by Fiona Neill
“Building the kitchen extension, reroofing, insulation, resurfacing the tennis court, installing a security system, swimming pool, home cinema, games room, the orangery . . . It’s all here.” She tapped the plans impatiently, indicating that he should look at the spec. He picked up the eight-page document and started reading.
“You’ve agreed to spend eight grand on a reconditioned burnished-copper bateau bathtub? I’m not fucking Henry the Eighth, you know, or have you already included a velvet loo seat?”
“Copper is a great electrical and thermal conductor,” said Bryony calmly. “It’s the best material for a bath. Retains the heat really well, so actually you save money on hot water.”
“Bryony, you cannot seriously talk about saving money on heating bills when you’re washing your bits in a bath that costs more than a new G-Wiz.”
“I’ll pay for the bath,” Bryony said with a shrug.
“Replastering, thirty thousand pounds?” continued Nick. “You’re spending too much time with Russian oligarchs.”
“The Jacobean ceiling moldings need to be completely reconditioned,” Bryony explained. “We need to sample the original mortar to try and come up with something that matches the original plaster. The architect says it will probably be a combination of one part calcium carbonate to twenty-five parts lime. There are only about two people in Britain who can actually do it. It’s a listed house. We need to be faithful to the original spirit of the building.”
“I just don’t get why we need to do all this. The people we’re buying from have been living quite happily there for almost half a century.”
“It’s what we agreed. You were at the meeting. And their taste is diabolical. I can’t live with all that chintz.”
“We can’t afford it.” Now it was Bryony’s turn to look incredulous. She paused for a moment, then leaned toward him on her elbows, fingers firmly entwined until her wedding ring was hidden, and smiled.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Nick,” she said calmly.
“Why can’t we do half now and the rest later?”
“That will end up costing even more, and it will be even longer before it’s all finished. I don’t see what you’re so worried about.”
Bryony picked up the newspaper and flicked through to the business pages until she found today’s story about Lehman’s results.
“It says here that things are better than expected and that your bosses think the worst of the contraction is over.” She ran her finger over the headline until the tip blackened. “‘Lehman Net Falls Less Than Expected.’ You’re being too much of a bear.”
“Fuld is deluded. They’re on a spending spree when everyone else is tightening their belts. They’re buying hedge funds at the top of the market, buying back stock to impress investors, investing in real estate when they should be selling it. We have loans on our books worth thirty-four times the value of the bank. I honestly think they’ve gone mad. And I’m not alone.”
“Have you spoken to anyone senior?” Bryony asked in a tone that suggested she hoped that he hadn’t.
“In a conference call today, I tried to point out that in June, Merrill had nineteen CDOs that couldn’t be moved at the right price. They told me I was being overcautious and uncreative,” Nick said. “We’re at the top of the market. I can smell it. And Fuld still wants more risk.”
“Lehman’s shares have gone up today again, and you’re sitting on a pile of stock, so please can we just give the green light to the architect, and then I can put this to one side and focus on work again?” Bryony paused for a moment. “I can always put some of my money into it and ask Dad to chip in with the rest.”
“You are not to do that, Bryony,” Nick said, his hand curling into a fist.
“I want to have Dad’s seventieth-birthday party at the new house next June. Time isn’t on our side, Nick.”
• • •
So when Izzy slouched across to the table, carrying a bowl of muesli and yogurt, the early-evening snack recommended by the eating-disorders counselor, instead of praising her for eating sensibly, Bryony and Nick flew at her over her choice of outfit.
“You cannot go to the Wilbrahams’ house looking like that! What will she think?” spluttered Bryony. “You look like a punk.”
“I am a punk,” retorted Izzy, through thick layers of purple lipstick that reminded Ali of the raspberry jelly the twins had eaten for tea.
“Punk died in the 1980s,” said Bryony.
“Jacobean houses died in the sixteenth century,” said Izzy. “Anyway, I’m a post-punk.”
“Seventeenth, actually,” Bryony corrected her.
