Menus arrived and we chose. In this company there was no nonsense about eating lightly in the middle of the day. My parents – corned beef sandwich merchants at home – were legendary lunchers when out, working up through the courses to pudding with heroic gusto. It was just as well they were going to the ear-busting tapfest. Anything less exuberant – Hare, say, or Stoppard, let alone Chekhov or the Bard, would surely have induced slumber in no time.
There was no point in standing aloof. I had whitebait, followed by pork in cider and cream sauce with new potatoes and seasonal veg. I nearly had cheese instead of pudding, but decided that it was equally fattening and settled for crème brûlée. They had soup and rack of lamb. My father had the treacle tart, and cheese to follow. My mother saw off one of the largest dollops of trifle I’d ever seen. It was perfectly clear that our waiter was bewitched by her high-octane between-the-wars charm.
We talked about the family. Apparently Anthea had broken a finger while putting a young horse through its paces on a lungeing rein. She and David had invited the parents to join them at Reids Hotel for a week in June and they’d accepted. Jasper still didn’t have a steady girlfriend but Emma had formed a liaison (my father’s expression) with a game warden named Bud. Caro was thinking of moving to a flat and Steph was thinking of marrying the newsreader, so there might be a family wedding in the summer, which would be nice (opined my mother). If they did, then presumably Ros and Brian and their two would come over from Vancouver.
‘If it takes place,’ said my father, ‘ and I think we ought to reserve judgment on that one, I rather doubt it’ll be the full white do.’
‘Why ever not?’ asked my mother.
‘Because Stephanie is not in the first flush of youth, and that chap she has in tow doesn’t look like morning dress material to me.’
‘But poor Caro’s been dying for another wedding, one she can really go to town on …’
‘Since when did Caro’s wishes have the slightest influence on the terrible twins?’
‘You may be right,’ agreed my mother. ‘But anyway, there will be some sort of party I’m sure. Yum, yum,’ she added with a sigh, laying down her spoon and sitting back. ‘I wish I could say that I’ll never do that again.’
My father turned to me. ‘ How was yours, Laura-lou?’
‘Wonderful,’ I said. I found myself wondering, as I so often did, what Susan would have made of this lunch. Too much food and not enough drink, probably. My parents were serious cocktail-takers – three stiff ones before a meal was as nothing to them, and at the average stand-up-and-shout they could have drunk anyone of my acquaintance under the table – but a second bottle of wine was less usual.
As my father selected cheese from a board like a football pitch, my mother said, ‘And how’s Glyn?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘Is he ever not fine?’
I thought about this, and remembered him as I’d seen him leaving for work in Madras checks. ‘No. He almost always is.’
‘As far as you know,’ added my mother, inclining her head in my direction with a little smile to show that this was an expression of kinship and not a criticism.
‘He has a great capacity for contentment,’ I said.
‘What a gift!’ exclaimed my mother, who shared it.
I walked with them to the theatre, which was only a few hundred yards away. The foyer was teeming.
‘God Almighty,’ said my father. ‘Are you sure this is the right place?’
‘It’s a hot ticket, Pedro,’ explained my mother. She turned to me. ‘Darling, if we could swap our seats for three together, would you like to join us?’
‘I won’t, thanks. I’d like to get back before the rush.’
‘Of course, you’re driving – I hope we didn’t give you too much to drink,’ said my mother, as though I were under five and the entire responsibility for my consumption lay with them. ‘It’s all right for us, we swan up first-class on our old crocks’ Railcard.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
We kissed each other and agreed how nice it had been. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting some of the management’s extortionately priced chocolates,’ said my father.
‘Naturally. Black Magic.’
He moved away sideways through the crush, and I felt my mother’s gaze on me: fond, speculative, collusive … She had intuition like a laser which even her perfect tact could not completely disguise. Though I couldn’t fault her behaviour, there was something premonitory about her attitude towards me today. I had no reason to feel guilty except my thoughts.
