by Rosie Thomas
The last question came.
‘There’s a poignant story behind this particular success story. Harriet, you didn’t devise the game yourself, that’s fairly widely known. As a postscript, could you tell us something of its history?’
Harriet caught her breath. She became suddenly acutely aware of the radio mike clipped to her lapel, of the faces of the technicians watching her, of spools of tape that would be imprinted with the sound of her own voice. Out of shot, Alison looked at her watch. Harriet knew they could only want another two or three minutes from her. It would not be the first time she had talked about Simon. She thought, if only it could have been.
‘The game was devised by a British army officer who was a prisoner of the Japanese, in Hong Kong, during the Second World War. He built it from scraps of rubbish. He kept it with him for four years, and when he was liberated it was the only thing he owned.’
Harriet’s right hand, with the big ring, reached out to touch the broken wood that lay on her smooth desktop. The cameraman moved to bring it into shot. Harriet remembered the story, much longer and much more painful to recall, that Simon Archer had told her in his cold, comfortless house in the gloomiest quarter of a featureless Midlands town. She could clearly hear his words. She could remember the exact phrases he had used.
She listened to them now, within her head.
When she looked up again, she found it hard to believe that only a second or two had ticked by while the camera’s greedy eye lingered on Simon’s packing case. Evidently Alison had either no wish or no time to probe deeper. The success story had been told, and she was ready to wrap up one more programme.
‘A remarkable testament to one man’s will to survive. As, in a different way, the success of Peacocks is a testament to Harriet Peacock’s skill and determination.’
‘And to that of my staff and suppliers,’ Harriet insisted. She was briefly amused, thinking of the acceptance speech full of the same sentiments that Caspar must make if he won his Oscar. Alison smiled back at her.
‘And now, in true executive style, you’re going direct from here to Heathrow to take a flight to Los Angeles. Is this a business trip, or will you have time to go to the Academy Awards?’
Harriet’s expression changed. Her response was chilly. ‘My trip to Los Angeles is a holiday. It was agreed at the outset, wasn’t it, that there would be no questions about my private life?’
Alison made an acquiescent gesture that said, worth a try. They would edit the exchange out, of course.
There were a few more concluding remarks, mutual thanks, and the interview was over. The technicians stuck their thumbs up. ‘Super,’ the producer said.
Harriet looked at her watch once more. The car would arrive in a little under fifteen minutes.
‘If we could just keep you with us a couple of minutes longer, Harriet, while we check we’ve got everything? Noddys now, Alison, OK love?’
The camera would focus on Alison now, for the footage that would be used as cutaways. Harriet waited. Across the room she saw the door silently open and her assistant’s head appear. She mimed, telephone. Harriet shook her head. As far as the rest of the world need know, she was already on her way to Heathrow. But Karen refused to go away. Urgent, she signalled.
Harriet sighed. ‘Excuse me. I have to take a telephone call.’ She circled around her own desk, and went out to Karen’s office. Karen held the receiver out to her.
‘Hello? Harriet Peacock speaking.’
It was Charlie Thimbell. Harriet knew him well. His wife was one of her closest friends.
‘Charlie, is everything OK? Is Jenny all right?’
‘Yeah, nothing like that. Listen, Harriet, I heard a rumour. I thought you’d better know about it.’ Charlie Thimbell was a financial journalist, the City Editor of one of the national dailies.
‘What rumour?’
‘More than a rumour, then. A tip-off. Are you watching your back, Harriet?’
‘You’re talking about a raid, are you? We were at two twenty-five this morning. Steady.’
Charlie said nothing for a moment. Then, very quietly, ‘Are you overstretched?’
Harriet laughed. ‘If we are or if we aren’t, I wouldn’t tell you, Charlie. Which would you put first, me or a good story?’
‘Difficult one, that. Well, I just thought I’d let you know. You might want to think again about making your trip.’
‘I’m going. Caspar’s up for an Oscar, and he deserves to win it. I want to be there when he does.’
‘You’ll be a long way from home.’
Karen had taken another call. She told Harriet, ‘Car’s waiting downstairs.’
Harriet was impatient. The television crew had finished, they were carrying their gear out of her office. ‘Charlie, I’m not going up the Amazon, I’m going to LA. They have telephones there. I can be back here in twelve hours, if I’m needed.’
‘Sure thing. Well, enjoy yourself. Tell the old tosspot I’m rooting for him.’
Charlie had never met Caspar Jensen, but he made a joke of pretending familiarity with the man and his habits.
‘Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for ringing. Give my love to Jen.’
‘Come back soon.’
Charlie rang off. Karen was looking up at Harriet. ‘Problem?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Harriet said. She would not have admitted anxiety to Charlie. The anxiety, in any case, was well within bounds. She could live with it. She wanted to see Caspar more than she wanted anything else. Her luggage, two small neat suitcases, was waiting for her by the door. If she didn’t go now, she would miss her flight.
‘Shall I ask the driver to come up for your suitcases?’
Harriet picked them up. ‘No, I can manage. Travelling light.’ One Bruce Oldfield evening dress for the big night, not much else.
