by Sarah Rayne
‘I am, Pippa. I know it. I know I am.’
Pippa and Maggie cross paths on Archway Road, Pippa on her bike, Maggie in the back of a cab. Maggie briefly registers Pippa’s large, egg-like helmet through the window, before returning to the client notes spread out in her lap.
Her first client of the day, the supermodel who’s suffered from depression for four years, hasn’t done any of the exercises Maggie recommended last week: all she wants is another big dose of her usual prescription. She goes through the session as if she is being put out by it, as if Maggie is an interviewer from some poxy local paper, granted a few minutes in the presence of the celebrity. Maggie’s second client, the MP cheating on his wife with a married TV star, is equally obstreperous, as usual: all he really wants is for Maggie to keep telling him that he’s doing nothing wrong. To him, she is a priest in a confessional. Her third client before lunch is twenty minutes late, so Maggie doesn’t eat until half past two. She bolts down a tuna salad before her Pilates class.
As Maggie hurries down the street towards the gym, Pippa is trying to work out why the vacuum cleaner isn’t working properly. She squats down next to it, presses the button a few times, removes and reattaches the tube, tries again. She feels as if her thoughts are having to wade through a layer of wet cement to reach her brain.
The landlady clears her throat.
‘You’ve forgotten to plug it in.’
Pippa rises slowly to her feet, reddening.
‘So I have.’
The landlady smiles politely, but peers through her spectacles at Pippa as if wondering whether she might be dangerously incompetent.
‘I’m normally a bit better than this!’ Pippa laughs.
The landlady smiles another thin smile, nods like a primary-school teacher with a lagging child, and moves away into her entrance hall, with its richly carpeted staircase and huge, bowl-shaped Regency chandelier. Pippa wishes she had eaten something for breakfast, or for dinner last night.
Maggie gets out of the Pilates class slightly later than expected – it’s one of those days when the time is always ahead of where it ought to be – and arrives flustered at the Soho Hotel for the afternoon conference. Even though she’s been to this hotel before, she walks past it once in each direction before finding it, tucked down a little mews off Dean Street. The wind is swatting at passers-by, and there are spots of rain in the grey air. She is meant to be speaking on ‘New Developments in Neurolinguistic Programming’, which is an alarmingly wide brief, and she’s going to have to bluff it as best as she can. There hasn’t been much time to prepare it; there’s never time for anything.
The delegates are thronging in the hotel lobby; many of them have already filtered through to the airless conference room. Maggie sees her name on the agenda for the afternoon, up on a laminated notice, and her intestines draw themselves into a loose knot. She finds the Ladies, but it’s packed, there is a queue of five silent, sullen women, there isn’t time. She should have done this after Pilates. She retreats from the bathroom, brings her flimsy notes out of her bag and heads for the conference room, forcing a smile onto her lips as someone important grabs her arm in greeting.
Xavier is taken by surprise when Pippa calls in the late afternoon – he thought it would be Murray ringing to ‘run some stuff by him’ for ‘Murray’s Musings’. He looks at the name flashing on the display: PIPPA CLEANER. Probably time to remove that suffix, he thinks. I don’t think I’m going to forget who she is.
‘Pippa?’
‘Hi. Sorry it’s so noisy here. They’re doing monster trucks. They’re just getting the trucks in.’
‘What?’
‘You know monster trucks? Where they, like, drive all these massive trucks around an arena and sort of smash them into things, or make them do tricks, or race them, or drive them up ramps, or—’
‘Yes, monster trucks,’ Xavier manages to cut in, ‘but what are you doing there?’
‘I’m cleaning the meeting room for a lunch for the big bosses, the people who own the trucks. I’ve just dived out for a second.’ There is a mechanical whine in the background, and a roar of air. ‘It’s fucking chilly today, eh!’
‘I’ve not really been out,’ Xavier murmurs.
‘Anyway, to come to the point, love, I need to go to the doctor’s with me sister on Saturday morning, so I don’t think I can make it.’
Xavier registers a small but definite inner plunge of disappointment.
‘That’s no problem. Did you want to reschedule it, or . . .?’
