PRAISE FOR PETER ADAMSON
‘A tender and joyous celebration, a book that shows that ordinary lives, half-successful lives, even failed lives, can be lit with glory. At the end I was weeping with happiness. A beautiful, subtle, and very loving book.’
William Nicholson
‘I was captivated by the atmosphere but it was the sheer thoughtfulness of this novel that interested me … one of the most consistently intelligent and fascinating novels about what goes on in people’s minds that I’ve read for a long time. Quite mesmeric in its hold.’
Margaret Forster
‘It took me into a world I knew very little about and opened my eyes to its beauty and interest. What I especially admired was the way the characters were both representative of large ideas and yet also fully human … it’s a huge achievement.’
Alain de Botton
To the memory of James P Grant
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Part One
1 | Don’t wear a suit
2 | I would know her by heart
3 | Life and times
4 | Spare me the cold chains
5 | Not really cricket
6 | Next year in New York
7 | Is there someone else?
8 | A circle completed
9 | Look me in the face
10 | Filer à l’anglaise
11 | Can we take a walk?
12 | Why this blood-buzzing anxiety?
13 | Flies on a summer day
14 | If this is a joke
15 | Forget it ever happened
16 | Too much reality
17 | The young master
18 | Better than anyone I know
19 | For the rest of our lives
20 | The curvature of the earth
Part Two
21 | All over nervous
22 | We wish to make it clear …
23 | Nothing could be simpler
24 | The sender of this letter
25 | The presence in the shadows
26 | Let’s do it
27 | The heart of a perfectionist
28 | Iacta alea est
29 | Take this cup from me
30 | The girl next door
31 | That can’t happen
32 | Ours not to reason why
33 | Lounge lizards
34 | To satisfy our masters
35 | Common ground
36 | It’s Harvey
37 | This is from the top
38 | If only they knew
39 | No one wants to talk
40 | The words he knew by heart
41 | The cards face up
42 | A kiss is still a kiss
43 | A little bit of your heart
44 | Competing with James Dean
45 | Happy hour
46 | Smelling a rat
47 | When shall we five …
48 | Finding cold air
49 | To love you or hate you
Epilogue
Postscript
The real story
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
About the author
Copyright
Author’s note
None of the principal characters in this story
has ever admitted to being involved in the events
described here. All names have there fore
been changed.
Part One
1 | Don’t wear a suit
Oxford, April 28th, 1980
Stephen Walsh frowned down at the keyboard of the ZX80 computer. Behind it, along with its packaging, stood a fourteen-inch television displaying a steadily blinking cursor. Holding the manual flat in one hand, he pecked at the rubber keyboard with the other, peering up over half-moon spectacles with each expectant prod.
Dear …
We’ve lost touch, the months drifting into years and the years into decades.
He missed the deep travel and satisfying clack of his typewriter keys but stared, captivated, by the letters appearing as if by magic on the screen.
We’re all to blame; the immediate subverting the important, as it ever will. But we said we wouldn’t let it happen and so …
He looked in vain for the carriage return as he neared the end of the line.
… I’m inviting you here for a weekend so we can all eat, drink and be miserable, lament how middle-aged we are, and talk about who we were and what we were going to do and what’s become of us all.
The room was dim in the middle of the afternoon. At either end of the couch, parchment-shaded lamps cast a barely perceptible light on old floorboards. Three of the walls were lined with bookshelves interrupted here and there by niches in which hung faded Soviet posters from the 1920s.
I’m suggesting the first weekend in October …
After typing a few more paragraphs he looked up from the screen and let his eyes travel over the volumes of History Workshop Journal and Radical History Review, most of them ragged with scraps of paper that had been inserted in their pages. The machine was emitting an audible hum he was not sure he could live with.
He stood and crossed to the window seat from which he could look down on the perfect lawn set in its mellow quadrangle of Cotswold stone. Facing him on the other side of the quad were the stone-mullioned windows of the rooms belonging to the Regius Professor of Modern History. That well-known reactionary having recently decamped for Cambridge, the suite was currently unoccupied. The décor was no doubt in need of updating, but the important thing was whether the appointment would be made before the start of Michaelmas Term. In time for their shabby grandeur to host his little reunion.
