She put the phone down and looked at Gray, still cold, still hurt. ‘She’ll call in the morning. I think I’ll go and have a bath. OK?’
‘OK,’ said Gray. He felt as if he had been saved, albeit briefly, from some great, almost unimaginable, danger.
He looked at his watch. It was just after seven. Time to start making the sauce.
Chapter Four
Bard Channing was in a rage. The news cut a swathe through Channing House. There was Bard as he normally was, volatile, awkward, overbearing and bad tempered, and then there was Bard in a rage. The two conditions did not bear comparison.
Oliver Clarke had witnessed the dawn of the rage, and it was he indeed who had conveyed the news of it beyond the confines of his own small office adjacent to Pete Barbour’s.
He had watched Bard walk into Pete’s office in the way he did when he was really angry, less heavily than usual and very fast, his face taut and set, looking straight ahead of him, and slam the door behind him so hard that the windows reverberated. Jean Rivers, Pete’s secretary, who had just brought Oliver’s post in, looked up startled at the noise, and made a face at Oliver.
‘One of those days,’ she said quietly, and disappeared again.
Oliver started sorting through his post and pretended he wasn’t trying to hear what was going on next door; he could hear voices, Bard’s voice rising, roaring, and the occasional choice phrase – ‘bring the whole fucking pack of cards down’; ‘lunatic incompetence’, were two that came through particularly clearly – alternating with the lower, level hum of Pete’s voice and then Bard’s again, louder still. ‘I don’t care where it fucking comes from, Pete, just find it.’
The phone rang on Oliver’s desk suddenly; it was Sue in Reception with a package for him: ‘Those disks you wanted, I think,’ and he went out, grateful to have a genuine reason to escape from the line of fire in which he sat. Channing never saw him on the way into Pete’s office but as he came out he looked directly at him, and if he was in a rage, or even a bad temper, he was quite capable of shouting at Oliver for some infinitesimal thing, like having a window open in winter, or for simply looking up at him as he went past.
‘Haven’t you got anything to do?’ he had said one morning, as Oliver glanced up and smiled nervously at him. ‘Better find it, or get out. This is not a charitable concern I’m running here, you know.’
‘Into the bunkers,’ Oliver said now to Sue, picking up the package. ‘Heavy artillery attack coming in.’
‘Sir?’
‘Yup.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘No idea.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ she said, and grinned at him.
As Oliver went back into his office, Bard came out; he glared at Oliver but didn’t say anything. His face was ashen, his eyes very dark. He walked into Jean’s office; Oliver could see through her open door, watched as he literally threw a heavy envelope onto her desk. ‘Get that round to Methuens fast,’ he said, and stalked out again.
Oliver waited a few moments, then went in. ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Jean, who was desperately trying to get through to the messengers, ‘except that he asked Pete for some bank statements earlier, and I took them along to Marcia’s office. You know the rest.’
‘Wow,’ said Oliver.
Oliver had worked at Channings for just over six months, as assistant to Pete Barbour. He didn’t like it and indeed it wasn’t at all what he wanted to do; he had got a 2:1 degree in economics from University College, London, and then been taken on by a very good firm to do his articles. He had been there a year or so, and passed his first set of exams, when the very good firm had struck the rocks and laid forty of its staff off at all levels – including its articled clerks.
Oliver might have stuck it out and found another firm had he not just taken out a mortgage that was fractionally higher than he could actually afford on a small house in Ealing, and bought a new car; he might still have stuck it out, but his sister, Melinda, had panicked, told their mother, and she had phoned Bard Channing as she had done on every serious crisis in the past twenty years and asked him if he could help. And Bard Channing, as always, had helped, and arranged for him to see Pete, who needed an assistant. It was impossible for Oliver to refuse. Pete Barbour had been extremely nice, said he understood it wasn’t quite what Oliver wanted, and even said he could go for interviews if he wanted to; so far there hadn’t been any. Articles in good accountancy firms, especially for people who were halfway through, were hard to come by.
