by Jemma Harvey
And so it went on. Drink → penitence → abstention → awareness → guilt → drink. Garry Grimes had gone on benders lasting two or three days but in between he had periods of relative sobriety. It was depression he needed to fight, not alcoholism. But Franco was now a full-blown alcoholic. Ultimately, he drank because he drank. After his mother’s death they moved into the family mansion, a decrepit villa full of nooks and crannies where bottles could be hidden. Georgie tried getting rid of them, but he only bought more. She sought medical advice, only to be told there was nothing to be done until he decided to do it himself. She took control of their finances, only to find they hadn’t any: what remained of the Cavaris’ ancestral wealth had mostly been gambled or drunk away. Franco borrowed money from her, and never repaid it. When she refused to lend, he stole. The tenor of their rows had changed: she no longer laughed or teased him. One day, he hit her.
That was when she knew she would have to leave. Not tomorrow, or the next day, but sometime, someday. She stood at the window looking out over the Eternal City and thinking that its roots were deeper than love and its towers higher, because a city was a strong thing, a work of skill and stone, and the edifices of the heart were as towers of mist, and like mist they blew away. She told herself she wasn’t bitter – she swore she would never be bitter, because bitterness eats the soul – but cynicism had entered into her, hardening her mind if not her heart. She would have to leave, and return to London, and the dolce vita was gone for good. In fact, it had been gone for quite a while.
‘Of course you had to leave,’ said Lin. ‘He might have hurt you.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t worried about that,’ Georgie responded. ‘He couldn’t hurt me. Even when he hit me, I didn’t feel it. What worried me was that I would hurt him. If he hit me again I might hit him back, or pick up a kitchen knife – and that would be that. I never wanted to hurt him, so I had to go. There was nothing I could do for him any more.’
It was a battle she couldn’t win, and Georgie had always been used to winning. She could have stayed in Rome – she had been there nearly ten years, and had many friends – but she felt it was better to make a complete break. She sold her jewellery and put the money in a trust with anything else she could scrape together, and arranged for regular payment of basic bills and a small allowance for Franco. The American writer and a Cavari cousin were trustees. Then she packed her clothes and a few personal items and flew back to England. Everything she had in the world fitted into three suitcases and a flight bag.
In London, she moved in with the elderly aunt who would subsequently bequeath to Georgie both her house and her mortgage. She knew she wouldn’t be able to pick up where she had left off and she was right: she was pushing forty and had been out of the game too long. But there was an opening at Ransome Harber and an old friend put in a word. The salary was mediocre, the social scene far from glittering, but it was a job. Georgie took it.
It must sound as if everyone in publishing gets their job through the machinations of a friend. Basically, this is true. But just for the record, I got in through an employment agency – which makes me almost as rare as an author who’s been pulled out of the slush pile.
Georgie had been with the company about eight months when Lin joined, over a year when I came. She and Lin, though unlikely friends in terms of character and outlook, had enough similarities in their life histories to form an instant rapport; Georgie rapidly became Lin’s chief confidante, mentor, and substitute elder sister (though a far more sympathetic and understanding version than the real thing). Since I was working in Editorial, not Publicity, it took me a little longer to form part of our trio. I was attracted to Georgie – everyone is, of both sexes – but it was only after a particularly disastrous launch at L’Escargot that we became close. The book in question was a classy legal thriller by a blonde barrister called Courtney Pryce (real name Davina). Her literary agent, a battleaxe of uncertain age and even more uncertain temperament, got extremely drunk at the party even by publishing standards and Courtney politely suggested it was time for her to go home. The agent, whom I won’t name for reasons of tact, discretion, and libel laws, went berserk, attempted to sock her client, and had to be forcibly restrained. She was eventually sent home in a taxi, was subsequently dumped by Courtney, and a year or so later produced an inferior novel plagiarising much of her ex-client’s plot which became a brief bestseller at the Walthamstow branch of Safeway. Meanwhile, back at L’Escargot, a furious Georgie repaired her smudged mascara – ‘Thank God my blusher’s okay: I haven’t got it with me’ – and thanked me warmly for leaping into the fray to assist her. We retired to the restaurant for dinner, lingering – with Lin – long after the author had fled, and bonded.
