‘Today of all days,’ Jane said, putting the phone down on Lavender. ‘I have a committee meeting at ten.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’ Freddie bent to pick up some of the clothes. ‘I’ll put these back in the cupboard for you.’
‘They’re not going back,’ Jane said. ‘It’s jumble.’
‘Jumble?’
‘We’ve got a charity shop in Fulham. There’s this marvellous estate agent, a friend of Caroline’s, who gives them to us between lettings.’
Freddie wasn’t listening. He had recognised a silk shirt and liberated it from the heap.
‘You’re not getting rid of this?’
‘When did you last wear it?’ Jane demanded.
‘I like that shirt. I’ve had it for years.’
‘You can’t even do it up over your chest.’
‘I could give it to Tristan.’
‘Tristan wouldn’t be seen dead in it.’
‘I paid a lot of money for that shirt,’ Freddie said. ‘Kindly don’t throw it away.’
‘You’re never going to wear it.’ Jane began stuffing the rest of the garments into a black dustbin bag.
Catching sight of an empty yellow sleeve, Freddie pulled at it and rescued a shrunken and matted pullover from its fate. He had bought it in California one unseasonable May when he had been playing in a golf tournament. It had the Pebble Beach logo on it.
‘It’ll do for golf.’
He hated to throw anything away. He had inherited the trait from Lilli who throughout his childhood had had to economise, to practise what she referred to as ‘make do and mend’.
‘You’re always hanging around,’ Jane said.
‘I was only trying to help.’
Jane tied the top of the dustbin bag in an angry knot. The silk shirt Freddie could not get into, and the pullover he would never wear, were left accusingly on the floor.
‘Bingo will be here in five minutes. If you really want to help you can change the bed,’ Jane snapped, nodding to a pile of clean linen. As she left the room she delivered her parting shot: ‘Take the top pillow slips off.’
Freddie put on I Puritani and listened to the love-lorn madness of Elvira’s coloratura soprano as he advanced towards the bed from the disorder of which he emerged each morning, to enter it again, neatly made as if by some unseen hand, at night. He studied the used sheets which did not look to him as if they needed changing, and the identical square pillows, a predilection for which Jane had inherited from her mother, and the satin-bound blankets – Jane would not have anything to do with duvets – piled in a haphazard heap.
‘How do I know which is the top pillow?’ Freddie called above the Siberian baritone of Elvira’s spurned lover.
‘What?’ Jane’s voice rose from the hall where she had gone with the dustbin bag.
‘How do I know which is the top pillow?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You told me to change the top pillow slip,’ Freddie said reasonably. ‘I can’t change the top pillow slip unless I know which is the top pillow.’
‘Not the top pillow! The top pillow slip.’
It took him some while to persuade the pillows, which seemed to have wills of their own, into the freshly laundered pillow slips which he reckoned Jane must have bought a size too small. When he had finished, they were rhomboid rather than square, and did not look right at all.
‘Do I change both the sheets?’ His voice was almost drowned by the orchestra.
‘What?’
‘Both sheets?’
‘Yes.’ Jane was obviously trying to keep her cool.
He stripped the bed down to the mattress thinking what a bloody waste of time and energy it all was.
‘I thought you’d be finished by now!’ Jane breezed through the bedroom on her way to the bathroom.
‘I have finished. What do I do with this woolly thing?’ Freddie shouted through the closed door. It was opened again angrily.
‘What woolly thing?’
Freddie held it up.
‘That’s the underblanket!’
‘How am I supposed to know?’
Jane gesticulated with her foaming toothbrush. ‘Freddie, please leave it. I’d rather do it myself.’
When Jane had gone out, Freddie decided to redeem himself by hoovering the drawing-room (to Alfredo Kraus’ ‘Una furtiva lagrima’). Women made such a song and dance of everything. It wasn’t such a big deal. When he inadvertently allowed the duster, which he had taken from Lavender’s cleaning cupboard, to be swallowed up by the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner – which began to smell alarmingly of burning – he chucked the whole thing in and went to play squash with James.
