Corporate Bodies (14 page)

‘What a lovely day for the tennis,' he said, opting to keep his remarks uncontroversial.

The three couples agreed it was a lovely day for the tennis.

‘Yes, lovely day for the tennis,' Charles confirmed.

He had a sense of
déjà vu
. For a moment he couldn't place it, then recalled that he had spoken exactly that dialogue in one of those fifties french-window comedies about a publisher. (They had all been about publishers; to the dramatists of the time, publishing represented a lucrative profession whose demands were in no danger of impinging on anyone's private life.) Now what had the play been called . . .? Oh yes,
Service Not Included,
he remembered it now.

He also, unfortunately, remembered the review the
Halifax Evening Courier
had given his performance. ‘Charles Paris wanders dementedly through the play, like Van Gogh trying to decide which ear to cut off.'

He saw Ken Colebourne grinning and waving, and excused himself from further reaffirmation with the three couples of how good a day it was for tennis.

‘All the arrangements went all right, did they?'

‘Fine, Ken. Yes, very grateful to you for setting the whole thing up. My wife's absolutely delighted to be here. I must introduce you.'

‘Well, first let me introduce you to my wife. Patricia dear, this is Charles Paris.'

The sight of Patricia Colebourne was quite a shock. He had hardly noticed her, lost in the shadows under one of the umbrellas. She was agonisingly thin; the beige linen dress hung slackly from the angularity of her shoulders; and her skin had a waxy pallor. Two sticks were hooked from the lip of the table.

She was clearly a very sick woman, and yet the formalities of introduction do not traditionally include a medical bulletin, so Charles could only shake the hand that felt like a bunch of dry twigs and say, ‘Pleasure to meet you.'

‘Patricia's a great lover of the tennis,' said her husband. ‘Been watching it all day this week, haven't you, love?'

His manner towards her combined embarrassment with a kind of defensive pride.

‘Yes. And I hope to see that young Yugoslav playing this afternoon. She's amazing. Supposed to be on court at two, I think.' She looked at the watch that dangled loosely from a skeletal wrist. ‘Probably better start walking over there now. I'm afraid I move very slowly these days, Mr Paris.'

She was joking, but the mention of her disability served to clear the atmosphere.

‘Oh, you're not that bad, love. Anyway, we've got lunch to eat first. I'm sure you'll enjoy that.'

As if on cue, Brian Tressider raised his hands, gesturing towards the interior of the marquee. ‘Going through for a spot of lunch now – set us up for the excitements of the afternoon, eh?'

There were three round tables each seating six inside the marquee (a structure, incidentally, of greater permanence than the word usually implies). Frances, who was proving a great hit with her new friends, was whisked away to sit with them. ‘Unless you'd rather sit with your husband . . .?'

‘Good heavens, no,' she replied with a sweet grin to Charles. ‘We see quite enough of each other.'

He didn't quite know how to take this. Inside a normal, cohabiting marriage, such a remark would be a sign of strength, of a couple so secure in their mutual affection that they didn't need to spend every minute in each other's pockets. Given the unusual circumstances of Charles and Frances's marriage, though, the interpretation was potentially different. Did Frances really mean that their three or four meetings during the last year had been quite sufficient? Or was she just making a joke at his expense?

Charles inclined to the second view, though not with that total confidence which would make him feel secure. Frances was definitely playing games with him, but he couldn't be certain how serious those games were. She had been hurt too many times to allow the progress towards any possible reconciliation to be easy for him.

So there was Frances's table, which she seemed effortlessly to dominate; and the table towards which Brian Tressider had firmly ushered his preselected guests; and there was the third table, which was definitely lowest in the hierarchy. Charles Paris sat at the third table.

On one side of him was a young man with sleeked-back hair and a suit and tie even sharper than Charles's; on the other, a girl with carefully frizzed blonde hair, whose trim figure was enhanced by a navy leather suit that teetered between sexiness and tartness.

It soon became apparent that they were married. The young man took Charles's hand firmly in his and announced, rather as if presenting a business card, ‘Daryl Fletcher, and that's my wife Shelley.'

