by Anna Maxted
I sighed and began to clear my desk.
‘So were you listening? I want you to use this time to think. Think about what sort of person you are, Hannah. Not everyone is cut out for this. You were once, but people change. Then again, there are different sorts of approach to the job. Me, I find you almost can’t help break the Data Protection Act in this business. But I know enough PIs who’re as straight as they come. And maybe you’re one of those, Hannah. But, maybe you’re not a PI at all. Maybe you’re happy to take what you see at face value. Maybe the truth is something you can take or leave. Maybe, Hannah, your true calling is as a lawyer.’
There was no need to insult me.
I picked my mobile off my desk and tried not to feel like a loser. It didn’t even help that my mobile was silver and the size of a matchbox. (I’d upgraded after seeing Jack’s.) I was a girl with the best gadgets, the smallest phone, the biggest TV. And yet I felt like the girl with the biggest phone, the smallest TV. I felt as if I was walking around and everyone was assuming I owned a big fat mobile phone. Gabrielle had something similar. Everyone, for years and years, thought she was vegetarian. As a voracious meat eater (she used the Atkins Diet like a bus – on, off, on, off), she found this offensive. You can tell a lot about yourself from what people assume about you, which is why I never ask. Jason, when we first met, offered the assumption that I was a girl who never filled her car with petrol, who ignored the red light until the vehicle conked out in the street. I saw where he was coming from, but actually I am obsessive about maintaining a full tank. It’s part of the job, being a bit of a girl scout, prepared for any eventuality. Cash, credit cards, full tank, bag with a change of jacket. You never know what the subject is going to do. I was grateful, then, for my job, that it made me mysterious, unpredictable.
I walked out of Hound Dog whistling. Greg was not going to see me cry like a girl. But I clenched my teeth so hard, I was surprised they didn’t shatter in my mouth. My job was my identity. I was big phone, small TV girl without it. I felt exposed, naked, like one of those furless cats. It was horrible.
I got home and slammed the door. I didn’t want to see anyone. I thought of calling Jack, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel like an attractive proposition. Even if you’re selling a can of beans, presentation is all. I sat on my sofa, didn’t switch on the TV, just stared at its silent grey face.
What would I do for two weeks? An enforced break on no pay doesn’t put you in the holiday mood, even if you are free to watch films in the afternoon.
I rang my father.
‘Sugar pumpkin! How are you?’
‘I’ve been better, Roger.’
I paused. Here was I, disengaged from Jason, a family pariah (I suspected that if I didn’t force myself upon Gabrielle, my mother, or my father, there was a good chance I’d never hear from any one of them again), dismissed from my job, sodden with regret about not seeing my grandma before she died, appalled about Ollie leaving Gabrielle – and my father hadn’t called. He wasn’t like some men. He was perfectly able to pick up the phone in a social situation and chat.
‘Darling, I am so sorry I haven’t been in touch. I’ve not had a minute to call my own – I’ve been in the office sorting out dramas, all the while organising a real drama – Inimitable Theatre’s production of Separate Tables opens on Wednesday night! But I’ve been with you in spirit. Martine has assigned herself our personal go-between, and hoorah for giving Jason the heave-ho. He would have made you miserable. That fellow was too … inconsiderate.’
‘I didn’t realise the play was still going ahead,’ I said. ‘What with Grandma dying, me out of a job – yes, I was told today – Ollie leaving Gabrielle – you knew? – my engagement being announced in the press and called off the same day, making me the talk of the Suburb – everyone in the family seems to be cracking up. I’m surprised there’s time for the play.’
My heart battered my chest. I had never spoken to my father like this. It bordered on rude and was unprecedented. I tensed to be shouted at.
‘Oh, Hannah,’ said my father, instead. ‘Oh, Hannah,’ in a deep, warm voice. ‘You poor love. Now let me say this, no one in the Suburb is laughing at you. Everyone was greatly saddened to hear the marriage was off.’
Forgive my cynicism, I curled my lip. There’s a red minibus that speeds round the tree-lined roads of the Suburb delivering Filipino maids hither and thither, and when the woman next door had a heart attack and her son called the ambulance, the minibus hooted the ambulance for blocking the road. This, after the driver and his passengers had watched the ambulance men transporting the woman’s prone body on a stretcher from the house, like a pack of Romans watching a lion eat a Christian.
