Golden Boy

by Rosemary Friedman

  Too early for his rendezvous with Conrad Verger, he dawdled, hands in his pockets, along the concourse at Liverpool Street station gazing unseeingly into the windows of the Body Shop, Boots Pharmacy, and the Knickerbox. A student tried to thrust a leaflet into his hand, ‘Diet for Health’. Freddie did not take it.

  At a corner table in the restaurant, Jane faced Piers over his salmon salad.

  ‘He doesn’t pay his bills – he doesn’t even open them – just shoves them in a drawer. All his papers are in a muddle, I daren’t say anything. It’s the drinking which really freaks me out,’ she said. ‘He needs help, Piers. I keep telling him to cut down…’

  Unscrewing his bottle of Perrier water, Piers smiled wryly. ‘That’s the worst thing you can do.’

  ‘Somebody has to stop him.’

  ‘Only Freddie can do that.’

  ‘Piers, Freddie doesn’t think he has a problem.’

  ‘He doesn’t admit there’s a problem.’

  ‘Okay. You’re the expert. What do you suggest?’

  ‘The only advice I can give you, darling – and I know it’s not easy – is that you don’t try to stop him. Criticism in such cases is counterproductive. It will only make matters worse.’

  ‘Sit back and watch Freddie destroy himself? Is there nothing I can do?’

  Piers took her hand. He hated to see her suffer. ‘Detach with love, Jane,’ he said. ‘Detach with love.’

  ‘He’s wittering on about setting up a bank in Singapore. Right now Freddie couldn’t set up a game of skittles. I’m frightened, Piers. Is he going to get a job?’

  ‘If he stops trying so hard.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Freddie’s still in shock. He’s putting out bad vibes. I’d like to do something. You know that. I love that man almost as much as I love you. I’ve asked around. I keep asking. Things are pretty grim at the moment. You read the newspapers, Jane. A quarter of a million jobs gone in London. Employment due to fall by a further 170,000. Bank lending down. Money supply weak. It will get better. But it will get better slowly. It’s a question of hanging on. Freddie’s an asset. People will be glad to get their hands on him. In the fullness of time –’

  ‘There is no time. Derek Abbott keeps ringing. Freddie doesn’t even return his calls.’ Jane put down her knife and fork. ‘I’m sorry to dump on you –’

  ‘That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘I can’t talk to Freddie. Everything I say is wrong. We do nothing but fight. I don’t know how much more I can take.’ Jane pushed her plate away, the salmon salad half eaten. A tear fell onto the polished table. She took out her handkerchief.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do this, Piers.’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ He touched her cheek. ‘I don’t know what that bastard’s done to deserve you.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Jane blew her nose, ‘he seems to be doing his best to destroy it.’

  At the bar adjacent to the restaurant, Freddie stood next to Conrad Verger, towering above him. He drank his Black Label in silence as Conrad, who had been visibly shaken by Freddie’s unkempt appearance, marshalled his thoughts.

  ‘You know, Freddie, things are not going too well at Sitwell Hunt since my…since Gordon died,’ he said finally.

  Freddie took out his worry beads. ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘Takeovers are extremely thin on the ground, apart, that is, from a few middle-sized deals.’

  Freddie said nothing.

  ‘One doesn’t know whether to diversify, whether to risk capital. To be perfectly honest with you, Freddie, we’re exceedingly short of fees.’

  ‘What has that got to do with me?’

  Concerned for Freddie’s empty glass, Conrad signalled for another Black Label.

  ‘All the good bankers and brokers seem to be gravitating towards the big battalions…’

  Freddie noticed that Conrad was sweating. His top lip was damp. He refused to make it easy for him.

  ‘My father-in-law’s death… Circumstances alter cases. I’d like to know, Freddie, how you feel about returning to Sitwell Hunt.’

  Freddie, holding the late chairman’s son-in-law indirectly responsible for the purgatory of the past months, did not answer. He knew that he was addicted as any junkie; that corporate finance was in his bones.

  ‘I can’t offer you your old job, of course. Travers is running the department…’

  Freddie upended his glass and felt the whisky sear into his churning stomach as a burst of masculine laughter from a sombre suited knot of fresh-faced drinkers resounded in his head.

