Finally she came back, looked at him blankly and said, ‘How may I help you?’
‘I’m interested in the history of a building,’ said Gray politely.
‘If it’s history you want the library. High Street, second on left – ’
‘No, not that sort of history. Of a building in Easterhope, put up in the early ’seventies.’
‘Well, there were lots,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to be more specialised that that.’
‘Specific,’ said Gray
‘Pardon?’
‘Sorry. Nothing. It’s the development on South Avenue, just near the Ring Road, the flats, you know, and there’s a school and an old people’s home – ’
‘That’d be South Farm Estate.’
‘Ah, yes. Yes, that’s the one.’
‘What do you want to know, the history did you say?’
‘Yes, the planning history, and then when it was actually built, all that sort of thing.’
‘Is your interest professional?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Gray humbly. ‘I’m a journalist and I phoned to say I was doing an article on – ’
‘You on the News?’
‘Yes,’ said Gray, cautiously. He hadn’t thought he’d mentioned that.
‘We had two blokes here yesterday, wanting to photograph the new statue. You people ought to be co-operative together a bit more.’
‘Oh,’ said Gray, ‘oh, no, not the Easterhope News. The News on Sunday, national paper.’
‘Oh well,’ she said, clearly uninterested again, ‘you should have gone through the press offfice at the town hall.’
‘I did. And they told me to come straight through you. Said you were always exceptionally helpful.’
It worked every time, this one. In fact, he rarely spoke to press offices, who tended to be not only unhelpful, but suspicious of the press.
She smiled. ‘Oh, well, in that case. Down there, the planning offices. Tell them Jackie said it was all right.’
The planning offices were even dingier; beyond the mottled plastic counter that was Reception, he could see endless, floor-to-ceiling bulging brown files on racks, rows of grey tin filing cabinets, men in short-sleeved shirts and women in cotton dresses either thumbing listlessly through sheaves of paper or tapping slightly less listlessly onto computers. Gray was just yielding to serious depression when a very pretty girl in a tight T-shirt and a Lycra mini with the longest, blackest, false eyelashes Gray had ever seen came and smiled at him over the mottled plastic.
‘How may I help you?’
‘I’m told you may have what I’m looking for,’ he said choosing the double entendre carefully, giving his most careful, easily charming smile.
‘Depends what it is,’ she said and looked at him beneath the lashes.
‘Well, it’s rather boring, I’m afraid. Just a file on the South Farm Estate.’
‘That is boring,’ she said, ‘you’re right. What you want that for, then?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ said Gray. ‘I’m writing an article on architectural development in the ’sixties and ’seventies.’
‘Oh I see. Your paper doesn’t do those page three type things, does it?’
Gray paused before answering, trying to gauge her reason for asking; he didn’t want to offend her. ‘No, not really,’ he said trying to imagine a pair of oversized and bouncing boobs on the austere pages of the News. It seemed, bizarrely, a rather good idea.
‘I think they’re disgusting,’ she said.
‘Oh, me too.’
‘Not that I’m one of those women libbers,’ she said firmly. ‘But I just think it’s awful, men ogling away at them, in the canteen and that. You feel really awful, as if they could see you like that – and also – ’ warming to her subject; she clearly felt Gray was in a position of some authority in such matters – ‘also, why do they choose such awful models most of the time? There are loads of really pretty girls walking about with really nice bodies and they choose ones who look like they’re deformed or sort of.’
‘Yes, I couldn’t agree more.’
‘I mean, I wouldn’t do it, of course, but I think if they had girls who were more, like, normal, it would be a lot better. Anyway, you want the files on South Farm. Would that be right from the beginning?’
‘Yes, please. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’
‘Haven’t got anything else to do,’ she said, shrugging.
You could never quite believe it, when something suddenly worked, when a hunch came good, when things fitted even better than you’d hoped. It was like the first mouthful when you were really hungry, the first drink at the end of an endless, tough day, tipping over the brow of a hill and taking off down the other side on a bicycle: a mixture of such physical and emotional pleasure it could be savoured and remembered for a long time. And in those grey and dingy offices, sitting at a table, thumbing through dirty files, Gray found himself staring incredulously at the names on the sheets of paper before him and looked up at the sun, shafting down in great dusty lines through the grubby windows, and at one and the same time was unable to believe it, and knew, without more than a nought point one percentage of real evidence, that he had his answer.
‘Could I have the early files on Bard Channing again? ’Sixties and’seventies,’ said Gray.
The girl in charge of what was left of the cuttings library at the News grinned at him. ‘You’ll wear those things out. Hang on.’ She handed them to him; battered brown files filled with yellowing papers. ‘Here you are. We’re closing in half an hour. That OK?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’
He sat down at a table and started methodically from the beginning. She was right, they were becoming very familiar. The young Bard, thin then, the very first time he had hit the press, grinning, flanked by an equally cheerful-looking Duggie Booth, and an earnest young man in spectacles called Nigel Clarke.
‘Three young Davids defeat Goliath,’ said the headline. They had won a contract to put up a small but prestigious development in South London, against some stiff opposition from the big boys. No details, no more names. The year was 1970.
