She wasn’t exactly posh, not like Eliza, but she was certainly a lot further up the class ladder than he was. Or any other girl he’d been out with. She’d been to a private school for a start. ‘Only a day school though,’ she said, as if that somehow made it quite different, and her mother had a car as well as her father and played a lot of bridge; they lived in Gerrards Cross, in a detached house, and employed not just a cleaner, but a gardener as well. Her father was a solicitor, a partner in a local practice, and her brother John was at university, reading law so that he could go into the firm. It was all very respectable, which made Gina’s sexual amorality seem all the stranger to Matt. Scarlett would never have got into bed with someone the evening she met him, as Gina had done with him.
Louise was trying very hard not to lose her temper with Jenny Cox, the new junior. She had personally picked her, thinking correctly that her sweetly pretty baby face, long blond curls and rather unfashionably large bosom would provide an excellent distraction for clients kept waiting to see either her or one of the boys. It was her first job, ‘a big chance for you,’ Louise had said firmly, and as well as her physical assets Jenny did have extremely good shorthand and typing skills, obtained at Pitman’s Secretarial College in Purley. However, she found the telephone a problem and frequently either failed to write down messages, or lost the scraps of paper she had entrusted them to. Two important would-be clients had already rung irately to enquire if their business was of any interest or not; and that morning Louise had discovered Jenny had spent the whole of the week’s petty cash on a large, rather ornate white vase and some flowers to fill it with.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Mullan,’ Jenny said, her eyes filling with tears (and looking even larger and bluer), ‘I thought the office looked a bit bleak and it would be nice for people to have something pretty to look at. I read in an article in Woman’s Own that an attractive office helps morals—’
‘Morale,’ said Louise after a moment’s thought.
‘Yes, that’s what I said. And—’
‘Jenny,’ said Louise, ‘that might be true, but we can’t afford lots of flowers. We have to improve morale in other ways. And anyway, you shouldn’t have spent the firm’s money without asking us. The petty cash is for coffee and tea and biscuits for visitors. I told you that on your first day. Better to concentrate on them.’
‘Yes, Miss Mullan.’ The tears brimmed over. ‘I’m very sorry. I was only acting for the best.’
‘I’m sure. Anyway, just remember that in future. Now, I want you to type a letter and then deliver it yourself, this afternoon; it’s to go to Leicester Square and it’s very important.’
‘Yes, Miss Mullan.’
The phone rang. ‘Shall I answer that?’
‘Yes, please.’
She picked up the receiver rather gingerly: ‘Simmonds and Shaw. Yes. Oh, yes, I do remember, yes. Well – oh, dear I’m not sure. Could you just wait while I ask—’
‘Check, Jenny, not ask,’ hissed Louise.
‘Sorry, while I check. Thank you.’
She put her hand over the receiver and looked at Louise, her face rather flushed.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Miss Mullan. They rang on Monday. I forgot. It’s about the lunch.’
‘What lunch?’
‘Um – would it be the A Lunch. Something like that?’
‘Let me speak to him,’ said Louise, taking a deep breath. The A1 lunch club had been formed by some of the younger members of the property fraternity; it met monthly, in the private room of a pub in Dean Street, with the primary purpose of exercising that new skill, networking. By invitation only, the members pooled information about deals that were going through, city planning, useful contacts. Both Matt and Jimbo had been very excited at being invited to be members; they would not be pleased to hear that Jenny had failed to acquaint them of some important development.
‘This is Louise Mullan speaking, negotiator for Simmonds and Shaw. I wonder if you could just – ah. I see. Yes. Well, I’m afraid both Mr Simmonds and Mr Shaw are out all day, seeing clients. So – no, they won’t be able to attend. I’m so sorry. I do appreciate that. They were both called out at the last minute, and my secretary was about to ring you. But …’ she perched on the edge of Jenny’s desk, one long leg crossed over the other, and smiled brilliantly at some distant point in the room. ‘I would very much like to attend in their place. I am fully acquainted with all our business and I’m confident it would be of mutual benefit. I am a senior negotiator here. I beg your pardon? Oh, no of course I don’t mind.’ She smiled into the phone. ‘I like all-male gatherings. So – yes, I’ll hold.’ She waited, scarcely daring to breathe. ‘Wonderful. Thank you so much. Twelve forty-five, upstairs at the Queen’s Head. Fine.’
