Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  Although recently she’d been having just a few doubts…

  Anyway, she had finished now; she had only to get the document typed, complete with its final changes, ready for sign-off. She rang the night secretary, got no asnwer, and rang again. She’d obviously gone walkabout. They were always doing that, gossiping in one another’s offices. Very annoying. Well, it would have to go to the word processing centre. She took it down, told them to call her when it was done, and decided to get her head down for an hour and a half in the overnight room and then go to the gym and come back to the office. With the clients coming in and the deal closing at noon, it was terribly important nothing went wrong now. It was one of the biggest acquisitions she had worked on—one financial services company taking over another, made more complex by the worldwide offices of both and a very quixotic CEO in the client company. And the whole thing had begun as a management buyout that had gone wrong in the other company, and the acquisition was salt in the wound of the main protagonist; he had been dragging his feet, looking for a white knight until the eleventh hour, and raising objections to almost every clause in the contract.

  But they had done it. Sayers Wesley, one of the biggest, sleekest operations in London, had fought a mighty battle on behalf of their client, and won. And Martha Hartley, at thirty-three one of the youngest partners, had been in control of that battle.

  She was happy: very happy indeed. She always felt the same at this point, her muscles aching as if the battle had been a physical one and light-headed with relief. She had sent her assistant home to get a few hours’ sleep and the poor exhausted trainee as well; she worked best on her own in these last-lap hours, undistracted, her head absolutely clear.

  What was more, she had earned a great deal of money for Sayers Wesley, which would be reflected in her salary in due course. Her £300,000 salary. Her dream of becoming rich had certainly come true.

  Her father had asked her, quite mildly, the last time she had gone home, what she did with her earnings; she had appeared, to her irritation, in a list of the up-and-coming women in the city, the new nearly millionaires it had said, and her family had been shocked by the amount she earned. She didn’t tell them it had been underestimated by about twenty thousand.

  “Spend it,” she had said.

  “All of it?”

  “Well, I’ve invested some of course. In shares and so on.” Why was she feeling so defensive, what was she supposed to have done wrong? “And bought that time-share in Verbier. Which you could also call an investment—I let it if I don’t go there.” Which she hadn’t for the past two years, she had been too busy. “My flat was quite expensive”—she hoped he wouldn’t ask how expensive—“and that must be worth at least twice what I paid for it. And I give a lot to charity,” she said, suddenly nettled. “Really a lot. And I’m ready and waiting to help you and Mum buy your retirement bungalow.”

  This was a sore point with her parents. One of the things about being clergy was that you never owned a house, you lived in church accommodation, never had that huge investment most people did nowadays, to cash in on at the end of their lives. Pride had so far kept Peter and Grace Hartley from accepting money from their children, but it was beginning to appear inevitable—and painful. Martha knew that and was as discreet as she could be about it; but there was no very satisfactory way of saying, “Look, Mum and Dad, take thirty thousand, you need it more than I do.”

  She had the money in a high-interest-bearing account; had saved it without too much difficulty over the past five years. It almost frightened her to think she could do that.

  But most of her life was appallingly self-indulgent, and she knew it. Her apartment was dazzling, in one of the most sought-after high-rise buildings in Docklands, with huge sheet-glass windows and coolly pale wood floors, furnished from Conran and Purves & Purves; she owned a soft-top Mercedes SLK, which she used only at weekends; she had a walk-in wardrobe that was an exercise in fashion name-dropping, Armani, Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan, and a stack of shoes from Tod’s and Jimmy Choo and Manolo Blahnik filed in their boxes in the fashionably approved manner, with Polaroids stuck on the outside for instant recognition. And she worked on average fourteen hours every day, often over the weekend, had a very limited social life, hardly ever went to the theatre or concerts because she so often had to cancel.

