by Rosie Thomas
It took Harriet two minutes to stop herself shaking. In the end she drew a deep breath of the overused air. Sell, she told herself. That’s what you’re here for. You’re not far short of break-even. Not disastrously far short.
Back on the stand, the salesgirl greeted her with a triumphant smile. ‘He took two hundred and fifty. I put the order in the book.’
Harriet nodded wearily. She knew that the order should have been for five hundred, the buyer was responsible for a group of shops. Conundrum was selling, but it wasn’t selling enough. The game was good. It deserved a better response, so what was she doing wrong? She stood back now, and looked at the stand she had been so proud of. Perhaps, a suspicion gnawed at her, perhaps it was too wholesome and bright? What the buyers saw was all there was. There was no story here, there was nothing to beckon or intrigue.
The challenge rekindled a little fire in her. What can I do? Harriet wondered. What’s the extra little thing that will make them all take notice?
Conundrum was only a game, however intriguing a game and however powerfully packaged. She needed more than that for it. She needed a human face.
A tiny worm of an idea began to wriggle, but Harriet pinched it dead.
‘Harriet?’ Startled out of her reverie, she swung round. It was Leo. He had arrived at the stand with metal camera cases in either hand, tripod tucked under his arm, as if for a shoot. She stared at him.
‘There’s no need to look so furiously bloody angry.’
‘I … I’m sorry, Leo, I’m not angry at all. Just surprised.’
‘I telephoned, didn’t I?’
It was a long time since she had seen him. Already they were wrong-footing each other. Leo was the last person in the world she needed to see at this moment, particularly Leo in an injured mood. He needed more attention than a small boy. She had had the time, once, but she didn’t any longer. She became aware that the two girls on her stand were staring curiously at them.
‘You did. My fault, I wasn’t expecting you right now, that’s all. Why all the gear?’
‘I thought you’d like some decent pictures of your stand.’
It was kind of him, and Harriet felt guilty. ‘I’d really love some pictures,’ she said warmly. ‘What do you think of it?’
He put his head on one side, studying it. ‘Lighting’s a bit harsh. I’ll have to filter.’
Harriet smiled, her guilty feeling evaporating. She shouldn’t have expected a response to her own achievement. Leo only ever regarded things through his own eyes.
‘I’ll let you set up, then,’ she said neutrally.
Leo busied himself with unpacking his cameras. Harriet had rather pointedly not introduced him to her two helpers, and he spent a moment or two importantly assembling lenses and filters before glancing across at them. Immediately, and so distinctly that it made her want to laugh, he became the different Leo that she had fallen in love with. He even reproduced the crooked, faintly diffident smile that she had once found irresistible.
‘I’m Leo Gold,’ he said. ‘I wish you’d tell me who you are.’
The two girls loved him, of course. He became a very bright spot in a dull afternoon’s work. They fluttered about, seeming to be very interested in photography, while Leo made them move things and hold lights. He winked, once, at Harriet, making her a part of a conspiracy she didn’t care for. But the business of the photography created another little flurry of interest around the stand, and one or two of the late-visiting buyers drifted over to talk to Harriet.
In the hope of attracting a few more potential orders, Harriet had left the Conundrum stand intact. She would start to clear it after six o’clock, when the fair officially closed. But many of the other exhibitors were already beginning to dismantle their displays. There was an air of the day after Christmas, with unravelled streamers littering the aisles, screwed-up paper beginning to form drifts, and up-ended toys waiting to be scooped up and carted away.
Leo made Harriet and the two girls pose in front of the sunburst. Harriet hated having her picture taken, particularly by Leo. The lights flashed in her eyes, and she knew that she was scowling into the lens.
‘How much longer?’ she was asking, when she saw Robin Landwith. He was picking his way through the debris, his expression of interest tinged with mild surprise at finding himself in an unlikely place. Amongst the salesmen in chainstore suits his handmade gloss seemed doubly exotic.
