Titmuss Regained

by John Mortimer

  ‘How the hell much did these tickets cost?’

  ‘I’m not telling you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re such a puritan. You wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘And our government’s handing out tax-payers’ money to help this lot go to the opera.’ He looked round at the well-nourished faces in the Grand Tier.

  ‘Well, at least that’s one good thing about your government.’

  ‘Jenny. Why don’t you let me pay?’

  ‘Because you asked me to take you and I’m very obedient. At least I hope you’ve kept your side of the bargain.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You mean you’ve forgotten? Just another of your politician’s promises.’

  He looked at her, puzzled, and she had to remind him. ‘Didn’t you go to Moss Bros and hire that suit?’

  ‘Well, no. I have to wear it rather often. At functions.’ He looked, she was glad to see, guilty. So she pressed home her advantage.

  ‘And the bow-tie? You’re not going to tell me you tied it yourself?’

  ‘I’ve got used to doing it,’ he admitted. ‘Over the years.’

  The lights dimmed and she was able to rebuke him with ‘Leslie Titmuss, you’ve let me down completely’ before the conductor bobbed up like a distant jack-in-the-box, received his applause and the overture began.

  ‘The champagne’s there. Under Sir Thomas Beecham.’

  ‘Follow me.’ Leslie Titmuss felt he was of some use at last. ‘I can elbow my way through this lot.’ He went through the Crush Bar crowd like a knife through butter. Some opera-goers fell back and smiled nervously, recognizing a well-known face; others gazed in amazement, having always thought the Minister’s idea of an evening out would have been all-in wrestling, or dinner overlooking the Wembley dog races.

  ‘Are you enjoying it at all?’

  ‘Good God, yes. A people’s politician! Elected by public acclaim. No wonder all the toffee-nosed Italian aristocrats hated him.’

  ‘He came to a bad end.’

  ‘I know,’ Titmuss conceded. ‘Poisoned by an underling.’

  Jenny was surprised at his grasp of the plot. ‘What about the music?’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. In fact it hardly gets in the way at all.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ She was suspicious; surely that was a bit of Titmuss self-parody?

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘I never thought that the Opera House was your particular stamping-ground.’ Ken Cracken was suddenly upon them, leading Joyce Timberlake, Christopher Kempenflatt, a Mrs Armitage who was Kempenflatt’s lady, and a large man called ‘Jumbo’ Plumstead, with his wife – he being the merchant banker who was placing large stakes on the proposed Fallowfield Country Town development.

  ‘I don’t think you know everything about my interests, do you?’ Leslie was unwelcoming.

  ‘I’m Ken Cracken,’ the youngish man with a fair moustache told Jenny. ‘Joyce Timberlake, Christopher Kempenflatt, Mrs Armitage, Sir Hugh Plumstead, Lady Plumstead.’

  ‘ “Jumbo” Plumstead.’ The banker was proud of his nickname. ‘This is one of the long ones, isn’t it?’ He seemed to be talking about the opera.

  ‘Jenny Sidonia,’ she had to say, as Mr Titmuss clearly had no intention of introducing her to these people, whom he was looking at with smouldering distaste. They had spotted the Secretary of State’s unlikely presence from their box, whose privacy they had left, together with a large plate of smoked salmon sandwiches, to satisfy the greater hunger of their curiosity about his beautiful and mysterious companion.

  ‘Such a wonderful place to unwind!’ Mrs Armitage, a woman whose hair, skin and jewellery were all the same shade of burnished gold and from whose crustaceous dress her powdered breasts were in danger of being ejected, told Titmuss as though in confidence. ‘Christopher always says he forgets all his business worries after the first two bars of the overture.’

  ‘We usually bring the Japanese customers here.’ Jumbo Plumstead still had his mind on commerce even at the end of the first act. ‘Such a relief not to have the little fellows bowing at you all over the Crush Bar and downing whisky. At least this is a night out with the Brits!’

  ‘We’re all still talking about that absolutely super speech you made at the U.C.D.A. dinner, Leslie.’ Christopher Kempenflatt’s mind also seemed to have returned to business with the cessation of the music. ‘It’s given us a great deal of encouragement on the Fallowfield project.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Jumbo rumbled. ‘A hundred and fifty years ago those Save Our Valley blighters would have objected to Manchester.’

  ‘Live in Manchester, do you?’ Leslie asked Jumbo in what Jenny realized was a tone of considerable menace.

  ‘As a matter of fact we’ve got a place near Lewes. On the South Downs.’

  ‘The South Downs, eh?’ The Titmuss eyes were particularly cold. ‘We ought to remember them next time we want to dump a new town somewhere.’

  ‘Of course you’re joking!’

  But Leslie didn’t smile. He turned on his one-time tormentor. ‘You ought to take the lady’s advice, Kempenflatt. Put business right out of your mind when you go to the opera. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss important matters of planning policy. But you’d be much mistaken if you thought that anything I happened to say at your little dinner party meant that I’ve even begun to make up my mind about the Rapstone development. One way or the other. Come along now.’ And he took Jenny’s arm as she had once, so long ago, taken his. ‘I reckon this show’s costing you about two quid a minute. We can’t afford to miss any of it.’

