‘Yes, I know that. I don’t mean Mr Baby Praeger. I mean Mr Frederick Praeger the Third.’
‘Well, I’ll try for you. Do you have an appointment?’
‘No,’ said Angie briefly.
‘Well in that case –’
‘Please ask Mr Praeger if he’ll see me. My name is Burbank. Miss Burbank. You can tell him I have a debt to settle.’
‘Oh. Well.’ The girl looked flustered. ‘Well if you just take a seat, I’ll ring up to his office.’
Angie sat down, and picked up the Wall Street Journal. She liked the Journal; it looked so nice. She remembered Virginia using it once to paper the walls of some financial man’s study.
‘Miss Burbank?’
‘Yes?’
‘Mr Praeger says you’re to go up. Third floor. His secretary will meet you at the elevator.’
The elevator was very old, with elaborate gilded gate-style doors; Angie was glad when it arrived to much groaning and rattling. A very pretty girl in a pink suit was waiting for her.
‘Miss Burbank? Hi, I’m Candy Nichols, Mr Praeger’s secretary. He says will you wait just a moment, he’ll be right along. Can I get you a coffee?’
‘Yes please. Black,’ said Angie.
‘Fine. You’re like me, you like your coffee strong and your men weak, huh?’ Candy gave her a ravishing smile.
‘I like my men strong,’ said Angie. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Candy, who clearly didn’t.
Fred III kept her waiting for ten minutes. Angie didn’t mind. She knew what she was doing, and she knew he had made a huge concession seeing her at all with no appointment. She smiled at him as he came into the room, and stood up, holding out her hand. Her first thought was that he had hardly aged at all in the fifteen years since she had last seen him. He was, she knew, over eighty, but he was still a powerful, forceful man, tall and erect, and, with his thick silver hair and brilliant blue eyes, still attractive. In a strange way, she thought he looked younger than Baby.
‘Mr Praeger,’ she said, ‘how nice to see you again.’
‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I don’t have very long.’
‘Two things,’ she said. ‘I wanted to give you this.’ She held out an envelope. ‘It’s a banker’s draft for one hundred thousand dollars. You said I should return it if I – got together with Baby again. I’m a good businesswoman. I don’t renege on a deal.’
‘You should give me more than that,’ he said. He scowled at her, but there was a flash of amusement in his eyes at the same time. ‘That money is worth a lot more now.’
‘I know, but inflation was not written into the agreement. I have witnesses to that. Sorry.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank you. I hope you’re not expecting that I shall tear it up. I intend to pay it into my personal account immediately.’
‘I’d hate you to tear it up,’ said Angie. ‘I’d be insulted.’
‘Good. Well, you’re looking well. Pregnancy suits you.’
‘Yes it does. Which is just as well. The only thing is, I’m not having just one baby. I’m having two. Had you heard that?’
‘I had not. I am not in the habit of discussing my son’s personal affairs.’ Again, in spite of the hostility, there was amusement in his eyes. Angie smiled at him, and drained her cup of coffee.
‘Yes, well I’m having twins. At the end of July.’
‘How nice for you.’
‘Well I hope so. It’s a bit of a daunting prospect.’
‘Well,’ said Fred III, ‘you made your bed, Miss Burbank. Now you have to lie on it.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Of course you do. Girls like you don’t get pregnant unless they want to. Nor do their lovers risk getting them pregnant.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Angie.’ Fred leant forward, patted her lightly on the cheek. ‘May I call you that? I’m a very old, very worldly man. I don’t deceive easy. Of course you trapped Baby into this. I know that. It’s a measure of what a simpleton he is that he doesn’t. What did you tell him? That your diaphragm had a hole in it? That you forgot to take your pill?’
‘Mr Praeger –’
‘And then what did you tell him? That you hadn’t realized until it was too late to do anything about it? That you were a Catholic or a paid-up member of the Pro Life group?’
‘Baby and I have been very much in love for years,’ said Angie coldly. ‘I find your assertions very insulting.’