‘I’ll finish the roll,’ Leo said, his head bent over his lens.
Harriet was pinned against her sunburst, in her buttoned outfit with the two identically-dressed girls posing on either side, while Leo’s lights clicked and flared. Robin stopped to watch, off to the side in the welcome shadow. Harriet endured the humiliation for a minute longer, then said brusquely, ‘That should be enough, shouldn’t it?’
She stepped off the stand. Leo straightened up with a shrug of irritation, but his eyes followed her. Harriet held out her hand and Robin Landwith shook it.
‘Thank you for coming.’
He looked at the stand. ‘It’s impressive.’ His tone seemed to indicate to Harriet that it was anything but. Seeing it through his eyes she noticed that the silk was grubby and marked with hand and footprints, and even torn in places so that it hung down in little sulky mouths.
‘It’s seen a lot of hard wear, the last few days,’ she defended it. ‘Crowds of buyers and sightseers. When we first put it up it stopped everyone dead.’ She was conscious of the girls in their dresses the same as her own, and Leo with his paraphernalia of lights and tripods. She could hardly avoid introducing them.
‘This is Natalie and Caroline, who have been helping with selling and PR on the stand. And Leo Gold, the photographer.’
‘Harriet’s husband, also,’ Leo said coolly.
Harriet didn’t know which one of their tight group stepped awkwardly sideways in the narrow confines of the stand. It might even have been Robin Landwith. All she did know was that someone trod on the corner of the precarious sunburst. It had survived for four days but now there was a small crunching sound, and then a much louder rattle and bump as the coloured platforms tilted and fell forward, domino-like, and unstoppably. The Conundrum boards and boxes that had been arranged on the ledges slid and bounced to fall over the four people beneath. For a few seconds it felt as if they might all be buried beneath an avalanche of shiny black frames and rainbow-coloured boxes and counters.
And then there was a moment of appalled silence as they stood in the wreckage.
It was funny, but it was too catastrophic for any of them to laugh. Natalie and Caroline caught each other’s eyes, and looked quickly away again. Harriet moved stiffly, over to the collapsed sunburst, and pushed it roughly upright again. Polystyrene and plastic crunched under her feet. A small crowd of people was gathering in front of the stand.
‘Grand finale, eh?’ one of them called. She bent down and began to collect spilled counters in the cup of her hand, her eyes and her face red.
‘That’s right,’ she answered. ‘Big finish.’
Immediately Leo began to extricate his lights and tripod. It was Robin who waded in to help Harriet, followed, after a risky exchange of glances, by the two girls.
‘There’s no need,’ Harriet said to him, gripping shiny black boards against her chest like a shield, fending off anger and humiliation. ‘I don’t want you to do this. Please.’
‘Why not?’ Robin asked, all sweet reason.
Out of the corner of her eye Harriet saw that the tiny crowd was splitting into individuals again. The show was over.
‘Because Natalie and Caroline and I can do it. It’s time to dismantle in any case.’ And she gestured at the wasteland of the exhibition hall.
Afterwards, when it was all done and the stand had been stripped to an empty slot once more, Robin took Harriet out to dinner. They were dusty beyond repair in the exhibition centre cloakrooms, but the restaurant was small and satisfyingly dimly-lit.
‘Thank you for
helping with that,’ Harriet said.
‘Why didn’t you want me to?’
‘I didn’t want to see someone I’m trying to borrow money from picking up embarrassing wreckage. Of course.’
‘If you’re embarrassed by wreckage, perhaps you shouldn’t be trying to borrow money in the first place? Disaster’s always a possibility.’
‘I should. I want everything to fit, not to fail. Failure should be private, success is for celebration. I’d prefer to be successful.’
Robin looked at her through the meretricious candlelight. He saw a face that was too angular for beauty, but which seemed to offer other interesting possibilities. Robin liked women as well as enjoying them, which marked a difference from his father, and he liked what he had seen of Harriet. Her declaration of preference impressed him less, because he had heard the same from every would-be entrepreneur he had ever encountered.
