by Prue Leith
Angelica returned to the question of her room and convinced Rebecca, as a mother does a child, with a mix of explanation, threat and reward.
‘Problem is, I’ve got a ton of stuff that I’m not allowed to leave in my room at uni. I suppose I could ask Dad if he can store stuff for me and put me up in the vacs, but Mum, I’d much rather be here with you. Look, why don’t we have a go at your wardrobe and make some room? I like sorting stuff.’
Rebecca heard the threat, and knew she’d been manipulated, but the prospect of her daughter helping her do what she was so hopeless at, and of having time with her, vanquished Rebecca.
‘OK, sweetheart, you win,’ she said, scooping up an armful of coats and dresses and heading back to her own bedroom. ‘But let’s have a little lunch first. I’ve got some really nice cheese and a packet of prosciutto from Carluccio’s and some great bread from Planet Organic and half a bottle of bubbly. It will give me the courage to chuck stuff out.’
Rebecca rather wished Joanna and Lucy were not in the pub with her and Nelson. The presence of two other women in their fifties put her in an ‘oldie’ bracket she did not think she belonged to. Guilty by association.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like these women – she did – but you had to be honest. Both Lucy and Joanna looked much older than her and she knew that if it had been just her and Nelson, people would take them for the same age. His age.
They were in the upstairs room of the pub, which was heaving with bodies, both black and white, and pounding with reggae. No one took any notice of Nelson with the three of them, which surprised Rebecca a little. They made such an unusual table: one young black guy in his natural habitat and three white, middle-class old matrons right out of their comfort zone. It was impressive that Nelson was prepared to bring them there and risk being ridiculed by his mates. But he was cool about it and when a couple of Rastafarians came past he introduced them.
‘Malcolm, meet these good ladies. They all learnin’ to sing gospel. Ladies, this is Malcolm who owns a nightclub, and his brother Mark who is a villain.’
Mark said, ‘Yeah, man,’ and punched Nelson’s arm, grinning, pleased at the compliment.
‘And this here’s Lucy, voice like an angel. And Joanna, shit-hot business lady, and this chick here’s Rebecca.’
Rebecca knew he was joking, but hey, it was still nice to be referred to as a chick. Mark and Malcolm moved on to the bar, and the women went back to discussing Joanna’s problem, which was still a problem, but maybe a diminishing one. Tonight they’d had their third private lesson before the group session, and Joanna had sung ‘Motherless Child’ by herself with no help from anyone and then started blubbing. It was sweet really, thought Rebecca, she’s the hard-boiled business type who never cries: she’d been so embarrassed, laughing and mopping her eyes and saying sorry, sorry.
Nelson had put his great bear paws round Joanna then and the green-eyed monster had given Rebecca a little stab.
But then when the main group arrived and they had all sung ‘Motherless Child’ again, Joanna couldn’t do it, and Rebecca had thought she’d burst into tears again, this time with frustration. But she didn’t. She just mimed away, her face long as a wet November.
Thinking over this, Rebecca concluded that that was why Nelson had suggested a drink. He was a softie really and didn’t want his students crying into their pillows.
Now he put one of his big warm hands on Joanna’s wrist and said, ‘Joanna, babe. I tol’ you it was gonna be like this. One step at a time. Soon you’ll be singin’ like Tina Turner.’
The wine (they’d downed a bottle and a half of red between them) had made Joanna look less of a schoolmarm. Her face was flushed and her eyes shiny, but whether because she was glad or sad it was hard to tell. She hadn’t said much but now she blurted out, ‘Nelson, I really am so grateful.’ She included Lucy and Rebecca in her frowning, earnest gaze. ‘And you two. You’ve been really wonderful to me. So kind. You mustn’t feel you have to continue—’
‘Nonsense,’ interrupted Lucy. ‘We like it, and it’s a good warm-up for the classes.’
Rebecca was sorry for Joanna but couldn’t understand why she was so wound up about the singing. Not being able to sing was hardly the end of the world. She chipped in, ‘Don’t worry, Joanna. It’s good fun. Besides, we want to see if it works, don’t we? Like being part of an experiment.’