Among the many rules and observances in Michael Lowell’s life, including being in his office before 7.00am on weekdays and 8.00am on Saturdays, was the stricture that, if possible, no piece of paper should be handled more than once. But the letter he now held in his hand, standing on the little wrought-iron balcony of his apartment in the lakeside town of Nyon in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland, had already been picked up three times as the bells of St Michel struck the half hour.
We can all lament how middle-aged we are … talk about who we were and what we were going to do and what’s become of us all.
Away to the west he could see the autoroute, already burdened with traffic glinting in the early-morning sun. Normally he would have been in advance of the rush. But on this particular morning, Friday, May 2nd, 1980, his routine had faltered. Beyond the harbour the mist was beginning to lift, the lake slowly disrobing on what promised to be another fine spring day as he read through the second page again.
Why now? I don’t know. The old man died two months ago and I suppose it stirred up the subliminals (as well as embarrassing me with an immodest inheritance). Anyway that’s probably what started me thinking of lost youth and time passing, of old ideals and the old friends who once shared them.
Underneath the signature, in a scrawl of green ink, was a handwritten postscript:
‘Michael – I already talked to the lovely Seema, who’ll definitely be coming. She’s divorced now, as I expect you know, so don’t wear a suit.’
Below him the roofs of the old town were beginning to glow in the first of the sun. Later in the day, Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles would be visible, but for the moment it was only possible to make out the faint blur of France. He blinked against the astonishing light. Out on the lake a lateen boat, motionless in the calm, had already spread its nets.
Seema Mir. Had there been a day in the last twenty years when he hadn’t thought of her?
One of the advantages of being the creative director of an advertising agency is that you can stare out of the window for hours on end and people will not
only believe you are working but will quite probably assume you are doing something brilliant. Toby Jenks, who frequently took advantage of the scope thus offered, was in fact standing by his window because he was ever so slightly inebriated at four o’clock in the afternoon and had felt himself to be at some risk of nodding off at his desk.
It was the first week of May and the window in question admitted a dull London light into the modern third-floor office on the west side of Berkeley Square. Below, the trees were swaying slightly, much like Toby himself as he locked his hands on top of his balding head and pushed out a fat bottom lip. It had been a bad week. Really, a bad week. Monday had seen his fortieth birthday come and go. Tuesday had brought more hate-mail, including one particularly vituperative letter from a woman in Queensland. Wednesday he had discovered that Sarah had been back to the house and taken away the rest of her clothes and all of her shoes. Worst of all, the day’s second post had come and gone, forcing him to face up to the fact that, for the first time in a decade or more, he had not been nominated for a BTA Award.
Over the rooftops a weak sun was attempting to push through the clouds that had covered the Home Counties all week. In the square itself the trees were just coming into bud and a group of young people who might have been students were stretching out on the lawns. That was the thing in this business; you were put out to grass when you stopped being young. As soon as you were no longer a rising star you were a black hole. And probably that’s where he was right now, poised at the dread point just past the top of a mixed metaphor. He blinked his eyes into focus. Under his window, a few of the regular dog walkers had gathered by one of the gates to the park.
He thought about pouring himself another Scotch. Ten minutes earlier the bottle had been resolutely put away in the low rosewood cabinet that housed a bank of television screens. Rubbing both ears hard to wake himself up, he returned to his desk and began looking through his in-tray: product briefs, draft pitches, story-boards, corporate prospectuses, all of which promised nothing but terminal tedium. Coming across a couple of typed letters dictated earlier in the week, he signed them with his initials and transferred them with a flourish to the out-tray. He had cultivated being known by his initials (‘friends call me TJ’). And for many years he had also affected silk ties in a different pastel shade for each day of the week. It was an idiosyncrasy that had quickly become famous in the advertising world, as he had known it would, and whenever it elicited comment he would explain that it was the only way most of his colleagues would know what day it was. In retaliation, the thirty or so creative types in the department had taken to referring to the days of the week by their colours (‘Thank God its Pinkday’). He might also have been disappointed to know that he was commonly referred not as ‘TJ’ but as ‘Old Tobe’, or sometimes ‘The Toby Jug’, and just occasionally ‘High Jenks’.
