The Code

by Nick Thripp

  ‘All right, Rachel,’ I said, ‘let’s get married. But on one condition.’

  She eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We don’t invite bloody Toby.’

  ‘You are a fool,’ she said as she stretched across from her seat and gave me a big wet kiss on my cheek. ‘I do love you, you know.’ Her hand reached out and fondled my crotch, like a film star stroking her miniature pooch.

  Perhaps marriage won’t be so bad, I thought to myself. Maybe it is time to settle down.

  ‘Toby or no Toby, I want it done properly you know,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to ask Daddy’s permission, and then it’s the full bended-knee-job and a massive rock.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I want to choose the ring though; your taste is terrible, and besides you’d probably come away with the cheapest one in the shop.’

  Chapter 14

  Promotion again, 1983

  ‘Do you think they’ll make us partners?’ Richard said as we ate our sandwiches in the scrubby little patch of green which passed for a park near the office.

  ‘They have to,’ I replied. ‘They’re taking on more and more junior people. From what I heard, they can’t recruit any seniors because we don’t pay enough. It’s a simple case of supply and demand.’ I threw some crumbs on the ground and they were immediately covered by a swirling mass of pigeons.

  ‘Thought Braithwaite said you weren’t ready,’ Richard said.

  ‘That was six months ago, and you look at the wankers they’ve promoted to manager since then. Some of us managers have to become partners.’ All around me pigeons perched expectantly, waiting to compete for the next bonanza.

  ‘I hope you’re right. Those skinflints will do anything to save money. It would suit them fine to have all cheap Indians and no properly rewarded chiefs.’

  A week or so later, I got a call from Braithwaite’s secretary.

  ‘He wants to see you. Now.’

  Braithwaite sat hunched over his desk. Apart from a curt ‘Enter’, when I knocked, he ignored me completely, leaving me standing while he finished reading the document in front of him. I looked around. A half-smoked cigar smouldered in an overflowing ashtray while a bluebottle hurled itself repeatedly against the window, through which I could see a crane perched motionlessly over the site next door, and beyond that the concrete skeleton of a skyscraper under construction.

  ‘I’ve decided to take a risk,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the document. ‘I’m going to promote you to salaried partner. There are those who say you’re not ready.’ He looked up and stared at me. ‘It’s up to you to prove them wrong. Roger will tell you your new salary.’ He looked down. The interview was clearly at an end.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Braithwaite,’ I murmured. When I got into the corridor, I executed a quick dance. I’d done it. I’d caught up with Rachel, at least in job title.

  *

  ‘Congratulations,’ Rachel said as she lifted her glass to toast my success as we sat with Richard in a corner of The Magpie. ‘It means you’ll have to work much harder now though. No more skiving off.’

  ‘I hope it’s not going to affect our midweek golf matches,’ Richard said. ‘I rely on the money I take off you to keep the family budget afloat.’

  ‘You’ll soon be getting your own call from old Braithers,’ I said. ‘I’m sure that as partners you and I will need to spend even more time together at off-site meetings.’

  ‘This is a great opportunity. Please don’t stuff it up,’ Rachel said.

  ‘You don’t seem to be putting too much effort in yourself these days, Rachel,’ I replied, savouring this unprecedented opportunity to criticise her work ethic.

  ‘Will do once I get the wedding sorted.’ Rachel was heavily involved in making plans and fighting the many battles associated with an expensive event for which someone else was paying. She was in opposition to her mother and, seemingly, the rest of the family, on every possible point. I had no say in the proceedings. Mine was a walk-on part, necessary only for completeness on the great day itself. Until then, thank God, I was insignificant.

  *

  The wedding was held in the old Norman church in her parents’ village. Linda and Jean were ushers. When Richard and I shuffled nervously into the church, one of them beckoned me over.

  ‘You know that bit when the priest asks if anyone knows of any lawful impediment?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Yes.’

  ‘We haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten what?’ I croaked.

