Golden Boy

by Rosemary Friedman

  ‘Are you there, sir?’

  Freddie, holding on with one hand to the receiver and with the other to his worry beads, pre-empted the concierge’s words.

  ‘No message?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, sir.’

  Returning to the bar, and reporting the blank he had drawn to James, Freddie voiced his suspicions of the reason for Sidonie’s hasty departure and downed two double Black Labels in quick succession.

  ‘You may not be head of corporate finance any longer, but you’re still the same person,’ James tried to console him.

  ‘You don’t know Sidonie. That’s not the way her mind works.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ James said, ‘it sounds as if you’re well rid of her.’

  ‘I don’t want her. All that’s over. Was over a long time ago. I only wanted to see if I could come up with the goods.’

  ‘Why Sidonie?’

  It was hard for Freddie to explain to James, who deceived his wife with his mistress, and his mistress with his other mistresses, and his other mistresses with his casual encounters, that he was a one-woman man – that woman being Jane – and that it was only his inability to make love to Jane which had led him to pin his hopes on Sidonie.

  ‘Not exactly a success at the moment, am I?’

  ‘It depends how you define success,’ James said.

  Freddie was now on his fourth Black Label. ‘Winning Wimbledon, making money, running an organisation, getting to the top of the professional tree, the Nobel Prize…you can’t define it. You know damn well what it means.’ He signalled to the barman.

  ‘Steady on.’ James pushed the potato crisps towards him. Freddie ignored them.

  ‘All my life, ever since I first placed my building blocks one on top of the other, I’ve needed to make things happen. I’ve needed to have an idea, to put it into practice, to see it bear fruit. Even if it backfires, even if it turns out to be a damp squib. What I’m doing now is occupational therapy, filling time. You know me, James. When have I ever “filled time”?’

  ‘You underestimate yourself. If somebody said to you, look, I’ll offer you a lousy job but you’ll get paid £3 million a year, what would you say?’

  When Freddie did not answer, James said, ‘You’d tell him to stuff it!’

  ‘Three million pounds is a hell of lot of money…’ Freddie said. He was beginning to slur his consonants.

  ‘Where’s my old Freddie? Since when has money been an evaluation of success? Since when has it been a scoreboard, a measurement of how well you’re doing? You know as well as I do, it’s the deal that’s the fun. It’s the shaking of the jigsaw, the fitting of it together.’

  ‘Try selling that jigsaw spiel to Derek Abbott!’

  ‘Your trouble, my friend – for God’s sake, Freddie, what are you trying to do to yourself, don’t you think you’ve had enough? – your trouble is that you are unable to cope with unstructured situations.’

  Freddie picked up his new drink and through a Black Label mist, thought about what James had said.

  ‘Right! I have to have a strategy. There must be a coherent structure. I am psy…psycho…psychologically unhappy with random circumstances.’

  ‘One last question,’ James said, ‘then I’m taking you away from that whisky bottle and we’ll have something to eat. Why do you think Gordon Sitwell sacked you?’

  ‘You know perfectly well why he sacked me.’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘He sacked me because business failures in Britain are running at 248 every working day. He sacked me because in the past year alone there have been 47,777 liquidations and bankruptcies. He sacked me because small firms have shed almost one million jobs – 15 per cent of their workforce! He sacked me because levels of credit for long-term financial commitments have hit bottom. He sacked me because there are major structural weaknesses in the economy, for which I am not responsible. He sacked me because of Conrad fucking Verger, because he wants to keep Sitwell Hunt in the family, and because he is shit scared.’

  ‘Balls!’ James said. ‘Gordon Sitwell sacked you because he would be incapable of recognising an opportunity if it got up and hit him in the face. He sacked you for the same reason that he hired you. Because you have an innovative flare which would help Sitwell Hunt to grow. When organisations get to a certain size, Freddie love, they often feel it necessary to get rid of the executive who gave them their much-needed kick up the backside in the first place.’

