Jay was thrilled when he saw Chloe’s kitchen, with its professional stove, huge, abundantly stocked fridge and larder, and every culinary utensil you could dream of hanging from a handy overhead rack.
‘Rock and roll,’ he said, throwing a piece of ginger up into the air and catching it behind his back. ‘She’s even got a ginger grater.’ He kissed it theatrically and got to work.
My job, he said, was to mix some drinks, get some music going and find him something he could put in his mouth immediately. ‘And I don’t mean your left breast, delicious though that is,’ he added.
Without even asking him what he wanted, I made him a beauty of a negroni. I might have been a total waste of space in the kitchen, but I seriously knew how to mix drinks. I’d learned it from Ham’s second wife, Margot, who was a world-class alcoholic, but with a lot of style.
Her gift to me as a child, was to work our way through a 1950s book of cocktail recipes. While other little girls might have played teddy bears’ tea parties, I mixed drinks like a Savoy barman.
I mixed them and decorated them – using all the right glasses and trimmings, which she had lined up ready in a fabulous old cocktail cabinet – and she drank them. We both had a fine old time.
I was still really fond of Margot. She was in pretty poor shape these days – you can’t drink with the kind of commitment she had to hard liquor and hold on to your health – but I still loved her company.
She’d been in my life for only three years – from four to seven – but that’s an impressionable age and she had definitely made a big impact on me. My taste for marabou-trimmed peignoirs definitely came from her. She had lounged around in hers all day drinking the cocktails I made her, with Dean Martin crooning on the hi-fi.
It was Ham finding out about our daily cocktail sessions, which went on while he was working, that finally led to the end of their marriage, which had never been well advised. And I think, in that way kids have, I somehow thought it was my fault. She’d never married again, but had spent the years since drinking herself to death on Ham’s alimony.
So out of a mix of affection and responsibility, I still visited her when I could, in the residential care home where she now lived. She rambled a lot these days, in between bouts of rib-wracking coughing – she smoked as much as she drank and with similar elegance, always with a cigarette holder – but she would still come out with nuggets of kooky brilliance.
‘The thing about your darling faaaaaather,’ she used to say, in her wonderful 1950s RADA voice – she was older than Ham and had been a Rank starlet in her youth, ‘the old rat, is that he’s too much cock and not enough cocktail.’
Then she’d take a big drag on her ciggie and smile at me like the Mona Lisa, the smoke billowing out of her nose, completely forgetting what she’d just said.
It was sad to see her like that, her hair still always perfectly done, her nails always painted, always in high heels, but her brain shot to bits. But one thing I had learned from Margot, apart from how to mix a mean martini, was to have healthy respect for booze and cigarettes. I knew what they could do to a girl.
Jay was suitably impressed by his drink – and my choice of music. I’d put Van Morrison on, because another thing we’d discovered we had in common, over our twice-daily phone calls, was that we both really preferred music from the seventies to anything that had come out more recently. We even agreed on the exceptions – which were mainly tracks that were just great to dance to – but for music to chill to, we liked the old stuff.
I sat at the kitchen counter on a high stool, sipping my drink, nibbling on the Twiglets and olives I had found in the cupboard and watched him cook. He clearly loved it and he never so much as asked me to chop an onion, which was fine by me.
We’d been singing along to Van the Man and were just getting into a discussion about seventies films – and what seemed to make them more interesting than contemporary ones – when my mobile rang. I had to answer it. It might have been the office.
I turned the music off with the remote control and told Jay I would take the call in the next room. I was glad I had – it was Ham.
‘Are you still in that bloody office?’ he said.
‘Hello Big Chief Hambone,’ I said, feeling almost sick with guilt. Not only had I broken my promise to him, I was doing it in his house. I was no better than men who cheated on their wives in the marital bed. ‘No actually, I’m not at the office – I’m at your house. I just got here.’
I didn’t say where from. The less actual lies I told Ham, the better.
