Three's a Crowd

by Simon Booker

  ‘Sounds great.’

  And that’s when I felt my throat constricting and the tears glaze my eyes. Sodding hormones!

  ‘Are we okay, Tom?’ I said, fumbling for a tissue.

  His smile was back.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ I said, blinking back tears. ‘Let’s hope we can say the same for Nan.’

  TOM

  Heading home on the Victoria Line, maybe it was the three whiskies I’d downed in the pub near the tube station but Harriet’s voice sounded different – firmer somehow, bordering on hostile. Or perhaps it was my imagination. Either way, when I stumbled onto the overground at Highbury & Islington, there she was again. Even the briefest announcement – ‘next stop, Dalston Junction’ – seemed to have taken on a brittle edge, as if she’d decided to give me, like, the cold shoulder. Just me, of course. No one else. Too much Johnnie Walker will do that to a man.

  Next stop, Dalston Junction. And no ‘lasagne’, thank you, Tom Brocklebank. As for ‘sofa, telly and a bottle of wine’ – who do you think you’re kidding?

  We’d both known what I’d meant by ‘a quiet night in’. Was I disappointed by her rebuff? Of course. Surprised? No. It wasn’t the ideal moment to make a pass, but with my father en route to Paris I could see she was impressed by his man-of-action shtick and I couldn’t help wondering how many more chances there would be to have her to myself. In hindsight, the doorstep lunge was a dumb move, doomed to fail. Dad’s reaction to George whisking Nancy off to Paris was much smarter. That he stood little chance of finding them was irrelevant. He was doing something. What was my response? A lame pass. Meh.

  All the same, there was still time to save the day. By now, my hopes of making progress with Harriet – of pulling off a coup that would throw serious shade on my father – were pinned on the musical. The songs were in good shape, even if I said so myself. And not only had she helped me to get the show ready, perhaps she’d done me a favour by, like, rebuffing my overture.

  I now planned to work all weekend, finessing the lyrics, honing the melodies, perfecting the libretto. Every word counted, every note, every beat. The date of the showcase was in Paul Mendoza’s diary, all I had to do was book the room above my local and make sure the show was ready. Zara and I needed more rehearsal time but no impresario would expect us to be ‘off the book’. The point wasn’t to show him a polished production ready for opening night, but to whet his appetite and persuade him to invest seed money in They F**k You Up – to put some skin in the game.

  By the time I got home, the cat was asleep, annoyed to be woken as I sat at the Yamaha and started running through the opening bars of a new song, ‘Co-dependent Blues’. Or maybe it was the smell of my Big Mac that roused her – the quarter-pounder-with-cheese that was my response to being snubbed by Harriet. If I couldn’t have her, at least I could have meat.

  (Men think this way, especially when drunk. I know.)

  Nelson gave the Big Mac a disdainful sniff then let herself out through the cat flap. Alone with, like, half a bottle of whisky, a pack of Marlboro Lights and exercise books filled with scribbled scores and lyrics, I sat at the keyboard, plugged in my headphones and settled down to work.

  Over the last few weeks, I’d grown accustomed to the show being an obsession – a distraction from thinking about Harriet 24/7. But at 3 a.m. – with the whisky and cigarettes gone – the truth hit me like a speeding truck. They F**k You Up was no distraction. It was everything – the personal and the professional inextricably bound, one dependent on the other.

  I’m not sure when I moved onto the sofa – probably around 4 a.m. – but I know when I was jolted awake: 8 a.m. on the dot. My phone rang. Dad’s name flashed onscreen.

  ‘Sorry to wake you,’ he said.

  I tried to speak but my tongue felt as if someone had shoved a tobacco loofah in my mouth, and my skull was threatening to burst open.

  ‘It’s about George,’ he said.

  I sat up, blinking against the daylight, my head throbbing. ‘Have you found him?’

  ‘Yes. And Nancy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve got bad news.’