  ‘Suppose we say as a consultant…’

  Be answerable to Conrad Verger? Not in a million years.

  ‘A non-executive director…’

  Freddie held out his glass for a refill.

  ‘…The board is behind me.’

  ‘What you mean, Conrad,’ Freddie swallowed his whisky in a gulp and slammed his glass down on the bar, ‘is that you want me to sort out the mess!’

  ‘Hang on a bit, Freddie, that’s not fair –’

  ‘Don’t even think about it.’ Freddie turned on his heel. ‘I always thought you were a bit stupid, Conrad. Now I know. I think you’ve got a bloody nerve!’

  As he went through the door into the piazza, something made him turn his head and glance into the dark recesses of the restaurant where the lunchtime tables were packed. In the far corner, leaning across the table, Piers Warburton was kissing Jane.

  ‘Sorry for being such a pain.’ Jane put away her handkerchief.

  ‘That’s one thing you’ll never be, Jane.’

  ‘Freddie thinks we’re having an affair.’

  ‘I should be so lucky.’ Piers signalled for the bill. ‘Things will work out. I’m sure they will.’

  ‘Detach with love.’ Jane said. ‘I’ll try to remember.’

  But there was no chance for her to try out Piers’ advice. Freddie did not come home for dinner. He did not arrive until ten o’clock. Jane, who was in the kitchen with Rosina, rushed to intercept him, but walking past her, as if she were not there, he went straight upstairs to his dressing-room and turned on Otello at full throttle. When Jane knocked on the locked door, he pretended not to hear her. She knocked again, urgently, kept knocking, until the volume was turned down on the Verdi.

  ‘Freddie, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘We have nothing to say to each other, Jane.’

  Jane’s heart turned over. She was shaken by the icy timbre of his voice.

  ‘I have to speak to you! Please, Freddie, it’s extremely important. There’s something you have to know.’

  The key turned. Freddie appeared in the doorway. He smelled of whisky, his hair was dishevelled, his eyes were red-rimmed, he looked for all the world as if he had been crying. He did not speak.

  ‘Freddie…’ Jane said.

  Cold and distant, his eyes focused on something behind her head.

  ‘…You’re not making this very easy.’ She put out her hand to touch him, then, thinking better of it, withdrew it. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been going frantic. I had no idea where you were. I rang James. I thought you might be playing squash. And Charles. He hadn’t heard from you. Rosina’s been marvellous. We didn’t know what to do. I’ve only just got back. I’m afraid… Freddie, please look at me.’ Jane took a deep breath. ‘About five o’clock this afternoon. Mrs Williams. It’s Lilli… I’m so sorry, Freddie, darling, there’s no other way to say this. Your mother is dead.’

  Thirty-six

  Freddie, his chin stubbled, wearing a black tie, looked round at the packed pews, at the familiar faces. Although he was as good as bankrupt as far as Derek Abbott – whom he had noticed sitting at the back of the church – was concerned, in terms of friendship he was a millionaire. He derived little comfort from the knowledge.

  When Jane had told him that Lilli was dead, he had had some difficulty in taking it in. He had made her repeat the words over and ove
r as he tried to make sense of the fact that he was a 40-year-old orphan, no longer anyone’s son. While he had been drinking himself stupid, his mother had disappeared, as she had when she had hidden behind the sofa to frighten him as a child. When he opened his eyes to look for her, she would no longer be there. He would never see her again.

  It was Mrs Williams who had found Lilli, lying on the floor in the bathroom, in a pool of her own blood. The preliminary diagnosis, later to be confirmed by a post-mortem, was that Lilli had had a massive haematemesis due to the effects of aspirin on an ulcer which had been lurking silently in her stomach wall. Her death had been sudden and painless.

  Jane could not understand why, in his hour of need, Freddie had excluded her. He had shut the door of his dressing-room again and, in an effort to get his act together, listened to Parsifal, strengthening himself with the words, fortifying himself with the music, until he felt able to cope with the hysterical Mrs Williams, with his own grief, and with the bureaucracy of death. James and Charles were waiting for him at the Water Gardens. They had embraced Freddie in sympathy then, at his request, left. Despite the brandy James had given her, Mrs Williams was still shaking. She recited the story of the blood and the bathroom over and over, her account reaching a crescendo which broke into fragments each time it approached the climax, as if trying to expunge, by constant reiteration, the horror she had seen. To Freddie’s surprise Mrs Williams said that she had grown to love her irrational charge, difficult as she was, and that she was going to miss her. They were in the hushed sitting-room which was redolent of Lilli, echoed with her voice, but was devoid of her presence. He had not yet been into the bedroom.

