Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  It had been a four-year affair: four years of parties, expensive holidays, great clothes. Tom had made her see the difference between good sensible clothes and truly beautiful things, made from exquisite cloth by great designers; the sort of clothes that made her look the part even when she was secretly nervous.

  Their love affair had fallen apart as suddenly as it had begun. For some months, the endless round of London life had failed to satisfy Joanna and she’d attributed her lack of pleasure in it to overwork and tiredness. But she’d not have said she was unhappy, or out of love with Tom.

  One evening, after a day on a friend’s boat in the South of France, she’d abruptly decided to tackle her fears.

  ‘Darling,’ she’d said, ‘I need to know where we are going. I love you to bits, but is this it, do you think?’

  He’d been trying to light a cigarette on the harbour front at St Tropez and he’d gone on flicking the lighter, head down and hands shielding the flame from the wind. He’d said, the cigarette between his lips,

  ‘What do you mean, is this it?’

  ‘I suppose I mean, are we going to progress at all?’

  ‘Progress?’ He was still clicking his lighter without success.

  Tom could be irritatingly stupid sometimes. She spelled it out for him.

  ‘Yes. Get married and have children.’

  He’d looked up at her then and said, ‘Good Lord, no! Why? You don’t want to, do you?’

  It was as though he were asking, ‘You don’t really want an ice cream do you?’ Or, ‘you don’t really want to go to that restaurant, do you?’ He was simply unaware of the importance of her question, as unaware as he had been of her growing anxiety about children, about their future, about his commitment to her.

  He had just never noticed how she felt when their friends showed off their new babies, when she peered into a stranger’s pram or gazed into shop windows of infant clothes.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I’m nearly forty and if I am to have children I have to have them now. So – she’d tried to smile as she said it – am I to have them with you, or someone else?’

  He’d realised how serious she was then, and had taken her by the shoulders and told her he loved her, and sat her down with a large glass of red and reminded her of what a great life they had, how good they were together, how faithful to her he had been,

  ‘But,’ he’d said, ‘I can’t do marriage. I just can’t: a house in the country, children, schools, in-laws, the whole bit. They’d completely ruin our lives.’

  She’d never found that someone else to have babies with, and if Tom hadn’t almost immediately replaced her with a younger model, she’d have gone back to him, she knew, and on his terms. The truly painful thing had been that within eighteen months he was the proud father of twins, with a double page spread in Hello magazine trumpeting his new-found happiness in fatherhood.

  And now, thought Joanna, there was Stewart. Or rather, she hoped there would be.

  The truth was that over the last few weeks of negotiations, discussions with Innovest and planning for the future, Joanna had been falling in love with her chairman.

  Apart from their business acumen and the ability to handle Joanna’s success, Stewart had little in common with long-gone Tom. He never voluntarily talked about himself, and he would never, ever boast about anything, not even about his beloved Caroline. He was also infinitely more civilised. In the years since her affair with Tom, Joanna had discovered the pleasures of art, music, theatre, even of playing tennis. Her life now was much richer and more interesting than the glitzy socialising Tom had provided. And Stewart, she knew, would understand and share her love of concerts and opera or of trailing round museums.

  But was he remotely in love with her? She had no idea if he felt what she felt. Maybe he was just flirting with her … Sometimes it seemed as though they were tipping into something close and deep, but then she would decide that this was wishful thinking. That they were more than colleagues was certain, but she could not tell if he desired her.

  They normally lunched together when she was in Wakefield or he was in London, and he made a point of discussing personal stuff before business. It was one of the most attractive things about him – the way he was interested in her life: her garden, her friends, what she did with her time. And, if she pressed him, he talked to her honestly about his marriage, his children, even admitting his unfair preference for Caroline over Mark, and the unexpected hole in his life when Elaine died.