  RICHARD

  I stepped off the train at the Gare du Nord just before midnight. Climbing into a taxi, my first stop was The Ritz. The receptionist declined to reveal if Monsieur George Brocklebank was a guest at the hotel. The same applied when I enquired about ‘Lord Anthony Buckingham’.

  ‘I’m sorry, m’sieur. We cannot divulge such information.’

  Two hundred euros later it was a different story. Cash talks, especially at establishments frequented by the wealthy, where treatment of staff is often poor and the pay even worse.

  Keeping the taxi on standby, I repeated the exercise at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée, Le Meurice, The George V, Hôtel de Crillon and Le Bristol. I didn’t bother with the Mandarin Oriental. My father would have dismissed it as a ‘palace of bling’. He was an old school bon viveur with a ton of money and no time to lose. Only the best would do.

  There was nothing to admire about a man who had committed the ultimate betrayal, and yet I couldn’t help feeling a sneaking regard for one aspect of his Parisian adventure: in spite of everything, it mattered that he’d decided to share it with a woman his own age rather than younger models who would have happily helped him to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.

  It was harder to understand Nancy’s motive for joining him on the jaunt. What kind of woman colludes in stealing from her own granddaughter? Or perhaps the truth was more complicated.

  It was 2 a.m. before I decided to take a break. Paying the cab driver, I found an all-night café and sat outside with a glass of Ricard and a cigarette, huddled in my coat, glad of the fedora clamped to my head. I contemplated sending Harriet a text but decided against it. The best outcome would be to find Nancy and George together, fit and well, then retrieve Harriet’s cash, or what was left of it. Mission accomplished, I could return to London triumphant. Would my boldness sway her? Would it seal the deal? Doubtful, but it could do no harm – and anyway, it was the right thing to do, not least because it was a way of keeping tabs on George… and of doing everything possible to ensure the man kept his mouth shut about Tom.

  Strolling by the Seine, I recalled the last time I’d visited Paris with Bonnie, twenty years ago. Tom was five. We’d left him with her parents and spent a springtime weekend eating in out-of-the-way restaurants and making love with an intensity we hadn’t known since our early days.

  ‘Making love’ was the correct term for it, too, not ‘having sex’ or ‘shagging’. And ‘romance’ was the mot juste for what we’d had all those years ago. I’d been in love before, of course, and so had she, but even as our honeymoon period had segued into something more mature we’d managed to remain smitten. Love letters, poems, Post-its on the pillow or stuck to the bathroom mirror. Lingering looks, flowers, a brush of fingertips under the table at a dinner party. Surprise gifts – nothing extravagant, but thoughtfully chosen books and CDs, or tickets to a sought-after concert or play – in the good times, maybe even a surprise plane ticket to Venice, Amsterdam or Rome. The fact that life had been so enjoyable had made Bonnie’s betrayal harder to bear, but also meant there was so much to walk away from. That weekend in Paris had been our final carefree jaunt, our last weekend of innocence before the revelation that had blighted not only Tom’s birthday but the rest of our lives. In the end, I’d stayed not for his sake but for my own.

  My melancholy was interrupted by the chirruping of my phone. I stared at the caller’s name, taking a moment before answering. I’d tried George’s mobile several times since discovering his vanishing act, but now here he was, his name flashing onscreen.

  ‘Damn you to hell,’ I said. ‘What are you playing at?’

  A pause then a woman’s voice.

  ‘Richard?’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Nancy. Is there any chance you might be able to help me?’

  ‘Is
my father with you?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘He’s with me, yes. We’re in Paris.’

  ‘Me too. I came to find you.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case, perhaps you could come straightaway?’

  She gave me the address of a hotel in the fifth arrondissement. I flagged down a taxi. The streets were almost empty and the journey took less than five minutes. As we turned into a narrow cobbled street and pulled to a halt outside the nondescript building that housed the three-star L’Hôtel Hortense, I saw Nancy in the doorway.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said as the taxi drove away. ‘Your father’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  She put a hand on my shoulder. ‘He passed away. Two hours ago. I’m so sorry.’

