With no department to control, he supervised the running of the household with which he had never concerned himself before: ‘Where did you get that?’ ‘Why on earth have we got this?’ ‘You’re not throwing that away?’ ‘Whose are these?’ He interrupted Jane’s cooking. Once she lost an egg she was about to crack – she found it later in her bureau where she kept her stationery – when Freddie interrupted her to enquire, as if she kept them in the microwave, if she happened to have a first-class stamp. When he disturbed her in her sewing-room to which, never ever having had too much of Freddie previously, she was now happy to escape, he justified the intrusion by the fact that she was ‘only sewing’. When Jane suggested to Freddie – to get him out of the way – that he go for a walk in the park, he replied that she had always protested that he worked too hard, that he would have thought that she would have liked having him around, and that the park was full of people with nothing better to do than talk to the squirrels, and that he did not need anyone to tell him what to do.
It began to dawn on Jane that the fact that she and Freddie had always got on so well, was perhaps due to the fact that because of Freddie’s addiction to work, his need for constant activity, they had, since their marriage, actually spent very little time in each other’s company. Even in bed at night, especially in bed at night, it was not like old times. They no longer fell asleep in each other’s arms and Jane did not reach out to him. She was afraid to touch him. The king-sized bed had become a no man’s land divided down the middle. It was as if, in addition to his livelihood, Gordon Sitwell had robbed Freddie of some vital component, as if he had been switched off at the mains.
Freddie was having breakfast in the kitchen, his stack of newspapers – opened at the Appointments Vacant pages – spread out all over the table which Jane wanted to use, when Lavender arrived for work with her face discoloured and her cheek swollen.
‘He went for me,’ she said listlessly. ‘Lucky for him I didn’t have me baby premature.’
‘What happened?’ Freddie pulled out a chair for her at the newspaper-strewn table, while Jane made some tea.
‘He was nicking money for ciggies. He found this packet of Featherlite in me handbag…’
Jane and Freddie exchanged glances.
‘He thought I’d been out screwing.’ Lavender put an eloquent hand to her abdomen distended like a taut football. ‘Screwing!’
‘What were the condoms doing in your handbag?’ Jane said practically, putting three lumps of sugar in the tea.
‘That’s what Tony wanted to know. I told him someone put them there. They weren’t nothing to do with me.’ She took out a pink tissue. ‘He didn’t believe me. He went for me!’
Lavender’s problem, for which Rosina was unwittingly responsible, released some of the tension, which had been building up over trivialities, between Freddie and Jane. When Lavender had gone upstairs to do her cleaning, Freddie put his arms round Jane’s waist.
‘At least I don’t beat you up. I don’t mean to be angry, Jane. I’m angry with myself. I’m really sorry about the car. And your friends. I blew my top. I wasn’t expecting them to be here. I didn’t think.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I know how you must feel…’
‘You have no idea how I feel.’
‘If you told me, I might be able to help.’
‘I’m okay, darling. I’ve lost my job. I’m not ill. I am not an invalid. I don’t need help.’
Ever since he had been 6 years old and his mother was busy with her pupils, if anything went wrong he had had to cope with it on his own. He would continue to do so. He gathered up the newspapers and looked at his watch.
‘I’d better do some work.’
Jane’s heart went out to him. ‘I’ll ask Bingo if she’ll have the committee meeting at her house next week.’
Freddie was in the dining-room, listening to Pelléas et Mélisande and attempting to make some sense of his accounts, while he waited for the phone to ring, as usual, when Derek Abbott called. By the concern he manifested for Freddie’s well-being and the exaggerated interest with which he enquired about his prospects, Freddie guessed that the news was not good.
‘I have spoken to Head Office…’ the bank manager began.
Freddie tapped his pencil on the table. He was damned if he was going to make it easy.
‘Unfortunately it is as I thought. The bank, being uncovered, would like you to reduce your overdraft immediately you receive your cheque from Sitwell Hunt. They are willing to continue it – in the very short term only – to the tune of £50,000.’
‘You do realise that this puts me in an extremely invidious situation.’ Freddie threw the pencil down. ‘There is no doubt that I shall find something suitable.’ He decided to prevaricate. ‘There are already one or two things in the pipeline. As a matter of fact I am waiting for an extremely important call now. But it is going to take a bit of time.’
‘The matter is not in my hands, I’m afraid.’
How often had Freddie used that phrase himself?
‘I think you could have exerted a little pressure,’ he felt his gall rising. ‘All I need is a few months.’
‘Believe me…’ Derek Abbott said. This exhortation was invariably followed by a lie ‘…I did my very best.’
The next call was from Hans Wichmann.
‘Freddie? I have been trying to send you a fax. I don’t have your fax number. How are you keeping? And how is your dear wife?’
Another over-solicitous one.
‘I have at last some news…’
Perhaps he had been wrong.
‘I told you when we met – such a wonderful English breakfast – that I must discuss the matter with one or two of my colleagues. I was worried at the time that there could be problems at this end.’
Freddie did not dare speak.
‘We have been over the question of supermarkets with the… how you say…the fine-tooth comb?’
Wichmann’s voice was optimistic.