I doubted that the Suburb was saddened to hear my marriage was off. I said so.
‘Oh, Hannah,’ said Roger for the third time. ‘I know what you need. You need a treat!’
My ears pricked up. Even though I’m not five.
‘What you need, my darling, is to eat a fancy meal, in a fancy restaurant, wearing fancy clothes! I’ll have to leave the dress rehearsal promptly but sod all that! My daughter comes first! I have the perfect place, Michelin starred, I shall call up using my deepest voice and the name Rockefeller, and let’s see if they dare refuse me a table! I’ll pick you up at eight thirty. Now, chin up, and best frock! Ta-ta!’
Some people sneer at grand gestures. I don’t. I find the ‘grand’ bit overrides the ‘gesture’. Anyway, I had a tricky question to ask my father, and – short of asking it in the middle of a nick surrounded by coppers – a fancy restaurant, where no one could raise their voice or hand, was the perfect venue.
Chapter 32
I won’t deny I’m annoying myself, but other people are more annoying. Even people I like. I think highly of Gabrielle, yet even she has habits that make my stomach clench. For instance, her endless comments on everyone else’s diets. She once watched me devour a heap of pasta with cheese sauce, and said, ‘You eat a lot of white food.’ I think she’d have preferred me to step into the street and spear an antelope.
Jason annoyed me in a million ways, one of them, by not picking up his feet when he walked, another, by replying ‘Sterling’ when the bank teller asked how he wanted his cash. Ollie, by visiting my flat and leaving a souvenir jammed in the toilet, which Jason then presumed was mine and freaked out about (‘I’m not getting rid of it, we’ll have to call a plumber,’ etc.). Martine, by loudly snorting air up her nose to clear it and thinking this socially acceptable. Greg, his public use of toothpicks (would he floss in a restaurant?). My mother … you know about. But my father was faultless.
Until now. He stood a little wonky on his pedestal, wobbled occasionally. He’d righted himself each time, but it had shaken my confidence. I was supersensitive to his every word, alert to any possible slip of judgement. So far, this evening I hadn’t caught him out. He pulled up on time in his black Volvo C70 (‘one of the world’s safest convertibles’), held open every door, remarked favourably on my hairstyle. And the restaurant, when we reached it, was very special. It wasn’t a place I’d go to eat if I was hungry, but it was a lovely experience.
We were greeted by a swarm of besuited men and women who smiled unceasingly and competed to offer us drinks, seats, wine lists, menus, canapés, a cocktail glass of pale froth ‘compliments of the chef’. I worried he’d spat in it, but Roger told me it was espumantay duh Pimms – don’t quote me on the spelling – and drained his through a straw.
The room was white, with floor-to-ceiling windows like a greenhouse. We overlooked what appeared to be a pond, but up close, it was the depth of a puddle. There were flame lights across it. ‘A fire-and-water mow-teef,’ Jack would have said, in a Northern accent, mocking. Nice, or tacky, depending. England always struggled in the heat, and I liked that this place was smoothly Mediterranean, as if born to it.
The food was presented like art. It was delicious but sparse, and I had to pad out each course with bread. My father sighed, and lea
nt back in his daddy bear armchair. I was seated on a wall sofa, and my feet didn’t reach the ground. I swung them, like a little girl, and swizzled the straw in my chocolate milkshake. I was psyching myself up to speak, and reckoned the best way was to cram as much sugar into my system as I could.
(Another of Gabrielle’s comments: ‘You’re addicted to sugar!’ Said while ticking off on each finger what I’d eaten that day: ‘Ricicles! White bread and honey and peanut butter! Baked potato! Coke! Honey-roasted peanuts! Baked beans! Dates! Apple juice! Lion bar! Pasta! Mascarpone sauce! Coffee with full-cream milk and two sugars! Coke! Apple pie! Raw cookie dough ice cream!’ I’d been pleasantly surprised at my balanced diet.)
My father refused to be alarmed that Ollie had left Gabrielle. ‘A storm in a teacup,’ he said, twice. ‘They’ll make it up. Best not interfere in other people’s marriages.’ Then he’d wiped his mouth with his napkin, to show that no more was to be said on the matter.
