‘Jane? Darling?’
Lavender appeared at the top of the stairs. In her arms was a bundle wrapped in a shawl.
‘It’s me. Lavender.’
‘Where’s Jane?’
‘Not here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What time will she be back?’
Freddie dumped the flowers on the kitchen table. There was a baby’s bottle in the sink.
Lavender did not answer. She followed him into the kitchen.
‘She’s gone away.’
‘Who has?’
‘Jane.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘There’s only me and Prosperchine.’
‘Prosperchine?’
Lavender advanced the bundle.
‘I’ve left Tony. They’ve taken the other two into care. I’m stopping with Rosina. Do you like it? I read it in a magazine.’
Freddie sat down. He felt all the new strength in his muscles leech from his legs.
‘Do you know where she’s gone?’
Lavender shook her head and pulled back the baby’s shawl. ‘Think she takes after me?’
‘Lavender, I need to know where my wife is.’
‘Don’t you like babies?’
‘I do like babies. She’s very pretty. Did she take any luggage?’
‘Couple of cases.’
‘Where’s Rosina?’
‘At school. Want a cup of tea?’
Freddie looked into the uninhabited drawing-room and the silent bedroom. The house was neglected, as if it had been abandoned and was up for sale. Calling to Lavender that he was going out again, he ran through the mews into Albany Street, hailed a passing taxi and gave the address of the National Westminster Bank.
Piers Warburton was taken by surprise.
‘Where’s Jane?’ Freddie demanded, marching into his office.
‘Jane? How the hell do I know?’
‘Come off it, Piers. She’s not at home. I saw you together into the City Pipe.’
‘That was weeks ago…’
‘You don’t deny it.’
‘Why should I deny it?’
‘You were kissing her.’
‘I was?’
‘You know very well you were.’
‘I might have done. Jane was upset.’
‘About what?’
‘About you.’
‘I was the one who was upset. I thought… You don’t know where she is then?’
‘Haven’t a clue.’
‘I’m sorry, Piers. I think I’m going a bit mad.’
‘Drink?’ Piers reached for the sherry decanter.
‘I won’t, if you don’t mind. Sorry to butt in like this. I’ve got to find Jane.’
Pacing up and down as he waited outside Queen’s College for Rosina, Freddie worked his worry beads overtime.
His homecoming, which he had anticipated would be greeted with the blast of trumpets and the crash of cymbals, had fallen decidedly flat. Finding his way amongst the numbers in Jane’s idiosyncratic address book – in which ‘Bingo’s’ was under W (for warehouse) and Hurst under C (committee) – he had telephoned Bingo, who had no idea of Jane’s whereabouts, and had drawn the same blank both from Dos and from Caroline. He had the impression that the women were closing ranks, that they were ganging up on him.
Rosina, amazed to see him, left the posse of girls in whose midst she had come out of school, and flung herself into Freddie’s arms.
‘Daddy!’
Holding her close, all 140 pounds of her, he thought of the skeletal frame of Becky Bostock, and how much he loved his daughter and how very little he really knew her.
They walked, Rosina clinging tightly to his arm, up Harley Street.
‘I’m so pleased to see you,’ Rosina said.
Freddie hoped he could make the words sound casual, as if he were not torn apart with grief. ‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘Oh. You’ve been home then?’
Freddie nodded. ‘Where’s she gone?’
Rosina let go of his arm. ‘You weren’t very kind to Mummy…’
‘I don’t need a lecture, Rosina.’
‘She’s fed up with you.’
Coming to a halt on the pavement, Freddie felt himself grow cold.
‘Has Mummy…? Is she coming back?’
Rosina did not answer.
‘Rosina, where is she? Please! I’ve got to know.’
‘I promised I wouldn’t tell.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Facing him, Rosina looked up at her father’s anguished face. He had suffered enough.
‘Mummy’s in France,’ she said. ‘With Grandmaman.’