  ‘Never mix it with lawyers,’ the other one said.

  They grinned and winked at each other before going back to handing out orders of service, leaving me with a cold sense of foreboding.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Richard asked. ‘And who are they?’

  ‘They’re history, thank God,’ I replied. Whatever else married life brought, the Krays would not be part of it.

  Rachel’s father wanted to be able to enjoy the proceedings as a parent, so a pasty-faced curate with a lisp conducted the service. My heart skipped several beats when the just cause or impediment question was asked and a loud cough and throat-clearing noise erupted at the back of the church. After a nerve-racking pause no objection materialised, but my hand was still shaking so much I dropped the ring while trying to slide it onto Rachel’s finger. Rachel lifted her veil and gave me a reassuring smile before we kissed. I was a fool to have worried about the Krays; Rachel was more than a match for them.

  Much of the rest of the day became a blur except for Richard’s entertaining if slanderous best man’s speech, and Rachel’s father’s caricatured impression of me which had all the guests laughing except for my mother, who spent her time crying into a lace handkerchief. My father guffawed rather too loudly at the slurs on my character while he put away as much champagne as he could. I’d worried he’d place a dampener on proceedings. In fact, throughout the afternoon every time I encountered him he was telling slightly risqué jokes or clapping members of the bride’s family on the shoulder. He even spent time talking to Linda and Jean, and I was pleased to see all three of them burst out laughing until I remembered that the subject they all thought most risible was me.

  As Rachel and I were about to leave the reception my father materialised and clasped me by the elbow.

  ‘Glad to see you’re making something of your life at last. It’s taken you rather longer than most people.’ I winced as he slung his left arm around my shoulders. ‘I think you’re getting there at last, my boy. Now you’ve got a secure job and a pretty wife you can settle down and give us grandchildren we can be proud of.’

  I looked down at his puffy red face, and couldn’t think of a suitable reply. He proffered his hand and, reluctantly, I took it.

  ‘Good luck, my boy.’ He gripped my hand tightly and, for a moment I thought I detected a slight moistness in his eyes. I averted my gaze; I couldn’t bear the sight of him becoming sentimental after everything he’d done to oppress us all.

  My mother hugged me, brushing her wet cheek against my waistcoat and whispered in my ear, ‘I know Rachel’s very pretty and intelligent. I do hope she’s nice enough for you though. She’s very ambitious, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s the way with modern career women, Mum,’ I replied. ‘We new men are used to coping.’

  ‘I hope so, dear. I do hope so.’

  The crowd of well-wishers engulfed us, and I found myself being propelled by the Krays towards a chauffeur-driven vintage Daimler trailing a tin can and a pair of kippers from its exhaust. We waved at our guests as we pulled away en-route to a local hotel for the night, and I reached out and took Rachel’s hand in mine.

  ‘Happy?’ I asked.

  She looked at me very seriously. ‘So-so. Seven out of ten.’ She proceeded to run through all aspects of the day, critiquing and scoring each. The ch
urch service had been a six as the curate had stumbled his way through his part and the readings had been delivered with little feeling by her relatives, the quality of the food had been an eight but its service, which had been slow, only merited a five. The speeches had been awarded a nine, particularly her father’s, the wine a six, the champagne an eight, the venue a seven and the guests had only earned a five for their lacklustre singing at the church and their muted responses at the reception.

  ‘And how would you score it?’ she asked.

  Even then I couldn’t remember that much about it. As I’d been dreading the day, I took that as a good sign.

  ‘Oh, ten out of ten for me.’

  Although I hadn’t paid much attention to History lessons at school, Disraeli’s confession to laying it on with a trowel when flattering Queen Victoria had always stuck in my mind. It seemed like sound advice.

  ‘How could marrying you warrant anything less? Yes, absolutely, ten out of ten.’

  Rachel kissed me.

  ‘You’re sweet,’ she said. ‘It’s what I like most about you. You’ve no edges.’

