The Decision
Page 24
It didn’t sound cosy, that was for sure. They’d lost several accounts, including JKL Tobacco and La Roche toiletries; Jeremy was being brought in as overall account director and his brief was to work with Carl, relaunching the entire agency.
‘It will be fun,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, ‘and I will enjoy it, I’m not asking for sympathy – except having to live without you of course – but God, the egos I’m going to have to dance around. The creative people are great, it’s the account people who’ve made a complete horlicks of it all, and morale is seriously bad. First off I’ve got to decide who’s wheat and who’s chaff and then see about getting rid of the chaff; there’ll be ground glass put in my coffee on a daily basis, I should think. But there will be good aspects, no doubt.’
‘Like?’
‘Oh – like an apartment on the Upper East Side – that’s sort of Knightsbridge-y; excellent expenses of course, and a contractual agreement that I can fly home at least once a month – First Class, natch. And then there’s you, of course.’
Oh God. He was going to say it after all. She composed her face again. Took a careful sip.
‘I shall miss you terribly. Terribly.’
‘I’ll miss you too, Jeremy. Of course.’
‘But I do want you to come over lots. For long weekends and so on. As well as me coming home lots as well. In fact I think I can swing the fare on expenses fairly often. I really couldn’t manage without you entirely. So – shouldn’t be too bad. Oh, darling.’
‘Yes?’
Maybe even now? His idea of a joke? A tease?
‘I do hate to leave just now while you’re so worried about your dad and the house and everything. But you know we can talk whenever you like.’
No joke, no tease.
‘Yes. Yes, of course I know that. And – congratulations, Jeremy, again. It really is wonderful.’
Well – so what? she thought when finally, finally she was safely home, in bed, with the light out, no longer pretending, no longer having to smile. Exploring how she felt. Which was fine. Absolutely fine. It would be marvellous to go to New York, meet the editors of things like American Vogue and Harper’s, see the New York designers. So it was a huge bonus, really. And it was only for six months. And what would be the point in getting engaged when they weren’t going to be together? Probably Jeremy had thought exactly that – although he could have said it. No, the simple fact was that clearly he just didn’t want to be tied down at this stage in his life. He had enough to worry about. And anyway – who on earth wanted to get married, when they were flying as high as she was? It was her career that really mattered to her. More than anything else in the world. Wasn’t it?
As if on cue, Jack Beckham sent for her the next morning, told her he had just fired Fiona – ‘and don’t try to defend her, I’ve had it on very good authority she’s been completely off her head for the last three days, and not for the first time, migraine my arse, and it was her fucked up that last session with the ball gowns, not the photographer’ – and formally appointed her fashion editor.
They all argued later over who had had the idea first. Valerie claimed it inevitably, Valerie Hill, still one of Simmonds and Shaw’s major clients, Valerie Hill who had become a phenomenon in her own right, one of the first female tycoons, constantly featured in the magazines and newspapers, with a chain of offices supplying at least half the upper echelons of the secretarial community.
She had come in one morning to see Louise, who now regarded her as her personal client, about a couple of offices in Ealing. And told her over Jenny’s coffee and biscuits, which continued, Louise claimed, to be one of the major contributions to the firm’s success, that she could see in the years to come there would be a huge increase in offices in the outer suburbs.
‘We’ll just have to look further out – well beyond Guildford. In the green belt, even. It can’t go on like this.’
Louise was talking to Matt and Jimbo later that day, about the nightmare of the Brown Ban, as it was called (after George Brown, a new minister in Mr Wilson’s punitive government) on any further office building in London. ‘Half our development work is being stalled for lack of planning permission,’ said Jimbo gloomily, ‘bloody Labour, thought they were meant to be getting us out of trouble, helping the working man, not putting him out of his job.’
‘Well, we’re not going to change that,’ said Louise. ‘And Miss Hill was saying this morning we’d all have to move right out, start building offices in the suburbs.’
