Don't Get Me Wrong

by Marianne Kavanagh

  In some ways it was good to be back. He’d already visited the CEOs and finance directors of some of the newer companies in his sector. Michael Adewale, the CEO of Medway—which designed and manufactured high-tech medical equipment—had turned the company from a modest start-up into one of the leading innovators in the field in just ten years. Medway hadn’t been affected by the recession at all. “It’s win-win,” said Michael, pacing round the office punching the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “We make money. And we save lives. What’s not to like?”

  I never managed to explain that to Kim, thought Harry as he walked home afterwards—how investing in companies like Medway can benefit everyone. Capitalism can wear a benign face. The City doesn’t always unleash the dark forces of Sauron.

  But as Christmas approached, and the parties dwindled away, and people in the office kept disappearing to buy presents for nieces, and nephews, and boyfriends, and wives, Harry started to feel lonely. He called Syed, who now worked for one of the bigger hedge funds, but his friend sounded distracted.

  “It’s the fuckwit brother-in-law. He’s done it again.”

  “Again?”

  “Lost a fucking fortune. And I’m expected to bail him out. Just like that. My mother says, I trust you. You know what to do.” He sighed. “They say family is a blessing. Not for me, it isn’t.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No. It’s Christmas. You go and enjoy yourself. I’ll see you in the New Year.”

  Harry tried to enjoy himself. He decided to be a tourist and get to know his new surroundings. He wandered the narrow streets of the East End, imagining the slums of Dickensian London. He found Spitalfields Market, admired the arts and crafts exterior of the Whitechapel Gallery, and studied the Huguenot simplicity of the Brick Lane mosque. He ate jellied eels and Bangladeshi fish curry. Nothing worked. The harder he tried to distract himself, the more desolate he felt. He tried to be rational. You can’t just disappear for a few years and expect everyone to jump up and down with excitement when you return. People get on with their lives, fill the hole you left with new faces, new interests. It takes time to build up a circle of friends again.

  But deep down, Harry was worried. Tactically, from a career point of view, coming back to London had been a good move. Since the crash, no job was safe—and, as an outsider from Europe, he had been particularly vulnerable in the US. His new employers in the UK had offered him more money, more responsibility, and a bigger department. They were so keen to have him, they’d even guaranteed the bonus he would have earned if he’d stayed put.

  But, thought Harry, sitting alone on a park bench in the cold East End, I loved New York. In England, you don’t admit to being happy. You take pleasure in the kind of humor that goes with gray skies and perpetual rain—self-deprecation, slagging off other people’s success, and gloomily predicting the worst. It’s clever. It’s funny. It’s a very British way of seeing the world. But he’d been surprised by how much he’d enjoyed trying out a different attitude. In New York, everyone is optimistic. Smiles are dazzling. Achievements are celebrated. You not only set bold targets but assume that you, and the people around you, will reach them.

  “You always look like this is the best day ever,” his new boss had said to him one morning as they stood waiting for the elevator.

  “It is,” said Harry, grinning.

  It had taken a while to adjust to the work ethic. In New York there was no distinction between private and professional. Harry was on duty 24/7. Even going out to a bar or a restaurant or a club was all about networking. But this suited him. He didn’t want complicated relationships. He didn’t want any woman to get too close. Hinting at some kind of aristocratic background, he modeled himself on all the rom-com parts that Hugh Grant had ever played. Fuck, he said. Fuck. I’m so awfully sorry. Fuck. He blamed a fictional boarding school upbringing—somewhere between Hogwarts and Gordonstoun—for what he called his emotional repression. You’re so full of life, he’d say. You deserve better. You need so much more than I can possibly give.

  Sometimes he was so busy giving an Oscar-winning performance that he didn’t realize he was in the wrong film.

  “You’re full of shit, Harry.” She worked at the same bank, on the same floor. Curvy, dark, sweet face. They’d been eyeing each other in the corridors for weeks.

