An Ocean Apart

by Robin Pilcher

  “Not too good. I think I’ve got the flu as well as a hangover.”

  “Christ, you poor bugger! You should have said something!” He paused. “Look, I’m going to come back tonight, but you’ll probably be finished way before me, so I suggest you get yourself to Penn Station and just take a train to Patchogue. You can get a taxi from there.” He delved in the pocket of his jacket, at the same time flicking open his brief-case. “There’s the key of the house, and”—he took a mobile phone from the case—“I think you’d better call ahead and tell them that you’re running about half an hour late.” He shook his head and looked sheepishly at David. “I really am sorry about all of this.”

  The journey thereafter was completed in silence. Richard, green-faced in his sufferance of the mother of all hangovers, sat snoring loudly with his mouth open and his eyes closed, while David pulled his jacket tight around himself to try to curb his interminable shivering. Dan drove as fast as the speed limit and the traffic would allow, but by the time they reached the queue for the toll at the Midtown Tunnel, Richard’s projected half-hour delay was already five minutes over schedule.

  Dan looked round from the front seat. “Do you know where on Madison you’re going, Mr. Costawfin?”

  “Yes, somewhere between Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth East.”

  Dan nodded. “Right—that’s easy enough. Just along Forty-second and up Madison. If it’s all the same with you, Mr. Eggar, we’ll drop off Mr. Costawfin first.”

  “Certainly, Dan,” Richard agreed. “Without question.”

  The horn-blowing Manhattan traffic was heavier than Dan had anticipated, with the result that it took a further ten minutes to reach the block of Forty-fifth and Madison. Bidding Richard a cursory farewell, David jumped out of the car, then proceeded to take another ten minutes of frantic searching to find the building in which the offices of Deakin Distribution were situated. By the time he came out of the creaking lift onto the fifteenth floor, the clock on the wall opposite read five past eleven. He looked up and down the corridor. At the far end, a polished brass plaque bearing the company’s name hung on the wall beside a pair of large glass doors. He ran towards them and burst into the reception area so forcefully that the young blonde receptionist, her mouth open with fright, pushed her seat back from the desk, as if she felt that her office had suddenly come under siege from an Armed Response Unit.

  David turned to catch the hinged glass door as it swung wildly back and forth following his forceful entry. “Sorry about that,” he said almost inaudibly, trying to calm the situation by talking quietly.

  The girl never took her eyes off him, but warily drew her chair back to the desk. “Can I help you?” she drawled, an annoyed slant to her voice.

  “Yes,” David said, trying to catch his breath following his exertions of the past quarter of an hour. “I’m afraid that I was meant to be here at ten o’clock, but I was held up. I’m from Glendurnich Distilleries Limited.”

  “And you are…” The girl ran her finger down the appointment book on her desk before looking back up at him with a sudden light and happy look on her face. “… Mr. Corstorphine?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If you would like to follow me, sir, the directors are waiting for you in the boardroom.”

  David followed her as she teetered along the narrow, newly carpeted corridor, her feet splayed out in stiletto-heeled shoes which made her tight-skirted bottom swing unnervingly from side to side in front of him. She stopped outside one of the doors, knocked and, without waiting for a reply, opened the door and stepped aside to allow David to enter.

  A group of five or six men sat slouched in their chairs around a long boardroom table, some with their hands linked behind their heads. As he entered, they pulled themselves upright and swung round to look at him, then jumped to their feet in unison. A silver-haired man who had been sitting up at the far end made his way down the side of the table to meet him.

  “David,” he said, approaching him, his hand outstretched and a wide, beaming smile on his face. “Charles Deakin, managing director of Deakin Distribution.”

  David took his hand, and Deakin clenched it in his powerful grasp, giving it a shoulder-dislocating shake. He let go and clapped his hands together, as if wanting to start proceedings immediately.