I was desperate to say, ‘Yes, but we don’t even know where Ollie is. Aren’t you worried?’ but I refrained. If he didn’t wish to discuss it, fine. I’d sacrifice this concern for another, more pressing. I was braced for the shake and the crème brûlée to turn my veins sticky with glucose, when Roger pre-empted me.
‘So,’ he said, ‘now that Jason’s out of the picture, I suppose you’ll want to bring Jack to the play!’
I swallowed. I wasn’t imagining this. I glanced at my father over the table. It was a mark of this restaurant’s quality that there was no candle placed smack in its middle like a torch shone in your eye.
‘Why are you so pro-Jack?’ The question shot out, baldly. I’d meant to soften it with a ‘tell me …’ or a ‘can I ask …’ but it never worked that way with me.
If this were a film, and my father the villain, the camera would have zoomed to his face, where a muscle would tense in his cheek, betraying his anger and discomfort. I’ve always thought that a cheap trick – I mean, what ham-faced actor can’t clench their jaw? They’re all masters of it at Inimitable Theatre. For the record, my father’s jaw remained unclenched.
He said, ‘I think he would be good for you, Hannah. That’s all. I want to see you with the right person.’
It frustrated me that he wanted to see me with any person. I disliked the universal habit – common to any old busybody with a vague blood tie – of meddling with their younger relatives’ love lives. I couldn’t get away from the thought that they were making plans for my vagina, hunting down suitable penises for it. Surely this was a private, personal endeavour, no one else’s business? It was the reason I failed English A level; I found Jane Austen virtually pornographic.
And yet, vaginas weren’t my present concern.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘You’re very keen that he comes to see the play.’
‘Absolutely!’ said my father, smiling broadly. ‘I thought it would be nice for you to bring someone, and Jack knows all the family. It would be very relaxed, very chilled.’
I wished he wouldn’t use words like ‘chilled’. I was too old to use words like ‘chilled’.
And then, in for the kill. ‘Daddy, did you know that Jack is an actors’ agent? A very successful actors’ agent?’ I gripped my seat as if it were perched on a cliff edge. The way my heart beat, it might have been.
‘Noooooooo!’ said my father. And then, in a tone of hurt and shock, ‘Ha-nnah! You didn’t think I …?’ And then, chiding but affectionate: ‘Now, how long have you known me?’ And then, stern but understanding: ‘You’ve gone through a rough patch, been betrayed by a lot of people – Jason, your boss, your mother—’
‘Well, to be honest, Mum’s been fine, actually. I think the salt in the meatloaf was—’
‘Wwwwhatever. All I’m saying is, your trust in people close to you has understandably been compromised, but I have to say, I am quite taken aback at your extremely offensive intimation that I could ever, would ever, stoop so low as to use my own daughter to promote my silly little acting career – it’s not even a career, it’s a hobby, a self-indulgence, an escape – if I even dreamt for one picosecond that your imagination had taken off on such a warped, vicious route, I would never, never have suggested it, in fact, I insist, don’t bring Jack to the play, I couldn’t bear it if you were to harbour even the twinkle of a suspicion that I had tricked you into bringing him to satisfy my own selfish ends, now, Hannah sweetness, do you swear to me that you will, on no account, bring Jack Forrester to see your old dad make a fool of himself on stage this Wednesday night at seven in the Old School Hall?’
I was almost snapped in two with guilt.
‘Daddy,’ I said, ‘I’m bringing Jack to the damn play, end of story, accept my most servile apologies, and let’s forget this conversation, let’s scrape it from our minds like, ah, mud off our boots. Pardon, do I want coffee? Roger, are you having? Decaffeinated, please, only if it’s decaffeinated.’
*
The trouble with me, I realised the second the words left my mouth, was that I’d do anything to please my father. It was pathological, although the sugar rush hadn’t helped. Even if I thought I was annoyed with Roger, that deeper need overrode my annoyance. I felt sick with myself, like a reformed alcoholic sneaking a slug of whisky. I might as well have promised my father entitlement to the throne.
But … I wanted to speak to Jack. His last words to me at the theatre rolled around my head like marbles: I would have looked after you for ever if you’d let me.
I was beginning to see that Jack was so protective of his feelings, almost every emotion was hidden behind a shield of possibilities. You could never be certain of what he meant unless you took a risk.
