Exit Five From Charing Cross, page 18
He left, returning moments later gowned up, gloved hands held before him. He stood this way for several minutes, directing the human traffic with a raised finger here, a raised eyebrow there, a sharp word bit out when the unwary or downright stupid veered too close to his sterile majesty. Under his direction Ann’s domed body was bent, and then he sat.
‘This will just be a little uncomfortable, Mrs Mitchell,’ he said.
I watched him over the bulk of Ann’s body, as he bent and twisted. He could be doing anything behind there, I thought. Then Ann gave a short groan bringing my attention back to her, and at the same time the doctor stood. He shed gloves and gown into the willing arms of what I assumed was a very junior member of the team, who looked at him as if he were a god.
‘That’s it all done now, Mrs Mitchell,’ he said, as if the whole purpose of her pregnancy was the insertion of the damn epidural.
Ann whimpered as the nurses repositioned her.
Moving to hold her hand, once more, I nodded in the general direction of the doctor. I needn’t have bothered; he had already gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
If I hadn’t agreed to all Ann’s demands, the housekeeper, chef, cleaner, maternity nurse, nanny, and then after Phoebe’s birth, the masseuse and the personal trainer – both of which, Meredith told her, were essential if she wanted to get her figure back – she probably wouldn’t have agreed to have a second child. But I suppose she felt I had conceded so much, she had to do her bit, and thus it was that a year later Peregrine was born.
I hated the names, had wanted to call our daughter Joyce, and our son after me as is the tradition in every damn family but ours. Ann thought my choices were so lower-middle class. ‘So suburban,’ she said, as if that was the greatest insult that could be levelled at anyone.
The alternatives I offered to the names she chose were either too common or too middle/lower/working class, take your pick. She had decided and, as usual, what Ann wanted, Ann got.
So, my daughter and son were lumbered with Peregrine and Phoebe. I got my revenge though, and by the time Peregrine was born, it had come to that, jab and counter jab. Ann had moved back to the spare bedroom early in the second pregnancy, citing her hyper-sensitivity again, but we both knew the truth. The fat woman may not have sung, but it was over all the same. Neither of us had ever pretended we were in love, but, for a time, it appeared to be a meeting of minds where we made plans and had dreams. If they weren’t made with love they were built on common sense, and I thought, as a foundation, it would be strong enough.
I was wrong.
I don’t know who stopped pretending first, or when, but suddenly we were strangers who looked at one another as you would someone you thought you knew but couldn’t quite place, someone, moreover, you were certain, beyond any doubt, you did not like.
Following Peregrine’s birth, I suggested Ann move back in with me but, although she didn’t refuse, it didn’t happen. A few weeks later, feeling horny, I followed her in and made amorous advances that she accepted without much enthusiasm. We made passionless, loveless love; sex that left me feeling empty and unsatisfied. Each time, after I emptied my seed into her on a cry that was part release, part desperation, I swore never again. After, maybe the third or fourth time, when I opened my eyes to see her laying there under me, unmoving, her cold eyes fixed on mine with an expression of disdain, I never did go back.
But we stayed together. Why wouldn’t we? I was busy trying to keep my world from falling apart; she was busy finding new ways to spend money she didn’t realise was running out. I started to criticise her spending, to find fault with her constant demands, and she became more dismissive, more derisive. We jabbed and counter-jabbed instead of speaking, avoided each other as much as possible, made polite small-talk when we had to spend time together.
But as I said, I got my revenge on her choice of names for our children. The awful Phoebe, and ludicrous Peregrine, became Fi and P, the nicknames catching despite Ann’s best attempts to prevent it. ‘It’s Peregrine,’ I heard her snapping at the housekeeper one morning, and chuckled to myself. By the time he was almost two, he wouldn’t answer to anything else except P, and even Ann had had to give in. She remained the only person to call Phoebe by her full name.
Adam and Jane adored them both. They were delighted godparents and willing babysitters for them both when Ann was out with Meredith or some other friend, and I was, once again, working late.
