The man who won, p.9
The Man Who Won, page 9
In the Preston household there was an unfamiliar atmosphere of hope. Holly, temporarily mollified by the promised improvement in her recently damaged lifestyle, was even prepared to overlook the fact that it owed nothing to her husband. Her mind was on other things. The Caribbean cruise was back on her agenda.
But Clive, delighted as he was by this strange shift in his fortunes, could not pretend that his problems were over. The first reminder of this came when a Christmas card arrived from Sandra. Luckily he was sifting through the mail that morning and found it before Holly could see it and ask questions. But its sudden appearance made him feel vulnerable and exposed.
The picture showed a muscular and cheerful Santa Claus delivering Viagra. The message inside said ‘With love from Sandra’. It frightened him more than he would have expected. He didn’t even know that she had his address, particularly as he had moved since he left the office. She knew where he was and could reach him! He tried to reassure himself that his second house move would throw her off the track.
The second reminder came when Charlotte asked for a considerable increase in her weekly pocket money. He had hoped that the prospect of a wonderful new home would blunt her abrasive edge and bring back the lovely character he had once known. But she had talked to her mother and knew about the cheque.
She cornered him in the muddy drive where Clive was washing the BMW before looking for a buyer. It was to be replaced, as soon as they moved, by two new cars.
‘Fifty pounds a week!’ he exclaimed when Charlotte told him the new figure she had in mind. ‘What on earth does a girl of fifteen want with fifty quid a week?’
‘It seems a fair figure given the size of your cheque,’ she said tonelessly. Today she was wearing pale blue jeans, holed fashionably at the knee, and a black and white striped rugby shirt.
‘But you don’t need that much, Charlotte!’ he said.
She leaned on the car door and looked down at his bucket of dirty water.
‘How’s Sandra?’ she asked.
This was doubly alarming: the last time they’d had a conversation like this she hadn’t mentioned Sandra’s name. He put down his sponge and looked at her.
He no longer knew anything about her; he didn’t know what her life was like. Communication had broken down some time in the past when his questions suddenly became unwelcome. He had learned to respect her pubertal privacy. But who knew what she was up to now? In these fast-track days when no appetite was ignored, her virginity may already have gone. He could hardly bring himself to think about it. The menacing swarm of unwashed adolescents with their acne, their funny voices, their torn clothes and misguided lust could constitute a challenge to a rebellious fifteen-year-old that she might not be inclined to resist.
One minute he had been looking after her and the next she had removed herself from his care.
He wondered why she disliked him so much. The hate came off her like steam. It preceded the Sandra business, although the Sandra business hadn’t helped.
Irritably conscious of the absurdity of it, but unable to see a strategic move, he said: ‘OK, fifty quid a week.’
thirteen
On the day after Boxing Day, two professionally packed removal lorries bearing the names of rival firms arrived simultaneously in Meadow Way. As they reversed into their respective drives, exchanging amiable expletives cab-to-cab, Andy and Clive were waiting like recently installed lords of the manor to greet them, having been dropped off by their wives who had then returned to their old homes to supervise the loading end of the operation.
The removal men Andy was dealing with – a stout middle-aged man and two burly youngsters – were used to taking the contents of a house from one end of the country to the other, sleeping in the vehicle to cut costs. The twenty-odd miles they were travelling today was a welcome respite in a gruelling schedule. Watching them work, Andy wondered what the breakage rate was on a job like this, but given the age and cheapness of the family possessions it was unlikely to become the subject of litigation. Almost all of it, he guessed, would be replaced in the next few months when the truth about their windfall had sunk in.
‘I’m not extravagant, but the house deserves it,’ Clare had explained. Andy agreed with her. Their battered sofa would look incongruous in these bright new rooms. The kitchen furniture, second-hand when they bought it, would have to go.
