by David Nobbs
‘I couldn’t. I didn’t know there was one.’
He tried to smile, but gave up the attempt. He had rarely known a moment when a smile would have been less useful.
‘And you have to do what Mr Schenkman tells you, do you?’
She gave him a nervous look, wondering if she had gone too far. She blushed under her suntan. For a few moments she didn’t look so muddy.
But he welcomed this spark of spirit.
‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘but in this case, sadly, I didn’t think I had the weapons with which to launch a serious attack upon him.’
She gave a brave half-smile.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m crap, aren’t I?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Marcia. In my eyes you have great virtues. You’re very good to look at.’
She blushed.
Careful, James, or you’ll have a stalker on your hands.
‘You make a good cup of tea.’
Lousy coffee, but we won’t go into that.
‘You have a warm heart, which to me is an essential qualification, but which regrettably doesn’t register on Mr Schenkman’s radar. Unfortunately, you have punctuality problems, your memory isn’t great, you aren’t methodical, and you’re weak on certain points – spelling, punctuation, meanings of words, spacing and I don’t think you were ever taught apostrophes, were you? I could live with it all, but Dwight Schenkman the Third couldn’t. Anyway, I’m not going to do what he asked. I’m merely going to give you a verbal warning, which I have to give in writing, with my reasons, which I have tried to express very mildly, because I … anyway, there we are.’
He handed her the verbal warning and she read it but he could see that she was too shocked and shaken to take it in.
‘So what happens next?’
‘Your work improves out of all recognition and I’m thrilled.’
‘And if it doesn’t?’
‘I give you a written warning with my reasons.’
‘And if it still doesn’t improve?’
‘I give you another written warning with my reasons, and if it still doesn’t improve I sack you. Reluctantly. Truly reluctantly, Marcia.’
‘I … um …’ She blushed. ‘I don’t honestly think my work will improve that much. My school was shit. I can’t believe the government is as cruel as to want to put me through all those terrible warnings and reasons. I couldn’t stand it. I resign. I’ll give you a month’s notice.’
‘Right … well … if you’re absolutely sure … right.’
‘I am sure. I do have … other ideas.’
‘Right. Well … there we are then.’
He stood up and held out his hand. She stood up too and shook his hand very awkwardly.
‘Oh, incidentally, Marcia,’ he said, ‘before you go, you know the comments I made on the problem of the EU rules for global disposal of unwanted styrofoam, there is one error still.’
‘Oh, lorks, sorry.’
‘Paragraph eight. “We must make sure that there are no barristers between China and the United States.” That should be “barriers”.’
‘Oh, sorry. I’m rubbish, aren’t I?’
She had her hand on the handle of the door but it was as if she’d forgotten how to open it.
‘You said you had other ideas,’ he said. ‘Would you like to tell me about them? Because, I mean, obviously if you need a reference I’ll …’
His voice faded out as he began to think about the difficulty of writing a truthful yet effective reference for her.
‘I thought I might try something utterly different,’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a writer.’
The man who was no longer in a white linen suit recognised the voice of the Hungarian receptionist.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I … um … I came to your hotel to … um … meet … um … my wife, and if you remember I booked a room.’
‘I …’
‘It was a couple of days ago. Lunchtime. I had lunch on my own. She … um …’
‘Oh, yes. She not come, and you book out before you book in, and I not charge.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No problem. And you have lunch.’
‘Yes.’
‘No problem, I hope.’
‘No. Very nice. But I think I may have left a ring in the Gents. A wedding ring. When I got home I realised I hadn’t got it. I took it off in there, because it was hurting, and I think I must have just left it.’
‘Oh, yes. We have.’
‘Oh, that’s marvellous. Thank you.’
‘We will send.’
‘Oh, great. That’s fabulous. My address—’
‘I have the address, Mr Rivers. Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole.’
‘Yes. On second thoughts, I’m actually away from home at the moment, not far from your area, I’ll collect it myself.’
‘As you wish, Mr Rivers.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘No problem.’
He put the phone down, and sighed deeply. It was about a hundred miles each way. Why hadn’t he just said, ‘Look, to be honest, the lady was a married woman, I gave a false address,’ and given his real address?
He still could.
But he couldn’t. Couldn’t do it. It was a question of style. And pride. Couldn’t bring himself to lose face that way. Couldn’t sully Deborah’s reputation by revealing that he had involved her in such a charade, even though neither he nor anyone else would ever see her again.
He began to cry.
People talk about the pressure of routine, the stultifying boredom of routine, but sometimes routine can be very comforting. It was so for James that day, suspended as he was between two difficult meetings with women, between making Marcia resign and having afternoon tea with Helen. He was looking forward to that, of course he was, increasingly so. There was a pain in his balls, a faraway pain, but it was growing and getting nearer with every hour. No, it was the end of the tea that was worrying him. To go back with her to her bed, just two days after Deborah’s death, deceiving his mother, and Philip, and Charles, and just four days before he discussed Deborah’s virtues with the vicar, it wouldn’t be right, but she wouldn’t see it that way. The parting would be strained. They just must not argue. The fallout from it, if they did at this emotional time, could be extremely dangerous.
