Golden Boy

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ Freddie stood up, ‘I’ll find my own lawyer.’

  Dominic crossed the room and held open the door. He seemed relieved that the session was over.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to let this make any difference to our golf. We must play a round sometime.’

  ‘Good idea, Dominic,’ Freddie said. ‘Don’t bother to call me.’ The worry beads were already out of his pocket. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  Freddie’s car was parked on the double yellow line outside the building. Sliding onto the seat, his briefcase beside him, he realised with shock that with his interview with Dominic Mason his day was finished, and it was still only 4.30. There were no more meetings, no urgent appointments, no clients waiting, no plane to catch.

  Leonard was waiting politely for instructions.

  ‘I suppose’, Freddie said, ‘you’d better take me home.’

  Opening his front door, he was greeted by a blast of cacophonous sound which filled the house and assaulted his eardrums. Following the racket upstairs to the drawing-room, he found Rosina, dancing in front of the television, like one possessed, to a band of young men in matador shirts brandishing accordians and guitars. Picking up the remote and pointing it at the TV set, Freddie flipped the channel.

  ‘Daddy!’ Rosina screamed. ‘It’s The Pogues…’

  Two-six-one for the FTSE 100 index/FT 30 index; two-six-two London stocks; two-six-three Dow Jones/Wall St stocks. It was like telling a rosary.

  ‘I’ve got a date on Saturday night, Daddy. Dancing burns off twenty-five calories an hour…’

  Indifferent to this fascinating piece of information, Freddie did a quick flip through the Far East and European stocks and the Forex report. He was about to hand Rosina back to The Pogues when the words Universal Concrete, in a short paragraph of text, caught his eye: ‘Takeover bid for Universal Concrete. Shares jump in response.’

  ‘Takeover bid! Takeover bid!’

  ‘Something wrong, Daddy?’

  Freddie sat down abruptly.

  ‘Nothing that £11,000 won’t put right. I have just lost £11,000, Rosina – money which I don’t happen to have – on the certainty that Universal Concrete was about to go bust!’

  Fourteen

  Rosina was unable to devote her entire attention to her father’s apocalypse. She had other matters on her mind. Sacrificing the Azzedine Alaïa body-hugger and the Gaultier leggings was the least she could do, although it had been her intention to wear them together on Saturday night. In the circumstances she was prepared to make do with a black Agnés B sweater borrowed from her friend Ariadne, whose father was number two at the Greek Embassy, which she had swapped for her scarlet rib-top with the keyhole front, worn with Anglo-American sunglasses and a pair of her mother’s fishnet tights.

  As she lay in the bath, her face immobilised by a mask of Dead Sea mud, which promised to draw out the dead cells ‘like a vacuum cleaner’, she reviewed her life. As practically the only remaining virgin in her year – if the boasts of her classmates were to be believed – she had a problem. Sometimes she felt herself to be still a child and wanted nothing more than to lie on her bed with her teddy bear consuming vast quantities of confectionery (dynamite to her skin) whilst she read teenage comics or watched the latest episode of Neighbours, and at others she saw herself as a Hollywood icon with a craving to be initiated into the penetrating mysteries of sex.

  Jane had, of course, discussed the matter with her. She had had a long talk with Rosina about safe sex, and unwanted pregnancies, and the risk of HIV, and explained to her that the decision to sleep with a boy was an extremely serious one, which should not be based on the fact that everyone else was doing so, and about the vital importance of the condom.

  It was at a gig at the Carwash that Rosina had met Henry Dove who at the age of 18, and waiting to go up to Bristol, was insistent upon ‘going out’ with her.

  There had been boys before Henry. When she was 7 years old, a schoolfriend of Tristan’s had lured her to the end of the garden. He had dared her to remove her knickers in return for a glimpse of his own equipment which he seemed to prize highly, but which – from her experience of seeing Tristan in the bath – Rosina thought run-of-the-mill. Her first kiss, which took her by surprise with its moistness, had been received during a game of forfeits on her ninth birthday, since when she had been in love, whether they were aware of it or not, with a succession of boys whose experience had been as limited as her own.