I hadn’t been entirely truthful about needing to get home before the rush. I wanted to have some time to play on the way. I didn’t delude myself that I was needed at home. It was a state of affairs one longed for from the baby-rice to the school run and perhaps especially through the taxi-service years when no Friday or Saturday night was complete without its accompanying crisis at midnight, with last trains missed, purses nicked and kindly police in attendance. But now this mid-life plateau was here, I sometimes felt perversely lost.
I left the car in the underground car park and took the tube to Bond Street. I couldn’t lay claim to the Diana effect – that of rendering sales staff helpless with humility – but I was at least wearing my good suit, and had not seriously troubled my credit card for several months. A spirit of reckless consumerism possessed me. I wanted something new, now, and I wanted to purchase it without wondering whether it matched other things, or whether I had the shoes to go with it. Who cared? If I had no shoes to go with it, I’d darn well buy those too.
Lightheaded with retail fever, I cruised a couple of recherché designer boutiques where the stock only came in black, white and taupe, and tried on assorted tops, skirts, jackets and jodhpurs. They were all nice, but not quite nice enough for the price. If I was going to pay an arm and a leg for casual wear, then I wanted nothing less than a transformation. I left both shops with a murmured ‘Thank you’ and what I hoped was the vague, unimpressed smile of the internationally experienced spender.
In the third shop there was another colour, ‘Sand’, and having just seen my mother wearing it I was sure it was the height of fashion savoir. The clothes were simple and dashing. The beaming charm of the sales assistant was quite unnecessary – I already knew I was going to buy.
I didn’t take long. Once seduced, I was a pushover. I came out half an hour later toting the shop’s large, glossy, stiffened carrier with black rope handles. Rustling amongst tissue inside the bag was the pants-suit (I’d picked up the lingo) to die for. In the palest gold fine wool, with a jacket so long and light it was hardly there, with a single self-covered button, and long, lean, perfect trousers that fell from the waistband like water and broke over the instep. High on the easy rush of plastic credit, I had added a narrow mesh-leather belt and a cream silk T-shirt. The mere smell of the carrier bag was enough to keep me on the high all the way back to the underground car park.
On the drive home my exhilaration ebbed away. They were, after all, only clothes. I felt rather flat, but I still wasn’t ready to go back to Alderswick Avenue and relegate my wild purchases to just another couple of hangers-worth in the bedroom wardrobe. I drove to the park near the river.
The park was known as the Piece, and when we first moved out of London I had always assumed, because it was overlooked by the Church of St Michael and AH Angels, that this was spelt ‘Peace’. Confused agnostic though I was, I’d been disappointed to find this wasn’t so, and continued privately to spell it my way. It was a pleasing park, with large trees, winding paths, some reassuring civic statuary and a pool in the centre with ducks and lily pads. Even at five o’clock people didn’t hurry through it, but strolled. And beside the pond, young men with briefcases and smart girls in spike heels stood and stared, perhaps remembering when they’d stood by that same pond or one like it with a bigger person, throwing bread for the ducks.
I walked, slowly, right round the perimeter of the park, and then
went through the little black iron gate into the churchyard. On the far side of the church the bustle and drone of a provincial rush hour filled Bartholomew Street, but here it was quiet.
I sat down on the only seat, and gazed at Isobel’s grave from a distance. We’d chosen this place because the idea of St Michael and all his angels looking after our daughter was comforting. The church had a small but faithful ageing congregation and every Saturday there was a bring-and-buy stall by the main entrance where Glyn bought homemade fudge. The vicar was a nice, ill-looking man about ten years younger than us. Glyn had told him about Isobel, something I’d never have dreamed of doing, and he now greeted us like friends.
She had a tiny, white, arched stone, with her name and the year. From where I sat it looked like one of those pantomime milestones that proclaim ‘London, 50 miles’, but promise Shangri-La.
