Exit Five From Charing Cross, page 1
EXIT FIVE FROM CHARING CROSS
CHAPTER ONE
If...it’s such a big word. You hang your dreams, aspirations, hopes on it, then it topples over and pins you down, leaving you squirming like a worm. A sad word, full of regrets for what might have been. A melancholic word hinting at missed opportunities, at wonderful lives almost lived.
A life like mine.
The view from my window at Sebastien et Sebastien, was breath-taking...London...no, the world at my feet. I couldn’t believe my luck when I landed a position at this discrete investment bank for the seriously wealthy. Eight years ago. I remember staring out this window, looking down on the tiny figures scurrying below, feeling powerful. I was going to be rich, and money was God.
Eight years ago. Now, well everything has changed, hasn’t it?
I was waiting for the phone to ring. All morning, staring out the window, waiting, yet when it did ring, it startled me, I jumped and my heart – I swear it stopped and started out of sync – hammered a thumpty, thumpty thump, a canter that became a full-on gallop as I reached for the phone, my hand trembling, a sudden burning in my solar plexus, my other hand moving automatically, the heel of my hand pushing in to close the door on the flames.
Picking it up, I forced my voice to sound the way it should – busy, but not too busy to deal with the caller, concerned but not overly so at the earlier e-mail dispensing with my services, dismissing me, dumping me. Bitterness shot through me, put a bite in my voice.
‘Jake Mitchell.’ Good, my voice was business-like. Cool. No hint of the tension, the determinedly unacknowledged desperation that pinged beads of sweat on my brow, beads that gathered and ran their course down the sides of my nose.
‘We still on for lunch, Jake, old buddy?’
The cheery voice in my ear brought a reluctant smile to my face. Stress lines that had been tightening all morning took an anti-clockwise half-turn, and I breathed Adam on a quiet exhale, as if he were the answer to a prayer, I hadn’t known I wanted to make.
I should have said no, really should, but then thought, why not. Taking an hour out to meet an old friend for lunch, taking an hour of time to play at normal, it wasn’t going to change anything. And for that hour I could, maybe, relax or at least pretend to. ‘Sure, we are, Adam,’ I said, smiling, ‘I wouldn’t miss it.’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Laters.’
My smile died before I put the phone down, my hands moving tiredly over my face, tracing lines that I was sure hadn’t been there till recently. I sat heavily behind my desk and picked up the e-mail that had come earlier. I’d printed it out hoping that my computer screen was being traitorous and lying to me, but on paper, no matter how many times I read it, it read the same. My last, my only client was dispensing with my services. No explanation. After...how many years was it?...nine?...maybe more? I had brought him with me to Sebastian et Sebastian, had nurtured him, nursed him, given him my expertise and time, and now I get dumped like a one-night-stand. Tempted to reply to his e-mail with a succinct, rot in hell, you bastard, instead I sent a polite, business-like e-mail asking him to ring me so we could set up a meeting to discuss matters. That was three hours ago.
With a shiver that came from a part of me that was colder than liquid oxygen, I finally faced the truth. There was nothing left but the pitiful retainer Sebastian et Sebastian paid me, and even that mightn’t last, not when I broke the bad news about my last client.
There didn’t seem any point in doing anything, so I didn’t. I sat and stared at my desk, unblinking eyes becoming dry until I forced myself to close them, only to open them quickly because in the darkness of my closed eyes I could see the emptiness before me. I sat until it was time to leave to meet Adam, threw on my coat and left my office door to click shut behind me.
The receptionist ignored my forced cheery wave. There seemed to be no point in telling her when I’d be back. Nobody was going to ask.
Minutes later, I was on the tube to Charing Cross, standing, one hand holding-on, one hand in my raincoat pocket, making myself small, trying to avoid the hoi-polloi as they brushed past me, clambering on and off. I tried not to breathe too deeply, conscious of the expelled breaths of the masses that made up my air, catching the faint whiff of garlic, the merest hint of alcohol. From an elderly lady, dressed in a suit and yellow-tinged white gloves, her outfit a remnant of a bygone era, a faint, but not unpleasant, hint of camphor drifted up and tickled my nose. A stop later a young, overweight woman, huge arms tattooed from shoulder to wrist, squeezed into the carriage. Suddenly the air was thick with cheap scent that didn’t come anyway near to masking the underlying stink of body odour. My nose, and several noses around me, crinkled in defence.