‘I find your expecting all of us to believe that the whole thing was an accident equally insulting. However, let us not spend too much time debating that. You’ve done it finally, gotten Baby away from his wife and family. Very good. What’s the second thing you want?’
‘I want Baby to come to London,’ said Angie briskly.
‘Oh really? Well that’s very interesting. Is there any other little demand I can meet for you at the same time? Perhaps you’d like my house in New York as a pied-à-terre? A small clothing allowance? My blessing on your liaison? I’m finding this conversation very interesting.’
‘Look,’ said Angie, leaning forward. ‘It’s a very sound idea.’
‘Oh really? For whom?’
‘For you,’ she said.
Fred leant back and looked at her. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and clipped off the end. Then he pulled a box of matches out of the other pocket and started lighting the cigar, puffing very hard in her direction. It took a long time, and he said nothing at all. Angie waved the clouds of smoke away from her, coughing.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Fred, heavily polite. ‘I didn’t think. Forgive me. Shall I put it out?’
‘No,’ said Angie. ‘I know how much you all rely on your cigars. Didn’t I hear somewhere that Lehman Brothers’ annual cigar bill is thirty thousand dollars?’
‘Sounds modest to me,’ said Fred. ‘Well now, tell me a little more about this arrangement you have in mind. What it will do for me.’
‘It’ll get Baby out of New York.’
‘And why should I want that?’
‘He’s an embarrassment to you,’ said Angie briefly. ‘I know he is. He isn’t really terribly clever. I love him, you may not believe that, but I do – but I can see he isn’t terribly clever. And he’s certainly no banker. Incidentally, why did you suddenly change your mind about the London office?’
‘Nothing to do with you. But I didn’t suddenly change my mind. I always intended to do it. I just don’t like putting my cards on the table until I’m ready.’
‘Well that didn’t do a lot for Baby’s morale either,’ said Angie. ‘Or his standing, I imagine.’
‘You’re very arrogant,’ said Fred, looking at her. ‘How did you come to all these conclusions?’
‘I listen to Baby. Telling me things. I can see it. But – he does better when you’re not there. You destroy his confidence. Make him make more mistakes than he would.’
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes. Really. So either you should retire again. Or you should give him a second chance in London.’
‘How altruistic you are. And no doubt you’d prefer the former option?’
‘No. The second. I want him in London. I don’t really like New York.’
‘Baby does,’ said Fred, looking at her carefully.
‘I know, but he’d like London too. He’d love it. And you could carry on here for years, having fun, get back in your old office, have everyone say what a miracle you are, and he’d be in London, out of your hair, and everyone would be happy.’
‘Including you?’
‘Well obviously.’
Fred stared at her for a while. Then he said, ‘No. Out of the question.’
‘Why?’
‘I want Baby here. I’m still trying to do something with him. Make a banker of him.’
‘It’s not working. He’s miserable. Demoralized. What’s more, he’s diminished in authority here. And that must be bad for the ba
nk’s image. The clients can’t respect him. He’ll do much better in London. Given a fresh start. He did much better without you before. When you were retired. Before he had his heart attack. You’re not allowing him any stature. Why can’t you see that?’
‘I’ll allow him what I choose, when I choose,’ said Fred III, but he sounded thoughtful suddenly, and his eyes were distant.
A month later there was an announcement in the trade press. Baby Praeger was to head up the new Praeger operation in London, where Praegers had made a successful bid for the stockbrokers Rutherford and Whyte. Fred Praeger III would remain in control of the New York office until such time as he saw fit to retire once more. Mr Praeger told a journalist from the Wall Street Journal that he had no intention of retiring again until he received notification from a much higher authority than anything Wall Street could offer.
Chapter 26
Max, 1984
Max got out of the plane in Miami feeling irritable and restless.
This trip was in theory going to be great fun; three girls and Max (always a happy proportion, and he knew one of the girls, Dodo Browne, extremely well already), a photographer called Titus Lloyd, who was famously able to drag sex into a photograph of anything, even a boiled egg, the hairdresser and make-up artist, a deceptively sweet-looking gay boy called Jimbo, with a tongue that could very efficiently savage anyone who crossed or upset him in the least little way; and then there was the client, a shirt manufacturer from the East End called Terry, and the account exec from the agency, a slightly plain, very clever girl called Jennifer Collins.