‘Well, you should be down in this bloody house. I’m so sad you’re not going to be here tomorrow.’ Then he switched to his most conspiratorial tones. ‘You should see the cake – Chloe’s done Freddie a Harry Potter cake, but with a photo of him for the face. It’s marvellous. I’ve got a massive firework display set up – do try and come down tomorrow if you can, darling, it won’t be the same without you.’
‘I’d love to, Dad,’ I said and I meant it. If only he didn’t have such a problem with Jay we’d both be down there already, I thought. That was the maddening thing. Jay would have loved it, I knew him well enough already to know that.
He could have helped Chloe with the cooking, he could have put the tepee up, and I could just imagine him leading a tribe of whooping Indian braves through the garden. He would so fit in.
But of all the men I had ever met – and the only one I had ever brought home – he was the one Ham didn’t want me to see. I still couldn’t believe my luck, or lack of it.
I would have to take it up with him again sometime soon, I told myself, but this was not the moment. I was up to my neck in dishonesty in a hole I had dug for myself, and for the time being I was stuck there.
‘Well, my senior duckling,’ Ham was saying. ‘I’ve got a good mind to give Duncan a call and tell him to release you tomorrow, but I know you wouldn’t like that. But if they do see fit to set you free, just get straight down here, OK? Anytime. And help yourself to anything in that house. I like to think of you up there.’
I rang off, praying he wouldn’t ring Doughnut – and feeling like a total piece of poop.
‘Food’s up,’ said Jay, looking completely relaxed and happy, when I walked back into the kitchen. ‘Do you want to eat at the table, or in front of the TV? Either’s fine by me. Your dad has a fine selection of Scorsese movies on DVD, I’ve just been looking through them.’
I’d been feeling really miserable after that phone call, but I had to laugh. Here I was, for the first time in my life, doing the full domestic thing with a man. It was everything I despised in my friends’ relationships – and I was loving it.
‘The table,’ I said. There were limits. I wasn’t ready for the full DVD and dinner-on-the-sofa experience yet. Just playing house with Jay was enough of a breakthrough for one day.
I opened a bottle of wine and we sat down at Ham’s round table to eat Jay’s delicious food.
‘You really can cook,’ I told him, after the first mouthful.
He smiled. ‘My mom taught me. She’s a great cook. We spend the whole day cooking when I go see her. We pick the veggies from her garden, make bread, the whole works. She has her own vineyard too. It’s a blast. I’ll take you to meet her one day.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘New Mexico. Just outside Santa Fe.’
‘I love it there,’ I said. ‘I went there once to interview Tom Ford, on his ranch.’
Jay’s face lit up.
‘Oh, you know Tom, that’s great – he’s a good friend of Mom’s. They live real near each other out there. He’s a great guy, I really like Tom.’
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘He’s one of my heroes.’
‘Well, if he’s around when we’re there, we’ll have him to dinner. You can mix him a drink.’
He beamed at me, while I sat and pondered that latest reminder of the chasm between us.
‘This is another great domestic space of your dad’s,’ he said,
after a while. ‘I can see how he has the energy flowing through it again. Will you show me round after dinner?’
I nodded. Just another little betrayal of my father couldn’t hurt. I was stacking them up thick and fast. Maybe I should have jungle sex with Jay in Ham’s bed, I thought. That would top it all off nicely.
‘I’d love to see your dad again,’ Jay was continuing. ‘I’m such a fan of his ideas and he’s a great guy too. I really enjoyed meeting him that time at Willow Barn. He’s a blast.’
It was time to tell him, I thought. OK, so it meant possibly destroying the first – and blissful – domestic evening I had ever spent with a man I was also having sex with, but I couldn’t lie simultaneously to both the men I loved.
And as I thought it, I realized it was true. That was why it was all so different. That was why I wanted him to stay at my place. That was why I was happy shopping for food and cooking dinner and being soppy about song lyrics with him.
I was madly in love with Jay. Scary.