He made internal calls to several people. Lindsay Gibb. Lindsey Wellingborough. Annoying that, a Lindsay and a Lindsey sitting on the same committee, but they were the best people. Duncan Bailey. Tim Campagnetto (his mother married an Italian POW). Boris Eckhart. Jean Forrester. That should do it.
The pattern of the call was the same with all of them. Sympathy, stoically borne, with closure as swift as possible. A brief résumé of the accident, getting more brief with each telling. Sadness about the young soldier’s tragic death. Astonishment that he was already back at his desk, the reasons for which he explained as briefly as possible and taking care not to use words that might precipitate a return to sympathy. A very brief résumé of the tasks set him, in the gloomy financial climate, by Dwight Schenkman the Third. An explanation of why he thought each of them in turn was the best man, or woman, in the whole company to contribute to the necessary process of identifying huge potential savings in Bridgend and Kilmarnock. A request that each of them should attend a meeting in the Small Conference Room on Monday. Discussion of availability. A promise to get back to each of them after considering all their availabilities. A second call to Duncan Bailey asking him to reschedule his meeting with Health and Safety. On his successfully managing to do so, a second call to all the others setting the meeting for 11.30 on Monday. All good, calming, boring stuff.
For lunch he got Marcia to bring him a tandoori chicken sandwich and a bottle of still water. He didn’t want much to eat, because he wanted to do justice to his afternoon tea, and he didn’t want to go to the canteen, because it would be awash with staring and sympathy, and it would be hot and he might sweat, and he
didn’t want to go to Whistler’s Hotel with dark stains under his armpits.
He threw half the sandwich in the bin. He was too nervous to be hungry.
He had an inspiration, rang Fliss, and offered to take her out to dinner in Guildford that evening to discuss the composition of the funeral service. This would kill a whole flock of birds. It would show due deference to Deborah’s side, it would relieve him of some of the responsibility for the composition of the service, it would provide him with something to do, taking his mind off things, it would be company for Fliss on Dominic’s last night away, it would give her a wonderful chance to get her feelings about Dominic off her chest, it would give him lots of opportunities to shout at radio programmes on the way there and back, and it would furnish him with a cast-iron reason not to go back to Helen’s place after their tea.
At first she said that she couldn’t go, but he sensed that she wanted to, and he persisted. In the end she came out with the truth. She was having her hair done the next morning. It was awful. She couldn’t risk meeting somebody she knew when her hair was such a mess. He pointed out that she definitely would meet somebody she knew. She would meet him. She told him that he didn’t count where hair was concerned. He didn’t notice such things. Deborah had often expressed regret over this. He pointed out that this evening his shortcoming would be a virtue. He wouldn’t notice that her hair was a mess.
She allowed herself to be persuaded.
There was still an hour to go before his tea with Helen. The time hung heavily. How could he fill it? On an impulse he rang Jane Winterburn. He would wonder, afterwards, if he’d had some instinct that Ed’s disappearance was going to turn out to be more important to him than he could possibly have foreseen.
‘Hello, Jane. It’s James. I was just wondering if there was any news.’
‘Not a sausage. He’s disappeared without trace. It’s very good of you to care, James, with your problems.’
‘Mine’s not a problem, Jane. It’s just … a sad event. I can’t spend all day and night thinking about it. Has anybody any idea what’s happened?’
‘Well, no. I mean, the police have dragged the Thames near where he was supposed to have gone, but they can hardly drag the whole thing when …’
‘When what, Jane?’
‘Well, when he might just have … pissed off. I mean, he fucks for England. He’s not really a very nice man at all, James.’
‘No, well, I … I’m just really sorry, Jane.’
‘That’s nice of you.’
‘I’m fond of you. You were my first proper girlfriend, you know.’
He wished he hadn’t said that. God, it sounded so naive. He’d been twenty! And it suggested … well, it suggested that he might still be interested. Which he wasn’t.
He wished he hadn’t rung her.
‘Well, Jane,’ he said, ‘I know this is a bad time for me, but for you, the not knowing, that must be far worse, it must be hell.’
‘It is. Well, thank you so much for ringing. I think that’s amazing of you.’
‘Let me know if … when anything happens.’
‘I will. And keep in touch.’
Not a chance. This was a big mistake.
‘I will.’
The Palm Court of Whistler’s Hotel was a room of slightly faded gilded magnificence, decorated with murals of Henley, Lord’s and Wimbledon. Every table was taken. The ladies had dressed for the occasion. Waiters and waitresses in starched black and white bustled about, without seeming to bustle. It was seven minutes to four, and it looked as if it would be seven minutes to four for all eternity.
James was glad that he had managed to be early. He didn’t think he was a control freak, but it had been important that he should arrive before Helen. This was his moment, his big scene, his first encounter with his beloved since they had become free. He was feeling sexually stimulated in a way few men are as they sit waiting for egg-and-cress sandwiches. It seemed senseless now that he wasn’t going back to her flat to make love. Senseless. What had he been thinking of?
