But he did not have time to make that clear. “I’m going to talk to her,” said Caroline abruptly. “I’ll see you some time. Goodbye.”
James was about to protest against the finality of this, but Caroline had rung off. He dialled her number several times but on each occasion he was told that she was unavailable; she had switched the phone off. He sighed. Caroline was his first proper girlfriend. He had heard, of course, from his contemporaries how difficult women could be, and had smiled at their descriptions of moody, capricious behaviour. Not for me, he had told himself, and yet here he was encountering it, and feeling every bit as perplexed and at a loss as his friends had felt. Would it be simpler to bring things to an end with Caroline? James did not need her, when it came down to it. Or did he? I do, he thought. I can’t bear being shut out emotionally, I can’t bear it.
I need you, Caroline, he muttered. But how can I show it?
Chapter 28: Barbara Regrets Giving her Key to Rupert
If relations between James and Caroline were not all that they might have been, then the same was certainly not true of relations between Barbara Ragg and Hugh Macpherson, the young man whom she had picked up in Rye. And she had picked him up, in the most literal sense, because he had asked her in the car park of the Mermaid Inn whether she would be able to drive him back to London. On the way back there had been a terrible incident when the scarf Hugh was wearing had become entangled in a wheel of her small open-top sports car, threatening to bring about an Isadora Duncan moment. That had been averted – fortunately – and they had continued their journey to London where, quite suddenly and, Barbara thought, miraculously, they had fallen in love. It was as simple as that.
Now they were engaged, and if people like Rupert Porter were sniggering about it behind her back – and she knew that he was doing this – then let them; it would make no difference to the happiness she was experiencing. There was a history there, she reminded herself. Her father, Gregory, had worked for many years with Rupert’s father, Fatty Porter, and they had been friends as well as business partners. But, as with any close partnership, there had been occasional stresses in the arrangement, and Barbara had not forgotten the discussion her father had had with her shortly before his death. He had been confined to his bed, and was weakening.
“I know that you and Rupert will keep the business going,” he said. “And that makes me very happy. It’s a wonderful thing, you know, for a parent to feel assured that something he or she started is being carried on by the family. It’s difficult to describe the feeling exactly, but it’s something like the conferment of immortality. Yes, that’s what it’s like: it’s like being given a small measure of immortality.
“Rupert’s a nice enough young man,” Gregory went on. “But I do hope you don’t end up marrying him.”
Barbara had laughed. “I give you my word I won’t do that.”
Her father smiled. “Good. I don’t think it would work, frankly.”
“It certainly wouldn’t,” agreed Barbara. “And I’ve never seen him … in that way. So don’t worry.”
Gregory rested for a moment. Speaking was becoming difficult and he was trying to conserve his strength. “The problem is that as much as I get on with Fatty, and as much as we are close friends, there’s a side to him that I just don’t trust. It’s difficult to put your finger on it, but I get the feeling that at the end of the day, Fatty might just let you down. He’d always do the thing that was in his best interests.” He paused. “Do you know what I mean? Looking after number one?”
Barbara nodded. “Yes. But then, don’t all of us do that? Don’t we all look after number one when it comes down to it?”
“I’m not sure about that,” said Gregory. “I suppose there’s a sense in which we are all our number one priority, but there are plenty of people who actually do seem to think of others first. Or at least spend more time on others than they do on themselves.” He hesitated. “Did I say plenty?”
“You did.”
“Well, maybe not plenty. Some, rather. Some people are strikingly altruistic.”
“And Fatty’s not one of those?”
Gregory grinned. “Heavens, no. Nor will his son be. Watch him. Because … Well, you know my views on heredity. It shows. It always shows. If you want to know what somebody is going to be like, look at the parents. There’s your answer.”
And now, sitting in her office, tidying up on the last afternoon before she was due to begin a ten-day holiday with Hugh – their first holiday together – Barbara remembered this warning from her father. She had heeded his advice, of course, and over the years she had seen little instances of Rupert’s selfishness that had confirmed her father’s judgement of him. But now she wondered whether she had done something that flew in the face of the paternal warning. I have, she thought; and it’s too late to undo it.
Rupert had come into her office that morning to discuss a rather difficult client who was proposing to change agencies. He was torn; on the one hand it would simplify life if this demanding client were to make his unreasonable demands on another agency altogether, but …
“On the other hand,” said Barbara, “if he goes then he may eventually take another five or six people with him. We know for a fact that he’s very friendly with Molly and Pete …”
“And George,” added Rupert. “He and George are very close. And if George went that would be a big blow.”
“Precisely.”
“So I try to persuade him to stay?”
“Yes,” said Barbara. “Definitely.”
They had agreed on a strategy of persuasion and then Rupert had raised the issue of Barbara’s impending holiday. “Lucky you. I’m stuck in town for another two months.”
She thought, he’s trying to make me feel guilty. He always does. She smiled up at him from her desk; Rupert never sat down when he talked to her – he liked the advantage of extra height.