By this time, Jane had discovered she was unable to carry a child. Adam broke the news to me over lunch, told me Jane was devastated by the news. He didn’t say but I could tell he was pretty devastated himself.
‘What about...what do you call it...IVS or something.’ I asked.
‘IVF,’ Adam corrected me, shaking his head. ‘No, I’m afraid she’s not a candidate for it. She has no problem getting pregnant, you see. It’s the hanging on to it that’s the problem, some unusual abnormality in her uterus.’
‘Poor Jane,’ I said, reaching out a hand and gripping Adam’s arm, trying to convey, in the way men do, that I felt for him too.
Jane never mentioned it, of course, and in her company, neither did I. But I watched her playing with my children and I thought, not for the first time, and not with any degree of originality, life wasn’t fair.
P and Fi loved them both and were only too happy to go with them anywhere, and it was Adam and Jane who took them to the Pantomime, to the circus, to visit Santa. And if it wasn’t them, it was the Norland nanny or one of a succession of Norland nannies we had had since P was born. Ann treated the children like pets; she picked them up, cuddled or played with them, then put them back, forgetting about them almost immediately. She was too busy organising the social soirees she had become renowned for. I played my part, loving husband, doting father.
But the truth was, I wasn’t the first, and hadn’t time to be the second.
Because just at this time, the world started to crack, and I was struggling to make repayments on the colossal mortgage that now stood at nearly ten million.
And then the crack widened, and into it fell Northern Rock, Lehmann Brothers, Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. They fell like dominoes taking so many with them, so many little people caught up, so many lives changed irreparably. And if that wasn’t all bad enough, along came Madoff to finish it all off. At least for me, because I had the bad luck, or bad judgement, to be caught up in it all. How damn unlucky was that?
Bad luck or judgement? I don’t honestly know. I, like so many others, was caught up in this wonderful glitzy slingshot of a life, the band stretching further and further, the excitement building and building. We thought we’d be shot into the stratosphere, our world a constant twinkle, and instead with a snap it all gave way and we were dumped, unceremoniously, into the sewer. There were those, of course who got out in time, who escaped to watch aghast from the side-lines. The previous owner of Elgin Crescent for instance, sitting prettily in alpine splendour in Switzerland and thanking his lucky stars he had sold his house for ten point two five – a house, incidentally, that was now worth eight. If I could find anyone stupid enough to buy it.
When Lehmann Brothers hit the fan, it sent a waft of debris across the ocean to take the lustre and sheen off our gold, turning it once more into filthy lucre, tarnishing all of us who had worked hard to milk the system of every penny with the same viscous mess. My consultant status, of course, offered me no protection. Sebastien et Sebastien were very up-front, very polite, but the bottom line was they were retrenching and huge retainers, never mind six figure bonuses, were out of the question. No contract, no argument. It was okay for a while. I still had my accounts, after all, and I worked hard, looked after them well, made the best choices I could under the circumstances but, no matter what I did, no matter which way I turned they dropped like flies, fell like dominoes, dried up like puddles on a hot London day.
It was over, way before I realised, or certainly before I admitted, it was over.
Seb n Seb – the full title I had insisted on for years was the first to go, and I took to using the abbreviation Adam always used – kindly kept me on in my consultant capacity, offering a pitiful retainer that was supposed to indicate some version of loyalty. I suppose it did hold out an element of hope. But hope didn’t pay bills. And for the moment any mention of a bonus, just the mention of the word, had senior management rearing back as if from a scatological obscenity, tut-tutting and shaking their heads as they headed back behind their hand-carved solid mahogany desks.
It was all stiff upper lip, and we’re all in this together, and joking about the Blitz spirit. Meanwhile deals were being done under those hand-carved tables, shares were sold, money moved, fortunes lost, jobs chopped, lives changed utterly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Changed utterly, I thought now, my mind on the woman I had left sitting outside Paul’s. Her name rolling through my mind, Joyce, Joyce, Joyce, even as I tried to concentrate on whatever it was Adam was saying.
