by David Nobbs
He wasn’t worth it.
This was ridiculous. There was some utterly trivial explanation. Any minute now she would breeze in, smiling her apologies with that memorable wide smile of hers.
But she didn’t.
The Pizza Express was like … well, it was like every other Pizza Express. Just about Italian enough to be acceptable to the sophisticated, not so Italian that it discomfited the gauche. Warm enough to be pleasant to enter, cool enough to discourage a long stay.
A Polish waiter approached, trying to look Italian, trying to pretend to be really rather excited to see them. His insufficiently practised Eastern European smile foundered on the rock of Dwight Schenkman’s face.
‘Anything to drink, gentlemen?’
God, I could sink a Peroni.
‘Just a small sparkling water, please,’ said Dwight Schenkman.
Maybe a glass of the Montepulciano, thought James. A large one. But the words died in his throat.
‘Still water, please.’
James studied the menu. How, when the main course was mainly pizza, could there be dough balls as a starter? How much dough could a man consume?
‘How’s the lovely Deborah?’
‘Very well. Very well indeed.’
‘You’re a lucky son of a gun.’
‘I know I am. More than I deserve.’
‘And Max?’
‘Great.’
‘And Charlotte? The absent Charlotte?’
‘Still absent.’
The tension grew with every devastating drip of politeness. Now he had to take his turn at asking questions, and there was a problem. The names of Dwight’s wife and family escaped him entirely. He had once begun a correspondence course to improve his memory. ‘That’ll be a futile gesture,’ Deborah had predicted, and she’d been right. Halfway through the course he’d forgotten all about it.
‘Everything all right with your family?’ he enquired.
Pathetic. The lack of detail was blatant. But the BWC didn’t seem to notice. He took a photograph from his wallet.
‘We have our very first grandchild.’ He handed James a photo of an ugly, podgy baby being held in the excessively ample arms of an unrealistically blonde lady with slightly stick-out teeth. In the background was a bungalow of quite spectacular dreariness. ‘Who do you think that is?’
Inspiration, that rare visitor to his life, struck James.
‘Dwight Schenkman the Fifth?’
‘Yessir!’ This was said so loudly that several people in the vicinity turned to look.
‘Lovely,’ said James. ‘They make a lovely couple. And is that their home? It looks … cosy.’
‘James, that is exactly what it is. Dwight’s very New York, but Howard’s a real home bird. That’s his wife, Josie. James, it gives me great pleasure that you, my old friend, my trusted manager of the London office, think that Josie and Howard make a lovely couple. Thank you.’
James looked desperately for sarcasm and found none. But ‘old friend’, ‘trusted manager’. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.
The waiter scurried across with their water, and asked if they were ready to order.
‘Absolutely,’ said Dwight Schenkman the third without consulting James. ‘James?’
‘I’ll have the capricciosa, please.’
‘Great choice, James. I’ll have the Veneziana. I like to feel I’m giving 25p to Venice. It’s a great little town. And those dough balls sound nice to start. You going for the dough balls, James?’
‘No, thank you.’ How thankful he was that he hadn’t made any comment about them.
‘We’ve had some great lunches, haven’t we? Le Gavroche. Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Claire and the lovely Deborah.’
Claire! Must remember that. Claire. An éclair with the e on the end instead of the beginning. Easy-peasy.
‘And now the Pizza Express.’
‘Hard times?’
‘Got it in one. What’s your view of the state of the packaging industry, James?’
‘Difficult, Dwight. We pack what people buy. We can’t pack more or less than that. We’re a kind of barometer of the economy.’
‘I like that.’ The BWC rolled the phrase round his mouth as if it was a glass of premier cru Chateau Margaux. God, James could do with a glass of wine. Any wine. ‘A barometer of the economy. I’ll remember that.’
Of course you will. You remember everything, you bastard.
Dwight Schenkman the Third leant so far forward that James could smell his toothpaste and his aftershave.
‘To business,’ he said.
James’s heart began to pump very fast. Thank goodness he’d remembered to take all his pills.
‘There are two elements to this, James. A global element and a UK element.’
The pumping of James’s heart began to slow just a little. It didn’t sound like the sack.
‘In the short term, James, I am requiring every element of our global operation to make a fifteen per cent cut across the board. Across the board, James, from personnel to toilet paper via water coolers and stationery. I need your specific proposal as to how this target may be met in Bridgend and Kilmarnock, and I need it within six months.’
James knew how difficult this would be, but all he could feel was relief, immense, shattering relief. He had been given a job to do. He had not been sacked.
Dwight’s dough balls arrived. Since he was far too well bred to talk with his mouth full, and since he was an exhaustive chewer, his outlining of James’s greatest challenge came with long interruptions.
‘There is a real possibility, James, that we might have to consider transferring some, if not most, of our total British production capacity to …’
James tried not to watch the curiously sterile rhythmic movement of Dwight’s jaw as he chewed.
‘… Taiwan. Well, there are other possibilities, but Taiwan is favourite as of this moment in time.’
As opposed to this moment in space, thought James irreverently.
