Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
He was silent for a moment. ‘You can say that because you’ve never loved someone.’ He gestured sadly. ‘It’s very simple. I loved her and it’s bloody painful.’
Emily was silenced. Love, she thought, had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with mayhem, which left you sad and damaged.
‘But perhaps you’re right.’ He dropped a kiss on her cheek.
‘About what?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
Conscious that she had failed him but unsure in which way, Emily hurried on to the bus stop, lured by the prospect of Mike and his flipcharts, the whole new world of office hierarchies, alliances and procedures.
Tom went to bed and, late as it was, Annie worked on the neglected report. Eventually, stupid with fatigue and having undressed, she went to check on her mother-in-law before going to bed.
The night light threw its subdued gleam over a sleeping Hermione.
Her thorn in the flesh? The cuckoo in the nest of number twenty-two?
There’s no greater intrusion, thought Annie, than to watch someone sleeping without their permission. Hermione’s light, puffing breaths betrayed the state of her lungs, and her wrinkled arm her age. But, elderly as this adversary might be, Annie understood that Hermione had her secrets and she had no right to divulge them to Tom.
She bent over to straighten the duvet and became aware that Hermione had woken and was regarding her with the direct stare so often a characteristic of the very young.
‘That’s a pretty nightdress.’ Her mouth creased in what was – and Annie never imagined she would see on Hermione – a naughty smile.
Annie’s hand crept up to her neckline. Trimmed with Brussels lace and of fine muslin, it was an indulgence she had bought in a Parisian flea market.
Hermione’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Tom is fortunate,’ she murmured, and closed her eyes.
Back in her bedroom, she regarded Tom’s unconscious figure, shrouded in his duvet like the elderly patients in the hospital ward. Shaken by terror that either he or she might be alone when they, too, reached the end of the line, she leaned over and gently, oh, so gently, touched his cheek.
She got into bed, and the customary gap remained open between her and him. The soft folds of the antique nightdress settled over her – the brush of a spider’s web, or unripe barley, or warm white sand.
She turned her head to look at the dark wedge beside her. Outside, the world was broken. Along with millions of others, she longed for things to be whole in her house, her head and her heart.
Tom, she thought, with a catch in her throat.
Tom?
Where are you?
Chapter Seventeen
The sulky summer had thrown yet another chilly and blustery day.
Tom was cold and regretted he hadn’t fished out his overcoat but it was not smart enough. The joke was he could have afforded several coats on his previous salary, but he had deliberately cultivated the statement shabby look. Deluded? Absolutely. Originally a method of indicating his membership of the BBC’s priestly caste, it had become second nature. Now that he felt he could not justify the outlay on a new one, he discovered that a tatty coat worked differently, conveying the message that he had fallen to the bottom of the ladder.
The offices of Hidebrande & Ephron, Headhunters, were in Piccadilly and he was heading towards them.
‘Tell you what,’ offered James, when he had rung Tom after a considerable period of not ringing Tom, ‘I’ll put in a word with my mate John Ephron. He runs the agency. They might be able to do something.’
Aware that even his walk was different – less certain and slower than in the days when he had carried all before him – Tom paid attention to how he placed his feet on the pavement. Despite James’s intervention, it had been necessary to cajole John Ephron into granting Tom an interview and he was apprehensive.
A few months ago, in the fat and fertile days, people had
begged to see
him
. In that triumphant past, James had even begged Tom, for God’s sake, to help him out. ‘I owe you big-time, mate.’ Tom recollected James’s expression of deferential gratitude, the glow of doling out patronage – and had thought nothing of it.
Shown into Reception, he was asked to wait five minutes.
Five minutes stretched to ten, ten to fifteen, then twenty.
The set-up in the basement of what used to be a smart townhouse, now parcelled up into offices, sported well-tended pot plants, leather furniture, an espresso machine and serious financial magazines. Tom stared at the state-of-the-art machine and the early German Futurist painting on the wall, which he coveted instantly. That bothered him. Since when had he turned into the envious sort who minded that others enjoyed bigger houses, better paintings? Since when had he measured himself against the nimbler, the more successful, the better-loved? To be jobless pitchforked one into a new psychological landscape. To say that he was reluctant to travel over it was to put it mildly.