  “And what about a boyfriend?” asked her sister, married now for seven years with three children. “I suppose you just go out with people in your own line of work.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Martha had said briefly, and it was true; she had had two rather tidy relationships with solicitors on a similar level to her, and one heartbreaker of an affair with a third, an American who had just happened to be married and failed to acquaint her with the fact until it was too late and she was helplessly in love with him. Martha had ended the relationship immediately, but it hurt her horribly, and a year later she was only just able to consider going out with anybody at all.

  She wasn’t lonely exactly, she worked too hard for that, and she had a few good friends, working women like herself with whom she had dinner occasionally, and a couple of gay men she was immensely fond of, who were invaluable escorts for formal functions. And if an empty Sunday stretched before her, she simply went to the office and worked. But somewhere within her was a deep dark place which she tried to deny, which drew her down into it during her often sleepless nights, usually at the news that yet another friend was settling into a permanent relationship; a place filled with fears: of a life that was not merely independent and successful but solitary and comfortless, where no one would share her triumphs or ease her failures, where fulfilment could only be measured in material things and she would look back with remorse on a life of absolute selfishness.

  But (she would tell herself in the morning, having escaped from the dark place) being single was perfectly suited to her, not only to her ferocious ambition; nobody messed up her schedule or interfered with her routine, no untidied clothes or unwashed cups or unfolded newspapers destroyed the perfection of her apartment. Apart from anything else, it meant her life was completely under her control.

  She walked back into her office at six, having studied herself in the mirror as she left the overnight room; she certainly didn’t look tired. She actually looked as if she had had a good night’s sleep.

  Martha was not a beautiful girl, and certainly not pretty; she was what the French call jolie laide. Her face was small and oval-shaped, her skin creamy, her eyes dark and brilliant, but her nose was just a little too large for her face, a patrician nose, and she hated it and from time to time she considered having surgery, only to reject it again on the grounds that the time could not be spared. Her mouth also displeased her, too big again, she felt, for her face, although her teeth were perfect and very pretty. And as for her hair…a lovely gleaming brown certainly, but very straight and fine and requiring endless (and extremely expensive) care simply to produce the easy swinging bob that looked as if it could be washed and left to dry on its own.

  And yet people always thought her gorgeous: glossy, perfectly dressed, and wand-slim. Her appearance was the result, like everything else in her life, of a great deal of hard work.

  There was a weary-looking Asian woman plugging in a vacuum cleaner in her office.

  “Lina, good morning. How are you?” Martha knew her quite well; she was always there at six, her weariness hardly surprising, since this was the first of three jobs that she did each day.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Hartley. Shall I come back later?”

  “No, no, you carry on. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m pretty well. A little tired.”

  “I’m sure you are, Lina. How are the family?”

  “Not too bad. But Jasmin is giving me trouble.”

  “Jasmin?” Martha had seen pictures of Jasmin, a beautiful thirteen-year-old, adored by both her parents.

  “Yes. Well, it’s the school, really. It’s a bad school. Like most schools the
se days, seems to me. She was doing so well, in her last school, working so hard, getting such good marks.”

  “And now?”

  “Now she’s bored. Not learning anything. She says the teachers are rubbish, can’t keep any discipline. And if she tries to work, she gets teased, told she’s a…boff. You know what a boff is, Miss Hartley?” Martha shook her head. “A boffin, someone who studies all the time. So already she’s slipping. And you know they said at her last school she was university material. It’s breaking my heart, Miss Hartley, it really is.”

  “Lina, that’s terrible.” Martha meant it; it was the sort of waste she hated. “Can’t you get her into another school?”

  “All the neighbourhood schools are bad. I’m thinking of taking another job, in the evening at the supermarket. So I can pay for her to go to a private school.”

  “Lina, you can’t. You’ll be exhausted.”

  Lina’s eyes met hers, and she smiled. “You’re a fine one to talk about exhaustion, Miss Hartley. Working all the nights.”

  “I know, but I don’t go home and care for a family.”