The fact that the vacuum cleaner not only had to be repaired, but that it needed an expensive new motor (when Freddie was trying to keep their capital expenditure to the minimum) and would be out of action for the best part of a week, did not improve matters between himself and Jane. Their daily confrontations were symptomatic of the underlying problem which they no longer addressed.
Tristan’s words, talk to Mum, reinforced what Freddie already knew. Something must be done before the impasse became irredeemable. On the way home from the station he bought a bouquet of long-stemmed yellow roses, and entered the house determined to make his peace with Jane.
He was met at the door by Rosina who had a finger to her lips.
‘Mummy’s got a migraine,’ she said in a state whisper. ‘And it’s the first night of Kiss me Kate.’
Freddie put the roses on the table and slipped the worry beads out of his pocket. Rosina was waiting for him to speak.
‘I’ll see if she wants anything,’ Freddie said softly, his foot on the bottom stair.
‘What about Kiss me Kate?’ Rosina said.
‘What about it?’
‘Will you come?’
‘Me?’
Freddie took his foot off again and faced Rosina. He had seldom involved himself in sports days, speech days, concerts, prizegivings or PTA meetings. Busy at the bank, he had left that sort of thing to Jane.
‘Me?’ Freddie repeated.
The concept of sitting in a draughty hall while a bunch of schoolgirls cavorted on the stage in a show of desperately amateur dramatics was totally alien.
Rosina looked in the hall mirror and preened herself. ‘I am the leading lady.’
‘I’ve some papers to deal with,’ Freddie said. ‘I’ll come another time.’
‘It’s the first night.’ Rosina put her arms round his neck. ‘You’d really like it.’
‘I’d really hate it.’
‘Please, Daddy…’
Freddie would rather have defended a hundred hostile takeover bids.
‘You’ve nothing else to do.’
It was the story of his life these days. Situations with which previously he had never had to deal, domestic matters with which he had never concerned himself, conspired to fill the void. So it was that he found himself in a packed Pfeiffer Hall, Xeroxed programme in hand, wedged between a power-dressed mother whose scent threatened to anaesthetise him, and a portly father (he was amazed to see so many men in the audience) whose bulging thigh impinged on his own narrow space, on a straight-backed chair which he presumed was inscribed, as was the one in front of him, with the name of a past student of the college.
He opened his programme. ‘Synopsis: The action centres around a small theatrical company directed by Fred Graham, whose ex-wife has been employed to star with him in their production of The Taming of the Shrew. The stormy plot of the Shakespeare play is paralleled in the relationships off stage and this – along with the comedy provided by the ‘gangsters’ who end up part of the cast – gave Cole Porter the cue for some of his finest music…’
Freddie had already appraised the fidgeting and excited members of the orchestra who tuned their instruments at the side of the stage: violins, violas, cello, bass, flute, clarinet, saxophone, horn, trumpet, trombone, harp, piano, pe
rcussion. He hadn’t been expecting anything so comprehensive or so professional in appearance. The cast list, amongst which Freddie recognised the names of some of Rosina’s friends, was headed by Rosina Lomax.
As the orchestra struck up, and the lights dimmed, Freddie took out his worry beads to ease his frustration at being hemmed in between the overpowering scent and the intrusive leg, leaned back, as best he could, and prepared himself for 120 minutes of unmitigated boredom.
Two hours later, together with the rest of the audience, he was applauding as loudly and as enthusiastically as he had ever done when the curtain came down after a performance at Covent Garden or at Glyndebourne. From the moment the lights (Lighting: Mr Buckley and Mrs Pycraft) had gone up on Stage of Ford Theatre, Baltimore, to the final scene in Baptista’s house and the familiar chorus of ‘Wunderbar’ (which he was tired of hearing round the house), the evening had been one of pure joy.