  James stood up. ‘You are not useless, old cock, you are not worthless, and you have not been rejected, not even by Sidonie who most probably had quite some other reason for leaving the Berkeley. All you are, my friend – if you will allow me to say so – is pissed!’

  Despite what James had said, Freddie’s elation over Bowker & Page had been tempered by his disappointment at Sidonie’s cavalier treatment of him. He had called her New York apartment at regular intervals to be informed by a machine that she was not available. Her Wall Street office had been instructed to say, on each occasion that he tried to contact her, that Ms Newmark was ‘out of town’. As far as Sidonie was concerned, he was yesterday’s news.

  Twenty-seven

  Gordon Sitwell would not let Margaret leave his side. Whereas Freddie’s response to his reversal was to withdraw into himself, to hide his wounds beneath a carapace which excluded everyone, including Jane, to whom he was closest, Gordon’s reaction to the ignominy to which he had been subjected by the press, was to cling like a limpet to his wife. He would not go out of the house, except into the garden where he communed with his roses, refused to see visitors, and would not let Margaret out of his sight. The argument, that he had brought his situation upon himself, was not one which he was willing to address. He equated his predicament with penalising a man for eating because he was hungry, and he could not reconcile his apprehension by the police with the truth, as it seemed to him, that he was merely satisfying an appetite, as basic as that for food, which he was incapable of controlling. The fact that he had been charged, and that he was to come before the magistrates, seemed to Gordon grossly unjust. There was so much crime about that was real: thieves who got away with burglary, violators who perpetrated rape, muggers who attacked the old and the innocent, swindlers who cheated, frauds who defrauded, arsonists and wife-batterers, GBH offenders and child-molesters. Gordon Sitwell was not an enemy of society and he did not remotely equate himself with these felons.

  All he had done was talk. To a prostitute. He had not even got as far as her room. It would not have made the slightest difference if he had had sex with her. His crime was soliciting. His misdemeanour had been spelled out for him several times. It had been made abundantly clear. That he had both lied to the police officer about looking for an all-night chemist’s and categorically refused to furnish his name and address, had, as it turned out, been errors of judgement which had cost him dearly. In a moment of panic, he had taken a calculated risk which, in the event, had misfired.

  Whereas Freddie was unable to tolerate what he considered was his unwarranted dismissal from Sitwell Hunt, and dreamed impotently of putting back the clock, Gordon merely wanted to wipe the slate clean of the stigma with which he had been branded. While Freddie’s ordeal had resulted in distressing sexual inadequacy with Jane, one of the perks of Gordon’s disgrace was, as far as a surprised Margaret was concerned, his renewal of interest in his wife. This nightly distraction deferred the re-run of his arrest by PC Mark Morrell of the Metropolitan Police, which now furnished the ongoing scenario of his dreams.

  The three hours – from the time that he had waited unhappily on the Hertford Street pavement next to the young constable, awaiting the arrival of the vehicle into which he would be summarily bundled, to the moment when he appeared on the steps of Savile Row police station to be confronted by the paparazzi – were etched into his memory as indelibly as if they had been seared with a blowtorch. There was no eradicating them, no easy panacea for his shame.

  He had merci
fully not been handcuffed. He had sat in silence on the back seat of the car next to PC Morrell, his designated minder, until they reached the police station. He had been escorted to a down-at-heel charge room where he was directed to a plastic chair and ordered to ‘keep quiet’, an admonition he had accepted from no one since his schooldays.

  Glorying, it seemed to Gordon, like a salmon fisherman in the size of his catch, the arresting officer, helmet beneath his arm, had approached the Custody Sergeant, who sat behind a desk which was bolted to the floor.

  While he waited, Gordon thought paradoxically of the gilt chair in the ballroom of Buckingham Palace, on which he had waited to receive his knighthood.

