Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  ‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long,’ she said, as Miles stood over her, urging her to hurry up.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Sleep with you all night in a proper bed. Not a hotel one, I mean. It feels different, much nicer.’

  ‘Yes, well, if you could just keep moving Serena, I have a breakfast to go to.’

  ‘You don’t have to wait for me. I can see myself out.’

  ‘No, better if we leave together. And we need to be out of here in five minutes.’ He was thinking about the double hazard of Conception lurking in the hall, and Makepiece parked outside the front door. He felt like a prisoner in his own home.

  But Serena would not be hurried. Stretching out in Floris-scented water, she said, ‘I do like those houses across the garden. With the pediments and pillars. They look wider than the others in the square.’

  ‘They are. One of them was lived in by the speculator who built the square in the first place. Its all flats now. The other one’s a refuge for battered women or something, they’re not allowed into the garden.’

  ‘How mean. Why ever not?’

  ‘God, Serena, you sound exactly like my daughter Mollie. She’s always banging on about them too. Anyway, out of that bath. I mean it, we really do have to go.’

  Mollie knew that, in teaching, she had found her true vocation. She found it extraordinarily fulfilling, in a way that nothing had come close to before. All the theoretical side—to do with children’s human rights and best practice in the classroom—interested her greatly, and she only wished her own teachers had adhered to the new legislation on the mental bullying of minors and appropriate teacher-pupil interaction. However, it was the practical side of teaching which she found most rewarding. As part of the training programme, she was attached to an ethnically-diverse comprehensive close to her flat where she assisted in the classroom two afternoons a week. On her first afternoon, the head teacher told her they had pupils of twenty-eight different ethnic origins, who spoke thirty-three different languages at home, and that English was the first language of only a third of the intake. It was a school categorised as ‘failing’ by a recent Ofsted report. When Miles heard which one it was, he gleefully informed her, having had it checked up on, that it was the worst sink comprehensive in West London. ‘If I were you, Mollie, I’d carry a gun. You can be damn sure most of your pupils do.’

  Undeniably there were serious discipline problems—knives, drugs, endemic truancy, violence against staff, Mollie learnt more about the evils of the real world in her first six weeks of teaching that in her whole previous life—but this only made the challenge, and the satisfaction when she felt she had made a difference, all the greater. Of course, you could not expect miracles. She measured her achievement in small things: the Albanian pupil who had arrived at school without a word of English three months earlier, who learnt to count from one to twenty; the aggressive bipolar Maltese boy, unable to socialise with other kids, who worked in a team to help create a wall collage using special blunted scissors; the painfully introverted Bengali girl who sang a little song at Diwali at the front of class.

  For Mollie, the home lives of her pupils were a revelation, or rather, in so many cases, the absence of any settled home life. Alternatively despondent and exasperated by what she saw, she veered between determination to help more and realism about the futility of doing so. She had been unprepared for the depth and prevalence of poverty. Having been brought up hearing her father rail against dependency culture, and how the impetus to work had been removed by state handouts, the indignity of poverty shocked her. She began to view the city through new eyes; she had seldom previously noticed the numerous charity shops which occupied the cheaper locations, or the pound stores where everything on the shelves was priced at a quid, or the gimcrack supermarket chains—CostCutters and PennySavers—where the parents of her pupils shopped. There was an enormous new Pendletons behind the Olympia Exhibition Centre, where Mollie out of habit did her own weekly shop, but she never ran into any of her school kids in the aisles, even though they lived all around. When Freeza Mart opened a Hammersmith store in King Street, she transferred her loyalty there instead.

  As summer approached, she had an idea of hiring a coach and taking a bunch of children, and their parents as well if they wanted to come, to Chawbury for the day for a picnic. She mentioned it to her mother and Davina thought it was a lovely idea, but did wonder what Miles would think and whether he’d approve. In the end, Mollie didn’t even bother asking. She could easily imagine his sarcastic comments about slum children tearing about the garden and, on reflection, Mollie wasn’t sure she really wanted the other teachers to know about her home life.

  30.

  The man Samantha had been seeing off and on for the past four months, who did not advertise himself as her boyfriend but with whom she made love whenever he bought her dinner, was spending the weekend in Dorset with a bunch of old mates but had not invited Sam to join him. That was the nature of their relationship: they shared beds but few friends, they shared fun times but did not envisage those fun times leading to anything more enduring. The man, Nigel, who traded commodities such as sugar and sunflower oil for a big American company based at the Royal Exchange, was forty-two years old and Sam had met him through her previous man, Peter, the one who worked in commercial property and first took her to Annabel’s, who was one of Nigel’s best mates.