Clare had the upper hand in these matters. She possessed talents that had escaped Andy. Two homes ago she had retiled the bathroom floor, painted the hall, and made a useful table with legs supplied from one store and wood and tiles bought in another. Diminished by these achievements, Andy retired to his typewriter and tapped out words that were intended to put food on the table. The sad fact that neither her formidable talent nor his produced money was overlooked in the creative swirl. But her artisan’s skills would not be needed now that they could write cheques, and she was going to concentrate on colour and decoration.
The carpet men had arrived hours earlier and their work was almost done. With giant scissors and delicate hammers they worked on hands and knees, replacing bare boards with a cosy homeliness. Andy, redundant as ever, did a circuit of his new house, wondering how the rooms could be filled. The airy, open spaces had a refreshingly new smell, and the matt pink walls, not yet assaulted by pictures or mirrors, seemed to go on for ever. It was all beautifully silent. There were no moans from the plumbing or creaks from the floorboards. From the window he looked down on a field of sheep and, beyond it, a copse. The unearned prosperity that had suddenly propelled him to these Elysian heights from the subsistence level where he had spent most of his life made him feel dizzy. Unaccustomed to the amount of money that now languished in the wasteland that had been his bank account, he was unsure how to use it. But two cars were needed, and Clare’s shopping list, which had once featured items like bread, sugar and eggs, was now headed by dishwasher, new microwave and fridge-freezer.
His bank manager, the scrupulous author of many a begging letter that had brought distress to the Devlin family in the past, assumed a cuddly new persona. He rang up like an old mate who wanted to borrow a video, and suggested a chat.
Over the phone he explained, as if to a child, that the money now lying in Andy’s account would yield several hundred pounds a week in interest if invested wisely, and advice on such investments was available to his customers. Andy, unsure what would be left for investment after they had dealt with the growing shopping list, promised to get in touch.
The car he had his eye on was a Lotus Esprit GT3. He knew little about cars, but liked the low-slung look of it. Clare wanted a brand new Golf which was bigger than the Golf she had been driving for years, and Greg had some suggestions of his own. A satellite dish and a new large-screen television to accommodate the delights it would discharge topped his list. Andy was sorry to hear it. What rubbish would fill the boy’s head now?
It had been a strange Christmas. Poised for flight, it had been difficult for them to celebrate in their cramped, rejected home. But Clare had bought a Christmas tree, a ritual Greg wouldn’t allow them to ignore, and adorned it with last year’s lights which twinkled through the dark December day.
Their minds were twenty miles away in the new home, and on the presents they would soon have, especially the cars. But for Greg they constructed a traditional Christmas, so that he awoke to find a pillowcase full of presents at the foot of his bed. The bike and the computer would arrive when they had moved, and he began to see the exercise as two Christmases rolled into one.
They sat in front of a roaring fire playing one of the games that Greg had found among his presents. Andy had bought him a smart chess set but his son’s tastes, rejecting the more austere disciplines of Andy’s boyhood, lent towards the electronic.
Most of Boxing Day was spent packing, but the accompanying conversation was very cheerful. It involved words that they hadn’t used much lately, like theatre, restaurants and travel.
For Clive’s family, the move to a new home was a relatively simple matter. Much of their stuff was still packed from the previous move and had been lying in boxes in the garage. Holly’s determination that their stay in what she called Cemetery Lane would be a short one had been triumphantly vindicated, and so had her refusal to unpack more than was necessary.
But as he stood in the hall, having paid off the removal men and the carpet layers, Clive wasn’t expecting any smiles as he waited for Holly and Charlotte to arrive. Holly would march into the house and blame him for something that didn’t meet with her approval: furniture in the wrong place, clothes not yet hung up, boxes still unopened. She would be feeling the stress of the day, and the tension would crackle.
Charlotte, who had never seen the house, would no doubt have her own poison to distribute. She saw gratitude these days as a weakness, and would probably find flaws in the new home that nobody else had noticed. And if the spleen deserted her, she would effortlessly produce a string of sarcastic remarks about who provided the money for all this. The articulateness that Clive had admired in her as a child had grown to be a weapon.
