‘The main problem, as I see it,’ Charles kept an eye on the doors for the return of Bingo, ‘is assessing lending risks in a competitive market. Bad debts have been accelerating for years; £5.6 billion has been written off this year alone. The clearing banks have been so busy scrambling for the market share that they have failed to recognise – although it’s been staring them in the face – that the name of the game has changed…’
Listening to them, Freddie felt as if he had a terminal disease. The news that his friends might have it too was, he presumed, intended to make him feel better.
‘Freddie’s on good form.’ In the ladies’ room, Georgina, wearing the Cottesloe pearls over a simple black shift, advanced two paces towards the row of cubicles.
‘It’s the first time I’ve seen him laugh,’ Jane said. She meant since his dismissal.
‘We’re running an article in the magazine on redundancy…’ Alex said tactlessly.
Dos glared at her.
‘The emotional cost…’ Alex blundered on.
‘For God’s sake, Alex!’
‘It’s okay,’ Jane said.
‘Did you know that Relate’, Alex warmed to her theme, ‘has reported a 30 per cent increase in marriage breakdown, thought to be brought about by the strain and pressure of redundancy on middle-class, middle-aged relationships…’
‘Someone in America has invented a gadget for women so that they can pee standing up,’ Bingo said loudly as they shuffled towards the head of the queue. ‘I’m not sure of the logistics of the thing, but apparently it looks like a baseball.’
Having effectively silenced Alex and caused considerable amusement to the other ladies in the queue, Bingo put a comforting arm through Jane’s.
By the time they returned to the table, the Latin American band (courtesy of Sir John Pawsey) had struck up, and the dancing was in full swing. Freddie was already on the floor with Rosina, and Piers, seizing the opportunity of getting Jane into his arms, stood up as she approached and invited her to dance.
‘She’s only dancing with him.’ Rosina followed Freddie’s gaze as he steered her round the floor.
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Daddy! You’re frightfully drunk, you know. I’m practically anaesthetised.’
‘Alcohol does not affect me,’ Freddie said. His eyes did not leave Jane and Piers. ‘It never has.’
Dancing next with Ferdinand, Rosina thought that she had never been so happy. Looking at him, his aquiline nose, his Christ-like face, she knew that having sex with Ferdinand, who was gentle where Henry had been rough, patient where Henry had been impetuous, sensitive where Henry had been like a bull in a china shop, would not be the let-down it had been with Henry – who was now going out with the beastly Rachel Lloyd who deserved him – but that he would treat her with respect, would extract from her body wondrous tunes, as he did from his viola.
As Ferdinand escorted Rosina back to the table whilst firmly retaining her hand in his, a drum roll drew 500 pairs of eyes to the platform, where her mother, whom she thought of more in terms of nagging her to tidy her room or reminding her what time she was to be in at night, was about to make a speech.
Into the expectant silence Jane, who was largely responsible for the success of the evening, said: ‘The charity industry, with an annual turnover of £18 billion, represents 4 per cent of gross domestic product…’
Freddie sat up. Jane’s voice, as she stood at the microphone, was clear and confident. He was unaware that she had even heard of gross domestic product.
‘…and is larger than the agriculture sector,’ Jane went on. ‘If the volunteer time was costed, this sector – according to the Charities Aid Foundation – could represent 10 per cent. Like most industries, however, the voluntary sector has been hard hit by the recession…’ She avoided Freddie’s eye. ‘The main item on the agenda of almost every charity today is funding. Company giving has decreased, individual giving has diminished, and central government has been effectively capping much local authority expenditure…’
Speaking fluently, and without notes, Jane held her audience as, standing on the dressing-up hamper as a child, she had captivated the younger copperknobs.
Listening to her, watching her, her white sequins, her red hair, Freddie realised that there were strengths to Jane that he was either unaware of or had ignored. Her final exhortation ‘to give generously’, to the assembly enslaved both by her words and her appearance which sparkled sveltely beneath the chandeliers of the great ballroom, brought tears to their eyes and charmed the cheque books from their pockets. Leading her proudly onto the dance floor, to the strains of ‘La Vie en rose’ which he had asked the band to play, Freddie took her in his arms.