She put the phone down, smiled at Jenny. ‘Now then, Jenny. If Mr Simmonds or Mr Shaw ask you where I am at lunchtime, say you’re not sure. You don’t know anything about the lunch, all right? And I think that article you mentioned was quite right, and I’m prepared to pay for the vase myself. And I think you should get a notebook out of the stationery cupboard and keep it for telephone messages. Now, can you take the letter I mentioned to you earlier please?’
‘Yes, Miss Mullan. Thank you Miss Mullan.’
As Louise left, at twelve thirty, Jenny looked up at her and smiled. ‘Have a good lunch, Miss Mullan. And if you don’t mind me saying so, I like your hair like that.’
‘Thank you, Jenny,’ said Louise. She had put her hair up in a French pleat, thinking she would look more businesslike than with it tumbled onto her shoulders. ‘Now, don’t forget – you don’t know where I am. If they ask.’
Jenny looked at her and her eyes widened even further.
‘But I don’t, Miss Mullan. I can’t remember any of what was said on the phone. I never can.’
‘Fine,’ said Louise, and then added, ‘but do start that notebook today, won’t you?’
‘Oh, I certainly will, Miss Mullan. Thank you.’
Louise got back from the lunch at three o’clock. She was flushed – not with alcohol, which she had been careful not to touch, unlike most of her fellow guests, but with excitement.
Matt looked at her suspiciously.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘At a lunch,’ said Louise carelessly.
‘What lunch?’
‘Oh, you know, one of the A1 property lunch clubs.’
‘But you’re – you’re—’
‘Yes?’ She smiled at him sweetly. ‘What am I?’
He clearly saw a big mistake coming and warded it off.
‘You’re quite – late. I thought we had a meeting this afternoon.’
‘Of course we do. A presentation, isn’t it? At three thirty.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And – did they actually invite you? The A1 people, I mean.’
‘Of course. It was a last-minute thing. They had a vacancy and they said they’d like me to go.’
‘Were there other – girls there?’
‘No, there weren’t actually. I didn’t mind that at all though. It was very interesting, Matt. There was a lot of talk about planning gain, and also a new property page starting in the Daily Sketch. They’re having a launch party apparently; I’ve just rung them to make sure we’ll be invited. And the chap I spoke to, he said it was interesting a woman being a negotiator and he wants to interview me.’
‘You?’
‘Well, yes. I don’t think there are any other women working here, are there? Except Jenny of course. Anyway, he’s coming round tomorrow.’
‘Well I presume he’ll want to talk to us as well?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Louise, ‘he wants to interview a girl negotiator, Matt. You seem to have missed that particular point. But it’ll be good publicity for the firm, won’t it? Got to go now, get ready for the presentation. See you in ten minutes or so, and you’d better tidy this office up a bit. It looks like a bomb hit it.’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Ma
tt irritably.
‘Eliza! Have you got a minute? And Fiona, if she’s around?’
It was Annunciata Woburn, the features editor of Charisma. She was dazzlingly beautiful, with a great cloud of red hair and huge green eyes, and was breathtakingly clever; she had a double first in classics from Oxford and was married to Oliver Burton, the author of a much-admired biography of Sophocles and another of Chaucer. They were renowned as one of London’s leading media couples and hosted a literary soirée at their house in Highbury every Tuesday evening. Eliza had been amazed to find her at Charisma, thinking she was exactly the sort of person Jack Beckham would have no truck with, but he adored her, and even while telling her not to give him any fucking intellectual rubbish, he hung on her words. And she was, to be fair, a brilliant journalist; she had worked on the Times Literary Supplement and before that on the Manchester Guardian, but she had also been a hugely successful columnist for the Daily News, writing first from Washington where she and Oliver had lived for a year and then from Paris. One of her best friends was Emma Northcott, Jeremy’s sister with whom she had been at Oxford. Beckham had hired her against everyone’s advice and everyone had been proved wrong, very wrong. Annunciata it was who had suggested a feature about strippers’ boyfriends, ‘so much more original and revealing than talking to the girls themselves’, another about the relationship between cooking and sex, and a third about homosexuality and had indeed conducted it herself and then published a savage interview with Henry Brooke, the Home Secretary, over what she called the archaic illogicality – and moreover danger – of homosexuality remaining a crime.