Waiting for their appearance, he felt upset that what should be a celebration would probably descend into a slanging match. He opened a can of beer and braced himself.
In fact, when they arrived they were laughing girlishly, probably at him. Increasingly these days he struck a mournful figure.
‘Welcome to your new home,’ he said with a smile.
‘Daddy’s been drinking,’ said Charlotte, looking at the can of beer and nudging her mother.
‘This isn’t the sort of place where you stand on the doorstep with a can of beer in your hand,’ said Holly. ‘Also, your flies are undone.’ They swept into the house, leaving him on the step.
‘It’s awesome, Mum!’ said Charlotte, looking at the big rooms with their space and light.
‘Wait till you see the kitchen!’
‘I don’t do kitchens,’ Charlotte said. ‘Which is my room?’
They went upstairs where Charlotte relayed, on a mobile phone she had been given for Christmas, a glowing commentary on the house to a friend. ‘The rooms are, like, huge, and I’ve got my own bathroom,’ she reported happily. ‘Wicked or what?’
Holly, relieved at these rare signals of satisfaction from her usually disgruntled daughter went downstairs again. Clive was unpacking crockery.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Of course we’ll have to spend some money on things.’
‘We seem to have some,’ Clive replied.
‘Thank you, Brad.’
While her parents unpacked boxes and filled cupboards, Charlotte set to work in the third en-suite bedroom (the second was to be reserved for guests) and in a matter of hours created her own Valhalla of darkened windows, cacophonous music, garish posters of a grunge-rock icon, currently in jail, and enough cosmetics to open a shop. It was a suitable home, Clive thought, for somebody who seemed to secrete a toxic venom, but Holly, a loyal mother, told him that he shouldn’t have become a father if he didn’t understand children.
Curious about this disorderly den, and anxious to fill in the gaps in his fatherly knowledge, he ventured inside the next day when Holly and Charlotte were out in search of a brochure that featured sea cruises. His daughter had stopped just short of padlocking the door, and he could almost imagine a closed circuit camera recording his intrusion. Charlotte’s devious brain, he had to admit, was beginning to daunt him.
Prowling guiltily round her crowded room, he found walls plastered with coloured pictures of her and her friends, love letters from some of them, and cuttings from newspapers, almost all of them about pop stars.
He went through the items on her dressing table in disbelief: Chanel N°5, nail polish remover, purifying gel for face and eyes, cleansing oil, self-tanning cream, Benetint (‘the sexiest flush you can get’), lime and mint body milk, an invigorating oil for the body, and an array of brushes, all for the face. On the floor he saw a box of CDs, a baseball cap with an obscenity on the front, a bottle of Coca-Cola, and copies of Heat magazine.
He opened a drawer and found six bottles of San Miguel beer, a small bottle of vodka and a half empty packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He didn’t even know she smoked. Alongside the cigarettes were two sealed envelopes that he couldn’t open without revealing that he had been there.
He crept out of the room and wondered whether he should brush the door handle for fingerprints. He was almost certain that twenty-five years ago, when he mixed with fifteen-year-old girls, they weren’t a bit like this.
fourteen
The long Christmas holiday, which now merged seamlessly into the New Year and even provided a hiatus in the busy life of Warren Goldberg, had meant that Andy’s play had laid in a literary limbo for two weeks. But now the world was back at work and dormant dreams were revived in the frenzied offices of literary agents. Goldberg rang.
His call to the rented house which Andy had hastily vacated went unanswered, but making one final visit to the place to collect the post, Andy discovered the call when he dialled 1471. He was about to cancel the phone, too, and arrange for one to be installed at 3 Meadow Way, but first he rang Warren Goldberg Ltd with some apprehension. He had put a lot of work into the play, and one phone call could tell him that it was a wasted effort.
Maureen, Warren’s secretary and shield, came on the line with her customary zip.
‘Mr Devlin! Warren’s been trying to get hold of you.’
