Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  And then she convinced herself that she had imagined his interest. She’d been flattered by his attention and elated by the champagne, that was all. After all, why should Stewart be interested in her? Most men his age (sixty-two? Three?) go for forty-year-olds. He was just softening her up so he could get round her on the Greenfarms question. That must be it …

  It was a relief to see Stewart sitting in the corner – at the best table – when she arrived. Filippo greeted her with his usual skill.

  ‘Ah, Miss Carey, how good to see you. So tonight you are to be the guest! But I have still given you your favourite table, you will see.’

  Joanna, weaving her way through the tables in Filippo’s wake, thought how impossible it was not to be flattered when a maître d’ pretended that you were important. Of course she knew the good ones did it to everyone, remembering faces they seldom saw, and pretending to remember those they didn’t, but still, it did make one swish through the restaurant like a star.

  Stewart rose with old-fashioned courtesy as she approached, his face alight with welcome.

  ‘Oh, thank God. I thought you might blow me out.’

  Joanna smiled and slid into the banquette seat diagonally opposite him. ‘I’m not late am I?’

  ‘No, I was early, anxious to ensure they’d got my booking.’

  ‘And were you suitably gratified to find you had the best table? I’m impressed.’

  ‘I did it by dropping your name to Filippo.’

  Joanna didn’t think this was true, but the flattery got to her, and once again she told herself to beware: this was all about Greenfarms, not her. It was a deliberate charm offensive, and she was not going to fall for it.

  Dinner was delicious, and after a couple of glasses of very good Gigondas, she began to relax. After all, she thought, I know and trust Stewart, and if he has something to say I should listen.

  Stewart admitted that her rigid analysis of the Greenfarms business could not be faulted by conventional business wisdom. But then Greenfarms was not a conventional business. And didn’t she recognise that there are some companies that do well in an unorthodox way?

  ‘Caroline built Greenfarms on conviction,’ he said. ‘On a passionate belief that you can combine high-minded principles with making a profit and providing employment. I was sceptical at first, but I was wrong. She did extraordinarily well.’

  Joanna made a determined effort to pull her mind into business mode instead of thinking how attractive Stewart was when serious. His eyelids sloped down over earnest brown eyes, his slightly shaggy eyebrows softening his all-over polish. ‘Stewart,’ she said, ‘I would not be on your board if that were true. You know better than anyone how deep in trouble Greenfarms is.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he replied, ‘it is now. And it’s largely my fault. I thought the supermarket route was a wonderful opportunity. I saw it as a City man would, but Caroline was always against it. She felt we were somehow compromising the brand – and she was right.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Joanna, forget for a minute that you represent Innovest. Just imagine that this was your business, and you wanted it to survive. You care more about its soundness than its growth. You don’t need to become mega-rich, you don’t want to float on the stock market, you don’t want to sell out to a global conglomerate. You just want to provide good food to people who want to buy it, and to do well enough to keep growing steadily, so you can do more of what you do – spread the mission, if you like.’

  For a moment Joanna was spellbound by the intensity of his tone. He could be Caroline, proselytising for the organic movement.

  ‘OK. But I’d still advise Innovest to sell up. A slow-growing lifestyle mini-business is not what they invested in. They want, and always have wanted, good returns to satisfy investors who are hugely demanding.’

  ‘I know that. I am not asking you to prevent them selling. I want to buy them out. Have a family business again.’

  ‘And you want me to persuade them to give up their shares for a peppercorn?’

  Stewart smiled. ‘Well, maybe two peppercorns. They’ll be more interested in cutting their losses, getting out before we go into loss, won’t they? They will know that there won’t be another buyer out there wanting to take on a struggling company, losing supermarket contracts. Other venture capitalists will know very well that if Innovest couldn’t make Greenfarms fly, they won’t be able to either.’

  Joanna was back on the business ball now.

  ‘Stewart, you’re telling me that you’re a buyer, and you’re asking me to tell my employers that there are no buyers. And that therefore they should just give their shares to you.’

