where high-flyers and the wealthy were a source of admiration, rather than envy, and she had never made any secret of the fact that it was from the rich and powerful, both in business and in her personal life, that she got her kicks. Through Sidonie’s eyes, Freddie saw himself, like Alice as she went down the rabbit hole, diminish in size. No wonder Sidonie hadn’t wanted anything more to do with him, to share her bed with a has-been, an erstwhile banker no longer worthy of her regard.
Golden Boy Page 20