Eliza was so much in awe of Annunciata that she found uttering more than two words in her presence almost impossible. She was forced into it today.
‘Oh – Fiona’s not here. She’s out on appointments. Sorry. Maybe later in the day … She did have to make an awful lot of excuses for her.’
‘OK, I’ll catch her then. You’ll do for now though. I’m just trawling the office for ideas, I’m looking for people for a feature which I’m calling The Intropreneurs.’
Eliza tried to look politely interested.
‘It’s about people, young people, who are making waves from a base of absolutely nothing. And who haven’t quite arrived, but are almost certainly going to. Know what I mean?’
‘Um – think so, yes.’
‘Not been to public school, not been at university necessarily, just bright young people who’ve got an idea and gone for it. I’m sure there must be lots in the fashion business – but if you know anyone outside it as well, just give me their names.’
‘Should I sound them out first?’
Annunciata considered this for a moment; then, ‘No, don’t think so, because then if I don’t use them, they could be disappointed. I’m just getting a directory together for a start. No great rush: any time in the next week.’
‘Fine. Yes. I’ll tell Fiona, shall I?’
‘Please. Right. Like my boots?’ She did this, switching from the seriously cerebral to frivolous within the same second.
Eliza looked at her boots: they were softest white kid, with a wide cuff.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she said truthfully, ‘they look like Courrèges.’
‘They are Courrèges,’ said Annunciata.
She was clearly extremely rich as well as extremely clever.
Eliza went back to her office and pulled a sheet of paper towards her. There must be lots of people. Maddy. Esmond. Jerome Blake. She managed ten, then realised they were all in fashion and she wanted to impress Annunciata by being more than a fashion bird-brain. She thought for a bit, then rang Charles, asked if he knew anyone; he said he didn’t think so, there wasn’t much working-class talent on the stock exchange. Then he said, ‘Tell you what, though, Matt Shaw might be an idea. He’s a real working-class hero.’
She remembered dancing with Matt at the party that night and smiled. She liked Matt; he was very sweet. Well, maybe sweet was the wrong word. Bit too stroppy and pleased with himself to be sweet. But – quite sexy. Well actually, very sexy. He was certainly an amazing dancer. Anyway, he’d probably be really chuffed. Free publicity. Yes, it was a great idea. She’d call him.
‘I love you so much.’
‘Do you really?’
He looked hurt. ‘Yes, of course I do. Don’t you believe me?’
‘I – yes, I suppose so.’
‘Is there – is there something the matter? Because you’ve been – not quite yourself, not quite my lovely laughing girl for some little time now. Just tell me what it is, I’ll put it right, I swear. I can’t bear to think you’re not happy.’
As if he could. As if she could tell him. It was too complicated, too difficult. And too dangerous.
To say, ‘I was pregnant with your child. And I got rid of it. Just had it – flushed it away.’
That was one of the worst things; wondering what they had done with it, her baby. That minute, more-than-half-formed human being. She had found an article, complete with very beautiful and graphic photographs, about the development of the embryo in an old issue of Life magazine, had tried not to even look at it, had found herself studying it compulsively, over and over again. At eight weeks, the age of her baby when she had had the abortion, it had had a completely recognisable human face, jointed limbs, even tiny fingers. Its heart, liver, lungs and sex organs were formed; it had been a very-much-alive human being. And what had she done, as it nestled within her, growing, sweetly safe, towards its birth? Killed it. Had it ripped out of her. Just wrenched away. And …
‘No, honestly, David, I’m fine. Just a bit – a bit tired.’
