Just the Memory of Love

by Peter Rimmer

  “There are rules in business,” began Byron as he passed Shelley a glass of wine. “Maybe you should think of them before you decide. Cheers, Miss Lane.”

  Byron sipped his wine and walked across to the old flower beds, treading through the long, uncut grass of the lawn. He bent to smell the white flower of a tobacco plant that scented the evening air. The little garden was quiet in itself, a haven from the world; brief sanctuary. A child’s treble voice echoed from another garden, far away.

  “If you work for me, which is what you are asking, there will be nothing but business between us and you will do what you are told. Right now, Shelley, you can’t sing. Your body, the lights, sexy clothing are what you are selling. Men are interested in the singers, so gigs are out straight away if you work for me… You could have a voice but it has to be trained. Nothing is easy. Nothing overnight. Nothing of any value has come from this life to my knowledge without hard and dedicated work. Do you really want to be a singer or do you like the idea, the glamour, the centre of attention? Are you using the stage to catch a wealthy man to support you and your future children in the style you would like to be accustomed? You set me up, I see that, but what deal were you really looking for?”

  Shelley sipped her wine and followed him with her eyes as he slowly walked around the garden. She did not give him an answer.

  “Money,” said Byron, “is the only thing about which I am deadly serious. Money carries on if it’s looked after and preserved, unlike love. Undying love is the figment of man’s imagination. Sad, but true… If you are looking for love, I am not your man. Money, maybe… The rules of business apply to any product and a singer is a product provided she is good enough… You have some of the ingredients; youth, sex appeal, a good body, provocative eyes, good, sexy movement on the stage. But can you really sing, make that deep-throated sound that rings an echoing chord in the male sex organ? The evocative sound that makes men search for satisfaction. The good singer sends the customers to each other’s arms, has them dreaming of love with each other. It’s somewhere mystical, a further sense that provokes emotion, that strikes the chord in us that is not animal; the artist, the religion, the mystique, maybe beauty in its purest sense.”

  Shelley waited. Byron was at the back of her bench, behind the mottled trunk of the plane tree. The summer evening was settling gently into dusk, drawing the sweet smell of the tobacco plants. Bending forward, Shelley poured herself a second glass of wine and as she picked it up she shuddered, spilling down the crystal sides of the glass. Bending to the glass, she licked the stem where the wine had collected, her long tongue expertly drinking up the spill. Not a drop reached the grass below. More than anything, she wanted the man behind her to pick her up and take her inside and make love to her until she was lame… She waited through the moments.

  “It’s your decision, Shelley Lane,” he said softly from right behind her seat.

  The moment lasted for a long time and neither of them made a move. There was not a sound in the garden, the bees having stopped their quest for food, the light shadowing down with the dusk.

  “Have some more wine, boss,” she said softly, just stopping the sob.

  Byron sat down on the wooden bench with his back to the table. “If you can get that emotion into your singing, you will succeed.”

  “This afternoon, I wanted to succeed so much there was nothing I would not sacrifice. Now, I’m not so sure… Don’t you want me, Byron?”

  “Of course, Shelley, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. For me it would be just another conquest. A brief moment of pleasure bought with money or the image of money. But, for you, do you want the moment or the future? Do you believe in yourself or is the singer in you nothing but a myth?”

  “Sometimes life is not fair.” She tried to look at his face.

  “Life is never fair.”

  “Byron, I want to be a singer.”

  “Then you must work.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good. Then you can pour your new employer a glass of his wine. Then your new employer will take you out to a business, strictly business supper, and bring you to your celibate bed. Tomorrow, I will have my lawyer draw up a binding contract… Life does have some strange moments… I’m glad I gave Mrs Page the flowers… Something so simple can change a person’s life.”

  “Mrs Page’s?”

  “Yours, if you succeed.”

  Shelley was surprised to see the glasses go back into their leather case and return to the duffle bag with the corkscrew. The wine bottle on the rickety table was empty.

  Byron’s car, open to the summer night, was waiting for them in the road and they let themselves out of the house without disturbing Mrs Page. Shelley had changed while Byron drank the last of the wine in the gathering dusk. She had not turned on her bedroom light.

  The Triumph TR2 drove quietly out of the street into the traffic, heading back into town. He parked outside the restaurant, in the street, and opened the car door for Shelley. Neither of them had spoken since leaving Holland Park.

  The table Byron chose was in the corner and they sat facing each other. Without asking, Byron ordered the food and wine. No one he knew was in the restaurant. The oysters came with wine.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” said Shelley.

  “Oh, it does. You made a choice.”

  “What will I live on without gigs?”

  “Me. I’ll pay Mrs Page and give you an allowance for twelve months. The first three months you will be on probation.”

  “Do you know what you are doing?”

  “Anything I don’t know I will find out. The one thing I did find out tonight is you want to sing more than anything else. That’s good enough for me. Business is a calculated gamble.”

