by Andy Bailey
“Is he?” Susan seemed genuinely surprised. “He doesn’t show it.”
“Of course he is,” Carlo appeared taken aback and even horrified at the thought that Susan didn’t know what her father thought of her. “He’s a very busy man and he gets very distracted and he’s very naughty with those he loves and I know what he feels. He tells me, and I know how proud he is of you.”
Carlo was an impressive-looking character in his own right, with an upright bearing, jet-black hair, swept back with no grey showing (or being allowed to show); tall and slim with a presence that was authoritative but not standoffish.
Martin was observing this exchange, noting the familiarity with which Carlo spoke of Jimmy Sachs when he himself was suddenly fixed with the Italian’s gaze.
“And you don’t even introduce me to your friend.” Carlo was looking straight into Martin’s eyes and appeared genuinely absorbed. Again, not just the professional blandishments.
“Oh yes, sorry – this is Martin. Martin Dash from work,” Susan spluttered, appearing momentarily flustered.
“Martin Dash !” Carlo was obviously delighted by the accord between Martin’s name and appearance. “Yes . . .”
And then – a little more respectfully – Carlo extended his hand and nodded his head slightly forward, whilst dropping his eyes. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr Dash. Any friend of the beautiful Miss Sachs is a friend of mine.”
They laughed at this and Martin smiled, “You too, Signor Demello,” as they shook hands.
“Please: Carlo, please. The Sachs are my family. And I think you would be a welcome addition to the family. Eh, daughter?” Carlo grinned mischievously at Susan.
“Enough, Carlo, enough !” Susan shrieked, laughing but also blushing. “Can you squeeze us in?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Carlo sighed, pretending to look at the book.
The place was heaving but in a moment they were seated at one of the best tables against the glass wall facing directly onto the river, now black with a thin ribbon of multi-coloured lights twinkling on the opposite bank.
As he sat, Martin spotted face after face in the Friday night Belugo crowd – you couldn’t help but look (although a disinterested observer might also notice that a number of this high-end clientele, male and female, also gave Martin a second look; Susan, although not disinterested, also noticed this and a small shiver of joy wriggled through her frame).
Amidst this social scanning, their eyes fell upon each other and Martin smiled, “This is a bit more rarefied than I’m used to,” and – unconsciously – he looked at the menu.
“Yes, it is a bit pricey,” said Susan, “but don’t worry, Dad keeps a tab here, or something anyhow. Carlo has never let me pay. So we can have what we want !”
“Oh no, I should pay.”
“Why?”
A pregnant pause. And Martin mock-surrendered “Oh, go on then . . .”
Susan laughed and patted his hand, “Thank you !”
9.
“So, how about your family? Parents? Brothers? Sisters?” Susan had decided it was time to start pumping Martin for information instead of dominating the conversation with the saga of her illustrious father, his triumphs, misdeeds and scandals. They had just been served coffee – after a long, leisurely dinner that Martin suspected had been personally overseen by Carlo – and Susan had given him the full story, most of which had been played out in the full glare of the media (of which he was already aware) but some of which could never have seen the light of day.
Susan had been putting it away steadily all evening while Martin had not shown the slightest temptation to break his long abstinence, much to her disappointment (but what did she expect?). She had become progressively more indiscrete with each glass and had given him at least two stories which, if publicised and verified (perhaps not even verified . . .), would have meant the end of Jimmy Sachs' career (and the final end this time, not all those ends from which he had miraculously resurrected before).
Martin, however, was proving a harder nut to crack, as usual.
“So you were born where?”
“Birmingham.”
“You haven’t got a Brummie accent. In fact, you haven’t got any accent.”
“Well, I was born there but we moved around a lot.”
Bit of a silence.
“Like where?”
“Oh, all over – Bristol, Uttoxeter, Leicester, Lewes.”
Susan was eyeing him suspiciously. Martin was appearing nonchalant.