I sat and gazed. Isobel’s microscopic life gave her a kind of authority over the rest of us. She had become universal, a constant. The plain white stone, which looked as though it had been placed there only yesterday, would outlast me, Glyn, her brother and sisters, and her nephew and niece. Isobel would always be there, and always keep her counsel.
An elderly couple, probably American, certainly tourists, paused by her, and the man leaned forward to read the inscription. I could see by their faces and body language that they were affected. The man laid his hand for a moment on his wife’s shoulder. As they began to walk away the woman raised her hand in a small wave of farewell, and then snapped her fingers shut abruptly as if embarrassed. I half-wanted to make myself known, but I didn’t want to break the spell of calm.
As the couple walked past me the man was saying, something Victorian in a small child’s gravestone … something weird about burying a baby …’
At home, Verity was in the kitchen, making a vegetable hot-pot. The good smell greeted me as I came through the door and I left my jacket and bags in the hall and went through to talk to her.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked, putting a cup of tea in front of me.
I told her what I’d overheard. ‘ It made me feel as though Isobel were some sort of freak show.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Verity firmly. ‘And anyway, does it matter what two perfect strangers say and think? You know what’s what, and so does Our Lord, and that’s the important thing.’
I always felt that Our Lord had me, a miserable sinner, foisted upon him in these situations, but I consoled myself with the thought that it was wretches like myself who presumably made His job worthwhile. If everyone were like Verity there’d be nothing left to do.
She sat down opposite me and opened a small tin to reveal homemade mueslijacks. ‘How were Gran and Pops?’
‘In tremendous form. We had a lovely lunch at the Clarendon and then they went off to their show.’
‘Gosh …’ Verity sighed in happy wonderment. ‘They are just so – sort of glamorous for their age.’
This seemed like my cue to flaunt a little glamour of my own. ‘I bought some clothes – rather expensive ones. Would you like to see?’
‘But you must put them on!’
She was the perfect audience. In spite of her own monastic attitude to possessions she positively encouraged indulgence in others. I sometimes had the unworthy notion that she was earmarking new clothes for her vagrants a few years’ hence.
‘That is gorgeous!’ she exclaimed, as I gave her a twirl. ‘You look like something out of Vogue!’
‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ I agreed, looking down at myself. ‘I’m afraid it’s a case of you gets what you pays for.’
‘Did they cost a fortune?’ I gave her a rough idea. ‘Wow … still, you deserve it.’
‘Well, I don’t know …’
‘Have you shown them to Dad?’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the office, go on, you must.’ I went and knocked on the door.
‘Come.’
Glyn was on the phone, but he made ‘Wow’ faces as I came in, and held out a restraining hand to keep me there.
‘Okay … yeah … sure … no problem,’ he said, leaning forward and making winding-up motions with his hand for my benefit. This was to indicate the long-windedness of the person on the other end, but I knew very well that Glyn liked nothing better than ‘a good goss on the blower’ as he put it, and had probably instigated the call and been talking up a storm for hours before I arrived.
‘Yup, terrific. Catch you later.’ He put the receiver down and held out his arms. ‘Look at you!’
‘Like it?’
He linked his hands behind his head. ‘ It’s more a question of whether I can live up to it or not.’
‘No chance, I sincerely hope.’
‘It won’t do you any good round at the CAB I can tell you. Your poor-but-honest image shot to pieces at a stroke.’
‘No, well, I wasn’t thinking of wearing it at the CAB, was I?’
‘We’ve got the agency’s anniversary bash in June. Boat on the Thames, jazz band – you can give it an outing then.’
I was doubtful. ‘Will it be right for that?’
‘Anything’s right for that. Who says you’ve got to fit in? You can wear what you like.’
‘In that case I probably will …’
‘Pedro and Diana okay?’
‘Fine. They sent their love.’
‘Verity’s making supper, by the way.’
‘I know, I’ve been talking to her.’
The small change ran out. Glyn sat there with his hands behind his head, smiling, and I suddenly felt slightly silly in my finery.
‘Right,’ I said, ‘I’d better go and get back to normal.’
