The broker, who had waited to order until Freddie arrived, asked for grapefruit and porridge, followed by eggs, sausages, bacon, tomato and a round of toast, while Freddie, who had already taken his customary light breakfast at home after his morning exercise, accepted only black coffee. When they had both been served and the waiters had withdrawn, Wichmann dabbed at his mouth with his starched napkin.
‘I have read your proposals. The marmalade, if you would be so good, Freddie. Very interesting. Very interesting. If we are able to go ahead with what you suggest, we will be first in the field. We will revolutionise the entire market of the CIS, bring supermarkets to the man on the…how you say…St Petersburg tram…ha, ha, I like that, St Petersburg tram, such as never in his wildest dreams has he imagined…’
Wichmann put a piece of sausage into his mouth after studying if carefully, as if it were a laboratory specimen. Freddie sipped his coffee and felt surreptitiously for the beads in his pocket. Scarcely daring to breathe, he waited for Wichmann to continue.
‘Wonderful sausages. Have you tried our Bratwurst? Unfortunately, Freddie, I am not able to give you an immediate answer. I have first to discuss with one or two of our people in Frankfurt.’
‘Take your time.’ Freddie’s smile was deceptively relaxed. ‘I don’t think you will find more advantageous terms than I have offered.’
‘I am sure you are right.’
Wichmann reached for a toothpick. The meeting appeared to be over.
‘Frau Wichmann has asked me to thank you for the Covent Garden and for the dinner. She thinks your wife is quite charming and will send her a copy of her book so soon as it will be published.’ He put an arm on Freddie’s sleeve before summoning the waiter and pushing back his chair. ‘An excellent weekend, Freddie. Excellent. I hope we can do business together. I will come back to you in a few days, yes?’
Outside it had stopped raining. Having nothing better to do, Freddie decided to walk. He went over the past half-hour with Wichmann, searching in his head for clues. He would keep his fingers crossed. If the supermarket deal came off, his worries would be over. At least for a while. One big break was all he needed.
In Bond Street, the desolation of the almost-empty pavements and the boarded-up shop fronts, dotted at regular intervals amongst others in which the prices of the goods had been drastically reduced, epitomised the recession in trade, what was happening in the street. What he saw about him brought home the plummeting line and impersonal figures visible hitherto only on his Topics Screen. Fewer shoppers meant not only less money in the tills, but a slump in profits, as costs – over which desperate retailers, in the death throes of extinction, had no control – continued to rise. Evidence of the excessive rents now being demanded was all around him in the discounts emblazoned in large red letters across the windows: ‘Final Reductions’, ‘Clearance Specials’, ‘Hurry while stocks last’, which threatened to turn the once exclusive thoroughfare into a souk. Shirts 20 per cent off; suits 50 per cent off. Bargains in cashmere and cameras, in luggage and lingerie. Oriental carpets at giveaway prices, in establishments which announced with regret that they were shortly to close down.
The morning’s news had offered little encouragement. A further decline in business was anticipated by the CBI, hopes of an early economic recovery had been quashed, companies continued to cut back their investment in new machinery and equipment, more job losses were expected and confidence stood at an all-time low. The export figures were even less promising: 49 per cent of firms reported orders below normal, and 71 per cent were working below capacity.
‘Freddie!’
Charles Holdsworth, Bingo’s husband, was standing in front of a bow-fronted jeweller’s with two brooches: an Edwardian moonstone heart and an Art-Deco clown with emerald eyes.
‘I was hoping I’d bump into someone,’ Charles said. ‘Bingo will be 38 on Thursday. I’m not very good at presents.’
Freddie refrained from telling Charles of the extravagant gestures with which his wife’s last husband had been in the habit of celebrating her birthdays. His final gift to Bingo had been a Ford Mustang, the keys of which had been hidden beneath the top layer in a box of her favourite chocolates.
Passing through the heavy glass door held respectfully open for them, Freddie followed Charles into the Aladdin’s Cave of gold and precious stones, wondering if his own days of shopping for Art-nouveau jewellery for Jane were over. Charles fingered the two brooches on the green baize cloth on the glass-topped counter, behind which the salesman held his breath.