13
‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ I began, fiddling nervously with my wine glass.
‘I’m listening,’ he said, smiling happily.
‘It’s about my dad…’
He put his head on one side, looking all boyish and interested. It was agony, but I had to get it out.
‘It’s about my dad and you…’
He frowned a little.
‘Well, you know he’s a life peer and all that?’ I blundered on.
He nodded.
‘Well, the thing is, he’s a Labour peer… he’s sort of a socialist and, well, you see, he has a big hang-up about inherited wealth.’
Jay put his knife and fork down with a clatter.
‘Here we go…’ he said, his face instantly tightening up. It was such a contrast from the gentle way he normally looked at me. I hated to see that hard look on his beautiful face.
‘So your dad hates me because I have too much money. Ay yay yay.’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘Most of the world is trying to crawl up my ass to get their hands on it, and the other few – mostly the nice ones – hate me because I have it. Great.’
‘It’s not the amount, Jay. Ham – Dad – has a lot of very wealthy friends, it’s not money itself he has a problem with. It’s just that you didn’t make it yourself. He doesn’t think that’s good for people.’
‘Well, that’s hardly my fault,’ he said, his voice getting even more tense. He looked like he was on the verge of blowing up. ‘I didn’t ask to be born a Fisher, just like a kid in Africa doesn’t ask to be born starving. I just was.’
‘I know that, Jay,’ I said. ‘In all honesty, I don’t think my dad is entirely rational about it, but he just doesn’t want me to be with someone who comes from a huge pile of inherited money. He doesn’t think it makes people happy’
‘Doesn’t he?’ said Jay, with a sarcasm I had never heard from him before. ‘But aren’t you going to be one of those people yourself one day? He can’t be short of a few bob himself. He is one of the best-known architects in the world.’
‘Actually,’ I said, sounding more defensive than I wanted to, ‘Ham has hardly got a penny. He’s been married five times before this one, remember, and everything he makes from the practice goes in child and ex-wife support. He has six kids who are still under eighteen – three of them are still under ten, for heaven’s sake – and now Chloe’s pregnant again. That’s a lot of school fees still to pay, then university… It doesn’t leave much. Plus, he does a lot of lecturing and consultancy work in developing countries for nothing.’
‘Well, if he’s such a socialist,’ said Jay, ‘why does he send his kids to private schools?’
I didn’t have an answer for that. It’s just the way things were.
‘Anyway,’ he continued. ‘He might not be particularly liquid, but you’re all going to inherit plenty when he goes from the property alone. This place is prime London real estate and Willow Barn would be worth a fortune even if it wasn’t so famous. But with its architectural significance, it’s almost priceless.’
‘Ham doesn’t own Willow Barn,’ I told him blankly, slightly offended by his casual assessment of our family assets. ‘He was given the money to build it by a group of his patrons. They set up a trust to pay for the house, in the interests of furthering architectural theory and trying out Ham’s ideas for real. He gets to use it freely in his lifetime, but as soon as he dies, it goes back to the trust and it will become a study centre for students of domestic architecture.’
‘Oh, really?’ said Jay, in that maddening off-hand American way.
‘And this place will go straight to Chloe,’ I continued. And she’s only a few years older than me. So I’m not going to inherit anything. I’ve never expected it and I’ve never hankered after it and that’s why my career means so much to me. I’ve already got my little house, Ham gave me that, I’m very lucky, but apart from that, I’m on my own.’
Jay was leaning back in his chair, looking thoughtful. It was his turn to look at me across the chasm, I thought.
‘So, how do you feel about it?’ he asked me, eventually, in a more even tone. ‘How do you feel about my money, my filthy inherited wealth? Does it revolt you too?’
‘I don’t really understand it,’ I answered, completely honestly. ‘I really can’t conceive of how much money you might have and what that really means. Over a thousand pounds it’s all the same to me really. I write about handbags costing twenty grand, which I know is more than a lot of people earn a year, but there are waiting lists in London for those bags. Over a certain amount, money just turns into blah blah in my head. Zero zero zero blah blah blah.’