  ‘That Christopher Kempenflatt,’ he told Jenny as they found their way back to their seats, ‘is one of the bastards who pushed me into the river.’

  ‘I wish you’d told me,’ she said. ‘I’d’ve spat in his champagne.’

  Later Leslie and his car delivered Jenny to her flat, as he always did after their evenings out. She had never seen the inside of his mansion apartment, nor had she any wish to do so. Sue Bramble, who was her lodger, was away for the night and Jenny felt suddenly miserable at the thought of turning on lights in empty rooms and of going to sleep, once again, with no one to say goodnight to. As usual Leslie kissed her cheek while his driver stared politely at a lamp-post.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was a treat. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘Shall we go again?’

  ‘I’ll start saving up.’ He smiled at her.

  The strange thing was, she thought, looking back on it, that what happened then was entirely her responsibility. ‘Why don’t you come in?’ she asked as quietly as she could.

  ‘What shall I tell my driver?’

  ‘You can tell him to go home.’ And so it was decided.

  Very early the next morning, just as it was starting to get light, Jenny Sidonia woke up next to a naked Leslie Titmuss. He was quite motionless and breathing regularly, but his eyes were open. She had heard somewhere that this was how horses slept.

  When they had reached the flat they had gone, almost without a word, into the bedroom. There Leslie took off his custom-made dinner-jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. Jenny said, ‘I won’t be a minute,’ and went into the sitting-room where she looked, for a little, at her outstretched hand. Then she took off her wedding-ring and put it in the drawer of a writing-desk which had once been the property of Tony Sidonia. She went into the bathroom and spent a short while taking off her make-up and cleaning her teeth. When she came back to her bedroom Leslie Titmuss was already undressed and between the sheets. The room was in darkness which was apparently how he preferred it.

  His eyes always seemed cold but she was surprised by the heat of his body and, although he was so much older than she, he behaved as though he were enjoying a youth long postponed. At the same time she was made to feel as though she, Jenny Sidonia, was the height of his ambition, long awaited, like his position in the Cabinet, the Right Honou
rable in front of his name and the black official motor car always in attendance.

  When he lay motionless, asleep, she thought, with his eyes open, he spoke.

  ‘You like Rapstone, then?’

  ‘I told you. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘You like the house?’

  ‘I told you I did.’

  ‘They want to build a town there.’

  ‘The man who pushed you in?’

  ‘Yes. That’s his idea.’

  ‘He can, can’t he?’

  ‘I don’t think you should worry.’

  He had said planning policy shouldn’t be discussed in the Crush Bar of the Opera House. To talk about it when they were in bed for the first time, just after five o’clock in the morning, seemed equally inappropriate. She closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep and when she woke again he was still looking at her.

  ‘My son, Nick,’ he said, ‘is a librarian.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘He’s got himself a job. Somewhere in the North-East.’ Leslie had travelled to the sprawling town in an area untouched by the prosperity his government had brought to the South of England. He had walked through the rooms which smelt of disinfectant and floor polish, where pensioners slumbered over the newspapers and schoolchildren giggled and searched vainly for rude bits in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was enraged because the fear that he had had in the college garden was realized. His son was calling himself Nicholas Fanner. ‘Mr Fanner,’ they had told him, ‘is in cataloguing.’

  ‘He doesn’t want me to help him,’ he told Jenny. ‘I don’t want your name because I want to do something on my own,’ Nick had said. ‘I don’t want to be given jobs just because you’re in the Cabinet.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of me, then?’ Leslie had covered his hurt with anger. ‘Not ashamed. Of course not. But we’re different, aren’t we?’ Nick had tried to explain. ‘We’re two entirely different people.’

  ‘Surely it’s understandable,’ Jenny said. ‘He wants to be independent.’ She felt sorry for Leslie and liked him better because of this unhappiness.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t really know about Nick. Just as I didn’t know about his mother.’

  ‘The one who liked men who ate sauce sandwiches?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the one.’

  ‘Well. How do you get on at understanding me?’ Jenny wanted to cheer him up; he seemed a prey to such sad thoughts.

  ‘I think we’ve got something in common.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  Loneliness, that’s what she thought he might be going to say. Instead he laughed at her, ‘Opera!’ Then they started to make love all over again.

  Sue Bramble, who shared Jenny’s flat, had been to visit her lover, a trainer of horses who lived near Newbury. They had argued for a great part of the night about his apparent inability to so arrange matters with the wife from whom he said he was separated, so that he might marry Sue. Finally he confessed what she had half suspected, that this wife of his was only staying with relations in America and he had not, in fact, plucked up courage to break the news of Sue’s existence to her. Filled with rage and swearing never to bestride one of his horses or travel to the races with him again, she had got into her Triumph motor car at dawn and driven back to London, disillusioned with life, love and the reliability of husbands. She arrived at the flat early and there found a tall, pale man in a dinner-jacket making tea in the kitchen. Although unshaven he had taken the trouble to tie his black bow.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I’m Sue Bramble. I suppose you’re Mr Titmuss.’

