Rich Deceiver

by Gillian White

  ‘If you want to do those things, why haven’t you done them already?’

  It was so difficult to explain. ‘There never seems any point. I sound pathetic, don’t I? As if I am just a reflection, not real unless Malc says so.’

  He didn’t answer that, but said, ‘And you truly believe that a few lucky breaks are going to change this man?’

  ‘Not change him—no, not change him! It’s already there underneath. It’s all there, I know because I knew him when he was different. There was a time when he wanted those things, too. He’s kind and gentle underneath and I don’t think he likes himself as he is any more than I do, but he’s seen his dreams crash down around him so many times that he’s buried them. He’s taken the easy way out, if you like. He’s not strange or extraordinary, Robert, he’s done what so many people do and he’s put a barrier around him.’

  ‘The trouble is, Malcolm’s barrier seems to have circled you both.’

  Ellie said, ‘I’m not angry, or bitter.’

  ‘You don’t need to be—Malcolm is carrying it all for you. And isn’t there a danger that what you’re doing is asking him to carry you again? You’ve no need to, you know. You’re strong enough on your own.’

  But she wasn’t strong. She didn’t want to be strong and she found it slightly annoying, the way he kept insisting that she was. ‘I find it very easy to talk to you, Robert,’ she stared at her glass, ‘or is it the wine? I’m not used to wine at lunchtime, you know. Normally I slip across to the sandwich bar for a cheese and pickle roll.’

  ‘I suppose you’re planning to carry on working?’

  ‘I have to,’ said Ellie, ‘until the plan starts to take shape. I don’t mind working—I wouldn’t know what to do with myself at home all day.’

  ‘But when Malcolm makes his fortune this, too, will be different?’

  Ellie ignored the slight irony in his tone. She was proud to be sitting in here with this striking young man and talking so intimately like this. She had a superior feeling whenever a woman walked by. It was funny, really, what money could buy… like this kind of hidden factor that she’d never imagined when she’d filled in that column of numbers over all those years. She was glad the bank manager hadn’t been a woman. She knew what sort of woman they’d choose… one of the Caroline Plunket-Kirbys of this world who wouldn’t have listened in quite the same way. A woman wouldn’t have considered her ‘interesting’ and women were more sensible than men—oh, not women like Di or Margot—but successful women, powerful women…

  They would talk down to her.

  They would see through her, they would know how she was enjoying all this. They might even tell her not to be silly while Robert Beasely thought she was only absorbed in the plan.

  ‘If I had come into your bank and deposited one hundred pounds you wouldn’t have given me the time of day, would you?’ she asked him now. ‘I have never spoken to a bank manager before. I have never been on first-name terms with any professional person before… not even the doctor, and we’ve had him for years. We still call him Doctor Grant. People like you, you know, their eyes slide off those who have nothing, and when enough people’s eyes slide off you, in the end you can feel you have disappeared.’

  ‘If you had come into the bank and deposited a hundred pounds you would not have been in need of my help,’ he told her. And she shouldn’t be accepting more wine, but she was.

  ‘I might have needed help, perhaps with debts, and that need would have been more real, in a way, than this one, which some people would call rather fanciful. You wouldn’t have invited me to lunch if I’d come to you weighed down under a load of debts.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t, but then the bank would not stand to profit from you very much if you were in that sort of trouble.’

  ‘So we’re only sitting here now, talking and drinking and eating, because I am good for business?’

  ‘That’s not strictly true. We needn’t have had lunch—we could have discussed all this in my office. I am genuinely interested in what you are trying to do and I am interested enough to involve myself personally, Ellie.’

  ‘I like that,’ she said, and then hiccupped and knew she’d drunk too much wine.

  ‘What is it you like?’

  ‘That you are taking a personal interest. It would have been difficult to go through with this, all on my own.’

  And she loved the warm smile that he gave her.

  It was a sensible decision that they should meet once a month on a Wednesday… and that she would ring the bank the day before to confirm.

  7

  THIRD TIME LUCKY—JUST as it had been in her own case.