‘Which do you think?’ Charles cocked his head.
Either would set him – or more likely Bingo herself – back a very great deal of money. Worried about the outcome of his meeting with Wichmann, the choice of the heart or the clown seemed immaterial to Freddie. Charles, unable to make up his mind, decided to take both brooches on approval.
Bingo’s midnight-blue Daimler, its engine running, was waiting outside the shop.
‘I’m on my way to the City,’ Charles, whose bank was in Pall Mall, said. ‘Need a lift?’
Freddie shook his head. His eye caught the sign Brook Street. ‘Meeting…’ he said. ‘Claridge’s.’
Charles nodded understandingly. ‘I should be finished at Lazard’s about three. I’ll pop up and see you. Will you be in your office this afternoon?’
Freddie consulted his personal organiser. ‘Sorry.’
‘Golf on Sunday then? Friend of Bingo’s coming in from the States. You owe me a few balls.’
‘Fine.’ Freddie desperately needed to talk to Charles. Bond Street pavement in mid-morning seemed hardly the place.
‘Sunday then…’ Charles lowered the car window. ‘Love to Jane.’
‘Love to Bingo.’
The Daimler, driven by Bingo’s grey-uniformed chauffeur, pulled smoothly away.
At home, pleasantly tired from his walk, Freddie rushed up the stairs to tell Jane about his morning with Wichmann.
‘Jane!’
There was no reply. She had to be in. Her car was outside. The house seemed to be in silence. The doors of the drawing-room were unaccustomedly shut. Freddie threw them open.
‘Jane?’
A dozen women, amongst whom he registered the startled faces of Bingo and Caroline Hurst, swivelled round to stare at him.
‘Freddie!’ Jane, pencil and paper in her hand, rose from the sofa.
Before she reached the doors, Freddie had closed them. He went slowly upstairs to the bedroom which was filled with unfamiliar scent and scattered with strange coats.
In his dressing-room, he turned on Radio 3 to Janet Baker singing ‘Che faro’, and picked up the Appointments section of The Times. The pages were trembling. A half-page advertisement caught his eye. ‘Executive Director Corporate Finance. A fast-growing merchant bank invites applications from candidates with extensive experience in corporate banking internationally. Your experience will have given exposure to Money & Capital Markets financing, Mergers & Acquisitions and Multinational Project Financing. Our compensation package is competitive and negotiable.’
Freddie lowered the radio. It sounded right up his street. He looked at the small print as an outburst of female laughter erupted from the drawing-room below. Nigeria. The job was in Nigeria!
Flinging aside the newspaper, he put on his jacket which was still damp, ran down the stairs, picked up the car keys from the hall table and, closing the front door behind him, got into the Japanese hatchback which was Jane’s second home. Repositioning the driving seat, he looked with distaste at the crumpled tissues, discarded chocolate wrappers, old parking tickets, random shoes, out-of-date shopping lists, empty cans of de-icer, sundry writing instruments, disjointed umbrellas, scattered coins and boxes of Kleenex, and switching on the ignition headed for the Water Gardens.
There was a smell of cooking, cabbage or apples, in the corridor. Using his key, and ringing the bell by way of alerting Mrs Williams, Freddie opened the door of his mother’s flat.
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‘Mother!’
There was no reply. He called again. Lilli didn’t always hear.
‘Mother!’ He waited. ‘Mrs Williams?’
The beds were neatly made. Mrs Williams had been ironing in her bedroom. The iron was still warm. In the kitchen there was evidence of morning coffee and a half-full packet of digestive biscuits, potatoes on the draining board waiting to be peeled. He wondered what had happened, where they could possibly be.
Repeating his tour of the silent flat, he felt a return of the fear he had experienced as a very small boy when, letting go of his mother’s hand, he had lost her in a crowded shop, or when she had deliberately pretended to disappear – which brought him out in a cold sweat – hiding behind the sofa from which she would emerge to startle the wits out of him with a triumphant ‘Boo!’