Most friendships formed at work happen because people are stuck in the same environment and getting along together is both pleasant and convenient. But I really hope the friendship between Lin and Georgie and me is the deep kind, the kind that lasts. We certainly worry about each other enough. But then, women always worry about their friends: it’s so much more comfortable than worrying about yourself. For instance, Lin and I indulged in some serious worrying over Georgie after the office party two Christmases ago.
Office parties, as everyone knows, are an essential item in contemporary romance. What Almack’s was to Georgette Heyer, what Cinderella’s ball was to the fairytale, what the movie premiere is to the B-list celebrity, the office party is to chick fic. In the City, secretaries tart up to seduce their dishiest bosses while excluded wives rant down their mobiles, and So-and-So from Foreign Investments makes an exhibition of himself with That Blonde from Money-Laundering.
In publishing, contrary to Bridget Jones et al, there are very few dishy bosses: Peter Mayer at Penguin in the good old days of fun and fatwas was, I am told, the exception to all rules. But since it is perfectly true that us girls tart up more for ourselves than the opposite sex – if Nigel is anything to go by, men don’t notice anyway – we duly tarted. That is, Lin wore something with ethnic embroidery and tatty hemlines, mascara too dark for her colouring and a smudge of lipstick; I did my best to cover the bulges in a loose silk shirt, daringly pink, which made me look like an oversized Christmas parcel; and Georgie wore an Armani suit, all slimline trousers and stylish tailoring, which must have made a major contribution to her mounting credit-card debt. She looked sensational, with her tits looming from a wispy little top under the collarless jacket, her hair an exquisite blonde disorder, and a couple of face jewels (they were all the rage that year) on her cheekbones. And all for the massed might of Ransome Harber, including not only the resident imprints but also the Design Department, which, like Publicity, dealt with everyone, Contracts, who had turned procrastination into an art form, and the power-mad control-freaks from Sales, who, in the teeth of the evidence, still believed they knew How the Market Works.
From five-thirty, every ladies’ loo was choc-a-block, while the men wandered around complaining because there was no one else to answer the phones, opening bottles, sampling their contents, pulling the odd premature cracker and, in extreme cases, wearing paper hats. Georgie, Lin and I finished our titivation in Georgie’s office, where she had thoughtfully provided us with a portable mirror and desk lamp for makeup purposes. Then we emerged, headed for the drinks as usual, and several glasses later, when Lin had peeled off to discuss folklore with Graham from Phoenix, Georgie and I found ourselves talking to Calum McGregor, the Art Director.
Cal is the reason the Design Department can tell a writer like Todd Jarman that his title is too long. It is thanks to Cal that Ransome Harber has never been up for the Worst Dust Jacket award at the Frankfurt Book Fair. He claims he can turn a sleeper into a bestseller simply by changing the packaging, and has, on occasion, proved it, with a little help from Promotions. The fact that he’s dyslexic and is said never to have read a book in his life is irrelevant. Colleagues complain he’s a stroppy perfectionist who makes their lives hell, picks their work to bits, and always thin
ks he knows what’s best – unhappily, he usually does – though if he’s been particularly difficult he will sometimes compensate by buying them a beer later. At the time of that party he was still a year or so short of forty, with floppy dark brown hair that made him look much younger, designer specs, and a face which, without being classically handsome, was – is – definitely attractive in a rather boyish, half sad, half mischievous way. He plays killer squash and goes running most days on Streatham Common near his home, so what you can see of his muscles look more suited to the sports field than a publishing house. Perhaps to plug his artistic image, he shaves infrequently and never wears a tie.
He was also the office lech. In those days, anyway. He seduced all the prettiest temps and would then start on the plain ones, with little subtlety and a cheerful lack of discrimination. As a rule he avoided any entanglement with the permanent staff but was seen out from time to time with leggy models, pouting PAs, dashing advertising executives. None of his affairs ever lasted more than a few days, or at the most a few weeks, and male friends said that despite the philandering he was still in love with his wife, a former biochemist called Christine. His marriage was long-standing but reputedly sex-free since the birth of his second son, who was severely mentally and physically handicapped. His wife had given up her career and everything else to devote herself to her child, becoming immersed in related charity work and eventually rising to a directorship in the Williamson Trust, which specialises in the care of handicapped children. Cal, so he claimed, was forced to seek solace elsewhere.