  *

  For our honeymoon, we drove around Tuscany for a fortnight. Rachel had organised everything, taking us from one idyllic hotel to another, and the places we stayed could all have been used as settings for up-market holiday brochures.

  Rachel was in an uncharacteristically carefree mood, and even I was surprised by the spontaneity and passion of our lovemaking; in the woods, in the car and on the beach as well as in our bedroom. I found myself wondering whether we could create a life for ourselves in Italy and formulated a plan to set up a business to export garden plants to the UK market. I would suggest it to Rachel on our last night.

  *

  We were dining at a hill top restaurant with views over rolling Tuscan hills. In the distance was a dark clump of woods. On the slopes below us were the orderly ranks of a vineyard, and a jumble of gnarled and twisted olive trees. The cooling evening air was scented with pine. I held Rachel’s hand, looked into her eyes, and outlined my idea. At first, she looked bemused, then amused and finally irritated.

  ‘And I thought you were being romantic.’

  ‘Sorry. Er, what about it though?’

  ‘Out of the question. This is a great place for a holiday, ten out of ten. I don’t want to live here though. I’ve got a job and a career. I know it’ll be frantic when I get back to the office, a real adrenaline rush; that’s what I love. I couldn’t waste my life becoming a lotus-eater.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be. We’d be working, and we’d be doing it for ourselves. It could be very profitable. There’s a longer growing season and the plants mature more quickly out here. I could easily establish links with UK garden centres and start exporting. Think of the quality of life, the food, the wine, the sunshine. It would be fantastic, a dream existence.’

  She silenced me with a single look. You couldn’t argue with Rachel once she’d made up her mind.

  When we came home we opened the wedding presents and among them found a small, ornately-fashioned gold and silver chess set in a mahogany box, on which our names were inscribed in gold lettering. We’d been so intent on tearing the wrapping paper off, we’d no idea who’d sent it. When I retrieved the paper, I found a card inside from John Beart, though I couldn’t think how he’d found out we were getting married.

  ‘What a generous gift.’ Rachel seemed impressed, more because the gold and silver were real, (so the maker’s card inside was at pains to point out), than because of the intricacy of the craftsmanship.

  ‘Rather over the top, don’t you think?’ I said, appalled at its extravagance. I couldn’t think what you’d do with a chess set like that. It was so ostentatious you couldn’t leave it on display. The insurance alone would probably cost a fortune. As far as I was concerned we should sell it. Failing that, the best place for it would be in the vaults at the bank.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Rachel said. ‘It doesn’t really go with what we’ve got, but as we upgrade everything else, it could fit in nicely.’

  I looked around at our few possessions. I’d grown fond of them and the idea of throwing them all out and buying in more fashionable furniture and fittings gave me a vague sense of unease.

  ‘We must invite him over for dinner,’ she continued, weighing the pieces in her hand.

  ‘I don’t know how to contact him. Anyway, I don’t like him very much.’

  Rachel looked at me disbelievingly. ‘Don’t be feeble. He obviously thinks highly of you. Just look at this amazing gift he’s given us.’

  I told her about his proposition.

  ‘We must definitely have him over then. He’s right. Bringing a new client in will set the seal on your partnership.’ She burrowed in the pile of papers again, and found the external wrapping.

  ‘Look, here’s his address. It’s on this other card.’ She put it carefully in the cupboard drawer. ‘Let’s make sure we don’t lose this. It could be the making of you’.

  *

  The role of partner wasn’t particularly onerous. Others did the real work and I could adopt a hands-off approach, liaising with the client’s finance director and controller at the beginning of the audit and then reviewing the work done and signing it off at the end. In the interim, there was a certain amount of schmoozing the clients.

  The recently recruited accountants, all so anxious to take on extra work and shoulder additional responsibilities, seemed a different breed from my generation. It was all a little frightening and I reckoned it best to keep out of the way of all these highly motivated, extremely competent people.