  Henry was different. He drank his beer straight from the bottle and was training for his pilot’s licence. Familiarity in the cinema, or becoming carried away by soul music while Ariadne’s parents were out and Ariadne was occupied with her current boyfriend on their double bed, was not going to satisfy Henry – who had declared himself passionate about Rosina and waited for her every day outside school – for much longer.

  ‘Going out’ represented a significant leap into maturity from which there could be no turning back. It was not a question of morality. Times had changed since her mother had been a teenager, and physical relationships between the sexes now started sometimes as early as 12. It was no big deal. What bothered Rosina was whether, if she gave Henry what he wanted, what they both wanted, he would still like her; whether – like her movie heroines who with no fumbling and no flab ripped off their shirts in one sinuous movement – she would do it right. It was not as if she had not mastered the drill. She knew about the importance of foreplay and about male arousal, had boned up on the physiology of orgasm, and, after a few false starts, had managed to produce what she was pretty sure was the phenomenon in herself.

  While Henry was taller than she was, and with his blue eyes – made more blue by tinted contact lenses – and his cropped hair, wildly sexy, he was neither as well-built nor as charismatic as Freddie and lacked her father’s warmth and sophistication. Her virginity was the last card in a woman’s pack. Did she want to squander it on Henry?

  She had consulted her stars on the subject. Her horoscope, under Gemini, was unequivocal. ‘Never have you been privy to so many secrets (her father’s dismissal?) – even people in authority are confiding in you (definitely Freddie). What you discover now will help unravel a mystery that’s been puzzling you for some while. You’ll have an intimate time too, with that special boy.’ No doubt about that. Saturday night was the night. Freddie and Jane were going to the opera and she had invited Henry for supper. He had promised to bring a video.

  The beep of the timer on the side of the bath reminded Rosina that it was time to remove the ‘rich cocktail of potassium, magnesium, bromine, vitamins, minerals and nutrients’ from her face, when it would have worked, or it would not. Loosening the mask with a damp sponge according to the directions on the pack, and wondering whether she should perhaps have opted for lemon juice and sour cream and washed her hair in Evian water like Kim Basinger, she reckoned that she still had time to make up her mind. Freddie’s attempt to get the seriousness of his financial situation across to Jane, who had a blind spot as far as arithmetic was concerned, had resulted in his blowing what had, since his dismissal, been an increasingly short fuse. Writing down for her the figures, which landed them in the poverty trap and haunted him like the blind Samson’s lament, he tried to get her to understand the anomalous mess in which he found himself.

  ‘It seems perfectly simple to me, darling,’ Jane said. ‘We don’t need this big house…’

  ‘Even if we could manage to sell the house,’ Freddie explained patiently and not for the first time, ‘we owe the mortgage company £600,000.’

  ‘…We could move to the country…’

  ‘It wouldn’t help, Jane. Even if we lived in a cottage, I would still have to find the extremely large sums of money which I owe.’

  ‘You must have some money, Freddie. We seem to spend an awful lot. And then there’s Lilli…’

  He did not need Jane to remind him of the exorbitant rent of his mother’s flat, not to mention the
crippling wages demanded by her carers. When Lilli had first shown signs of dementia, he had been to inspect a residential home. In a Suffolk retreat for ex-musicians he had seen rosy-cheeked French horn players and tremulous violinists – put out to grass like aged horses – sitting round the walls of a dilapidated country mansion in varying degrees of inertia while a vacant-eyed ghost played ‘Roses of Picardy’ on an out-of-tune piano with yellowed keys.

  ‘Why don’t I go out to work?’ Jane was saying brightly.

  Bingo had recently bought a disused warehouse in Fulham, into which she had introduced a collection of fin de séries garments which she displayed against room settings of antique furniture and sold by word of mouth. With sales flourishing, the alternative economy booming, and her reputation growing, Bingo had been asking Jane to join her in her enterprise for some time.

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  ‘But I quite like the idea.’