Thankfully, the next stop was mine, and in Charing Cross I joined the mass of bodies that swept toward the exit, taking my ticket out as we moved, reaching the barrier and doing the usual push-the-ticket-and-keep-walking routine we all know so well. But the barrier swallowed my card and refused to open and I had to wait and be rescued by a bored looking official who obviously had seen it all before, who threw me the standard, meaningless apology in a tone of voice that said as clearly as if he had said the words, he didn’t give a toss about my predicament.
Because of the delay, I ran up the concrete steps of Exit Five alone. The tap of my leather-soled shoes on the steps was a sound I was sure I’d never heard before, lost as it usually was in the chorus line of other tapping feet. The concrete tunnel felt suddenly sinister, otherworldly, and I gave a quick glance behind, seeing nobody, feeling strangely unnerved, my feet speeding their ascent until I was running, as if the hounds of Hell were at my heels, and exiting into the sunshine, still alone.
If I hadn’t been, if things were the way they were supposed to be, I might never have seen the woman sitting on one of those wooden seats outside Paul’s cafe, eating one of their pastries, her eyes closed, lost in the moment, flakes of pastry drifting around her, falling onto the red coat she wore with a certain panache, its collar standing, framing her face. Her face...Jesus, I got lost there and then, stood like a fool, staring as if I had never seen a woman before.
If I had just moved on then, if I had shaken my head at my own foolishness and walked on...well, then things might have been different, and I might not have done the things I did.
But I didn’t. I moved to the chair opposite the woman, put my hand on the back of it and, leaning toward her a little, asked, ‘Would you mind if I sat here?’ raising my voice a little to compete with the road-noise growling behind me.
Her eyes opened, warm, hazel eyes that met mine and kept them locked to her gaze while her small, slightly prominent, Hollywood-white teeth closed down on the pastry again. Tiny flakes broke away to float and flutter down around her like falling blossom from a cherry tree. They speckled the front and sleeves of her coat but she made no attempt to brush them away.
There was something almost bovine in her concentrated chew, her lower jaw moving in a slow anti-clockwise cycle...around...stop...around. I was mesmerised, standing with my hand on the back of the chair, my eyes locked on hers. Waiting for her reply. Wanting her to say please sit down. Needing her to say it. Traffic sound faded into the far distance and there was suddenly no sound, just a vacuum waiting to be filled.
She broke her gaze then and slowly raised one shoulder in an elegant shrug, her face twisting in casual acceptance, polite indifference. If she noticed the other table and its empty chairs, and wondered why I didn’t use them, she didn’t say. It was less than an invitation but enough for me, and I rushed to pull out the chair and sit.
She paid me no attention. Her eyes closed again and stayed that way until she had finished the pastry, the tip of a pink tongue flicking in and out to catch errant flakes, to lick, daintily, the sticky residue of the filling that had dripped down her hand. I was reminded, suddenly, of a cat I once had who would lick marmite from my finger, its rough tongue gentle as it licked every salty morsel, and I felt a flicker of desire I hadn’t felt in such a long time it took a moment for me to recognise the feeling. Then she opened her eyes, looked across the table at me and said, ‘Hi.’ Just the one word but said on an outward breath that wafted across the table, smelling sweet and luscious, and the flicker caught and became a flame.
She wasn’t beautiful. Not like my wife Ann, who was, classically so, beautiful skin, perfect features, blonde hair, blue eyes. Ann...the comparison was automatic. Does every man see a woman, and think mine is better/worse/slimmer/fatter? I don’t know. But I did. And this woman who sat opposite, weighing me up much as I was weighing her, was left way in the shade by my beautiful wife. And yet...even with blotchy skin, slightly prominent front teeth, and hair that had been, in my estimation, poorly coloured, she attracted me like no woman had ever done before. Why...I have no idea...but she did. I looked at her blotchy skin and wanted to see it all, wanted to kiss it, feel it, run my hands over it. All of it. Saw her prominent teeth and wanted to run my tongue over them, wanted to feel them on me, biting, sucking. Saw her hair, coarse and badly coloured, and wanted to run my hands through it. I wanted her. More than any woman since my first encounter with the female sex some...Jesus, was it twenty years ago?