  For the first time in her life, Shelley found herself shaking hands with a male escort at the front door to her house. Leaving her standing on the step, Byron drove off into the night. For once in her life she was being offered exactly what she wanted. She had set out to trap a rich promoter and instead had fallen in love. Back in her apartment, in the lonely bedroom, she began to cry.

  Byron’s office in Pall Mall was next to Cox’s & King’s bank, former paymasters for the Royal Air Force, a coincidence not missed by Red Langton who had found out through Josephine that his son had changed jobs. Adelaide had once again said the boy would end up making his fortune or end up in jail and the matter had been dropped at Langton Manor where Randolph, the eldest son, was running the farm.

  At reception, and acting as Byron’s secretary, was a twenty-one-year-old girl almost as good-looking as Shelley Lane. Madge O’Shea was a flaming redhead with a flaming temper and an honours degree in economics from London University where her politics had been wedded to the left. Fortunately, the facts of economics convinced her that governments were unable to create wealth. During Madge’s third week of employment, Shelley Lane called at the office to collect her allowance and neither of them liked the look of the opposition. When Shelley left with her money, she passed reception without a word, holding the cheque up delicately between forefinger and thumb. Madge waited less than a minute before making an excuse to go into the boss’s office.

  “Who the hell was that?” she said to Byron.

  “An aspiring singer. I sponsor her.”

  “You told me this firm was a merchant bank.”

  “Merchant banks do a lot of things. We have a contract with the lady that just left. Her singing teacher says we may be in luck.”

  “You mean she can’t even sing?”

  “Not yet… Don’t worry about Shelly Lane. You know perfectly well I never mix business with pleasure.”

  The outside office opened and closed and to the surprise of neither, Johnny Pike shook out his umbrella and dropped it into the hat stand. Madge walked back to her desk, pulled her typewriter forward and began to type, ignoring Johnny Pike.

  “The help not very friendly today,” he said and firmly shut the door.

  “Leave her alon
e, Johnny. She doesn’t even like you.”

  “All women like me, eventually.”

  “Your conceit is only matched by your charm.”

  “Do you know anything about Africa?”

  “Only what my young brother writes on the very rare occasions he puts pen to paper.”

  “The African empire is about to collapse and with it British control of the mineral resources, some of which, like chrome and copper, are vital to the Western alliance.”

  “Why this sudden political lecture?”

  “We’ve had an approach from a dark gentleman who tells us the Federation of Rhodesia has the largest copper mines in the world, outside of Chile, and with political change, Anglo-American Corporation will lose control of their mines and their offices in London will lose control of Britain’s main source of supply. The man wants money now in exchange for the right to distribute his country’s copper. We think he is a communist who intends to install a one-party state. The party will decide through whom the copper is to be sold on to the world market.”

  “If he’s communist, why doesn’t he sell his copper to the Russians who can then throttle British industry?”

  “The Russians will supply our friend with guns for his revolution.”

  “If they will give him guns, they’ll give him money.”

  “The man we are talking to has the job of raising funds for the party but he is clever enough to know that post-independence politics in Africa are going to be volatile and dangerous. He wants to place his insurance.”

  “We are bankers not an insurance company.”

  “You also know the legal ways of leaving the profit from business transactions in bank accounts untraceable by governments. This man says that the new government will legislate that all minerals will be sold through a government-controlled central selling organisation. We will be asked to finance the sales provided we leave a commission from the proceeds in a party account in Switzerland. The black nationalist movement in Central Africa is shopping for a merchant bank that is not part of the establishment. Someone has told our friend you contribute to the British Labour Party and the British Communist Party. They said your sister is a Trotskyist and a passionate believer in the worldwide socialist revolution.”

  Byron thought through the implications.

  “How did they come to you?” he said, ignoring the accusation against his sister.

  “One good rocket recognises another.”

  “You mean these revolutionaries are crooks?”

  “Businessmen. Good politics and good business are the same thing. Dad’s checked them out, Byron. Just keep it in mind.”

  “Has the man an official position in this ‘party’?”

  “Of course not. The politicians probably know nothing except their need for funds. Most politicians in the world don’t wish to know who supports their party. People down the party line bring in the money and pass out the ‘pork’. Socialism, capitalism, communism are all as corrupt as each other. All need money to get into power and consider the means justify the ends. Like your Shelley Lane, a little investment up front can bring huge returns. I believe half her earnings go to you if she succeeds?”

  “Seventy per cent, actually… How much does this man want up front?”

  “Twenty thousand pounds in a Swiss bank account. We’ll keep track of him. That will be our insurance… Now do you think that girl outside will let me take her out to lunch?”

  “You can only ask. I just won’t vouch for the answer.”

  Byron sat for some time without moving, staring ahead into the morass and trying to make sense of it all. The empire was breaking up faster than his own predictions but business would carry on much the same, only the players and profiteers would be different. With the great political change, opportunities would be available that had been controlled by the establishment for centuries. Political change had nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of a particular system, it was only a means of changing the patronage, of gaining financial control by passing legislation that would require government approval, legislate who would sell the copper… Byron began to chuckle. Without change there was never a new opportunity. For the first time, he began to look kindly at the prospect of the dissolution of the British Empire. A fine-thinking businessman could make a fortune.