At last he was shown into an office where he was greeted by a (much) younger man, with a mass of brushed-back fair hair, in a three-piece suit that exuded Savile Row. ‘I’m Joe Hidebrande.’ He exuded a tutored politesse. ‘John asked me to give you the heads-up and sends his apologies but he’s a bit tied up.’ He leaned back in his leather chair. ‘What did you wish to discuss?’
Tom stared at him. How old was Joe Hidebrande? Twenty-five, possibly twenty-seven – and light years away in sensibility? ‘I was hoping …’ Oh, God, why had he said ‘hoping’? It was always a sign of weakness. He began again.
‘I wanted to talk over the situation and to sort out where you could fit me in.’
Joe Hidebrande cleared his throat. It was not a reassuring noise. ‘As you will know, our business tends to operate the other way around. We come to you when we’re franchised to fill a position …’
Franchised to fill a position
… The terms had certainly changed.
‘But …’ The word carried a burden of favours having been called in, of charity, even. ‘Why don’t we go over your CV?’
Between the two men stretched an expanding reservoir of non-comprehension. Tom swallowed, and an image of Annie hurrying out of the house, weighed down by a briefcase stuffed with documents to do with on-going work concerns, passed through his mind. At that, the competitive gene asserted itself and he swore he would sit it out.
The clock on the building opposite was registering noon when Tom emerged from the expensive offices. He took a few steps in the direction of the Underground, changed his mind, reversed in the opposite direction past the scene of his recent humiliation and came to a halt.
I don’t know what to do, he thought. Until now, he had refused to allow himself to consider that he might fail to get another job – but the near-certainty had come home to roost.
Had he really been the man who had thrown a credit card on to the salver on which reposed a staggering bill for dinner with colleagues?
I’ll see to it
. In that once-upon-a-time, he had been careless, heedless, expansive and more than a little flown with drink. He remembered tapping his crocodile wallet against the edge of the table and the puck-puck sound it made, then collecting his shabby overcoat from the cloakroom.
‘You like all that too much,’ Annie had once accused him, which had brought him up short. ‘Be careful.’
He speed-dialled her.
‘Hallo.’ She was guarded, which usually meant someone was in the office with her – in her world of lino corridors, surgical gloves and statistical juggling about which he knew little.
‘It’s me.’
‘I know it’s you.’
Tom turned on his heel and walked towards the park.
‘Is something the matter?’ Annie clipped out the question.
He wanted to shout,
Everything
. Instead he said, ‘I just wanted to hear your voice.’
It was as if he had waved Prospero’s wand, for now Annie’s voice swooped tenderly: ‘That’s nice.’
He enjoyed the pause that followed – a pleasurable, almost-forgotten moment of anticipation after which anything might happen. It was the moment when you listened to the unspoken words of the other. In the early days they would have been:
I love you
.
‘How did it go, Tom?’
‘Badly. I was fobbed off. Not their fault, but they couldn’t have been less interested, and I can’t blame them.’ He prayed that Annie would not respond with platitudes about short-sightedness and ageism.
She did not let him down. ‘There’s no question you’re up against it. We’re just going to have to think round the problem more cleverly.’
‘I made mistakes, didn’t I?’
‘Surely not.’ Annie barely missed a beat. ‘The god of the radio.’ She turned serious. ‘You’re not alone, Tom. I, too,
thought I could do good. Instead I just hold up a wall of paper and try to limit damage when patients die who shouldn’t.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Not talking, I suppose.’
Tom dodged an oncoming car and crossed the street. ‘If I was a god you were a goddess.’
He heard her snort of amusement.
He raised his eyes to the blustery skies. At least Annie appeared to be with him. ‘Annie …’ he struggled with a lump that had sprung – shamingly – into his throat. ‘The other night … I mean … you can come into my shed any time.’
At that she laughed properly, and it was a very nice sound.
He continued: ‘In the meantime, while we think round the problem, as you say, more cleverly, I can look after Maisie for a bit, which would help out Jake.’
‘Tom, now I’ve heard everything.’