“I’m looking forward to it immensely. We’re going to Scotland.”
“We?” asked Rupert, and then, quickly, “Of course, you and Hugh. Of course. How nice.”
Then Barbara had mentioned her boiler. “It’s rather awkward, though. I’ve got somebody coming to install a new central heating system in the flat. They insist on doing it next week, but I don’t want to hand over the keys to people I don’t know. I was hoping to get a friend to supervise – to let them in and see that everything was in order. But I haven’t yet …” She stopped herself, realising what was coming next.
“But let us help,” said Rupert effusively. “We’re just round the corner, as you know, and since Gloria went freelance she’s very flexible. Miss Flexibility herself, in fact. She could pop in and supervise things.”
“I don’t want to …”
“Look, it’s not the slightest imposition. Gloria would love to help. Just give me a key and all will be fixed.”
Barbara knew that she should have resisted, but it was too late. She could hardly refuse this offer without appearing churlish and distrusting, and yet even as she handed over the spare key she understood what a profound mistake it was. Rupert had wanted her flat for years, and felt that he had a moral claim to it. And here she was handing over to him when it would have been so easy to prevaricate, or make an excuse. Could anything be more foolish? Or weak?
After he had left the room, she looked down at her desk and took a deep breath. It was absurd to be worry unnecessarily; there was nothing that Rupert could do. After all, one couldn’t steal a flat – could one?
Chapter 29: Rupert Scorns the Yeti Project
Barbara made a conscious effort to stop thinking about Rupert and his wheedling ways. She had only another three hours in the office before she could leave for the next ten days, putting all thoughts of Rupert and the Ragg Porter Literary Agency out of her mind. These ten days would be spent in the company of Hugh Macpherson, her fiancé, in the wilds of Argyll, staying in a cottage on his father’s farm. It was a blissful thought, and Barbara allowed her mind to dwe
ll on the delights that lay ahead. She would have Hugh all to herself; her companion, her plaything. She felt a frisson of anticipatory pleasure as she allowed herself to imagine moments of intimacy together; Hugh was attentive, the ideal lover, and made Oedipus Snark, with his hurried, insensitive ways, seem like a bad dream. Oedipus had not really felt anything for her, she now realised; he had stayed with her for several years simply because his vanity required that he have a partner. He had not loved her, and if she had persuaded herself that she loved him, then it was no more than wishful thinking and self-delusion.
She closed her eyes, allowing herself one final image of Hugh lying beside her, with the window open to the Highlands sky that in the summer was light even at eleven at night, and the scent of the sea loch that Hugh had explained lay just a short distance from the cottage; and she pictured herself getting up and looking down at Hugh, still asleep, and then crossing to the window and seeing the deer going down to the machair, that strip of grass between the sea and the land proper. She imagined all that, and then opened her eyes again and frowned, and began to dictate the final few letters that she had to give to her secretary before she left for this idyll with Hugh. She glanced at her watch: it was three o’clock. In seven hours they would be boarding the Fort William sleeper for the trip north; just seven short hours.
There was a letter to Errol Greatorex, the amanuensis who claimed to have written the autobiography of a yeti. Rupert had initially been scathing about this project, and was still somewhat dubious about Greatorex’s credentials. “Firstly,” he had said on one occasion, in that insufferably pedantic voice that he used when he wanted to explain what he thought was very obvious. “Firstly, the very existence of yetis is doubtful. It’s all very well producing photographs of giant footprints, but if these creatures existed, then surely we would have found skeletons, at the very least. Unless they’re immortal, of course. There’s always that possibility, I suppose. If they’re like Zeus et al and the Himalayas are like Mount Olympus, then I suppose that we wouldn’t find skeletons, would we, they having no mortal coil to cast off – d’accord?”
He drew breath. “Secondly, if abominable snowmen do exist, then it would be very unlikely that they would have the gift of speech, being some sort of sub-homo sapiens primate. So how could this yeti have conveyed his experiences to your friend, Mr Greatorex? Somewhat unlikely, I would have thought. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course.Cela va sans dire.
“You have to be careful, Barbara. Literary frauds are always lurking in the undergrowth. Grey Owl – look at him. Ojibway Indian – I ask you! Archie Belaney from Sussex, in actual fact. And how did his publishers and agents feel, I wonder? And that book, My Uncle Joe, about Stalin, by his nephew, except he wasn’t Stalin’s nephew at all. We’re on well-worn ground here, Barbara, and I don’t think that Ragg Porter should end up with egg all over its face.”
She had resisted Rupert’s opposition to the project, and encouraged Errol Greatorex to produce a manuscript. So far four chapters had been written and had been submitted in a neat folder marked Yeti’s Life Story, Confidential. She had taken these home one evening and had pored over them, so transfixed by the story that her soup had boiled over and burned, unnoticed.