‘I think you’ll be successful,’ Robin said. If he could influence Martin, he added silently, and he was almost sure he could.
They didn’t talk any more about money, or about Peacocks and its prospects.
Robin ordered champagne, a marque that Harriet had never seen before in a bottle that appeared to have been hand-painted with scattered flowers. She was susceptible to champagne. The bubbles always went to her head, and tonight was no exception. She had thought, when she chose her food from the rather startlingly expensive menu, that it would be impossible to forget the anxiety of the fair and the final catastrophe. But after two glasses of champagne, and with the arrival of salade d’artichauts et cailles aux noix, pretty as a picture on a plain white plate, the obsessions of the day drifted away. They were replaced by an unlocalised sense of well-being, and a sharp appetite.
What the hell, Harriet thought.
Robin watched her with approval as she attacked her food.
After the quail and artichoke came faisan de mer au basilic, and more champagne. Harriet sighed and leaned back in her chair, releasing her heels from her shoes. Her feet seemed to have grown after four days spent standing on them. Her shoulders and back ached too, but champagne bubbles prickling at the back of her throat dispelled the pain.
‘You were hungry,’ Robin commented.
‘I haven’t had time to eat. Sandwiches and filthy coffee, that’s all.’
Robin gave an automatic, gourmet’s shudder. He was interested in food and wine in almost the same knowledgeable, academic way that he was interested in the movements of the money market. Both were there to be studied and their benefits, in different ways, to be enjoyed. Tonight, however, he had barely noticed his food as he concentrated on Harriet. He had seen her soften, as they talked and drank, by slow degrees. So far, but no further. He wondered what it was that she kept so tightly contained, and the speculation excited him. He shifted a little in his padded chair.
‘How long have you been married?’ he asked.
Leo had packed up his gear into his silver metal boxes, and then looked at his watch. It was the watch that Harriet had given him for Christmas the year before, an assemblage of buttons and bleepers waterproofed to a depth of two hundred metres, because Leo loved gadgets and mechanisms of all kinds. Robin Landwith’s watch, emerging from the cuff of his pale blue shirt, was so thin and pale by comparison as to be hardly a watch at all. Leo had noted the time, muttered about his lateness for some other appointment, and kissed Harriet on the cheek. She had been relieved to see him go, but Natalie and Caroline had followed him with wistful stares.
‘I was married for about four years. We separated a few months ago. The arrangement seems to suit us both better.’
Robin had guessed as much, but he felt a tidy beat of satisfaction at hearing it confirmed.
‘You must have some pudding,’ he told her, ‘they’re very good here.’
Because he was so young his assumption of authority over what she ate amused Harriet, but she submitted gracefully.
‘What shall I have?’
He chose for her and ordered wine for them both. When the wine came it was dark gold and viscous-looking, but on her tongue Harriet tasted honey and flowers.
‘It’s good,’ she said.
Robin smiled. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
Her dessert was five different tiny puddings, with petals of marbled raspberry sauce fanning between them. Food that looked as beautiful as it tasted was new to Harriet. She closed her eyes as she sampled each separate taste, and broke the pink and cream ribs of the petals with the edge of her spoon. As she ate, it struck her that her pleasure in it was sensual, as in making out-of-the-ordinary love.
She looked up and met Robin’s eyes. She held out her spoon for him to taste. He acknowledged both the food, and her enjoyment of it.
‘That was all wonderful,’ she said.
Robin inclined his head. ‘And now?’
‘Now I have to go home. Work tomorrow.’ Back to neglected Stepping, and to a dismal re-examination of order books for Conundrum. Back to the necessity to decide, and plan, and to find a way of selling more games. The cold touch of anxiety was the more unwelcome in the glow of the restaurant. Harriet pushed the thoughts back, examining the faces at the other tables instead, deciding that she would allow herself to escape just for tonight.
‘What is this place called?’