A couple more like that. One of the articles was more detailed, a short history of the partnership – Gray knew that one literally by heart, how the young Channing had been working for an estate agency, called McIntyres, along with Clarke, and how one of his clients, impressed by the two of them, had offered them a corner of the deal and a percentage of the profit. That had got them up and running; Booth, working for another agency, had joined them a few months later.
Then a bigger piece in the London Evening News about how they had landed a contract to build a large shopping centre in the Croydon area in ’72, and another for a huge office block near Bromley towards the end of that year. Channing’s name was mentioned in several general articles about the boom, about the absurdly escalating prices of property, about single buildings bought and sold three, four, five times in as many weeks, about the almost manic enthusiasm with which banks were lending money, afraid of being caught liquid, with large sums not invested, about the massive demand for office buildings, largely created by the policy of the Labour party to discourage commercial development in the late ’sixties, and to direct all the available funding into building homes. And Channing was quoted too: a surprisingly sober voice for one so young and in such a heady climate, counselling against too much greed, too much profiteering.
It was a counsel that saw him through the massive property crash of’73.
And – yes, there it was, also in the News and the Standard, and a small piece in the Telegraph, the announcement of the contract to build South Farm Estate in Easterhope, in Essex. And another in the same area, a year later, a block of flats and a shopping arcade. A small paragraph in the Evening News about the tragic death of Surrey businessman Nigel Clarke in a road accident, and quite long fulsome articles about him, his family, with reports of his funeral in the Guildford News and the Surrey Gazette. A picture of Heather Cl
arke, leaning heavily on Channing at the funeral, with Duggie Booth looking shattered just behind them.
And so it went on. And on. The years of consolidation: developments: the public flotation in 1980: the formation of the Northern company in 1985. But no mention anywhere of – ‘Shit!’ said Gray. He said it aloud, and then he said ‘Fuck me’ and then he sat and read and read and re-read, half aloud, his lips moving, a report in the South East London Press on a dinner given in July 1987 to mark the early retirement, due to ill health, of one Clive Hopkins, a planning officer who had been involved, amongst other things, in the prestigious South Farm development at Easterhope, built by the Channing corporation, and who was a prominent member of the Round Table, the Freemasons and several other charitable organisations for whom he had worked tirelessly. The Mayor of Easterhope, who had been the guest of honour, had wished Mr Hopkins well in his retirement and his new life in Torquay, South Devon, where he was sure Mr Hopkins would find peace and happiness, not to mention the good health which had been denied him of late.
Ten minutes later (having found nothing more), Gray handed back the files and went outside the building and gazed up smiling at the sky for a moment before roaring off on his bike, filling the lovely golden air with exhaust fumes.
When he got home, Briony was waiting on the doorstep.
‘So how are you, Gray?’
She looked, irritatingly, extraordinarily well. Well and pretty. He had somehow imagined her to have lost weight, to look drawn and pale. But she was tanned, had obviously been away; her hair was streaked with the sun, and there was a dusting of freckles on her small nose. She was wearing a linen jacket over a long navy and white silk dress, and a big straw hat; she looked, sitting sipping a Pimms in one of the wicker conservatory chairs, exactly like some refugee from the’thirties. She smiled at him very sweetly; he felt disturbed, upset by her, by the realisation that he still loved her, had missed her horribly.
‘Oh,’ he said, hearing the silence he had created as he studied her, ‘oh, I’m fine. Yes. Very busy. Very busy indeed.’
‘Really? Me too.’
‘Good. That’s good. It’s usually a quiet time for you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I’ve had a couple of commercials. One for kids, a breakfast cereal, it’s been just the best fun. And a travel firm, shooting out in Jamaica – ’
‘Hence the tan?’
‘Hence the tan. Yes. So what have you been up to?’
‘Oh – you know. This and that.’
‘Uh-huh. Not been away?’
‘No, no I haven’t been away. I’ve been very busy, and – well, no-one to go away with. Have I?’ He smiled in what he hoped was a careless, jokey manner.
‘Well, I wouldn’t know, Gray, would I? I mean, two months is quite a long time.’
‘Not really, Briony, of course it isn’t,’ he said, setting aside determinedly the memory of two rather long, exhausting nights with Kirsten Channing. ‘I wouldn’t call it long at all. Would you?’
And, ‘No,’ she said seriously, her large blue eyes fixed on his, meeting his gaze steadily, ‘no, I wouldn’t. Not really.’
Another silence, then he said, ‘Anyway, yes of course you must have your prints. I told you to take them at the time.’
‘I know, but I was – well, anyway, I didn’t want to. But the walls in my new flat do look rather bare, and I did specially like them.’ She looked at him and smiled. ‘I can’t tell you how many times I lifted the receiver to call you, put it down again. It was only because I was actually driving past the road, with half an hour to kill, I plucked up my courage. And I thought I might as well kill it sitting outside your house as anywhere.’
‘Well, the half hour is well dead now,’ he said.
‘I know. Can I make a phone call?’
