She joined the queue feeling a bit silly; there were only three people in front of her.
‘Hello,’ he said, when she finally reached the table, taking it from her.
‘Hello. It’s – it’s a very nice book.’
‘Thank you. Right now – no, I know what to write—’
He scribbled away, big sloping letters in thick black ink, handed it to her.
‘There. Hope that’s all right.’
‘I’m sure it will be. Yes, well, thank you.’
‘Thank you for buying it. Maybe we’ll meet there again one day. On Trisos, I mean.’
‘Maybe. Yes.’
She left the shop, the book in a large brown paper bag. She was dying to see what he’d written but she couldn’t stop in the street to look, it was too heavy and anyway, it was raining. She went into Lyons Corner House at Piccadilly Circus, sat down at one of the tables and opened the book. And smiled with pleasure.
‘For Miss Scarlett, from Mark Frost, a neighbour.’
Miss Scarlett. That was what Demetrios and Larissa called her. How nice that he’d remembered. He really was quite – quite charming, in a quiet sort of way. She felt touched, sat there staring at it, at the black ink on the white paper, at the sprawling writing, spelling her name. And then it happened.
One of the waitresses collided with another, both of them carrying cups of coffee: both cups went over the book. The precious five-pound book.
‘Oh, madam! Oh, I am so sorry. Oh, how dreadful, how careless of me. Oh, dear.’
One of them dabbed helplessly at the brown-stained paper, smudging the writing into illegibility; the other tried to wipe the table and the coffee dripped into Scarlett’s new Fenwick’s handbag. She suddenly felt furious.
‘Look, just leave it, would you? You’re making it worse. Leave it alone.’
‘What is this, Doreen?’ It was the manager, pompous, fat, red-faced.
‘I spilt some coffee, Mr Douglas, on this lady’s book.’
‘Oh, I do apologise, madam. Very unfortunate. May we offer you a free coffee by way of recompense?’
‘Coffee?’ said Scarlett, losing her temper completely. ‘You call coffee recompense for a five-pound book. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve only just bought it—’
‘Yes, I do see. Very annoying for you.’
‘Annoying! It’s much worse than annoying. I actually think you should buy me another copy.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, madam, I’m afraid that’s not possible Maybe a contribution – please wait.’
He went away, was gone for ages, came back smiling. ‘I’ve just spoken to our regional manager and he says if you’d like to write a letter explaining what happened, he’ll consider it and perhaps send you a book token for some of the amount. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.’
‘It’s a very poor best,’ said Scarlett, glaring at him.
‘Perhaps, madam,’ he said, his face growing more hostile, ‘it was a little unwise to open such a valuable book at such a busy time. We do stress that customers should take care of their possessions while they’re here.’
‘Oh, never mind,’ said Scarlett, ‘I’ll just leave. And not return in a hurry, I can tell you that.’
‘That is your prerogative, of course, madam.’
The entire café was now silent, everyone’s eyes fixed on her. She picked up her ruined book and left.
Outside she found herself near to tears. Her lovely book with its lovely inscription – ruined. To make matters worse, it was raining much harder and the brown paper bag was getting soggy too and the cover wet.
‘Oh – shit!’ exclaimed Scarlett aloud and dumped the whole thing in a rubbish bin.
‘Was it that bad?’ said a voice. ‘How very embarrassing.’ It was Mark Frost.
Five minutes later they were back at Hatchards. Another book was found, and inscribed, Scarlett protesting helplessly, and slightly quaking at the thought of parting with another five pounds.
‘No, no,’ said Mark Frost, as she rummaged for her cheque book. ‘I get a dozen complimentary copies from the publisher, I never know what to do with them all. I’ll bring Hatchards one of those.’
‘Thank you again for coming, Mr Frost.’ It was the manager. ‘Such a success.’
Mark Frost handed the book to Scarlett. ‘Now you must excuse me,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ said Scarlett. ‘I’ve taken up far too much of your time already. And thank you so much.’
‘Please don’t mention it. And – perhaps on Trisos, then? Are you returning this year?’