‘At the end of the day, the decision we have made is that, for the moment in the least…’
All over bar the shouting.
‘…We have not got the green light.’
‘Thank you for letting me know.’ Freddie tried to keep his voice steady. Not to let his disappointment show. ‘If anything else should crop up…’ he said, hating himself for having to crawl to Wichmann.
‘My dear boy, I will be immediately on the telephone. Ja, ja…’ Freddie could hear Wichmann talking impatiently to someone in his office. ‘My regards to your beautiful daughter, and to your dear wife.’
He knew that he would not hear from the Frankfurt broker again. Picking up his pencil, he added the £11,000 he had lost on Universal Concrete and the £10,000 he had thrown away at the casino (for which he had still not forgiven himself) to the outstanding bills for the house insurance, and electricity, and gas, and the mortgage interest, and the water rates, and the poll tax, onto his £115,000 overdraft, making the grand total, devoid of any financial cushion, look increasingly alarming. It was like a personal nightmare. If he didn’t get some cash together soon he was going to find it impossible to keep afloat, even for a few months, without demolishing the entire structure of his life.
He was gazing firmly at the latest batch of bills, when the telephone on the table rang. To his surprise it was Thomas Glidewell, an ex-Sitwell Hunt client, from whom he hadn’t heard for some time.
‘Freddie? I rang the bank. They told me you were at home. Not sick are you? I’m in town for a couple of days. How are you fixed for dinner tonight?’
Some years ago, as head of corporate finance, Freddie had been instrumental in bringing Tom Glidewell’s small family business, the Derbyshire-based Glidewell Security Grilles onto the market. As a result of his expertise, his efforts to find suitable expansion outlets, and his talents for commercial matchmaking, the grilles were now in worldwide demand and the Glidewell brothers (no one believed it was their real name) millionaires seve
ral times over.
Freddie had remained friendly, on a personal basis, with Tom Glidewell and his young wife, Wendy, and he and Jane had been to stay with them at their farm in Bakewell.
Over dinner at the Savoy Grill, Freddie, who had only toyed with his food but made heavy inroads into the wine, which didn’t go unremarked by Tom Glidewell, explained briefly why he was no longer with Sitwell Hunt.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you.’ Tom tucked into his mille feuilles. ‘There’s no stigma attached to redundancy these days. How are you managing?’
‘Fine.’
‘Don’t bullshit me.’ He put down his spoon and fork with satisfaction and ordered coffee.
‘Okay, Tom.’ Freddie pushed his pudding to one side of the china plate. ‘Things are not going as well as I hoped. It’s a question of staying afloat. If you really want to know, I’m beginning to get seriously worried.’
‘You’re not going to like this, Freddie,’ Tom signalled for a toothpick, ‘but I want you to accept a loan.’
‘You’re dead right!’
‘Listen a minute. And pay close attention. If it wasn’t for you and what you did for Glidewell Security Grilles, there’d be no Swiss bank accounts, no offshore funds, no farm in Bakewell. I’d still be living in Badger Cottage, and my brother and me would still be schlepping our grilles from door to door. Have one of these petits fours. I’m going to lend you twenty grand…’
As Freddie was about to protest, Tom held up his hand.
‘…on the strict understanding’, he put a chocolate truffle in his mouth, ‘that if you can’t pay it back, then that’s how it will be. Now I’m going to tell you what I’m doing in London.’
‘What are you doing in London?’
Tom’s face grew grave. ‘I’ve come down to be with Wendy. She’s in the Middlesex. She’s dying of lymphoma.’
As Tom recounted a poignant chronicle of reprieves, remissions and chemotherapy which had failed to work the hoped-for miracle, Freddie was aware that, while in the grand order of things his own dilemma paled into insignificance, it did not make him feel the slightest bit better.
‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am.’ Freddie noticed that Tom’s eyes were suspiciously moist. ‘I had no idea about Wendy. I honestly don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. I didn’t mean to dump on you. Sometimes…if you aren’t going to eat these I’ll finish them off…it’s take the lid off or explode.’
‘I wish I could do something.’
‘You already have. Sympathy, not solutions. It’s what most people want.’
When Freddie got home, taking a taxi from the Strand, Jane was already asleep. Getting into bed quietly, so as not to wake her, he lay on his back, alone in the darkness, going over the evening’s conversation and wondering how it was that he was able to share his problems with Tom Glidewell, who meant little to him, and not with his wife. He was no nearer an answer to his own question when his circuitous thoughts, which prevented him from sleeping night after night, were interrupted by the telephone which was on the far side of the bed.
Sitting up, in an automatic response, Jane grabbed the receiver.
‘Who? Who?’
Freddie was unable to make out the voice on the other end of the line.
‘New York. Some office. Sidonie Newmark? Would you mind telling her it’s two o’clock in the morning…’ Jane said, before wriggling beneath the covers and going promptly back to sleep.
Twenty-one
‘BANK CHAIRMAN IN SEX SCANDAL’. Up early for golf with Charles Holdsworth, the headlines in the News of the World above a photograph of Gordon Sitwell, caught and transfixed Freddie’s incredulous eyes. Although he might in his fantasies have planned to murder Gordon for ruining his career, he had no desire whatsoever to see the old boy discredited.
