An Eligible Man

by Rosemary Friedman

  “Good luck to him.”

  Marcus stood up. “They say that charity begins at home. I think that in your case it should be compassion. Be fair to yourself, Topher. You don’t have to spend Sunday afternoon alone, punishing yourself with Pushkin. My professional advice is that you give that conscience of yours a break. Come and have some of April’s lasagne.”

  Twelve

  Driving to Lowndes Square Topher considered his conversation with Marcus. In the course of it he had learned that guilt was more commonly engendered by self-criticism than it was by foul deeds. The blame he was always ready to attribute to himself for wrong-doings, real or imagined, stemmed, according to Marcus, from his relationship with his parents who had loved him not too little but too much. He and Tina had been conceived (in the days before children were spawned in petrie dishes) when their mother had given up all hope of fertility. The twins were so precious to their parents, and were reared so fondly, that their childish misdemeanours often went unpunished. Listening to stories of abuse, both verbal and physical, from his peers at school had led Topher to rejoice in his own good fortune. The odd clip round the ear, however, or reproof from his mother or father – whose one wish was to protect him and Tina from the evils of the world – might, apparently, have created less emotional havoc than did their excess of devotion. The latter had left Topher with the feeling that it would be impossible for him ever to repay his parents’ kindness, that he would remain forever in their debt.

  Throughout his adolescence it was clearly anticipated that Topher would live up to his father’s high expectations of him. That he would not let him down. His father had died long before Topher had proved himself, long before he had been sworn in as a judge. Only Tina had been present to hear the words of affirmation he had repeated before the Lord Chancellor in his oak-panelled room, after which His Lordship had spent a few affable moments chatting to them both. Although neither of his parents had lived long enough to see him at the pinnacle of his career, he had, in the early days, felt as uneasily aware of his father’s presence at his elbow as he was now of his late wife’s.

  “I am only going to fetch my pen,” he told himself firmly, turning the car out of Hyde Park at the Epstein sculpture known irreverently in the Osgood family as “bottoms”.

  As he passed the lighted shop windows, already exhibiting brief swimsuits on headless models, he told himself that he had every right to be going out; that Caroline would be only too pleased that he was not staying at home with Pushkin. It was to no avail. By the time he had parked the car in Lowndes Square, and asked the uniformed porter of Jo Henderson’s block for number sixteen, he was possessed by the uncomfortable and familiar sensation that he should not really be there.

  “Lady Henderson?” the porter inquired.

  Lady Henderson. Topher nodded and followed the man to the lift. “Press the top button, Sir, and I’ll tell Her Ladyship you’re on your way.”

  The lift opened directly into Jo Henderson’s apartment. She was standing by the door to greet him. As if they were old friends, and as naturally, she kissed him on both cheeks.

  Topher could not help contrasting the apartment with Sally Maddox’s basement. Interior design was a language in which furniture, fabrics, and accessories were the words. So April said. Clients who put their trust in herself and Inez could be sure, at the very least, of getting their grammar right. Where Sally Maddox’s flat had been decorated in the main with books, Jo Henderson’s was furnished with chairs and tables of doubtless impeccable provenance, hung with paintings individually illuminated, and awash with objets d’art. Standing in front of the marble chimney-piece – on which a pair of silver knights on horseback guarded a Second Empire clock – Jo Henderson had the appearance of an objet d’art herself. She was wearing a slim black skirt with a tight, long-sleeved jacket of pink silk fastened with large round diamanté buttons. There seemed to be a great deal of gold round her slim wrists. On her finger was a substantial emerald ring.

  “The porter said Lady Henderson…”

  “Henry was a High Court judge.” She picked up a silver photograph frame and showed Topher a picture of her late husband in his full-bottomed wig.

  “I’m so sorry,” Topher said, the boot for once being on the other foot.

  Jo replaced the photograph, fussing with its exact position on the boulle side-cabinet. She opened her mouth to speak and Topher thought that she was going to talk about the husband who had drowned, but she said: “What can I get you to drink?”