  I’d half-expected it, of course, but her words still had the power to take my breath away. I leaned against the hotel door and sank to a crouch.

  * * *

  I don’t recall a great deal about the next few hours. I remember the apologetic smile on the face of the hotel manager; the cosy room on the top floor where George lay in bed, naked; Nancy sweeping his little blue pills into a bin. The rest is a blur.

  I must have contacted Tom and Harriet, and I guess I called Pam to tell her I wouldn’t be at work for at least a week (repatriating a body is no simple matter). As dawn broke over the rooftops I knew that even as I was discharging my duty, formulating plans for the funeral, I’d already decided there would be one notable absentee – me.

  Among many bizarre moments (the woman from the British Consulate who giggled at inappropriate moments, the struggle of the funeral directors to carry George’s body down the narrow staircase) the thing that sticks in my memory is being drawn aside by Nancy and ushered into the bathroom.

  ‘He said this is where he used to come with your mum,’ she said. ‘I thought it was sweet, after all his fancy hotels.’ She nodded towards the shower. ‘That’s where you were conceived.’

  I must have flinched.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I expect they’ve given it a squirt of Mr Muscle.’ She managed half a smile then her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry for your troubles,’ she said. ‘He told me about Bonnie, how he regretted that affair more than anything. And don’t fret – I won’t breathe a word to Tom.’

  I watched as she opened the cupboard under the sink and drew out a canvas holdall. It bore George’s initials. G.O.B. George Albert Brocklebank.

  ‘Before I agreed to come I made him promise that he would return this to Harriet,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s probably best if you give it to her.’

  I unzipped the holdall. It was filled with fifty-pound notes.

  ‘Nine-hundred-and-twenty-two thousand, eight-hundred-and-fifty quid,’ said Nancy. ‘Lord knows how he fenced those diamonds, and I’ve no idea how you’re going to get it back to London but you’ll think of something. Harriet says you’re resourceful.’

  I said nothing, watching as the woman extracted a notepad from the side pocket of the holdall.

  ‘Better this than months in a hospital with tubes up his nose,’ she said. ‘And it could have been worse. He told me the pacemaker had given him an extra ten years.’

  ‘My father had a pacemaker?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I expect he didn’t want to worry you.’

  As if. Did she seriously think he gave a damn about anyone but himself? She opened the notepad to reveal one of his pencil sketches: a picture of a baby – a boy.

  ‘It’s Tom,’ I said, running a finger over the baby’s face.

  Nancy shook her head. ‘It’s you.’

  Underneath my father’s signature was an inscription.

  For R with love. Better late than never.

  I turned the pages. Another drawing: me as a baby. And another: older now – perhaps two or three. I flicked through the notepad. Each page contained a sketch of me, drawn by my father recording my childhood, from infancy to adolescence. Funny thing was, I had no recollection of him drawing me, ever.

  As I stared at the sketches, I dimly remember Nancy leaving the bathroom then returning with my father’s yellow pocket square. She held it out but I shook my head.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just something in my eye.’

  Despite her presence, I felt more alone than at any time in my life. There was only one person I wanted to be with, one person I could think about.

  Being around death has a way of concentrating the mind, of shifting the focus to what really matters. Had George not died, I would almost certainly not have done what I did when I got back to London, so I suppose I have him to thank for spurring me into action, but was I sorry the old bastard was gone? No. It would take every ounce of self-control to prevent me from dancing on his grave.

  HARRIET

  Nan came home on Sunday night. Tom and I were waiting. Sipping tea in the kitchen, she told us about the holdall full of fifty-pound notes. Apparently George had whisked it through customs without breaking a sweat. Richard was planning to smuggle it back into the UK, hiding it in his father’s coffin. Even Tom had to admit the idea was ingenious.

  For the next few days, while Richard was arranging the repatriation of George’s body, I did the breakfast show with his stand-in, a smarmy bloke called Chris. Nice enough, I suppose, but we didn’t have the same rapport and I was relieved when the week was over.