I heard him pick up the phone again as I closed the door. I collected my other clothes from the sitting-room sofa and went upstairs. The faint, unmistakable scent of pot indicated Josh’s presence on the floor above.
I got back to normal.
Normality reasserted itself even more brutally the following morning when Becca called at 8 a. m. to announce that Bunker’s had found more damage to the Mini than they had at first thought, and that ‘that dreary little man’ – the driver of the Scorpio – had written to her to say that his boot had been pushed out of alignment and a new one would cost £600. What a rip-off, and there hadn’t been a single mark on his bloody great car, could we believe it? We could – I especially, having witnessed the treatment he had received at our daughter’s hands. Just for good measure Josh had developed a nasty flu bug and was lying red-faced and slightly smelly in the attic, unable to get his head off the pillow. Glyn was going in to London, and Verity was visiting a housebound disabled Desert Rat, so the task of succouring the sick fell to me. I escorted him, weaving slightly, down to the sitting-room, took a firm line on a change of T-shirt and boxer shorts, gave him a clean duvet cover and pillowcases and poured him a large jug of diluted orange juice. I more or less forced him to take a couple of paracetamol, and left the packet by him with instructions to repeat the dose, although I knew perfectly well he would simply He there in a sickly stupor until he felt slightly better, and would then get up and go out to repeat the exercise next day.
In consequence of all this I was late at the CAB and my first client, Mr Prentiss, a regular, was sitting on a hard chair waiting for me when I arrived. I apologized and let him in, clutching my polystyrene cup of coffee.
‘I’m sorry – would you like one?’
‘No, thanks, I’m not a coffee man.’
It was hard to know what sort of man Stan Prentiss was. My lateness would probably work in my favour since it would confirm him in his sense of superiority. Having been made redundant – with several hundred others – from A&B Holdings, he had taken on the role of professional complainer. He didn’t come to us for help, but to lodge these complaints. I had run out of advice long ago, together with leaflets, useful contacts, data-sheets and sympathy. Basically, Mr Prentiss couldn’t come to terms with the unfairness of life. I was far from being unsy
mpathetic to his plight, but I slightly resented being used as a repository for the mass of generalized moans which he couldn’t get to stick elsewhere. Especially as his manner made it clear that he regarded all of us at the CAB as bleeding-heart time-servers protected by income and privilege from the harsh realities experienced by people like himself. Curiously, I suspected that he was also rather right-wing and would have disapproved strongly of, say, Becca’s modus vivendi.
‘What can I do for you this morning?’ I asked with a somewhat steely smile. Our relationship had gone past the point where we pretended it was more than something to be got through.
‘That remains to be seen,’ replied Mr Prentiss.
‘How’s the job search going?’
He jerked his head back in a silent ‘ Ha!’ ‘ How do you think?’
‘I’m sorry if you haven’t found anything but I’m sure you will, with your qualifications.’
‘I wish I shared your optimism.’
‘It’s not so much optimism – it’s a case of self-esteem.’
Mr Prentiss sneered. You didn’t see many honest-to-goodness, gone-for-broke sneers these days, but this was one of them. He was, I estimated, in his late thirties and rather a good-looking man, but his face was becoming pinched with discontent and resentment.
‘Oh, I know what I’m worth all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just I have this little problem,’ he put his finger and thumb a centimetre apart, ‘persuading other people.’
I tried to steer the conversation towards more practical topics. It was what I was there for, after all.
‘How are the finances?’ I asked.
‘We’ve had to cut down to one Caribbean cruise and we’ve let the wife’s BMW go,’ he replied with heavy sarcasm.
‘Is your wife still working?’ I knew Mrs Prentiss worked part-time in a florist’s.
‘Yes.’ There was a ‘What of it?’ in the background.
I soldiered on. ‘How are the children?’
This was his weakness, and I must say I liked him for it. His manner changed from abrasive truculence to something deeper and gruffer.
Life After Lunch Page 12