  ‘I’ll not get another job,’ Mrs Williams sobbed. ‘Not at my age.’ Freddie put his arm around the woman’s shoulders. She was not a bad sort. ‘I know the feeling.’

  The bathroom was an abattoir. Mrs Williams had done her best. The carpet would have to come up. Lilli lay in the candle-lit bedroom. Mrs Williams had cleaned her up. Relieved by death of her mortal life, she appeared immune from misery, peaceful and unafraid. It was no consolation to Freddie. He had neglected Lilli recently, as he had neglected everyone, including himself. Her death, before he had a chance to say goodbye to her, was her ultimate reproof. Looking at the calm expression on her alabaster face, he wanted to ask her if she had found the ultimate reality, or if death was the end of the human spirit and the sequel to life was annihilation. He was surprised to discover, as he bent to kiss the cold forehead, that there was a definite tear on her cheek. He spent the night in the armchair, grieving, by her side.

  Freddie was flanked in the pew by Tristan and Rosina. Jane, at Freddie’s request, was on the far side. Rosina was heartbroken. She had introduced Ferdinand to Lilli, and they had taken to each other straight away. Lilli’s death, the first she had encountered, had hit her hard, but it was she who had comforted Freddie.

  ‘Grandma wasn’t afraid of dying, Daddy. She said it would be quite a relief. She said it was no worse than being born.’

  Freddie had removed Lilli’s ruby ring and given it to Rosina. Worn on her right hand, with its bitten fingernails, it glowed in the refracted lights of the church.

  Tristan, now home from school, had not known what to do, what to say. On impulse, he had put his arms round Freddie and buried his face in his jacket.

  ‘Dad…’

  ‘It’s all right, son.’

  Standing upright, next to his father, Tristan, who had not cared for Lilli, wondered if his negative feelings had somehow communicated themselves to his grandmother and if they had contributed to her death.

  James and Dos. James had been a tower of strength. Charles, and Bingo (in an outrageous black hat) who, appalled by the cold shoulder Freddie was giving Jane had lent her support to her friend. Peter and Georgina (the pearls at the neck of her black suit), Alex, and Piers – whom Freddie refused to acknowledge – none of whom had really known Lilli, all sacrificing their busy schedules to pay their respects to the dead.

  Margaret Sitwell, a sad bewildered figure, sat apart, on her own. Jane beckoned her to sit beside her. Since Gordon’s death, Margaret had taken up gardening, caring for Gordon’s rose bushes. She had refused to disturb his possessions and, despite entreaties from Conrad and from Sophie to move to an apartment on the south coast – where they had offered to file her conveniently away – she had refused to leave the reverberating house.

  Susan, his ex-personal assistant, whom Conrad Verger had lured back to Sitwell Hunt, her chignon once more in place. It was nice of her to come to the funeral. He did not blame her for her perfidy. These days it was sauve qui peut. A job was a job.

  The vicar ascended the pulpit in his surplice. ‘“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages…”’ His voice was measured and sombre, although he had not known Lilli who was not a churchgoer. ‘“Fear no more the lightning flash, Nor the all-dreaded thunderstone…”’

  Freddie tried to connect the Lilli he had loved, but to his shame not always liked, especially of late, with the words from Cymbeline, with the coffin lying on its bier, with ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ with the verses from Blake which had been sung by the choir, as clips from his past flashed fleetingly onto the empty screen of his mind. His mother’s unexpected appearance in the doorway when the blue-eyed china cat had met its demise, weaving a necklace from the daisies he had picked for her in the park, snatches of her long-suffering voice from the sitting-room as she coached her pupils at the Broadwood – ‘No, no, third finger…’ – her single-minded dedication to him throughout his impressionable years and her unceasing efforts to pour him, like a jelly, into the confines of her mould.

