Cents and Sensibility

by Maggie Alderson

  He just stared at me, frozen. He had tears in his eyes and I was glad.

  ‘I’ll be watching you,’ I said viciously, and I turned my back on him and walked away, fast.

  He called after me, but I ignored him and when I saw a cab at Seven Dials, I jumped into it.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ said the cabbie. ‘Where can I take you?’

  I had no idea. Suddenly Zara and Top Shop had lost all their allure and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere near that tea at The Berkeley. I wasn’t up to making interested remarks about a bespoke mascara service. I wasn’t ready to go back to the office either and my house was way too close to Ham’s territory.

  I gave him the address of Margot’s nursing home.

  19

  As we got closer to Avonlea Residential Care Home, I wondered whether a visit to Margot had been such a good idea. It was well after lunchtime and she was liable to be in a deep, alcoholic fug. She probably wouldn’t even remember I’d been afterwards, but I decided to go anyway. I needed to see someone I could talk to about my dad – with no inhibitions.

  I got out of the cab at an off licence nearby and bought her a large bottle of brandy, a bottle of Moët, and a carton of cigarettes. I always struggled with my conscience about doing that, but she would just buy them herself anyway and the look of delight when you turned up with those kinds of presents, was the closest to happiness I think she ever got any more.

  I also bought her a pile of glossy magazines, which she still enjoyed looking at. She liked the ‘gowns’, she used to tell me.

  ‘Daaaaaaarling,’ she said, when I walked in, clapping her manicured hands with delight. ‘What an unexpected joy. Come and tell me everything – in filthy detail.’

  She was much more lucid than I had been expecting. It must have been a good day and it clearly got better for her, when she saw what I’d brought with me.

  ‘Oooh, you marvellously clever girl,’ she said in her throatiest tones. ‘I did train you well. Just open that cupboard by my bed, would you, sweetheart?’

  She directed me to the middle shelf and behind a frilly make-up bag, was a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of angostura bitters.

  ‘Did you mean these?’ I asked her, holding them up, her plan becoming clear to me.

  She giggled girlishly and nodded. ‘Champagne cocktails all round, don’t you think?’

  So I made us the drinks just as I had learned to, from her book of cocktail recipes – she even had a couple of champagne flutes stashed in her underwear drawer, along with some emergency gin – and between us, we quickly polished off the whole bottle of Moët.

  After the third champagne cocktail, I was already so pissed I was slurring my words – and I was smoking, which was something I never did.

  And in my drunken state, I told her the entire story of me and Jay, and Ham’s interference, plus the problems I was having at work, all leading up to what I had seen in Monmouth Street that afternoon.

  I had no idea how much of it she took in and I didn’t really care. I just needed to tell someone the whole unexpurgated history and, as long as I kept mixing the drinks, Margot was all ears.

  When we finished the champagne we moved on to neat cognac and after a couple of those I was beginning to feel like maybe I really had drunk enough.

  I was starting to nod off a bit in my chair, when suddenly, through the pall of smoke between us, her Rank starlet tones rang out. It was as though someone had suddenly turned the radio on. To the Home Service.

  ‘So what you are telling me, darling girl,’ she said, ashing her cigarette on to the floor, with great aplomb. ‘Is that for the first time in your life you are really in love with this young man – who is very handsome and frightfully rich. You are also having a tiresome time at work. Well, I really don’t see what your dilemma is. You must go to him immediately. Stuff the job. Let him spoil you. Enjoy yourself. And as for your wretched father? Stuff him too. It’s time a woman stood up to him – and who better than you?’

  And then she fell asleep – or unconscious, there wasn’t much in between with Margot – in her chair. I kissed her on her powdery cheek and left.

  I rang Jay from the cab home.

  ‘I’m drunk,’ was the first thing I said to him. ‘I’m really really falling-down drunk, so don’t hold any of this against me, but I had to call you.’

  Jay laughed.