“My earliest memory,” wrote the yeti, “is of being taken by my uncle to a place just outside one of the high villages in a remote part of the country. There was a monastery outside this village, a square stone building with a commanding view of the valley below. I had never been in a proper building before – we lived in small shelters, tents of a sort, that we disguised with snow. They were comfortable enough, but the sight of this monastery with its darkened windows and its high parapets made a great impression on my five-year-old self.
“I wanted to go into the monastery, but my uncle, with that natural shyness of our people, refused. ‘They will not understand,’ he said. ‘That is part of their world, not ours.’
“I heard the monks chanting within, and the sound seemed to me to be beautiful beyond imagining. Yetis do not have any music of their own – they have small singing bowls that they sometimes use to produce a single note, but I hesitate to call it music. Hearing the chants of the monks filled me with excitement. It seemed to me that I was being addressed, personally and directly, and that if I did not respond this mournful, moving sound would disappear from the face of the earth.
“My uncle, however, told me to be quiet, and so I said nothing, but crouched there with him, watching the monks going about their tasks, tending their struggling vegetables in the patches of raked earth they had prepared in front of the monastery.
“I had no idea that, six years later, I was to return here and be given the chance of an education. I had no idea, too, that some of the monks whom I had watched with such curiosity would come to mean so much to me. At that point they were just men in saffron robes, clutching hoes, scratching at the thin soil of the mountainside, behind them the prayer flags fluttering in the wind: blue, green, yellow, red – colours that had until then been no part of our world, which knew only the white of the snow and the pale, singing blue of the sky above.”
Chapter 30: The Sleeper Train
“That’s our sleeper train,” said Hugh, pointing along the platform. “See it?”
Barbara Ragg nodded, momentarily distracted by the sight of a group of staggering football fans being searched by a contingent of transport police before they were allowed on the platform. The search was being conducted in good spirits, it seemed, even though it was proving productive. At the side of the concourse was steadily growing a motley pile of bottles and cans, taken off the fans by the police. Barbara did not want to stare, but found it difficult to tear her gaze away. For a moment she was consumed with shame; where else in Western Europe could such sights be seen? Where else was public drunkenness so manifest? On the streets and in the cafés of France? She thought not; such places always had a light, civilised air, even if the statistics showed that the French consumed vast lakes of wine. But they drank it with food, while engaged in pleasant conversation, not like this. Nor, she imagined, did they have mobs of drunken young women, screeching hen parties, tottering in high heels and short skirts from bar to bar, fuelled by sweetened vodka concoctions. And in Germany? The Germans got drunk at beer festivals, in large tents, to the strains of oompah music – again, all very different from this. And yet if you said anything about it to anybody, they merely shrugged, or smiled at you as if to imply that you were some sort of killjoy.
Hugh did not appear to have noticed. Perhaps, being Scottish, he was inured to such sights. “I like sleepers,” he said, as they made their way down the platform. “Do you?”
“I don’t really think very much about them,” she said.
Hugh quoted Norman McCaig. “There’s a Scottish poet,” he said. “He wrote a poem about the Edinburgh to London sleeper. He said something about not liking being carried sideways through the night. That’s such a powerful image, isn’t it? Being carried sideways through the night.”
Barbara agreed. “Sometimes,” she said, “when I look up and see an aeroplane overhead I think of all the people in it. All those people being carried in the sitting position through the air. If you just took the outer skin of metal away, imagine what it would look like. Rows of people shooting through the air.”
Hugh smiled. “Yes, very odd. I think I probably prefer being carried sideways through the night to being carried through the air like that. One is less of a hostage to fortune when one is only a few feet off the ground, don’t you think, rather than, what is it, four miles above it?”
“Five, I think.”
“Give me a train any time.”
Trains were normally of little interest to Barbara, except as a means of getting from place to place, but this one was different. At first, it seemed to her that it had no windows, that it was that curious thing, a sealed train, of the sort in which Lenin travelled from Switzerland to Russia; then she saw that there were windows, but they were rendered
opaque by drawn blinds.
“I can hardly remember when I last took a sleeper train,” she said. “As a teenager I did some travelling on the continent. We were in a wagon-lit, I think.” It was a hazy recollection: a vague memory of sounds, of being rocked through the night on the way down to Italy; the slightly acrid smell of sleeper carriages, a smell redolent of batteries and stuffiness, and slightly sour milk.
“I want to go on the Orient Express one day,” said Hugh as they neared their carriage. “To Istanbul. I’ve always wanted to. It’s such a romantic idea, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Barbara.
“Shall we do it?” asked Hugh. “Should I book?”
She laughed. “Perhaps.” He had started to say we now, quite frequently, and she was still getting used to it. It touched her. Oedipus Snark had never said we; her life with him had never been a shared one. With Oedipus, it was always I.
They boarded the train. A woman with a clipboard, a diminutive woman with a strong Glaswegian accent, showed them to their compartments, two single-bed cabins with a communicating door between. For a moment Barbara felt a twinge of disappointment, but then asked herself what she had expected. Sleepers did not have double bunks, of course, because that was not the point of a sleeper. You were meant to sleep when on a sleeper – as the name suggested.
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