The Gilded Ones

by Brooke Fieldhouse

  Against the inboard wall was the only piece of wall-standing furniture in the room. It was a double-fronted armoire, a crazy pastiche of Rococo and Art Nouveau and finished in a pale grey distressed lacquer.

  ‘It’s an arm-oire,’ He said it as if he were teaching a three-year-old a new word. Mum blinked obediently. Patrick moved towards it and with a combination of the casual and ceremonial unique to him, he opened first one door then the other. I could see why there were no pictures, with both doors opened flat there was little wall space left.

  Inside, the armoire had been custom-fitted with shelves in contrasting burgundy-coloured lacquer and contained most of the things associated with the preprandial and postprandial. Prominent were bottles for the construction of cocktails, an array of red wine bottles, and a legion of glassware.

  ‘They’re not allowed alcohol in Kuwait. What Darren does is he gets a friend of his who lives in Doncaster to send him all the ingredients – the hops and yeast and so on in the post, then he can make his own…I make my own wine you know.’ At Mum’s last piece of information Patrick’s mouth formed itself into the daffodil trumpet shape.

  ‘Well you won’t have had this one before.’

  Patrick advanced towards us with three medium-sized wine glasses which he placed ringingly on the low table. He returned to the armoire where he removed a dark glossy bottle which was standing on its own. I noticed that the cork had already been drawn. He sidled up to Mum, his left hand cradling the base of the bottle while his right performed glissandi upon its slender neck. Mum sat bolt upright watching the mulberry-hued liquid gurgle into the glass.

  ‘Cheers, Patrick,’ I offered rather dully. He was fixing my mother with his jet pupils, waiting.

  ‘… Specific gravity about 21. More than average acidity and very high on tannin…’

  Patrick’s face had the look that it might have had if he’d just been told the joke about the Irishman who burnt his neck while trying to iron his shirt collars… As if he’d been the recipient of a piece of information so inappropriate as to be downright offensive.

  ‘Well, at least you will be able to drink the whole glass because unlike some, this won’t have any sediment in the bottom. Lees I believe you people call them.’

  ‘That’s true,’ conceded Mum defiantly, ‘but none of my wines contain sulphites, which this certainly does!’ I was amazed and considerably alarmed at my mother’s candour. Patrick’s eyes had gone pitch black, and the skin round his mouth not only had the appearance of the anus of some unknown creature, it looked as if it was engaged in a desperate struggle to repulse a sudden attack of haemorrhoids.

  Mum did finish her glass – practically in one, and in spite of its heavy tannins, high acidity, questionable specific gravity, and its abundance of sulphites she asked for, received, and downed a second one.

  ‘Do you know London well?’ Patrick had recomposed himself and was eying Mum.

  ‘I know where they have the Gay Pride march and I’ve been to Flanagan’s – oh and we went to Midsummer Night’s Dream in Regent’s Park in…

  ‘Nineteen seventy-two, Mum,’ I added.

  ‘Really?’ Patrick sounded genuinely excited. ‘I was there.’ He said it as if he was talking about some event of world-shattering implications, as he might have done if he personally had witnessed Lee Harvey Oswald entering a Dallas Warehouse carrying a rifle. ‘Wasn’t Puck good?’ For the first time ever he sounded sincere, amiable even.

  ‘I cried.’ Mum was gazing at Patrick, perhaps trying to visualize what he’d looked like twelve years previously, and whether the two of them might have exchanged glances in the crowd. She changed the subject as if she couldn’t bear thinking about the possibilities.

  ‘My husband was here during the war – just passing through and ready to go to France after D-Day. Saw a Messerschmitt in Hyde Park… crashed of course.’

  By the time Mum and I rose to go, I had revised the plan for the rest of our evening and phoned from the downstairs studio for a taxi. The wait plus the hour’s taxi ride back to W4 would give Mum ample opportunity to sober up and we could get a pizza there.

  I got the cabbie to drop us on the High Road outside the police station which was directly opposite Pizza Express. We both got out and as I was paying the cabbie I could see Mum peering at the back of a large BMW parked nearby. Conspicuously displayed on the inside of its rear window was a Grateful Dead logo.