He had accepted my excuse for being late without question. Why wouldn’t he? Mind you, Adam was good at avoiding confrontational topics. He had never, for instance, asked me if I were in love with his sister. Perhaps if he had, things would have turned out differently.
I watched as he fought to hold his club-sandwich together, a slice of tomato edging its way out as he bit in. He caught a sigh I didn’t know I’d made, and hesitated, his mouth full, eyes questioning. The tomato slipped further, poised to take that leap onto his trousers. I pointed it out to him and he slurped it up and chewed noisily, but didn’t lose his train of thought. He could be persistent when he wanted; a family trait, his sister was the very same.
‘Things okay with Seb n Seb?’ he asked, ‘Don’t tell me there’s trouble in the highest of the high.’
I wasn’t sure if I had been sighing about work or the woman I had just left but, in any case, it just was easier just to smile and say nothing.
It was always a relief having lunch with Adam. I tried to explain what I did for a living, once in the earlier years when he might have been supposed to be interested, just a little. His eyes had glazed over. Even now, with news of the economic meltdown everywhere, on everyone’s lips, in every newspaper, he had little interest. We talked football, movies, beer. He asked about Fi and P, and I told him the latest funny thing one or other of them had said. He never pointed out that he and Jane spent more time with the children than I did, that he knew more stories, more anecdotes.
We parted with the usual arm slapping, back thumping, see you next week that was as part of the ritual as the lunch itself. He headed back to his teaching, and I headed back to the office where I tried to look busy. I read over memos I knew by heart, looked at share-prices until the numbers blurred, looked at my computer screen as if somehow the very act of looking would somehow change the way things were. I closed my eyes against the futility of it all, but only when I was sure there was nobody to see. In the back of my mind, the one constant thought. I would see her again tomorrow.
Ann didn’t notice that I was more than usually distracted that evening, and thankfully it wasn’t one of her entertaining nights when I could arrive home to find total strangers lounging about in our reception rooms, the doors thrown open so nowhere was sacrosanct. I would be expected to make convivial chit-chat to people I didn’t know, people Ann would have met at other dinners or parties, whose number she would have taken with a you must come around some evening, just a little get-together, and I would have had to be polite. I would have had to listen to them telling me what should be done about the current situation and why it had all gone wrong, because it was all anyone spoke about. And I would have been expected to smile and nod because that’s what good hosts do.
But the gods must have been smiling on me because it wasn’t one of those nights. Ann seemed a little distracted but I didn’t ask her why. I knew she would tell me if she wanted me to know. I spent the time before dinner playing with the children, listening to their happy babbling, making them laugh by pulling silly faces, picking them up and smelling their addictive baby smell. Beth, the current Norland nanny, arrived to take them away just before dinner was served, it being one of Ann’s many rules that we had dinner undisturbed by the children’s cries.
‘We need adult time, Jake.’ Ann would say, when I asked they be allowed stay. She would add, with complete lack of irony. ‘After all, I’ve had the children all day.’
We rarely, if ever, ate out anymore. Or at least, we rarely ate out together. Truth was we rarely ate together, full stop. Until recently anyway. My long working days meant I hadn’t arrived home some nights till after eight, nowadays I was home by six. In the early days, if I managed to get home early, we’d sit out on the veranda in the summer or watch some television. But now, well now the house was big, and we rarely spent time in the same part of it. I excused myself immediately after dinner and spent the evening in my office, supposedly working, but actually just waiting for the time to pass, every dreary tick and even drearier tock.
I arrived earlier than usual in the office the next morning, desperate to get out of the house, only to find myself desperate to get out of the office. As a consultant, I could come and go as I pleased but, like my fellow consultants, I hung around watching for crumbs to fall from those damn desk, like ducks we would pounce, fighting over who got the scrap, the crumb, grabbing it and taking it back to our desk to work it, sometimes for hours, in the pitiful hope it would give us sustenance.