‘I’ve moved,’ said Andy. ‘I’d better give you my new address. I don’t seem to have a phone yet.’
Warren’s voice was warm enough to give Andy hope.
‘Andy! I think lunch.’
‘Lunch?’
‘What day can you come to town?’
When he returned to his new home, Clare was putting up curtains in one of the bedrooms.
‘I’ve got to go to London tomorrow,’ he told her.
‘Can you remember how to get there?’
‘Warren’s buying me lunch.’
‘What did he think of the play?’
‘He didn’t say.’
The home-building exercise that Clare was now engaged on was a source of great satisfaction. The fact that nobody had lived in the house before gave her a scope denied her in their previous homes, which had often arrived with fitted carpets and cookers, preordained colour schemes and built-in bookcases. She dumped the job at the delicatessen and embraced the challenge.
Sitting on the train the following morning, Andy experienced a rising nervousness about how Warren had reacted to his play. The idea that it had been a foolish mistake to attempt something so ambitious was not far from his thoughts. The very best that he could imagine was that Warren had a list of suggestions for amendments and improvements. Scripts like his traditionally went through many drafts.
He took the tube to Holborn and headed for Red Lion Square, feeling like the country bumpkin who had come to town. Confined by poverty and circumstance to his little office, it was a long time since he had seen such crowds.
Warren Goldberg Ltd occupied the bottom floor of an eighteenth-century house in the square. You had to go down steps to reach its bright blue door. Maureen rose from a computer to greet him. She turned out to be a buxom girl of about twenty-five. On the phone she had sounded older.
‘It’s lovely to meet you, Mr Devlin,’ she said. ‘As I told you, I loved your novel.’
‘Call me Andy,’ he protested. ‘Where’s the man?’
‘I’m here,’ said Warren Goldberg, emerging from a second office. ‘Andy! Great to see you again!’
There was much hand-shaking and slapping of backs. Fifteen years didn’t seem to have touched Warren much. He hadn’t lost any weight or grown any hair. He still seemed to bounce as if the balls of his feet were made from rubber.
As they walked to the Italian restaurant Warren had chosen in Holborn, he talked about the problems of his job, the changing markets and the constantly shifting staff in the firms he had to deal with. Warren clutched his heart as if some physical strain was involved here, but the sun shone. The papers said it was the warmest winter for years.
Installed in the corner of their tiny restaurant, the chatty host delivered a eulogy on Maureen, the treasure in his office who was more interested in books than book-keeping, and had been plucked from college because of her knowledge of literature. She might be only a secretary now, but she would certainly become a literary agent herself.
They seemed to be skirting round the subject of his play, and Andy was scared to bring it up. Pouring wine and eating steak, Warren was keen to boast about his latest discoveries. They included a topless model’s story, transmuted by the alchemy of fiction into a 400-page shagfest; seven cook books from seven TV chefs, all with their own equally unhygienic methods of preparing food; a first novel by a Cornish convent girl on the joys of incest; a multi-generational epic, set in Motherwell and called See You, Jimmy, that spanned Scotland’s resentful years from Culloden to devolution, complete with dialect; three cheery novels by young authors so far known only to the public as comedians but now, suddenly, litterateurs; a whimsical travel book in which a one-legged man transports himself on crutches from Karachi to Kuala Lumpur, looking for jokes; and a sex guide from a Catholic priest. All these books Warren had swiftly placed in the grateful arms of successful London publishers, most of whom had their bosses in New York.
It was only when they reached the crêpe suzette that he was ready to discuss the matter in hand: the demands of his tournedos Rossini had evidently been too distracting for serious conversation.
‘The play,’ he said, looking Andy in the eye. ‘What made you think of it?’
Trying to remember, Andy picked up his wine glass and found it empty. Warren apologized and refilled it.
‘I was reading a history of Elizabethan England to get my mind off other miseries and Raleigh’s story sort of stuck in my head.’