  Harry, sitting up against the pillows, redoubled his efforts. “I’d promise to change. But there’s no point. I’d just slide back into my old ways. I’m not good enough for you.”

  “You don’t want commitment.”

  He sighed deeply. “I’d better go. The longer I stay, the worse it gets for both of us.” He leant forward to the muddle of clothes he’d thrown onto the floor the night before. “I’m terribly sorry. I just don’t feel the way other people do. Sometimes I think there’s a piece of me missing.”

  “Harry?” He turned round. She was lying on her stomach, looking up at him. He took in her naked brown back, the dip of her waist, the rise of her buttocks. Her eyes were full of light. She was laughing at him. “Would you like me to help you find it?”

  Most of the time, life was so busy that he didn’t have time to think about what he’d left behind. Sometimes he remembered. There would be a girl with white-gold hair. Or nude wood under peeling bark, like the plane trees on Peckham Rye. Then, briefly, his head would be crowded with images of southeast London—the red buses toiling to the Elephant and Castle, the dingy pubs, the endless terraces of small Victorian houses under a wide gray sky.

  Manhattan was vertical. You looked upwards, through a funnel of brick and glass, to a tiny patch of blue right at the very top. It was a different way of seeing.

  At the last minute, on Christmas Eve, unable to stand one more minute of isolation among the crowds of London commuters, Harry cracked. He rang Titania on her mobile. “How are you?”

  “Well, fine, except for the terrible problems.”

  Harry’s heart sank. “What’s been happening?”

  “You tell me. There are parts of Manhattan that have been cut off for years. No phone signal. No Internet. It must have been so difficult for you doing business. In fact, come to think about it, was that the reason for the whole financial crisis? People in New York completely unable to contact anyone else in the entire world?”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you might not want to talk to me for a while.”

  “It might have been nice to ask me. Rather than making the decision for me.”

  “Would you have wanted to talk to me?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to talk to me now?”

  “Possibly. I’m not sure. I’ll have a think about it.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Harry.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. I’m not going to drop everything and rush out to see you just because you ring me for the first time in over two years.”

  “I just thought, if you weren’t busy—”

  “Besides which, I’m six months pregnant.”

  There was a tiny pause. “Congratulations.”

  “You sound shocked.”

  “No. Not at all. Surprised, maybe.”

  “You didn’t think I was the motherly type?”

  “I just didn’t think you wanted children this soon.”

  “No, well.” Titania sounded resigned. “Life has a habit of turning out differently than you expected.”

  “And is there . . . ?”

  “A man involved?” She hesitated. “You won’t like it. It’s Giles.”

  No, thought Harry. No. He had a vivid mental picture of the clay-pigeon shoot in Wales, with Giles, red-faced, potbellied, prematurely balding, exploding with excitement. “I always liked Giles.”

  “Liar.”

  Harry cleared his throat. “So have you got some lovely moated manor house in Suffolk?”

  “Sevenoaks,” said Titania. “We thought Kent was an easier comm
ute.”

  Harry suddenly felt overwhelmed by misery. “Well, it’s been lovely to catch up. Send my best wishes to Giles.”

  “So that’s it then, is it?”

  He knew what she meant. He had rung up to reestablish contact. But he’d wanted the old relationship. Not some awkward, strangled friendship between a loved-up couple and the old boyfriend.

  Titania said, in a quiet voice, “Happy Christmas, Harry.”

  Unlikely, he thought, ending the call.

  • • •

  Jake liked to pretend he could cook. What this meant, in practice, was that he would invite people round to supper and then find a complicated recipe that he thought would impress them. Because he never experimented with the same national cuisine twice, the cupboards in the kitchen were full of unlikely companions—nam pla, turmeric, pesto, allspice—like a suburban train coming into London on a Saturday afternoon. Kim looked at it all with a degree of suspicion. She liked wandering round Borough Market and had been known to splurge on goat cheese. But she found food snobbery irritating. What was wrong with a plain roast chicken?