And there was another reason of course. Nelson. She knew that a black preacher who taught gospel singing to white middle-class residents of Notting Hill wouldn’t exactly do, but he was definitely, definitely a turn-on.
She turned to him. ‘Nelson,’ she asked, ‘have you ever done this before – trained someone out of tight-throat syndrome or whatever it is?’
She wasn’t really interested in Joanna’s singing problems, but she knew the way to a man’s heart was to ask him questions so he could talk about himself. Nelson was no different, and answered with a grin.
‘Yes, a few times, once for a professional singer who could not sing if his wife was in the audience. I ended up teaching the whole family. The wife now sings in one of the choirs her husband performs with.’
He talked about his work with school children and community groups, with private clients and professionals.
He’s magnetic when he’s talking about teaching, thought Rebecca. He forgets to do the Jamaican street slang bit and sounds educated, confident and relaxed. She looked at the others. They were as fascinated as she. Three ageing groupies, transfixed by a very tasty guy.
Then Lucy, who stayed with her daughter and son-in-law on singing nights, said she must go. Rebecca knew Lady Luck was really on her side when Joanna decided to leave too. Quickly, before Nelson could organise a general exodus, she whispered to him, ‘I’m for finishing the bottle, what about you?’
‘Sure thing, babe.’
He helped Joanna into her jacket —Armani, Rebecca noticed – and they said their goodbyes.
The two of them sat down again and Rebecca returned to her task of wooing him with flattery and questions. She reminded herself that this was just for fun, for flirting’s sake, not to be entered into seriously. Nelson hadn’t any money, and she simply could not afford a real relationship with someone who could not improve her lifestyle.
She was surprised to learn that Nelson had never married, and he didn’t have children. She’d thought there would be a wife and a flock of kids. Another surprise: he was forty-eight! Only six years younger than she. He looked more like thirty-five.
They ended up in his flat, which Rebecca was sorry to see was in a council block in Westbourne Park. She’d never been inside a council block, and rather expected it to be all graffiti and piss in the corridors and young men in hoodies loitering with intent. But it was a low-rise, solid, brick building, perfectly nice, and Nelson’s flat (once they’d negotiated the impressive array of front door locks) was a pleasant surprise. It had white walls and wooden floors, with a pale kilim rug under a glass coffee table. There were large, rather good, modern pictures, a cream leather sofa, an upright piano, and bookshelves crammed with orange Penguins. It was neat, spacious and classy.
Rebecca tried to disguise her surprise, but Nelson spotted it.
‘I don’t do badly with the teaching. And I run singing sessions for big companies and organisations on their away days – sort of corporate bonding sessions. Team building, they call it. Pays well.’
He came and stood behind her at the bookcase, where Rebecca was pretending an interest in The Great Gatsby, Ulysses, Middlemarch. There were lots more like that – books she had heard of but never read. She’d better deflect him from any discussion of them.
‘Nelson, how come you talk afro-slang in company and proper English now?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t know. It’s true though, you aren’t the first to notice it. I just fall into the Yo Man stuff when I’m with my pub mates, or playing the part of the black blues teacher. Maybe it’s for the street cred with the kids I teac
h so they’ll give me “respec”. They’re great on being given “respec” though it seldom occurs to them to earn it. But it’s not really me. Both my parents spoke good English – they were civil servants.’
He is intriguing, thought Rebecca, no doubt of that. She watched him roll a couple of joints, feeling good that he accepted her as someone who would not disapprove. They sat on the sofa, smoking and listening to Haydn.
He asked her about her marriage. Rebecca, at first flippant and jokey, found herself becoming serious as she told Nelson about Bill’s problems with drink, how she’d hoped in vain that the birth of a longed-for child would sober him up, how their shared devotion to their daughter had seemed a competition in parenthood rather than a mutual delight.
‘And the truth is,’ she said, ‘I encouraged him to drink. I guess I was what they call a “facilitator” – the person who gave him permission to do what he shouldn’t.’