  ‘To be honest,’ he’d said, ‘I didn’t think I’d miss her as I did. I suppose I took her for granted. We seldom had a cross word, and we rubbed along together just fine. But there was no longer any excitement in it, though we both loved the Wakefield choir. I seldom thought of her, never telephoned her during the day, didn’t look forward to holidays, though we went to great places together. And yet I missed her terribly.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘No, I’ve got used to her absence. And, in truth, it had become a rather dull marriage by the end.’

  ‘But is there ever excitement in a long marriage?’ Joanna had asked. ‘I’ve never been married, but I imagine you’d have said pretty well everything you have got to say to each other after thirty years, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Maybe, but if so, it’s sad. Anyway, I feel badly now. Because Elaine was a bit deaf and refused to wear a hearing aid – vanity I suppose – having a conversation could be a strain, and I’m a lazy bugger and I didn’t make the effort.’ He’d sat back, shaking his head. ‘So latterly we didn’t discuss anything really.’

  Joanna had been struck by the generosity of this remark: it was his fault for not trying, not Elaine’s for refusing the hearing aid. It was typical of him. He seldom had anything unkind to say of anyone and his ability to see the good in people was very appealing.

  ‘The thing is,’ he’d continued, ‘what I remember now is not our later years, though of course there were still some good things: dinner on the table, someone who cared. I think more of the way we used to talk when we were young, when we discussed every detail of each other’s lives, and were genuinely interested. Her work in a primary school, mine as a travelling salesman.’

  ‘A travelling salesman! What did you sell?’

  ‘Batchelor’s Surprise Peas.’

  ‘What on earth … ?’

  ‘Don’t you remember them? No, you were probably in Australia then. They were freeze-dried peas, tiny little things, electric green, and they plumped up with boiling water. They were huge sellers for a few years until frozen peas saw them off.’

  ‘And you sold them. Who to?’

  ‘Mainly village grocers. I used to bump all over the Highlands of Scotland in a Morris Minor van demonstrating the marvels of my peas to independent grocers and village stores.’ He’d chuckled at the memory. ‘I learnt a lot about the grocery business, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what a hard job it was. And that I should definitely do something else with my life. If you were the village grocer in the Highlands of Scotland in the seventies, you had to get into the store hours before it opened to shake the weevils out of the walnuts, and scrub the ox tongue you’d fished out of the brine tub, and put fresh sawdust on the floor.’ His face was alight with his tale, and Joanna felt her enthusiasm being kindled by his. He went on. ‘They were great characters, those grocers. Heart of the village. Making sure Mrs McFee got her pilchards in tomato sauce or her corned beef, stocking both fine and coarse oatmeal so that porridge could be made to suit the laird in the Manse or Mrs Douglas down the road. Giving thieving school kids a clip round the ear …’

  Joanna loved the talk, but increasingly found herself looking at Stewart’s eyes, or mouth, often his hands, as he spoke.

  Up until last Wednesday, she could tell herself that she was just having fun, enjoying the attention, and maybe a bit of flirting and fantasy; that any attraction wasn’t serious and she could walk away anytime, no problem.r />
  But last week, after they had concluded the deal with Innovest and were walking down Cheapside looking for a cab, Stewart had put his arm round her neck, pulling her to him, like students and children do.

  ‘Jo, let’s go across the river and have a drink. To celebrate your getting us out of Innovest’s clutches, and, more important, your throwing in your lot with us. Anyway, I don’t feel like a two-hour train journey back to an empty house. What about you?’

  Her heart had given a triumphant little lurch. Maybe tonight’s the night, she thought, giddy as a teenager.

  They’d sat side by side on a sofa with a view of the river. The winter light quickly faded to dusk, and they watched the water darken as the embankment lights went on. Golden oldies were playing in the bar, and they got mildly drunk on Bellinis and hummed along. They discovered that they both knew all the words of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, and of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’. They ended up eating tapas and talking, like they had on the train, for hours.

  Lightheaded with drink, warm in their winter coats but with cold cheeks and misty breath, they had ambled along the Jubilee Path on the south side of the river, talking about everything and nothing. They’d crossed Westminster Bridge, admiring London like tourists. They stopped in the middle, silenced by the spectacle.