‘In six months I will have received estimates of the saving that we can achieve by moving production to Taiwan. I want you to set up a committee to give me another report producing equal …’
James took a sip of his water and tried to pretend it was gin.
‘… savings in the UK. Otherwise, Taiwan it is. In which case we could …’
He chewed on his next morsel of dough ball as if he couldn’t bear the pleasure to end.
‘… close the London office and you could all join us here in Birming-ham.’
Dwight Schenkman pronounced England’s second city as if it was a type of meat.
James’s heart sank. Even the arrival of his pizza capricciosa couldn’t lift it.
She was more than three-quarters of an hour late now. He was in turmoil. He stared wildly at the door, willing her to hurry in. But he knew in his heart that she wouldn’t.
He had ruled out the possibility that she had had second thoughts. Apart from the fact that there was no reason why she should – they had talked about it and talked about it and she had committed herself and told him how much she loved him and told him of James’s lack of real passion in recent years – there was also his knowledge of her character. She was a woman of courage, of spirit, of compassion, of style. If she had had second thoughts, she would have phoned to tell him.
He began to think about the possibility of an accident. He could barely allow himself to believe that she would have had a bad accident. His happiness, his utterly unexpected happiness, was not to be taken away so cruelly. But a minor accident, that would be what it was.
If it was a very minor accident, though, she would have been able to phone.
So why didn’t he phone her? Not in the restaurant, though. It was too quiet. Too many people were eating in whispers, in that strange, overawed English way.
He strolled out into the garden, slowly, trying to look casual.
He had chosen this remote spot so well that there was no network c
overage.
He returned to his table, smiled at the lunchers and sat down, trying to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Round and round went his mind.
He told himself that he had lived without her reasonably happily for fifty-one years. Surely he could manage another thirty or so?
He knew that this was nonsense.
He caught the eye of the plump, plain woman. She had a stern, stiff look on her face, and traces of tiramisu on both her chins. He had a sudden fear that he knew her, and that, therefore, she knew him. He smiled at her, trying to make the smile look casual and relaxed. She gave a defensive half-smile in response, as if she wasn’t sure whether she knew him.
What did it matter, anyway? Deborah hadn’t come. Nothing had happened.
A waitress lumbered over towards him, English, local, with inelegant legs and not a shred of style.
‘Would you like to order, sir?’ she asked. ‘Only the chef’s got the hospital at two forty-five, with his boils.’
‘Well, he could hardly go there without them, could he?’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘I’ll have the chicken liver pâté and then the loin of God.’
‘Good?’
‘Fine, Dwight. It was fine.’
‘You’re an unusual eater. I was watching you.’
Too right. Like a hawk. Disconcerting. Very.
‘I make sure that I don’t run out of the things I particularly like, which in this case were the egg, the anchovy, the capers,’ explained James. ‘There must be a bit of those left at the end. Not too much, though. That would be childish.’
‘I see,’ said Dwight, not seeing at all. ‘Right. So there we are, James. A simple task. Not too frightening, is it?’
It’s terrifying.
‘Not at all.’
‘I could have just phoned you, James, but we go back a long way. I wanted to establish the continuation of a relationship that is a substantial part of the bedrock that has helped to cement the British sphere of the Globpack operation over the years, not to say the decades.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Coffee? No. Back to work. Quite right, James. Time is money.’ He summoned a waiter and asked for the bill. It came instantly.
‘Thank you very much for lunch,’ said James.
‘My pleasure. We must do it properly soon. The four of us. Not on the company, though. Those days are over, never to return.’ The waiter moved off and Dwight leant forward. ‘One other matter, James. Sack your PA. Immediately. She’s incompetent. She’s a liability to the company image.’
‘I know, but …’
‘You’re not having…?’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s just …’
It’s just that she’s so useless she’ll never get another job. And I like her. I’m comfortable with her.
Can’t say any of that.
‘Immediately. Absolutely.’
Oh, God.
‘How would Deborah feel if one day your whole operation did move to Birmingham?’
She’d go ape-shit.
‘I don’t say she’d be thrilled, Dwight, she’s a London lady through and through, despite her farming background, but she’d accept it without complaint if it was necessary.’
Dwight stood up. James rose with him as if they were tied together.
They got a taxi back to Globpack. The two men stood outside the main entrance for a moment, in the stifling sunshine.
‘My very best to the marvellous Deborah,’ said Dwight Schenkman the Third, shaking James’s hand ferociously.
‘Thank you. And my very best to …’ Oh, God. What was it? Ah! Cake. That was the clue. And ending in an e. Got it. ‘… Madeleine.’
‘Madeleine?’
Oh, shit. That was Proust.
He could feel the eyes of Dwight Schenkman the Third, those piercing yet strangely unseeing eyes, boring into his back as he strode towards the car park.
The man in the white linen suit cancelled his room.
‘We not charge. You not use,’ said the Hungarian receptionist.
‘Thank you.’
‘I hoping you finding your wife very all right, Mr Rivers.’
‘Thank you.’