Marching once again to the same drummer, he did not need to remind Jane of the moonlit walks along the Backs, the passionate nights in his Cambridge room. The music did it for him. He had no idea whether it was the remembrance of things past, his pride in Jane, his love for her, or the alcohol he had consumed, but for the first time since his nightmare had begun, he felt capable of making love to her.
‘Let’s go home,’ he whispered, holding her close.
Jane got the car out of the garage. Rosina, her head on Ferdinand’s shoulder, sat in the back.
Old habits dying hard – he liked to be first with the City editors’ comments on the week’s news – Freddie asked Jane to stop for a moment outside Tottenham Court Road station. Getting out of the car, he handed over a note to the man behind the trestle table, who was wearing a woolly hat with a bobble, and helped himself to a stack of Sunday newspapers. By the light of a street lamp he stared unbelievingly at the headline: ‘BANKER TAKES OWN LIFE’, above a photograph of Gordon Sitwell.
Thirty-two
Margaret Sitwell had not picked up a Mills & Boon for two weeks. She had been too busy looking after Gordon. Since his arrest he had been a changed man. She hoped that after the court hearing he would revert to his old self. The hearing had twice been delayed. On the first occasion Gordon had pleaded lumbago, and on the second, a virus infection, both of which had been obligingly confirmed by the accommodating family practitioner, Malcolm Rowe, a longtime friend. Gordon was indeed ill. But his indisposition was not physical. Since the night he had driven home from Savile Row police station to lay his head in the confessional of Margaret’s lap, his very real suffering had been pathetic to behold. He had not shown his face at the bank, had delegated his work to Conrad Verger, and his Rolls Royce had not been out of the garage.
The first indication that Margaret had of the severity of her husband’s condition was when he refused to go into the garden. He could not face his roses. It was as if Rosa Rubiginosa, Rosa Xanthina, Virgo and Pascali, and Madame Louise Laperrière, had joined forces to censure him.
Although he had not yet been indicted, Gordon felt that he had been unjustly accused, just as he had when he had spied through the bedroom door on his mother, swearing to his father, so very many years ago, that he had only stopped to fasten his shoe. Somewhere between his apprehension by the police and his decision to take his own life, he had managed to convince both himself and Margaret that he had in fact been looking for an all-night chemist. Margaret thought that it was only a question of time – as soon as he was well enough to appear before the magistrates – before her husband was completely vindicated. She had said as much to her friends in The Pantry where she took her morning coffee. They had nodded their heads in sympathy.
Gordon did not have the support of friends. He would not even let his children into the house. He had no one but Margaret. He relied upon her to find his slippers – he had taken to shuffling round the house in his dressing gown and refused to get dressed – to accompany him to the morning-room where he sat most of the day doing nothing more demanding than stare unseeingly out of the window, to cook his meals, with which she had all but to feed him, to cradle him in her arms in bed at night, when he would turn to her and act out the fantasies which had led to his downfa
ll. Margaret did not object. She had never had so much attention. She allowed Gordon to ride her, and beat her, to abuse her in ways she would not divulge to anyone, not even under torture, but proudly displayed the black rings beneath her eyes and the huge purple lovebites on her neck, in The Pantry.
Malcolm Rowe, who had long ago retired but continued to look after Margaret and Gordon, said that Gordon was depressed, and told him to snap out of it. Margaret suggested to Malcolm that there were pills for Gordon’s condition, she had heard ‘Hyacinth from Wood Green’ and ‘Eroll from Tooting’ discuss their efficacy, on the LBC phone-ins. Malcolm Rowe said that pills were for people with problems, people who had something to be depressed about, but Gordon had never been depressed in his life, he had just had a nasty shock and that left alone he would get over it.
Margaret, who was not accustomed to thinking for herself – Gordon had always told her what to think – had left it at that. When Gordon appeared to get worse instead of better, she decided that the time had come to consult Sophie, their oldest daughter, married to Conrad Verger.
Leaving Gordon with some lunch on a tray, a flask of tea, and some rockcakes she had bought that morning at The Pantry, she had set off for Rickmansworth, where Sophie and Conrad had a mansion with a swimming pool and a sauna and a fully equipped gymnasium (for Conrad’s weight training) and a tennis court for the children. Conrad and Sophie were sympathetic but, busy preparing a barbecue for the neighbours, arranging the chairs on the patio, and wondering whether there would be enough food to go round (Sophie was shouting at the children and wrapping potatoes in tinfoil), were not particularly helpful.