  As the organist struck up Berlioz’s Te Deum, one of Lilli’s favourite pieces, he tried to remember his mother as she had been, but the memory of a tetchy and dementing Lilli, at war with Mrs Williams, confounded his attempts.

  After the service in the church, the service at the graveside. An elm box was lowered into the earth on ropes. It had nothing to do with his mother. The vicar dragged more words, this time to do with ashes and with dust, from the depths of his surplice which moved lightly in the wind. There were flowers. Conrad Verger had sent a wreath. And clods of earth. Faces, of people whom he knew, and of grave-diggers whom he did not. Consoling hands, condolences borne on a black sea. Badly in need of a drink, a depersonalised Freddie watched himself watching the panoply of death.

  He did not join the motorcade which set off for Chester Terrace. Charles Holdsworth, lagging behind, was the last of the mourners to leave. He grasped Freddie’s hand.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Freddie.’

  Freddie acknowledged the sympathy. There are two parties to a death; the one who has died and the one who is bereaved.

  ‘I know this is hardly the time, or place… Forgive me. I only heard this morning. I thought I ought to tell you. The chairman feels… I’m afraid he’s changed his mind about a Far Eastern branch. Singapore has fallen through.’

  For all the effect Charles’ words had on Freddie, he might just as well have conveyed his message in Chinese.

  Charles put a hand beneath his elbow. ‘I’ll give you a lift home.’

  ‘I’ll grab a cab…’ Freddie indicated the burial site. ‘You go ahead.’

  Charles nodded understandingly.

  When the midnight-blue Daimler had driven off, Freddie returned to the freshly dug grave. He stood motionless, his hands folded in front of him. The tears streamed down his lined face for Lilli, who had tried so hard to make him her golden boy, and for the fact that, in the final analysis, he had failed her.

  Outside the cemetery gates he stopped a taxi. He did not give the address of Chester Terrace but asked the driver to take him to the Berkeley Hotel. In the familiar hall, with its tiled floor, its massed flowers – was it a coincidence they were lilies? – its welcoming fire, he checked into Room 333 and instructed reception to have room service send up a bottle of Black Label, and not to put through any ca
lls. By the time he reached the bedroom, the whisky was already there. He took off his black overcoat, throwing it on the armchair, and loosened his black tie. Remembering the Man of Thermopylae, he picked up the coat again, arranged it on a hanger, and hung it in the lobby. He put the ‘Please Do Not Disturb’ notice outside the door, took a pill bottle out of his jacket pocket, removed his shoes, folded back the quilt, and lay down on the bed, propped up against the freshly laundered pillows. ‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages… Fear no more the lightning flash, Nor the all-dreaded thunderstone…’ Now that Lilli was dead, he no longer had to live up to her ambitions. He was free at last to make his own choices. He opened the pill bottle and tipped the capsules, dark green miniature rugby balls, into the palm of his hand. Cramming them into his mouth, he washed them down with whisky. It was hard going. Some of them got stuck in his oesophagus and burned his throat. He took it more slowly. One capsule at a time. His stomach gurgled. He had had no breakfast. He had been too distressed to eat. It wasn’t every day one buried one’s mother, confined her to the sod.