  Our social life was now very enjoyable. We ate in fashionable restaurants, took various interesting European city breaks, and booked holidays wherever the fancy took us, business schedules permitting. I started to appreciate going to the theatre and to concerts and was even becoming quite knowledgeable about opera. We moved from Teddington and bought a sizeable terraced house in Richmond which, at Rachel’s insistence, we re-decorated completely. My only regret was that the garden was very small and dark, and it was difficult to grow anything of interest there. Filling the house with stubby yuccas, angular dracaenas and spiky urn plants somehow didn’t compensate.

  Rachel was now the target for approaches by head hunters attempting to recruit her as finance director of organisations of increasing size and importance. Although she rejected them, she only did so after skilfully manipulating her own firm into repeatedly improving her compensation package. Recognising how little I contributed at work, I already felt guilty at being paid so handsomely, so it didn’t matter I wasn’t ever approached. In fact, it was a relief. I couldn’t believe how well everything was turning out. It seemed my father had been right. Accountancy, as a profession, did have prospects.

  Occasionally we’d visit Rachel’s family for the weekend, and despite a polite welcome, her parents’ lack of interest in me was still apparent. The elegant eighteenth century, wisteria-clad vicarage, which smelled of old leather furniture downstairs and of antique dust and mildew upstairs, needed repainting outside and redecoration inside.

  Of Rachel’s sisters, only the youngest, Suzie, a tall, slender girl in her late teens whose straw blonde locks fell around her shoulders, still lived at home. She seemed to be in permanent motion as she shimmied barefoot around the house and garden, her long thin feet like luminous white levers protruding from her flowing ankle-length skirts. Sometimes she was dressed in a paint-stained smock. Whatever her attire, she smelled of marijuana and wore a permanently abstracted expression. Occasionally I’d catch a glimpse of her at her easel at the bottom of the garden. More often she would seclude herself in her bedroom, with a large ‘painting in progress: do not disturb’ sign on the door. She ignored everyone, including me, despite my attempts to ingratiate myself.

  Rachel would become angry by just looking at her, berating her f
or her idleness, her lack of motivation and her unwillingness to do anything as mundane as laying the table or washing up. Suzie would merely smile and glide past to only she knew where.

  ‘The girl’s as high as a kite,’ Rachel said to me one day. ‘I don’t know where she gets the stuff, or the money. She was thrown out of school for smoking dope and she’s still permanently stoned. Years of exorbitant school fees and all she managed to do is scrape two O-levels, and they were in Art and Religious Studies. Can you believe it? Now my parents are talking about sending her to a finishing school near Reading. Good money after bad.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit harsh?’

  ‘Harsh?’ Rachel exploded. ‘I still haven’t forgiven her for being so out of her mind on acid she missed our wedding. Absolutely inexcusable.’

  Though I nodded, I couldn’t bring myself to join in. It rankled with Rachel that she and two of her sisters had attended the then newly formed and chaotic local comprehensive, whose results at the time were appalling. Rachel, the oldest, had of course shone academically. The next two sisters had done equally well; one was now a doctor and the other a research scientist. In contrast, Suzie, benefiting from an aunt’s legacy, had been sent to an exclusive boarding school where she made little impression until her expulsion. Despite Rachel’s continual criticisms I sympathised with Suzie. I’d spent my own youth drifting and knew what it felt like. Now she seemed to have found something which she loved – the paintings I saw were certainly accomplished – and she couldn’t care less about anyone else, least of all her big sister. I admired that.

  *

  It was a hot afternoon, the still air heavy with the spicy fragrance of tall pink and white Dianthus flowers, the silence broken only by the resonance of assiduous bees and the humming of hover flies.

  ‘What are you planning to do?’ I had found Suzie in the vegetable garden, sitting sketching lettuces. She was wearing what appeared to be a dull brown sack and, for once, baseball shoes. Her hair was pulled up into a loose and straggling bun.