by Rosie Thomas
Harriet shook her head impatiently. She pulled a folder towards her. It contained details of several small industrial premises that might be suitable for her manufacturing operation. She was reading the specifications of the first when Karen buzzed through to her.
‘Harriet, there’s someone here to see you.’ Her voice sounded odd, as if she had swallowed something too hot. Harriet frowned a little, glancing across at her diary.
‘Who is it? I’m not expecting anyone.’
‘It’s Mr Jensen,’ Karen said.
Harriet half-stood, the door whirled open and Caspar appeared. It was as if a strong wind had begun blowing.
‘Will you look at all this? Why didn’t you tell me you were Meizu Girl?’
‘As far as I remember the opportunity didn’t quite present itself.’
He gave a healthy trumpet of laughter. ‘You remember more than I do. It wasn’t one of my better days, but then it wasn’t a very memorable occasion, was it? But I do remember you.’
He had come across to her desk. Harriet stood up straight. She saw the blue eyes again, and a light suntan that didn’t quite hide a network of fine veins spreading over his cheekbones. He carried with him the scent of cologne, expensive clothes and dark, smoky bars.
Caspar held out his hand and Harriet took it. The first time, his voice had made her think of honey and smoke. Now that he was sober she perceived it as much more complex, a matter of levels as discrete but inseparable as the rings of a tree trunk. He had the gift of making the banal sound significant; he made her want to go on listening to him, whatever he said.
‘I have never thanked you properly.’
‘You sent the most beautiful flowers. I like orchids.’
Caspar let go of her hand, still looking at her. Harriet withdrew her own, slowly. She was nonplussed by the materialisation of this famous face, this more-than-real presence in her office. But she was glad that he was there. She did know that.
‘Now I owe you more thanks.’
‘I’m pleased Linda came to me. She stayed the night and I drove her back the next morning. That’s all. We’ve talked a couple of times on the telephone. I told her she could come at weekends, sometimes, if you would let her.’
Caspar put the edge of his thumb to the corner of his mouth, rubbed it contemplatively, without taking his eyes off Harriet.
‘Let’s go and have some lunch.’
Harriet had the feeling that whole chunks of dialogue that should have taken place between them were being cut; complete scenes, even, being edited. It wasn’t a disagreeable feeling, but she did protest, ‘It’s ten past eleven.’
‘The morning is progressing nicely towards lunchtime. And I think we should talk about my daughter.’
‘I’d like to,’ Harriet agreed. Then she indicated her laden desk, and the open desk diary. ‘But I just can’t, not today.’
‘Oh, Jesus, whyever not? Talk to your boss.’
Harriet straightened her shoulders. ‘I’m the boss.’
‘Exactly. And what’s the point of it unless you get to call the damned shots? Let’s go to lunch.’
Caspar Jensen was inviting her. You didn’t say no twice, Harriet thought. ‘OK,’ she said meekly. ‘Lunch it is.’
Caspar swept her along. Harriet remembered Karen’s startled expression, Sara cut short with an armful of print-outs, two or three other faces staring in doorways as her staff witnessed their departure.
‘I’m going with Mr Jensen,’ Harriet said, like a prophecy. ‘I’ll call in this afternoon, to see if anything has come up.’
From beyond the door she knew that Caspar’s triumphant laugh would be clearly audible behind them. She followed him out into the street. Outside, she saw, it was a beautiful day. Caspar’s car, a black Jaguar, was parked at the kerb. Harriet knew that more heads turned as Caspar opened the passenger door for her. He was whistling as he climbed in beside her. They pulled away, leaving Peacocks behind them.
Caspar turned to look at her. ‘You see? It’s easy.’
‘You’re right,’ Harriet answered. She stretched her legs and leaned back, looking out at the shoppers as if they belonged to another world. She was doing her own kind of running away. She felt gleeful, irresponsible.
‘The Waterside, today, don’t you think?’ Caspar asked.