As the Musical Director, the Producer, the Choreographer, the Stage Manager, as well as those responsible for make-up, set design, programme and publicity, came diffidently onto the platform to take their bows with the exhausted but radiant cast, Freddie reckoned that they deserved every last bit of their acclaim. There had been the odd hiccup: a backdrop lowered into place upside down; a muffed entrance; forgotten lines; a spontaneous snigger at the ‘lovers” passionate kiss. But the accomplished acting, the professional costumes, the sophisticated production, for which he had not been prepared, made Freddie feel both ashamed of himself and proud. He felt ashamed at what he must have missed over the years, by way of school performances both by Tristan and Rosina, and proud to be the father of the radiant and excited leading lady who had come forward to take her bow. He had not realised she was so talented.
From the front of the stage Rosina bowed long and low, making Freddie wish that he had brought the yellow roses to present to her. Straightening up, she smiled at him, then caught the eye of the viola player, a young man with limpid eyes and shoulder-length black hair. Rosina bowed again, before, to Freddie’s horror, subsiding slowly into the green folds of the velvet skirt so lovingly sewn by Jane, she fainted dead away.
Thirty-one
On the morning of her Ball, Jane was woken by Freddie’s baritone – ‘Figaro si, Figaro la, Figaro si, Figaro la’ – and prayed that the unfamiliar sound signposted the road to his recovery. She was not to know that it was the calm before the storm.
Leaving for Grosvenor House early to put some finishing touches to the arrangements, and knowing what the decision to show his face in public was costing him, Jane tentatively approached Freddie who, dressed in his tuxedo, was already at the drinks tray in the drawing-room. Putting her arms round him, she hugged him understandingly. For the first time in weeks he did not resist.
As he waited for Rosina, who seemed to have spent the entire day washing her hair, he took his Black Label to the armchair and went over the débâcle which had suceeded Kiss me Kate.
Ministered to by several members of the audience, a surprising number of whom turned out to be medically qualified, Rosina had quickly recovered from her faint. She was still pale and shaking when Freddie got her home. Downing a couple of whiskies himself while waiting for the kettle to boil, he prepared a hot toddy for Rosina while she got herself into bed.
‘Have you got a temperature?’ Freddie felt her head. ‘Do you still feel dizzy?’ He wished Jane were around. ‘Does anything hurt?’
Rosina looked up at him from her pillow. Despite the fact that she still had her stage make-up on, she was cuddling her worn-out teddy bear and looked about 12 years old.
‘Shall I call Dr Cardwell?’ Freddie asked dubiously. He was unaccustomed to dealing with such crises.
‘Daddy…’ Tears welled up, like green pools, in Rosina’s eyes. Freddie waited.
‘I think I may be pregnant.’
Freddie was speechless. Pregnant! He remembered the day Rosina was born. He had been in Geneva on business when Jane’s membranes had ruptured five days early. The moment his meeting was over he had dashed to the airport. It was six o’clock. The last plane to London was at 6.30. The girl at the Swiss Air counter told him firmly that the flight was closed. Bringing all his not inconsiderable charm to bear, he managed to persuade her to allow him through. He had never run so fast in his life. Up the escalator, through immigration, into the departure lounge, through the gate, along the miles of corridor – colliding with startled travellers and apologising in any language which came to his lips – to make the aircraft as the surprised crew were about to close the door. By the time he reached the hospital Jane was in the final stages of labour. To the accompaniment of the silent Marriage of Figaro which crashed joyously through his head, he watched the miraculous birth of his daughter who would grow up with all the noble purity with which Mozart had endowed his Countess.
‘Rosina?’ Freddie whispered, as Jane held the perfectly formed child to her breast.
Jane nodded, smiling her tired smile. And Rosina it had been for the past fifteen years. The fact that she was now old enough to become a mother herself had somehow passed him by.
‘Pregnant, Rosina!’
The thought that some scruffy youth had defiled his Countess, filled him with rage. He felt capable of strangling the man with his own hands.
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re going to have a baby?’
Rosina nodded.
‘Have you been having sex?’ Freddie heard himself say.
The massed tears overflowed down Rosina’s cheeks in black tributaries of mascara.
‘Oh no, Daddy…’ she sobbed. ‘I found it in Lilli’s box!’