  Faced with the prospect of a weekend with nothing planned, Sam considered going home to Chawbury. She had not actually been to Hampshire for three months at least, probably four, and it was tempting. Her bedroom at Chawbury Manor was comfortable and frilly, full of the pop posters and gymkhana rosettes of her childhood, and she would be able to sleep until lunchtime; there would be three delicious meals in the dining room (four if she arrived on Friday evening) with drinks and wine and everything done for her; furthermore, and not unimportantly, the weekend would be absolutely cost-free, especially if she took a lift down with Peter in his car. Recently she was skint. She was so overdrawn she could barely withdraw cab money from an ATM. The last time she’d tried it had flagged up ‘Insufficient Funds’ and refused to pay out. Another attraction of returning home would be the chance of a top-up from her father, if she caught him in the right mood. If she agreed to go out riding with him, that was generally the opportunity, when he was feeling most squirarchical and indulgent.

  Against this, Samantha had two reasons for reluctance to return home. The first was the question of her employment. One the rare occasions she passed Miles on the stairs at Holland Park Square, he commented on her lack of a job and asked what she was doing about getting one. He had threatened to find her one himself, either at Straker Communications or with one of their clients, if she didn’t find something herself and sharpish. The whole concept of work was a pain. She had actually gone to see some old bat at Harvey Nichols, who was located in a personnel office above the restaurants on the top floor, and been given a form to fill out about her qualifications and experience. The interview hadn’t gone too well, Sam felt, and the pay didn’t seem much considering you had to be there from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. and only got 20 days holiday a year. It hardly seemed worth it.

  The pace of her social life became ever more frantic. She went out five or six nights a week, seldom returning home until the small hours if she returned at all. Recently she’d spent quite a bit of time over at Nigel’s place in Ennismore Mews South. She was capable of occupying her days without effort or activity yet considered herself overstretched. She could take a hot bath and make it last from lunch to teatime. She spent fifteen minutes brushing her teeth twice every day, and almost as long brushing her hair. Her make-up routine, before she went out for the evening, was also very time-consuming, though she hardly needed to bother, being naturally beautiful. Her figure was amazing, with perfect posture and a good bum from years of riding. She had a perpetual shine about her, except in the mornings when she could scarcely function. Her mind was capable of drifting o
ff when people were talking to her; she gave the impression, however, of listening intently, and this was extremely flattering to men. Both Nigel and Peter loved the way she listened to their business problems.

  Samantha’s second hesitation about a weekend at Chawbury also concerned her father. She had never alluded to seeing him at Annabel’s draped over Serena Harden; nor had Miles referred to it, though Sam thought he must have spotted her. She had spent the remainder of dinner that evening ducking her head, and soon afterwards Miles had directed Serena to the Buddha room at the other end of the club. In the ensuing months, Sam wondered about the state of her parents’ marriage. Having never previously given it a moment’s consideration, she began to notice his frequent trips overseas and the many weekends spent away from home. And Conception had twice mentioned that her father was not expected in London on a particular Monday night, when Davina had clearly said he would be coming up. All this made her watchful. Had she known for sure Miles was unfaithful, she would not have blamed him but her mother, for choosing to live in the country and spending too much time gardening and painting.

  Her relationship with her siblings was similarly estranged. Peter always struck her as weird in any case, and their paths did not cross in London; they inhabited parallel universes. When Miles criticised his elder son for being disengaged at Straker Communications, and not attending enough client events in the evenings, Samantha took her father’s side. ‘God, Peter, I’d go to your parties if they invited me. You’re so lucky.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Sam. There’s a fiesta of Spanish tapas and sherry in the Regent Arcade tonight, if you want to go along. I’m supposed to be there. And a cocktail party to launch pan-Asian Gourmet Week at Zach Durban’s hotel.’

  With an insatiable appetite for socialising, Sam found Peter’s reluctance pitiful. Similarly, whenever Mollie came round to Holland Park Square, which she didn’t often, Sam sensed her disapproval and was annoyed by it. What grounds did Mollie have for patronising her? She looked at her younger sister and felt pity and embarrassment. She made so little of herself, her clothes were terrible and so was her hair. When Mollie spoke breathlessly about her teaching job and tried to engage Sam with tales of the Albanian and Bengali kids she was so absorbed by, Sam felt a shutter of indifference coming down. Mollie’s dispatches meant nothing to her, nor was she interested. The only one of her siblings she had time for was Archie, and he was away at Bristol. Archie was a laugh. Last time he’d been home at Chawbury, he’d brought three friends back from university including some girl he was clearly shagging. It was great he’d put all that hassle about Gemma Clegg and the baby behind him. Girls like Gemma should be shot.

  In the end, it was the prospect of spending the weekend with Peter and Mollie, both of whom would apparently be at Chawbury too, which made Sam decide to remain in London, on her own, in Holland Park Square. So she announced she had a party to go to, and that was that. Miles was slightly put out, since there were things he wished to discuss with her, but of all people he understood the importance of putting parties before family.