  Lilli’s death left him directly in line for his own mortality. The barrier had been removed. You did not even need a ticket. It was open to everyone. Whatever it was. The one certainty: ‘In the midst of life we are in death’. The birth of children is the death of parents. As if it were night-time and he was going to bed, he unstrapped the chronograph Jane had bought him for his birthday which stopped the time to an eighth of a second and marked the beginning of the end. Since she had given it to him his life had been measured out in a descending scale of misfortune; the loss of his job, of Universal Concrete, of Gordon Sitwell, of Sidonie, of Bowker & Page, of Jane, of Lilli, of the Singapore commission in which he had not really believed. He wondered how long the drugs would take to work. The chronograph was upside down. He looked at the words engraved on the back of the case. La Vie en rose. He had loved Jane. Tout court. Had always loved her. They had been an item from the very beginning. Copper and gold. There had never been anyone else. Not even Sidonie. Certainly not Sidonie. Poor, poor Sidonie. Jane was a one-off. He thought that he had been a one-off for her. Jane and Freddie. Freddie and Jane. He had no idea what she saw in Piers Warburton. He abhorred the idea of Piers’ hand touching Jane’s pale skin, her red hair, hearing her laugh – like a phrase of music – holding her freckled body in his arms. Once, after Tristan was born, Jane had asked Freddie, in an intimate moment, who it was that had given him his lessons in love. He had told her about Amy Low. After Amy, and a spell as a lifeguard on Bondi Beach, he had made his way north. A catamaran, The Call of the Wild, piercing the early morning waters with its torpedo-shaped hulls, had borne him out to the garden jungle of black coral trees, delicate staghorns and sea fans, to the underwater oasis of the Great Barrier Reef. Weightless, in wet suit and flippers, scuba bottles on his back, he had slipped through the silent, sunlit waters down to the underground wonderland of calcium carbonate and limestone in which brightly coloured hordes of gyrating predators darted and trembled, employed all manner of offensive behaviour, took every evasive action, in the battle to stay alive. Dodging the sea urchins, and avoiding the coral – coral cuts were notoriously slow to heal – he saw sharks with insatiable appetites home in on distress signals from injured fish (signifying an easy meal), as smaller predators, themselves pursued by larger fish, set upon schools of pilchards and sent them panicking to the surface in synchronised flashes of silver. In the magical landscape, in the relentless struggle for food and space, no holds were barred as the striped trumpet fish used the coral trout as stalking-horse, the hermit crab made skilful use of his venomous spines, and the deadly blue-ringed octopus sneaked stealthily up on his prey. Maestros of disguise, some capable of changing their sex at will, it was kill or be killed, amongst the Venus tusk fish and the whiptails, the blue tangs and the cleaner wrasse, the flutefish and the Moorish idols, the seasnakes and the bivalves who maintained the rhythm of life and preserved the delicate balance of the deep. Freddie wondered should he have availed himself of the outplacement which Gordon Sitwell had suggested, and presented himself, like a novice, for interviews, for psychometric testing, have accepted a work place, in keeping with his seniority, for as long as he needed it. Should he have disregarded his amour propre and accepted Conrad Verger’s offer. ‘All places that the eye of heaven visits/Are to a wise man ports and happy havens./Teach thy necessity to reason thus;/There is no virtue like necessity.’ Should he, perhaps, have turned the economic climate to his advantage, employed the same opportunistic flare which had cost him so dearly at Sitwell Hunt, put the recession to good use, made a virtue of necessity? Could he not have set up a consultancy for corporate recovery? Used his expertise to help small, family businesses – makers of plastic pipes or widgets – to keep afloat? The outplacement consultancy would have helped him to identify those companies in need of help. There could be serious money in it. But it was not for Freddie Lomax to whom the fierce battle for acquisitions, the cut and thrust of corporate finance was the breath of life. Behind the Chinese wall, as in the translucent waters of the Great Barrier Reef – where frenzied predators had stripped the flesh from an unsuspecting moray in seconds leaving nothing but the bone – it was hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed. The only way he knew. Somebody had drunk the whisky. The bottle was empty. The pill bottle had rolled on the floor feeling pleasantly drowsy he punched the pillows to make them more comfortable but he was lying on something hard he removed the worry beads the komboloi carried by every self-respecting Greek man from his trouser pocket he would not be needing them the ceiling revolved and the flowers on the curtains danced then someone pulled down his eyelids over the past weeks as the voices of the celestial choristers: ‘The wine and the bread of the Last Supper, once the Lord of the Grail, through pity’s love-power, changed into the blood which he shed, into the body which he offered’ and the antiphonal response of the knights: ‘Take of the bread; bravely change it anew into strength and power. Faithful unto death, staunch in effort to do the works of the Lord. Take of the blood; change it anew to life’s fiery flood. Gladly in communion, faithful as brothers, to fight with blessed courage…’ filled his head with glorious music and the vicar ascended the pulpit in his surplice fear no more the heat o’ the sun nor the furious winter’s rages fear no more the lightning flash nor the all-dreaded thunderstone there was a knock on the door housekeeper to turn down the bed sir to turn down the bed sir to turn down the bed sir turn down the bed sir turn down the bed sir she must have seen the notice do not disturb not now or ever and moved on…