  He looked at her as though he was considering the possibility of denying it, and then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you’re making that for Jenny, she likes Lapsang. I’d better show you where it is.’ And she added, quite unnecessarily, ‘It was Tony’s favourite.’

  After she had made the tea he thanked her and took it away in silence. She heard voices and then the front door open and shut. Later she sat on the end of Jenny’s bed. To her disappointment, her friend looked unreasonably contented.

  ‘The things you get up to the moment my back’s turned!’

  ‘I thought you were away till tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be away again. Men are such liars!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And I’m sorry I scared your Mr Titmuss. I thought he was going to jump out of his skin.’

  ‘I don’t think he was scared, particularly.’

  ‘Nonsense. He bolted out of here like a rabbit.’

  ‘He had to get home and change.’

  ‘Well, I imagine he didn’t want to turn up at the Ministry in his tuxedo.’ Sue Bramble lit a cigarette in some gloom. ‘Is he terrified I’ll talk and it’ll be all over the News of the World?’

  ‘He did mention that possibility.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I told him you were totally reliable.’

  ‘Too bloody reliable. That’s my trouble.’

  ‘Oh, Sue.’ Jenny looked at her friend with great concern. ‘Teddy has let you down, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. You’re the one we’ve got to worry about. Promise me, Jenny. You will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jenny Sidonia gave the matter some thought. ‘I don’t think I can promise that.’

  *

  Later that morning, when Jenny was sitting contemplating the unsold and quite probably unsaleable New British Abstracts, the telephone rang and a female secretarial voice said, ‘Mrs Sidonia? I have the Secretary of State here for you.’

  ‘Jenny.’ Mr Titmuss came on the line immediately, sounding brisk. ‘I meant to tell you. I have to go to Rome next month. Something to do with my opposite number in the Community.’

  It was a one-night stand, she thought with unexpected despondency, and this is his way of saying goodbye. ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ she said.

  ‘And I’ve been thinking …’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What exactly?’ She was not, whatever happened to her, about to weep.

  ‘Well. Wouldn’t Rome be rather a good place for a honeymoon?’

  ‘What on earth can you be talking about?’ It was ridiculous, the great swing on which her spirits were rising.

  ‘I’ve rung the Rector of Rapstone and suggested a date for him to pencil in. They’re both dead, I told him, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be married in church, is there?’

  After they had spoken, she sat still for a long time, then she telephoned Sue Bramble and offered to buy her lunch in Soho. She wanted to cool off, as soon as possible, in the icy waters of her best friend’s disapproval.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘What on earth would Tony think?’ Jenny found the question particularly irritating, partly because it assumed that Tony was still around somewhere and watching everything she did with puzzled disapproval, but mainly because it was what she had avoided asking herself. Now Sue Bramble had, with a true friend’s lack of mercy, faced her with it.

  ‘How on earth should I know?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Sue wasn’t going to let her off lightly.

  ‘I think Tony always wanted me to be happy.’ Jenny played for safety.

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m sure he did. But would he have wanted you to be happy with Leslie Titmuss?’

  ‘I think he’d’ve left it to me.’

  ‘Chalk and cheese?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your extraordinary Leslie and Mr Sidonia. By the way, was he wearing a made-up tie?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When I caught him in full evening-dress at seven o’clock in the morning. Was that a ready-made-up bow he was wearing?’

  ‘I can tell you without a doubt’ – in this new and confusing world there was one thing Jenny was sure of – ‘he tied it entirely himself.’

  ‘A real bow-tie which managed to look phoney! Only your Mr Tit
muss could do that.’

  ‘If he were exactly like Tony. If he wore all the right clothes, only he looked as though he slept in them and didn’t give a damn anyway. If he knew all the poetry and history I’d never heard of, and read all the books I’ve never even opened and could be quite serious, particularly when he was making jokes – well, then, I suppose Tony might be upset because I’d found someone who could do all he could do and perhaps better. But my Mr Titmuss, as you insist on calling him, can’t do any of those things. He’s chalk and cheese, as you said. So why on earth should Tony be jealous of him?’

  She was, she realized, being absurd. Where on earth was Tony, to be jealous or not? If not on earth, was he floating through space, dodging secret weapons and television satellites, deeply distressed by her new friendship? She could only think of him in his fraying basket-chair in the untidy garden of their house in North Oxford, holding a book too close to his eyes and laughing tolerantly at the nefarious connivings of some long-dead Pope. No doubt he would be laughing at her and Leslie’s strange behaviour, and when she thought about it she decided he might be right and laughter was the only possible reaction.

  ‘I’m not saying he’d be jealous. I’m just saying he might not be very happy about your prospects.’

  ‘You think Mr Titmuss is going to ditch me?’

  ‘I think he’d ditch his own mother, if it’d get him higher up in that awful Cabinet or whatever it is he belongs to.’

  ‘I tell you, you’re wrong.’

  ‘Am I?’