The whole thing had hit Oliver very hard, especially as he had begun to feel he could at last stand on his own feet and stop being beholden to Bard Channing. He knew he was very lucky to have him as his mentor, he knew how grateful he should be for all Mr Channing had done for him – giving him work experience, topping up his grant at university, helping out with buying clothes and even his first car, getting him holiday jobs – and he actually was grateful, but he still was looking forward to it stopping. Stopping being grateful, stopping being the poor relation.
He didn’t mind so much all that Channing did for his mother: making sure she really was in the best nursing home, visiting her regularly, and sending her flowers and books and baskets of fruit and an endless supply of the rather pop classical CDs she loved, and lavish presents on her birthday (like a player for the CDs); or even what he did for Melinda, paying for her French exchange when she’d been doing her GCSEs and for her piano lessons, but none of it felt right. His mother told him not to be silly, that it was wonderful that Mr Channing was so good to them, an awful lot of people wouldn’t have been, would just have lost interest, and he had never for a moment rubbed their noses in it, made them feel grateful; and Melinda had a crush on the whole bloody family, had spent weeks making a dress for the new baby for instance, in the hope they’d be asked to the christening (of course they weren’t), and as for her passion for Barnaby, her conviction that he liked her too, that really was pathetic.
It was almost exactly twenty years now since their father had died, Oliver thought, staring at the date in his diary: 14 April, and his father had been killed on the 17th. That was always a bad day; his mother still got very upset and he and Melinda always went to see her, took her to his grave in the churchyard and laid some flowers on it, and talked about him. Neither Oliver nor Melinda could remember their father: Melinda had been a tiny baby, and Oliver three when it had happened; when he had crashed the car, wrapped it round a tree that awful foggy, unseasonal April night. He had been driving home from the office, not Channing House then of course, nothing so grand, he and Bard and Douglas Booth were operating from a building in Bayswater, but they had still been doing well, riding the first recession, ‘the real one’, Channing always called it, building their empire. And Nigel Clarke had never seen the real rewards, reaped the big bucks; and neither had his wife or children. But Bard Channing had been very good to them. Very good indeed.
In a funny way, Oliver felt he was paying for it now.
Things had quietened considerably by lunchtime. Bard had calmed down (the news of this spread almost as fast as that of the rage had) and had in any case gone out, Pete Barbour had emerged from his own office, looking still slightly shaken but almost cheerful, and Oliver was just thinking that he might after all be able to go and meet one of his former colleagues for a drink when the phone rang.
‘Oliver? Oliver, this is Teresa Booth.’
He couldn’t think for a moment who she was; then remembered going to her wedding, having to dance with her even, briefly (‘Come along, Oliver, I’m intent on stepping out with every male in the family’), being not quite sure if he liked her or not. He hadn’t met her since.
‘Oh, Mrs Booth. Yes, hallo. How are you?’
‘I’m absolutely fine, Oliver, thank you. How are you? And how is your poor mother? I liked her so much, and one of the things I’m determined to do, now my house is finally finished and my business
affairs properly under control, is go and visit her. Could you give me the telephone number and address of her nursing home?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s – ’
She interrupted him. ‘No, you can give it me when I see you. Which is the other reason I’m phoning. I want to buy you lunch, Oliver. I’d like to get to know you a bit better, and I’ve discovered a link with your family, a cousin of mine used to work with your father. Small world, isn’t it? Long before Channings, when he was at McIntyres, you know, they were all really young, of course. She was asking me if I knew anything about him, and about you two youngsters, and your mother, and I promised I’d try and get some news for her.’
‘Oh,’ said Oliver, ‘oh, I see. Well – ’
‘So I thought what a wonderful excuse to have lunch with an attractive young man. Would you do that for me, Oliver? Come and meet me one day?’
‘Well – yes,’ said Oliver, hoping he didn’t sound too unenthusiastic. ‘Yes, that would be very nice.’