Mental desire quickly became physical, and I felt my body stirring with a sense of disbelief. Small beads of perspiration broke out on my forehead as I concentrated on controlling the response this woman provoked in me. For goodness sake, I was thirty-five not fifteen. I was supposed to be past all this adolesce
‘Joyce,’ she replied with a slight nod.
‘Aah,’ I breathed, ‘that’s my favourite name.’ I wasn’t lying, had wanted to call our daughter, Joyce, but Ann didn’t consider it had sufficient cachet which is why the poor mite got stuck with Phoebe, the ugliest name I know.
Joyce smiled, and it wasn’t just in the gentle curve of her lips but in the twinkle in her eyes, the softening of her face, and in her soft, melodious voice when she asked, ‘Really?’
I nodded foolishly, searching in vain for a pithy quip or clever witticism, the kind of thing you can come up with while lying awake at three in the morning but never, never can think of when needed.
Just then the phone in my pocket vibrated, and I gave the casual shrug that conveys apology and took it out. Adam’s name flashed on the screen, I pictured him immediately, a slight frown on his face as he checked his watch, worried suddenly because I was never late.
‘Sorry, have to get this,’ I explained, as if our exchange of names made such courtesies necessary. Opening my phone, I spoke rapidly, ‘Adam, listen, I’m sorry, I’m running late. I’ll be there in five, ok.’ Then didn’t wait for an answer but shut the phone and pocketed it.
‘I have to go,’ I said. She sat unmoving, watching me, the smile gone and in its place a curve of her lips that I couldn’t interpret. Women are so much better than men at reading faces. Ann, I thought, without the slightest pang of guilt, would have been able to tell me exactly what that enigmatic smile implied. But, thankfully, Ann wasn’t there so I chucked objectivity out with the bathwater and read the curve of Joyce’s lovely mouth as a sign of sympathetic interest. ‘I have to go,’ I said again. ‘Will...could you be here tomorrow? I want...no, I need to speak to you, to see you again. Please.’
Her warm hazel eyes transfixed me.
‘Please,’ I said again, and reached across the table to where her hands now rested, one atop the other, touching her gently with the tip of one finger, feeling the electricity fizzle. Then, because I could think of nothing else to say, I took my finger away and put it into my mouth, sucked it, tasting her sweetness.
Her eyes narrowed and the curve stretched back into a smile that dazzled. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said, nodding.
With great reluctance I stood, and then reached across and patted her hand, the second pat drifting into a caress. Her smile didn’t falter and I took it with me, went off to meet Adam with a bounce in my step that hadn’t been there since I don’t know when.
CHAPTER TWO
Adam and I were college friends. We’d gone, over the years, from nightly drinking sessions after lectures, to weekly drinks after work, to monthly lunches to catch up. He’d read history and geography and drifted into teaching, landing a permanent, pensionable post in an upmarket Catholic boy’s college where, he said, all the boys were over-indulged brats. He should have gained experience elsewhere but didn’t, digging in and staying put, calling it loyalty, but nobody was fooled and saw his extreme laziness for what it was, shaking their heads at his narrow-minded reluctance to reach out and grasp the opportunities that were there for the taking. Five years before, he was certain he would be offered the assistant headmaster’s post when the previous incumbent moved up, the headmaster having retired following twenty years in the post. But the new headmaster, determined to dust away the cobwebs of the former twenty years stagnation, offered the post to a new, dynamic, experienced younger man. Adam didn’t bother trying to hide his bitterness and became a barbed thorn in the side of the new establishment, sneering at every change that was made, resisting every new development, stirring up bad-feeling with a word here, a complaint there. It had, instead of teaching, become his raison d’être.