  “Well, the way I see it, no point caring for them if they’re all going to end up on the social. Half the teenagers on the estate are unemployed. No qualifications, nothing. Only way out of it is education. And Jasmin isn’t going to get it if she stays where she is. I’ve got to get her out of it. And if it means me working harder, I’ll work harder.”

  “Oh, Lina!” God, this sort of thing made Martha angry. How dare this ghastly system write off children as they did, denying them their most basic right, while swearing via their absurd league tables that standards were rising. She’d read only the other day that a large number of children were arriving in secondary schools still unable to read. Why should people like Lina have to work themselves literally to death to provide what their children should have by right? But there were only a very few grammar schools left and she had heard only the other day some education minister pledging to see them all closed by the next Parliament; going as they did, he said, against the comprehensive ideal. Some ideal…

  “I’m sure she’ll cope,” she said rather helplessly to Lina. “Bright children always do. She’ll make her way somehow.”

  “Miss Hartley, you’re wrong. You don’t know what it’s like there. And no child wants to be the odd one out. If all Jasmin’s friends turn against her because she’s trying to do her schoolwork, what’s she going to do?”

  “I—don’t know.” She wondered suddenly, wildly, if she should offer to help pay Jasmin’s school fees—but what about all the other Jasmins, the other bright, wasted children? She couldn’t help them all. And it wasn’t just education; her father was always telling her of elderly parishioners waiting two years for hip replacements and lying frightened and neglected in dirty wards run by hopelessly overworked nursing staff. But what could she do? What could anyone do?

  She checked her diary, to make quite sure that there were no outstanding personal matters to attend to, no birthday cards to be posted that day—she always kept a stack ready in her desk—and no pressing phone calls to make. But it was all under control. She had sent her sister some flowers: she always did remember her birthday. It was the day they had all met at Heathrow, and set off on their travels. And she had said how determined she was to be successful and rich. She wondered if the other two had done as well as she had. And if she would ever see any of them again. It seemed extremely unlikely. And it would certainly be much better not to.

  Clio wondered if she was brave enough to do it. To tell him what she had done, tell him why. He wouldn’t be pleased. Not in the least. So—oh, Clio, come on, pull yourself together. You may be about to get married, but you’re still an individual. Go on, pick up the phone and tell him, or at least tell him you want to talk to him. This is your fiancé you’re confronting, not some medical board…

  “Hello? Rosemary? It’s Clio Scott. Yes, hello. Could I speak to Mr. Graves, please? What? Oh, is he? Oh, all right. Must have been a very long list. Well—could he ring me, please? When he’s through. No, I’m at home. Thanks, Rosemary. Bye.”

  Damn. No getting it over quickly then. Still time to change her mind. But—

  Her phone rang sharply, made her jump. Surely Jeremy hadn’t finished already.

  “Clio Scott? Hi. Mark Salter here. Just wanted to say how very pleased we are that you’re joining us. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it and we can certainly use you. When are you actually joining us? Good, good. Sooner the better. I believe you’ve had the nerve to ask for time off for your honeymoon. Bloody cheek. Well, look forward to seeing you then. Bye, Clio.”

  She’d liked Mark Salter. He was a senior partner in the practice and one of the reasons she’d wanted the job so much. That, and the proximity to home. Or rather what would be home. That was something she could tell Jeremy. That one of the things she had based her decision on had been that the job was so near Guildford. He should like that. Surely…

  “I don’t understand.” They were sitting at an outside table in Covent Garden in the early-evening sunshine; his face—his slightly severe face—was as much puzzled as angry. If you’d asked for an actor to play a surgeon, Clio often thought, he would have looked like Jeremy, tall, very straight-backed, with brown wavy hair and grey eyes in a perfectly sculpted face. “I really don’t. We agreed—or so I thought—that you’d only work part-time. So that you could support me as much as possible. And get the house done, of course.”