‘If you have to lay anyone, Max,’ the agency had said to him slightly plaintively (for last time there had been just the suggestion of a complaint from the client about Max Leigh’s extremely active behaviour after hours), ‘do include Jennifer, there’s a good lad. She’s just the teensiest bit sex-starved and sensitive.’
Max, who was sitting next to Dodo, looked at Jennifer, reading Time magazine, sighed mentally at her rather earnest clever face intent on an analysis of President Reagan’s fiscal policy, then reflected rather more pleasurably upon her undeniably long legs wrapped comfortingly around one another, and thought he could throw a bit her way. Particularly if she would agree to his nipping down to Key West for a day.
Therein lay the source of his irritability and frustration; he needed, desperately, to get to Key West. Michael Halston had given him the name of a bar frequented by a group of his mother’s friends; and the news that Miami was the last stop had been a serious blow. It had been too neat to be true, really, getting a free trip down there; he was absolutely skint (despite his large earnings, which were disappearing horribly fast into the bottomless pit dug by a growing addiction not only to clothes and clubs and expensive girls and fast cars but to the occasional sampling of cocaine as well) and there was no way he was going to be able to find the time or the money to go again for months.
They were staying at the old end of Miami, near Coconut Grove; they arrived there at five in the afternoon, were told they had the evening to themselves, although they could eat dinner in the hotel should they so wish, and warned that shooting was to start at six in the morning. ‘I don’t want any baggy eyes looking at my lens, thank you,’ said Titus Lloyd, ‘and that goes for you as well, Max. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Max.
He ate dinner that night with Titus and Jennifer, and went to bed early.
They were shooting around the pastel-painted, fake deco shops of Coconut Grove that first day, and using the hotel as a base; the girls were twittering about trying on and rejecting the shirts, slagging them off to one another and oo-ing over them whenever Terry Gates hove into view.
He was hovering rather a lot, continually wandering into the girls’ dressing room and then saying sorry, sorry, his mistake; in the end Dodo complained to Jennifer, and Jennifer suggested to Terry that perhaps he might sit down with Titus and look at the layouts; Terry said he had looked at the layouts until they were coming out of his arse and he wanted to see the shirts on the girls. Jennifer shot a despairingly conspiratorial look at Max, who promptly went over to Terry and said, ‘Got a fag?’
‘Sure,’ said Terry.
‘Let’s have it outside, shall we? Can’t stand this farting around any longer.’ Outside, he said, ‘Look, mate, stay out of the girls’ dressing room, will you?
They like to make believe they’re virgins, you know; they get edgy if someone’s spoiling their act. And edgy girls don’t do a thing for shirts.’
‘OK,’ said Terry. ‘Can you put in a word for me with the blonde? I gather you know her.’
‘Sure,’ said Max. ‘No problem.’
He sidled up to Dodo a bit later, as she stood waiting to go into a shot; Jimbo was tutting over her hair. ‘You really should get this cut, darling, it’s in terrible condition.’
‘No way,’ said Dodo. ‘Not here anyway.’
‘Look,’ said Max, ‘watch yourself tonight, Dodo. Tel Boy is after you.’
‘I’ll have his balls for garters if he tries anything,’ said Dodo equably. ‘Nasty little squirt. Thanks for the warning. Oh, hi Terry. These shirts are just fab. Did you design them yourself ?’
‘Some of them,’ said Terry modestly, whose only input into the design was to decide how many of each size to make up. ‘That one you’re wearing was one of mine.’
‘It’s brilliant. Could I buy it after the shoot?’
‘You can have it, darling. For the price of a smile.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly,’ said Dodo. ‘You must let me give you something for it.’
‘You can give me something for it if you like,’ said Terry, moving round and putting his hand on her neat little bottom, only just encased in cut-off jeans. Dodo looked at him and moved away.
‘Suddenly I’ve gone off the shirt,’ she murmured.