  “So you eventually found us,” he said, pulling out a vacant chair for David and making his way back to his own at the head of the table. “I must apologize for not having sent you directions. I thought that you must have been to New York before and knew about our morning traffic!”

  Charles Deakin had reached the top of the table as he finished his sentence and, turning to face David with a sardonic smile on his face, was joined in his moment of amusement by a rippling murmur from the rest of the assembled company. David smiled weakly. Apart from their managing director, all of those around the table were at least ten years younger than himself and dressed as though they were following a strict company code of attire—in razor-creased shirts, muted silk ties and brightly coloured gold-slided braces. He became acutely conscious of the fact that his own dark grey worsted suit looked old and dull, not only standing out in stark contrast against the vibrance of his companions’ dress, but also perfectly reflecting the way that he felt within.

  As Deakin sat, everyone around the table immediately followed his lead. David moved quickly to his own chair, realizing that he was in danger of getting completely out of step with the meeting. God, he thought to himself, what am I doing here? I should be in bed. Anyway, this was destined to be a mistake. I should never have agreed to come out here in the first place. His head pounded mercilessly, perspiration soaked the back of his shirt, and he became aware that his cheeks were shivering uncontrollably. He leaned forward in his chair, thinking that he should try to offer some explanation for his being late, but as he opened his mouth to speak, Deakin cut in.

  “I’m afraid that we’ll have to press on, David, as some of the guys have other meetings scheduled for mid-day. Alex here”—he held out his upturned palm in the direction of the young man beside him, who leaped to his feet and went to stand by the flip-chart in the corner of the room—“will be carrying out the presentation, and will introduce you to each of my colleagues in turn as he explains their individual involvement in the marketing and distribution strategy that we have laid out for Glendurnich.” He opened the presentation document in front of him. “So, gentlemen, if you will all turn to page one, I’ll hand over to Alex.”

  Deakin swung his chair round to face Alex, and there was a sound of acetate scraping against paper as the men opened their files. David, trying to keep up with proceedings, leaned over the side of his chair, picked up his brief-case and opened it up. The document was not on the top. It must be below the pad of paper. It wasn’t there. He slid his hand to the bottom of the pile of papers and flicked his thumb through them. Nothing. He pulled open the flaps on the lid of the brief-case and stuck his hand down inside, but they were empty. A cold, terrifying sense of realization overcame him as his frowning concentration began to clear away hazy memories of the night before, and he remembered that he had taken it out to read in bed. Oh, no, he’d never put it back! It was still on his bed.

  Alex, who had started the presentation, halted when he noticed David still scrambling inside his brief-case and stood looking in his direction, turning his black marker over and over and tapping its end impatiently on the palm of his hand. Charles Deakin, following the eye-line of his young colleague, swung round in his chair and looked down the table towards David. There was silence. David glanced up and saw that everyone was looking at him.

  “Are you all right, David?” Charles Deakin asked.

  David pushed his fingers through his hair and scratched at the back of his head. “Erm, I’m sorry—no—I don’t seem to have the paperwork. I think I’ve left it behind.”

  “Not in Scotland, I hope!” Charles Deakin said with a chuckle, and his colleagues once more dutifully joined him in
his amusement.

  “No!” David said, a little too loud, thinking that he had to defend what little credibility he had left with the assembled company. “I mean, no, I’ve left it in my bedroom where I’m staying.”

  Charles Deakin nodded and smiled down the table at him. “No problem,” he said slowly, as if he were about to explain a point to a classful of primary-school children. “If you would like to take Jack’s copy and Jack, you share with Curtis.”

  Jack slid the document down the table, and David smiled an embarrassed thank-you at him. Deakin swung his chair back to face Alex. “Right! Let’s get going.”