  “If you have to ask,” said Jake, “we’re not really on the same page.”

  Kim wondered whether Jake’s guests were secretly as unimpressed as she was. One Saturday night he finished off a duck mousse by wafting it with wood smoke, a technique he claimed was used in all the best restaurants. (Although whether top chefs lit damp twigs, blackened them to cinders, and set off the smoke alarm was open to debate.) Everyone applauded. But no one ate more than a mouthful.

  “Colombian,” said Jake. “Chorizo, arepa, and chicharrón.”

  “What about simple Italian,” said Kim, “like risotto? You could get everything you need from La Dolce Vita round the corner.”

  “Or something from the Kakheti region of Georgia. Followed by churchkhela. Washed down by a superb Saperavi.”

  I give up, thought Kim.

  Early in February, Jake invited some of his political contacts round for supper. It was a group of people whose opinion mattered. He was almost nervous. Wanting to make some kind of statement, he created a clearing in the middle of the flat and set the table with antique cutlery and silver candelabra. Because of the dust and cobwebs, the effect was slightly spooky—more Miss Havisham than English stately home. But at least the flickering light from the candles meant that most of the rubbish was hidden in shadow.

  Jake was now the charity’s head of campaigns. (Kim had taken over research and development, and had her own intern working with her in the cubbyhole.) He enjoyed his new role. He said it had great political significance. He particularly liked hobnobbing with the lobbyists, bloggers, and journalists who hung around Westminster. It was, as far as Kim could see, a world that thrived on gossip. A vague rumor in the morning could become a major scandal by teatime. Watching it grow made observers feel busy and important, like someone whose tweets are retweeted.

  But by the time the guests had sat down and were halfway through the first course (shredded rabbit and smoked haddock with puréed fennel in a blackcurrant jus), Kim was feeling completely out of her depth. The rules of the game seemed to be that you had to shout about how important you were (“Well, of course, that’s what I predicted weeks before it actually happened”), name-drop (“Gordon was only saying the other day . . .”), or outdo everyone else with aggressive banter (“So I said to him, I hope you get cancer”). She tried pinning on various expressions, ranging from awed admiration to intense interest. But everyone ignored her. She was outside the bubble. Her only function was to collect the plates.

  Towards the end of the evening, one of the guests broke ranks.

  “So what is it that you do, Kim?” said a woman with gold-rimmed spectacles and short gray hair dressed in a sort of purple tunic.

  “I head up research. At the charity.”

  “My old job,” said Jake.

  “Ah,” said the woman. “Following in the master’s footsteps.”

  “Jake likes his trainees,” said the middle-aged man at the end of the table. He had red-rimmed eyes and jowls like a bloodhound.

  “Whoops,” said the gray-haired woman, her eyes glittering behind her glasses.

  Kim looked at Jake.

  “The last intern,” said Jake, “your predecessor, is working at the House of Commons now. A political researcher.”

  Kim still stared. But Jake was looking down at his fingers, peeling the shell off a prawn with immense slowness, as if one tiny, pearly fragment would choke him.

  Much later, when the last dinner guest had finally left after raucous good-byes in the hallway, Jake sauntered back into the shadowy living room and sat down. He picked up his phone. “Went well, I think. A few favors returned.”

  Kim said nothing.

  “Interesting conversation about Elliot Morley and the MPs’ expenses scandal.”

  Still, Kim said nothing.

  Jake put down his phone. “Come on then.” He seemed sad but resigned. “Out with it.”

  “Do you sleep with all your interns?”

  Jake looked completely relaxed. “They’re poisonous. You know that. They like stirring things up.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “Not the way you’ve put it, no.”

  “So what way should I have put it?”

  He shrugged. “She was my girlfriend. For a while.”

  “For how long?”

  “Kim, I don’t like this. It feels like you’re accusing me of something.”