And, to top it all, the morning post had brought not an invitation to the BTA Awards dinner but a letter from, of all people, Stephen bloody Walsh. The first weekend in October. Eat, drink and be miserable. Old friends and old ideals.
He gave up on the in-tray and returned to the window, looking out on a city that was already getting ready for evening. From the far side of the square the row of plate-glass windows that was Jack Barclay’s Rolls Royce showroom blazed with the reflected glow of an unexpected sunset. Across the city, lights were going out in shops and offices as hundreds of executives, middle-managers, accountants, designers, copy-writers, film editors, space-buyers, secretaries, shop assistants, hurried through the streets, escaping to evenings of boredom, bliss or argument.
And in front of it all his own reflection confronted him, refusing to go away.
Stephen bloody Walsh.
And underneath the signature, the sly, handwritten postscript with its pretentious Greek ‘e’s and green ink: ‘Tobe, I already heard from Hélène who’s definitely coming. So bring a good supply of mints. Ab imo pectore, Stephen.’
Michael engaged cruise control as the autoroute began to clear. Ahead lay the city of Geneva and a day of meetings, personnel decisions, data-checking, periodic performance reviews, midterm strategic plans.
… talk about who we were and what we were going to do and what’s become of us all.
He took the exit for Pregny and began working his way down to the lake. In twenty years he had never been able even to hear the name ‘Stephen’ without also hearing the words he had spoken that evening in the small back bar of the Eagle and Child at the end of Trinity Term, 1960: ‘You know I believe in speaking truth to power, Michael. But I’m afraid I also believe in speaking truth to friends. And the fact is, of course, she’s turned you down because she finds you just a little bit too dull.’
Stephen had clinked beer glasses with him to show that this had been said in the spirit of honest, straightforward male comradeship. It had been a struggle to receive the words in the same spirit. And it had been a struggle ever since.
He indicated right again and made his way up through the leafy suburbs behind the European headquarters of the United Nations, unable to prevent himself being drawn back to Stephen’s words of that evening long ago.
‘Pair of them in tears. Couldn’t help hearing the odd word. Said if she was looking at the next fifty years she wanted a little bit more. Something about you being incapable of ever doing anything that would surprise her.’
The blue-and-white flag of the World Health Organization flew at the barrier as he turned in. Was it an exaggeration? Had there been days in the last twenty years when he hadn’t thought of her? Last thing at night. Or first thing on waking. Or at odd moments during the day. In a meeting. In the lab. On a plane. It had never needed much – just a passing thought that strayed too near the buried magnet of her and was deflected inwards, making contact with a little metallic click in the mind – and there she was again, as vivid as ever: the calm amusement in eyes that seemed always to be expressing mild surprise; the incipient smile ever at the edges of the mouth; the maddeningly imperturbable composure; the sheer excitement of her; the power to slip effortlessly past any guard he might from time to time have put in place.
Waved through without showing ID, he began patrolling up and down between the strips of lawn, crossing wet patches of blacktop where the early-morning sprinklers had over-reached themselves. But the parking lot was full at this hour and he was forced to take the ramp down into the souterrain, pulling off his sunglasses and braking to avoid the scarred curve of the wall.
… old ideals and the old friends who once shared them.
He turned off the engine. The dimness soothed and he let his head fall back, listening to the engine ticking in a crypt of silence. Above him were eight floors of offices, corridors, conference rooms in which three thousand people spent their days, most of them knowing that youthful hopes had long ago run into the sands of bureaucracy. He reached across to the passenger seat for the old Gladstone doctor’s bag. Those years in the field had not been like this. Working from dawn ’til dusk on Bhola Island. And later, in Africa, when they were finally closing in on the virus. Had he thought of her even then, in those last days in Merkka and Bardere as they had trudged through the endless rains, driven on by the thought that the greatest of all killer diseases had been narrowed down to just those two villages?