  Gloria Kendle had been shopping for a son-in-law for eighteen months and nothing had come of it.

  “Mummy, they’re all so boring,” was the constant refrain from her twenty-two-year-old daughter when another invitation slipped through the letter box. Beatrice, the only child of a rich merchant banker in the City, was the target of mothers with bachelor sons looking for a good marriage, the mothers studying the market with the same concentration their husbands studied the stock market.

  Beatrice, unbeknown to either of her parents or any of her friends, was being laid twice a week by an Italian waiter from the Greek Street pub owned by Jack Pike, the smell of cooked cabbage in his one-room bedsitter sending her into multiple orgasms. There was no emotion on either side but the physical satisfaction was mutual and wholly rewarding. Beatrice was as crisp and clean as the Italian was dark and dirty and both of them looked forward to his nights off with equal expectation.

  Beatrice considered her parents’ marriage as boring as cricket where people played a game for five days without getting a result. She worked in a solicitor’s office as prim and proper as her mother expected; high-necked, well-tailored suits, long sleeves, sensible shoes and thick stockings, underneath which was a body waiting to be turned on fire. Her friends whispered she was frigid, a virgin, and were it not for her rich father would certainly end up an old maid.

  The last place she expected to see the up and coming merchant banker was Jack Pike’s pub on a Wednesday night. Byron was waiting for Johnny to go over some figures. His mind was in free idle, mellow from two double gins when he caught sight of the ‘frigid babe’ out of the corner of his eye and vaguely wondered what on earth she was doing in Soho. He had just attended one of Shelley’s music lessons and was well pleased with his six-month-old investment. The girl’s voice had reached a power and range he never could have hoped for.

  “No, Shelley, I have a business meeting and you know dating is not part of our contract. But I will give you some good news. I’ve found you a songwriter and put him under contract. I am now looking for a band so we can take you up north for a try-out. See what the public have to say. Get some feedback. I want every one of your songs to be an original.”

  “Are you dating that damn redhead in the office?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you. She hates me.”

  “That is possible.”

  Byron had found out some time ago that tensioning up the staff was good for business. Madge O’Shea was as good a confidential secretary as Shelley was a singer.

  Beatrice had known for three weeks that some of the fire had gone out of the waiter and when he politely said he had other things to do on his night off she smiled, patted him mildly on the cheek and turned away.

  “You not mad at me, Bea?”

  “Why ever? We both used each other to mutual satisfaction. Whoever said an affair had to last forever?”

  “Maybe one more time?”

  “Your tendency to become romantic is sometimes out of place. Give my love to your mother.”

  “My mama in Italy. You don’t ―?”

  “You can still give her my love and tell her what a good boy you are.”

  “You English, I never understand.”

  “That is comforting. One day, probably tomorrow, I will have forgotten your name. Now, if you will excuse me, there is a friend of mine sitting at the bar who has asked me over for a drink.”

  Leaving her ex-lover with nothing more to say, she walked along the bar to the corner and sat down.

  “Byron, be a darling and buy me a drink. That bloody dago just stood me up.”

  Byron turned to her in surprise and a moment later they
both burst out laughing.

  “Mr Barman,” he said, catching his eye. “Tell Mr Pike to ring me in the morning. Come, Beatrice Kendle, I’ve a much better idea. In twenty minutes this bar will be closed but I know a club down the road that specialises in good music. Can’t have our aristocracy being stood up by the Italians without a celebration. I mean, why ever did we fight the war?”

  “What are you doing here?” They were arm in arm going towards the outside door.

  “Mr Pike is a client and he owns this pub among other things.”

  “There’s more to you than I thought.”

  “My dear Beatrice, if anyone had suggested this morning that you were dating a wop I’d have called them mad… We’ll walk the two blocks, so button up your coat.”

  The club was in a basement and had just opened. Finding a table back from the bandstand, Byron gave an attendant their coats and put the tickets in his top pocket.

  “Remind me where they are,” he said, tapping the pocket. “You mind if we drink a bottle of wine? Saves chasing the waiter… Red or white?”

  “Red, I suppose.”

  “By eleven o’clock the club will be full and noisy. Trust me. And don’t worry, not a soul in your crowd would be seen dead in this club. This is a club where people actually come to hear the music. Jazz, pop, guitar. A couple of big names started off right over there.”

  “What does a young merchant banker have in common with this?”

  “You might well be surprised.”

  “I can’t imagine my father coming here even in his student days.”

  “I can’t imagine your mother dating an Italian waiter.”

  “Do you mind if I change my mind?”

  “You want to go home?”

  “Not at all. Make it champagne and let me pay.”

  “Tonight,” said Byron, “the world has turned on its head. The women I seem to meet never offer to buy me a drink let alone a bottle of champagne.”