With Jane still laid low with her migraine, which was always a three-day event, it was Freddie who took Rosina to see Bruce Cardwell, the family practitioner. Waiting outside the consulting room while she was being examined, Freddie rested his head in his hands. He had been awake all night.
‘Mr Lomax?’ Dr Cardwell’s nurse beckoned him into the room where, Rosina, fully dressed, was sitting on the examination couch running her fingers through her hair.
‘If it’s a question of abortion, Bruce,’ Freddie said, taking charge of the situation, ‘I’d like her to see the top chap.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Bruce Cardwell was smiling. ‘I think the lacings were too tight.’
‘Excuse me?’ Freddie was puzzled.
‘On the dress. That, and the excitement – she forgot to have anything to eat – and the heat from the lights…’
Freddie realised that he was talking about Kiss me Kate.
In the street, Freddie put his arm round Rosina’s shoulders and walked happily in step with her along the pavement. He would take her to Jane’s Ball.
By some trick of the light, Rosina’s appearance at the door of the drawing-room, red hair, white skin, wearing what appeared to be an emerald-green crêpe bandage, woke Freddie from his reverie and made him think for a moment that she was Jane. It happened lately. He’d see some 20-year-old in the street and believe for a moment that it was some contemporary from Cambridge, not stopping to think that any friend of his was now more likely to be a 40-year-old tax exile, a designer-stubbled media mogul, or a middle-aged industrialist.
‘Daddy?’ Rosina said.
It was not Jane. He looked admiringly at his daughter through an alcoholic haze.
Jane had arranged a table of close friends – Charles and Bingo, James and Dos, Peter and Georgina, Piers and Alex – onto which two more places had been squeezed at the last minute. Henry Dove had been given his marching orders, and Rosina had invited Ferdinand – the viola player of the limpid eyes and shoulder-length black hair – to be her partner at the Ball.
It was like old times. Helped by the Black Label, Freddie climbed out of the pit into which he had been cast by Gordon Sitwell and back into his old skin. It was a long while since he had been at the top of his form.
Observing him, the most impressive, the handsomest man in the room, as he hosted the
evening with his old panache, Rosina hoped that if she ever did decide to get married, her husband – would it be Ferdinand? – would be as wonderful as her father and that she would be as lucky as Jane.
As if there was no tomorrow, Freddie bought tombola tickets for Rosina (she won Frau Wichmann’s Kölnischwasser and a pink ‘babygrow’ the significance of which was lost on all but Jane and Freddie), and an entire book of raffle tickets for an embarrassed Ferdinand – who had put his hand into the pocket of his borrowed dinner jacket and come up with two twenty-pence pieces – and generously tipped the waiters who had marched into the darkened ballroom with their flaming desserts of spun sugar held at shoulder height, and ordered several rounds of brandy and liqueurs for which he refused to let anyone else pay.
After dinner, while the women streamed towards the ladies’ room and Ferdinand wandered off to get some air while he waited for Rosina, Freddie, Charles Holdsworth, Piers Warburton, Peter Cottesloe and James remained at the table and closed ranks.
‘When’s the big day?’ Charles addressed Freddie, who knew he was referring to the signing of the Bowker & Page deal.
‘Monday.’ Forty-eight hours to go.
‘Anything else in the offing?’
Freddie signalled for more brandy, a move registered by Piers who was working his way through a bottle of Malvern Water.
‘One or two irons in the fire.’ It was not strictly true, although tonight, helped by the alcohol he had consumed, Freddie felt it to be.
‘Believe me, this is no time to be a banker,’ Piers said.
‘Or a name!’ James, a member of Lloyds, who had lost a considerable amount of money, said ruefully, lighting a cigar.
‘There have been some strange goings-on in my own outfit, lately.’ Piers screwed the top on the Malvern Water. ‘Four market-makers, out of a team of twenty-eight, have just been made redundant. Rumour has it that one of them was responsible for over £1 million of trading profit in the past three months. The story is that it’s part of a “reorganisation”. The powers that be are looking at radical measures and are apparently planning to shed thousands of jobs and hundreds of branches. I shall probably be out on my ear myself very soon.’
Golden Boy Page 24