In the gloom the ticking had almost stopped. From somewhere an elevator whined. No, not even then had she been lost to him. Like a paraphrase of Blake – ‘there is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find’ – there had always been a moment in his day that Seema Mir could find.
By six o’clock, Toby was perched on a revolving stool in the cellar bar of The Warsaw, just off Soho’s Poland Street and wondering if any other member-in-good-standing of London’s Australian diaspora might be dropping in. He swivelled round to face the early-evening crowd. Everything too dark or too light. Too much bloody contrast. Too much bloody drama. Is that Gilbert? Grinning all over the place. Sliding round the bar like a fucking oil slick. Grin. Grin. Fu
cking Gilbert. Fucking Ogilvy’s. Taken to greeting his staff with a mock-opera rendition of ‘Just one Cornetto’ and introducing himself as ‘The Man who put a Tiger in your Tank’. Might as well be waving his fucking BTA invitation in my face.
He looked away to avoid a greeting from some agency types descending the stairs. It hadn’t always been like this; it was here that he’d had some of his own best ideas. The sensational ‘cool girl’ ad, with the lovely Silky Mathilde. And the loneliness of the long distance commuter with the Dirk Bogarde lookalike, a man’s life set to the rhythm of the train. And the BTA-winning Mens Sana campaign for the chain of fitness centres; the only time, he reflected, when his Classics degree had been of the slightest use.
Stephen bloody Walsh.
He spun back to the bar and picked up his drink. Not even half six. Could just pop back to the office, see if it’s come in the late bag. Fuck no. Face facts. See that face wobbling in that shallow little circle of Scotch, big and pink and pathetic? That’s you, mate, and you’re off the screen, wobble, wobble, bye-bye, over the hill and far away. A fresh crowd was descending from the street. Theatre or film types. Or glorious pioneers of the age of videotape. Best of all, yes, best of all, this was the place where he had thought up the first wordless commercial. He saw it now through the gloom of the bar: the tanned, thirty-something Australian descending into the cellar, all laid-back masculinity, listening warily to the voices of effete, upper-class Brits ordering martinis ‘with a twist’ and peach schnapps with Chambord, followed by a slow, nervous retreat, making his way backwards up the cellar steps and emerging with relief into the last of the evening sunlight which merged into a glowing, overflowing pint of Australian lager.
His reflection confronted him again from between the liquor bottles on theatre-lit glass shelves. He had seen Stephen once or twice over the years: the odd lunch in the West End, and at the college gaudy he had regretted attending. Even back in the day they had had nothing in common. And now they had considerably less than nothing: the adman and the pinko academic, Pauncho and Lefty. No way would he be going. He swung around again to face the mounting din of the cellar. Fucking Stephen. ‘Talk about who we were going to be’. Who am I? Where am I? Same fucking bar. Same fucking sawdust on the floor. Sawdust! It’s the West End for Christ’s sake! Place stuffed full of Gilberts. Gilberts to the right of him, Gilberts to the left of him, Gilberts to the front of him, trolleyed and plastered. Into the BTA dinner they rode, when can their glory fade, when can that speech be made? But not, not, Toby Jenks. He frowned into the bottom of the glass. Couldn’t stand it all again anyway. All the sham bonhomie. All the cod conviviality. All that pathetic pretence at surprise, all that gushing over people who’d had diddly-squat to do with anything, air-kissing some bimbette from Channel 4 who wouldn’t know a decent commercial if it ramraided her fucking sweet shop. Ten years of it all, and then suddenly wham-bam-thank-you-Toby and you’re not even at one of the round tables with the candlelit place-name, not even one of the also-rans clapping too hard and pretending they don’t have a modest little speech tucked away in the inside pocket of the tux, eating their little hearts out with smiles like fucking rigor mortis. No. No way would he go. He had no desire to see Stephen bloody Walsh again. Creep. Marx in Doc Martens. With his aristocratic background and his ludicrous estuary accent. Of course he won’t have changed his fucking ideals, he’d never left fucking Oxford, except for a few years on the wild side over at Cambridge.
The Kennedy Moment Page 1