  Oh no, Malc had not gone through with it the first time, nor the second, but Ellie pinned all her hopes on this, the third time of trying. She pretended she wasn’t hoping at all, and all day long she tried not to think about it.

  She wasn’t a Catholic, but she’d even been to light a candle in the Cathedral and she’d sat down, closed her eyes and said a little prayer on his behalf.

  He let her ring up in response to the ad on the strength of winning the snowball. She was very polite on the telephone but she stated his name very slowly and clearly, spelling out FREEMAN—in case the girl made a mistake.

  ‘He is the one,’ she wanted to shout. ‘He is the one you are after!’

  Back came the application form. It was both formal and formidable, with no humanity in it. They had not amended it in any way, on purpose, Ellie supposed, for it wouldn’t do to raise his suspicions. Malc opened it in a hurry before leaving for work, held it at arm’s length, frowned then leaned across as if to stuff it straight in the bit bin.

  Ellie held up her hand like a traffic cop. ‘Malc—don’t do that! At least let me see it.’

  But his attitude was that of a cross little boy who didn’t want his mother to see… what? Another carefully devised instrument of rejection?

  ‘Let’s just look at it and read it. Tonight, perhaps, when we’ve got more time.’

  Malc stood up. ‘You do whatever you like, Elle, but don’t expect me to take any part in it. They’ll have thousands of replies to an ad like that, and look, they want to know everything about me, down to the colour of my frigging underpants. Well, I’m not prepared to get into these kinds of games.’

  No! You are not prepared—not because you disapprove of them, but because you are so terrified of losing!

  ‘How would it be if you had nothing to do with it, if I filled it in and sent it back? I’d even forge your signature. You would never need to know anything more about it.’

  He stared at her belligerently, suddenly terribly angry. ‘I’d sodding well know if they turned me down, and what is this anyway, Elle? What’s so great about this job?’

  Ellie subsided. ‘I just have a feeling about it, that’s all.’

  ‘You do what you like, Elle, you always do anyway,’ he said as he left the house, banging the door behind him.

  So that was the first time he tried to back down, but Ellie ignored it.

  She took the application form to work because she knew she had to fill it in when Malc wasn’t around. To see her sitting there in the evening with the form on the arm of her chair and a pen in her hand would have been, for Malc, too threatening and too wounding. She filled it in between customers. Even knowing that he’d get the job, she wanted to fill it in correctly. She wanted to give these people a good impression of the man who was her husband—she didn’t want to be seen by anyone as some kind of misdirected charity.

  Experience. Ellie leaned over the counter, letting her eyes rest on an unpacked box of flashing Christmas tree earrings and tapped her teeth with a pen which had a teddy bear dangling off the end. Twenty years with the same company must count for something! He’d passed his fork-lift truck test, he’d learned to work the computer and he had a basic certificate to prove it. He was strong from all the years of carting sacks, he was loyal, he never took days off and his overalls were always clean—Ellie saw to
that.

  She put it all down.

  Examinations. How stupid of her—she’d gone and put his two certificates down in the Experience section. Well of course Malc didn’t have any exams. Ellie thought about Kevin, and quite without shame she listed his… English language and literature; history; French; maths; geography; sociology; art; physics and chemistry—should she stick down the A-levels, too? She decided against it; for a salesman’s job that might have been going too far. She didn’t want them to think he was overqualified.

  But what was Malc doing in a warehouse with ten GCEs?

  Oh, she couldn’t bother about that… she’d done it now, and anyway, that does happen to people… odd people.

  Medical History. Well, that was easy. Malc had never had anything seriously wrong with him, apart from the odd broken bone, in his life.

  Motivation? She’d been told that the partners were American, and this strange question was surely something that only Americans could understand. But still, it had to be tackled and she knew she couldn’t put ‘the money’. It had to be something to do with ‘getting on’—they wanted to know if Malc was aggressive enough. Twenty years in the same old warehouse was a daunting stumbling block in this particular section, and one for which the company might genuinely want an answer. There was quite a wide space so Ellie filled it with, ‘This is the first time in my life when I have been able to think about my own prospects because the children have left home and I don’t have that responsibility any more. I am determined to make up for lost time.’ Then she thought for a bit and decided to add, on its own at the bottom, ‘For me it is now or never.’