  Everything, from that moment on, came in a blur. Alex’s voice sounded as if it were being played back through a slowed-down tape recorder, as the young man waarp-waarped his way through the presentation. He introduced each of the men in turn, and one by one they stood up, grinned in David’s direction, and sat down again, their movements as slow and as fluid as the motions of weightless astronauts, without David’s catching either their names or what roles they would be playing in the future marketing of Glendurnich in America. His mind drifted, a bizarre continuity in its train of thought. It started with his father, and how he had let him down so badly by making such a fool of himself at this meeting; then he thought of meeting his father in the boardroom at Glendurnich and how delighted he had been that he was to be staying with Richard; Richard, his friend, caught in a spiralling whirlpool of discontented unfulfilment with Angie, his wife; his own wife, Rachel, and the turmoil in his mind suddenly abated as he returned to Scotland with her, to long summer evenings down at the loch with their children, Rachel lying spread-eagled with laughter on the bank, while he, his jeans rolled up to his knees, waded into the loch to catch on camera the mad and uncoordinated antics of the children in the boat.

  The last of the men around the table had sat down again, and the sudden break in activity penetrated his senses enough to make him realize that Charles Deakin was talking to him. He screwed up his eyes to clear his head.

  “Sorry?”

  Deakin repeated his question. “Are you married, David?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great,” the managing director continued immediately, “because we think that it would be opportune for your wife to accompany you on these PR trips. We Americans prize family tradit——”

  “NO!” David yelled out.

  Everyone sat back, startled at the sudden outburst. David clamped his hand over his mouth.

  “I beg your pardon?” Deakin asked.

  “No,” David said, his voice choking. He had never said it before. No one had ever asked him that question. Everybody knew. “I’m sorry, I meant to say no—I’m not married.”

  There was a slight shifting of body weight in chairs, as the directors shot uncomprehending glances at one other.

  “You’re—not—married,” Charles Deakin said slowly.

  David looked along the table at him, feeling a tear suddenly trickle down his cheek and onto his hand. He shook his head once in the direction of them all, then, pushing out his chair, he jumped to his feet and, slamming his case shut, ran towards the door.

  “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me.”

  He threw the door open and walked hurriedly along to the reception area. The girl smiled as he approached, then her face went expressionless as she saw the look on David’s face. He strode past her without speaking, pushed open the glass doors, and left the offices of Deakin Distribution.

  There was a stunned silence for thirty seconds following David’s departure from the boardroom, broken only when Charles Deakin rose slowly from his chair. He cleared his throat.

  “Well, gentlemen. I’m not quite sure what happened there.” He turned and walked over to the window, the faces of his young executives following him as he went. He stuck his hands into the back of the waistband of his trousers and looked out at Manhattan. After a minute he returned to his place, gathered up his papers, and thumped their ends once on the desk.

  “I think the best course of action would be for me to speak immediately with Duncan Caple at Glendurnich, and thereafter I’ll circulate a memo to you all which will include the outcome of this meeting.” He reached the door and turned round. “Thank you all for being in attendance.” He pushed open the door and left the boardroom, leaving a crescendo of discussion behind him.

  * * *

  Tears welled up in David’s eyes as he thumped at the elevator button with the palm of his hand. The panel showed lights on the fourth and twenty-third floors, but neither car seemed to be moving. He stood close to the door, his head bowed, willing one of them to reach the fifteenth floor before someone came out of the offices of Deakin Distribution to question him about his behaviour. A bell pinged once and the door farthest from him opened. He glanced in. It was empty, thank God. He dived into its haven of solitude, pressed the ground-floor button, and slumped back against the steel panelling. As the doors closed on him, he knew he was alone and, dropping his brief-case to the ground, he covered his face with his hands and broke into convulsive sobs, at the same time sliding down the panelling until he squatted on the floor.