Harriet knew that the Waterside was out of town, beside the Thames. ‘Definitely.’ They drove westwards.
‘Why didn’t you tell me who you are?’ Caspar asked her. He took out a cigarette and lit it one-handed, then drew on it and squinted at her through the smoke. Then he took it from between his lips and offered it to her. Harriet rarely smoked but she took it and turned it in her fingers, looking at where his mouth had been.
After a moment she asked, ‘Would it have made any difference? Does it make any now?’
‘I think so.’ He was quite candid. She saw that he was looking at her thighs, exposed by the hem of her skirt rising when she leaned back in her seat. She didn’t try to tug it down again.
‘I like it. I like success,’ Caspar told her, and then returned his attention to the road. Harriet watched the sun sparkling on the traffic, enjoying the drive and their enclosure together behind the Jaguar’s tinted windows. Caspar was also enjoying himself. He began to hum, and then in his resonant voice to sing.
Gentlemen songsters out on a spree,
Damned from here to eternity.
The song was an old favourite of Ken’s. Harriet remembered it from her childhood, how she had watched him shaving, striking swathes of white lather from his cheeks and singing. She joined in now as she had not done then, her voice sounding thin and dry in unison with Caspar’s.
O Lord, have mercy on such as we,
Baa, baa, baa.
Caspar was delighted. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Encore!’
They sang most of the way to the river at Bray.
Their singing made Harriet feel as if she was on a delicious outing, a rather old-fashioned outing like a Sunday-school trip. The sight of the river, when they reached it, heightened the effect. The water shivered with points of light and the weeping willows’ fronds lifted in the stiff breeze. Pleasure boats passed with their flags fluttering, and bright pennants strained on the bank. Snatches of music drifted from the boats, and then were swallowed up by the ripple of their wash.
Caspar had been warmly greeted.
‘For two? But of course, Mr Jensen. A great pleasure to see you.’
Caspar had made no reservation. Harriet supposed that for Caspar tables always materialised, always the best tables. The impromptu quality of this day appealed to her. It was very different from the way she and Robin did things together. They consulted their diaries and compared their schedules, and ordered opera seats and theatre tickets well in advance. Robin’s secretary booked tables, and telephoned Harriet’s secretary to confirm times. Robin and Harriet planned their time carefully, because they allowed themselves so little of it. At that point, Harriet caught herself. Robin would like more time with her, only she denied it. She wasn’t sure that there was much they could do with more time.
Caspar had decided, with satisfaction, that it was still too early to eat lunch. They had come to sit in the garden and watch the river traffic. He had ordered Bellinis and the drinks came in frosted glasses, looking to Harriet too pretty to taste. Caspar had no such reservation. His was gone very quickly, and a fresh one ordered. He leaned back in his white-painted chair and lit a cigarette.
‘Linda,’ he said.
Harriet listened while he talked, absorbing the details of a story she had largely guessed for herself.
Linda had reacted badly to the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, choosing at first to deny that it was happening at all. Then, faced with what could no longer be denied, she had swung violently between the two of them, first refusing to visit Caspar in his rented house at the beach, then insisting that she could no longer live with Clare on their Bel Air estate.
Harriet wondered about the kids for whom this was usual. The only children she knew herself were Harry and Alice, safe in Islington with Jenny and Charlie to look after them. The sympathy for Linda renewed itself.
Then Caspar had been offered a short theatre season in London. He had bought the Little Shelley house in a great hurry, moved in, and left Linda with her mother in Los Angeles. Linda had been particularly difficult and then Clare had been offered, in quick succession, two unmissable scripts. Both had involved long periods of location work. The first had also involved Marco Rey, the young actor, Clare Mellen’s new love.
The obvious solution to the problem of Linda had been boarding school in England, under the direct care of Ronny Page and the more distant supervision of her father.
‘Poor Linda,’ Harriet observed.