  From the range of bottles on display she poured whisky into heavy goblets for Topher and herself. He was running a finger reflectively over the curved blue head of a china bird which regarded him cheekily from a small table.

  “It’s a chaffinch.” Jo gave him his drink.

  “I know.”

  He had not intended to talk about Caroline. Despite his good intentions he found himself exhuming her for Jo.

  When he had finished telling her about Caroline and her birds, Jo said ambiguously: “To imagine one can love only one person is like expecting a single candle to burn for ever. I booked at table at Le Mazarin. Is that all right?”

  Topher contemplated the proposition and its alternative. Solitary fish-cakes (albeit salmon), despatched at the kitchen table, and Pushkin. He cracked his knuckles, as he often did on the Bench – despite the best endeavours of Mrs Sweetlove to cure him of the habit – before making a decision.

  “That sounds splendid.” He wondered if he could safely put the fish-cakes back into the freezer. Because he could think of no further comment to make, he repeated it. “Absolutely splendid!” They drove in Topher’s car to Pimlico. Aware of Jo Henderson’s perfume, and her slim knees, he attempted to keep his eyes on the road.

  They made a great fuss of Jo in the restaurant. “Bonsoir, Lady ’enderson,” and “’ow are you today?” and escorted her to a reserved table.

  “Where do you usually dine?” Jo asked Topher, when they had been seated.

  “At home.”

  She raised a plucked eyebrow.

  “I cook for myself. Well, it’s not exactly cooking…” he thought of the fish-cakes with their precise instructions: “…thirty-five minutes in a preheated oven”.

  Jo Henderson picked up her menu.

  “I can see,” she said, “that I shall have to take you in hand.”

  Studying the overblown descriptions of the dishes on offer, Topher’s eye fell upon the salades tièdes for which Caroline had had such scant regard. His determination to confine her to the back burner of his memory failed him once again.

  Jo was speaking. His mind on Caroline, Topher had to ask her to repeat what she was saying.

  “The soupe au cresson is divine.”

  It would at least not be derived from a tin.

  There were two large whiskies on the table. Topher had not noticed them appear.

  His companion lifted her glass.

  “To all the lonely people.”

  Sitting directly opposite her, in close proximity to her smile, Topher noticed that she had very good teeth which looked as if they had been recently polished. The fronds of her lashes, long and black, each one seeming to be separate, accented the remarkable translucence of her eyes. When you had to describe eyes for the purposes of fiction, Sally Maddox had said, it’s amazing how few colours there are to choose from. Jo Henderson’s eyes were green, but there was in them a certain superficiality. It was easier to imagine skating over their surfaces than drowning in them.

  Topher ordered the watercress soup, followed by veal, and Jo, warm chicken livers to start with, then fillet of fresh salmon in a sorrel sauce. She waved away the basket of seed-covered rolls and from the wine list settled upon a Château Neuf du Pape ’81.

  “My son gave up the idea of the BBC, by the way. He met a girl from Guadalajara and dropped out.”

  “He’ll drop back in again,” Topher said, without much conviction.

  The conversation turned to legal matters.
Over the soup and the chicken livers they discussed the repercussions of delays in the due process of law. Topher’s complaint was that, after a long period, the memories of witnesses, unreliable at the best of times, were apt to deteriorate still further. Jo was more concerned with the sleepless nights suffered unnecessarily by the defendants, the pressure on remand accommodation, and the general lack of confidence in the system and those who administered it. Topher had his own theory how the matter might be resolved. It was that judges should sit in the evenings to hear cases which did not require jurors or lay witnesses.

  “Why has no one thought of that before?”

  “The suggestion has not exactly been received with enthusiasm. The judges would, of course, have to be paid. But it’s a question of getting one’s priorities right. The present situation is intolerable.”