  She hoped she hadn’t made him look like a man clutching at straws.

  Then there were easy bits like Religion and Driving Experience. Easy, because Malc had neither of these.

  Ellie posted the form on her way home, fairly pleased with her work and not prepared to discuss it, but when he came in that night Malc asked her if she’d sent it. He tried to sound uninterested, as if he didn’t really care one way or the other, and Ellie replied in the same vein, with nonchalance.

  ‘Well, that was a bloody waste of a stamp then,’ he said, turning on the telly and turning himself off to her and to the whole matter.

  The invitation to go for an interview was cleverly done. It was a print-out, with only his name typed differently at the top, so it looked as if the same invitation had gone out to hundreds of applicants.

  ‘But I can’t bloody drive,’ said Malc, refusing even to look at it.

  ‘Well, what if I ring them up and ask about that?’ ventured Ellie, despairing.

  Malc stared at her with curiosity. ‘Oh, they’re going to love that, aren’t they? They’re going to love having women ringing them up at all hours of the day and night asking damn stupid questions like that.’

  ‘I don’t see why they’d mind,’ said Ellie weakly.

  ‘You daft bat,’ snorted Malc, turning away in disgust.

  And then she’d had to tell another of her lies. She discovered she was good at this lying game… she had to be.

  ‘They were ever so nice on the phone, Malc. Really friendly and helpful. They say that not being able to drive is no problem. It is the right man they are after, and they don’t mind paying for driving lessons. They said that naturally they’d prefer an experienced driver, but that it was by no means essential.’

  Malc looked surprised. ‘Well, they must be out of their minds then, and not the sort of set up any right-minded person would want to work for.’

  And then Ellie got angry. She stood over his chair and banged clouds of dust out of the top of it. She felt like reaching just a bit further down and bringing her clenched fist on to his head. ‘I’m just getting sick and tired and fed up with all this, Malcolm! Here’s me, going out of my way to fill in forms and post them off and make phone calls as if I’ve got nothing better to do with my time, and there’s you, sitting there with that stupid look on your face like a great lumbering lout! Okay, okay, all right! You don’t think you’ll get it, you don’t want to make a clown of yourself, but you’re not, you fucking feeble sod! Get up off your arse and TRY, Malc, and if you don’t get the frigging job then we’ll say sod it all, go and have a drink, and forget all about it.’ And then she softened. ‘But why don’t you just go for the interview? After all, you swore you wouldn’t get this far but you have.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over you, Elle.’ He didn’t turn round.

  ‘Well nor do I, but that’s just how I feel.’ She flumped across the room and sat down in her own chair, exhausted. She tried to stop but she couldn’t… she couldn’t stop herself crying. She was so near! So bloody near and yet still so far. She almost hated him… no, no, she did hate him then, just briefly.

  He said, ‘Don’t cry, Elle.’

  ‘Well, what else am I supposed to do?’ she sniffed.

  She could tell he was thinking it over. ‘If I went for the interview I wouldn’t want anyone else to know,’ he said at last, grudgingly.

  ‘Well, of course not,’ agreed Ellie, sniffing again loudly. ‘It’s nobody else’s business, is it?’

  ‘Not Di, or Margot.’

  She fluffed herself up in her chair, gasping on hope. ‘I wouldn’t tell them. I wouldn’t dream of telling them.’

  He looked at her sharply. He was silent for a while and she didn’t break it. Somebody answered the call to ‘Come on Down’ on the telly, the audience roared and the fire crackled uneasily. ‘When do they want me?’ Malc asked.

  ‘Next Tuesday.’

  ‘I’d have to take a day off and they’d want to know why.’

  ‘You’re going to the doctor’s,’ said Ellie quickly, ‘with your hernia.’