The trouble with having troubles was how stupid they made him feel. Where had his confidence gone – the bright underpinning that had powered him into Jocasta’s bed and into his workshop to produce his creations? Having lost it, he was semi-paralysed and diminished. So habituated to achieving things without effort, Jake was nonplussed by the effort it required to function halfway decently.
He unlocked the workshop door and manoeuvred the pushchair inside. One way or another, he hadn’t been there for a week and the air was noticeably stale. The dust made Maisie sneeze.
Jake opened a window, shrugged off his jacket and bent
over to tuck the rug over the baby. After the buffeting from the wind outside, she was sleepy. Parking her in a patch of sunlight under the window, he left her to it.
He yawned, stretched and bent over to push a pot of varnish back on to a bottom shelf. When he stood upright, Ruth was in the doorway, toting a large canvas holdall.
Since they had last met some weeks ago, her hair had grown. She wore a high-waisted fifties pencil skirt, which was just a shade too tight – it didn’t matter because the effect was fabulous. But she did look a little strained. ‘Here, can you take this?’
Obediently, he wrested it from her grip and set it down on the bench. ‘What on earth …?’
‘Your next lunch … so to speak. If you want it.’ Hauling out a couple of toasters and a wooden box with a broken lid, she presented them to him like votive offerings. ‘Word’s got around.’
‘What?’
She stuck her hands on her hips. ‘I didn’t take you for stupid. They need mending. Interested or not?’
‘Of course,’ he replied uncertainly.
Ruth tiptoed over to inspect the sleeping Maisie. ‘She’s got one red cheek.’
‘It happens with babies.’
Her eyes travelled around the room. ‘I’d love to see some of the things you’ve made.’
‘The furniture’s gone to the people who commissioned it.’
‘Big pieces?’
‘Some of them. But any size, and …’ he grinned wryly ‘… hopefully handed down to the next generations. That’s their point. To be used and passed on.’
‘I can take the stuff back, you know.’ Her eyes were wary, almost goading him to rebuff her yet hoping he wouldn’t. ‘Easy.’
He glanced down at the jumble. Already he was assessing and sorting, anxious to make them whole again. ‘Leave them with me.’
Ruth seemed to relax. ‘You should put a notice up at the entrance to the workshop. Then people will know.’ She cocked her head as if she was explaining a basic fact to Year One, which made Jake laugh.
‘You’re a very practical person.’
‘I have to be,’ she said simply.
‘I’m practical but not businesslike,’ he confessed. ‘It drove – it drove my wife mad.’ He paused. ‘But it’s a good idea. The notice.’ He laid out the stuff on the bench. ‘Do you need receipts?’ She shook her head. ‘OK. If you can wait, I’ll do the easy job now.’
Maisie stirred from her all-too-brief nap and uttered a hungry noise. Jake pointed to his bag. ‘There’s juice and a biscuit in there. Would you …?’
Ruth did not appear that willing, but obliged. She hunkered down beside Maisie and gingerly offered her the bottle. ‘I don’t have much practice.’
‘It’s not rocket science.’
She observed Maisie attack the teat. ‘Perhaps not.’
Now that Jake had grown used to, and took for granted, the umbilical cord that stretched between him and his daughter (however smelly or grubby), it always gave him a prod when others were lukewarm about the baby package. ‘If you talk to her, she’ll get to know you.’
‘Get to know me? That’s nice,’ she murmured.
The order book had happened to fall open at Jake’s last substantial order.
Dining table. Seating up to 16. 2 Leaves. Claw legs. Inlay. Walnut
. It was like looking at an object behind the glass at a museum that belonged to a different era. He shut it. He applied himself to the task at hand. The jewellery box was made of cherry and inlaid. Its owner had taken care of it but the inlay required a tweak, the lid a new hinge and the lining replacing.
He checked the drawer, which contained a selection of silk, velvet and cured leather. ‘Red or green for the lining?’
She did not look up. ‘Green. Suits the wood better.’ She guided Maisie’s hand around a biscuit. ‘I know you’re used to doing bigger, classier projects. You probably consider a jewellery box beneath you.’
‘I’ll take what comes,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Easy come, easy go.’
At that, Ruth did look up. ‘Really?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It isn’t. I mind very much.’