As he walked slowly, sadly, exhaustedly to his car through a wall of heat, the man who had called himself Mr Rivers realised that he had indeed been hoping that this lunch would be the first stage in the long process of finding a wife, and that Deborah as his wife would indeed be very all right, although the whole thing was so very all wrong.
What on earth had happened to her? He found it almost intolerable that he had no idea.
‘That was a twenty-three-stroke rally. I wonder when there was last a twenty-three-stroke rally at Wimbledon on the twenty-third of June,’ said the commentator.
‘Do you really? How sad is that?’ called out James.
‘Interestingly enough—’
James pressed the button. He smiled internally at the thought that he would never know whether the commentator’s remark would have been interesting enough. He was already far away, on Radio 2, listening to Steve Wright in the Afternoon.
His phone rang almost immediately. Sadly, Steve Wright spent only twelve seconds in James’s afternoon.
It was Marcia, his PA. At the sound of her posh Benenden voice his heart sank. Dwight wanted him to sack her tomorrow. He wasn’t sure if he had the power to sack her any more. Didn’t he have to give her a warning, maybe several warnings? He didn’t want to sack her, but he didn’t want not to have the power to sack her if he wanted to. It was odd being a boss these days.
‘Hello. It’s me.’ So bright and warm and innocent and naive. She hadn’t been to Benenden. She’d been to an obscure private school, now defunct, where they taught you to talk as if you had been to Benenden. James sometimes thought that it was the only thing they had taught her.
‘Hello, Marcia.’
‘How did it go? Do I still have you as my boss?’
Marcia, that really is a little bit forward.
‘Sorry. Am I being a bit cheeky?’
‘No. Not at all. It went well. You still have me as your boss.’ Not for long, though. Poor girl. ‘No, we just have to make savings. Fifteen per cent across the board.’
‘Heavens.’
‘Quite.’
‘And we have to produce a report stating why we shouldn’t move all our production to Taiwan.’
‘Oops.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Are you coming back in?’
‘No. The traffic’s terrible. I’m crawling at forty in the fast lane.’
‘Oh, poor you.’
‘Always nice to hear your cheerful voice, Marcia, but was there any particular reason for ringing?’
‘Yes. There was.’
Silence.
A Vauxhall Corsa pulled into the space between James and the car in front. He hooted angrily. It happened all the time if you tried to keep your distance. Keep two chevrons’ distance? Impossible. Had anybody in the government ever driven on a motorway? No, they had chauffeurs and slept, dreaming of their expenses.
It was yet another irritation on an irritating day.
‘Are you still there, Marcia?’
‘Yes. Sorry, it’s gone. Oh, lorks, maybe I’m going to have to be a bit more on the ball if you’re having to make these savings.’
It’s too late, darling.
‘Oh, yes. It’s come back. The police rang.’
‘The police?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I should have written it down, ’cause I usually do, but I thought it was so important and unusual that I couldn’t possibly forget it.’
‘Quite. What did they want?’
‘He didn’t say. He sounded nice, though. Quite young, I think.’
‘Yes, I don’t care what age he was, Marcia, but didn’t he say anything?’
‘He asked for your home number and your address. I d
idn’t think it would sound good to be too inquisitive. I think they’ll be in touch with you this evening.’
‘Thank you.’
‘James?’
‘Yes?’
‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’
‘Thank you. Probably some scrape my bloody daughter’s got into.’
‘I guess. James?’
‘Yes, Marcia?’
‘I’ll be in all evening. Will you ring and let me know? ’Cause I’ll worry.’
‘That’s very sweet of you.’
‘Well, you know I …’
‘What? What, Marcia?’
‘No. Nothing. Sorry.’
She rang off. Oh, how how how could he sack her tomorrow? Or even give her a warning. How could he bear to witness the hurt that she would have no ability to conceal?
It was his barely admitted wish that he had been born as his brother Charles that had led James to choose to live in a three-storey Georgian end-of-terrace house in one of the more fashionable parts of Islington rather than in the five-bedroom two-garage four-bathroom suburban home with conservatory, summer house, tree house and large lawn hidden from the envious by leylandii that might have seemed more suitable for the Managing Director of the London office. The only real drawback was the absence of those two garages. Even with his residents’ pass he often had to park quite a way from the house, and on this day of irritations it was no surprise that this should be so.
As he dragged himself through the poisoned early-evening heat past the reticent charms of the nicely proportioned brick-built houses in the modestly elegant, understated street he longed for a drink, but even more than that, he craved the peace of his home. Every visitor commented on how restful and quietly artistic the house was, and he was always generous in admitting how much of this achievement was down to Deborah, his style guru.
His legs were leaden. The heavy traffic, the tense meeting, the fear of sacking the lovely, useless Marcia, and the news that he was going to get a call from the police all contributed to a debilitating unease.
He couldn’t find his front-door key, so he rang the bell, but there was no reply. That was odd. He had expected Deborah to be in.
Thank goodness the house was on the end of the terrace. He took the narrow path on the eastern side of the house, picked up the back-door key from under the third stone behind the statue of Diana (Greek goddess, not princess), and entered the house through the garden door.