  ‘No,’ he countered. ‘I’m asking you to be the honest broker. Do a deal that will avoid us having to call in expensive advisors, negotiate for aeons, and end up with both sides feeling they have been robbed. That’s what I’m asking.’

  Joanna agreed to think about it. ‘But Stewart,’ she said, ‘are you sure about this? Are you really convinced by Caroline’s plan for recovery? And if she wasn’t your daughter, would you hire her as the best person to lead that recovery?’

  She thought he might be offended. He was so besotted with Caroline. But he gave a snorting laugh. ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘Of course not. But when was business a perfect world? And if you stayed on the board, between us we could probably manage her.’

  ‘Me stay on? After Innovest has pulled out?’

  ‘Why not?You are the best board member we’ve got. And you’d enjoy it.’ He put a hand over hers and she was struck by how cool it felt and how his long, manicured fingers had just a few hairs on the back of them, between the knuckles. Oh Lord, I’m slipping again, she thought.

  She frowned and withdrew her hand. ‘Stewart, I’ll look at her plan again. And I’ll think about it, take some advice … and come back to you.’

  When he’d paid the bill and they’d been bowed out of the restaurant, Stewart put her into a taxi with old world courtesy and paid the driver in advance.

  She wound down the window to thank him.

  He put both hands on the window sill and leant into the cab.

  ‘Joanna, you’re too good for that City rat-race. You should give up Innovest and have some fun. With us.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was late November, and Rebecca had decided the time was right to put her Lucy makeover plans into action. Joanna had told her she was worried about Lucy. Bring on the cavalry; Rebecca to the rescue, she thought. She opened her mobile, wondered if Lucy would answer it. She did.

  ‘Lu-Lu,’ Rebecca told her, ‘I’ve got a great idea.’

  ‘Don’t call me Lu-Lu.’ Lucy’s protests were routine: she always objected to her Lu-Lu, but Rebecca never took any notice.

  ‘What great idea?’ Lucy sounded suspicious.

  ‘Let’s go shopping. For clothes. For you.’

  ‘Rebecca, you’ve tried this before. But why? I hate shopping.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t do it properly.’ Rebecca could not understand anyone not liking shopping. ‘It’s supposed to be fun, not a death sentence! We’ll have lunch in the middle. Get tiddly and buy stuff you wouldn’t buy sober. And which you’ll not regret, I promise.’

  Rebecca could hear Lucy’s heavy sigh.

  ‘But Rebecca, I don’t need new clothes. I’ve too many …’

  ‘You do. Trust me, you really really need new clothes. And you need a clear-out. That’ll be fun too. We’ll give them all back to Oxfam where they came from.’

  Oops, thought Rebecca, maybe I’ve gone too far, she’ll take offence. But she didn’t. ‘Not all of them came from Oxfam,’ Lucy said. ‘There are other charity shops, you know.’

  She’s great, thought Rebecca, I love her.

  ‘What has brought on this sudden desire for retail spending?’ Lucy wanted to know.

  ‘I’m having withdrawal symptoms. I can’t shop because I’m broke. You, on the other hand, can afford it. Also, I’ll make a great pers
onal shopper.’

  ‘And I bet Joanna has been telling you I need rescuing or some rot. Has she put you up to this?’

  Rebecca thought. Why lie? ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘she’s worried about you. She thinks you’ve been down. But I’ve been itching to use my makeover talents on you ever since we met.’

  ‘You have, have you?’

  ‘Sure. You’re the perfect victim, clueless when it comes to fashion, but great raw material. You’re good looking under that awful haircut, and if you would just swing your hips a bit, people might notice what a great bum you’ve got. The before and after pics will be terrific.’

  ‘That bad, is it?’ Lucy sounded quite unruffled.

  ‘Worse.’

  To Rebecca’s surprise Lucy agreed, and they settled on Friday.

  On Wednesday Lucy tried to back out. She rang Rebecca on her mobile, sounding hesitant.

  ‘Rebecca, look, I can’t do Friday. You don’t mind if I cry off do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. No crying off allowed.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, but I really can’t come.’

  ‘Why not?’ Rebecca was not going to let her off the hook. Apart from anything else, she thought, Joanna would kill her.