“How come?”
“Because of the work, sort of – my dad was a teacher and he just kept getting jobs in different places. So we’d move again. But I think he was just a bit restless anyway. He preferred to keep moving.”
“What about your mum?”
“Oh, she just followed; just went along with it – she was a nurse so she could always get work wherever we were.”
“And where are they now?”
“They’re both dead.”
Another bit of a silence.
“Both of them? Oh, I’m . . . I’m sorry but they can’t have been very old?”
“They died in a car crash when I was 18.”
“Oh, how awful for you. You must have been devastated.” Then she realised what she’d said. Martin was just looking at her.
“Did you . . ?”
“Have the illness then? Yes – I’ve always had it.”
You could almost see the questions formulating in Susan’s puzzled face.
“I know this sounds like a rather crass question but . . .”
“How did I feel? . . . like always. I never feel anything.”
This hit Susan like a slap across the face with a cold, wet, bulky, dead haddock and, after a little while, she realised her mouth was gaping (she promptly shut it).
“Martin, I . . . I don’t know what to say. You must be the strangest person I’ve ever met. You walk around, meet people, get on with them; people like you . . . and yet, underneath . . . Your parents die and you can’t feel a thing? I feel so sorry for you and I just can’t get my head round it . . . How can you feel absolutely nothing?”
“I know, I can’t really explain it. Because I’ve never known any different. I don’t know what it is to have feelings, like you do . . . like everyone else does. I’ve no idea what that must be like.”
Martin sipped from his orange juice.
“Well, what do the doctors say? Because it can go away, can’t it? And there are drugs?”
Martin smiled, “You’ve been researching?”
Susan shuffled and blushed slightly, realising she’d been caught out, but then gathered herself and came back, slightly indignant.
“Well, yes I have, actually, but why not? I was interested – I’d never heard of such a thing before. It just seemed so strange to me. So I just looked it up.”
“To check I wasn’t making it up . . ?”
“Don’t be silly.”
Martin simply took another sip and cast his gaze around the restaurant. But without really looking.
Susan was not giving up – “But it can be cured, can’t it?”
“There are some people who have episodes and then go back to normality and there are some who respond to treatment. They tried various drugs on me but they didn’t seem to make much difference. And my dad stopped it as he said the drugs would make me ill and I was fine as I was. And eventually I think I just dropped off the doctors’ radar and I’ve never really tried again. I’m fine.”
He could see Susan’s sceptical look.
“Honestly. I am.”
The drink had been working its magic on Susan for a while now and she was becoming transfixed by Martin. He was dressed in a blue suit, bright white shirt, crimson tie, immaculate as ever – his blue eyes that looked like jewels, his bright blond hair, his beautiful face – like a girl. She was feeling deep stirrings that were only strengthened by the idea that this gorgeous creature before her might actually be unattainable.
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‘Is he a virgin?’ The thought suddenly popped up in her mind and there must have been some manifestation in her face, a shift of intensity that Martin saw because he pointedly looked at his watch and swigged down the last of his juice.
“Well, that was great food but I reckon it’s probably time to hit the trail.”
Susan seemed to come round as if out of a dream; swayed in her seat ever so imperceptibly; and looked at her own watch. It was only 11 o’clock. But she acquiesced and, as she looked across the restaurant, she saw Carlo approaching them, with perfect timing to ensure that their departure from his restaurant without having to pay a sou was orchestrated as charmingly as possible.
As they bundled into the taxi outside, the driver asked: “Where to?” and Susan came straight back with: “Bayswater; Queens Gardens, please” – the flat, owned by her parents, that she formerly shared with her elder sister, Maria, but now on-and-off with her friend Charlotte.
She looked meaningfully at Martin. Who said to the driver: “And then Angel, please.”
Susan furrowed her brow and whispered: “Why don’t you come to mine?”