  “Yes, I do know, Jeremy.” She waved the hovering waiter away. “And I know I should have consulted you before I accepted. But—initially—it was a part-time job. But there were two, one full-time. And they just rang up and offered me that, and said they had to know right away, as there were others—”

  “I’m sure they’d have waited until you’d discussed it with me.”

  “Yes, of course. But—” Inspiration hit her. Slightly dishonest inspiration. “I did ring you, Anna must have told you. But you were in theatre. And I had to—to make the decision. I can’t understand why you mind so much. You know I’ve done the GP course, we agreed it would be ideal—”

  “That has nothing to do with whether you’re working part-or full-time. And if you really can’t understand it, then I would say we’re in trouble.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She took a gulp of wine. “I’m not going on the streets. I’m going to be a GP. Pretty near the house we’ll be living in. We need the money, you know we do—”

  “Clio, being a GP is a pretty full-time job. And then you’ll be on call, often at night, at weekends—”

  “You work very full-time,” she said, meeting his eyes stormily. “What am I supposed to do while you’re operating six days a week? Polish the nonexistent furniture? I’m a trained doctor, Jeremy. I love what I do. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me.”

  “The fact that I work so hard is all the more reason for you to be there when I am at home,” he said. “It’s not easy, my work. It’s physically and mentally very hard. I’m trying to make my way in the world. I need support, and the absolute certainty that I’m going to get it.”

  “Look,” she said, playing for time, knowing that actually she was—to a degree—in the wrong. “I’m sorry if—if I should have consulted you more. But I do find it hard to imagine I won’t be at home when you are. Ever. And I got an estimate for the work on the roof today. You know, having it all reslated. Ten grand, Jeremy. Just for the roof. I don’t think even doing your private list on Saturday mornings is going to make that sort of money, do you? Not at the moment. When you’re a senior consultant, of course.”

  “And until then I have to do without your support? I see.”

  “Oh, Jeremy, stop being so ridiculous.” Clio was losing her temper fast; that was good, it was the only way she ever found the courage to face him down. “You’re twisting everything. Of course I support you. My hours will be very proscribed and I won’t be travelling for hours to get to work. And the money I earn ca
n go on the house, make it all happen sooner.”

  “I’m beginning to think we should never have bought that house,” he said, staring moodily into his drink. “If it’s going to be that much of a burden to us.”

  “Jeremy, we knew how much of a burden it was going to be. But we agreed it was worth it.”

  As they had; after falling in love with it, a beautiful early Victorian farmhouse, in a pretty village just outside Godalming. It had been going for a song, as Jeremy had said, and as he always added, it was going to cost them a grand opera to make it habitable. Neglected for several decades, with every sort of rot and damp, it was nevertheless their dream house.

  “We can live here all our lives,” Clio had said, looking up at the rotten, damp-stained ceiling, on which sunlight nevertheless still danced.

  “And that room next to the kitchen will be absolutely superb for parties,” said Jeremy.

  “And as for the garden,” said Clio, running out through the rotten back door and into the overgrown jungly mess that seemed to go back for miles, and was overlooked only by a herd of cows in the meadow beyond, “it’s just wonderful. All those trees. I do so love trees.”

  So they had offered the absurdly low asking price—and then hit reality as the work estimates began coming in. Which was one of the reasons she had been so extremely tempted by the full-time job. One of them…

  Jeremy and Clio had met when she was a houseman at University College Hospital and he a senior registrar; she could never quite believe that she had managed to attract someone as handsome and as charismatic as he was. (She was later to discover that he recognised in her—probably subconsciously—a certain willingness to be told what to do, and a rather disproportionate respect for intellect and success.)

  She had fallen helplessly in love with him, and the hurt when he made it very clear to her that it would be many years before he could consider any sort of proper commitment had been profound. Desperately humiliated, she had fallen into a relationship with one of her fellow housemen; he was funny and fun, and was very fond of her, as she was of him, but after two years of almost living together, as Clio put it, she arrived unexpectedly at his flat late one night to find him in bed with someone else.