‘Can’t see that,’ said Jimbo, ‘commercial firms want their feet in central London. They won’t want their offices here there and everywhere. So unless you can persuade an entire company to move, it’ll never work.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Louise. ‘Sun Alliance are doing it, moving everyone out apparently, except for head office. It’d be much cheaper for them, and it’d be nice for the staff, wouldn’t it, not having to go into London every day, able to work much nearer home. There’s a lot of people moving out of London to live, you know.’
‘Yeah, and if they were big firms,’ said Jimbo slowly, ‘big offices, people would move to work there, like they do to Ford, in Dagenham. I can see that makes sense.’
‘Yeah, but that’s factories,’ said Matt. ‘Can’t see people moving to be near an office.’
‘This’d be a bit like a factory though, wouldn’t it?’ said Louise. ‘Only not manufacturing cars or washing machines, but processing insurance claims or whatever.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Matt, ‘if we could buy some land, and then develop one of these places, ready and waiting for some of these big firms – well, we’d be printing money.’
Jimbo stared at him. ‘Mate, you’re living in dreamland. You’d have to print a whole lot, just to buy the land in the first place.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Matt. ‘It’d be much cheaper than land in London. And there’s plenty of money around. You just need to have a good business plan, that’s all.’
‘Well, if you say so. But how’d you know where to buy it, where the firms would want to be?’
‘We could work it out,’ said Matt slowly. ‘It’d be where the public transport was good. The underground, bus routes, mainline stations. Easy as that.’
He sat back in his chair, and lit a cigarette, looking at them very coolly through the smoke. ‘This is our way into the big time,’ he said, ‘trust me.’
The news had broken fast about Eliza’s appointment. Next morning, she came in to an office filled with flowers; by lunchtime every vase in the place was utilised, and she had to ask her secretary to go out and buy half a dozen more. Breathy messages accompanied them: ‘darling Eliza … so thrilling … so exciting … so well deserved … many congratulations’: all from people who only days before had been fawning over Fiona. The phone rang constantly, offering her lunch, drinks, even that newest social occasion, breakfast; other fashion writers called in their unique code: ‘We’ve been worrying about Fiona … she couldn’t go on like that … she needs a rest.’
Eliza called Fiona herself, several times; there was no reply. Finally at the end of the day, feeling increasingly wretched, she wrote her a note and ordered some flowers to be delivered to her flat next morning. They were returned, with the message that said there was no reply; later that day Fiona’s mother phoned Jack Beckham to tell him that Fiona had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic suffering from a major breakdown. Jack called Eliza into his office to tell her.
‘Oh, Jack, that’s terrible, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘I only told you so you could see how right I was. She obviously couldn’t have gone on anyway.’
She thought suddenly – and not for the last time – how like Matt he was.
‘Scarlett, it’s David.’
‘Oh – hello, David.’
‘Look – are you quite mad? My mother says you’re coming out here to stay with her. You can’t do that, you really can’t.’
‘What sort of queries?’
‘Well – you know. Like how Gaby can be pregnant, when you haven’t slept together for years. Does she have a lover, I wonder? Is it someone else’s baby?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well – must be immaculate conception then. How amazing.’
‘Look, Scarlett of course we – that is I – she—occasionally we – well, we sleep together. It’s – it’s just—’
‘Just what?’ A silence. She sighed. Loudly and theatrically. ‘Well, this is why I want to come, you see. To answer those sorts of questions. And I do like your mother so much and her house sounds really lovely. And she says so is Charleston this time of the year. So – I’m coming. Sorry, David, if you’re not entirely pleased. But you should have thought that something like this might happen. Bye now.’
Something like this. That hurt so much a lot of the time she felt she couldn’t breathe properly. Someone else having the baby she should have had. With the man she loved. The baby she didn’t have, the baby that had been torn out of her, just to save the man and his filthy, lousy marriage. The baby she had kept quiet about, been so brave about, never complained about. The baby that still haunted her sleep, with its sweet, smiling embryonic face, the baby that she had killed.