“Oh, thanks – but I’d better get back to mine. I’ve got a bunch of stuff I need to do for Barry Rogers in the morning so I reckon I’ll need to get my head down.”
Susan looked crestfallen and cross at the same time but then a thought came into her head: “Well, you could give it to him in person tomorrow night, if you like.”
Martin knitted his brow, puzzled.
“Mum and Dad are throwing a party at the house. Why don’t you come with me? All the players will be there . . . and Barry and Joan,” she said with a wink. “It’ll be a laugh – you’ll enjoy it,” and then, pulling herself up, ". . . well, you know . . .”
Martin smiled, “It’s OK; yes, I’ll come – that’ll be great. Thank you for asking me. Are you sure they won’t mind?”
“God, no – they’d love to meet you. I’ve been going on about you for weeks.” She was throwing caution to the wind now.
“So, Bayswater then Angel?” called the driver from the front, tired of waiting for a decision. Susan laughed, “Yes, Bayswater then Angel,” and gave Martin a hug.
10.
Martin Dash gazed out of the taxi’s rear window as it wound its way along the broad streets of leafy Hampstead Garden suburbs. He had ordered the cab to go from his flat in The Angel at 6:00 in order to arrive at the Sachs’ home at the time appointed by Susan – 6.30. Susan had phoned him that day to fill him in on the party and give some directions. She had explained that his invitation was rather last minute because she had not intended to go – her parents, being promiscuously sociable, held such do's fairly regularly and it was generally left to Susan whether she came to them or not.
They were fully aware of her distaste for the political characters who made up the bulk of their social circle but were generally relaxed at this as they also knew she was too well-mannered to cause embarrassment if she did turn up and would usually restrict herself to the odd caustic remark that was expertly balanced between a level of venom that could be shocking if you considered it for any length of time and the kind of roughhouse ribbing that could easily be explained away (if the target got shirty) as what you were brought up to deal with in the 'sophisticated' milieu they inhabited.
In any event, everyone agreed that – amongst the other blessings bestowed upon her – Susan had definitely inherited the whiplash tongue her father had deployed to devastating effect on many occasions, to the delight of all who witnessed it (often including the supposed comrades of the unfortunate recipient). This was one of the reasons he was such a popular figure (for a politician) – he was just so damnably entertaining (as Boris Johnson himself had put it).
So, the Sachs’ summer party was a well-established feature of the social round of the London political scene. In fact, not just political as Jimmy and Rosa had both come out of cultured backgrounds and carried the same sense of engagement with the wider world throughout their lives and careers. Rosa had maintained her profile in the arts (initially as a successful opera singer and, latterly, with select trusteeships) in tandem with the career of politician’s wife and was equally at ease with a visiting South American novelist as with the hard-nosed political bruisers who routinely came round to empty the drinks cabinet.
Martin knew that Hampstead was, of course, a 'nice' place generally – its heady combination of a patronising liberal / bohemian heritage mixed with a serious accumulation of proper money and desirable properties made it a haven for wealthy establishment types and generational trustafarians, whose preference was to wrap themselves in the comforting security blanket of complacent superiority rather than to slum it among the vulgar Russian arrivistes of Chelsea Harbour; but, as the taxi passed by the perfect customers sashaying through the perfect shops of the perfect High Street, humming in the golden sunshine of the early evening, and wound its way up the hill, past the open human wildlife reserve of The Heath, towards the Sachs’ residence, Martin realised that there were some parts of it that were even nicer than the others.
The houses got bigger, the lawns got bigger and the walls in front of them got bigger. And, suddenly, as they rounded a curve in the road, a crush of cars and people hove into view. In front of the Sachs’ house. It was a commotion of swanky Mercs, Beemers, Rollers, chauffeurs, guests, celebrities, photographers and even a couple of camera crews with bouffanted society journos beaming their pieces to camera.
“I think this might be it,” deadpanned Martin’s taxi driver, sardonically.