  The riverfront was mesmerising. The tide was in and the water glittered darkly below the floodlit buildings and sparkly bridges, with St Paul’s so serene and confident among her brasher neighbours, the millennium wheel a joyous thing, the familiar parliament buildings still magical.

  And then they walked on, along the Embankment towards the City again, her arm through his, both of them softly singing ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. Joanna’s throat did not tighten and she didn’t miss a note. Stewart teased her.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t sing. Was all that about your throat closing a fiction then? You sing like a dream.’

  ‘I’m better than I was, thanks to Nelson’s lessons. But my throat can still clamp up if I’m not relaxed,’ she said. ‘I’m relaxed with you. You feel close and on my side.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said, looking at her solemnly. They were outside the Howard Hotel now. She knew he had a permanent suite here, but he’d never invited her to it. Now Joanna waited for him to usher her in.

  But he guided her instead to the row of waiting taxis.

  ‘Joanna, you are a dangerous woman. Dangerous to me, that is.’

  There was an intensity in his voice, and when he kissed her on the cheek, he held her hard, just for a second, and then almost pushed her away. As he opened the cab door for her, his voice flattened and he said, almost formally, ‘But you will be wonderful for Greenfarms. I know it.’ His face broke into a grin. ‘And with luck it will make you even richer.’

  Joanna forced a smile, disappointment enveloping her. How could he follow that merry drink, the long deep conversation, that walk through the glories of London with a peck on the cheek and a quip?

  Joanna had not seen Stewart since that evening, and now, sitting in the pub, she was finding concentration on Greenfarms business almost impossible.

  They wrapped up the meeting just as the citizens of Wakefield began drifting into the pub, and Stewart offered to drop her at the station. But she needed the loo first, and followed Caroline down the swirly red and blue carpet to the distant Ladies, her mind playing with the thought that Stewart might follow her onto the train as he did before, but this time in romantic rather than business pursuit.

  When she came out of the cubicle, Caroline was washing her hands. Joanna smiled at her in the mirror, but though Caroline looked up and their eyes met, she did not return the smile. Joanna bent to swish her hands, dried them on a paper towel and followed Caroline to the door.

  Suddenly Caroline spun round, her back to the door, barring Joanna’s exit. Joanna stopped in surprise. Caroline’s eyes, narrowed and hard, held hers.

  ‘Just don’t mess with my father, Joanna,’ she said. ‘You may be good news for the business. We will see. But you are not good news for the family, and Dad does not need another woman in his life.’

  Joanna was too astonished to utter, and anyway Caroline turned away, opened the door and walked out. As she went, she said, ‘Just so you know.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lucy waited for Joanna and Rebecca at Bentley’s corner table. Joanna had offered to treat them to a pre-Christmas lunch, and Lucy was feeling rather good. She was used to a deal of fawning and fussing by head waiters – she was a restaurant critic after all – but the maître d’ had told her she looked like a movie star, and on the way to their table she’d met a former colleague from the Globe who greeted her with, ‘Lucy, what have you done?You look fantastic!’

  The fact that she hadn’t been able to remember the woman’s name, did not, for once, worry her.

  Now she looked at her reflection in the mirror opposite. Her face, carefully made up, was framed by stylishly cut straight hair, shiny as a shampoo commercial. Until Rebecca had got at her she had seldom worn make-up at all, and when she had, it was what Rebecca called her Women’s Institute look – pale pink mouth, and a tentative smudge of lilac on her lids. Now her skin was subtly smoothed with some expensive foundation, the shape of her wide cheekbones accentuated by blusher, her eyes satisfactorily dark and smudgy and her lipstick several shades browner than she’d ever have chosen unaided. At last, she thought, at the age of fifty-nine, I look as one might expect a successful globe-trotting journalist to look. And, damn it, I’m still that, even without the Globe column.