  Until this moment, that tone of boredom would have been enough to silence her. Again and again, over the past two years, he had made her realize how little she knew. He was there to instruct her. To help her. To support her in her slow progress up the career ladder. Sometimes, when she was being particularly naïve, he couldn’t help sighing. Betraying a little weariness at her lack of experience. But he didn’t do it often. Most of the time, like a kindly uncle, he waited until she’d caught up. A generous man. A good teacher.

  Kim had been careful not to try his patience. She had bitten her tongue on so many occasions. But now she needed an answer. “How long were you together?”

  “I’ve told you. I don’t like the implication that I’ve done something wrong.”

  Kim thought about this. Then she stood up and reached for her coat.

  Jake looked surprised. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t just walk off into the night. It’s not safe.”

  “So tell me what I want to know.”

  “If you promise to sit down.”

  Kim sat.

  Jake said, “We were together for a year or so.”

  Kim stared at him.

  “Three years. We were together for three years. We broke up when she got her new job.”

  “Just before I started working for you.”

  “Yes. It was a time of major reorganization in the charity, as you know. She decided her future was elsewhere.”

  “And you never told me.”

  Jake smiled as if she was sweet but foolish. “You never asked.”

  “You didn’t think it was important?”

  “I thought we’d agreed that the past was the past. We said we wouldn’t pry into each other’s lives. You seemed happy with that.”

  Kim felt muddled and anxious. Did we? Did we agree to that? After a while, she said, “But don’t you think it’s strange that you went out with two interns one after the other?”

  “I think you get to know someone when you work together. Especially work like ours. When you’re committed. Passionate. Putting in long hours. I don’t think it’s that surprising.”

  Maybe it isn’t, thought Kim, his patient tone of voice making her feel, as usual, that she was making a fuss about nothing.

  Jake said, “I’ll tell you everything about her. Anything you want to know. Just ask me questions. I would have told you before. But I didn’t know it was important.”

  “It isn’t im
portant.”

  Jake’s expression cleared. “Good. I’m relieved. That’s what I thought our understanding was. So let’s forget all about it. Let’s draw a line under it and move on.”

  Kim, in her mind, saw Jake painting a thick black line across a piece of white paper. She felt outmaneuvered. What’s wrong with me? Why do I let him walk all over me?

  Jake stifled a yawn. “Do you need a hand with the clearing up? Or can I go to bed?”

  • • •

  A few days after he’d signed the lease on a brand-new riverside apartment near London Bridge, Harry realized that he didn’t have any furniture. The flat in Mile End had come completely kitted out, right down to the espresso machine, as had the apartment in Manhattan. But this one was empty. Walking through the big, open-plan living area with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Thames, Harry was tempted to keep it all completely minimalist. Just a bed, he thought. And a laptop. I don’t need anything else. But late the following evening, sitting in his office under the pool of light from the desk lamp, Harry realized he wasn’t being practical. It was a hard job. You got tired. You needed a few home comforts. A sofa, at least.

  So the following Saturday, Harry headed for Tottenham Court Road. He felt uneasy. This was all new to him. Obviously, he’d done a bit of background research online—Harry never went into any situation unprepared if he could possibly help it—and buying a sofa didn’t look too difficult. Size, fabric, comfort, style—not that different from buying a suit. Which he was good at. How hard could it be?

  But Harry had a nagging suspicion that he was being naïve. Since living in New York, where he’d learned how to play the part of a British toff (tortured but basically decent), he’d become even more sensitive to tiny clues about class and status. Back in the UK, he realized just how much he still had to learn. Recently, on one of the bank’s dress-down Fridays, a fellow analyst—an old Etonian—had turned up at the bank wearing salmon-pink cords. Harry had only just managed to wipe the look of astonishment from his face before anyone noticed.

  Maybe, thought Harry, the perfect sofa—the equivalent of salmon-pink trousers—will be right in front of my nose, and I won’t even see it. Perhaps I should have paid someone else to do the buying. An interior designer. A stylist. Some kind of concierge service.