  Having taken a stand about staying up in London to attend a party which did not exist, Sam felt rather deflated and at a loose end. She rang her usual gang of friends but, for one reason or another, all were busy or away. She dialled an ex-boyfriend but his phone was answered by a strange female and she rang off. She left messages on answering machines but nobody called back. Fleetingly she imagined the scene at Chawbury Manor, with the family bathed and changed and assembled for drinks before dinner in the drawing room, and began to regret not being down there herself. Revisiting her address book for names she’d rejected calling first time round, she rang a guy she’d met out clubbing, Gaz Paul, and he said, ‘Yeah, sure, come over, there’s a crowd of people here.’ In the background she heard laughter and music.

  She took a cab to an address in Drayton Gardens, a flat in a mansion block on a thoroughfare of Victorian houses. Gaz let her in and there were eight or nine people sprawled about on sofas or on the floor. There were bottles of wine everywhere, all empty, and saucers as ashtrays. ‘The booze has run out,’ Gaz said, ‘but at least there’s plenty of weed.’ A reefer was passed in her direction and she took a long drag; she liked the sensation, which made her mellow and relaxed. After the frenetic hours she’d spent looking for social stimulation, it felt good to be chilling out at Gaz’s place, not doing anything, just hanging. It was a cooler scene than she was accustomed to, which made her self-conscious. When cocaine appeared, she tried that too. All of a sudden, she felt courageous and full of energy which was a revelation.

  Before she went home at 3:30 a.m., Gaz said, ‘Hey, Sam, you hoovered up that coke, babe, I was watching you.’

  ‘It was…. great.’

  ‘Yeah, you liked it, babe. When you need more, you know where to come.’

  31.

  Ross became accustomed to returning home after a week in London and finding some dramatic alteration to his house. The first surprise had been flouncy silk curtains across the four big windows in the hall, with a verdant pattern of purple verbena and pink carnations, with pelmets and braided fringes and tasselled cords.

  ‘What the Dickens are these doing, Dawn?’ he asked. ‘I thought we had blinds in the entrance hall.’

  Gingerly, Dawn admitted what she had not previously told him, that Serena was helping redecorate—or rather ‘updating’—some of the rooms. ‘Just a few touches to make it more liveable.’

  ‘I liked it well enough before. And we only just moved in, never mind “updating.” ’

  But Dawn assured him it was all necessary. ‘I just don’t think we got it all quite right first time round. Serena thinks that too.’

  ‘I’ll bet she does,’ Ross said. ‘Is she helping out as a favour, or are we paying her for her services?’

  ‘Ross, she’s a professional lady, of course we’re paying her. But she only keeps the difference between retail and wholesale, which she gets as a decorator, so it doesn’t cost us much at all. Only her time.’

  A couple of weekends later, elaborate new curtains appeared at the drawing room windows, along with new sofas and armchairs, making the room feel fuller.

  ‘It’s like a ruddy furniture shop in here,’ Ross said. ‘I feel I’m in DFS. And what’s happened to our picture? The one above the fireplace of the forest?’

  ‘Serena didn’t think it went with the new sofa covers. It wasn’t a very nice painting anyway.’

  ‘You liked it when you chose it. Debenhams in the Bull Ring, I remember us buying it. And where did this new one appear from, whatever it’s of? Three Kit-Kats on a saucer, it looks like.’

  Dawn smiled patiently. ‘It’s an abstract, Ross. It’s not meant to be of anything.’

  It was when their old House of Fraser bed with leather headboard—a bed Ross had always particularly liked and found comfortable, and in which their two younger children had been conceived—was removed without warning and replaced by a silk-draped four-poster with yellow ruched silk canopy, that Ross finally flipped.

  ‘I cannot sleep in that thing. No way. It’s like something what’s-her-name, Sleeping Beauty, and Prince Charming would kip down on. If anyone thought I slept in something like that, I’d be a laughing stock. Get it out of here. And bring back our old one.’

  Dawn looked pained. ‘It’s already been carried upstairs to Greg’s room. I though it would be nice for him having a bigger bed at his age.’

  ‘Well, fetch it back please. And Greg doesn’t need a bigger bed, he scarcely ever comes here. He hasn’t visited for months. I can’t remember when he was last down.’

  ‘He says he’s very occupied with all his politics,’ Dawn said. ‘I called him up Wednesday, but he said he was too busy to speak for long.’

  ‘I wish he’d find himself a job. A proper paid one, I mean. It’s all very fine this messing about at the Labour Club, but he needs to get stuck in to something.’

  Hurt by her husband’s negative reaction t
o the new decorations, and wondering what to do with the four-poster if Ross refused to sleep in it, Dawn was inclined to support Greg for once. ‘If you gave him a job at Freeza Mart that would solve it. Surely there’s something he can do at your office?’

  ‘Dawn, you are speaking about one of the most obtuse, anti-business young guys in the country. Why would I want him working in my company?’

  ‘Well, I think you’re very mean. James and Laetitia’s son Hugo works for his dad at Pendletons and is doing very well there apparently. They’re training him up.’

  ‘If I thought Greg had the slightest interest, never mind aptitude, I’d be only too willing to give him a shot. But he doesn’t. To hear him talk, he’d like to shut down all the supermarkets, ours included, not work for one.’