  There was a pause and then Lucy said, without much conviction, ‘I’ve got to finish some work … I …’

  ‘Lu-Lu, that’s not true.’

  ‘Don’t call me Lu-Lu.’ Long pause. ‘OK, Rebecca, it’s not true. Or rather it is, but that’s not the reason. The truth is that I don’t want to go shopping. I can’t face the Christmas jingle bells and Rudolf. Can’t face lunching either. Or having my hair done, or getting my face covered in mud or essential oils or whatever nonsense they dream up.’

  ‘Darling, if you don’t come up to town on Friday both Joanna and I are coming down to you, and that will be much worse, don’t you think?’

  This was bluff – Rebecca had only just thought of it and had no idea if Joanna would agree. But she knew that a month ago, when Lucy had been really down, Joanna had done exactly that – landed on her doorstep, stayed the night and frog-marched Lucy to London for the next choir practice.

  ‘You’ll feel obliged to tidy the house,’ she went on, ‘and make lunch, and entertain us. Much more effort than getting on the train and then letting me take over.’

  In the end Lucy caved in, and agreed to meet Rebecca at Costa Coffee on Paddington station.

  Rebecca lay in bed, periodically telling herself to get up, but mostly thinking about her friendship with Lucy and Joanna. Didn’t true friendship mean telling each other everything, like schoolgirls? Or maybe as you got older you got more easily embarrassed? I never tell either of them how badly I need men, for example. How much I still need sex. Does any woman of our age discuss this I wonder? Or only with their shrinks? Do they confess to fantasising and wet dreams and masturbation? Indeed, do they even do these things? Perhaps I’m a freak or something, but I do prefer it with real men, rather than making it up on my own.

  She thought that maybe Lucy might be still too damped down by grief and widowhood to need a man, but Joanna, surely, must long for someone to make love to her. If she did, she hid it well.

  They both, she thought, disapproved of her affair with Nelson. She guessed they’d grown fond of him and suspected she was messing him around, wasn’t serious. Well, it was true Nelson wasn’t for keeps, and they’d only stay together while the sex was good.

  But Joanna and Lucy probably considered sex at their age undignified. As if sex at any age was dignified!

  This led her to wondering what Angelica got up to. She wanted her daughter to have a lot of fun, and satisfactory sex. And a real love life. But Angelica, though she sometimes mentioned a boyfriend, never gave her mother any details. But maybe daughters just don’t tell their mothers. She certainly did not discuss her love life with Angelica.

  Rebecca flung back the duvet and stretched. She must get up. Today she was taking Lucy shopping, and she loved shopping. She even liked shopping for groceries, but her favourite place was Harvey Nichols’ Designer Room, which was her idea of heaven.

  When she was about fourteen her foster father had complained that she never did her homework.

  ‘Well, what do you expect? I’m fourteen! All I think about is sex and shopping.’ It was true, and she thought it was true of nearly all her friends, but it wasn’t supposed to be admitted.

  I’m not that different now, thought Rebecca. Shopping is still a thrill, and so is sex, but I no longer get them both together. Sadly. Nelson just would not understand the point of shopping. He saw shops as the enemy, trying to relieve him of his hard-earned cash, he didn’t see that it was like dancing, or eating, or drinking, which have a value quite apart from their main, practical function.

  Nothing could compare with the kind of shopping she had once done in Harvey Nick’s, or in Bond Street, with Faisal. That period of her life, just before she married Bill, had combined the high point of both her sex and shopping life, and Rebecca often thought of it. Nelson was a great lover, but Faisal had been something else.

  Faisal was Jordanian, rich, Oxford-educated and urbane. But no new-man European ideas had penetrated: he was all unreconstructed male. He liked women to be beautiful and he liked to both spoil and command them. He would never have done for a husband, but he was a five-star lover.

  He had sat in the Designer Room’s upholstered armchair, champagne (courtesy of the house) in one hand, while the ‘Personal Fashion Consultant’, an exquisite Frenchwoman wearing a YSL dress of fine silk jersey, produced the clothes. She showed them first to him – she knew who was paying her wages all right – and then, if he approved, Rebecca would put them on in the ‘Personal Shopping Suite’, then step out and give him a twirl.