  Further discussion was prevented by the arrival of the main course. Topher had been so engrossed in riding his hobby horse that he had not noticed that the restaurant had filled up. It was now reverberating with a cacophony of multilingual voices punctuated by geysers of laughter. He picked up his knife and fork and regarded the still-life on his plate. A round of veal, sitting on a pasta nest, was set amid a circular vegetable mousse, three tiny carrots, a few miniature mange-touts and some dill fronds. Across the table Jo’s salmon in its sauce was similarly arranged. Topher wondered whether an attempt to emulate the artistry with his chippolatas and baked beans might not improve the gustatory results.

  “What do you do at weekends?” Jo interrupted his thoughts.

  Pushing a recalcitrant strand of pasta into his mouth, Topher considered. On Saturdays, ostensibly, he helped Arthur in the garden. Caroline’s garden, in which she had planted pyracantha and berberis, elder and hawthorn, holly and cotoneaster, and set a peanut cylinder for her birds. A great deal of the morning seemed to be taken up sitting at the kitchen table putting the country to rights. On Saturday afternoons he read. Sometimes he fell asleep to the accompaniment of whatever was on offer on Radio Three. In the evening – if he were not visiting Chelsea, or the Gordons, or occasionally the cinema – the afternoon’s programme was repeated. On Sunday mornings he walked on the Heath with Marcus and later caught up with any legal work and personal correspondence. The evening was the mixture as before.

  “Nothing in particular.”

  The reply to Jo’s question made him sound dreadfully dull.

  “You must come down to the country. I’ve a place in Berkshire, between Stockcross and Woodspeen, if you know the area. Overlooking the Lambourn Valley and the Downs. Do you ride?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.” He had spent too much time stalking old barns for owls and swallows, pacing wet fields after rooks and magpies. He was not a country person.

  To his horror Jo had taken out her diary.

  “What about the weekend after next?”

  Topher removed his own diary from his pocket and, holding the virgin pages close to his nose, tried to invent some pressing engagement. He had never been much good at lies. Not even the socially acceptable variety.

  “My sister…” he clutched at Tina for help. “Bingley… Could I possibly let you know?”

  Topher was not surprised when Jo refused dessert. While he was concentrating on his bavarois, which seemed to have come out of the same mould as the vegetable mousse, and was set in a raspberry sea latticed with cream waves, he looked up to find her green eyes contemplating him speculatively.

  “Are you aware,” she said, “that you are an extremely attractive man?”

  What was it Marcus had said? “You are a man of learning and property, not bad-looking and patently in need of care.”

  Jo saved him the trouble of replying. Leaning towards him she lowered her voice and said, “There’s a gorgeous young woman over there who hasn’t taken her eyes off you all evening.”

  Curious to discover who it was who found him so fascinating, Topher turned round in the direction Jo had indicated. He found himself staring straight into the accusing eyes of Chelsea. She was dining at an alcove table with David Cornish.

  “That young woman,” he turned to Jo, “happens to be my daughter.”

  On the way out of the restaurant Topher greeted Chelsea. He introduced her and David to Jo. After the hand-shaking there was an awkward pause. It was filled by David, who said what a pity it was that Topher had not been able to join them at the BBC party. Whilst David was speaking, Topher was conscious that Caroline was appraising his companion from the top of her sleek head to her elegantly shod food. He had not the least doubt that she found her, in every respect, wanting.

  On the way back to Lowndes Square, Topher told Jo about Chelsea and David and the stalemate of their relationship.

  “Your daughter’s a fool, if you don’t mind my saying so,” Jo said. “If the man hasn’t the guts to leave his wife, she should find somebody else.”

  “I suppose she thinks the half of David she has is better than nothing.”

  “Poppycock! She’s wasting the best years of her life on someone who’s incapable, or afraid, of making a commitment to her. She needs to be told. I shall take her out to lunch.”

  Topher did not tell her that Chelsea would not take kindly to interference. Where he and Caroline had failed, it was distinctly unlikely that an outsider to whom Chelsea (if her attitude in the restaurant was anything to go by) was evidently hostile, would succeed.