‘Oh – I don’t know.’
‘I’ll be there in October. My house is supposed to be finished then. God, it’s taken a long time. Well, goodbye.’
The surprising smile again; and then he was gone. She felt a little odd. Shaken up. As if someone had given all her feelings a physical jolt.
‘He’s so charming, isn’t he?’ said the manager. ‘And such a wonderful writer, don’t you think?’
‘Oh – yes. Wonderful.’
‘He’s gone to meet Mrs Frost now,’ said the manager. ‘Have you met her? She’s the most brilliant poetess.’
‘Um – no.’
‘Such an amazing woman. And he is so devoted to her. Such a brilliant family.’
Scarlett resisted slamming down the second book with great difficulty.
She walked down Piccadilly, feeling absurdly depressed. Another bloody married man, devoted to his wife. It wasn’t fair. It really, really wasn’t.
‘Eliza, hi! It’s Annunciata. Have you heard the news?’
‘Of course not,’ said Eliza, ‘when did I ever hear any news?’
‘When I ring you up. Don’t be so touchy.’
‘Sorry. It’s lovely to hear from you anyway. Did the pope elope?’
This was a well-worn joke of theirs.
‘Much more exciting than that. Jack’s leaving.’
‘No! Oh, my God. Where’s he going?’
‘Back to Fleet Street. He says he can’t stand all the hormones any longer. Typical Jack, terribly arrogant, apparently he hasn’t even got anywhere to go yet.’
‘Wow. So how do you feel about that?’
‘Depressed,’ said Annunciata. ‘It’s the end of this magazine as we know it.’
Eliza felt it was the end of her life as she knew it as well. Those heady years when she had been certain of what she was doing and where she was going, when she had owned her own life, had made her own decisions about where she went and when and why, when she had risen to brief and starry success on the most starry and successful of all the publications in London – they were over.
As Charisma was over. It would live on, no doubt, for a few – maybe many – years, other editors would arrive and mould it to their own visions and it would be quite possibly perfectly successful, but it would be different. The extraordinary fusion of Beckham’s Fleet Street brilliance and belligerence, the slightly effete intellectualism of people like Annunciata and the stunning visual precocity of the art department and indeed Eliza’s own, had made of Charisma much more than a magazine. It was a phenomenon, watched, wondered at, admired and imitated, a meteor blazing through the Sixties’ skies; it was of its time absolutely, both created by and contributing to it and its like would not be quite seen again.
Eliza knew she had been privileged and blessed to have been part of it, it had made her as she had to a small degree made it; but its time, along with the decade that had spawned it, was drawing to a close.
The perfect symmetry would become a memory; and it made her very sad.
Jimbo had given in his notice. Or rather, as Louise remarked with some asperity, he had jumped before he was pushed, Matt tiring of his ongoing absences due to his ever-increasing familial responsibilites. These had come to a head one afternoon when he had been summoned home to look after his small son while his wife took her mother to hospital to have a broken arm set.
Matt who had arranged a big meeting with an impo
rtant new prospect, was roaring at full throttle.
‘So where’s that waste of space with nothing between his ears that he calls his assistant?’
‘At a site meeting,’ said Louise, caught as so often in the crossfire.
‘Jesus wept.’
‘He might be able to help. Jesus, I mean, not Terry.’
‘Not the time for jokes, Louise.’
He walked out of her office shouting for his secretary, a determinedly cheerful girl with stout legs and a steady nerve, who had so far shown no signs of following her three predecessors out of the door of Simmonds and Shaw before the end of their first week of employment, and indeed was about to celebrate her third month with Matt. ‘Sally, get Jimbo for me, would you. He’s at home it seems. And put it through to my office.’
Louise, walking past Jenny’s desk, heard the familiar roaring coming from behind Matt’s closed doors and winked at her.
Matt would have been less angry with Jimbo had this been the first time he had fled home at a snap of Roberta’s long elegant fingers. But it was the latest in a long series of demands for his presence at bar mitzvahs, birthdays and of course the Friday suppers.