Forty-two
‘Welcome to Air France flight 3533 to Nice. Our flying time will be one hour and forty minutes and we will be cruising at an altitude of 33,000 feet…’
Freddie sat in economy class, his legs wedged awkwardly against the seat in front of him, sipping the mineral water which had replaced the Black Label, and facing but not sampling his plastic tray of food.
When Rosina had told him that Jane was in France, he had wanted to get on a plane immediately, but Rosina was late out of school and by the time she had told him of Jane’s whereabouts he had missed the last flights both to Nice and Marseilles. He had wanted to talk to Rosina, to pump her about what had happened, to find out if Jane had said anything, and exactly what she had said, before she left. But he no longer had his daughter’s attention. Halfway up Harley Street she had caught sight of Ferdinand. Walking, with Rosina on his arm, towards the black-clad young man with his flowing hair, his viola case, Freddie had the bizarre impression that he was leading her not across Weymouth Street, but up the aisle, and delivering her into the arms of her bridegroom. Standing a little apart as the two of them embraced, he felt momentarily marginalised as he had been marginalised by Gordon Sitwell, as if Rosina no longer needed him and his task, qua father, was over.
Rosina and Ferdinand were off to a concert at the Barbican. Having no desire to stay in Chester Terrace with Lavender and her crying baby, Freddie had taken a taxi to Lilli’s flat before spending the evening with James. The porter at the Water Gardens had greeted him respectfully, offered his condolences, and in the same breath, the glint of a commission in his eye, enquired – because a gentleman from Saudi Arabia, whose brother lived in the block, had been putting out feelers – when Mrs Lomax’s apartment would be free. Notions of guilt – that he had deliberately annihilated Lilli in order to pay off his debts – had overwhelmed him. Taking a deliberate moment, he forced himself to take an alternative view before jumping to irrational conclusions. Challenging his thoughts for accuracy, as he had learned to do, he modified his beliefs. Of course Lilli’s monthly rent, not to mention the money he would be saving from her carers, would be extremely useful in pacifying Derek Abbott, but the fact that he would benefit directly from it had nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of her death.
The unsolicited mail had piled up on Lilli’s mat, making it difficult to open the front door. In the minuscule kitchen an opened packet of digestive biscuits lay reminiscently on the sink. Walking slowly round the flat, laying the ghosts, he thought of Lilli in her heyday, on the concert platform in her satin dress, and wondered if amongst the hopes and aspirations of her life’s overture the thwarted seeds of the finale had already been sown. Her musical career had been truncated, and her golden boy had failed… Hang on. Not her. Himself. There had been successes, since he had picked the daisies for her daisy chain, since he had counted the windows in Buckingham Palace. School. The scholarship to Cambridge. His subsequent career. Not even Gordon Sitwell could rob him of that.
Returning to the musty sitting-room, the muted roar of nearby traffic penetrating the hermetically sealed windows, he braced his shoulders and assumed the self-respect which, in addition to life itself, he had come close to losing. There were things which must be done and only he to do them.
He picked up the photograph of Hugh Lomax taken shortly before his death and struggled to make some sense of the fact that the two people responsible for his existence were no longer extant. He tried to think of his parents as astral bodies – composed of higher matter, with some sort of senses (Lilli’s in full working order) or organs, finally reunited with each other – and of the place to which they had repaired as spatial, with properties analogous to the shape size and location of the universe they had departed. But where was this other world? Was it somewhere high above the Edgware Road in the night sky which he could see through Lilli’s curtains, or buried deep beneath the underground car park in the nether reaches of the earth? Could it be reached, by rocket, or by digging a tunnel? Did he really concede that physical space was the only space, or was there, perhaps, a New Jerusalem somewhere on the other side?
In the presence of his mother’s ghost, Freddie was unwilling to believe that there was no purpose to life, and that it made no sense to enquire about the point of it. Replacing the photograph, in its silver frame, on the dust-bloomed sideboard, he wondered if the real reason for existence was not to provide memories which could be drawn upon, from which an image world could be constructed after we were dead.