‘The trouble is, I’m just so booked up. I mean all I’ve got is Saturday night, but—’
Xavier says, ‘Saturday night’s fine, if it’s fine with you.’
She hesitates for a couple of seconds.
‘I thought you’d be out somewhere glamorous, or—’
‘Why would I be anywhere glamorous?’
‘I don’t know, or working, or—’
‘I don’t work Saturday nights.’
It’s a date, of sorts. They are both surprised they’ve agreed to it. As soon as the call ends, Xavier thinks about calling back and claiming to have remembered an appointment. It’s one thing for her to come at lunchtime, but Saturday night! He doesn’t call back, though: he just sits, turning the phone over in his hand, and eventually deletes the word CLEANER from next to her name.
At the same time, Maggie is leaving the Soho Hotel. Her talk was all right, no better than that. They pronounced her name ‘Rhys’ instead of ‘Rice’ and some people sniggered as if it were a deliberate barb. There was some old bastard asleep in the corner, his face lolling down over his lap, and every time she tried to look around the room as her public-speaking coach told her to, her glance caught the discouraging dome of his bald head. There were some half-hearted congratulations and handshakes afterwards and she left without even a drink in the bar: she has to get back to the office for her last appointment. She has texted the client, Roger, to let him know she’ll be late, but he hasn’t replied. Roger is the managing director of an estate agent, Frinton, and sees her to talk about self-esteem issues. He has awful breath. She wishes this day would end.
She sits in the back of a cab which advances fifty yards in fifteen minutes. Why didn’t she take the tube, at this time of day? She checks herself in her pocket mirror: she looks awful, tired, the stylist ruined her hair, there are pouches under her eyes. She looks closer to sixty than forty. Her insides churn mutinously. She shifts about in the seat, tries to lower the window, but it seems to be locked.
The cabbie, like many London drivers, purports to be amazed by how much traffic there is around, as if the car were still some rare, newfangled form of transport.
‘Unbelievable,’ he mutters, gesturing at the stock-still vehicles on all sides of them, shaking his head at the perversity of other people. ‘Unbelievable.’
Roger Willis sits in Maggie’s office, waiting impatiently, trying without success to interest himself in one of the magazines provided, a men’s monthly, with articles on must-have gadgets; women; the top one hundred clips on YouTube; more women. He glances at the text from Dr Reiss – So sorry, ten mins – but even doing this reminds him of the mis-sent text he received earlier from Ollie, who he thought liked him, or respected him, anyway. But no, Roger reflects, obviously Ollie and Sam are always laughing at me. My breath. What the hell do I have to do? I have a mint about every ten minutes. I brush my teeth three, four times a day. I’ve used sprays, chewed gums, everything. I’ve got Brenda to stop using garlic, spices. What do I have to do?
Of course it’s typical, this wait. Roger glances irritably at the receptionist with her fingernails tap-tap-tapping the keyboard, and she returns him an insipid condescending smile. He can handle Dr Reiss knowing he’s depressed, it’s her job, but to have these women staring at him, the prim girl at the desk, the cleaner, the other patients, even . . . clients, not patients, they refer to them as clients. Everyone who sees him in this building knows that there’s something
wrong with him. Imagine if someone recognized him, a big vendor or another agent or client, imagine if they saw him coming out of a shrink’s office.
Yes, it’s typical, this wait. Everyone thinks Roger Willis is a soft touch. He’s someone you can send text messages about and laugh at in the lunch-break. His hair is falling out, and then there’s the breath. Roger can feel himself yielding to an undertow of self-contempt, exactly the sort of thing Dr Reiss tells him to avoid; separate out your worries, one negative thought leads on to another and another and it’s an avalanche. Well, all very well for Dr Reiss to talk, she’s still not even here, twenty minutes late now. Roger grits his teeth. He can feel his heart beating. He pictures Ollie’s sneering face. Someone is going to be sorry for the way everyone treats me, thinks Roger. Someone is going to be sorry soon.
‘The reason it’s such a problem for me,’ says Roger, as Maggie nods patiently, ‘is because my job is all about respect. Do you know what I mean? Without respect I can’t do my job. I can’t tell people what to do if they think I’m stupid. And that feels like a big failure. To be a man in his fifties. And not be . . . not have authority. Do you know what I mean?’