‘You’re supposed to be my partner, Jimbo, and you’re not playing fair,’ Matt said, ‘and you might remind Roberta that it’s your salary that pays for that house she lives in, two kitchens and all, and she might find things less cosy without it.’
Three weeks later, Roberta called Jimbo to say that Mikey, their oldest child, was running a temperature and was asking for him; Jimbo looked at his life and prospects in his father-in-law’s firm, and made his decision.
‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ he said, ‘very sorry.’
‘You will be,’ said Matt briefly. ‘What notice are you on?’
‘Six months, I think. But I won’t be working it out. Soon as you can let me go, I start with the old man.’
‘What old man?’
‘Roberta’s dad. He’s offered me a partnership and a big stake in the firm.’
‘Well, that’s bloody convenient, isn’t it? Overnight, was it, this offer?’
‘No,’ said Jimbo, ‘no, over a year ago. But I didn’t want it. Still don’t. What I do want is a quiet life and Roberta isn’t going to give me one until I join the family firm. Sorry, Matt. But – that’s married life, I suppose.’
‘A quiet life!’ said Matt to Louise. He had most unusually asked her out for a drink. Normally such arrangements in his life were entirely male. ‘Whoever gave up everything for a quiet life?’
‘I can think of a few,’ said Louise. ‘My dad for one.’
‘Thought your dad was a successful banker?’
‘No, Matt, he’s just a local manager. He was offered a job at head office, but he decided he liked knowing everyone in the town, making his own decisions about people, getting home to us all at night for supper.’
‘Right. Blimey. Where do you get it from, then? Your ambition and so on?’
‘My granny,’ said Louise.
‘Your granny? But she’s a—’
‘Woman? Yes, obviously. A woman from a different age. When they didn’t usually do a lot. But Granny did. She founded a cleaning agency, when she couldn’t get a charlady one day, and it was terribly successful. She was running five branches right up to the war. Had to stop then because the charladies were all working in factories, but afterwards she started again. Then she got ill and died of cancer, and Grandpa took the business over and ruined it.’ She sat back in her chair and smiled sweetly at Matt. ‘So I’m not the first tycoon in the family.’
When she got home that night to her rather grand new flat in Paulton Square, Chelsea, she sat looking over the square, sipping some very nice white wine, and wondering if Matt would now make her an equal partner in the firm in place of Jimbo. He ought to; she had contributed certainly as much as, and arguably a great deal more than, Jimbo. But she had known Matt for long enough to know that this was far from being a certainty.
What was a certainty, however, was how extremely sorry he would be if he didn’t.
Victor Johnson looked at David Berenson across his desk. His expression was the mixture of self-confidence and cunning that had made him one of the most successful divorce lawyers in the southern states of America.
‘I’m glad you told me all that, David,’ he said, ‘and under the circumstances, your wife hiring a private eye, it’s a pity you didn’t before. I think you need to get this girl on side. How does she feel about you now?’
‘Not too warmly.’
‘Right. I mean, it’s a pretty dodgy scenario, if it got out. Especially you giving her that money.’
‘I didn’t have any choice,’ said David defensively.
‘No, and you can warn her that blackmail is a crime. But – actually it is checkmate on that one. So, see if you can talk her into at least keeping shtum. Maybe she needs a little more money for her business? Could that be the way forward?’
‘It could be,’ said David. ‘That’s very clever.’
‘Right. See what you can do.’ Johnson smiled his catlike smile. His nickname was not Victory Johnson for nothing.
Eliza asked Matt if he was going to make Louise his partner; he told her he didn’t want to talk about it.
‘Why?’
‘Well, I assume you’re concerned with her feminist rights. Making sure she gets them.’ His eyes across the table were wary.
‘And if I was?’
‘You know my views on all that.’
‘What, that women don’t really belong in the real world? That they’re there to breed from and cook and look after you lot.’
‘That’s a fair summary,’ he said.
Eliza had had a difficult day with Emmie and she suddenly felt angry.