She managed to smile at him, thinking what would he have said, or done, if he’d known, and that she’d had no right to take the decision on her own, without discussing it, that it had not been just her baby, to do what she liked with, it had been his baby. He had put it there, within her, they had created it together. He might be terribly angry: which she could have dealt with. Or terribly hurt: which she couldn’t.
‘Well, I think we can do something about that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I think we can go on a little vacation. Just the two of us. For a few days, a week, maybe. To Venice, or Florence, somewhere really romantic. How would you like that?’
‘I – well I – well it would be wonderful of course. But—’
‘But what?’
How could she explain the but? That she was finding it so difficult to cope with everything at the moment, that she woke up most days feeling completely shattered, that she often cried herself to sleep at night – she could hide that for a day or two, while he visited London, but not for a longer time, not day after day. No, it would have to be postponed – while she pulled herself together, got her emotions under control, learnt to cope with what she had done: which had been the sensible, indeed the responsible thing.
‘But what?’ he asked again.
‘Oh – it’s just that my schedule is all done for the next month or so.’
‘Can’t you change any of it?’
‘Not really, David. And then I’m going on a course. I’m hoping to move to BOAC, I told you, and—’
‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘it was just an idea. A little later in the year, maybe.’ He looked hurt; he could see she wasn’t really very keen on the idea. Poor David. And she did truly love him; she hated to hurt him. But – it would be worse to hurt him more.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting her arms round him, giving him a kiss. ‘So sorry. And yes – later in the year would be lovely.’
But she couldn’t go on like this, crying all the time, not sleeping. Diana, who had been watching her worriedly for weeks, suggested she ask the doctor for some sleeping pills.
‘You look terrible, Scarlett, completely exhausted. What you really need is a holiday.’
‘I don’t want a holiday. Who do you suggest I go with? My mother?’
‘Of course not but—’
�
��Look, Diana, just leave me alone. I’ll be all right.’
Diana looked hurt.
‘I’m sorry. I just feel so – so despairing.’
‘I know. It’s all right, I understand. But please talk to the doctor. I’m sure he could help.’
Scarlett was sure he couldn’t, but she was wrong; he prescribed her a month’s worth of sleeping pills. Within a week she felt a little better, less exhausted at least, and less tearful. And, even, less angry.
But she still felt physically frail and in need of a holiday.
She checked out some destinations and settled on a tiny Greek island called Trisos, small and peaceful with its one hotel and a tiny harbour.
And it was absolutely – well, words failed Scarlett. Perfect was underrating it. After a long journey – a flight to Athens and then a long boat trip from Piraeus, she had arrived in a deep grey dusk, was led up to her hotel by the ferryman, fell onto a comfortable if rather hard bed in a small, almost cell-like room – and woke in the morning to a world of dazzling light. She had never seen or imagined anything like that light; it was positively celestial – shining, white, that shamed full noon English sunshine into shadow. Her hotel, little more than a taverna, was one of a cluster of white-domed houses, carved out of the brilliant blue sky; she leaned out of the window and felt the sun not just on her but in her, beating down to her bones, and smiled to greet it. It might only be spring in England and a rainy one at that, but summer had certainly come to Greece.
She sat on the small terrace, framed with trailing begonias, and ate figs and yogurt and honey and drank orange juice and then strong sweet coffee while lizards sunbathed beside her and seagulls whirled and called above her head, and felt she might actually have landed in paradise. Her hosts, Demetrios and Larissa, were charming, with the Greek gift of warmth and ease; she had one of only six rooms, and her fellow guests – all clearly younger and less exhausted than she – were already gone for the day.
They directed her to the beach, only about two hundred yards away, by way of a tiny meandering path; she wandered down, settled under a straw umbrella and gave herself up to pleasure.
The Decision Page 18