Taking out his jotter and pencil he made a note of tasks to be carried out and, feet astride on the faded and familiar Persian carpet which had been transported from the house in Maida Vale, was aware as he did so of a sudden sense of power and of freedom, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
James had taken Freddie to dinner at the Ivy in celebration of his recovery. When Freddie had explained to him, somewhat diffidently, about the job he had been offered at the Chesterfield and about the work of the clinic, especially in the field of stress management, James had become quite excited.
‘It’s not exactly head of corporate finance,’ Freddie said over his fishcakes.
‘Fuck corporate finance, it sounds like a brilliant idea.’
‘What does?’
‘The Chesterfield.’
‘Hospital Administrator! Come off it, James. I can’t see what’s so brilliant about it.’
‘You’ve worked long enough in the City, Freddie, you’ve seen enough people hit the wall. It’s a bloody marathon out there and not everyone can cope with the pressures. How many times have you seen an executive lose his cool, find himself unable to think clearly because things are coming at him from all sides, fail to prioritise his work load, become prone to a suspicious number of accidents, turn in poor job performance, fall by the wayside, find himself incapable of staying the course? It’s always been tough at the top. Now it’s tougher. Those who have the jobs have to fight to hold on to them, they have to run that little bit faster in order to stay where they are. Centres like the Chesterfield will become a growth field…’
‘I’m only an administrator!’
‘Freddie, what’s happened to your entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to see over the parapet which enabled you to defend Corinthian Holdings, which scared the shit out of Gordon Sitwell?’
‘Entrepreneurs need money.’ Freddie put down his knife and fork. ‘All I have is negative equity.’
‘We’ll go into partnership. You learn the ropes, and once you’ve got the hang of it I’ll buy the Chesterfield. We’ll open up a chain of hospitals. We don’t have to stop at London, we’ll set them up the length and breadth of England, expand into Europe… Who wants to be a banker!’ He picked up the menu. ‘“Ivy” Clinics. How does it grab you?’
‘It’s not exactly what I’m used to.’
James raised his glass. ‘“There is a tide in the affairs of men…” Freddie what’s the matter?’
‘I’m sorry I can’t be more enthusiastic, I’m worried about Jane.’
At the mention of Jane, James had clammed up. Like Dos and Bingo and Caroline Hurst, he had refused to be drawn.
It was not until after the coffee that he said: ‘You pushed Jane to the edge, you know, Freddie,’ before changing the subject and deciding that it was time they got the bill.
‘Terminé?’
The stewardess, in her Air France uniform, addressed him. Meeting her eyes which lingered a fraction of a second too long on his, before she removed his tray of untouched food, confirmed the return of Freddie Lomax to the land of the living.
What a fool he had been. To think that Jane, his wilful Jane, whom he had treated so cursorily, would be sitting at her sewing machine, like Penelope at her loom, patiently waiting for him.
He had pushed her to the edge. So James had said. He hardly remembered. Only that he had somehow displaced his own fears and anxieties onto her, and now on his return – not from his Odyssey but from some private hell – he had to win her back.
As he packed his bag in the echoing bedroom to The Barber of Seville, to which he had first wooed Jane, he had realised just how much Jane meant to him, how much she had always meant to him, and how paradoxical it was, after so many years, to have not only rediscovered your children but to be falling in love with your wife. He had been appalled at the piles of neglected paperwork and unopened letters which confronted him accusingly in his dressing-room as he searched for his passport. He could hardly believe that, once obsessionally tidy and expecting similar standards from others, he was responsible for the mayhem.
Finding a spare photograph of himself amongst the debris, he wrote on the back ‘Life is fantastic!’ before putting it into an envelope and addressing it to Becky Bostock. He would post it at the airport.
Lavender’s baby was on the kitchen table when he left. Glancing into the Moses basket, to find the kitten eyes blinking speculatively at him, he had a sudden desire – before it was too late for Jane – to have another child.
