Cents and Sensibility
Page 34
She looked at me with real distress on her face.
‘He made her cry the other day, he was so snappy with her,’ she said quietly. ‘So, while I love you dearly, in all honesty, Stella, I’m getting a bit pissed off with it. It’s been weeks now, surely you’ve gone off the boil a bit? Couldn’t you just sit and talk to him and try and work it out? You’re both adults, Stella.’
I felt anger flash through me, like a lightning bolt. She was the bloody reason I’d fallen out with him – protecting her from his appalling behaviour. For a millisecond I felt like telling her what it was all about, and about Jeanette, for good measure, but sense stopped me.
‘Is it still over that Jay Fisher business?’ said Chloe, clearly determined to push me on it, but before I could speak, Daisy came running back into the kitchen with a sequinned evening bag.
‘Here it is, Mummy, I’ve got your bag,’ she was saying. ‘It had lipstick in it. Can I have some lipstick?’
She was so clearly already wearing it – all over her face – my eyes met Chloe’s and we dissolved into laughter. It was the perfect tension breaker.
‘It’s mainly that,’ I said, when we’d recovered. ‘But there’s other stuff as well. It’s really complicated. Oh, I don’t know, Chloe. I’m sorry if he’s been giving you a hard time, but I’m still finding it really hard to forgive him.’
‘But weren’t you staying with Jay Fisher in New York anyway?’ she persisted. ‘Henry showed me a picture of you with him, in the paper.’
‘Yes, I was staying with him.’
‘So, if you’re not keeping that ridiculous promise Henry asked you to make all that time ago, why are you so angry with him? You’ve got your man and I think Henry is more than ready to make it up with you, if you’d just let him.’
‘I haven’t got my man,’ I said, quickly. ‘We broke up.’
I had to struggle to keep my composure. I wanted to burst into tears all over her, but I didn’t dare start.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Stella,’ said Chloe, putting her hand on my arm. ‘I’m really sorry. Forget everything I said. With that and what’s happened with your job, I can see you’re having a hard enough time without me laying a big guilt trip on you. So just forget what I said and do what you need to do to get through. You can’t be having a very easy time.’
‘Thanks, Chloe,’ I said, holding it together by a thread. ‘It is a bit crap, actually, but I’ll survive.’
I bolted my coffee in one swig, told Chloe I had stuff to do and I’d see her later, but before I could get down from my stool, she put her hand on my arm again.
‘Why don’t you go down to Willow Barn for a while?’ she said. ‘Henry’s in Chicago, so we won’t be going down this weekend, or next. You can have some time to yourself down there.’
And as she spoke, I realized it was exactly what I needed to do.
22
Although there were reminders of my father in every inch of the place, Willow Barn seemed to work its magic on me from the moment I walked through the door.
Even though it was such a big house – the main living area was often described as ‘cathedralic’ by architecture writers – it was still a very comfortable space to be in on your own.
I slept in my favourite room in the kiddie corridor, had music playing night and day through the whole house, and spent my time reading, napping, walking in the garden and surrounding countryside, and exercising mindlessly.
Jay had taught me how to be busy doing nothing, I thought bitterly to myself, as I pedalled furiously on Ham’s exercise bike, while watching Brief Encounter on cable TV.
The first time I used the pool, I had a strong flashback to the electrifying moment I had seen Ned there, glorious in his manhood, and felt sorry the way I had left things between us.
So when I got back into the house I called him – the sort of light-hearted, hello-how-are-you? do-you-want-to-meet-up-sometime? kind of call that you make to a friend, with no reference to what had happened that weird day – and I felt much better for it when I hung up.
The only thing that disturbed me about our conversation was that while I was kicking around at Willow Barn like I was on a mission to waste time, he was already having job interviews.
‘I’ve been to see four papers, but I think it’s going to be The Observer? he had said excitedly. ‘I had a really good meeting with them this morning and it was the stuff I did on the paper in Melbourne that they really liked – especially my series on youth gangs and organized crime – and it looks like they want to take me on as a junior investigative reporter. So I guess that means I won’t be seeing you at any more key-ring launches, I’m afraid…’
My phone had been ringing too – the word had got round predictably quickly in my claustrophobic little world – but so far nothing had emerged I could even be bothered going up to town to follow up.
Becca had rung to tell me she could get me consulting work with Cartier anytime I wanted, and Tara Ryman had called to ask me if I wanted to join her company as a senior account director, with Huguenot as my major client.
The gossip columns of two mid-market tabloid newspapers had also offered me jobs – but they were clearly more interested in my connections with Jay and his crowd, plus my father’s clients and political associates, than in my writing skills.
I diplomatically declined them all.
Then when Monday morning came around and there was a big report about the Journal resignations in The Guardian media section, I saw that there was a job going in newspapers that I was more than qualified for: Laura Birchwood had left the Post to take up my position on the Journal.
What really surprised me about it was that I didn’t care. I didn’t want my old job – or hers, any more – but I couldn’t get excited about the idea of trying to kick-start a more challenging journalistic career either.