  ‘I said it won’t be necessary.’

  ‘I heard you. If I want to go and work for Bingo, I’ll go and work for Bingo.’

  ‘I won’t let you.’

  ‘Hang on a minute, Freddie. What’s going on here? You can’t stop me going to work for Bingo. “Bingo’s” is going like a bomb. I’ve always been good at clothes, and the money would come in useful…’

  ‘For God’s sake shut up, Jane. I’m trying to explain to you, in words of one syllable, what is an extremely serious situation, and all you can do is rabbit on about selling frocks to a lot of idle women with nothing better to do, at bloody Bingo’s!’

  Retreating into a light-lipped silence, Jane had left the room. Freddie tore up the figures. They might just as well have been hieroglyphics. For the past couple of days, and just when he needed her most, a wall of glass had come between himself and Jane.

  Before they went to sleep, Jane, realising that her offer to go to work might, in the circumstances, have been insensitive, had attempted to put matters right.

  ‘I didn’t mean to walk out on you.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’

  ‘I’m not really bothered about working at Bingo’s.’

  The fact that Jane wanted to go out to work, that she had no problem whatsoever in seeing herself as the breadwinner, exacerbated Freddie’s feelings of inadequacy engendered by his continuing inability to make love to her.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter one way or the other. We’re not going to raise the siege by saving candle ends.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and see Didier? You’ve always said he was a good lawyer.’

  ‘I might just do that.’

  ‘And what about Piers?’

  ‘What about him?’ Freddie was on his guard.

  ‘He’s a banker. I think you should tell him. There could be something going at NatWest. Would you like me to ring him for you?’ Jane was trying to be helpful.

  ‘Just leave it, will you?’

  He knew that Jane was doing her best, but her attitude towards him, as if he were a sick child to be comforted, aroused unbidden feelings of anger and hostility. He did not want her pity. He wanted to be left alone.

  Didier was now an equity partner in one of the leading firms of employment lawyers which was itself going through bad times. Over a couple of pints of Sam Smith’s in the John Snow, near his office in Broadwick Street, Didier commiserated with his brother-in-law about the reprehensible way in which he had been treated by Gordon Sitwell.

  ‘You want me to come and kick the bastard in the goolies?’

  ‘Just tell me what my rights are. Tell me what redress I have.’ Freddie’s customary sense of well-being, his sanguine view of the world, was slowly giving way to an unfamiliar sense of grievance and gross injustice.

  ‘Based on what you’ve told me, not very much.’

  Didier, who with his pale skin and shock of red hair looked unnervingly like Jane, could not believe that Freddie, who was so meticulous in his concern for the affairs of others – to whom he had always looked for guidance, and to whom he was personally indebted – had shown an almost criminal lack of regard in respect to his own.

  ‘As a matter of interest, how was it you allowed your service agreement to lapse?’ Didier helped himself to a handful of potato crisps.

  ‘I was waiting for the results of Corinthian.’ Freddie drained his glass and signalled for a Black Label. ‘I took a chance. I thought I’d be able to negotiate better terms.’

  Didier whistled. ‘It’s like going on holiday without paying your insurance premium. Ten to one your house will burn down while you’re away.’

  ‘Dominic Mason advised me against entering into litigation with Sitwell Hunt.’

  ‘Dominic Mason is trying to run with the hare and the hounds. Nevertheless, Freddie, in view of what you’ve told me,’ Didier put his hands into the pockets of his trendy cotton trousers, ‘I am afraid I have to agree with him.’

  Freddie’s friendship with Piers Warburton, which had begun at school, had been interrupted when Freddie went up to Cambridge and Piers to the LSE. It had been resumed some years later when they both found themselves in the City. Freddie had lived through Piers’ battle with alcohol and the disintegration of his first marriage. He had stood by him – driving down to Winchester every week to visit him at Clouds – through the long process of drying out. After his rehabilitation (he was now actively involved in an alcohol programme and was a part-time counsellor for ALANON) it was through Freddie’s influence that Piers had been reinstated in continental banking. He was amazed when Freddie walked in on him in the middle of the day.