‘Good,’ said Teresa Booth. She sounded as if she’d just clinched some business deal. ‘Well now, I’m sure you’re much busier than I am, so you say a day. One day next week, I thought. How about Thursday? Thursday at the Café Pelican, in St Martin’s Lane? That suit you?’
Oliver found himself saying it would suit him very well, and thanking her. He put the phone down, wondering why it was quite such an unattractive prospect, and wondering also what on earth she really wanted.
Kirsten woke up early on Sunday morning and decided she was going to do three things before the day was over: have some really good sex, go to Mass, and see her mother. The first two were comparatively easy: Toby (who had thrown her so thoroughly out of bed a few weeks earlier) had phoned her the day before and said he’d like to see her; the church was just around the corner. But it was a long drive to Somerset, and although she hadn’t lost her licence, she had got a hefty fine and six points on it, and staying within the speed limit would make a very long day of it. Then she felt ashamed of begrudging her mother that, and picked up the phone and called the nursing home.
Yes, they said, that would be very nice, Mrs Channing would like to see her, she was very much better, probably home in another fortnight – oh God, thought Kirsten, so soon, at least when Pattie was being dried out no-one had to worry about her, and then promptly felt guilty again. She was a cow; it was time she went to church. She said she’d be down soon after lunch and then called Toby; his answering machine was on. Where was he, at nine in the morning on a Sunday? Bastard. She slammed the phone down again without leaving a message, had a shower, got dressed and drove herself to St Augustine’s in the Fulham Palace Road.
She sat in the church, watching intently as the priest offered up the bread and the wine for consecration and thus transubstantiation, trying to recapture the total, blinding, dazzling faith of her childhood that Christ was there, for her, in the bread and the wine, helping her to manage, helping her to be good. She went up to the altar rail, knelt, received the host, waited, waited actually praying for the peace, the comfort, the knowledge: but it did not come. She went back to her seat, and knelt again, prayed again, but still in vain, as always these days; hot tears of frustration, of misery, of disappointment rose behind her eyes, made a fierce ache in her heart. What had happened, she wondered, to the little girl who had believed so passionately, so deeply she had wanted to be a nun, and who even when that had passed had known with a sweet surety that God was in Heaven, and that He loved her? Lost, that little girl was, lost for ever, left behind while Kirsten had had to learn to care for a mother who had often been so drunk she could not even get herself to bed but had fallen asleep on the stairs; to struggle with mourning for a father who had walked away and refused to take her; to care for and lie to a sister who was still too small to understand; to battle with the taunts at school about a mother who was always late for everything, if indeed she came at all, and a father who was always in the papers with a long succession of pretty girls at his side; who had wanted to be loved so much she was climbing into bed with boys before her fifteenth birthday; and who had done something so wicked at sixteen in having an abortion she was destined straight for Hell; and who had now to live with the knowledge that there was in her father’s home another family, all much beloved, with a mother who would always be there for them. No wonder she was gone, that good, hopeful little girl; and how stupid, how appallingly stupid to think that the God who had cared for her would come back for a moment to the person she had become.
Angry suddenly, with herself as much as the Church, with her own failure as much as God’s, Kirsten stood up, strode out, her high heels beating out a retreat on the flagged floor. People stared at her, half shocked, half reproving; she stared back, praying there would be no more tears. God answered that one at least. Outside, it was bright, sunny, the sky brilliant, dappled with white; she walked down the street towards her car, fast at first, angrily fast, then more slowly, as she forced common sense into herself. How stupid, how unutterably foolish to look for easy answers, instant comfort; what was the matter with her that she expected so much for so little, from one hour, less, in her bigoted, superstitious Church?
‘Time to grow up, Kirsten,’ she said aloud, as she turned into her own street, and felt her spirits lift at the sight of Toby’s car parked in front of her flat.
‘You look cheerful,’ he said, getting out, coming to meet her, giving her a hug. ‘What did I do?’