“I don’t care if you’re a prehistoric punk, you look a mess,” said Nick, shaking his head at Bryony as though this was all her fault. “I can’t believe your school tolerates you dressing like this.”
“All my school cares about is how I perform in my exams,” Izzy retorted. “Anyway, I might look like a mess on the outside, but I’m less of a mess on the inside. You’re always saying in front of the counselor that you love me for what I am, not how I look, so you should try and see beyond the shell to what lies beneath.”
“You’re being completely unreasonable, Izzy,” said Bryony. Her tone softened. “Why don’t we go to Selfridges this weekend? I’ll call my personal shopper and book an appointment. You can buy what you like. God, I can even see the Oxfam label hanging off that leather jacket.”
“Has your BlackBerry buzzed to remind you to spend quality time with your daughter?” said Izzy. She was holding a small mirror and applying kohl around her eyes. When she had finished she snapped the mirror shut and stared at Bryony.
“If I spent my days shopping and baking cakes or sat with you while you did your homework, wouldn’t you question the purpose of your education?” Bryony asked. “I’m not going to apologize for having a job. And one day you’ll thank me for it.”
Jake came into the kitchen and announced he was going out with friends. He was meant to be working in the weeks before he started at Oxford in the first week of October, but despite endless discussion of work-experience possibilities—a week with Julian Peters at the BBC, a couple of days of filing for his godmother at the Financial Services Authority, and a stint at an advertising agency belonging to another friend of his parents’—nothing had materialized, because Jake couldn’t be bothered to make the calls. Ali half wondered if she could volunteer to go instead of him.
“What makes life worth living isn’t the pursuit of happiness but the happiness of pursuit. I’m trying to move away philosophically from the concept that money buys you happiness, because I don’t see much evidence to endorse that particular belief system around here,” Izzy continued. “And I can’t do this Saturday because I’m spending the day at Aunt Hester’s. Rick is giving me his old electric guitar. I’m done with the cello. The Beethoven quartet is possibly my swan song.”
Ali winced. Izzy really knew how to deliver the knockout blows.
“I can’t deal with this, I need to get to work,” Nick suddenly announced.
“Dad, it’s eight o’clock at night,” said Izzy.
“Come on, Nick,” said Bryony, her tone softening. She leaned over the kitchen table and rested her hand on top of his. Nick’s fingers tensed beneath. “Lehman’s has just written down seven hundred million dollars from their balance sheet to cover subprime losses, surely you’ve covered your back?”
“By my calculations we have about twenty-two billion dollars illiquid and impossible-to-price level-three mortgage assets on our books,” said Nick, his nails scratching the table backward and forward beneath Bryony’s hand. “No one wants to touch CDOs, Bryony.” He leaned over the table toward her. “When this ship sinks, it will make Enron look like a storm in a teacup, and if you go on like this it’ll take us down with it. The entire New Labour project is nothing
more than temporary prosperity built on illusion. This has all the classic signs of a bubble bursting.”
“So what shall I tell the architect, Nostradamus?”
“I don’t care.” Then he got up from the table, straightened the architect’s plans, lined up pens and pencils, and left the room.
• • •
“I’m not getting changed,” Izzy reiterated, as Nick went upstairs.
“Are you trying to make yourself as unattractive as possible?” Jake asked his sister as he came downstairs and headed straight to the toaster with a couple of slices of white bread. Malea rushed forward to take them from his hand and put them in.
“I want to write my own script, not follow someone else’s,” Izzy said. “It’s a noble aspiration.”
“Which self-help book are you channeling today?” Jake responded.
“At least I’m exploring my own individuality instead of subsuming my ego in a middle-aged relationship. It’s pathetic the way you and Lucy are joined at the hip.”
This was a new theme in Jake’s post-Corfu relationship with Lucy. It had been noted by Foy in front of the rest of the family and within earshot of Ali on the last day of the holiday that Lucy referred to herself only in the first person plural. (“When we are back in London . . . When we invite friends round for dinner . . . When we go to Scotland with my parents.”)