  ‘That’s just how I feel,’ she said, her eyes still on the logo. The day was beginning to catch up with her.

  We sat in the glazed roof extension at the back of the restaurant, there was music playing – popular, some old some new… Loud enough to enjoy but soft enough to talk over. Mum was full of Patrick – ‘If I were twenty years younger…’ She looked happy – the first time I’d seen her look like that since Dad died. She leaned close to me and said, ‘You know love; you’ve fallen on your feet there.’

  I too felt happy, happy that she felt happy, and in spite of the weirdness of the whole thing that was happening to me, happier than I’d ever done before. Anything felt possible.

  The voice in a song coming from the tape deck was warning me that not only was I my mother’s only son, but that I might also be a desperate one.

  Twenty

  Summer was almost gone. London had that flyblown post-late-bank holiday appearance when private gardens looked more neglected than ever, and people I’d seen every day while sharing a tube carriage into work seemed to have disappeared. Others had filled their places, and travelling on the District and Northern Lines I rarely got a seat.

  As I strap-hung trying to edge my way down the carriage each time the doors opened, I found that everybody seated always seemed to be reading or writing… mainstream newspapers, free newspapers, handwritten notes, non-fiction, and fiction – many were reading the same novel. Each day by the time I arrived at my station, I would take a regular count of how many copies of Hotel du Lac I’d seen being read. There seemed to be an epidemic.

  I hadn’t been away. Holidays were something you kept to a minimum, two weeks away from work could mean coming back and finding somebody else doing your job, doing it better. That had always been the fear in my previous office, and though the ethos – if you could call it that – of Lloyd Lewis Associates was different, the need to be there was just as intense. This was an age that heralded the birth of the control freak – well, perhaps not birth but definitely its propagation. So far, I’d used contract people to help me, hired on a week’s notice, fired on the same principle but I was particularly looking forward to today as Shem would be starting work with us.

  The last three weeks had been quiet at the office. Patrick and Martinique had been in France, were scheduled to have returned last night, and I’d taken the decision – following my adventures here and in the North – to have a period of quiet introspection. There was little point in me trying to find out more about the Freia connection with Hood and, if I was honest with myself, the most recent incident had shaken me. I would wait and watch.

  Lauren had been keeping an eye on the office, and the apartment above – I hadn’t been up to Patrick’s lair since the wine-tasting episode with my mother. It had been a happy time. Al would turn up once in a while to use the photocopier, and Laurie had been there quite a bit. I enjoyed his company with his frequent disparaging references to Patrick – or ‘Monsieur le Pseud’ as he referred to him. I’d seen nothing of the two girls, I was glad.

  It was 0800hrs on Tuesday 4th September. As I walked from the tube station and approached the terrace, I could see in the road outside the office the orange and blue stripes on the flank of a Ford Granada with the almost discreet letters – POLICE. I could hear the slam, slam, of driver and passenger door. I watched it do a tremulous three-point turn, and it rushed past me as I continued along the pavement. There were two uniformed officers in the front seats.

  ‘
Nothing of value’s been taken, just personal items of Martinique’s jewellery, hmm.’ Lauren’s usual tessitura had been replaced with higher breathless frequency. ‘There was no sign of a forced entry – even the rooflight was intact, yes.’

  Everybody seemed to be at the house. Al was in the basement, the twins in the butler’s pantry talking to Lauren. There’d been a family meeting and debrief at 0700hrs rounded off with the visit from the grasshoppers – as Mel Dickson would no doubt refer to them. The stench of well-hung pheasant had been replaced with the air of suspicion.

  It was unlikely to be a family member, and what indeed would a baroness be wanting with small personal items of jewellery? It would appear therefore that eyes were on me. I knew where the keys were, I was an outsider, and I might be seen as having reasons to resent he who employed me.

  ‘Laurie’s been spending a lot of time here,’ said Bea.

  ‘He’s been smoking cigs in the apartment,’ said Jen.

  ‘He’s been here every day this summer,’ said Lauren.