“Yes, I reckon I might as well get out here, thanks.” Martin paid the man, who then started to reverse back down the street with a cheery “Have a good time – don’t do anything I wouldn’t do !” living up to the cheeky chappy taxi driver persona with grim determination.
Martin’s local taxi firm had an unusual policy of only buying (second-hand) Mercedes for its fleet so, when his car had pulled up, there was nothing to remark; it blended in. However, one of the celebrity photographers stalking the beat (an old hand with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the delineations of every noteworthy face, its back story and newsworthiness) spotted this striking young man – with his quiff dazzling in the sun and his profile a direct echo straight back to the 1980s of Duran Duran and Princess Diana – and realised that he didn’t know him. Battle-hardened professionalism sprung his camera automatically up to his eye and this, in turn, was a Pavlovian call to his fellow hyenas packed about him, their nostrils twitching for the scent of something interesting, something saleable.
Something about the scene piqued their interest. This brooding young unknown, with the film star looks but without the face recognition, was now hesitantly approaching; he clearly wasn’t one of them, appeared completely out of his comfort zone, and yet was walking straight towards the entrance gates – Susan had instructed him to simply go to the gates and give his name.
As he approached, Martin started to notice a number of faces he had seen previously only on the television – politicians, actors, sports stars, artists – but his own presence seemed, for some reason, to be attracting as much attention from the press pack as any of the rest. It was simply one of those funny moments when a reaction happens to occur in a number of people simultaneously and entirely fortuitously and, accordingly, creates something of a feedback loop in the crowd mentality that is as odd as it is sudden. The reaction was to the fact that Martin simply looked so fine as he approached them and that they, the crème-de-la-crème of name checkers, had absolutely no idea who he was. It was a sudden – and, therefore, tantalising – mystery and, accordingly, he was questioned as he pushed towards the big iron gates in the front wall of the property.
“Good evening, Sir – are you a friend of the family?”
“Could we get a name, please?”
“Do you work for Mr Sachs?”
Martin was unsure and totally unprepared for this. All he could think of was: “I’m Martin Dash, I’m a fr
iend of Susan.”
“Martin Dash?” They all mouthed the question, some audibly, all puzzled. Then their finely-honed calibrators clicked into gear: “With Susan – ah, very good !”
“Do you mind if we ask if you’re an item, Sir?” Many of these guys had already got Susan on their radar as a potentially newsworthy source; they had spotted early on that she had an independent streak and that her father-like tongue would probably spit out something usable in due course. So to be suddenly presented with this enigmatic character whose first words linked himself to Susan was enough to get their collective antennae twitching.
Martin sensed this and thought to correct them: “I . . . err . . . I work with Susan.”
The man on the gate had caught all this and swung it open to let the prey push through – to the loudly rancorous disappointment of the pack.
Martin stood with other guests at the front of a deep forecourt flanked on each side by a lawn and a crushed pebble pathway leading to the glossy black double door of the very large frontage to the very impressive neo-Georgian residence that was home to Jimmy and Rosa Sachs (and their two daughters when they occasionally fell out with the boyfriend / husband and needed to fly back to the nest).
Martin realised that Susan had been there at the door waiting for him and was now skipping towards him, beaming, with her hands held out. With a mischievous glance at the photographers, she grabbed his shoulders and planted a kiss smack on his cheek. The paparazzi had got their prompt and clicked together in perfect synchronicity.
If you look at that picture now it has a haunted quality. Susan and Martin look like screen idols, dressed beautifully, stood in front of the big house, the sunlight twinkling in their eyes and the water spraying from the little fountain to the side.
Susan is smiling but something in Martin’s expression tells you that all is not quite right and – just then – Susan seems to have noticed this, even as the joy of the moment is coursing through her.
Susan felt the need to apologise.
“Sorry, I didn’t really warn you about this. Dad’s been in the news a fair bit since he got back into the Cabinet and this one's a bit busy.”