Yes, Maggie thinks wearily, she does know what he means, because they have this same conversation every week. She’s not surprised that his employees send texts about him. How has he ever been thick-skinned enough to make it as an estate agent? she wonders.
‘I think failure is a word you need to think about very carefully,’ says Maggie, thinking, oh, I’m going to burst, I’m actually going to explode unless I go to the bathroom. There are still twenty-five minutes of the session to go.
‘See, the reason this text message has particularly affected me,’ Roger continues.
‘Text message’! Why can’t he say text like everyone else in the world! He probably still refers to VHS and the television set. Maggie knows she’s being unfair but she is suddenly sick of people’s problems, their snivelling. Not even suddenly. She’s been sick of this for years. Glazed-eyed models. Narcissists. Sex addicts.
‘The reason it’s particularly affected me.’
He has this maddening habit of restarting sentences, restarting paragraphs, even, and each time she has the horrid feeling that the clock has also been wound back. Incredibly there are still twenty-five minutes left; the hand seems glued to the number on the clock face by some magnetic force, as Roger winds up his subject again.
‘It’s affected me because, well, to overhear something, you see, it makes it all the worse, because, you see . . .’
This is another thing he does, making some point like ‘It’s worse to find out indirectly that someone hates you,’ or, ‘It’s embarrassing to be undermined,’ as if he was the first person to discover it. In fact they all do it, everyone comes into the office and talks as if their neuroses are startling, as if they are in possession of remarkable insight into the human condition, none of them aware how many times a day Maggie hears the same phrases word-for-word, the same rehashed problems. Jesus. Her congested bowels sit impatiently; her stomach feels like a bowl of hot soup. At moments like this she becomes unpleasantly aware of the word bowel.
‘Now, I know you told me to avoid the word failure, I know it creates a bad set of associations, and I have been thinking about it, and trying to sort of address things in a more, a more positive way, if you know what I mean. But . . .’
Maggie is on her feet.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, Roger, but I am just going to have to leave for a second. I’ll be right back.’
He blinks at her.
‘I’m just going to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.’
He sits, affronted, listening to her quick steps in the corridor. This is typical, he thinks. She’s late, she’s hardly listening to him, now she’s slipping out halfway through; it’s not good enough, especially when you look at what he’s paying. Imagine him in the middle of a meeting with a property developer, just excusing himself! But again, it’s the way people are with Roger. This is it, this is where it ends. He steels his nerves for a confrontation.
Maggie slams and locks the door, trying not to think of the amused face of the glossy receptionist. She tears off a wad of paper and shoves it into the bowl to dampen the sound, then sits down hurriedly and realizes how fast her heart is beating. Everyone, everyone judges her. The way he looked at her as she went out of the room. The way the model talked to her earlier, contemptuously eyeing Maggie’s rat’s-tail hair and washed-out skin, as if Maggie’s age were not down to the inevitable working of time but to a perverse and regrettable choice on Maggie’s part. The MP who regards her more like a hired hand than a serious professional. All of them. Last week a client, who cried for twenty minutes into her shoulder, ended the session by saying, ‘What the fuck do you know anyway?’
In the consultation room Roger waits for four minutes, five. This is preposterous, he’s paying good money. He won’t pull her up on it straight away. He’ll wait until the end. But he will do it.
Maggie, red-faced and disarranged, tramps back across the corridor, feeling hot at the back of her neck as the receptionist, still with that pursed, know-all mouth of hers, smiles her consoling smile. Why is there such a stigma, thinks Maggie, attached to going to the bathroom, for Christ’s sake? Maybe there’s a paper to be written on it, a book even. That’s what I should be doing. Back to writing books. Enough of this. I don’t need this.
Roger refuses to meet her eye as she re-enters the room. They get to the end. Maggie suggests some strategies that might help Roger. She might as well be reciting a recipe for an omelette. They agree Roger is going to continue with St John’s wort, he’s more comfortable with something non-prescription, he doesn’t like the idea of pills, blah blah blah.