‘Hello. My name's Charles Paris.'

‘We're here because it's part of Daryl's bonus.' The girl had one of those Cockney voices that sound as if the owner's just going down with a sore throat.

‘Well, it's not exactly part of the bonus, just a kind of pat on the back. I got Top Salesman,' he confided to Charles.

‘Oh. Oh, well done.'

‘Yes. I'm North-West Area. Quite something for a North-West salesman to beat all those jammy bastards in the South.'

‘I should think it is,' Charles agreed sagely.

‘Don't know they're born, half of that lot. I got Runner-up last year, but this year I really pulled out the stops.'

‘Well done.'

‘Means me and Shelley get a weekend for two in Paris.'

‘And the car, Daryl.'

‘Yeah, and the car. Get presented with that at the sales conference. I'll trade it in, mind. Just some little Fiesta. Not my sort of motor. But the money'll be handy.'

‘Yeah, except you'll just spend it on your other car.'

‘All right, what if I do, Shelley? I'll see you get a bit of naughty lingerie, and all.'

This seemed to strike her as disproportionately funny.

‘I got a pretty nice motor, you see,' Daryl confided to Charles. ‘I don't mean the company car – no, I drive round day by day in a Ford Sierra, but I got this car back home with a bit of character.'

‘Oh,' said Charles, to whom all cars had the same character.

‘Cortina,' said Daryl airily.

‘Oh,' said Charles, reassured. He had been afraid of being blinded by car talk, but this was all right. He had heard of the Cortina. Reliable, long-running Ford model, now out of production and a bit boring, really. But at least, he comforted himself, there's not a lot you can say about a Cortina.

Charles couldn't have been more wrong.

‘It's the old Mk I,' Daryl confided.

‘Oh yes?'

‘Picked it up at a scrap-yard four years back. Saw its potential straight off.'

Charles couldn't conceive what possible potential a car from a scrap-yard might have.

‘Basically in good nick, but I had to do a lot of body and chassis work.'

‘Ah.'

‘Built a full roll cage inside.'

‘Did you?'

‘Yeah, and then while I got the body off, I give it a four-inch chop. Pleased with the way that worked, I was. Lovely job, though I say it myself.'

He looked up for approbation, but Charles wasn't quite quick enough to replace the bewilderment in his expression with something more congratulatory.

‘You do know what I mean by a “chop” don't you, Charles?'

‘Er, well . . .'

‘Tell you for free,' Shelley chipped in. ‘It's nothing to do with a chopper!'

This again struck her as extravagantly funny.

‘We are talking “custom” here,' Daryl explained generously. “‘Chop” means you take the roof down a few inches.'

‘Ah. Why?'

‘Well, gives you a bit of style, doesn't it?'

‘Does it?'

Daryl's social training told him perhaps he ought to open the conversation out a bit. ‘What do you drive then, Charles?'

A chuckle. ‘Well, er, taxis, if anything.'

‘You a taxi-driver?' asked Shelley.

‘No.'

‘What are you then?' asked Daryl.

‘An actor.'

The answer struck both of them dumb. They wracked their brains for things that might be said to an actor, but nothing offered itself.

Charles filled the silence. ‘What I meant was that the only cars I really travel in these days are taxis. I use the tube most of the time, but if I do go in a car, it tends to be a taxi.'

‘You mean you haven't got a motor?' asked Daryl in softly awestruck tones.

‘No, I haven't. Used to, when I was living with my . . .' He caught a glimpse of Frances entertaining her new friends at the adjacent table, ‘some time back,' he concluded lamely.

‘Blimey,' said Daryl quietly. ‘Haven't got a motor.'

‘No.'

But not for nothing had Daryl Fletcher been nominated Top Salesman. It was a salesman's job to keep talking, and he wasn't going to let anything – even a shock on the scale that he had just received – deter him from his duty.

‘You know, when I took the engine on the Mk I apart, I found the cylinders was still well within specs, so what I done was . . .'

After about two millennia of this monologue, during which Charles, almost without noticing, consumed smoked salmon,
boeufe-en-crôute
and meringue
glacé
, together with a lot of red wine, he became aware of a general movement around him.