  In Lowndes Square Topher escorted Jo to the street door of the flats, and thanked her for the evening.

  “You’ll come up for a drink?” It was not exactly a question. The porter, who had been dozing behind the desk, leaped up as if he had been doing no such thing and put on his cap smartly.

  “Good evening Lady Henderson. Good evening, Sir.”

  “This is His Honour Judge Osgood,” Jo said. “You’ll know him another time.”

  “A pleasure, Your Honour.” The porter held the gate of the lift. Topher doubted if there would be another time.

  Upstairs he agreed to just one small drink. He poured it for them both and sat down on the sofa. Jo put a record on – Dizzy Gillespie – and sat extremely close to him. Topher, who had drunk more than he should in the restaurant, attempted through a pleasant haze to keep his wits about him. The situation in which he now found himself reminded him of an old movie. He imagined that he was Cary Grant, or Spencer Tracy, and tried to remember his lines.

  Before he had a chance to consider them, Jo had put down her drink and undone the diamanté buttons of her jacket. Topher guessed that both Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy would have been amazed to discover that she wore nothing at all beneath it. She had the breasts of a young girl.

  Topher stood up and muttered that he must be going. It was Jo’s turn to be amazed.

  “I don’t understand.” She looked puzzled. “Why did you come up?”

  Topher considered his reply. He did not wish to appear boorish. “You forgot to give me my pen.”

  Thirteen

  Each time Topher got into his car he was reminded of Jo Henderson. He was aware of her perfume, which clung tenaciously to the upholstery, as he drove towards Kentish Town to pick up Sally Maddox. Since the evening at Le Mazarin, with its extraordinary finale, he had been sorely troubled. What bothered him was his lack of perception, the fact that the wires had so obviously been crossed. “You’ll come up for a drink?” How was he supposed to know that since his day – admittedly a very long time ago now – the words had acquired another meaning. The misunderstanding was not the only thing about the evening which bothered him. Try as he would he was unable to get the picture of the proffered breasts out of his mind. They were most attractive. Like nothing so much as firm, long-stalked pears. Caroline’s breasts – she was a big woman – had been soft and pendulous. Jo Henderson had been amused rather than angry at his refusal of her favours. To Topher’s disappointment she had promptly buttoned her jacket and crossed to the bureau plat from which she retrieved the pen.

  “You’ll let m
e know about coming to the country?” she said, as matter-of-factly as if nothing at all had happened.

  “Of course. And thank you again for this evening,” Topher said awkwardly.

  “It’s been a great pleasure.”

  For the second time Jo kissed him on both cheeks.

  Thoroughly confused, he got into the lift.

  In the days that intervened he had, in his mind, returned to the scene. He had performed it several times over, altering the dénouement at will. More often than not, in its replay, he had accepted the tacit invitation and (Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy rolled into one) fallen into Jo Henderson’s arms and, by extension, into her bed. That he had not done so in reality was due to his upbringing which had left him with the firm conviction that morality and happiness went hand in hand. In his youth a period of courtship – often protracted to unbelievable lengths by today’s standards – invariably preceded sexual relationships. He had been to bed (he could not, even in his head, entertain the contemporary idiom) with several girls before his marriage to Caroline. He had not however slept with his wife until after the wedding. Hitherto, he had associated the shift in morals solely with his daughters. Having been groped by Sally Maddox, an event now overshadowed by the exposure of Jo Henderson’s breasts, he should have been alerted to the fact that the change in his status entailed more than mastering the idiosyncracies of the spin-dryer and learning how to approach a Cabbage and Mushroom Bake.

  Wanting to be in court early to cast his eyes over the papers before the first case, he arrived in Jeffrey’s Street fifteen minutes before the agreed time. In answer to his ring Sally’s voice came through the entryphone.

  “Christopher? You said nine-fifteen! I shan’t be long. Come in and have some coffee.”