‘Sure. But it’s tough being a policeman.’
‘And Bill was so much more fun with a few glasses in him. He wasn’t a destructive drunk at all, and never violent. But he didn’t do much work either, and after a bit a good business looked like it was going down the tubes.’
‘And did it? Is he still drinking?’
‘ Oh no! Divorce was the best thing that could have happened to Bill, though he’s never exactly thanked me for it. He met this thoroughly dreary advisor from the bank, who took him in hand, sent him to AA and married him.’
‘And?’
‘And now they have two boys, the business is booming, and it’s all happy happy happy.’
‘You don’t sound happy.’
Rebecca flipped her hair back and smiled into his face. ‘Oh, I am. Bill is a good chap, but off the booze he isn’t a ball of fire. So no complaints, I’m fine. I’ve got a nice life. And a wonderful daughter.’
It had crossed Rebecca’s mind that she might be wise to keep quiet about having a grown-up daughter. But she could have had Angelica at twenty, which would make her only forty. And she couldn’t resist boasting about her darling girl.
So she told him about Angelica, the adorable, sensible twenty-one-year-old who had sailed above the divorce of her parents and being the single child of a single mother, to become a quiet achiever who was doing well at university. When Nelson said, ‘I’d like to meet her,’ Rebecca was pleased. She wondered if he was just being polite. But yes, she thought, they would like each other.
When Nelson came back from the kitchen with a bottle of water and two glasses, he put them down on the coffee table and leaned over and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, eyes open. Nice, but not electrifying. He seemed to be watching her. Then he pulled away, a little solemn, and she stared back at him. Rebecca did not quite know how to play this one. She had never been with a black guy, and was ashamed that her mind kept sidetracking to Aids and worrying about condoms.
He said, ‘We are going to bed, right?’ He didn’t wait for an answer but kissed her on the nose. ‘Just for the pleasure of it, not to get serious, right?’
She liked him more and more. He was upfront and straight. And surprising.
‘Agreed,’ she said, cool as a teenager.
Chapter Ten
Joanna was debating whether or not to take her jacket off. It was warm in the boardroom but she knew she looked the business in her Savile Row pinstripes. She generally wore trousers, partly because they looked good on her long skinny legs, partly because they disguised her slightly swollen knees but mostly because they so effectively made the woman-wearing-the-trousers point. It was part of her psychological armour for the job.
She decided to keep the jacket on. Her shirt, though classic and expensive, was soft silk crêpe with a ribbon at the neck and would not give her the right air of authority: she knew it was easier to play the part if dressed for it.
She struggled to pay attention while the routine stuff went on (minutes of the last meeting; chief executive’s report; last month’s results). She was worrying about her paper and calculating who would back her and who would not. When she’d joined the Greenfarms board back in the spring all the existing members were hostile. They’d tried to hide it, but she was the necessary evil, the ‘company doctor’ appointed by the firm’s chief backer to dish out the medicine no one wanted to swallow. Six months of board meetings and discussion had not improved relations much. Most of them still resented her and she didn’t blame them – but she had a job to do.
Several of the board were family members which made it a tough call. Hardly a level playing field, although Stewart, the chairman, could go either way.
Joanna admired Stewart. He’d got bags of experience and was a heavyweight captain of industry with a reputation in the City for delivering shareholder value. He’d made one fortune in carpets and another in property, and now sat on half a dozen boards, most of which he chaired. And he had fun investing his fortune in go-ahead enterprises – including this one, his daughter Caroline’s organic food business.
Joanna watched him as he came through the door, his papers in a pigskin leather folder embossed with his initials. He could have been made by Hollywood, she thought – elegantly greying, sophisticated, confident, rich, charming. He’d got that presence and toughness which women find sexy and men admire. If this were not his daughter’s business, he’d certainly back her conclusions. But as it stood, he might just go on indulging Caroline.