  Richard called twice, once on Tuesday and once on Friday evening. He sounded drunk both times and said there was something he needed to talk to me about.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Not now. Next time I see you.’

  On Saturday night, I suggested to Tom that he might like to cook us all a (non-veggie) meal but he was busy, putting the finishing touches to They F**k You Up, so I settled for a Chinese takeaway. When I got back from collecting it, Richard was sitting at the kitchen table, the holdall at his feet.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ I said.

  Nan planted a kiss on my cheek. She was wearing a new perfume. It smelt expensive.

  ‘Before I agreed to go to Paris,’ she said, ‘I made George promise you’d get all the cash. I didn’t think you’d mind if he spent a few bob on me first – on us, I suppose – but now it’s yours, all of it. You and the baby.’

  I raised a quizzical eyebrow in Richard’s direction. He nodded. ‘Every penny.’

  Bending down, I unzipped the holdall and gasped, feeling as if I’d strayed into a heist movie.

  ‘Nearly a million quid,’ said Nan.

  My heart was trying to fight its way out of my chest.

  ‘Shouldn’t we give it back?’ I said.

  ‘Who to?’ said Nan. ‘Damian’s dad? He’s pushing up daisies. Damian doesn’t deserve a penny. Or maybe you’d like to try to track down some tax-dodging toerags who lost a safe deposit box full of dodgy diamonds?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what you’ll do with it, Harriet – it’s not as if you can swan into the estate agent’s and buy a house for cash – but you’ll work something out. If you ask me, at thirty-five it’s a nice problem to have.’

  She said she had a headache and was going upstairs, to watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I had the impression that Richard had asked her to make herself scarce, so he could get me on my own. I served up the food and tucked into a plate of crispy beef while he toyed with a spring roll.

  ‘Will you go back to being vegetarian?’ he said. ‘After you’ve had the baby?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Maybe. Right now I’m doing whatever my body tells me.’

  He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin.

  ‘Quite a week.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘The funeral’s on Wednesday.’

  ‘Same day as Tom’s musical,’ I said. ‘Are you coming?’

  He gave a tight smile. ‘We’ll see.’

 
I could tell he had something else on his mind and I was right. He cleared his throat and put down his fork.

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said. ‘Nan says a death in the family makes you take stock.’

  ‘So does divorce.’

  ‘Is Bonnie coming to the funeral?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Won’t Tom be disappointed?’ I said.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Richard. ‘And Goa is a long way.’

  ‘They have planes.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s best she stays away.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘You’re making me nervous.’

  And that’s when he reached across the table and took my hand.

  ‘My father had a saying I agree with: “Life is short. Eat the cake, buy the shoes, take the trip.” This isn’t the ideal time but I think you know how I feel about you.’

  OH

  MY

  GOD

  ‘I think you like me, too,’ he continued.

  ‘Um. Of course.’

  JESUS

  H

  CHRIST

  ‘So… I was wondering…’ He tailed off then tried again. ‘I was wondering if – when the divorce is finalized, obviously – you might do me the honour of becoming my life.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘You said “life”.’

  ‘A Freudian slip. Let’s try again. I wonder if you would do me the honour of becoming my wife.’ I drew breath to respond but he put a finger to my lips. ‘It sounds crazy and I know there’s something rather Jane Austen about proposing to someone you’ve only kissed in the back of a taxi, but you’re right: a death in the family – even my motley crew – makes you think about what’s important. And the answer is very simple: I love you.’

  I was aching to speak but he wasn’t finished.

  ‘Don’t answer now,’ he said. ‘We’ve been through a lot – especially you – but things are looking up. You’ve plenty of money so you won’t think I’m proposing because of old-fashioned ideas about sweeping you up into a big house and showering you with gifts, like a delicate doll who can’t take care of herself. Yes, I want to look after you – and the baby – but you’re an independent woman and I know you’re going to be a success, whatever you decide to do.’ He held my gaze. ‘I think we could make a good life together. So will you think about it? At least until after the funeral?’