  Never before had he been so exposed to the reality of losing Rachel. Never before had he been so unable to control his emotions. But it seemed that, over the past twenty-four hours, fate had hit on a systematic plan to break down his defences, battering at his endurance, his emotions, his self-confidence, before delivering the final coup de grâce in the boardroom. It had worked. He felt no semblance of self-respect, no measure of ability, and now felt no inclination to suppress the one thing that he wanted to fill his thoughts with day and night—the memory of Rachel. He pulled his knees close to his chin and stared out in front of him, letting her name run through his mind over and over, like a jumping needle on a scratched record.

  The doors clunked open on the third floor, and a black girl with a laden mail-cart held them back with one hand as she manoeuvred her vehicle in with the other. She looked down at David, leaned across to push the ground-floor button on the panel, and as the doors closed and the lift set off again, she squeezed herself back behind her trolley. She took a pack of chewing-gum out of her pocket, pulled a stick out with her teeth, undid its wrapper and pushed it into her mouth. She looked down at David again. “Hard day, huh?”

  David continued to stare directly in front of him, his eyes vacant yet his mind focused on his thoughts. The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Never mind, friend,” she said, looking up at the floor indicator just as the ground-floor light lit up. “By the looks of you, I don’t think things could get much worse.”

  The doors opened and, with a hefty push, she rolled out her cart. David remained where he was, making no effort to move, not caring what happened to him and not really wishing to go anywhere else. He watched as the doors began to close on his solitude once more, but before they shut completely, a hand shot in and pushed them back. The girl leaned into the lift, her hand outstretched. “Come on, it’ll do you no good goin’ up and down the building all day. Just make you sick. Anyways, I might end up pushin’ my cart in here again, and that’ll only get me feelin’ as depressed as you.”

  David looked up at her beaming face and slowly stretched up and took her hand. Effortlessly, she pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go, friend,” she said, guiding him out of the lift. “You’ll feel better with some fresh air.”

  She walked him over to the doors of the building and took him outside onto the sidewalk. “You okay?” she asked, a concerned look on her face.

  David looked at her and nodded, forcing a smile onto his face. He held up his hand in thanks and started to walk south down Madison, for no good reason other than that was the direction in which he was facing. The girl watched him for a moment, then, shaking her head, went back into the building.

  He walked slowly, concentrating his sludged mind on moving one foot in front of the other, his legs feeling as if they were filled with a mixture of cement
and jelly, the combined effect making him weave like a drunkard from side to side. He started to cross over Forty-fifth Street without noticing the signal and a cab screeched to a halt inches from his right hip. The driver slammed his hand on the horn and yelled something at him out of the window. He ran the remainder of the way to the sidewalk, finding that even that small amount of exertion had left him feeling exhausted, and leaned his back against the spindly trunk of a street-side tree, its thin branches waving in the blustering breeze that whirled through the shadowed streets. Despite the warmth in the air, he felt freezing cold, and with one hand pulled together his suit jacket and fastened the buttons. He tilted back his head to see at what point the skyscrapers ceased to cast their shadows onto the streets below, then continued his gaze on upwards until he was looking directly above into the unshielded warmth of the deep blue sky. Little things, he thought to himself, little things please little bloody minds.

  He pushed himself off the tree and continued to walk aimlessly down Madison Avenue, on collision course with the side-stepping masses that approached him. Fifteen minutes later he had reached the block between Thirty-first and Thirty-second Street and stopped outside the open door of a pub, its glass window bearing the name FLANAGAN’S in gold crescent-shaped lettering. He looked in at the long bar, stretching thirty feet back into the depths of the building, every inch of it occupied by early lunch-time drinkers, and after a moment he entered and began to sidle his way through the crowd to the far end. A young barman in a white shirt and green bow-tie caught his eye and came down towards him, running a cloth over the bar as he walked. “What can I get you, sor?” he asked in a strong Irish brogue.

  David looked around to see what others were drinking. The young suit next to him was drinking Budweiser from the neck. “Budweiser.”

  “Would that be bottle or tap?”

  “Tap—and I’ll have a Scotch malt as well.”

  The bartender held the beer glass under the gurgling tap. “Any particular brand?”