I, on the other hand, qualifying with a first in business studies and economics, went from bank to bank, each position a step upward until I had soared to the pinnacle that was Sebastian et Sebastian, a small discreet investment bank where only the seriously wealthy were entertained. They head-hunted me, their approach tactfully tempting; a heavily embossed invitation to meet Francois Sebastian for lunch in Scott’s, where we dined on Beluga caviar followed by a plateau de fruits de mer, the cracking of lobster a gentle accompaniment to the job offer of my dreams. By the time we finished the bottle of Le Montrachet Grand Cru 2001, a wine so good I had difficulty containing my groan of pleasure, I had accepted the job offer, and didn’t so much as consider a downside to being a consultant rather than an actual employee. Francois – call me Francois, he’d said as I stuttered over the correct pronunciation of Sebastian, his accent just French enough to be charming – mentioned a retainer, commission, a superb six-monthly bonus scheme, and an office in the centre of London. As he held his glass of wine up to the light, what he left unsaid was – you too can afford to eat here, and pay over four hundred pounds for a bottle of wine.
Of course, I accepted. So, there I was, twenty-seven, a consultant fund manager for one of the London investment banks, making more money than I had ever thought possible. Serious money, I mean really serious money.
But, despite out divergent career paths, Adam and I remained friends. His family had a beautiful home in the Cotswolds, a beautiful Grade Two listed property that had been in the family for a hundred years. It was a charming house that sprawled, higgledy piggledy over three floors with stairways in strange places and corridors that ended suddenly, as if a room had vanished into another dimension. Visitors, like me, were always getting lost, searching for the bathroom but ending up in the kitchen, and then unable to find their way back. The family treated it as a spectator sport, frequently taking bets on how long it would take a visitor to find their way to the dining room after the dinner gong had reverberated through the house. The unfortunate visitor, already intimidated by being in a house where dinner was announced by a gong, arrived dishevelled and embarrassed, to be greeted by the sight of the host with a stop-watch in his hand, and shouts of laughter or groans of frustration from the various winners and losers as money passed from hand to hand. It was impossible to be offended, their warm bonhomie was inclusive and sincere and impossible to resist, and in their home – where the wind howled under ill-fitting doors and heavy curtains swayed in the breeze from the windows, so that, apart from a few months in the summer, and despite fires that burned in almost every room, it was always cold – I always felt warm and cared for.
Adam’s parents, Giles and Clara were the solid decent sort, old money and no pretensions, thread-bare ancient carpets on the floor, on their backs frayed tweed and Barbour jackets worn soft with age. I liked them immediately, and think they liked me. At any rate, they extended multiple invitations to me over the years, weekends during the college term when Adam and I would arrive ravenous on Friday evening to be met with laden tables and orders to help ourselves to more which we obeyed with alacrity, leaving as late as possible on Sunday stuffed full of food and kindliness that made me yearn to return.
Unlike Adam’s only sibling, his sister, Ann. Our paths never crossed in the Cotswolds because, for Ann, the Cotswolds were like Marmite. She’d tasted it and thought it disgusting, didn’t want to taste it again, and her dutiful-daughter visits reduced quickly from seldom to rare. Adam’s parents never complained, never criticised but when they did speak of her it was with an air of longing and I knew they missed her, and despite their pride that she was doing well, I don’t think they ever really understood why she had to go away, and why she stayed away. Too far from London, even further from the social circuit Ann buzzed around, they never heard the stories about her. We heard but never told, careful of their feelings, knowing they would be puzzled at some of the stories. Absolutely horrified at others. But then our stories merged, and everything changed.
Ann stayed away but I couldn’t get enough of the Cotswolds. One glorious summer, I spent a full week there with Adam. We walked for miles and miles over open countryside, stopping now and then to exchange pleasantries with people Adam or his family, or his family’s family, had known since who knew when. We would return home in the evening, exhausted, ravenous, and Adam would tell Giles and Clara who we had met and each mention would lead into a hundred stories that rambled and intertwined, one onto another, each full of colour and people and told with warm wit and kindliness. And I listened mesmerised by this strange unfathomable world, and by these people I’d learned to love.