  It seemed that perhaps after all I was not prime suspect.

  When the angst of the robbery had subsided and the family had dispersed, I went upstairs to Patrick’s office. He was still in his flat. I found Lauren on her hands and knees in the en-suite toilet. Bizarrely enough I hadn’t even known of the toilet’s existence – rather like the secret drawer in the walnut desk it was hidden away, only this time in that space on the first-floor landing at the top of the stairs.

  The en suite was a windowless box and lit by artificial means. It was surprisingly spacious and I couldn’t help thinking that it had been designed rather like the American presidential en suite in the Oval Office, which under certain presidencies had earned the reputation as acting as an extension of the boardroom table thus enabling its incumbents to continue pontificating while they enjoyed a presidential crap.

  ‘We really must find a new cleaner,’ wailed Lauren. It appeared that not only had the cleaner left visible a can of Mr Sheen, but the toilet roll supplier had delivered the wrong kind of toilet rolls.

  ‘What are the “right” ones?’ I’d never really studied them.

  ‘They have to be white, hmm.’

  ‘But those are white.’ I pointed to the fat little bale protruding from the wall on its polished stainless rod.

  ‘No, pure white. These have got things on them – see!’ She held up a spare roll to illustrate her argument. I let out a half-guffaw at the thought of the mounting discomposure of Patrick as he was forced to wipe his arse on a seemingly endless frieze of mint-coloured acanthus leaves.

  As I turned to go I noticed that the floor tiles had been laid on the diagonal. Perhaps a demonstration of Patrick’s extravagance as there was more wastage when laying the tiles, but more strangely an acknowledgement of the Islamic way of doing things. Their textile art which implies that the world does not end where space is intersected by wall, or the edge of the cloth, or paper. It was a constant reminder of the infinity beyond. A meditation on the invisible.

  It was 1100hrs when the three of us gathered in Patrick’s office, Lauren, me and Shem. Shem had said very little since he’d arrived. There’d been sniffing, grimacing, and a fair amount of foot-stamping on the molasses-coloured boards. Lauren had shown him round and I’d suggested he take the drawing board opposite mine. That left the remaining two workstations either for contract people, or further permanent staff as the workload increased.

  We were sitting round the large white desk. I was facing the window with Lauren opposite me. Shem was to Lauren’s right which meant he would be next to Patrick when he joined us at the head of the table.

  ‘I like your ring,’ Shem suddenly seemed to come to life as he looked at Lauren’s hand.

  ‘It’s from the Baltic.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  I felt a pang of jealousy.

  It was raining, the church clock was striking somewhere in the distance, and as it reached its final stroke it made a duet with the rattle of a Chubb lock being released from on high within the house. I heard the apartment door being softly squeezed open, and almost immediately closed again. There was a sound which resembled that strange percussive effect one experiences in a concert hall when the final notes of a symphony die, and for a split second the air is filled with isolated applause as if the audience have lost count of the number of movements and aren’t sure whether or not they should clap. Perhaps Patrick had had his brogues resoled.

  Through the window I could see Mackerel sitting on the balcony in front of the decorative ironwork waiting to be let in, and again I wondered how she had got there. The ‘applause’ ceased, the floorboard in the antechamber creaked.

  ‘Typical English weather!’ The male voice snapped as if it was not suffering fools gladly.

  ‘Oh Patrick… your arm! What happened?’ Lauren sounded emotional.

  I turned in my seat, Shem rose – his hand outstretched ready to greet Patrick who was dressed in navy blazer, grey worsteds, and tie with horizontal stripes. But there was something extraordinary. The right sleeve of the blazer was hanging empty at his side. Under the blazer, which was fastened at the waist with one silver button, was an enormous bulge. His right arm was in a sling of elegantly-pleated lint from neck to wrist.

  ‘It’s nothing!’ He raised his left hand as if in benediction.

  ‘But what happened?’