As he retraced his hushed steps through the empty rooms his imagination worked overtime. Lilli had been taken ill, although there was nothing wrong with her (except that she couldn’t remember the name of the Prime Minister or what she had had for breakfast), the geriatrician had said she had the constitution of a young woman, and Freddie had spoken to her, as he did every morning, only a few hours ago.
He rang the bell of the neighbouring flat. Two dark eyes above a black chador stared at him before slamming the door in his face. With a cavalcade of imagined disasters – Mrs Williams had abducted his mother, Lilli had had a heart attack, had been admitted to hospital with a stroke – chasing each other through his head, he returned to the living-room, pushed aside Mrs Williams’ mending, and rotating his worry beads, lay down on the sofa to wait.
Seventeen
The idea of rubbing out Gordon Sitwell in retribution for ruining his life, of eliminating him with a single blow as if he were some errant fly on a windowpane, had been gathering momentum in Freddie’s mind. Flies, according to Rosina who had brought the information home from school, had exactly the same lifespan as human beings. It was just that their hearts beat very much faster. Be that as it may, Gordon Sitwell would have to go. Getting a gun was not easy. Peter and Georgina, who lived next door and had a house in Norfolk to which Freddie and Jane were sometimes invited for the weekend, had guns in their trophy room which they used to dispose of Canada Geese. Freddie did not think that a 12-bore, side-by-side shotgun would be quite right for eviscerating the brains from the chairman of the bank. What he needed was a revolver. With a silencer. Such as was used in all the old Humphrey Bogart movies which he had seen when he was into film noir. To his surprise he found a Smith & Wesson in his briefcase. He thought that it must have been Wichmann who had put it there, and wondered if he was a member of the Nazi party and was some sort of Sturmführer, but it was Freddie’s PA, who smoothed his path and looked after his business and personal life, who was responsible. He asked Susan, who was sucking an outsize Fisherman’s Friend, if the gun was loaded. She was clearly upset by the fact that he queried her efficiency, and told him that she had loaded it only that morning with three new-laid bullets bought from a barrow on the way to work. He decided that when he had finished with Gordon Sitwell, he would take Susan to the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank for lunch. Sam, the Sitwell Hunt commissionaire, was embarrassed when he greeted Freddie. Someone had tipped him off that the vice-chairman was persona non grata. Freddie enquired as usual after his family but, although Sam answered him, he was unable to hear the reply. It took him an exceedingly long time to cross the entrance hall. It was as if he were floating on marble tiles which stretched away into the distance. By the time he reached the elevator he was exhausted. He pressed the button, but when it came there was no room. Not even for one. The heads of departments, jammed into a solid block of humanity which was revealed by the automatically opening doors, regarded him reproachfully. He waved his bus pass at them but there was not a flicker of response. They did not budge one inch to let him in. He decided to take the stairs. At the top of them, Sidonie Newmark, naked except for high-heeled shoes and outsize spectacles with tortoiseshell frames, was on the telephone to Frankfurt. She tapped her foot impatiently and told Freddie that he had absolutely no right to be on the fifth floor. It took him all day to find Gordon Sitwell. Every office that he entered, despite the fact that it bore Gordon’s name inscribed and illuminated by Jane on a place card, contained some startled employee who regarded him with profound distaste. He found the chairman in the dining-room. The mahogany boardroom table was laid for 2,000 people but he presided over it alone. He was surprised to see Freddie, and asked him if he was aware that the bank was in liquidation. Freddie waited politely for him to finish his lunch. Then raised his arm and shot him through the head.
The crack of the bullet, like the violent slamming of a door, woke Freddie from his dream.
‘Hugh!’
Freddie opened his eyes to discover that he was in Lilli’s flat and that his mother, wearing her outdoor coat and accompanied by Mrs Williams, was looking down at his inert body on her sofa.
‘It’s not Hugh, it’s Mr Lomax,’ Mrs Williams said, adding with what he thought was satisfaction for Freddie’s benefit, ‘We would have been back earlier, but we had a spot of bother with a Cadbury’s Flake in Tesco’s…’
‘Don’t believe a word she says. I told the man I was going to pay for it,’ Lilli said.