‘More than God could,’ said Kirsten, hugging him back. ‘I think I’m going to give Him up.’ And then felt so horrified at herself, at her own blasphemy, that she crossed herself.
‘You and that Church of yours,’ said Toby. ‘Did you ever think of being a nun?’
‘Yes I did,’ said Kirsten, looking at him very seriously, and then seeing the incredulity on his face, unable to bear the ridicule, she forced herself to laugh.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, and bent to kiss her; his mouth was very hard, very hungry, and her own meeting it felt the same. Five minutes later they were in bed.
Kirsten was very good at sex: she was imaginative, tireless, uninhibited, noisy. Most of her boyfriends liked it; a few didn’t, complaining she was too dominant, too greedy. Toby seemed to like it very much.
‘You make love like a man,’ he said, released finally from her demanding, almost frantic body, falling away from her, smoothing her stomach tenderly, kissing her hand, her hair.
‘How do you know?’ said Kirsten, laughing, She reached out, touched him, bent and kissed his penis, licking it tenderly, thoughtfully; she was still excited, the throbbing of her final orgasm only just easing, leaving her; she knew she could do with more.
‘It’s no use, Kirsten,’ he said, smiling, pulling her head up by her mane of hair, ‘no use at all. I’m done for. Now what did you say? Oh yes, how do I know. Because I am one, you fool.’
‘So how do girls make love?’ said Kirsten. ‘No, don’t tell me, I might get jealous.’
‘They don’t take over,’ said Toby, ‘but that’s fine, I like being taken over. It’s good.’ He lay back and looked at her. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said, ‘really missed you. I’m sorry about – well, I’m sorry.’
‘No, I deserved it,’ said Kirsten. ‘You were right. I am a brat. Everyone says so. Even my sister.’
She heard the sadness in her own voice, was startled by it. She looked at Toby and saw he had heard it too.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I like brats. I’m a pretty fine example of one myself.’
‘That’s true,’ said Kirsten, smiling. Toby had been born with several silver spoons in his mouth, the only child of rich and doting parents; he had arrived at his present employment, in a firm of City brokers, by way of Eton and Oxford; was tall, athletic (he’d got a half blue for rugby), good looking and charming; had been given a flat in Kensington for his twenty-fifth birthday, and amongst his other talents was a very good lover. He also had a fairly healthy ego.
&n
bsp; ‘How would you like to do something really seriously unbrattish for the rest of the day?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Drive me to Somerset. I want to see my mother.’
‘Sure. On one condition.’
‘What?’
‘You take up tonight where you just left off,’ he said. ‘I can see I might very well have recovered by then.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Kirsten.
Toby didn’t like talking while he drove; he said it wrecked his concentration. As he drove his BMW at a steady eighty-five, even on the single-carriageway stretches of the A303, Kirsten was happy to be silent. They stopped at a pub just north of Taunton, for a late lunch; Kirsten, feeling sick, ordered a Perrier and a salad.
‘I’d forgotten how exciting it is, driving with you,’ she said, slightly weakly.
‘It’s exciting doing most things with me. So what are you doing with yourself?’ he said, falling on a plateful of pork pie and pickle. ‘I should have asked, sorry. So busy telling you about me. Is it true you’re working for your dad?’
‘Good Lord,’ said Kirsten, ‘how did you know?’
‘The Square Mile is a pretty small place. Tell me what happened. Did Hell actually freeze over?’
‘What?’
‘You once told me that Hell would have to freeze over before you’d do that. I thought you were a girl of your word.’
‘Oh – well. Not quite, obviously.’ She felt embarrassed suddenly, ashamed of her hostility to the father who had taken her on so generously, so unconditionally (apart from that she should work her arse off and ask for no favours), ashamed too that she had no intention of staying, and that he had no idea of that; and then sharply remembering the childhood she had relived that morning in church, she said, ‘Toby, I just got sick of being a loser. And I thought he owed me one.’
‘No doubt he did. So what are you doing? Cleaning the toilets? Licking his boots before meetings?’
The Dilemma Page 10