What kept her going was the rage. At the lies, the injustice, her own gullibility. How could she have listened to him, believed him, trusted him?
Well – she had. And now she was getting her revenge. A bit of it anyway.
‘What on earth is going on in there?’
‘I really don’t know, I’m afraid. He just seems really angry.’
‘Who with?’
‘I don’t know. Someone on the telephone.’
‘Well, who was it? A client?’
‘I don’t know, Miss Mullan. I don’t think so. Well, first some woman phoned, she was ever so posh.’
‘Not Valerie Hill, I hope?’
‘No, she was called – oh, dear. It was a name I’ve never heard before. Really unusual. I thought at first she said she was making an announcement about her name, but that seemed to be it. Her name. Seemed to be something like Announcement. Anyway, he didn’t talk to her for long. Then he rang someone else. That’s who he’s shouting at.’
Louise listened at the door for a moment; she heard the words ‘bloody outrageous’ and then slightly later, ‘You made me a promise and in my business we don’t renege on such things. Yours is obviously less principled. I’m quite prepared to sue if necessary,’ and then, ‘Well you’ll have to sort it out because I’m not bloody having it.’
There was then a loud noise as the phone was slammed down and a long silence.
‘Heavens above,’ said Louise.
Rather reluctantly, she went out, to meet a client. When she came back, Jenny was looking rather excited, typing very fast.
‘Oh, Miss Mullan,’ she said. ‘What a morning we’ve had. That girl came back—’
‘Which girl?’
‘That girl who came to interview Mr Shaw for the papers.’
‘Oh,’ said Louise. ‘Her.’ She hadn’t taken to Eliza; she’d thought she was too self-confident by half. Snooty too.
‘Yes. She was quite rude.’
‘She has no business being rude to you. What did she say?’
‘She said, “Is Matt Shaw in there?” so I said what you always told me to say, I said, “Mr Shaw is very busy at the moment but I’ll see if he has a moment to speak with you,” and she said, “Don’t give me all that rubbish, is he in, yes or no.”’
‘That is rude. So what did you say?’
‘I said, “Well yes, he is”. And she just barged in.’
‘Goodness. And then what?’
‘Well, I heard a lot of shouting.’
‘What about?’
‘Well, she was saying he was pathetic and he should …’ She glanced at her notepad.
‘Jenny, you didn’t write it down!’ said Louise, grinning at her.
‘Well, Miss Mullan, you always say to take notes if it might be important.’
‘That’s – that’s true. So what else did you hear?’
‘Well, she said he should stop being so – well it was the f-word, Miss Mullan.’
‘Goodness.’
‘Yes, stop being so, well so – so effing – defensive, and did he really think they were going to write dis – disappearing things, would that be it?’
‘Disparaging?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Disparaging things about him, and he said he didn’t trust anyone in her business and she said she’d begun to admire him, and think he was clever, but now she could see he was a total – total – oh, yes, moron, and it was the last time she’d ever try to do anything for him and then he said he didn’t want her to do – well – effing anything for him, he’d never asked her to in the first place, and she’d obviously lied to him and what did she have to say about that.’
‘Right. So – then did she leave?’
‘No, but I went to the toilet. I felt a bit bad listening any more. And when I came back it was all quiet. So I thought she’d gone and then I thought maybe he’d like a nice cup of tea or something, to calm him down a bit, and a biscuit, you know how he likes his biscuits, so I knocked on the door and there was no reply, and I thought he’d gone out, so I opened the door really quietly, and—’
‘And what, Jenny?’
‘And – well, he was kissing her. I mean really kissing her, you know. And she was – Miss Mullan, she was most definitely kissing him back.’
Emma Northcott looked at her brother across the table. They had dinner together once a month; it had been an unbreakable rule ever since Emma had come down from Oxford and Jeremy had returned from National Service.
‘So – you’re off to the Big Apple, then? Told the aged Ps?’