  ‘Sitwell Hunt gone into receivership?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  While Piers poured sherry from a decanter for Freddie and orange juice from a carton for himself, Freddie, whose liturgy grew harder rather than easier with repetition, explained the reason for his visit.

  ‘As if I wasn’t properly in schtuck, I’ve just made a balls-up of a put option on Universal Concrete.’

  ‘Universal Concrete?’

  ‘The head office is near us. Was near us! I thought I saw the undertaker go in. I did see the undertaker go in, but Tarquin Chapman just happens to be the brother-in-law of the managing director of the company who were, as it turns out, making a friendly bid.’

  Piers whistled. ‘Wheeling and dealing instead of liquidating!’

  ‘I suppose it made a change. Cost me eleven K. I hate to tell you what I stood to gain.’

  ‘I know things are not easy right now, Freddie, but recession or no recession, there’s always going to be a shortage of good people.’

  It was all right from where Piers was sitting. Freddie did not want platitudes. He wanted a job, with the accompanying financial rewards to which he had become accustomed and which, as far as he was concerned, were the yardstick of success.

  Piers, who owed Freddie one, was considerably discomforted. He would have liked nothing better than to be able to be of help.

  ‘There’s nothing going – commensurate with your seniority – that I know of at NatWest. I’ll ask around, of course…’

  ‘Without mentioning any names.’

  ‘Without mentioning any names. I’ll let you know the moment I come up with anything in which you might be remotely interested.’

  A discreet tap on the door was followed by an apologetic secretary with some papers which she gave to Piers. While he engaged her in sotto voce conversation about asking somebody to wait, and some missing cash flow projections which he had asked for, his intercom buzzed twice and the telephone on his desk rang with an incoming call. Politely refraining from answering either of them, Piers stole a surreptitious glance at his watch. Recognising the feeling, Freddie stood up and polished off his sherry.

  He was already in the lobby when Piers, who had followed him, said: ‘How’s Jane?’

  ‘You saw her at the party.’

  ‘You’re so lucky. I envy you, you know. I never seem to get it right. Not even the third time! Look, Freddie…’
The buzzer, accompanied by the telephone, was still ringing insistently in the office. ‘I hardly know how to put this, but if it’s a question of a loan?’

  Freddie put an appreciative hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘You’d better answer your blower. Just keep your eyes peeled for a job.’

  Outside the bank, fresh-faced young men in dark suits erupted in hungry streams from stockbroking firms and counting houses into Broadgate Circle. Four years hence, according to the recent estimates, more than 20,000 employees would be concentrated in the recently developed area. Making for the piazza Freddie wondered if he would be among them. With time on his hands, he sat down on a travertine bench overlooking the arena where winter skaters waltzed to Muzak and sandwiches were eaten to the accompaniment of summer bands, and took a letter from his pocket.

  DEAR DAD,

  It’s all right about the trainer. Jeremy made me call Robert’s father and apologyse it wasn’t my fault it was a dare. He sent him a new pair not so expensive Robert doesn’t like them. I’m not talking to that geek. I’m not going to India. I’ll get a job, hospital porter or something the driving lessons can wait.

  Love to Mummy and that ratbag whose name I can’t remember.

  TRISTAN.

  Fifteen

  Jane did not share Freddie’s enthusiasm for opera. She was left cold even by Don Giovanni and had managed to sleep her way through an entire performance of Ariadne auf Naxos. She was particularly unimpressed by anything by Wagner in which it took half an hour to convey a simple message such as that Siegfried’s mother had given birth to him in the woods, musical beginnings never got finished, bent-kneed dwarfs wittered on about rings, grown men pretended they were dragons, and she was expected to differentiate between the motif of the helmet and the motif of the apple.

  By the time Saturday night came, Freddie, who was relying on Hans Wichmann’s lucrative business to get him out of trouble with the bank, had already sent the Mercedes to the airport on Friday, and having dropped Frau Wichmann at the Connaught, taken the German broker out for lunch.