  ‘You do sound loaded. What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ve had the shittiest of shit days and I just got completely hammered with my dad’s second wife. She’s a total alky, but I love her.’

  ‘What was so shit?’ he said, sounding genuinely concerned.

  ‘Oh, just all kinds of crap at work and then – then…’ I started crying, I couldn’t help myself. ‘I saw my dad with another woman…’

  Now I was wailing. The taxi driver was glancing at me in his rear-view mirror, with some concern. Probably worried I might be about to vomit all over his cab. He might be right, I thought, starting to hiccup between wails.

  ‘Oh, you poor baby,’ said Jay.

  ‘I mean, I know my dad is a total womanizer,’ I was gabbling. ‘He always has been and he used to make me answer the phone and lie to women, when I was just a little girl, but I thought he might have finally grown up and he hasn’t. He’s just a total bastard and I love Chloe and she’s pregnant. How could he, Jay? I mean, he drones on and on about the sanctity of “family” until it makes you want to spew, and then as soon as his pregnant wife grows a belly, he’s off schtupping the first skinny blonde who hoves into view. He’s such a hypocrite and a liar.’

  ‘Oh, baby,’ Jay kept saying. ‘That is hard, that is real hard. I wish I was there for you.’

  I wailed and hiccupped a bit more.

  ‘Look,’ he said, suddenly sounding businesslike. ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ve got a big meeting with my dad this afternoon – at the bank, nightmare – and I’ve got to go up to Rhode Island with him this weekend, I can’t get out of it, big family powwow, but as soon as that’s done, I’m coming over there. I’m going to be there for you. I’ll leave Monday night, OK?’

  And I just wept into the phone with relief.

  I woke early on Saturday morning with a hangover from hell. Did Margot wake up feeling like that every day? No wonder she drank; the only way to get over hangovers like that would be to get loaded again.

  I groped for my phone and checked to see if Jay had rung. He had, leaving a beautiful message saying he would leave his phone on all night and that I could call him whenever I wanted. There was also a short, rather strained one, from Ham, saying that they had gone down to Willow Barn and that he would try me again later. I deleted it.

  Ham left several more messages over the weekend and I just zapped them all without even listening to them properly. I hadn’t quite worked out how I was going to handle it with him, because if I declared war, we would have to give Chloe an explanation. Then inspiration struck. I would use the truth to cover up his lies.

  I rang his mobile and left this message.

  ‘It’s Stella. Don’t call me back. I’m not talking to you and I don’t want to see you – possibly ever again. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone why. I’m good at keeping your secrets. I’ve done it all my life, after all. And you can tell Chloe I’m angry with you because of your fatwa against Jay Fisher. You’re good at lying, Dad. You won’t find it very hard.’

  I hoped it would really hurt him.

  After all that, I was more than relieved to get back into work on Monday morning, and I breezed into the section editors’ meeting, feeling quite light-hearted. That was shortlived. Once everyone was settled down and ready, Martin Ryan looked up at me over his frameless glasses.

  ‘Stella,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise. We didn’t expect to see you here today.’

  I just looked back at him, not getting his point.

  ‘This is the section editors’ meeting, Stella,’ he said slowly, as though he was talking to a halfwit, his co
ld eyes disappearing behind the flash of the lenses. ‘And as you don’t have a section any more, you don’t need to be here, do you? So you can go back to your desk.’

  For a moment, I just looked at him, unable to believe what I was hearing and then I had no choice. I picked up my notebook and pen and left the meeting room, feeling like a schoolgirl who had been sent out of class.

  By the time I got back to my desk, I was trembling with fury, but I was thinking very clearly. I got a form out of my filing cabinet and filled it in. Then I went straight up to Doughnut’s office and gave it to his PA.

  ‘This is a holiday form, Sheila,’ I said. ‘Starting today. I’ve got six weeks due to me and I’m taking it all. Will you please tell Mr McDonagh that as my section has been postponed, I might as well take some time off now, so I’ll be raring to go when it starts up. And if he needs me to come back early, you just have to ring me. I’ll be on my mobile.’