I saw a distinct gleam in his eye as he studied Georgie’s cleavage, but it didn’t bother me unduly since such gleams were automatic with him, she was permanent staff, and his taste normally ran to girls of twenty-odd. I drifted away to talk to someone else and it was only when I glanced over, an hour or so later, and saw Georgie and Cal still nose to nose that I began to feel slightly anxious. Of course, Georgie was an older woman with aeons of experience under her belt: she could look after herself . . .
‘Georgie and Cal seem to be getting on awfully well,’ Lin said in my ear. ‘Oh dear. You don’t think they . . . ?’
‘Not getting on,’ I said. ‘Getting off. What is she doing? She knows his reputation. Everyone does.’
‘He’s been dropping into our office quite a lot lately,’ Lin volunteered. ‘He said it was about the posters for Doomspinner – but that isn’t anything to do with us really. That’s Promotions. I thought he was just being friendly. He tries to flirt with me sometimes.’ Lin isn’t the flirty type.
That, I knew, meant nothing. Cal would try to flirt with a lampstand if it looked vaguely female. It wasn’t the possibility of flirtation that worried me.
If I’d known what I knew later, I’d have worried even more.
‘I’ve fancied you for ages,’ Cal was saying with a flash of his cheeky-schoolboy grin. ‘I keep telling myself it’s a bad idea, but I won’t listen to me. I’ve always tried to avoid getting mixed up with anyone at work . . .’
‘It is a bad idea,’ Georgie agreed. ‘What about Trudi Horn from Contracts? Was that another bad idea – or just a lapse of judgement?’
Cal made a face. ‘Both. I was hoping you wouldn’t have heard about that. Gossip travels at lightspeed in this place.’
‘It didn’t have far to travel,’ Georgie pointed out. ‘Besides, I gather Trudi mentioned it – discreetly, of course – to about half the world. She was pretty upset.’
‘She wanted commitment. I told her, right from the start, I don’t do commitment. I don’t do the L-word. I’m a married man. I just want sex – and you’re the sexiest woman I’ve seen in ages. You don’t look the neurotic type – you’re young enough to be gorgeous and old enough to be sensible – and I’m drunk enough to try it on. The question is, are you sober enough to slap my face?’
‘Oh, I could do that drunk, too,’ Georgie said sweetly. ‘If you’re so married, why all the extra-curricular activity?’
‘Christy and I don’t have sex. I thought everyone knew that. We’re going through a bad patch.’ He sounded slightly defensive. ‘Lots of married couples do. We’ll get over it, and when we do I’ll go back on the straight and narrow. Until then . . . I’m a man, I like women, I need sex. I suppose I ought to control it, but I’ve never been good at abstention. In any case, you’ve only got one life and you have to make the most of it. Someone or other once said it isn’t the things you’ve done that you regret, it’s the things you haven’t done.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve heard that one,’ Georgie sighed. ‘And you were getting points for honesty till then. How long has this bad patch lasted?’
‘Since Jamie was born. My younger son.’
‘And he is—?’
‘Eight.’
Georgie didn’t say anything more, not then. She was thinking: Eight years? That’s more than a marital blip. Poor Cal. I wonder why? He’s really very attractive . . .
She said: ‘So you want us to have a little commitment-free sex? A quick roll in the hay – or the metropolitan equivalent? Even though we work for the same company, in the same building, so it’s a really bad idea?’ He shrugged, then grinned, an irrepressible sparkle of hope in his face. ‘Why me?’
‘I told you, I’ve been lusting after you for months. You’re stunning, you could have any man, and I’m nothing special, but – I’m an optimist. I thought it was worth trying my luck. Nothing ventured and all that.’
‘Try it, don’t push it,’ Georgie said with sudden hauteur. ‘Take off your glasses. No – put them on again.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve heard that one . . .’