  ‘Laurie did it.’ He pronounced it Lawrghrrrie and sniffed through his flattened nose as the roar of ‘…rghrrrie’ died on his pouting lips. He sat down in mystifying silence. Not only had there been a robbery but it appeared that an assault had taken place. The offence was no doubt in the process of being dealt with by the very two police who’d rushed past me in the Ford Granada.

  ‘But he’s only a boy!’ cried Lauren.

  Mackerel had her face a nudge away from the glass of the window. Her head looked like a rather damp striped medicine ball.

  Patrick, it transpired, had challenged Laurie to an arm-wrestling match – ‘all good-natured,’ Patrick insisted, but it seemed things got out of hand. There’d been no question of an assault and the police had been called to deal only with the robbery.

  ‘I won’t shake your hand,’ Patrick addressed the still standing Shem.

  ‘… Left?’ Shem persisted.

  ‘That would be indeed sinister. Are you settling in?’ He eyed Shem.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘I gather you’re Polish, I’m very pro Pole.’

  ‘So, am I mate, but which Poles?’ Patrick ignored the question.

  ‘Have you lived here long?’

  ‘Finsbury Park, man and boy.’

  ‘I’ve got something very interesting just for you, a client you’ll like.’ He studied Shem with his dark pupils. I felt a pang of jealousy, of a different kind from two minutes earlier.

  ‘Tell me, Shem, do you drive around London?’

  ‘… In a bus, mate.’

  ‘You’re familiar with Arrival Airways.’ It was rhetorical. Shem said he wasn’t.

  ‘People’s Airline – “no frills” that awful phrase, but it’s not “bucket and spade” – another awful phrase, it’s long haul, Nigeria and it’s particularly the Lagos flights that are the problem.’

  It sounded interesting, but wasn’t Shem supposed to be my assistant, why was Patrick giving him his own job above my head?

  The rain had come on harder than ever, and Mackerel’s face was pressed close to the glass, a tiny disc of condensation in front of her mouth.

  ‘It’s the hand baggage that’s proving difficult. These people want to take “everything but the kitchen sink,” – another awful phrase, and expect to cram it into the overhead lockers. They need a system to measure dimensions of the luggage – something that’s clear to the public so when an item is too big it’s seen to be fair to everybody, no ar
guments. I want you to go down there this afternoon, meet the client, take a detailed brief, and do a survey.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Oh, n-o-o-o, far too many people.’

  ‘Can I take Lauren?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ I felt another surge of adrenalin.

  ‘Right then, thanks Patrick… Early lunch?’

  ‘… If you must.’ Patrick’s facial expression was one of someone offended but cornered. For some reason I was unable to fathom, he seemed to be incapable of indicating that this was insubordination. Shem seemed to be having a bewitching effect upon him. Again, I felt a pang of jealousy.

  ‘Could we discuss GI Group?’ I couldn’t help it, my voice had a slight whining sound to it.

  ‘Pulse, you really need to get a grip on that job, now!’

  ‘Well I was thinking, if I could report back to you and brief Shem at the same time?’ I wished I hadn’t made a question out of it.

  ‘Not now.’ It was a bellow. Patrick rose, and the meeting was over.

  I looked at Shem. There was a look of mischief about him I didn’t like.

  ‘As it’s my first day…’ Shem spoke the words like an actor hamming it up just a little. ‘I thought it would be nice for the four of us to have a little bite together just down the road. There’s a lovely old eel pie and mash café in the market. You’d love it Patrick, all black and white tiles. They do a beautiful eels and liquor.’

  ‘Ye-e-e-s, well…’ Patrick sounded almost coy.

  ‘… Not your thing eh, Patrick? You never know whether you don’t like a thing till you’ve actually tried it.’

  ‘Falco’s coming in an hour, Patrick.’ Lauren shuffled the desk diary open in front of her.

  ‘Saved by the bell eh, Patrick, maybe another time?’

  Shem set off, Lauren withdrew to the butler’s pantry and I went to my desk to work on GI Group, I could get a sandwich after they’d gone.

  Moments later there was a loud report at the front door. Lauren answered it and there was the echoing of a male voice, the sound of kissing followed by a loud thump on the floor above and more of the staccato applause on the stone stair.