The next morning, I thought about it and thought about it and rushed to the toilet retching, and then I called Jack, at his office. I was thinking that if he said, ‘How are you?’ perhaps I could reply, ‘Single.’
How to put a man off you for ever.
His assistant answered, with the air of a doorman. ‘Jack Forrester’s office. Can I help you?’
‘Yes, please. It’s Hannah Lovekin. I’d like to speak to him, is he – is he there?’
‘May I ask what it’s concerning?’
‘I’m his ex-wife.’
‘Oh! Sorry. I thought you were an actor wanting representation! One second, I’ll put you through.’
After a long pause, Jack came on the line. ‘We really shouldn’t be speaking.’
I pressed my lips together, to stop a gasp of relief escaping. ‘Jack,’ I said. I loved the sound of his name in my mouth. ‘I wanted you to know that I ended my engagement to Jason.’ I paused. Waited. Silence. I closed my eyes briefly and added, ‘And, I do think that a lot of what you said at the theatre, about me being … jumpy around intimacy … that’s probably correct. So, er, well noticed.’
I stopped. Nothing.
‘Look. I wondered if I could come and see you. Anywhere you like. Any time. I’m not working right now. Later today, I thought?’
‘Hannah. I don’t know.’
‘Please.’
‘I’ve got a lot of work on.’
‘Well, maybe I could meet you at your office, after work.’
‘What, come to my office?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll have to wait around.’
‘Fine.’
‘Hannah, I think you have this idea that some men just spring back into shape, that they’re immune to pain.’
‘Oh! I don’t think I think that! I hope I don’t think that. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it.’
‘You should.’
‘Jack!’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll come to your office, then, tonight, at, say, seven.’
‘What?’
‘Please.’
‘Christ, OK.’
I wiped off my lipstick immediately after, feeling flat. It had cost me a lot to ring him, and he knew that. Yet, he hadn’t given me a thing. Still, I suppose you can’t expect every encounte
r to be smouldering.
Exactly eight hours later, I was sat in the corner of Jack’s office on a small hard chair, watching him work. There was a massive oak desk between us. He had said one word to me (‘Hello’) between a series of endless and indecipherable phone conversations.
‘Well, if I did take you on, I’d get you out of the soap as soon as possible. And no press or publicity. No more being papped in short skirts outside Click at three a.m. A third series? Turn it down. You can’t be frightened of turning things down. People who come out of soaps are very hard to get jobs for. Snobbery, darling. Your choice. It’s going to be hard to get you seen for, say, a Shakespeare film, but that’s the aim. The Donmar with a good director. Anything with Sam Mendes. A combination of film and good theatre. One-off TV if it’s good. Ideally, a dour maid in Pride and Prejudice, whatever. Something brilliant at the National. We’ve got to keep the balance, keep the door open. Have a think, we’ll talk, mmhmm. Bye.
‘Venetia? That breakdown’s come through. Tomorrow at ten suit you? We’ll discuss which parts we’re going to suggest on. Yeah, two main parts, not cast. I think they’re looking for genuine Irish clients for this. Tilly’s reading the script tonight. Where are you? Unlucky. He was probably looking through the curtain to see where you were. See you then, bye.
‘What? I know. We got the tip-off. News of the World. They’ve got the quote. All it needs is collaboration. I don’t, I never say a word. Pact with the devil. All I can say is, it’s not major. OK.
‘Lucien? Typical. Hasn’t worked for months, then he gets two things that conflict. I spoke to Vanity Fair. No. Got to be Gloucester on Thursday, it’s the only day they’ve got the windmill. Terence. He’s playing opposite him. Thursday in Prague, has to be, Terence can’t do any other day. Alternative windmills? I’ll get Tilly on to it. Good, bye.
‘Clara, sweetheart? Jack. You sitting down? The deal is done. Yes! I know! Legally contracted! Drinks somewhere starry, it’s a date. Not at all, well done you. If you’ve got talent, things turn around. I’ve passed on your details to the production office. Costume will call you tomorrow. The production assistant already called the office, wanting to know where to send the latest draft. It’s being biked to your flat first thing. I know, very exciting! Sleep tight, darling, big kiss.’