Frances caught his eye and waved. She pointed at her watch. ‘Two o'clock. Match starting on the Centre Court.'

‘Oh yes, right.'

Charles started to stand up, but Frances's words had stopped Daryl in mid-description of how he'd recalibrated the gauges from an old Cortina GT. The Top Salesman rose to his feet, ‘Great, I want to see this. Dishy pair of birds playing.'

Charles sank back into his chair. The risk of ending up sitting next to this cataract of Custom Car arcana was too great. ‘I'll just have a cup of coffee and be right along, Frances.'

His wife shrugged and nodded. She wasn't exactly unused to Charles making his own timetable.

The marquee did not empty completely, though most of the guests went off to watch the tennis. Ken Colebourne had gone some twenty minutes earlier, gallantly escorting his fragile wife, and Brian Tressider had led his party off soon after. But a few lingered over the last of their coffee, wine or brandy.

Shelley Fletcher, Charles observed, had made no attempt to move.

‘I'll go along in a bit,' she said. ‘Only women on Centre Court this match.' She giggled. ‘I'll wait till the hunks get out there.'

‘Ah.'

‘Daryl's very fond of his Cortina,' she explained, unnecessarily.

‘Yes,' said Charles Paris. ‘Yes, he is, isn't he?'

OUT OF THE corner of his eye, Charles kept catching movement on a television screen high in the corner of the marquee. White figures moved against a green background. The volume had been turned down low; applause sounded like distant sea-wash. But the picture was still distracting. He moved his chair round a little so that the screen was out of his eyeline.

This had the unintended effect of bringing him closer to Shelley. She raised her eyebrows in a quizzical, half-mocking challenge.

‘I'm sorry. It's just, er, that monitor, sort of putting me off my stroke.'

‘Ooh. Can't have that, can we, Charles?'

She had an engaging way of saying his name. In her husky Cockney, it came out as ‘Chowss'.

‘Look, I didn't mean –'

‘Don't worry. I've never complained about fellers getting too close to me.'

‘Ah. Ah,' said Charles. He wasn't used to this kind of heavy innuendo, certainly not from someone presumably in her mid-twenties. He adopted the traditional British method of taking the heat out of any situation. ‘Lovely day, isn't it?'

She agreed that it was a lovely day. ‘Nice to be down here, and all.'

‘Yes. You're a Londoner, aren't you?'

‘Mm. Mind you, one of the disadvantages of being married to the Top Salesman in the North-West Area is you have to live up there.' She grimaced. ‘We're in Preston.'

‘Is it that bad?'

‘No, the people's quite friendly and that, but all my mates is really down here.' She put on a pious expression. ‘Still, the little woman has to go wherever Hubby goes. And do whatever Hubby tells her to, and all, doesn't she?'

Shelley even managed to imbue this with a sexual overtone.

‘I didn't think women thought like that nowadays. Thought you were all more liberated.'

‘Oh, don't worry, Chowss, me and Daryl are a very
liberated
couple.'

He somehow didn't think they were both using the word ‘liberated' in the same sense.

‘And the thing is, a “liberated” couple can always find people of similar interests wherever they are. Even up in Preston. Quite a lot of “liberated” people we've met up there, you know.'

Charles nodded casually, not quite sure that he was hearing right. Shelley seemed to be saying that she and Daryl were into some kind of partner-swapping. In fact, her whole conversation could have come straight out of a soft-porn magazine. He had a sudden vision of the bookshelves in the Fletcher sitting-room – rows of Custom Car magazines, interleaved with
Penthouses
and
Escorts
.

‘So are you going to be stuck up there long?' he asked uncontroversially. ‘I don't know a lot about Daryl's kind of work. Is it the sort of job where you move around a lot?'

‘Yeah. Lot of salesmen do. Daryl's been with Delmoleen for a long time, working his way up, like, but now he's got Top Salesman, it's probably as far as he can go in the company. You know, he's not Sales Manager material – well, not yet, anyway – so he'll probably start looking for something else soon.'

‘Something down South?'