‘I know you’re trying to wind me up,’ she said, ‘but I still find that offensive. I just don’t understand you, Matt. Louise is as important to that company of yours as Jimbo ever was.’
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘Viewed from outside, which is important, she certainly isn’t. You’d never get a huge deal signed on her say-so. People wouldn’t have the trust in her.’
‘But you could help change that. If you made her partner now.’
‘And why should I want to change it? It’s the way the world works, Eliza. You’ll never get women running it, never, and I for one don’t think they should.’
‘Because they should be at home having babies?’
‘That’s what you’re ultimately there for, for God’s sake.’
‘No, Matt, it isn’t. The things are not mutually exclusive. I hate it that you talk like that, I really do. And I hate how it’s affected my life and what you’ve made me give up.’
‘I wondered when we’d get round to that.’
The row was long and bitter, only ending when Matt appeared in the doorway of the spare room, where Eliza had retired as she increasingly did, saying he was sorry and he loved her. And that he would try at least to see things more sympathetically, ‘although I still think it’d be wrong, you leaving Emmie when she’s so young.’
‘So I’ve just about gathered,’ she said, but she managed at least the shadow of a smile.
‘And meantime, I have a little idea for right now?’
‘I’d sort of gathered that too. And what if I don’t go along with it …’
‘I shall try very hard to make you,’ he said, ‘and if I fail, I’ll try some more.’
He sat down on the bed, leaned forward to kiss her. Reluctantly she felt herself respond, and then pushed him away.
His head dropped to her breasts; he began to tease her nipples with his tongue; angry still she pushed him off, but not before the familiar stabbings of pleasure began, the softening within herself; he sensed it and moved his head down to her stomach, began to kiss her there.
‘I want you,’ he said, ‘I want you so much. So much more than more than. I’m so sorry, Eliza. Sorry I’m such a brute.’
She giggled suddenly. ‘You do
n’t really think that. That you’re a brute.’
‘No, of course I don’t. But I am sorry to have upset you so much.’
‘You always win, don’t you?’ she said, slithering down in the bed, holding out her arms, ‘always, always.’
‘So far,’ he said.
Afterwards, he told her he hoped she knew how much he loved her. Eliza said she didn’t actually and asked him if he realised the only time he told her that was in precisely those circumstances, ‘you know, after the row, after the sex, when you’re feeling sleepy and soppy,’ and he was so shocked that he put the light on, struggled to sit up and stared at her, with an expression of such acute remorse that she laughed.
‘That’s not true, is it?’ he said, and ‘Matt, it’s totally true,’ she said. ‘Try saying it at some ordinary time. Like breakfast.’
‘I never see you at breakfast.’
‘That’s true. OK. When we’re watching telly.’
‘You’re always asleep.’
‘That’s true too. OK, then when we’re in the park. With Emmie.’
‘I’ll try and remember.’
She actually forgot all about it, but the next time they were feeding the ducks in Richmond Park, he suddenly took her hand and said, ‘Eliza, I love you.’
‘Oh, my God,’ she said, touched beyond anything, ‘oh, my God, you remembered. Matt Shaw, I love you too.’
‘Good. Right, don’t expect it every time, will you?’
Jack Beckham had invited Eliza to his leaving party.
Her first reaction to the invitation was surprise that he should have remembered her; her second delight that he wanted her there; and her third a serious doubt as to whether she actually wanted to go.
She had been feeling increasingly demoralised. In theory her life was great; she spent a lot of time telling herself so and most days would see her determinedly setting herself to various tasks – finding the new house that Matt wanted, she’d made an offer on a four-storey beauty in Fulham, quite near the river, checking out schools, taking Emmie to endless ballet classes and music clubs and riding lessons, buying her clothes, and of course seeing her friends. Ah yes. Her friends. The girls with whom she had grown up, middle-aged beyond their years, all braying versions of their own mothers, married to carbon copies of their own fathers; quite often she would feel a sort of claustrophobia, a despair at the life she had found herself locked into, and make her excuses and leave.
The Decision Page 40