  Sheila nodded.

  ‘I’m sure that will be fine,’ she said.

  But I didn’t really care whether it was or not, I was out of there. I stopped off in my office briefly to collect my stuff and to send explanatory emails to Ned, Tim and Peter, then I left.

  I called Jay as soon as I was out of the building.

  ‘Don’t get on that flight tonight,’ I told him. ‘I’m coming over there to see you.’

  ‘You are?’ he said, sounding delighted. ‘Wow, that is the best news, I can’t tell you. I’m having a truly heinous time with my dad, right now, and I can think of nothing better than having you come visit.’

  ‘So, what’s your address?’ I said, feeling dizzily carefree and excited.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ll meet you at the airport. And don’t worry about your flight either. Just go to the ΒΑ desk at Heathrow and it will all be fixed for you. Which flight do you want to get?’

  Unlike Jay, I didn’t have the New York–London flight schedule off by heart, so he told me to get the next plane, which left in three hours.

  ‘Have you got your passport with you?’ he asked.

  I did. I was a newspaper journalist, I always carried my passport.

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘Then just go straight to the airport from the office. We’ll get you everything you need when you’re here.’

  I was stumped for a moment. It was such an alien concept to go somewhere without packing, but when I thought about it, if I had him to look after me, what did I really need?

  For once, perhaps, I could leave my baggage behind.

  From the moment I landed at JFK, my time with Jay was charmed. He was waiting at the gate when I came through from customs and I practically fell into his arms. He had a black stretch limo outside and, as we climbed in, he turned off the intercom and closed the window between us and the driver.

  ‘Welcome to New York,’ he said, smiling as he unbuttoned my shirt.

  By the time we pulled up outside his building in SoHo, he’d made love to me twice. Then we went up to his apartment and did it some more.

  I woke up jet-lag early the next day and leaving him sleeping, went to look at his place, which I’d hardly taken in the night before. A whole floor of a classic SoHo loft conversion, it was huge, incredibly light, and the walls were covered in books and fantastic paintings. It was exactly the kind of apartment I had expected Jay to live in.

  I made myself some tea – I was pleased to see he had my favourite English Breakfast tea bags in for me, he knew what I liked – and I sat down on one of his several sofas, to take it all in.

  In pride of place on a blank wall between the floor-to-ceiling bookcases was a classic Warhol portrait of a woman. I got up off the sofa and perched on the window seat so I could look at it properly. There was something familiar about her face, but I couldn’t place it.

  I was still gazing at it, when Jay appeared, naked, rubbing his tummy, in that sweet, boyish way he had.

  ‘Saying hi to Mom, are you?’ he said, smiling at me through blinky eyes.

  ‘Is that your mother?’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘She looks like you,’ I said, realizing why the face had looked familiar. ‘Same eyes.’

  ‘Yeah, people say that,’ said Jay, sitting down next to me and putting his arm around my waist. He kissed the top of my head. ‘Hey, baby,’ he said. ‘It’s so good you’re here.’

  I just sighed and rested my head against his shoulder. I felt completely relaxed with him. There was no awkwardness between us at all and sitting there with him, the various big messes I had left behind in London seemed irrelevant and unimportant.

  ‘I suppose that’s a real Warhol, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jay, casually. ‘Mom was good friends with him. She was one of the first people he did in that style.’

  Immediately, the Grand Canyon yawned between us again. He wasn’t acting cool, it just wasn’t a big deal to him.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  From that first day – when he sent me off to Barneys in a chauffeured car, with his charge card, to buy everything I needed for my stay – there were numerous more occasions when I was reminded of that chasm, but in the end I made a conscious decision to stop letting it freak me out.

  Instead, I just relaxed and let myself enjoy it. Of course, I had my own money for bits and pieces, I wasn’t entirely a kept woman, but once I surrendered to it, it was actually rather nice to let him spoil me for a while. Margot had been right about that.

