by Lewis Orde
Roland put all business affairs on the back burner as funeral arrangements were made. He did everything he could to help Michael . . . everything short of visiting his father’s house. Meeting Albert would come soon enough at the funeral. Roland remembered too well what Albert had told Michael following the takeover of Adler’s . . . nor could he forget the last time he had seen Albert at a funeral and the confrontation that nearly turned into an all-out brawl. He didn’t relish meeting his former adversary again under such similar circumstances. Yet out of his respect and friendship for Michael he felt he should attend the funeral.
Standing in the chapel at Edmonton, he felt there was something disconcertingly familiar about the day as he looked over the mass of people there. Simon wasn’t with him this time, nor had Roland driven himself; he had been chauffeured from the Regent Street store by Alf Goldstein, who now waited outside. But the sight of Albert with Michael at his side couldn’t help but remind him of Monty Adler’s funeral. Later that day he’d found Catarina waiting in his office with the news that she was pregnant.
Roland made the same slow journey out to the burial plot, only this time there were two people with their hands on the cart that carried the coffin – Albert and Michael. He waited at the rear of the crowd while the coffin was lowered, prayers were said and the first spadefuls of earth were shoveled. It wasn’t until after they returned to the chapel that Roland approached Albert, joining the line of friends and family who waited to offer their condolences. Roland reached Michael first, shook his hand, asked if there was anything else he could do. Michael managed a wan smile and shook his head. Then Roland stood in front of Albert, his hand offered. Albert looked up, and for the first time Roland noticed he was wearing glasses. Behind them, the eyes were red-rimmed, glazed. In recognizing Roland the eyes sharpened and suddenly Roland tensed; just as quickly they became dull again.
‘I’m sorry about your wife.’ Roland noticed that Michael was watching closely, as if ready to act should there be another scene.
Very slowly, Albert extended his hand, grasped Roland’s. ‘Thank you. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.’ The eyes sharpened again, bored into Roland with an intensity he found uncomfortable. Roland understood the sudden fire, even if it was obvious that Michael did not. Michael looked from one man to the other, but Roland wasn’t about to answer the questioning look in his eyes.
‘Thank you,’ Albert repeated, before dropping Roland’s hand and turning to the next person in line. Roland nodded to Michael and walked out of the chapel to where Goldstein waited.
‘Did he say two civil words to you?’ Goldstein asked as they drove away from the cemetery.
‘Yes, he thanked me for coming. Said he appreciated it.’
Goldstein whistled in shock. ‘Must be getting a bit soft in his old age.’
‘I doubt it,’ was all Roland said before he fell silent for the rest of the journey back to Regent Street.
That evening he roamed around his apartment unable to settle down. It seemed so large and empty now, with Elsie Partridge having returned to Scotland and Katherine living with Janet in the four-bedroom house he’d bought for them in St. John’s Wood, a mile away. Normally the emptiness didn’t bother him; he didn’t spend enough time alone there for it to have any effect. Tonight, though, after seeing Michael and his father at the cemetery, he wanted company.
He left the apartment and caught a taxi to St John’s Wood. He stood in front of the large house for a minute, wondering whether he should have telephoned first. He normally visited Janet and the children on the weekends; maybe this surprise call wasn’t such a wonderful idea after all. But the downstairs lights were on, and their brightness lured him toward the front door.
Janet opened it and her face fell in shock. ‘Roland . . . what . . .?’
‘I thought I’d drop by. Nothing to do.’
‘For God’s sake, why didn’t you phone first?’
Standing in the hall behind Janet, half in and half out of the living room, was a tall man with thinning brown hair and a full, friendly face. Roland felt his skin begin to burn. ‘Maybe I’d better leave.’
‘Maybe you’d better come in now. At least you can say hello.’ She tugged him by the arm and introduced him to the man, who came forward hesitantly. Though he was standing in a house he had bought, in the company of a woman who had given him two children and mothered a third as if she were her own, Roland felt like a complete stranger.
‘Is Kathy asleep?’ he managed to ask, trying to regain his composure.
‘I don’t think so,’ Janet replied. ‘Go up and take a look. Just don’t wake Richard and Carol.’
Roland went up the stairs quietly. First he peeked into the rooms of Carol and Richard; they were both asleep and he kissed them fondly. Then he knocked on the door of Katherine’s room, opened it. She was lying in bed, reading by the light on her bedside table while a small radio softly played a Beatles song.
‘Hello . . .’ She opened her arms to embrace her father. ‘I thought I heard your voice. What are you doing here in the middle of the week?’
‘Just dropped by on the off-chance of getting a hug and kiss from you.’
Katherine kissed him on the cheek. ‘Did you meet Uncle Ralph?’
‘Who?’ then he remembered the man Janet had introduced. Ralph . . . Ralph Morrison. ‘I saw him downstairs.’
‘Did you like him? Janet’s been seeing him for almost two months now.’
Two months, and she hadn’t mentioned a word. Or maybe she had, and Roland – wrapped up in the French deal – had let it slip completely by. ‘Kathy, it doesn’t matter whether I like him, do you like him?’