It was important to look busy, to play the game. I wrote some completely unnecessary letters to people who were unlikely to read them before putting them straight into the shredder, letters that, in fact, were so innocuous, so banal that shredding was too good for them. I made small talk with other consultants, watching their eyes, like mine, slide to the door and desks, behind which the powers sat, knowing that our conversation would be terminated, even mid word, if we got the slightest sign. Some consultants had left, of course, at the first sign of trouble. Others, and I count myself in this group, were under the stupid, arrogant, foolish belief that what had happened to the iconic Lehmann Brothers couldn’t happen here – that was over there, after all – for God’s sake, we were talking about England.
But of course, it did. And then it was too late.
No crumbs fell during the morning and I left for Charing Cross early, unable to wait a moment longer. I bounded up the Exit Five steps knowing it was far too early, but she was already there. I sat in the same seat and faced her, feeling as if I hadn’t taken a breath since leaving her the day before. I did then. Took a deep breath, and let it out on a sigh.
She was in the same seat, wearing the same coat. She had obviously ordered the same pastry, one corner missing, crumbs on her lips. ‘I’ll just get...’I had no idea what I wanted apart from her so I just waved toward the inside of the coffee shop and went in. There was the usual queue but I didn’t mind because it gave me the chance to stare through the window at her. A jolt of pure, unadulterated lust rocked me off my feet, sent me knocking into the elegantly-dressed woman in front who turned and glared at me. I didn’t bother trying to explain. After all, what could I say?
Coffee in hand, I headed out into the sunny London day and sat.
‘The best macchiato in the city,’ I said taking a sip, hoping it made me sound cosmopolitan and chic. Not everyone knew what a macchiato was, never mind were able to pronounce it correctly.
‘I’m a cappuccino woman,’ she replied. ‘Although I believe it is frowned upon in the best circles to drink it after eleven.’
Having impressed each other with our knowledge of coffee etiquette we sat and drank; the silence companionable and relaxed.
We probably took turns to stare. Certainly, when her eyes dropped to her cup, I stared intently. I only supposed, hoped even, that when my eyes dropped to my cup, she did the same.
She wore the same coat as the previous day, red, belted, large pockets, over-large black buttons that went up to the collar. She had left the top two buttons undone and underneath she wore a cream round necked jumper – cashmere, I thought, impressed – and lying around her neck a string of beautiful pearls.
Once I had spotted them, I couldn’t take my eyes off them, my stare becoming intent and probably embarrassing. She didn’t look embarrassed, however, she caught where my gaze went and her hand went to the pearls, and she brought them more into view, pushing back the collar of her coat where they were partially obscured.
‘They are beautiful,’ I said.
‘My father bought them for me,’ she said, letting the strand drop back against her skin, warm cream on blush. ‘I wear them all the time. They’re not particularly fashionable but...’ she shrugged elegantly.
I knew they weren’t; I’d wanted to buy a similar strand for Ann to celebrate the birth of our first child but she refused. ‘Fuddy-duddy,’ she had said dismissively, choosing instead an exorbitantly expensive modern diamond and emerald piece that was stunning beautiful, but a long way from the understated elegance of pearls.
‘Classics don’t go out of fashion,’ I said. ‘Anyway, they suit you.’ She smiled at the compliment. I sat back, surreptitiously checking out the rest of her. A black skirt peeped out from the open edges of her coat, black clad legs – oh, I did hope stockings but guessed the practicalities of tights – ended in neat black shoes that had seen better days, the heels worn down, toes slightly scuffed. Not a shoe person, obviously, thinking of Ann’s vast collection, the Imelda Marcos of Elgin Crescent.
As my eyes ran up her legs, she uncrossed them, stretched them out and then languorously crossed them again, her movements feline and incredibly sexy. I wanted to reach my hand out and just touch her, anywhere, to feel a connection, to make sure she was real, that I wasn’t dreaming.
‘I’m glad you came back today,’ I said instead, sitting forward in my chair, leaning across the table. Closer but not touching.