First things first. He had to find Jane, to persuade her to come home. His plan was to hire a car at Nice and drive west, as he had done so many times in the past, along the motorway until the concrete landscape with its pall of diesel, gave gradual way to umbrella pines and the sweet smells of Provence. Leaving the race-track at Le Muy, he would cut a winding swathe through the groves of grey-green olives. Thirty minutes later, inhaling the smoke of woodfires through the open window, he would arrive at the double row of plane trees, flanked by the ordered vineyards, which lined the entrance to Grandmaman’s somnolent village.
The changing tone of the engine signified that the Airbus had started its decent. Abandoning Newsweek, with its gloomy predictions of increased unemployment, Freddie was surprised to discover that picturing Jane in Grandmaman’s kitchen, in the appartement above the Boulangerie, his heart was beating at an increased rate. He guessed that the two women would be cooking – a goose stuffed with prunes soaked in Armagnac, a gibelotte – and, jumping the gun, wondered if Jane would consider coming into business with him and taking over the kitchens of the Chesterfield.
He had been thinking about James’ idea for a chain of hospitals, and mentally considering the pros and cons. The market for treating stress-related illness, the symptoms of which – absenteeism, inefficiency, bad relationships at work, poor performance – undoubtedly cost employers considerable sums of money, was by and large untapped. If a manufacturing company with say, 2,000 employees, had ten days of absence per employee through health problems per year, the total number of days for sick leave would be 20,000. If the average daily wage per employee were £43, the total annual cost to the company would be a staggering £860,000. At a rough guess, at least 30 per cent of that cost was likely to be from sickness and absenteeism due to mental or emotional disturbance. If it was possible to reduce the sum by offering the necessary advice and treatment, paid for by the insurance companies, for those employees with problems, it would give business and industrial employers the chance to recognise the warning signs, such as changes in behaviour and/or performance, and prevent the situation developing into something more serious. The time and concern which would be invested, would be repaid many times over both in financial benefits to th
e company, and in the general well-being of the employees.
Working out the benefits, both of in-patient, and out-patient care, Freddie felt a surge of the excitement he had formerly associated with the challenge of acquisitions and the fierce battle for takeover deals.
In cutting his new teeth as hospital administrator at the Chesterfield before throwing in his lot with James, he would, in addition to providing services for business and industry, be helping people such as Bill and Becky – who had, through no fault of their own, fallen by the wayside – to dust themselves down and resume their useful lives. Perhaps Gordon Sitwell had done him a favour. Perhaps he was well out of corporate finance where, behind the Chinese Wall, just as in the hostile waters of the Great Barrier Reef, it was a question of hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed.
He had been so busy thinking about the future, assessing the feasibility of James’ proposal, contemplating restoring some balance to his life (not that he was going to be less committed, he would simply organise things differently) that he was unaware that in the last few moments they had swooped low over the Mediterranean and were already taxiing along the runway at Nice. Stowing the Newsweek in his briefcase, and ignoring the statutory injunction to wait until the aircraft had come to a complete halt, he stood up, tucked his shirt firmly into the waistband of his trousers, and retrieved his jacket and his bag from the overhead locker.
As he shuffled his way impatiently through the club class section, he recognised the camel-coated back of his opposite number from a City bank currently under investigation from the DTI, and reckoned, in a flash of clarity, that it was better to be an economy class hospital administrator than have a club class seat and downmarket morals. Running down the steps he made the waiting bus, managing to squeeze his large frame inside the doors as they sighed pneumatically shut. The journey was only one of a few hundred yards. Nearer to Jane. He could hardly wait. In the terminal building, his passport, a small red one – he was a new European – was waved through dismissively. He had no baggage to reclaim. Walking purposefully through the archway of scrawled placards held aloft by expectant hands, he made straight for the Hertz desk.
Golden Boy Page 33