‘Fortunately the manager was quite charming. He could see mother was a little bit…’ Mrs Williams tapped her forehead and smiled at Freddie.
Freddie did not return her smile.
‘Why aren’t you at the bank?’ Lilli said suddenly. Sometimes her mind was surprisingly clear, at others the past coalesced for her and she was convinced that the war was on or that her own mother was still alive.
Freddie did not answer. His mouth was dry. He was glad that he had not murdered Gordon, that his homicidal action had taken place only in his dream, and that although his thoughts towards the chairman remained violent, his hands were still clean. He ran his fingers through his hair and straightened his tie.
‘Mr Lomax is vice-chairman of a bank.’ Lilli addressed Mrs Williams. ‘Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?’
Taking his mother’s hand, when Mrs Williams, muttering to herself, had left the room, Freddie gently read her the riot act about trying to be more polite to Mrs Williams who looked after her so nicely and was only doing her best.
‘Her daughter’s getting married on Saturday,’ Lilli was unperturbed. ‘I’d like to give her a hundred pounds.’
Freddie was in charge of Lilli’s cheque book. She could no longer be trusted with it. A hundred pounds. A week ago he would not have thought about it twice. He wrote out a cheque and put it in the pocket of Lilli’s cardigan where he guessed it was likely to remain.
Freddie had first noticed that something was wrong with Lilli when her personality began to change. From a reasonable, quick-witted, self-sufficient woman, incapacitated only marginally by a measure of arthritis not inappropriate to her age, she had gradually metamorphosed into a despot whose cantankerous behaviour bordered at times upon the offensive. It was not until she showed positive signs of memory impairment that the penny had finally dropped.
At first there were small aberrations. She posted her shopping list in the postbox, filled her basket with cat food (although she no longer had a cat), and although she prided herself upon her languages, could not come up with the French for a frog. When you reminded her of events, no matter how recent, she looked at you blankly, as if they had never taken place. The memory lapses were spasmodic. They came and went with no apparent logic, and for days at a time her mind was crystal clear. The neurologist at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, whom Freddie had consulted, had tried to explain the nature of the condition. Freddie got the impression that Alzheimer’s disease, of which it appeared Lilli was in the early stages, was not fully understood by the physician himself. He had asked Lilli gently if she knew how old she was, and the time (to the nearest hour), as well as the current year, and the name of the Queen. Lilli had managed
to answer all his questions correctly in addition to counting backwards from twenty, and asking whether she should repeat the exercise in German. When she came back from the doctor, she accused Freddie of wasting everybody’s time, took off her hat and coat, and put her handbag neatly away in the fridge. Further investigations, including a CAT scan, had confirmed the original diagnosis, which had been made on the strength of the history, as well as revealing a modicum of cerebral atrophy.
Freddie prowled round the room absent-mindedly picking up the photographs of himself which decorated the sideboard; cricket in the long shadows with his father; as Oliver Twist (was that where Rosina got it from?) in the school play; with Lilli at his graduation; on the steps of the Register Office with Jane.
He picked up a photograph of his late father in his army uniform.
‘That’s my husband.’
Had he been a few years older, a few inches taller, it could have been Freddie. Freddie had the strange impression he was confronting his own ghost. He replaced the photograph next to a sepia portrait of Lilli, with bobbed hair, seated at the piano.
‘My first professional engagement,’ Lilli said. ‘I was only sixteen. They wanted a pianist for a symphony concert at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. Mozart’s B-flat major. I was absolutely terrified. My mother made my dress. Black satin. She was an excellent dressmaker. I could have been… I nearly… They gave Myra Hess the CBE. Afterwards… It was too late. I hated giving piano lessons. I never thought of them as lessons. They were the first encounter between a child and music. It was no good. I had to grit my teeth. Not one of them really wanted to learn. I think the mothers brought them just to get them out of the house. For something to do. All those grinding scales. All those elementary pieces. My idea of hell is to have to listen to eternity to “Für Elise”. It wasn’t easy, Freddie. I was so tired at night I used to cry into my pillow…’
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