Trains and Lovers: A Novel (5 page)

DAVID HAD REACTED WHEN ANDREW HAD MADE
his remark about thinking about somebody every day of his life. He had stiffened briefly and then had smiled. It was a private smile; not one intended to signal anything to the others.

Oh yes, he said to himself. Oh yes, you do. You do. You think about somebody. He fills your world. He is all about you, a presence, and you think about him; you can’t help it, because he’s always there, in your thoughts. But you know, of course, that all the while you’re thinking about him, he’s not thinking about you. That’s the hardest thing about it. That’s what makes it so very, very hard to bear. So hard that sometimes you just sit there and let the misery wash over you; the misery, the emptiness. It’s like a great white sea—one of those inland seas you see pictures of in the
National Geographic;
seas that are completely still, seas too salty to have waves or currents. Seas of tears.

WE LEFT WORK TOGETHER THE NEXT DAY AS SHE
had said that we would have to catch a train to her father’s place. It was forty minutes outside London, she said, in one of those places that is technically outside the city, but is not in the real countryside—a place of trees and lanes that negotiated their way past high hedges intended to shield the houses on the other side from view, but which afforded occasional glimpses of the luxury they almost concealed.

Hermione’s mother lived in France, she said. She had gone off a few years earlier with another man—one of her father’s closest friends. “They don’t speak. They write to one another through their lawyers. Not that there’s much to say—it’s mostly threats, I think.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She’s much happier, though. She told me their marriage was a nightmare.”

I hesitated to say anything. The house was not far
from the railway station, and we were walking. There was loose gravel on the pavement—small chips of it from some road repairs, and it made a pleasant, crunching sound. I had walked on gravel before, but never walked on gravel
with her
.

At last I said, “It must be awful to be that unhappy in a marriage.”

“Yes.”

“Like being in prison,” she went on. “And then suddenly it’s over and you’re free.”

“I suppose so.”

“They’re both happier now,” she said. “Although I don’t think my father really cares one way or the other. I’m not sure that he was all that unhappy anyway; he didn’t really notice my mother. She was just there. He wasn’t nasty to her—or not as far as I could see. He just ignored her.”

I said that I thought that some people would feel that ignoring somebody amounted to being nasty—certainly it could amount to unkindness, could it not?

“Some people don’t know when they’re being unkind,” she said. “I think my father’s one of them. His mind is on other matters. Business mostly.”

I had never asked her what he did. I was worried
that she would think that I was interested in her for her money—if they had it, which I imagined they did. I had read somewhere about how wealthy people are very discreet and are always concerned that people are going to befriend them for their money rather than for themselves. But now that she had mentioned his business, I brought it up.

“He owns a newspaper,” she said. “But that’s not the only thing. It’s for his ego. He’s the chairman of an investment firm. You see their ads all over the place. I think that’s the bit that really matters to him.”

I nodded. Newspaper proprietorship was exactly right for a real alpha male—so much so that it almost amounted to a cliché.

“I can see what you’re thinking,” she said.

I blushed. “I wasn’t …”

“No, you were. And I don’t mind. You were thinking that he owns a newspaper because that’s what somebody like him wants to do. People like that own newspapers or football teams. It’s about power, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. But, look, I can’t say very much about it. How can I? I haven’t even met your father.”

“You soon will,” she said.

We had reached a gate. There was a buzzer that she
pressed to open the gate. A voice from a small speaker above the button said, “Hermione, darling.” It was a man’s voice.

She leaned forward to the microphone. “Daddy.”

The gate was unlocked from within the house. There was a quiet click.
Well-oiled machinery
, I thought.

She turned to smile at me encouragingly. “Come on.”

I SAW IMMEDIATELY THAT HE LOOKED A BIT LIKE
her. That was disconcerting at first, because you love a face and then discover that the thing you love is in another face. I know I’m not putting that very well, but it’s a very odd feeling. You feel that you should love the other person too—if only a little, out of gratitude.

He looked at me in the same way in which she sometimes did—that same intense stare. That was another thing she got from him.

“So you’re Andrew. They call you Andy, no doubt.”

“Sometimes. But I like my full name.”

It sounded rude, which is exactly the opposite of the effect I had intended. I felt far from confident in the presence of Hermione’s father; I was out of my depth, and I knew it. I noticed him react. The intense stare faded and he glanced briefly at Hermione before his gaze turned back to me.

“Of course,” he said evenly. “You should never fool around with somebody’s name. Names are very important.”

“Daddy’s called Peter,” said Hermione. “I call him Hosh.”

“A family nickname,” he said quickly. It was a clear invitation not to call him Hosh.

We were standing in the drawing room, a large formal room that looked out onto an expanse of lawn. At the far end of the grass there was a summer-house, a small wooden structure with a shingled roof. I could see chairs inside and what looked, from where I was standing, as if it was a stuffed bear.

I glanced around the room. It was as different from our living room at home as it could be. My eyes alighted on a picture above the fireplace, a large post-impressionist framed in one of those wide gilt frames that the works of the impressionists and their successors so often appear in. Hermione noticed my glance.

“Bonnard,” she said.

I nodded.

“Of course that’s what you do, isn’t it?” said Peter. He looked at the painting. “I’ve always liked Bonnard. I bought that in New York. Sotheby’s, not your bunch.”

“It’s lovely,” I said.

“A woman in a bath,” Peter said. “It must have been difficult being married to Bonnard. Always wanting to paint you in the bath. No privacy at all.”

“She might have been flattered,” said Hermione.