It was hard to admit it to myself, but if The Observer had called up offering me the kind of role they were signing Ned up for, I would have run a mile. Suddenly, it just all seemed too hard.
But as the days passed, in between working out and lazing about, I did have one pursuit to keep me seriously occupied down there. When I wasn’t flicking through Ham’s art books, snoozing through an old movie on cable – even CNN seemed too much effort – or torturing myself by listening to Van Morrison, and all the other music Jay loved, I put a lot of effort into trying to track him down.
At first I had been too shell-shocked even to try, but then something happened that shook me out of my torpor. I was idly flicking through the papers one morning when I came across a feature called ‘From Crack House to Art House’.
It was about a young guy in LA who had been a hopeless crack addict, but who was now making a successful international career as a video artist, after being helped on his way by a charitable foundation which helped young drug addicts through rehab and mentored them into careers in the arts. He was having his first big London show at White Cube and everyone was very excited about him.
The piece went on at some length about the great work the foundation was doing and it was only then that it struck me: it was ‘B & Me’ – the charity Jay had set up in memory of his brother – yet nowhere in the article was he mentioned. He’d said he liked to keep a low profile about his involvement and now I could see he wasn’t kidding.
The article said that the foundation was funded by ‘anonymous benefactors’ and that it was ‘breaking new ground’ in the rehabilitation of drug-addicted young people, with much greater success at keeping them away from substance abuse and the associated criminal lifestyle than most other post-rehab programmes.
I felt sick with shame for what I’d said that day on Sveti Stefan.
I could still see the way Jay had looked at me when I’d called the foundation ‘a money-bunny guilt charity’ and the shame prompted me into action: I had to get hold of him, just to apologize for that, if nothing else. I could still hear myself saying it was a ‘play job’. I shuddered at the memory. How co
uld I have been so nasty?
I also remembered all too well what he’d said about his last word being final – and I knew exactly how stubborn he was – so I didn’t expect him to take me back or anything, but I had to say sorry for those awful things I’d said.
The fact that I no longer had any of his numbers did nothing to deter me. I kept trying his mobile, although I knew he would have changed it, and when I called his home number, there wasn’t even an answering service on that any more either. I emailed him and it bounced back.
I rang international directory enquiries to try and find out his new home number – I had his address after all – but no dice. I knew it was hopeless, but I had to try. There must have been a bit of the dogged newspaper reporter left in me, after all, I realized.
One desperate afternoon I even called Zaria – I had her ‘private’ mobile number, which she had made a great show of giving me while I was in New York with Jay, so we could ‘get together for girly lunches’, as she had put it at the time.
I was quite surprised when she answered – in very friendly tones – it clearly was the really private number.
‘Oh, hi, Zaria,’ I stuttered out. ‘It’s Stella here – Stella Montecourt? Jay’s, er, friend?’
But before I could even ask if she would give me his new mobile number, she had cut me off. I rang straight back – in case it was a transatlantic phone error – and it went straight to message bank. I didn’t leave one. And when I tried the number again, a couple of days later – almost out of curiosity – I wasn’t at all surprised when it just rang out.
But still I didn’t give up. Even in my desperation I baulked at sending an email to the address I found on the Β & Me website, so I wrote him a good old-fashioned letter and sent it off by snail mail to the New York apartment, desperately hoping it would get to him wherever he was and he would call me.
Then another line of enquiry occurred and I rang Amy at Pratler, to see if she had his new mobile number.
‘Stella, darling,’ she said. How great to hear from you – I was going to call you. We were talking about you in an ideas meeting the other day and Katie really wants you to write for the mag. Would you do a piece for us?’
Katie Wilde was the famously bright editor of Pratler, and writing for her was the first offer that had actually interested me. It might have been a society magazine, but it had really good features and was widely read. It could lead on to other interesting freelance work, I thought, maybe even Vanity Fair.
‘That sounds interesting,’ I said, feeling vaguely energized about work for the first time since I’d walked out of the Journal. ‘What sort of thing have they got in mind?’
‘Well,’ said Amy. ‘We want to do a major profile of Zaria Xydis. She won’t give us an interview, but we’ve got hold of some great pictures of her from Town and Country and Katie thought perhaps you could ask her, because you know her so well through Jay Fisher. You saw a lot of her when you were in New York with him, didn’t you?’
It was all I could do not to put the phone down on her, but I knew Amy wasn’t nasty, she wasn’t doing it to torture me, it was just her job. And there was no point denying any of it. Amy was kissy-kissy pals with all the people Jay and I had been hanging out with while I was in New York, she knew exactly what I’d been doing, where, when and with whom.
‘Er, no, I don’t think I really want to do that,’ I said. ‘It’s a bit complicated and actually, Amy, that’s why I rang you – I wondered if you can help me find Jay. I seem to have lost him again. Do you have his latest mobile number by any chance? Because the one I’ve got is kaput and he seems to have changed his home number too. And his email.’
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, sounding sincerely sorry – and more than a little disappointed. ‘That is such a shame, I’d heard you two were quite the little couple, but it is how those boys operate, I’m afraid. Now, let me have a look…’
But the numbers she gave me were the ones I already had. I really had lost him – and that wasn’t the end of it. When I opened the Daily Mail a couple of days later, my very worst fears were confirmed.