‘Yes. Pa wasn’t very interested, Ma said she’d be over to stay with me quite often. She’s got friends there, you know, and then there are the cousins in DC.’
‘Yes, of course I know. Now Jeremy, I want to talk to you about something. Nothing to do with me, I know, but—’
‘That’s never stopped you before.’
‘True. Anyway, it’s about Eliza. I presume you’ve told her?’
‘Oh yes. She seemed quite happy about it.’
‘Jeremy, what are your plans? For Eliza? Or rather, with Eliza?’
‘Well – not quite sure.’
‘You do seem very fond of her.’
‘I am. Very fond. She’s a darling.’
‘Is that it?’
‘Probably not.’ He grinned at Emma. ‘I know what you’re thinking. And I’ve been thinking about it too.’
‘You have?’
‘Yeah, I have. Quite seriously. Maybe very seriously. She’s the perfect girl, in lots of ways. Fun, bright – very bright, attractive. We get on incredibly well. I adore her, actually.’
‘So?’
‘Yes, I know, I know. She probably is the girl for me. And it’s time I got married, I know that too.’
‘Yes, it really is. And have you thought about how Eliza might be feeling right now?’
‘Well – not really. She didn’t seem too upset.’
‘Jeremy, you are incredible. Have you not heard of female pride?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Emma struggled not to sound too exasperated.
‘Jeremy, look at it from Eliza’s point of view. You’ve been going out with her, and I presume rather more than that, for about a year. Everyone thinks of you as a couple. Now suddenly you announce you’re off to the States, bye Eliza, been fun, see you when I get back—’
‘I didn’t say anything remotely like that,’ said Jeremy half-indignantly.
‘You might not have expressed it like that. That’s how it looks to everyone, most of all to Eliza. You really have got a hide like a rhinoceros
, Jeremy, I feel quite ashamed of you.’
‘But Emma, she’s got a career. Just been made fashion editor. She’s not going to be bothered about how things look. And anyway, is she going to want an absentee fiancé? We can see lots of each other, I’ve organised very generous expenses, I thought I’d leave it till I got back, see if we both feel the same way, and then—’
‘Jeremy! Eliza could easily be snapped up in the space of six months. I’m sorry to interfere, and of course you’re not sure, it’s different, but …’
‘Well – I’ll think about it really hard, promise. And I’ll let you know if anything drastic takes place. Now – shall we share a Chateaubriand? I’m awfully hungry.’
Charles arrived home on the dot of eight thirty. He was carrying some flowers and looked tired.
‘Hello, darling. These are for you.’
‘Oh – thank you, darling. They’re lovely. I’ll just – just put them in water. Nice evening?’
‘Yes, very nice, thanks. Just chewing the fat about Gib.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Oh – yes. Sandy Miles, remember? He was one of my ushers. And John Bridges.’
‘I remember John. Nice man. And his wife, she was very pretty. Well, dinner’s ready, I’ll just dish up. I presume you won’t want anything to drink before we sit down?’ Her tone made it very clear there would be no question of such a thing.
‘No, no, of course not. Nice dress, darling, is it new?’
‘Oh – yes. I bought it today. At Jaeger. Do you like it?’
‘Yes, sweetheart, it’s lovely. But—’
‘But what, Charles?’
‘You seem to be buying an awful lot of new dresses.’
‘Well, I like pretty clothes. Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘Of course not, darling. And I like to see you looking nice, of course. It’s just that – well, we’re a bit stretched this month. Bit overdrawn, you know?’
‘Are we? My account’s all right.’
‘I know, darling, but all you have to pay for out of that is your travelling expenses and the food of course …’
‘And my hairdressing, we agreed that. And the char, don’t forget. So, quite a lot really. Anyway, darling, sit down and I’ll dish up. And then we can talk about the weekend. Susie Short said would we like to go to the Ad Lib. I’d love to go, Charles, I wish we were members, everyone seems to belong these days.’