‘Now, do you need to arrange payment,’ asks Maggie, the usual euphemism for ‘Give me my money now’, ‘or . . .?’
Roger clears his throat, fiddles with his cuffs.
‘Dr Reiss, I . . .’
What? Maggie thinks, beyond exasperated. Is it not over even now, this stupid, endless day?
‘Dr Reiss, I haven’t been entirely happy with the service I’ve received today.’
‘You what . . . I’m sorry?’
Roger swallows. This is it, he’s standing up to her.
‘I’ve found you unprofessional. You were late for the session – seriously late – your mind seemed to be elsewhere, you left for some time halfway through, and now we’re finishing a good three minutes short. I mean, I understand that we all have an off-day . . .’
‘An off-day!’ Maggie echoes, almost laughing. This ridiculous man, who the hell does he think he is, with his customer-relations phrases, his terrible trousers, his shocking breath?
‘What I’m saying is . . .’ Roger hesitates, what is he saying? ‘I’d like there to be an improvement next time.’
This is too much. Maggie raises her voice.
‘You know what? Don’t pay me. Keep your money. Keep it. And don’t bother coming again. Find someone else.’
‘Dr Reiss . . .’ Roger is alarmed. He’d thought it was going well, the speaking out. He was pleased with the way he expressed himself. This is why he avoided counselling for so long, this is what he feared, scenes, fuss.
‘Dr Reiss . . .’
But Maggie has pushed open the door and marched, with the addled purposefulness of a drunk, out into the corridor.
‘Cancel it all,’ Maggie says briskly to the receptionist, whose perma-smile fades for once.
‘What?’
‘Cancel it all. I’m done with this.’
She doesn’t wait for the lift but strides to the fire-escape door and almost runs down the three flights, her footsteps, hard on the seldom-used stone stairs, echoing down the stairwell. Maybe she would have carried on for another fifteen years, hating the job; maybe she would have quit tomorrow anyhow; but now is the moment, because Roger got angry over her bathroom visit, because he’s upset over a text, mis-sent because of an unf
amiliar phone, used because another phone was stolen, because a boy was sacked after a tantrum provoked by a review, which was fuelled by anger at a beating-up which Xavier failed to stop on that cold day a few weeks ago.
As Maggie boards the tube, mentally preparing a speech to her husband (‘We need to enjoy ourselves, we can afford to leave all this behind, let’s go anywhere, do anything’), Xavier is preparing his Wednesday-evening show. They’re going to be talking about ‘Brushes with Fame’ – a lighter topic, tonight, as callers on a Wednesday, the sagging middle of the week, are often noticeably less sparky and energetic than on other nights. Their boss Roland is always happy when the subject is more playful; less risk, as he remarked to Xavier earlier in the week, that Murray might say something jarringly inappropriate.
Towards the end of the show, at a minute to three, Murray flicks the switch to cue the penultimate news broadcast. The show has slipped by in a pleasant stream of celebrity-related reminiscences, perhaps the most interesting coming from a caller who was trapped in a lift with Terry Waite, some years before Waite’s far more extensive captivity in Beirut. ‘Murray’s Musings’ went fairly well: he avoided, on Xavier’s advice, any reference to the recent trial of the man who kept his children locked in a basement, instead returning to the motif of the pirates, who fortunately came into the news again this week.
‘Anything planned for the wer, for the weekend?’
‘Not really.’ Xavier sips his coffee. ‘Couple of films. I’ve got some work on, columns and stuff. You?’
Murray plays with a frizzy strand of his hair, which is, at the moment, particularly bouffant.
‘My, er, my sister’s having a per, party Saturday night. Do you want to come along?’
Xavier looks out of the window at the car park with its slow dumb-show: the caretaker, fag in hand, eyes bloodshot, counting down the minutes of his final hour on duty; the fox down there among the recycling crates, half a discarded McDonald’s box in its teeth. He recognizes that this is less an invitation than a request from Murray, who, again, wants Xavier to serve as foil and support in his efforts to meet women. He’s got better at not introducing Xavier by saying, ‘We do a radio show together,’ or (as on one ghastly occasion), ‘This is the well-known Xavier Ireland.’ Even so Xavier has little appetite for the idea of the party.