Which, if you knew Caroline, was understandable. She was really something. She had a fine-boned face, big green eyes and a wide full mouth, deep red even without lipstick, which she never wore. Her red hair bounced about her narrow shoulders and down her back in great unbrushed ropes. As she strode into the room, she looked, Joanna thought, like a pre-Raphaelite angel. But angelic she was not. When opposed she was intolerant, foul-mouthed and completely unreasonable. But you had to hand it to her: Greenfarms was her baby and she had grown it from nothing.
Caroline had started the business ten years ago in her own kitchen, making organic soups for a market stall, and went on to build a profitable company with a ten million pound turnover. She was still as idealistic as ever. Her products were all certified organic by the Soil Association, packaging was sustainably sourced and bio-degradable, the factory was powered by a heat pump and the heat generated by the refrigeration, and excess energy went into the national grid. And she still rode her bike everywhere and her house and office ran on methane gas from the farm and on solar energy. It meant she had to put up with great ugly solar panels on the roof and in the garden. Which Joanna could never do. But Caroline’s principles were absolute.
Which means, mused Joanna, we are going to have a major fight – one that I could easily lose.
As the directors settled themselves round the table, Joanna continued her mental tour of the board: Amin, the finance director, was a small neat Indian, nervously twirling his pencil in his fingers. He was new, and she had no idea which way he’d go. At least he was not family.
Mark, the production director, was Caroline’s elder brother and perfectly hopeless. He was jealous as a snake of his sister and resented working for her. With luck he would go for Option A just to spite her. But then again, he might realise Option B would be safer for him. He would never survive the shake-up if she, Joanna, got her way.
The sales director was a relation too, but a more distant one. He was Caroline’s cousin, Alasdair, and he was good. He’d doubled turnover in the last two years, mainly by getting three of the big four supermarkets to list Greenfarms’ chilled ready-meals, and two of them to take their organic fruit and veg. He’ll go with me, I’m sure, thought Joanna.
She was not so sure of Phyllis, the company secretary, though she liked her and was pretty sure the liking was returned. Phyllis was a careful and lawyerish company secretary. The trouble was, she’d been Caroline’s friend for years and they were very close. Personal loyalty might conquer common sense.
Joanna returned her attention to what was going on and realised the
y were about to get to Item Five. Something lurched in her chest. How silly, she told herself, it’s not as if this is the first time I’ve had to do this at a company board. But her heart continued to thump. She forced her hands to lie still in her lap as Stewart put another tick on his Agenda and looked across at her.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘now, to the meat of today’s business. Joanna, will you introduce your paper?’
Joanna smiled at him, nodded, and looked round the table. Most of the board caught her eye briefly and then looked down as they shuffled their papers, finding the first page of her report.
Only Stewart and Caroline met her gaze steadily. Stewart’s expression was professionally neutral and polite. Caroline’s was anything but: her jaw was set and she was leaning forward, hungry for a fight.
Joanna spoke quietly and mainly to the two of them, her eyes resting on one for a few seconds, then on the other, occasionally sweeping the circle of the others and talking directly to anyone who lifted their eyes to hers. She had learnt years ago that the quickest way to alienate someone was to exclude them from eye contact.
‘I am afraid radical change is inevitable,’ she said. ‘This business has to change or it will not be here in a year. You’ve all read the report, so I won’t go through it blow by blow, but I would direct you to page eight, which covers the options in front of us.’ She opened her copy at the right page, flagged with a yellow sticker, and waited until everyone had followed suit. ‘Perhaps we could spend a little time understanding those before moving on to the report’s recommendations?’
Stewart and some of the others nodded. Caroline sat unmoving, her face stony.
‘OK then. Option A. This route assumes that we retain the big retailers as our main customers. But if we are to do that we have to take twenty-one per cent out of our costs for the coming year, and probably a bit more the following year. This is achievable, but only if we do all of several things.’
She counted down her list on her fingers.
‘One: we must invest in new automatic packing machinery for the raw produce range. Two: we must face up to the redundancies made possible by this automation. Three: we must abandon small customers for whom delivery is uneconomical. Four: we must import more produce from countries where labour is cheap. And Five: above all we must move from our small UK suppliers to bigger cheaper ones.’