‘I’ve warned him off,’ said Max. ‘As best I could. He’s like a filthy little mongrel with a set of pedigree bitches on heat.’
‘Thanks, Max,’ said Jennifer. She looked harassed. ‘These things are hard work, aren’t they? Now Jimbo’s thrown a wobbly because none of the girls will let him trim their hair, and he’s told them they’ve all got zits. They’re sulking, and Titus is going mad because the sun’s already too high for the shadows. Or something. And I thought it was going to be fun.’
‘It can be,’ said Max easily. ‘If you just lie back and enjoy it. Look, I have to go and stand moodily in a background now; I’ll buy you a drink later.’
It was already hot, and it was only nine; a small crowd had gathered, mostly elderly Miami folk with leathery, weather-beaten faces. Dodo was astride a very large motorbike that Titus had commandeered from somewhere, and the other two girls were standing on either side of her. Max was standing just out of focus, he knew, so he could afford to squint into the sun. He felt bored and irritable again, and the sight of Dodo’s buttocks thrust towards him was giving him an erection which he knew would be showing, so tight were his jeans. He would have to lay her tonight, he hadn’t had any sex for days and he was randy as hell.
And oh, shit, how on earth was he going to get down to Key West; they were only here for four days, and each one packed with shoots. And he was the only guy; in theory he couldn’t be spared.
‘Max, do pull yourself together,’ yelled Titus, suddenly. ‘I know you think you’re out of focus, but you’re not. Give me a pout. That’s better. Jimbo, Cary’s hair is too wild. Can’t you calm it down a bit?’
‘It’s too wild because it’s too long,’ said Jimbo. ‘It needs trimming.’
‘Then fucking trim it,’ said Titus. ‘You’re the hairdresser, for Christ’s sake.’
‘He’s not cutting my hair,’ said Cary, clutching it to her frantically. ‘Leonard would have a fit.’
‘Cary,’ said Titus, ‘as far as I can see, Leonard has very little to contribute to this shoot. And you are being paid a great deal of money to stand here in the Florida sunshine and thrust your ti
ts out of a few shirts. If I say your hair needs trimming, it needs trimming. Otherwise you can fuck off home. At your own expense.’
‘Oh all right, all right,’ said Cary. Jimbo advanced on her with his scissors, smirking.
‘Who’s a naughty girl then?’
‘Bitch,’ said Cary.
‘Come and have a drink,’ said Max to Jennifer. ‘Titus is busy gathering props, and the girls are trying to console each other about their ruined hair.’
‘But he’s only taken off about half an inch.’
‘I know. They wouldn’t even have noticed if it had been done in their sleep. But they get very worked up about their hair. They feel about it rather like an artist does about his brushes.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, they do all have very nice hair,’ said Jennifer carefully.
‘I’d rather have yours. Less fucked about,’ said Max. He meant it. Jennifer had a neat, swinging shiny bob; it was the sort of hair he liked.
‘Thank you. Yes, I’d love a drink. Orange juice and Perrier.’
‘Fine. I’ll have the same. Funny how it feels like cocktail time on these shoots at – what is it? – ten in the morning. It’s the emotional energy we all spend.’
‘You don’t seem much like the average male model,’ said Jennifer, looking at him.
‘I don’t? How’s that then?’
‘Too posh,’ she said. ‘You’re Viscount Hadleigh really, aren’t you?’
‘Yup. ’Fraid so.’
‘So what on earth are you doing, doing this?’
‘I like it. It likes me. Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, I’d have thought you’d be at Oxford, or some agricultural college or something.’
‘Darling, I’m as thick as shit,’ said Max, smiling at her radiantly. ‘One O level to my name. Never get into a college, I wouldn’t. Besides this is fun. I may not do it for ever, but it sure beats working. As the man said.’
‘Oh well. I just wondered. Nothing to do with me really. Thank you anyway. You’ve helped an awful lot already.’
‘I have? How?’
‘Oh, having dinner with me last night. I was feeling really nervous and shy. Everyone else knew each other and I could see Titus felt stuck with me. So it was really nice that you joined us. And then warning off Terry this morning, and now calming me down. I’m really glad you came.’
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