She laughed, meeting smile with smile. ‘No, really, take them off again. I want to see your eyes properly.’ She saw they were grey, with a fleck of hazel at the centre. How can eyes be expressive? she wondered. It’s lines and wrinkles, colour-change and muscle-movement, that create expression. Eyes are just balls of jelly with variegated circles on one side. How can a ball of jelly look sad? ‘They’re . . . sort of tweedy. Unusual.’
‘Your eyes are lovely,’ Cal said. ‘Huge and deep and soft. I could fall into them.’
‘That would be poetic,’ said Georgie, ‘if it was my eyes you were looking at.’
As the party fizzled out, Lin and I joined them and talked pointedly of departure. Cal bade us a cheerful goodbye and headed home first, leaving Georgie to wander along with us. Outside, she said: ‘I can’t be bothered with the tube. I’m going to look for a cab. Goodnight, guys.’ She didn’t tell us until some days later that the cab in question was waiting round the corner, by prearrangement, with Cal McGregor inside.
Lin and I wormed the truth out of her pretty quickly, but they managed to keep the affair secret from the rest of the company for quite some time. ‘We’re just having a little quiet fun,’ Georgie said. ‘It won’t last more than a month or two. He’s got a lovely body. I haven’t been close to that much muscle in a long while. That’s the trouble with this job: all the men I hang out with are middle-aged media types going flabby round the middle.’
‘You should get yourself a toyboy,’ I said. ‘That’s better than a married man.’
‘I’ve never fancied very young guys,’ Georgie responded. ‘I don’t want to wake up next to anyone prettier than me.’ She extricated a small silver mobile phone from her handbag. ‘Cal gave me this. He’s taught me text-messaging. He says you can’t have a clandestine affair without it.’ She scrutinised her latest message in complete bewilderment. ‘Can you read text?’
I gazed doubtfully at a jumble of letters and numbers.
‘The dyslexia doesn’t help,’ Georgie conceded. ‘Still, spelling doesn’t matter in text.’
‘He’s never opened a book,’ I said, unreasonably irritated. ‘He only looks at the pictures.’
‘We don’t need books,’ Georgie retorted. ‘We’ve got Real Life.’
In bed, inevitably, they began to talk. You can’t have
sex all the time, and in between there are those moments when you stop, sip alcohol of some sort, and it’s dangerously easy to open up. Cal isn’t a verbal communicator: he expresses himself through images. But when Georgie wants to be sympathetic she could get a corkscrew to unwind or coax a confession from a hardened criminal. ‘You’re a terrific lover,’ she told him, flattering with sincerity. ‘I can’t think why Christine doesn’t appreciate it. It seems such a waste. I know you said the other day she had a medical problem after Jamie was born . . .’
‘Sort of.’
‘I don’t believe you. That was years ago. If there was anything wrong, the doctors would’ve fixed it. Can’t you tell me the truth now?’ And, very gently: ‘Is it so difficult?’
‘Jamie . . . was premature. Things went wrong. That’s why he – why he was handicapped. I didn’t understand the technical details. They said it didn’t have anything to do with . . . You see, Christy didn’t want sex when she was very pregnant. She said she felt fat and ugly. I liked it – I liked stroking her stomach, feeling the baby in there. Our baby. I wanted to be close to her, inside her, part of it. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have thrust so hard . . . She thought that started the contractions. Having sex. She thought that was why the baby came early. Why he was handicapped.’
‘She blamed you?’ Georgie whispered.
‘No. Not blamed. She just wouldn’t do it any more. She said she couldn’t. She tried, but she hated it. More each time.’
‘Has she had therapy?’
‘She tried that too,’ Cal said, ‘but it didn’t last.’
‘It almost sounds as if she didn’t want to get over the problem,’ Georgie mused cautiously, tiptoeing on eggshells. ‘Did she like sex before, or—?’
‘She seemed to like it,’ Cal said. ‘We did it enough.’
‘What I’m saying,’ said Georgie, ‘is that if she didn’t have a high sex drive, or if she saw sex simply as the necessary route to having children, maybe, subconsciously, she wanted an excuse to stop. Whatever. It wasn’t your fault. You have to take some responsibility – maybe you should have given her more orgasms—’