‘Of course he’ll be acquitted, Mummy.’ Sophie seemed more interested in the potatoes than Gordon, whom she took after. ‘Jasper stop kicking Miranda and help your father with the chairs. If you can only get him to the Magistrates’ Court, all the fuss will die down. The public has a very short memory.’
‘Do you think more steaks, or more chops, Sophe?’ Conrad said.
‘Sophie’s quite right…’ Conrad always agreed with Sophie, it was more than his life was worth not to. ‘Yesterday’s news is today’s fish and chips. The sooner Gordon comes back to the bank, the better.’
‘He’ll have other things to think about,’ Sophie said, and to Conrad: ‘We can always make up with sausages.’
Declining the invitation to amuse the children, who were extremely badly behaved, Margaret refused Conrad’s offer (made as he looked anxiously at the time) to run her home. Margaret, who had never learned to drive – Gordon said that she was too careless – told Conrad that she wouldn’t dream of putting him out, and insisted on making her own way, as she had come, by public transport. By the time she reached Tall Trees, she was almost late for Gordon’s supper.
She sensed that something was wrong the moment she opened the front door. It was not merely the fact that she was not greeted with the familiar ‘Is that you, Margaret?’ – as if it could be anybody else! – but a feeling that the house was too quiet, that it was silently trying to tell her something.
She opened the door of the morning-room quietly, in case Gordon was having a nap. The room was tidy. It was as if no one had been in there. Upstairs the bedroom was empty, there was no evidence that Gordon had been lying on his bed. It was at this point that Margaret began to worry. Possibilities she had no wish to consider were already infiltrating her mind.
‘Gordon!’ she called, knowing there would be no answer.
‘Gordon?’ She dragged her heavy legs up to the long corridors, the empty rooms, on the top floor.
There was no question that he was in the garden. It was weeks since he had set foot outside the house. There was one possibility which she had not explored. She had no desire to. Returning to the bedroom she sat on the bed for a long time and enjoyed what was to be her last tranquil moment, her last vestige of hope, then made her way to the garage.
Gordon had never invested in an ‘up-and-over’ door, and refused to have anything to do with remote controls. He liked the oak doors on his garage. It was the same in the house. Although he must have plenty of money – Margaret knew, it stood to reason, although he never discussed it with her – he was not keen on spending it on what he considered inessentials. The old-fashioned cooker still cooked, the monstrous fridge they had had since their marriage still did what it was designed to do, the massive mahogany wardrobes opened and closed satisfactorily, and he saw absolutely no reason to bow either to built-in obsolescence or new technology. It was the same when it came to redecoration. While Margaret declared the wallpaper shabby, Gordon said it had mellowed, when she suggested modernising the bathroom, Gordon said it served very well. The stair carpet was threadbare but ‘serviceable’, and the children’s rooms had not been touched since their occupants were small. Gordon’s only visible extravagance was his car, and even that was not new. It looked as if it was. Ronald, Gordon’s driver, tended it like a child. He dusted and polished the Rolls, maintained and repaired it, and, while he waited for Gordon to appear in the mornings, regarded his own distorted image reflected in its maroon bonnet. Margaret knew that she would find Gordon in the garage. She had no idea how she knew. She was not into deduction.
The garage was locked. The large iron key had not been in its place on the brass tray (Gordon had bargained for it in Cario) on the hall table. The oak doors were locked from the inside. Margaret rattled them abortively, calling Gordon’s name. Receiving no reply, she returned indoors to summon the police. Somehow it was not the sight of Gordon as he sat slumped in the driving seat, his cheeks cherry red, his tended hands on the steering wheel, his unseeing eyes staring at Ronald’s neatly arranged cleaning materials on the shelf, which disconcerted Margaret, who knew before she knew that Gordon had taken his own life, but the fact that he had bathed and shaved, for the first time since his arrest, and was dressed in the black, pin-striped suit, which he wore for the office, and had fastened a rose in his lapel.
She had tried to ring Freddie. She had let the telephone ring and ring. Only then did she call Sophie. It was half an hour before Sophie and Conrad, leaving their barbecue in full swing, appeared on the scene in their new BMW. In that thirty minutes, the longest in her life, Margaret Sitwell realised just how much she had loved Gordon.