‘She wasn’t learning a damn thing in grade school. I wanted her to have an English education.’
‘So she told me.’
‘She likes you very much. She did from the first day, when you got rid of those bloody little birds off her plate. Which her father was too high to do.’
‘I like her too.’ Harriet spoke coolly.
Caspar appraised her. There was something of Martin Landwith in the way he did it, but Caspar was bigger in every dimension, and more lustrous, than Martin Landwith. Harriet’s memory of the Landwiths seemed to break up, like mist, in the sun of Caspar’s proximity.
‘Are you willing to be a friend to her, in her mother’s absence, in a way I can’t be?’
‘I have already told Linda that I will. I need your permission. Probably St Brigid’s requires it in writing. In triplicate.’
Caspar ignored that. He leaned forward suddenly, touched Harriet’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘I’ll do whatever I can. Linda needs something. I doubt if anyone can give it to her except you, and her mother.’
Caspar sat back in his chair again. He reached the bottom of his second Bellini as Harriet finished her first.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Did I disgust you, that day we met?’
Harriet thought. Then she answered, truthfully, ‘Not at all. In fact, I thought you were the only person in that room who was properly alive.’
The truth pleased Caspar. And Harriet wanted to please him. She wanted to sit in the sun, in the regatta festivity of the garden, and listen to his voice.
As she listened, feeling that she was coloured and animated by Caspar, as if she had been pale and lifeless before he came, realisation delivered itself to her. The understanding came fully-formed, needing no exploration or qualification, that she could fall in love with Caspar Jensen. That indeed she had already fallen in love with him, while they had been sitting here in earshot of the music from the pleasure boats, and the ripple of their wash.
If he wanted her, she decided simply, she would go to him.
The simplicity itself was alluring. Harriet had spent so long thinking, and planning, and calculating. Even Robin had seemed to be another issue that required appraisal, and informed judgements. Caspar called for none of those things. He drew her in, sweeping her into the current around him, and that was enough.
While she was thinking these things, Harriet went on talking and laughing, because it seemed quite natural to do so. Whatever happened, today or after it, there had already been this. The flags in the trees and along the waterside had been put out for her.
A waiter came to murmur that their table was waiting.
‘Are you ready?’ Caspar asked.
‘Yes,’ Harriet said. The admission made her smile, and Caspar put his arm around her shoulder as if to confirm a pact as they walked to the restaurant.
Harriet remembered how the Landwiths’ guests had covertly stared when Caspar made his entrance among them. The same glances followed him and Harriet now as they were shown to their table. Caspar seemed unaware of them, as he had been then. He brushed the maître d’hôtel aside and drew out Harriet’s chair himself. White wine was waiting in an ice bucket beside the table, and as soon as they were sitting opposite each other he lifted the bottle and poured it. He raised his glass, one arm hooked over the back of his chair, and inspected her over the top of it.
‘What shall we drink to?’
She studied him in return, noting the screen looks that were a little blunter and coarser in the flesh, but were more attractive for that, and the blue eyes that lacked the celluloid dazzle, but seemed more humorous. She liked what she saw.
‘Let’s drink to truancy,’ Harriet said.
‘Very good. I am a perpetual truant. And what about you, Meizu Girl? Are you playing truant from that sleek boyfriend who looks as if he has been raised on a diet of cream and capital gains?’
‘I think I’ve been playing truant from Robin for quite a long time before today.’
‘Good.’
Harriet ate a mouthful of food from the plate that had been placed in front of her, without tasting it.
‘Now. I think you should tell me about yourself. Childhood, marriages, all those things.’ He emptied and refilled his glass.
‘Couldn’t we talk about being a film star instead?’
‘Of course, when my turn comes. We have a certain amount of ground to cover.’ As in a script, Harriet thought, before the action can get fully under way. She unbent under his questions, still, and talked more about herself than she had done for a long time. More food came, was no doubt perfect, and the plates were removed again. Caspar drank steadily, calling for a second bottle when the first was empty.