  She had loved it. Faisal’s close inspection was such a turn on: his eyes were on her like a trainer’s on a racehorse, except that his gaze was lazy rather than intent, and she felt the challenge of keeping it there, making him want her. She knew he could so easily lose interest and turn that gaze to the demure curves of the Frenchwoman.

  Soon it had become a sort of secret sex game. Somehow he knew that the process excited her, and he played along. Instead of immediately spinning about to show off the dress, she would stand before him, like a schoolgirl awaiting instructions. He’d keep her there, expectant, while he slowly looked her up and down, down and up. Then, without a word, he’d describe a circle with his fingers, and she would slowly turn in a circle. That the elegant Frenchwoman had to stand by, a servant in attendance, pretending nothing was going on but routine shopping, somehow excited Rebecca more.

  They would try all sorts of clothes. A smart little suit with a short full skirt had him sending mademoiselle off for knee-high boots. When Rebecca had pulled them on he had put out his hand to take her foot. She’d stood there on one leg while he held her heel in one hand, and caressed the soft suede of the boot with the other. As his hand went from ankle to knee Rebecca longed for it to slip over the top, meet the cool flesh of her thigh, go higher …

  An evening dress with a low scooped neck allowed him to discuss the design with the saleswoman. He took no notice of Rebecca other than to trigger electric messages of lust with one well-manicured finger tracing the neckline over her breasts, or stroking her hip while apparently inspecting the cut of the skirt.

  When she tried on tight lycra jeans, she’d stood close to him with her legs a bit apart, back slightly arched, bum out. Under pretence of turning her to inspect the stitching, he had put one hand lightly on her bottom, one on the front of her thigh and trailed his fingers over the cloth as she turned, legs melting.

  Once, leaving the store loaded with carrier bags of designer loot, they’d been alone in the lift. He’d put down his bags and leant close to her. She raised her face and closed her eyes, confident he would kiss her. But instead he’d whispered in her ear,

  ‘You’ll have to wait, won’t you, my horny little bitch.’

  She remembered how the b
lood rushed to her face, half shame, half desire.

  And once into his big stretch limo, he’d told the chauffer to go into Hyde Park and drive around it, down Park Lane, then round again until he ordered otherwise.

  He had pushed the button to raise the dark glass screen behind the driver. As it rose Rebecca had met the driver’s eye, just for a second, and he’d looked at her – expressionless but knowing.

  Without ceremony Faisal had pulled her onto the plush carpet and pushed her head down. Rebecca knew she was to play the whore, to thank him for the clothes as he wished to be thanked.

  That the driver knew what was going on heightened her desire. She wanted to break Faisal’s studied indifference. She did too, though she noticed he had control enough to flip the intercom switch to off before letting go.

  Another time, after a Bond Street spree, he’d given her tea in Fortnum’s, and all the time they were eating elegant little sandwiches and tiny éclairs, he’d had his hand under her skirt on the banquette. He had not removed it when the waitress poured the tea, nor when the manager brought the bill and talked to him of the store’s revamp. When she’d tried to cross her legs at the approach of a waiter, he’d leant close to her and whispered, ‘Open your legs, little whore.’ And she had.

  Hot and aching, she had been unable to concentrate on the conversation, and the torment had continued when they got back to his Eaton Square apartment. He’d had her model the new leather trousers and fur jacket he’d bought, with nothing underneath except a gold slave collar from Asprey’s. And then he’d stripped her of the clothes, slowly, until she was frantic.

  ‘You’re gagging for it, aren’t you?’ he’d said. It was true.

  He’d finally fucked her, well and truly, on the long upholstered footstool. It was not long enough to support her head and legs and it lifted her body like an offering. It was half real, half fantasy. Even the gold collar digging into her neck as her head fell back excited her. Rebecca was all the things modern women are supposed to object to. She was his object of desire, his plaything, his chattel. And she loved it.