‘He’s all right, I suppose.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Sells insurance, I think. Or something boring like that. He’s not anything like you.’
Roland laughed delightedly. His own sentiments exactly, and he was so pleased that his daughter shared them with him. Insurance was respectable enough, no doubt. Profitable, too. But hardly the same as owning your own business.
‘How do you get on with him?’ Ever since he had broken up with Janet he’d never spoken about her men friends with Katherine. When they saw each other on weekends or on special occasions such as birthdays, or when she had won the show-jumping trophy, they spoke only about themselves.
‘All right. He buys me lots of presents’ – she indicated a row of costumed dolls on the dressing table – ‘as if he thinks being friendly with me is very important. See that Household Cavalry officer? He brought me that tonight.’
‘Being friendly with you is very important.’
‘I just wish he wouldn’t keep calling me Kathy,’ Katherine complained. ‘That’s your name for me.’
Roland reached out and hugged her. Only he was allowed to call her Kathy; everyone else had to abide by the more formal ‘Katherine.’ He was relieved to be assured that no matter what else happened, he would always be the number one man in his older daughter’s life.
When he went back downstairs, Janet and Ralph Morrison were sitting in the living room, listening to a Chopin recital on the radio. ‘Join us for a cup of tea?’ Janet asked.
‘No thanks, I’d better be going.’
‘I’ll see you out.’
Roland noticed the look of relief that his refusal brought to Ralph Morrison’s face, and he felt flattered. The man was obviously nervous about filling his shoes.
‘Kathy says you’ve been seeing Ralph for a couple of months,’ Roland said to Janet as he stood on the doorstep. ‘Is anything going to come of it?’
‘He’s thinking about asking me to marry him.’
‘How do you know?’ Roland was amazed by the statement; did women really possess such uncanny intuition?
‘He’s started looking at houses this weekend.’
‘What’s wrong with this one?’ Roland felt offended that anyone would even consider moving them somewhere else, to a place he hadn’t approved of and paid fo
r.
‘Roland, Ralph and I have talked about you a lot, what you and I meant to each other, the children, the way you still keep in touch. He’s a little bit scared of being permanently in your shadow. You have that effect on people, you tend to overwhelm them.’
‘When he gets around to asking you, what will your answer be?’
‘I’ll consider it.’
‘Does Ralph break his life into tidy little compartments?’
Janet shook her head. ‘No. Basically he’s a very simple man.’ She followed the words with a quick grin. ‘Which makes one hell of a change from you.’
‘No matter what you decide to do, I still want to look after the well-being of my children. That’s my responsibility and my privilege.’
‘You will. We’ve talked about that as well. Ralph’s comfortable with the children – he likes kids – and he understands the situation. You know, Richard and Carol being ours, Katherine being Catarina’s but living with me.’
‘And I want to see the house he’s thinking of buying—’
‘Shut up, Roland.’ She placed a finger against his lips. ‘Give him room to breathe. Give us all room to breathe. Good night.’ She removed her finger, gave him the most fleeting of kisses and closed the door softly. Roland walked out to the street and turned back to gaze at the house. A twinge of envy coursed through him as he pictured two people secure in each other’s company. Sharing. He began to feel sorry for himself until he remembered this was the way he had wanted it. He could have been in there with Janet now, with the children, but he had chosen to follow another course.
He looked at his watch. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. He had no desire to return to Regent’s Park, to sit alone in the apartment. He wanted company, needed it. There were other people he could call on, and he began to look for a cab. He spotted a telephone booth before he found a cab and dialed Sally’s number. He would be welcome there. She and Christopher Mellish were past the stage of wanting to spend a romantic evening alone; in fact they would probably welcome company. Mellish answered, delighted that Roland had called. Sally was away in Paris, covering the new fashions for the magazine and wouldn’t be back until the following day.
‘How about I meet you at Kendall’s in half an hour, Roland? I probably would have drifted over there anyway.’
‘Sounds good to me.’ Roland stepped out of the booth and searched for a taxi again. He finally spotted one and gave the driver directions to the casino.
Of all the clubs in the West End, Kendall’s was Roland’s favorite. Introduced to it by Mellish, Roland found the club – which took up the lower two floors of a massive Regency house on Mount Street – to be a throwback to an earlier, more elegant age. Ornate chandeliers hung gracefully from high vaulted ceilings. Luxurious carpets covered the floors. Even the voices of the croupiers – the hum of conversation around the tables – were muted, as if the people were attending a service instead of gambling. Often, Roland went just to sit and watch, finding a kind of peace within the club – the gentility of it soothed his nerves, allowed him time to think. And when he played, that same low-key decorum distilled his senses, made planning a pleasure instead of a chore.
He sat for a short time, watching players at a roulette table. As Simon had once claimed to judge people by the way they played backgammon, so Roland was able to form opinions by the way the club members gambled. There were stock types to be found at every table: the nervous ones, those whose fortunes were reflected in their faces; the American visitors whom the club welcomed only for their money, always so emotional about their luck; and then those who carried on expressionless as they either won or lost and walked away without batting an eye. Roland placed himself in the last category; when taking a risk, either on a table or on a company, he never let his thoughts show.