Peter shrugged. “Maybe.” He turned to me. “And what’s the art market doing right now? Jittery, like everybody else?”

I tried to remember what somebody had said over coffee the previous day. “It’s all right,” I said. “Contemporary art is doing rather well. Chinese too.”

He smiled, and I wondered whether he had guessed that this was just the recitation of something I had heard from somebody who really knew what he was talking about. But I was not the cause of his smile; it was the fortunes of contemporary art. “Interesting,” he said. “I read the other day—it was in the
FT
, I think—there was a report about how one of these chaps, a big name in art today, didn’t sell when they put a whole stash of his work up for auction. Nobody wanted it. Because it was rubbish.”

He waited for me to react. Presumably he thought that I approved of contemporary installation art.

“I don’t like that sort of thing myself,” I said.

He stared at me. “Koons and that crew?”

“I don’t particularly like Koons’ work. I saw something of his that looked like an air conditioner.”

He laughed; he was visibly relaxing. “Probably was. Five million dollars?”

“Something like that.”

“Created value,” he said. “The collectors keep the prices up. The stuff has only scrap value, but they can’t let people think that.”

“Dutch tulips.” I had just read about that.

He looked at me with heightened interest. “The best example there ever was. Although, frankly, I’m surprised the Dutch behaved that way. They were a sensible bunch—solid traders—and then they suddenly went wild over tulip bulbs.”

He turned to Hermione. “Mrs. Thing has made dinner for us,” he said.

She explained. “Mrs. Thing has got a name, Andrew. Mrs. Dallas. Daddy calls her Mrs. Thing.”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t mind. I wouldn’t call her Mrs. Thing if she minded.”

“She’s a really good cook,” Hermione continued.

Peter moved towards a drinks trolley against the wall behind him. “Something to drink?” he asked. “Mrs. Thing wants us to eat in fifteen minutes or her soufflé will
collapse. She always threatens us with collapsed soufflés, but never makes them. It’s a peculiarity of hers.”

He mixed us drinks and then, while we drank them, he quizzed me. At first the questions were of the sort that might be asked in any friendly conversation, but then they developed an edge. Did I think that my school education had prepared me adequately for university? Did I really think that university degrees needed to be as long as they were, or could they be compressed into two years, or even one? Were my professors there simply because they couldn’t do anything else?

I could have been more forceful in their defence, and would have been—in different circumstances. “They’re good at their job,” I said quietly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. But it all sounds a bit easy to me. What time do they start in the morning? When do they go home in the evening?”

“I think they’re there all day.”

He lifted his glass to his lips. “And you? Do you work a full day?”

Hermione shot him a glance, but he ignored it.

Now he answered his own question. “I’m sure you work very hard.” He paused. “Art history’s certainly interesting. You want to work in an auction house, I take it?”

I told him that I had not made up my mind yet.

“You could work in a museum or gallery, I suppose.” He looked at me with amusement.

I swallowed hard. I felt vulnerable. There was a note of condescension in his tone—something that was almost a sneer—and now I knew why Hermione had felt that she had to warn me. Her father was unlikeable—it was as simple as that. I did not like him at all, and I imagined how most people who came across him would think that way.

“Those jobs are quite hard to get,” I said mildly.

He smiled. “And that, of course, is why the pay’s so low. Jobs that lots of people want to do—and that anybody can do, of course—will never be paid well. Supply and demand.”

I felt my heart thumping within me. I had to say something. “Money’s not everything,” I said. “There’s job satisfaction …”

“I think you’ll find that money
is
everything,” he retorted.

Hermione came to my rescue. “I’m with Andrew on that,” she said. “You can’t put a monetary value on everything.” She was polite enough, but I could tell that she was both irritated and embarrassed. I had never been ashamed of my parents, but I knew that there were people who were, and Hermione must have been one.

Her father turned to her with a condescending smile. “Can’t you?”

“No,” she said. “You can’t. And anyway, we need to eat. Mrs. Thing …”

“Yes,” said her father, putting down his glass and standing up. “We must consider Mrs. Thing.”

As we went into the dining room, I glanced at my watch and worked out that we had another two hours of his company.

WALKING BACK TO THE RAILWAY STATION AT HALF
past nine, Hermione slipped her hand in mine. “You did really well.”

“He’s not too bad.” He was, of course. He was worse than I had imagined—a parody, almost, of the condescending magnate, sure of himself, dismissive of those he considered beneath him, arrogant in the core of his being. I had never met anybody like him before, and so I did not understand, as I understand now, that such attitudes speak to weakness far more frequently than they speak to strength.

“That’s kind of you. He’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but he’s got his good points.”

I waited for her to enumerate them, but nothing came.

“He’s got a lot of enemies in the business world,” she said. “I think it’s his style. He picks fights.” She squeezed my hand. “He was trying to pick a fight with you—you realised that, didn’t you?”

“I’m not sure. There were things he said …”

“That question about whether you worked a full day. I could see what you were thinking.”

“Maybe.”

She squeezed my hand again. “He’ll try to get rid of you,” she half whispered.

I let my astonishment show. “You mean he’ll try to kill me?”

She giggled. “Oh no, nothing that crude. He’ll just try to stop … to stop us. He’ll do all sorts of things to put a wedge between us. He won’t want you to stay with me.”

I asked her why. Was it jealousy, or was it because he did not think I was good enough for her?

She thought about her answer for a moment. A breeze had arisen suddenly, a warm breeze, and on it was a trace of some highly scented plant in one of the gardens. It was a scent I knew from our garden at home, but I could not remember the name of the flower.