  ‘And taking the whole day about it?’

  Oh Malc, she wanted to scream… these pissing little issues of life! So much scree had fallen behind him that when he turned round he saw another huge mountain. ‘You can tell them you were in too much pain. You won’t need a doctor’s note for one day!’

  The day of the interview finally came along and then they’d gone through the hassle of what he ought to wear and his cut chin. She sorted him out, but at work Ellie was a nervous wreck unable to concentrate on anything. She clutched her hands together at one point and yes, she actually prayed for him. And she squeezed her eyes closed, willing it, willing it, willing it, and saying over and over again, ‘Oh dear God let them be nice to him. And let him not go to pieces completely so that they have to come back to Robert and explain that they just can’t accept him.’

  But her heart was light as she hurried home on a vast billow of hope, soaring. She didn’t notice the storm that raged, the rain didn’t wet her and the wind didn’t buffet her. She floated above such inconsequentials as weather: let others discuss such mundane matters, not her. For this was the moment… the beginning of everything! This was like staring at that cheque again, that hysterical excitement when there were no words, only feelings too large to contain on your own. Now they were going to share it at last! This was what winning the jackpot on the pools was really all about!

  ‘I didn’t go.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I didn’t go. The rain started coming through the bedroom ceiling again, there were buckets to fetch and then I had to go down to Leesons to get some plaster…’

  ‘Did you ring them up? Did you explain?’ The rain was running down her neck and her hair had been blown all over the place. Ellie shivered.

  ‘Didn’t think they’d miss me. They must’ve had plenty of others to interview…’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Ellie!’

  ‘Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.’

  He tried to approach her with a soft face and soft words. ‘Elle, it wouldn’t have worked, my love. Calm down and think about it for a moment…’

  She took off her mac. She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t. She said, ‘I have been thinking about it, Malc’

  He flapped, ‘How could I
have left the bedroom with the carpet getting wet?’

  ‘You have managed to leave the bedroom ceiling for at least five years.’

  ‘The rain hasn’t been coming in for that long, Elle, don’t exaggerate.’

  She stood very stiffly. ‘I do not want to hear you say the words “bedroom ceiling”, not once more, not ever again, not in my whole life, do you hear me, Malc?’

  He gestured helplessly with his hands. He said, ‘Ellie!’

  She didn’t move. ‘This means a lot to me, Malc’

  ‘Well, I realise that. Hell, I can’t help but realise that, but I can’t arrange the weather just to suit…’

  ‘I am going, now, to ring them up.’

  ‘Oh Ellie, why won’t you leave it alone?’

  ‘Because I just won’t, that’s why.’

  ‘But there’s a storm out there.’

  ‘I’m not bothered about any sodding storm.’ She tried to put her mac back on but he stepped forward to prevent her.

  ‘There won’t be anyone there, Elle. It is after six o’clock.’

  ‘Well, I’m going out anyway.’ She fought him. They wrestled, fumbling about together for a moment, neither of them knowing what they were doing until Ellie screamed, ‘Leave me alone!’

  And Malc seemed to collapse. He told her, ‘All right, Elle, all right. I will ring them tomorrow and see if I can make another appointment. I will explain about the storm and the damage to the house and ask if they will see me again.’

  ‘And you’ll apologise?’

  ‘Yes. All right, I’ll apologise.’

  ‘You swear to me, Malc’

  ‘Yes, I swear to you.’

  The next time Malc was due to go for his interview Ellie forced herself to feel nothing. If the thought came into her head then she pushed it aside because it had grown too big for her to cope with. She took an hour and a half off at lunchtime, got on a bus for nowhere and found herself sitting in the Catholic Cathedral staring listlessly at a candle. She couldn’t say how she’d got there, she had the strangest feeling of being somebody else. She came home from work in a perfectly ordinary manner and got on with the liver casserole. She arranged the meat, carrots, swede and onions, and was covering the whole lot with a layer of potatoes, sliced very thinly, when he came through the door and stood before her with a smile on his face. ‘I got it!’