“Jake should be playing the field,” Foy had drunkenly complained to Julian Peterson over a whiskey on the terrace one evening. “She’s the kind of girl who’ll only give a man a blowjob if she thinks there’s a wedding ring involved.”
“Not like my wife, then,” Julian had said. Foy had looked almost hurt by the comment and muttered something about Eleanor being the type of woman that any hot-blooded man would want to “decant” from her dress, as though Julian should have taken his wife’s infidelity as a compliment to his taste rather than an insult to his masculinity.
Then, back in London, Lucy had compounded the situation for Jake by buying him a pair of expensive sheepskin slippers for his nineteenth birthday and insisting that he open the present in front of the rest of his family. As if on cue, Lucy now came downstairs to let Jake know that they were expected for an early-evening drink at her parents’ house.
“Don’t eat white bread, Jakey,” she said, removing the plate of toast from Jake’s hand. “I bought you that really nice three-seed loaf.” For a moment they both held the plate. Ali and Izzy watched the standoff in fascinated silence.
“Can’t we just go straight-out?” asked Jake, finally allowing Lucy to take it.
“We agreed to show them the photos of Corfu,” Lucy said. Ali turned round and caught his eye. He looked at his feet in embarrassment. He wasn’t even a deer caught in the headlights, thought Ali, searching for the right metaphor. A deer could run away. He was more like Laurel and Hardy stuck in the cage in the twins’ bedroom, eyes pleading for the purpose of their life to be revealed.
She knew from the sounds conducted by the chimney flue in her bedroom that sex between Jake and Lucy had become somewhat perfunctory. She felt mildly ashamed of herself for listening, but the dynamic of their relationship in retreat was too interesting. So she knew that Jake wanted a long, drawn-out performance. He wanted to keep the light on and observe the subtle changes in the muscles around Lucy’s mouth as his hand slowly mapped previously unexplored territory. He wanted to make her come with his mouth. He wanted depth and disinhibition, while she was content to swim in the shallows, to do nothing more than keep her side of the bargain. So, while it wasn’t unpleasant, and Lucy always seemed willing, there was a sense that the quicker it was all over, the better.
Ali heard Jake tell his friends that he had read enough of his sister’s magazines and seen enough porn to know there was a world of pleasure that he was being denied and Lucy was denying herself. So when one of his friends started telling him how hot he thought Lucy was, Jake did nothing to discourage him.
“Shall we leave the delightful Mr. and Mrs. Skinner to their domestic idyll and head down the road?” Izzy proposed.
Lucy bristled, but her natural self-restraint meant that her fury went into angrily buttering Jake’s toast. Jake simmered beside her. When Ali said good-bye, he ignored her.
• • •
Sophia Wilbraham answered the door almost as soon as Izzy rang the bell. Ali stood beside Izzy, holding the cello in front of her body, pleased to have ballast between herself and Sophia, even though she knew she looked like a bag handler.
Sophia eyed Izzy over her half-moon reading glasses. Ali noted the self-satisfaction seeping into her face as she absorbed the holes in Izzy’s tights, the purple lipstick smeared on her front tooth, and the chipped black nail varnish. Not competition for Martha, Ali could see her think.
This reminded Ali of being with her mother in Cromer when she was a teenager and her sister’s decline had become the talk of the town. Ali recognized the expression on Sophia’s face: the self-congratulatory smile, the disapproval, and a sense of relief that her own children weren’t on such an obvious trajectory to imminent self-destruction. Ali hadn’t learned about schadenfreude until she joined Will MacDonald’s tutor group. There was a lot of it around in the eighteenth century—Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, for example—and Holland Park was steeped in it.
“Such an eye-catching outfit,” Sophia said as she urged them inside, out of the cold. “You put things together so . . . decoratively.”
“Thanks,” said Izzy, who was sufficiently aware to know Sophia’s comment was dishonest even though she didn’t understand her motivations.
“Sorry we’re a bit late,” said Ali, even though they weren’t. “Bryony just got back from Russia, and she wanted to see Izzy.”