It was a page out of Simon’s book – taken to extreme proportions – but Roland thought that if he could, he would bring all of his prospective management candidates to Kendall’s, give them a handful of chips and assess their potential from the way they handled themselves at the tables. Roland liked the way Michael played – almost like himself, with a firm belief in the power of his own luck. He played with confidence and always set himself a limit. When he began to lose he quit. And if he were winning, he ran the streak right through until he sensed his luck had changed. Christopher Mellish, though, was another matter entirely. He played haphazardly, as if winning or losing was of little importance. Admittedly, he had the money to lose – as did Roland and Michael – but he often played as though he were simply passing the time before moving on to more pressing matters. Roland liked Mellish as a friend – but he certainly wouldn’t want him working in the Eagles Group.
‘Hello, old man, thinking about playing, or just playing at thinking?’
Roland looked up to see Mellish standing over him. ‘Waiting for you, actually. What do you fancy – the big tables or just a private bout?’
‘Private bout sounds good. Give me a chance to test the reflexes.’ While Roland set out a backgammon board, Mellish asked about Helen Adler’s funeral. ‘Go down well, did it?’
Roland winced. ‘Save those jokes for Sally, will you?’
‘If I told her jokes like that, she’d kick me out of the house.’
‘Good girl. I always did think she had sense.’
‘Must put the kibosh on your Paris business, though. Michael was supposed to be going with you, wasn’t he?’
‘I’ll have to do without him for a week. I’ll probably go the day after tomorrow. Nothing I can’t handle myself.’
They talked and played for a couple of hours, during which time Roland won a little more than three hundred pounds. ‘Have to raise my cloth prices again, make up for this embarrassment,’ Mellish muttered as he wrote out a check.
‘How about having a horse that wins occasionally? The fastest piece of horseflesh you ever had was Buttercup, that pony you gave to Katherine six years ago.’
‘And Katherine’s probably a better jockey than most of the cripples who ride for my stable,’ Mellish retorted.
On the way out of the club they passed a roulette table. Roland took ten pounds from his pocket and placed it on evens. Eleven came up and he shrugged; it wasn’t his money anyway, it was Mellish’s.
‘Run you back to Regent’s Park?’
‘Please.’
‘You ought to try to get over this fear of driving, old man. From everything I’ve heard, what happened to Catarina wasn’t your fault.’
‘It’s been thirteen years since I sat behind the wheel of a car. The way traffic’s getting these days I don’t think I’d have the nerve to try it again.’ Roland followed Mellish to the new Aston Martin he owned; the three hundred pounds he’d lost would hardly affect his lifestyle.
‘I see your pal Rushden’s giving you a break these days,’ Mellish said as they sped through the dark streets toward Regent’s Park.
‘God bless Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. Rushden’s got his plate full picking up all the little bits the other papers won’t print.’
Mellish burst out laughing. ‘Maybe he’ll forget all about you, just as long as you keep your head out of sight.’
‘I try to.’
‘Oh, no, not you. You attract publicity like honey attracts bees. You’re built that way.’
And though Roland didn’t like to admit it, he knew it was true.
*
Roland stayed up until four o’clock in the morning, reading, thinking about the funeral – the way Albert had thanked him for attending – the meeting with Janet’s boyfriend, and, finally, the work he had to complete in Paris. He would go the next day. Check that Michael was all right, then make arrangements to fly to Paris and close the deal. The sooner he got those French stores operating as part of the Eagles Group, the more he’d like it.
Undressing for bed he turned out his jacket pockets and came across the check Mellish had given him, crumpled up, forgotten. As he straightened it out, he notic
ed something he hadn’t seen before. Cheeky bugger had forgotten to sign it. Grinning, Roland lifted the bedside telephone and dialed Mellish’s number. Too bad if he woke him up; an unsigned check for more than three hundred pounds was damned good reason.
The telephone rang three times and then, to Roland’s surprise, Sally answered. ‘Sally . . .? What are you doing home?’
‘I got in a couple of hours ago, didn’t want to bother waiting until morning. Why are you calling at this ungodly hour?’
‘I wanted to speak to Christopher. We went to Kendall’s before. He gave me a check for three hundred pounds and forgot to sign it.’
‘He’s not here.’
‘What? He dropped me off at home—’
‘When?’
‘Half an hour ago.’ The lie slipped out in a flash. Two hours was more like it.
‘He should be home by now then.’
‘Maybe he went back to the club – tried to recoup the money he didn’t pay me.’
‘Maybe. I’ll get him to call you when he gets in.’
‘Don’t bother. Just tell him to send me another check, signed this time.’ Roland hung up quickly, with the disconcerting feeling that not only had he put his foot in it, but he had lied to Sally as well.
*
The group of French department stores that Roland was acquiring was named Girard et Fils. Although the company had been forced to close its Paris store on the Boulevard Haussman, it still had branches open in Lille, Nantes and Orleans. The buying offices, at least, were still in Paris, and Roland could still use the prestigious address.