  And as I met more of his friends – mostly other money bunnies, like George and Zaria, some hideous like her, but mostly OK in a rich-kid way – I realized that it was the differences between us, combined with all the things we shared, that made the relationship so compelling for us both.

  Although we socialized a bit, most of the time it was just the two of us, doing all the things we both loved to do. Going to galleries and museums in the morning and movies in the afternoon. Browsing in bookshops. Lying on our backs in Central Park, watching the clouds go by. Whiling away afternoons just talking in all the great little bars and cafés he knew. And dancing into the small hours, sometimes in seriously cool clubs, sometimes just the two of us in his apartment.

  He took me to my first baseball game and I took him to his first Iyengar yoga class and the rest of the time we made love like the pair of rampant loved-up crazies we were. It was one long magic-carpet ride.

  The only irritation was Ham calling and texting me furiously for the first few days, until eventually I relented and called him back.

  ‘Where are you?’ he practically screamed down the phone at me. ‘You’re not in the mews and I’ve called your office and they’ve told me you’ve gone on holiday and I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. We all have.’

  ‘I’m in New York staying with a friend,’ I said. ‘After what happened, I just couldn’t stand to be anywhere near you and your fake family values, so I’m staying here for a few weeks.’

  ‘Who are you staying with in New York?’ he asked me, suspiciously. I just ignored him.

  ‘Is everyone OK?’ I asked him. ‘How’s Chloe? How’s Daisy?’

  ‘They’re all fine. They all send love.’

  There was a long silence and I did nothing to fill it. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him. Eventually he spoke again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stella,’ he said, and he did sound it. ‘I’ve been really stupid and what you said that day has really made me think. I’m really sorry I have behaved so badly with women all your life. It’s hardly surprising you find it hard to trust men. And you’re right, Chloe is the best woman in the world and I won’t do anything to jeopardize that. Please forgive me, Stella, if you can?’

  I thought for a moment. He did sound sorry, but it wasn’t enough. And how dare he make sweeping statements about me not trusting men? I trusted Jay implicitly. I just didn’t trust him.

  ‘No,’ I said, eventually. ‘I won’t.’

  And I hung up.

  One of the most joyful thin
gs about being in New York with Jay, after our time creeping around London like fugitives, hiding from my father and the paparazzi, was the sense of freedom.

  We strolled around SoHo holding hands and Jay was completely uninhibited about public displays of affection. He’d stand on a street corner snogging me, while we waited for the lights to change, if that’s what he felt like doing.

  I asked him about it one day, when we were sitting in our regular daytime haunt, Café Gitane, which was just round the corner from the apartment.

  Aren’t you worried about the paparazzi here?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them around a bit. I didn’t tell you at the time, but one took some pictures of us coming back from that goddam yoga class of yours the other day – I still have sore hamstrings from that, by the way. But I don’t think it’s a problem because, with all due respect, no one knows who you are here. They’ll just think you are one of my many girlfriends.’

  He tickled me in the ribs as he said it.

  ‘Am I?’ I couldn’t help asking, although it was a subject we never went near – exes, long-losts, other love interests, it never came up, it was one of the things I really liked about Jay. We lived in the moment.

  ‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘You’re my only girlfriend and well you know it, so shut up, or I’ll start thinking you’re obsessing on the towel monogram.’

  I stuck my tongue out at him. He so knew I wasn’t.

  Spending so much time together, Jay and I really opened up to each other about our respective families and I was so glad I hadn’t read that book about the Fishers, as it meant I was able to react with proper sincerity to everything he told me about his brother’s untimely death and his appalling relationship with his father.

  The problem between them was quite simple, as far as I could tell. First and foremost, they just didn’t get on and then, since the death of his brother, Jay was expected to take over running the whole empire when his father retired, and he had absolutely no interest in doing so.