There was a picture of him leaving his building in SoHo with ‘stunning Argentinian beef princess Patrizia Fernandez’. Next to it was a story, quoting ‘sources close to Fisher’, who believed she would be the one ‘finally to bag New York’s most eligible bachelor’ and that they were ‘expecting an announcement any day’.
I studied that picture with the intensity of a scholar with a newly discovered medieval manuscript. She was beautiful, there was no denying that, and very chic. I thought back to the picture of me with him in my yoga gear, and cringed.
They weren’t holding hands, that was one blessed relief, I think that would have killed me, but she was smiling, clearly very at ease in his company. I studied Jay’s face. Did he look happy and in love? No, he didn’t. His expression was blank, I couldn’t read it at all. He could have been thinking about what he was going to have for breakfast.
When I felt strong, I told myself that maybe she had an apartment in the same building and they had just happened to be leaving at the same moment – although I’d never seen her there.
Then, if I really wanted to torture myself, I would imagine that they had been on their way round to Café Gitane for strong macchiatos, before heading off to a new exhibition and lunch at MoMA, or maybe a film at the Angelika in the afternoon, followed by dinner at Balthazar and late drinks at Bungalow 8.
Running through a scenario like that could leave me lying on the sofa sobbing for what felt like hours.
It was after one such crying jag that I decided I needed some fresh air. I went out through the back door and wandered around the garden for a while, admiring the last of the summer roses.
Then I strolled through the orchard pulling the seed heads off the long grass and scattering them around, and checking the progress of the fruit. The plums were over, but the apples and pears were coming along nicely. They’d be ready in a couple of weeks or so.
I wouldn’t be there for Ham’s annual apple harvest picnic and barn dance that year, I thought sadly. It was always great fun, but I wasn’t planning on taking part in any of his jolly family events anytime soon. They were just too bogus.
Without even thinking where I was going, I headed for the tree house. Its warm resinous woody smell was a comfort as soon as I climbed inside and I lay on my back on the floor, staring up at the knots in the ceiling planks and reflecting on the chain of events which had led me to be lying there in filthy old track pants and a stained T-shirt, my hair unwashed for days.
It was three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Had things been different, I reflected, I might just have been leaving a lunch at The Wolseley with the PR for Baume and Mercier, and wondering whether to go back to my desk at the Journal, before a six-thirty drinks party at the Burberry flagship store in Bond Street, to launch a new range of signature plaid iPod covers.
Alternatively, I might have been at the Journal, proofreading the final pages for my brilliantly successful luxury supplement, which would be coming out the next morning. Or just having a laugh in my office with Ned and Peter.
Or, I might have been sitting in Café Gitane with Jay, discussing US intervention in the internal political structures of foreign states, or the latest Ang Lee film. Or we might just have been in bed.
I rolled over on to my side and groaned. I’d fucked it all up, I thought. Even the parts of it that were within my control, I’d totally destroyed it all.
I was so wrapped up in my miserable thoughts, I didn’t hear anyone climbing the steps up to the tree house and nearly died of fright when a face appeared at the door opposite me.
It was Ham.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ he was saying, as he struggled to get his large bulk through the small opening, and once he was inside he just took me in his arms and held me. I was so surprised I didn’t protest. I sank my face into the intoxicatingly familiar smell of his shirt and wept.
I tried to speak, but I could only hiccup and splutter. It wasn’t the kind of hysterical crying I’d been doing over Jay, it was more sobbing with relief. Because the moment I had seen that huge craggy head of his, I’d realized how very much I’d missed him.
‘Oh, Ham,’ I said, when I could finally speak. He offered me his shirt tail to blow my nose on and I did. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been an idiot. I was furious with you, but I shouldn’t have let it go on so long.’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’m the idiot. I’ve been an idiot all your life. I deserved to be told off. I don’t know what I was doing with that woman, you were right, you caught me red-handed, but while I don’t expect to be absolved from that, all I can tell you is that it was the first time I’ve strayed for years, Stella. Please believe me. And I won’t do it again.’
He looked down at his hands for a moment and when he looked back up at me, there was real shame in his eyes.
‘I’ve been looking hell in the face these past few weeks,’ he said. ‘Thinking what I’d do if you told Chloe and I lost her. I’ll never do it again.’
‘Do you promise?’ I said. At least he was being honest about what he’d done at last. It was the pretending I couldn’t stand.
‘I promise. I really really promise. You made me realize what I was risking there. I’m not a young man any more, Stella. I may have small children, but I’m getting on. I think that’s why I did it, really, the last desperate seduction of an ageing lothario, wanting to prove to himself he still has pulling power, but that’s no excuse. Having small kids is all the more reason to behave like an adult myself.’
It was a fair and reasonable declaration and I decided to accept it at face value.
Sitting there with him, the air almost visibly starting to clear between us, I felt like I was able to breathe out again for the first time since I’d seen him on that terrible Friday – but then I remembered what Ned had told me about Jeanette. I had to ask him about it. I needed to know how low he was.