She was not the only one to be devastated by the fact that Gordon Sitwell (while the balance of his mind was disturbed), had connected a length of hosepipe to the exhaust of his Rolls Royce and switched on the ignition.
The chairman’s death had reawakened emotions in Freddie which had lain dormant for thirty-four years. Jane could not understand the effect of the news on him. He could not have reacted more strongly had he killed Gordon himself.
Freddie thought that he had. He thought that because he had dreamed, in Lilli’s flat, of assassinating the man who had betrayed him, he was responsible for his death. Notwithstanding the fact that he had been fifteen miles away from the scene of the crime at the time of Gordon’s demise, he had killed Gordon Sitwell as surely as he had killed his father in the garden.
Freddie had never told anybody what had happened, thirty-four years ago, by the canal in Maida Vale. He had not repeated it, not even inside his head to himself. With the fresh blood of Gordon’s death on his hands, he released the poltergeists from the confines of their dark cupboard.
Freddie’s passion, at the age of 6, had been for sweets. He rarely ate them. He collected them up – the jelly babies, and the Smarties, the sherbert dabs and Jamboree Bags, the gob-stoppers and Flying Saucers and liquorice comfits and chocolate buttons – and kept them beneath his socks in a drawer in his bedroom. Sometimes he took them out and counted them, arranging them neatly in rows. They were like money in the bank.
Occasionally, by way of a treat, he indulged himself. Lying on his bed with a comic, he broached one of the sealed bags and delicately extracted a Smartie, or a chocolate button, which he transferred, like a communion wafer, onto his outstretched tongue. He liked to see how long
he could make them last. In the case of a Smartie, he took it out of his mouth frequently to watch it change colour. The buttons were assessed for their even, slow melt, until only the puddle of chocolate on his tongue reminded him that they had ever been.
The day that his father had died had been a Saturday. Pocket money day. Freddie had been planning to buy a Walnut Whip. Unlike the other confectionery, the Walnut Whip would not dissolve in his mouth into nothingness, neither would it stay for very long in his drawer. It demanded a quite different approach. This entailed biting off the walnut, which must then be set aside. Into the resulting crater, the tongue, rolled into a neat point, must then be repeatedly inserted to extract the creamy interior. Then, and only then – all this took some time and could not be hurried – could the striated sides of the pyramid be disposed of in small, delicious bites. This left two unexciting walnuts which must be quickly despatched – sometimes they tasted quite bitter – before the acme was reached: the thick, substantial, satisfying chocolate base on which the entire edifice had been built.
Hugh Lomax did not go to his surgery on Saturday mornings. While Lilli prepared lunch, he took Freddie for a walk. On the way he discussed with Freddie what was going on in the world and asked him questions. Which Europeans were the first to sail to North America? How many seeds does a cherry have? What number is represented by the Roman numeral X? How many times a year will a tortoise drink? By the time he was 6, Freddie knew that if you stood on the moon, at a point where you could see the earth, it would always be overhead and never move; which was the widest river; in which sequence the traffic lights changed and how to preserve conkers. The questions he liked best were mental arithmetic. He could already add up quite serious figures in his head, and was equally proficient in taking them away.
On the day of his death, Hugh Lomax had left the breakfast table to talk privately to a patient on the upstairs phone. Whilst he was hanging about, Freddie, who did not much like waiting and was bored, went into the sitting-room where he caught sight of the blue-eyed china cat, which was what Lilli called ‘a collector’s item’, on the mantelpiece. The china cat, Lilli had made abundantly clear, was not a plaything. Freddie was not allowed to touch it. He assessed the risks. His mother was busy in the kitchen and he reckoned that it would be some time before she came to look for him, to see what he was up to. Climbing on the armchair and hanging onto the mantelpiece with one hand, he reached out with the other. Balancing on one foot, he had the cat within his grasp, when Lilli, in a white satin wrapper, her hair wound round jumbo red rollers in preparation for her Saturday night concert, appeared unexpectedly in the doorway. Startled, Freddie lost his balance. He landed, fortunately for him, on the Persian carpet, but was followed, as if in slow motion, by the blue-eyed cat, which dropped like a stone onto the marble hearth and shattered into a hundred irreparable shards.
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