Alison Shaw came out of Harriet’s office. She was wearing a full skirt that bunched over her hips, and a loose jacket. An unnecessary Burberry was folded over her arm.
‘Thanks for the interview,’ she said.
‘I enjoyed it,’ Harriet lied. They looked at each other for a moment. ‘I must go.’
‘Have a good trip,’ Alison and Karen said together.
In the car, as it turned into the westbound traffic, Harriet was thinking again about Simon. Her thoughts embarked on a predictable circuit and, with a touch of weariness, she let them follow the familiar groove. She sat hunched forward in her seat, containing the discomfort that they gave her. Looking out of the car window, from the little height of the Westway, she saw the cold sparkle of the city. A moment later, her spirits lifted. The groove had led her, as it sometimes did, to her mother. Harriet imagined Kath at home, in her kitchen, at Sunderland Avenue. The big, modern house would be humming with Radio One, and with the sound of vacuum cleaning or the buzz of the electric blender. They were the sounds of Harriet’s adolescence, but not her childhood. Harriet loved her mother. She thought that they were alike, for all the differences in their two lives.
Unusually, Kath had not telephoned her to wish her bon voyage, and Harriet had not found the time to call today. If there was no time to do it from the airport, she would ring as soon as she reached Los Angeles.
On the left of the car, a 747 dipped towards its destination. Harriet watched it as it slid through the sky, and wondered if the sun was shining on the West Coast.
She wouldn’t think about what Charlie had said. When she came home, she would find out where the rumour had sprung from.
Two
London, 1981
It was half past five.
The street outside Harriet’s shop was crowded with office workers flooding towards the tube station.
Harriet finished checking the till, and left a float for Karen who was on the staff rota to open the shop in the morning. She bagged the rest of the day’s takings, ready to be dropped into the night safe on her way past the bank. Then she went through the shop turning off the lights, so that the dazzling mirror-walls be
came blank, dark curtains. She locked the inner doors and set the alarm, then stepped out into the street. The shop was secure for the night. She paused to look up at the façade. It was pristine white, with the shop’s name, Stepping, in black, identical to the other shops in the chain.
All the Stepping shops sold dance- and exercise-wear, and ranges of associated products. Most of them, as Harriet’s was, were owned by franchises. Franchise-holders ordered from a central range of products, but they chose from the range to suit their own shops. Harriet knew her customers, and had the knack of offering them what they wanted to buy. The shop was in a good location, almost prime, and it was turning over well. Harriet was proud of it, and of her foresight in predicting the dance and exercise boom. She knew that she was doing all the business she could hope to do. If I was in Covent Garden, Harriet thought. But she wasn’t, and she wouldn’t be, not with Stepping.
She had been running her business for nearly five years. She had found the shop when she was twenty-five, and her stepfather had bought the lease for her. She was paying back the principal now. She was grateful to Ken for his generosity, but she was aware that it had been a sound investment for him.
She was less sure, now, whether she was satisfied with it herself. She knew that it would never make her rich, but more importantly it no longer gave her the charge of excitement that it once had.
Harriet turned away from the shop, and dropped the keys into her handbag. She checked to make sure that the envelope containing the cinema tickets was there too. It was Leo who wanted to see the film, and she had booked the tickets to surprise him. Afterwards she planned to treat them both to dinner at the new Thai restaurant.
Harriet forgot about the business. She began to walk briskly, looking forward to the evening with her husband. She reached the bank, with the bag of the day’s takings hugged to her chest. She opened the polished slit of the night safe and slid the bag into its mouth. She heard it bumping softly as it passed into the entrails of the bank, and the home-going crowds flowed reassuringly past her. Harriet went on with them, towards the tube station.
A few moments later she reached the street where Leo had his studio. Leo was a photographer, quite a successful one. His studio was on the first floor of a small warehouse building, with a garment manufacturer below him and a design company above. Harriet looked up at his windows. It was an automatic gesture, there was nothing to see, not even a light. It was a summer’s evening, there was no need for lights. She could see a drawing board angled at the window above.
Harriet would have pressed Leo’s entry-phone but the front door opened just as she reached it. Two smiling machinists in saris came out, and held it for her. Harriet slipped inside the building, and ran up the stone stairs to the first floor. She was cheerful with the idea of her surprise, picturing Leo at the light table, his back to her, examining transparencies. It was dark at the top of the stairs, there were no windows here.
Click. Harriet pressed the button of the timed switch beside the door and light washed over her.
She had the impression, in that fleeting second, that the click had sounded a warning. There was a scuffle on the other side of the door.
Harriet was holding the key to the door in her hand. She had hardly ever used her studio key; Leo must have forgotten that she had it. She fitted it deftly into the lock, and the door swung inwards.
Harriet looked straight ahead of her.