It occurred to him that in the last two years they had only twice met without going to bed together at some stage. And on one of those two occasions they had still managed to have sex, in her MG, not a car designed for sexual intercourse. He’d needed four visits to his osteopath, and he hoped he’d been convincing when he’d told Deborah that he’d slipped on the office stairs.
And there Helen was, standing on the wide, shallow stairs that led into the Palm Court from the foyer, her small mouth pouting and smiling at the same time. She was dressed in lime green, and she looked cool enough and fresh enough to drink. His heart almost stopped. She could halt traffic when she pulled out all the stops, but, equally, you could come across her in the supermarket and wonder why anybody should ever fancy her.
He stood up, smiled, moved towards her, kissed her demurely, held her chair out for her to sit down, slid it gently back in. This was not a man who had devoted his life to packaging. This was an English gentleman.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘this is different.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I thought. Our life has changed. Let’s do something different.’
He persuaded himself that he had thought this.
They ordered a full tea. They weren’t hungry, but it was what you did. The surroundings demanded it. From the huge list of teas he chose lapsang souchong, she Earl Grey.
There was a moment’s silence, then they both smiled at exactly the same time. This made them both laugh, and each of them realised that the other was shy. Shy, after all the times that they had met, after all the times they had made love. But this was different. They could be a couple now. Could be? They were.
‘So, poor old Deborah,’ she said, somewhat tentatively. She had to mention it, but James could see that she didn’t know quite what to say.
‘Yes, who’d have thought it?’
Armies of waiters brought things – a plate of tiny, manicured sandwiches, two scones, pots of cream and strawberry jam, two silver teapots and two silver water jugs. They smiled at each other again, and Helen said ‘Thank you’ to the waiters so fervently that they all smiled.
James tried to look round the room without Helen noticing, but it turned out to be one of his futile gestures.
‘Anyone you know?’ she asked.
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Wouldn’t matter now, would it?’
‘Well, I suppose not, but … it’s better that there isn’t.’
‘No, I agree.’
She took a smoked salmon sandwich. The crusts had been cut off. James chose a cucumber sandwich. Its faint crunch seemed quite loud to him in the silence of that moment.
‘This is very, very nice,’ she said.
‘I hoped it would be.’
She finished her tiny sandwich, chewing daintily.
‘Well, well, I never really thought this day would come,’ she said.
‘No. Nor me.’
He hoped that the two blue-rinsed, green-tea, scarlet-lipped ladies at the next table weren’t listening to this banal conversation. They wouldn’t realise that the occasion itself was so momentous that no words could add to it, and only banality was possible.
But the over-permed duo were listening. He guessed that this was their hobby, having tea and listening. He knew they were listening because their ears stiffened like cats’ when Helen asked, ‘Are you coming back afterwards?’
His heart sank. They had reached this point so soon.
‘It’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I can’t. I have to go down to Guildford to see Deborah’s sister and discuss the service.’
‘Oh.’
‘There’s such a lot to organise.’
‘I’m sure, but … it seems a shame, Friday night.’
‘I know.’
‘When will you come?’
He took a few moments to choose his words. This was difficult.
‘I’ve been wondering if it’s entirely appropriate for me to com
e between the death and the funeral, actually.’
The two women were riveted.
‘You said our life has changed. It hasn’t changed all that much.’
‘Not yet, no, but it will. We’re free, free to …’ He didn’t want to articulate what they were free to do. They were free to do anything, so why stipulate, why commit, why – well, he didn’t know why he didn’t want to say any more and he was surprised that he didn’t want to and he couldn’t just let the sentence hang there, he had to say something. ‘I mean, it’s all so … it’s been such a …’ He drew back from saying ‘shock’, it seemed tactless, and he didn’t want to say ‘surprise’, it seemed heartless, and he thought of saying ‘mess’, but that would be disastrous, so in the end he just stopped and let another sentence just hang there. Hardly a conversational triumph, and at such an important moment.
He put his right hand on her left hand and squeezed it.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you so much.’
‘Well, I love you too.’
She gave him a strange look, a mischievous look that made him feel uneasy. There was a glitter in those deep, subtle green eyes, as if she had a touch of fever. She gave a stern glance towards the two women, and they looked away hurriedly, and one of them said to her companion, ‘Have you seen the new season’s stock at Debenham’s yet?’
Helen leant forward and said, in a very low, slow voice, ‘I’m going to complain to the head waiter. This table’s too big. I can’t reach across and stroke your cock.’
He gawped. He was shocked.
‘Helen!’ he hissed.
He looked at the two ladies but they were leaning forward towards each other and talking in low voices about how long it would be before mauve made a comeback. Only when they had proved that they weren’t listening would they dare to listen again.
‘Helen!’ he repeated.
‘When are we going to go to bed together?’
‘It’s difficult. It’s a really difficult time.’
She called out to a passing waiter.
‘Excuse me.’
The waiter turned smoothly towards them, like a skater.
‘Yes, madam?’