  Her famous Donna Karan suit was buttoned up in winter mode, and the purple pendant was barely visible. The softness of the fine wool skirt and the slipperiness of its lining still pleased her. David wouldn’t recognise me, she thought, I really feel fine, confident and in control – for once not sorry for myself or panicking about losing my mind. And a clear sunny day in December is such a treat. Cause for celebration. She signalled a waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne.

  The others arrived together, and Lucy found herself smiling at the sight of them. Rebecca’s backless high heels click-clacked across the hard floor and her skinny dress looked, Lucy thought, like a petticoat. She must be freezing. Joanna was elegant as ever in a brown trouser suit with a big pink cloth bow on her lapel. God, thought Lucy, I’ll be a fashion writer next. When have I ever noticed clothes before?

  Lucy endured her friends’ exclamations and congratulations on her new look with embarrassed pleasure.

  ‘I told you I’d make you beautiful!’ said Rebecca. ‘Aren’t you thrilled?’

  Lucy laughed while Joanna protested, ‘Rebecca, how about a bit of modesty here? Maybe Lucy was beautiful already! Anyway, you look great, Lucy. Congratulations, both of you.’

  The waiter appeared with the champagne and three flutes.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Lucy said, her hand out to prevent him pouring it. ‘I just ordered the house champagne, not the Bollinger.’

  ‘There is no mistake, madam. The champagne is with the compliments of Mr Corrigan. And these.’ He indicated a platter of oysters being respectfully laid in the middle of the table by a second waiter.

  Lucy could not help being pleased and flattered, especially as Rebecca and Joanna were so impressed.

  ‘Wow, Lucy,’ said Rebecca. ‘Does this happen wherever you go?’

  Lucy shook her head, smiling. ‘No. When I review a place I book in another name and am seldom recognised by the staff. But if the owner sees me, I might get fêted a bit. Bribery, I guess. But since I’m no longer on the Globe, and only doing reviews for HOT Restaurant I’ll get less of it in the future. The ridiculous Orlando Black will get the treatment.’

  ‘Well, I could get used to this,’ said Joanna. ‘This is such a treat. Isn’t it odd that however old you get, there are some things that still feel very “grown-up” and special. I feel as if I’m playing the part of a lady who lunches. But we are ladies who lunch.’

&nbs
p; ‘Well, today anyway,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve eaten in countless smart places but almost always for work. Very seldom like this, just with friends, and no note-book recording every mouthful.’

  The oysters, Lucy noticed, had been carefully thought out. There were nine of them, three of each variety. Three were topped with a green salsa, three with a red one, and three plain. The women all ate one of each variety, throwing their heads well back and inserting the oyster shells deeply into wide open mouths.

  There was much oohing and aahing about the coriander and lemon dressing, and the kick of the chilli in the tomato and red pepper salsa. They followed the oysters with lobster tagliatelle and then Chef Corrigan’s retro-chic rhubarb and custard, and drank the champagne with rueful remarks about middle-age spread. But for once Lucy did not feel guilty – she had lost six pounds and a single blow-out on really good food wouldn’t hurt.

  Then, over coffee, Joanna said, ‘Listen, you two, I’ve got some news and a proposition.’ Caught by her serious tone, Lucy and Rebecca looked up, expectant.

  ‘Go on then, out with it,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Well,’ said Joanna – colouring slightly, Lucy noticed – ‘I think I’m in love, or something pretty near it.’

  ‘Jo! How wonderful!’ Rebecca exclaimed. ‘It’s Stewart from that greenie company, isn’t it? I knew it!’

  ‘How did you know that? I’ve never said a word!’

  ‘Yeah, but every time you talk about the business, it’s Stewart, Stewart, Stewart.’

  Lucy leant across and put her hand on Joanna’s arm. ‘I hope he’s in love with you too?’

  ‘Well, no, I’m not sure that he is. Sometimes I think …’

  ‘Has he said so?’ demanded Rebecca. ‘You don’t want him messing you around, Jo-Jo.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll do that. I know he likes me. And he thinks I’m the business when it comes to managing companies so I guess he respects me too. And we talk for hours and hours about everything under the sun. And he’s affectionate …’