‘Of course.’
He heard her saying, ‘Bit held up. Sorry. Be about another thirty minutes. Is that all right? Good, yes, great. Bye.’ And who was that she was talking to, he wondered with a stab of jealousy so fierce it was a physical invasion, some new boyfriend?
‘Sorry,’ she said, coming back in. ‘Have to go pretty soon. Photographer waiting. Wants to brief me on a job for some cruddy interior I’ve got to do next week. So shall I just go and get them, Gray, or have you moved them?’
‘No, no, they’re still there. Of course.’
She ignored the slight reproach, the emotional tug in his voice. ‘Good,’ she said quite coolly. ‘Well, I’ll just pop up and – ’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
They went up together, to the small room she had used as a workroom; she smiled at him, unhooking the pictures, handing them to him. They were very nice prints of London bridges; eighteenth century. He had never specially liked them, they were not really to his taste, but they had bought them all while she had been living at the house, and she had always insisted (slightly to his irritation at the time) that they were a shared possession. He would have expected to be glad they were going; actually he felt, looking at the bereft hooks, forlorn, rather sad, as if they had been objects of particular value to him.
‘Right,’ she said, in the awkward silence after they were stashed on the passenger seat in the jeep, ‘well, I’d better go.’
‘Briony – ’ he said. ‘Briony, I’d like to – well, perhaps we could have dinner or something. Just for – for – ’
And, ‘No, Gray,’ she said, her blue eyes very steady, setting her hat back on her streaky brown hair, ‘there really wouldn’t be any point, would there? Not really. I mean nothing’s changed, has it? Not for me, not for you, I don’t imagine.’
Her voice tailed away; for a moment, just a moment, he was tempted to say no, no Briony, let’s talk again, let’s think some more, reassess. But he knew it would be pointless, that it would simply open the way to more pain, more frustration; he did not, could not feel differently, and nor did or could she. There was no hope for either of them, no hope at all.
‘No,’ he said, ‘no, I’m afraid not. I’m sorry.’
And he bent and kissed her gently and then went inside and made himself a very strong whisky and sat watching the sky grow dark outside the conservatory, and could not find it in his heart to ring Teresa Booth to tell her what he had only two hours earlier found quite extraordinarily interesting and compelling, and which now suddenly seemed boring and totally unimportant. Well, at least he had his trip to Scotland to distract him over the weekend.
Francesca had spent most of Friday and Saturday forcing herself into a positive frame of mind. What had happened, she told herself, over and over again, was her mother’s fault primarily, not Bard’s. Liam was quite right; it hadn’t been his secret. She would have been just as shocked if he had betrayed Rachel’s confidence and told her about Mary. She should, she did, respect him for what he had done. It would be very wrong to blame him, to make an issue of it even. She would just refer to it briefly, so that he knew that she knew, and then leave it. They had enough problems at the moment without her wilfully adding to them; he was having an appallingly difficult time with the company, she could see that, he was still grieving over Duggie, he looked exhausted. Far better to leave things be, harsh things unsaid, reproaches unaired. Least said soonest mended, as Nanny would say: like all clichés, it was true. She found herself repeating this to herself over and over in her head like a mantra all through Saturday, as she waited for his return. He was coming straight to Stylings; she had suggested it, and he had agreed with surprising ease. They could have a quiet weekend with the children and then, she thought, on Tuesday they would escape to Ireland for forty-eight hours. Which could — which would, she knew – heal a lot of wounds.
He was due at teatime, but his plane was delayed; it was almost six when Horton delivered him, and she was reading on the terrace, a bottle of wine on ice beside her.
‘Welcome home,’ she said, kissing him, smiling carefully.
‘Thank you. That looks nice.’
‘Here.’ She po
ured him a glass. ‘How was your trip?’
‘Oh – you know. Bit of a curate’s egg really. Where are the children?’
‘Both in bed.’
‘Jack’s in bed! At six!’
‘Yes, he fell off his pony. Oh, he’s fine, but he was a bit bruised and shaken. It’s all right, I’ve had him checked.’
‘Fell off! But Megs only moves at about one mile an hour.’
‘Yes, I know. But he’s decided to join the circus, and he was riding her bareback – ’
‘Even so – ’
‘Standing up,’ said Francesca. He smiled at that, properly, for the first time; she smiled rather uncertainly back.
‘Oh. Oh, yes, I see.’
‘So we can have a nice quiet dinner.’
‘Lovely. Just what I need.’
He sat down, threw his head back, closed his eyes; he looked at the furthest edge of exhaustion. She stood there, looking down at him, feeling awkward, wanting to help, not knowing how.
He seemed to drift away from her for a few moments; then visibly pulled himself together, smiled up at her. ‘It’s nice to be here,’ he said and he sounded as if he meant it, reaching out for her hand.
‘It’s nice to have you here.’
Another silence, while he seemed to be studying her; then he smiled again. ‘Maybe an early night,’ he said.
And, ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling slightly awkwardly at him, relieved to find that in spite of everything she wanted him, ‘that’d be nice.’
The Dilemma Page 44