Robin told her, and she guessed that she should have heard of it.
‘I don’t know it.’
‘You do now. I’m glad it was me who brought you.’
‘Thank you,’ Harriet said, meaning it. She had enjoyed his company. He had let her talk, without cross-examining her, and he had told her a little about himself. Not very much, his style was hardly confessional. He had steered the evening, for all its unpromising beginning, with rather likeable adroitness.
‘I think we probably live in quite different worlds,’ Harriet said, half to herself. She was still looking at the sleek customers at the other tables. Money was written as clearly here, in its penetrable code, as it had been in Martin Landwith’s office. With Leo, she had eaten for years in noisy Italian restaurants, along the Greek strip of Charlotte Street, and in garlicky little French places. Too late, she realised that Robin might imagine she was offering him an opening to invite her a few paces further into his enviable existence. But if he did think anything of the kind, he was too subtle to show it, let alone to respond.
He only said, ‘I wouldn’t care to try to define worlds in terms of restaurants. It’s a tempting idea, but much too superficial. I go to all kinds of places. I’m sure you do too.’
‘All kinds,’ she agreed, liking him even better. ‘Robin, I must go now.’
He paid the bill, which Harriet estimated must be huge, after checking the addition. Then he drew back her chair, and guided her towards the door, hand under her elbow, as he had done from his father’s office. He had perfect, faintly old-fashioned manners.
It was raining outside, and it felt very exposed after the restaurant’s intimacy to be standing on a wet pavement in the cold wind. Robin unfurled a big black umbrella and held it over their heads.
As Harriet might have predicted, a yellow-lit taxi rounded the corner a second later. When it stopped Robin opened the door for her, asked for her address, and relayed it to the driver.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Of course. I enjoyed this evening.’
What happened next she also might have predicted, but it still surprised her when it came. Robin bent his head and kissed her on the mouth, very lightly, and then he placed two more kisses, one to each side of her mouth. The whole exchange took no more than three seconds. Harriet scrambled into the taxi and he closed the door, and the cab carried her away. She sat back in her seat, catching her breath, trying to work out what had happened to her.
‘I was struck all of a heap,’ she told sceptical Jane the next time they met. ‘Like a teenager, with the class heart-throb.’
The right word came to her as the taxi wandered in the approximate direction of Bel
size Park. It was tender. Robin Landwith had treated her with tenderness, and she had responded to it.
But by the time she reached the basement flat, with its unwashed dishes waiting in the sink and hungry, complaining cats, she had control of herself again.
Don’t be a fool, she had told herself. He’s years younger than you are. He’s not much more than a boy. And he’s a venture capitalist from whom you want to borrow a hundred thousand pounds. Don’t let three kisses blur your sight of that, will you?
Eight
Not many days after that, Martin Landwith telephoned Harriet.
She was at Stepping, and she turned away from the till with her hand pressed to her ear.
‘Harriet Peacock speaking.’
She heard Martin say that Landwith Associates believed that they could help her. If she would be willing to meet them again, they could discuss the possibilities in greater detail.
Harriet was willing. When she hung up, Karen asked her from the other end of the counter, ‘Good news?’
‘The best possible. Everything’s going to be all right.’
Anxiety fell away like a stone. With backing, she could manufacture to meet the orders she had already taken. And with capital behind her, she could promote Conundrum in the way she wanted to bring in the orders she needed. With the Landwiths’ help, she could support her house of cards.
A spring of energy bubbled up inside her. It happened, once it had begun, with surprising speed.
There was the meeting in Martin’s office. To Harriet’s relief, there was no chink in Robin’s businesslike manner, even when Martin told her that it was his son’s enthusiasm for her project that had influenced his own judgement, and that because of that same enthusiasm Peacocks would be Robin’s particular concern in the future. Harriet understood that this was probably a test for him, his first opportunity to back his own hunch. She was pleased with the idea, assuming that Robin alone would be easier to deal with than Robin in formidable conjunction with his father.