Across the studio and through another open door there was a black leather and chrome sofa. Harriet had helped Leo to choose it, from an Italian furniture catalogue. In front of the sofa was Leo, a lock of his dark hair falling boyishly over his eyes as he tried to pull up his 501s. They were too tight and he hopped, off balance and then – ludicrously – snatched up his shirt and held it in front of his collapsing erection. Clearly the girl was more used to exposing her body. She made no coy attempt to cover herself with her hands, and her composure made Leo look even more ridiculous. She simply stood, gracefully, her body composed of dark angles and smooth, colourless planes. She was taller and thinner than Harriet. Perhaps she was one of Leo’s models.
After the first current of shock, Harriet’s reaction was incredulous laughter. Leo saw it, and his embarrassment lit up into fury.
He dropped the shirt, took two strides and slammed the connecting door.
For a moment or two Harriet stood looking numbly at it. Leo would open the door again, of course, and he would be dressed and there would be no model and he would thank her for buying the cinema tickets, and they would go off for their evening together.
She waited, but there was only silence and the closed door. It was impossible to imagine what Leo and the tall, thin girl were doing on the other side of it.
Slowly, silently, Harriet closed the outer door too and stood in darkness again on the wrong side of it. She didn’t bother to press the switch for its premonitory click. She went quietly back down the stairs, with her hand pressed flat against the cold, shiny curve of the wall to guide her.
Harriet didn’t remember, afterwards, how she got home. She supposed that she must have followed the route mechanically, borne along by the homegoing tide.
When she reached the flat she found herself walking through the rooms, touching things, picking up vases and books and ornaments as if she had never seen them before. She went to each window and pressed her forehead against the glass, looking out at the familiar vistas. She found it hard to believe that she had lived in this place for four years, ever since her marriage. It seemed unfamiliar now, the house of strangers. She didn’t know what to do with herself in these rooms. There was no food to cook; usually one of them shopped on the way home. Tonight, there would have been the Thai dinner.
At last, she sat down in a Victorian chair that she had recovered herself. She ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth heads of the upholstery tacks, looked out of the window at the changing light. The day was ending and the sky was thinly clouded, suffused with pink.
Harriet felt the fingers of shock beginning to loosen their hold on her. She began to think, effortfully at first, as if she had forgotten how to do it. The flat was silent, even the road outside seemed unusually still.
She thought about her marriage to Leo. She wondered how long it was exactly since they had stopped making each other happy, and then found that she couldn’t recall the precise dimensions of happiness at all. She knew, in the same way that she knew the multiplication tables or the words of certain songs, that they must have been happy together once. Leo was Jewish and his prosperous parents had been opposed to their only son marrying out. Their opposition had only strengthened Harriet’s and Leo’s determination to marry at once. They had been happy then, in their blithe certainty. And afterwards? She could remember certain times, a holiday when it had rained and it hadn’t mattered at all, a long drive that they had made together, little domestic events that she could no longer recall, only the joy that went with them. That had gone. She wished she could at least remember when. They lived together now, but that was only living, the plain mechanics of it.
Harriet wondered how long her husband had had other women. How many, and how often? The memory of the tall girl with her planes of light and shadow came back to her.
Harriet thought about Leo himself. Leo was handsome, stubborn, amusing. Women were always drawn to him, as she had been herself. He was a man like others she had known, who found it difficult to put his feelings into words. Or perhaps not even difficult, but unnecessary.
The light was fading fast. Harriet had the sense of ordinary life fading with it, the edges of reality softly crumbling and falling away into fine dust. It made her feel sad, the more sad because it was irrevocable.
It was dark when she heard Leo’s key in the lock. She had sat on in the darkness without moving and now she felt stiff and cold. He came in, clicking the light on at the door so that she blinked in the blaze of it.
They looked at each other, trying to gauge the precise gradations of mutua
l hostility. Harriet knew Leo well enough not to have expected contrition. Like a small boy, Leo would cover his guilt with defiance. But now she couldn’t read him at all; his face was flat and cold. She heard the smallest noise, the ground around them softly crumbling into dust.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Leo said stiffly. ‘You should have telephoned, or rung the bell.’
There was no tentative bridge in the words, if that was what she had hoped for. She knew, in any case, that there were no foundations for a bridge. Harriet said the first thing that came into her head.
‘You looked ridiculous.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re such a bitch, Harriet, do you know that? You’re cold-hearted and self-righteous. You operate like a machine.’
Probably he was right, Harriet thought. She didn’t believe that she was any of those things, but she was willing to accept that they might know each other better than they knew themselves.
‘Have there been other times, Leo? Before tonight? Could you tell me the truth, please?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, you’ll tell me the truth, or yes, there have been other girls?’
‘There have been other girls.’
‘How many? How long have you been doing this?’
‘Three or four. Eighteen months. Perhaps two years.’
‘Don’t you even know for sure?’
‘Does it bloody well matter?’
Harriet stood up abruptly. She went to the window and looked out. The streetlights had come on, but there was still a child skateboarding on the pavement. She watched him weaving in and out of the lamp-posts. She wanted to close the curtains, but she didn’t want to shut herself in here, in this flat. Behind her she heard Leo go into the kitchen and take a beer out of the fridge. He came back into the room, dropping the ring-pull into the nearest ashtray with a tiny clink. Harriet turned to face him. Her legs and back ached with sitting motionless for so long.