In all the time that he had known Gordon Sitwell, there had never been the slightest hint of what one reporter referred to as ‘City businessman’s secret vice’. Whether or not Gordon had been soliciting, whether or not he had been looking for an all-night chemist – and it seemed to Freddie highly unlikely – whatever the verdict of the magistrates, he had already been tried, and his good name destroyed, by the sordid appetite of the press. A nod was as good as a wink from some impecunious police officer, and any tip-off concerning a public figure was always ‘appreciated’ by the Grub Street hacks.
Shocked as he was by the accounts of Gordon’s arrest, Freddie had other things to think about, in particular Sidonie Newmark whom he had neither seen nor heard from in nearly five years. He wondered what had happened to the Italian Count. Sidonie had been unable to say very much on the telephone. Only that she was sorry she had mistaken the time – for which he was to apologise to Jane – and that she was coming to London. She had asked Freddie to fix up an opera, and to meet her for a drink at the Berkeley Hotel where she always stayed.
Although his fling with Sidonie was long over, the sound of her voice on the telephone had disturbed his equilibrium and taken him back to the physical and sexual peak of his mid-thirties. His coup de foudre with Sidonie had been a total infatuation with a kindred spirit – the primary erogenous zone being the brain – which, thankfully, had burned itself out. He would not, he thought wryly, be very much use to her now.
On the way to golf in Jane’s car (borrowed this time with her permission), Freddie turned on the radio to what appeared to be an omen. Jessye Norman, singing the ‘Liebestod’, took him back to Venice and the height of their affair when, Sidonie clinging tightly to him, they had crossed a flooded St Mark’s Square on planks to get to Tristan und Isolde at La Fenice. Tristan und Isolde was being performed at Covent Garden on the day Sidonie was due to arrive in London.
Charles was waiting in the clubhouse together with Richard Scott, a psychiatrist, and Irving Weston, president of an American computer company, who were making up the fourball.
‘Freddie Lomax…’ Charles made the introductions. ‘Vice- chairman and head of corporate finance at Sitwell Hunt International.’ Before they reached the eighteenth hole, Freddie resolved to swallow his pride and speak to Charles, who was ten years his junior and on a much lower rung of the banking ladder, about the galling fact that he was in urgent need of a job.
So far, apart from telling Piers Warburton, he had managed to play his cards pretty close to his chest. Peter and Georgina, next door, had found out that he was unemployed by accident. Georgina left Chester Terrace in the mornings at the same time as Freddie. Not having seen either Leonard or the Mercedes outside his house for a few days, she had called in to enquire if Freddie was all right. Since he had opened the door to her himself, it had been hard to dissimulate. He had taken Georgina into his confidence, half-hoping that there might be some suitable opening in the wine trade which – having spent a few days in Epernay with Jane one Christmas – he imagined he knew something about. Georgina, genuinely distressed by Freddie’s revelation, had said that she was struggling to keep her own head above water (or rather above wine) and that it was as much as she could do not to go into receivership herself. She did have a wide circle of contacts, however, and despite the fact that many of them were, like her husband, indigent peers of the realm, promised to keep her eyes open for anything which might possibly be of interest to Freddie.
Georgina’s concern had touched him, as had Peter’s unsolicited arrival later on with a bottle of 1961 Château Latour (Pauillac) from their personal cellar. Drawn together by adversity, he felt that in the course of a day he had got to know his rather reserved neighbours better than he had in five years of inviting each other to dinner.
The last time Freddie had played golf, his handicap, after winning the weekly medal competition, had been pulled to five. Charles was playing off nineteen and their opponents off thirteen. Freddie had to give Scott and Weston six shots, while Charles received eleven. They agreed to play for five pounds a head.
The first hole was a long, par four dog-leg,
bounded by trees and bushes, with semi-rough down the right-hand side. After a couple of practice swings, Freddie, a big hitter, smacked the ball 230 yards, right down the middle of the fairway. Feeling his spirits soar for the first time in weeks, he consigned his problems to a back burner and concentrated on his game.
Charles’ shot, also straight, was 60 yards shorter than Freddie’s. Scott hit a long ball but sliced it, and landed up under a bush on the left.
Weston’s swing, with his boron-shafted driver, entailed much stance taking, wriggling, foot-shuffling and air-hitting. This virtuoso performance, which seemed to go on interminably and was decidedly idiosyncratic, was followed by a distinctly unimpressive drive.
Charles winked at Freddie. ‘All gong and no dinner!’
Charles’ second shot landed 70 or 80 yards from the green. Scott, chipping out sideways, sliced again, this time badly. He shook his head with disbelief as his ball rolled inexorably towards a bunker.
Weston hooked to the left, well short, and Freddie, using his five wood, arched his ball smoothly onto the green where it pitched tantalisingly by the flag then ran daintily on a few yards past the pin. Neither Scott nor Weston were near enough to one-putt. Giving Freddie and Charles a stroke, the hole was halved.
Walking ahead with Charles, Freddie cleared his throat. To his surprise he heard himself say, ‘How did Bingo like the brooches?’
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