Caspar talked too. He told her well-honed stories that made her laugh, Hollywood stories, but he also told her about his Tyneside upbringing and the days when he worked in provincial rep. It was enough to make her feel that he was offering her something of himself, beyond the public face. She forgot the covert glances of the other diners.
If it was all a performance for the benefit of the surrounding tables, of distinguished actor amusingly lunching with young businesswoman, then it was a performance that Harriet couldn’t fault him on.
With his coffee, Caspar drank Calvados. Harriet had drunk less than half as much as he had done and her last glass of wine was untouched, but she could feel the walls of the dining room seeming to ripple and dissolve, and the carpet to undulate beneath her feet. She was not quite certain that she would be able to stand up steadily when the time came, but she had also reached the point of happiness and relaxation that made her not care, particularly, what the walls and the floor were doing.
The same carelessness made her ask Caspar, ‘Why do you drink so much?’
As at Little Shelley he had been showing almost no signs of it, but now his expression changed and she was reminded of how he had looked when he had lost his temper at the inanities of the table. She had a moment to be afraid, and then the anger was gone again. He leaned closer to her.
‘Are you afraid that I’ll empty your plate into your lap again? Or that I’ll assault the waiter? Or you?’
‘No, none of those things. I think I am afraid of anger.’
‘Harriet, I’m not angry.’
It was the first time, she thought, that he had used her name. ‘I drink because I like it. When you reach my age,’ fifteen or even twenty years older than herself, Harriet had already estimated, ‘you learn that you may as well focus on your pleasures. The spread of them is not as wide as it once was. Also, Harriet, if you knew any drunks you would be aware that they have good days and bad days. You have already witnessed a bad day. Today, up to this point, has been a good one.’
Harriet lifted her head. ‘For me, too,’ she told him.
Caspar seemed to be thinking. Then he said quietly, ‘We’re not here because of Linda any more, are we?’
‘No.’
Harriet’s chin had been resting on her hands. Caspar circled her wrists with his fingers.
‘Now I should tell you that I propose to take you back to Little She
lley. There I will ply you with more drink, a little Mozart, and attempt to seduce you.’
Harriet let him see that she was considering.
‘Is that the usual pattern? With starlets, and so forth?’
‘In my experience, more or less.’
‘I should tell you that in my experience everything works much better if there is a mutual agreement. I’d like to come back to Little Shelley with you. I’m fond of Mozart too. But I don’t have to be seduced, Caspar, because I can think for myself.’
The blue eyes gave her a longer look. And then he nodded. ‘I recognised that two hours ago.’ Caspar stood up, and held out his hand to her. ‘Come on, Meizu Girl. Let’s go home.’
Harriet was also on her feet. The ground remained firm. ‘Only people who don’t know me call me that.’
Caspar said, ‘I don’t know you yet. But I intend to.’
Outside they blinked in the bright sunshine after the cool dining room. The Jaguar had been valet parked. Caspar turned back from giving instructions for it to be brought round, and as he put his hand on Harriet’s arm a man jumped into their path. Harriet wheeled instinctively against Caspar, looking for his protection from the attacker. Too late, her brain registered the black weapon that the man had raised to his face, and she heard the click, click, click, and the hum of the motor-drive. The man was a photographer.
Caspar briefly patted her shoulder as Harriet lowered her arm from her face, still blinking in the harsh light. She saw him walk over to the photographer and turn him out of their path.
‘Fuck off, friend, will you?’
The man had his pictures. He stepped back out of Caspar’s reach, nodding. The black nose of the Jaguar came around the corner and drew up smartly in front of Harriet. The attendant opened the door for her and she slid gratefully inside, slipping right down in her seat. Caspar sank down beside her and the car leapt forward. Harriet remembered the ice bucket. ‘Can you drive?’