Jay smiled again, and squeezed my hand.
‘Oh, you are so cute,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Because I know you mean that.’
‘Of course I mean it,’ I said urgently. ‘I’m not joking. So tell me, Jay, how much money do you have? It said “billions” in that magazine. Ten billion was it? What does that actually mean? What does that look like? How much is a billion dollars in terms of someone’s life?’
Jay’s face clouded over again. He had an expression on it I hadn’t seen since the South of France, when Laura Birch-wood had said his name. In retrospect I understand that I had just asked him the ultimate no-no question – how much money do you have? But back then, I still didn’t properly understand all that and, even if I had, I still would have said it.
This time he recovered quickly.
‘You know what, Stella?’ he said, looking at me tenderly again. ‘I really don’t know how much money I have – and I don’t really care. Yes, it’s a lot. The family trusts are huge and I am the main heir, by another accident of birth, or rather death. My older brother died in an accident nearly twelve years ago.’
He sighed and looked sad for a moment. I squeezed his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. Now he had mentioned it, a tragic death in the Fisher family rang a bell somewhere in my head, but this didn’t seem the moment to ask him about it.
‘Anyway,’ he said, gathering himself. ‘I don’t know how they come up with figures like “ten billion”. I think they make it up, because it’s hard to assess. A lot of it’s in property – Fishercorp owns quite a bit of midtown Manhattan. Then there is a whole load of investments and other stuff, even apart from the banking, so when people talk about “billions”, it’s not money in sacks, it’s the aggregate value of all the things that we own, which we will never sell. It’s almost like virtual money.
‘As far as how it affects me, I guess I’m rich enough not to have to think about money on a day-to-day level – except that I am not allowed not to think about it, because everywhere I go people treat me as some kind of a freak because they know about it.’
He paused.
‘Do you know I have people – total strangers – come up to me and touch me for luck. And not in India, or Mexico – in New York City. Do you know how weird that is?’
I sh
ook my head. ‘That is weird. That’s horrible, actually.’
‘And do you know who else never allows me to stop thinking about the fucking money?’
I shook my head.
‘My goddam family. It’s all they ever think about.’
His eyes narrowed suddenly.
‘Did your father mention my family? You know, when he was warning you off all Fishers?’
I didn’t want to answer that. I just looked down at my plate.
‘Did he mention my dear Uncle Edward, by any chance?’
My head snapped up to look at him, before I could stop it. Jay was nodding. He raised his wine glass to me and took a big swig.
‘That’ll be it. Your dad had to work with Uncle Ed on the museum project.’
He leaned towards me, across the table.
‘My Uncle Edward is a nightmare. He and the equally appalling Michael Fisher. They’re radioactive, they’re so awful. My dad isn’t much better, but a little less crazy, because he was born before them, so he’s the big swinging dick of their generation. I suffer because I’m next in line for that role – they suffer because they’re not.’
I didn’t say anything, but Jay was spelling out exactly the reasons Ham felt inherited wealth screwed people up. It was too ironic to be funny.
‘That whole museum project was mainly set up by my dad to keep Edward occupied,’ Jay continued. ‘And to make him feel important. It was also a desperate attempt to stop Michael drinking himself to death, by having to turn up at the odd board meeting. So I can quite see why knowing them would make your dad wary of me.’
He paused again. I smiled weakly. I wasn’t going to betray Ham any further by repeating what he’d said about Edward and Michael Fisher. That was potentially damaging to his career and I wouldn’t do that to him, not even for Jay.
‘But your dad’s met me,’ said Jay urgently. ‘Surely he could see I’m not like them.’
‘He did say how much he liked you, Jay, but he’s got it into his head that however nice you seem on the surface, the context of your inherited wealth would not be good for me – and…’ Now I had to get the really hard part out. And he’s made me promise not to see you again.’
Cents and Sensibility Page 19