  Margaret had never quite come to terms with being ‘Lady’ Sitwell. She did not feel at home in the part. Gordon himself was fiercely proud of the accolade. His photograph outside the Palace – with Margaret in a hat which looked like nothing so much as an upturned soup plate – had pride of place on the chimney piece at Tall Trees, and he did not mind admitting that the day he had been honoured by Her Majesty was the proudest in his life.

  ‘I nicked this one. Soliciting prostitutes in Hertford Street.’

  PC Morell’s words brought him back from the brilliance of the Palace ballroom to the charge room which was dismally illuminated by a naked lamp. While the Custody Sergeant did not exactly lick his pencil – his findings were recorded in Biro – the rate at which he wrote in the custody book betrayed a distinct lack of familiarity with the written word.

  There was little in the bleak surroundings to delight the eye. There were a great many doors, a large laminated rectangle on which the names of those already apprehended were entered in purple marker-pen, a grim poster, cautioning about HIV and the danger to drug users of sharing needles, and another (carrying a similar AIDS warning) explaining the use of a breathing tube when administering the kiss of life. The only distraction of the slightest interest was a wooden board mounted high on the wall, on which a series of lights flashed repeatedly and which were repeatedly ignored. It reminded him of the panel in the kitchen of his parents’ pre-war home, on which numbered tumblers were used to summon the servants. If the inmates of the cells which he had glimpsed were in need of attention, they were certainly not receiving it. The charge room was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a jolly place.

  ‘You!’

  The voice of the Custody Sergeant, who must have been close on retirement, was curt to the point of insolence. Gordon realised that he was being addressed, and that the man was indicating a fixed wooden bench in front of his desk.

  ‘Over ’ere.’

  Gordon wondered whether he should call Dominic Mason. That it was his prerogative to summon his solicitor, he was well aware. He decided that rather than involve Dominic at this point, he would wait and see what happened. Taking his time – by way of signifying his disapproval – he rose from his chair and traversed the room.

  ‘I ’aven’t got all night,’ the Custody Sergeant said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You ’eard. Name?’

  Gordon hesitated only briefly. ‘Sitwell,’ he said. ‘Sir Gordon Sitwell.’

  The Custody Sergeant exchanged a glance with the salmon fisherman, confirming the importance of his catch. Writing down Gordon’s address seemed to take several minutes.

  ‘Pockets.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Gordon said.

  ‘Pockets. What are you, deaf or something? Empty your pockets.’

  Gordon had had enough. ‘I am quite sure that you are doing your duty,’ he addressed the little Hitler behind the desk. ‘Carrying out your job. But there is not the slightest excuse for rudeness. Kindly watch your tongue, Sergeant, or I shall see that your gross discourtesy comes to the ears of your superior officer.’

  ‘Pockets,’ the Sergeant said as if Gordon had not spoken, and waited while he went through his overcoat, his jacket, and his trousers, and laid his wallet (with his credit cards which established his identity) and his possessions out on the desk where they were duly logged and, being of an entirely innocent nature, eventually wordlessly returned.

  It was the cue for PC Morrell to take out his notebook and read his version of the evening’s events as they concerned Gordon. Gordon was tired. He wanted to go home to Margaret. He was only half-listening to the constable’s reconstruction of the happenings in Hertford Street but was annoyed by the provocative manner in which he reiterated ‘repeated soliciting’ to describe Gordon’s brief conversation with the girls.

  ‘That is not at all an accurate description,’ Gordon said.

  The Custody Sergeant glared at him and nodded to PC Morrell to carry on.

  ‘Whereupon the defendant stated that he was “looking for an all-night chemist’s…”’

  ‘It was not “persistent soliciting”…’ Gordon objected.

  ‘Why don’t you fucking shut up?’

  Gordon had never heard such impertinence in his life. There was absolutely no need for it. The man would be sorry. He would see to it personally that he would be sorry.

  ‘Do you want him charged, constable?’ the Custody Sergeant asked PC Morrell, when his monologue had come to an end.