She immediately regretted saying this because she knew Sophia collected information about other people and used it as a currency to be banked and traded at a later date. Even the most innocuous facts—Foy’s birthday, the subject of Izzy’s latest English essay (a party in which a girl accidentally falls out of a window), or the name of Jake’s girlfriend—were collated and filed.
“How long has she been away?”
“Weeks,” Izzy said with a sigh.
“It must be exhausting for her,” Sophia said, “and for you, Ali.” She gave one of her most ingratiating smiles, waiting for Ali to respond. “Such a big responsibility when I imagine Nick works long hours, too. And the twins are at such a difficult age.”
“She’s only away for a couple of days at a time. At most.”
Sophia gave her a suspicious look, as though trying to gauge whether Ali had been instructed to withhold detail. She lacked the psychological skills to intuit that Izzy might have her own reasons for casting her mother in the worst light possible. Instead she clung on to her easy-bake stereotype of Bryony as a typical working mother paying the price for her selfish ways with a wayward daughter and freaky twins. She preferred not to dwell on Jake, who had learned he had three A’s in his A-levels when they were in Corfu.
“Bryony should have come and had a drink with us,” Sophia said.
“She’s too busy discussing the new house with Daddy,” Izzy countered. Ali poked Izzy with the tail spike of the cello. Izzy ignored her and took a side step. “It needs a lot of work.”
“What house?” asked Sophia.
“You know how Mum always has to have a project,” continued Izzy. Sophia nodded so vigorously that her glasses nudged to the end of her nose and her double chins gently undulated. She stared at Izzy, intently awaiting further information.
“Well, they’ve bought a house in the country,” Izzy explained, “an old Jacobean pile in Oxfordshire. I haven’t actually seen it yet. But we’re all going there this weekend, when Mum gets back from Russia.”
“She’s going away again?” questioned Sophia.
“Jus
t for a couple of days,” Ali interrupted.
“Well, at least I’m on hand to fill in the musical gaps,” Sophia said.
“Thank goodness,” said Izzy. Sophia gave a harrumph of satisfaction that made the button on the side of her skirt pop open.
“How much revision have you been doing for your mocks, Izzy?” Sophia asked as they trailed after her into the house.
“Four hours every night,” Izzy said politely. Sophia looked at her in confusion, torn between worry over the revelation because Martha’s schedule was definitely lighter and uncertainty whether Izzy was telling the truth.
“Beethoven calls,” she said finally, urging Izzy into the sitting room. “We’re going to focus on the third movement.”
Ali went in behind Izzy to hand over the cello. Martha was tuning her violin at the piano. She gave an embarrassed half-wave to Ali, caught her eye for a moment, and then quickly looked away. Ali thought back to the party in Notting Hill. She considered the gulf between Sophia Wilbraham’s perception of Martha and the reality of her life. It was the same with Bryony and Izzy. It could be argued that Bryony was even less insightful because she had worried less about Izzy when she was on track to develop a full-fledged eating disorder than she did now that she was slowly recovering.
Then Ali thought of her mother and Jo. Even when it was obvious to Ali, at age fourteen, that the way her sister came home in the early hours of the morning and then slept until four o’clock in the afternoon had more to do with drug time-tabling than the adolescent body clock, her mother still wanted to believe that Jo was simply going through a phase common to most teenagers in Cromer. Her father had been more realistic. He noticed the acne, the way Jo stopped wearing short-sleeved tops, the sunken eyes, and pleaded with his wife and daughter to get some outside help. Perhaps this blind spot was something common to all mothers. Maybe they didn’t want to see, or they thought the antidote to their children’s problems was simply to love them more.
She noticed Martha was wearing a shirt with the buttons conservatively fastened almost to the top. She couldn’t get rid of the image of her breast in the boy’s mouth. Ali felt a stab of compassion. She knew from Izzy that the boy hadn’t spoken to her since and had complained on his Facebook page that she had hairy nipples. Martha had subsequently gone to a beautician and not only had all these hairs removed but had a Brazilian, too.