  Gordon woke up. He hadn’t realised that there might be a choice. PC Morrell put away his notebook. It aged one to say that policemen were getting younger and younger. Gordon thought that this one could surely have been his grandson.

  PC Morrell buttoned his pocket. He had had enough of the charge room. He wanted to get out onto the street.

  ‘Down to you, Sarge.’

  Gordon groaned inwardly.

  ‘We’d better charge him…’

  ‘We do have to protect our young ladies.’

  ‘May I suggest you have a word with the powers that be, before going any further.’

  The Custody Sergeant opened a drawer and produced a charge sheet which, Gordon noticed, was in triplicate.

  ‘I’m going to charge you, Sir Gordon.’

  Gordon invoked his right to silence. He was convinced that the decision was provoked by the Sergeant’s envy of his title and position. Having been needled into setting the wheels in motion, he had no choice but to proceed. There was no way, even had he been so disposed, that he could climb down. There was more writing. It was quite ridiculous. It seemed to go on for ever. For the first time Gordon wondered whether they were actually going to lock him up in a cell, from were his plea for attention would go unanswered.

  He needed to go to the lavatory. His bladder had been registering full for some time. He conveyed his need to the constable but before his request could be granted the Custody Sergeant turned once again to his ledger.

  ‘What on earth…?’ Gordon said.

  ‘Nine forty-five, toilet…’ He nodded to PC Morrell who accompanied Gordon down the corridor.

  ‘Everything has to be logged,’ PC Morrell explained as Gordon stood before the urinal. ‘In case of complaints.’

  Gordon zipped his fly. The younger man was officious but at least he was civil. Better than that pig in the charge room.

  ‘I shall have to have some confirmation of your address…’ the Custody Sergeant said on his return.

  ‘I have already given you my address,’ Gordon snapped. ‘You’ve written it down.’

  ‘…an employer…’

  ‘An employer!’ Gordon exploded. ‘I am the chairman of a public company. Chairman of a bank.’

  ‘Your wife? A friend?’ the Custody Sergeant suggested.

  Gordon could not understand why the first person he thought of was Freddie, on whose discretion he knew he could rely. He certainly did not want to involve his daughter, so he did not suggest Conrad Verger. He had just spelled out the name and telephone number of his solicitor, when a mug of steaming tea, brought in by a hefty WPC, the outline of whose structural engineering was clearly visible beneath her white shirt, distracted the Custody Sergeant who looked at Gordon, in his bespoke overcoat, his Garrick tie, and decided to give him the be
nefit of the doubt.

  ‘Photograph and fingerprints.’

  ‘Fingerprints!’ Gordon said, to nobody in particular as he was led away. Fingerprints. For enquiring where there was an all-night chemist’s. It was ludicrous. No wonder there were outbreaks of rioting and hooliganism. The country was in danger of becoming a police state.

  He was led, like a common criminal, to a podium in front of a fixed camera which took a mugshot of his face against his name and a number spelled out in magnetic letters. Heads were going to roll for this. He had never been so mortified in his life. He could not imagine why, considering the nature of the charge, it was deemed necessary to fingerprint him, and assumed, correctly, that the Custody Sergeant was extending his powers to the limit. The process, necessitating the despoiling of his carefully tended fingers with black ink, daubed liberally onto a roller, took a painstaking five minutes. Afterwards he was despatched in the direction of a tin of Swarfega with which he was invited to clean himself up.

  On his return, the Custody Sergeant, who had taken advantage of Gordon’s absence to finish his tea, handed him the blue copy of the charge sheet which requested his presence at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court two weeks hence. Failure to appear, on the stated day, at the stated time, he was cautioned, constituted a criminal offence.

  With his release from the charge room, Gordon had thought that his ordeal, at least until the case was heard (which it would not be if Gordon could help it), was over. The profound shock of walking out of the front door of Savile Row police station to be blinded by the flash guns of waiting press photographers, brought home to him the fact that it had not even begun.