“Helen, darling,” he said suddenly. “This is only a suggestion, but honestly I think that Berna and I would manage better without you.”
Helen looked at him with disbelief.
“No, seriously,” he went on. “We are both trying so hard to please you, every word we say is like another shot in tennis … and we try not to look at you for your approval.”
Berna laughed. He had got it absolutely right.
“Where are you sending me?” Helen looked like a small child.
“You have a hundred friends of your own age—go off and tell some of them about your older man.” He laughed.
“Will you still be my older man when I get back? You won’t let her talk you out of it?”
“I’ll be here.”
They sat companionably by the fire. Chester told of his first wife, who had died, how they had been happy for three years but how she had grown remote from him, cold. How he had thought he would never love again until he had met Helen.
“I can’t give her youth and all that starting-out-together stuff, but I can take care of her. I think she’ll like that. You would have liked it, right?”
How did he know? How could anyone have known?
Chester looked around him, at the photographs, Jack waving from a yacht … a lot of their savings had gone on that little pastime. Jack in his three-piece suit; he had always gone to the tailor—Berna was the one who looked through the rails for bargains for herself. Jack talking with a crowd of film stars; he had loved hanging around with the famous.
The American’s eyes moved slowly from picture to picture as if he could read the years of neglect and loneliness. His voice was gentle.
“I’ll always be there for her. I know it’s a kind of father figure she wants … but I don’t mind. I’ll be there.” He sounded very dependable.
“More than her own father was a lot of the time,” Berna heard herself saying, to her own surprise.
Chester wasn’t going to go along that route, he wasn’t going to destroy a lifetime of carefully preserved memories.
“He was the man you both loved, wasn’t he?”
She reached out and patted the hand of this man who was going to be her son-in-law. She didn’t care that he worked in advertising and that he was much too old for her daughter. She knew with great relief that she was not going to have to be the voice of authority anymore. This wise man whom Helen had brought home would make all the decisions from now on.
He could start by planning the wedding.
“Where would you like it?” she asked him.
He had the sense not to say wherever she liked.
“I’d like about twenty or thirty people, here in this house. In your home,” he said.
And she knew that for the first time in their lives she and Helen would both be in complete agreement about something and put their hearts into it together.
Philip had always known how to succeed. At school he didn’t seem brainy but he got better examination results than anyone else. People had been puzzled, but not Philip; he had always known that you had only one crack at proving that you were well educated. He had studied all the past examination papers carefully and worked out the likely approach. It had been the same about choosing a firm for his first job—he took a lowly post in a high-grade office. It would all look better on the CV eventually. He didn’t enjoy golf and he positively disliked bridge but he learned both, as they were considered social skills.
Philip realized that a lot of people judged you on appearances, so he made sure that his own appearance was faultless. He did a lot of research about the right kind of clothes to wear and how to have his hair cut so that it looked smart and modern without being arty-farty. He learned to sponge his suits, he learned German from tapes and he attended symphony concerts and operas regularly until he did in fact begin to enjoy them rather than pretending to appreciate them, as he had done for so long.
It was at one of his visits to the opera that he met Annabel. Discreet questioning on his part revealed that she was very suitable indeed as an acquaintance, a date, a friend and possibly more.
In Annabel he saw a young woman with a comfortable background, an influential father and a perfectly satisfactory job of her own as a teacher in a girls’ school.
Annabel saw in Philip a very steady, hardworking and upright young man, who was such a change from her previous, wildly unsuitable boyfriend that it would be a relief to bring him home to Daddy.
Their wedding some twelve months later was, as you might expect, generous and elegant but not lavish. Philip said it would be so much more sensible to put any available money into a house rather than into a showy display. Their honeymoon was not in a far-flung place where they would rub shoulders with nonentity-type tourists. It was in an elegant hotel much frequented by the Established and the People of Power.
Philip’s career record was impressive, and he was only in his early thirties. Each career move had been taken carefully, after a great deal of thought. The present and most demanding post that he had just begun involved time off to study Japanese. Philip had suggested in his interview that anyone taking on such a role would need the company’s support in providing a language-laboratory course in a tongue that would be invaluable to the firm. It was the point that clinched his appointment. So now he began each day with two hours’ total immersion in a foreign language. It did mean leaving for work at 6 a.m. because one had to do one’s full day afterwards.
The day extended at the other end too—there were meetings and little so-called informal chats in clubs—but Philip knew that this was where all the power was centered. Sometimes he didn’t get home until nine o’clock at night. And those were the nights that there wasn’t anything official on, like a dinner or taking overseas contacts to the opera.
There was foreign travel too, and there was the car phone, so the hour of driving with music on the stereo as some kind of relaxation between the office and his home in the leafy suburb was constantly interrupted with calls.
At first Annabel cajoled, and then she begged. Later she sulked, and finally she went on a transatlantic business trip with him so that they could have time to talk.
It was no life, she pointed out, trying to keep the catch out of her voice. It was no marriage, she said, fighting down the overpowering sense of being wronged that threatened to take over. She had given up her job and moved to a stockbroker belt miles from anywhere to further his career and their life. But apart from the executive entertaining that they did rarely—Philip’s contacts were always too busy to get out to what they described as the wilds—there was no reason for her to be there. She was alone and resentful, and she was becoming increasingly anxious about her husband’s health and state of mind.
“You are heading for a breakdown,” she said in hushed tones in case anyone else in first class might hear.
Philip said that this was hardly constructive when he was heading out to close a very important deal. Not wifely, not supportive. Not even remotely likely, either.
As it happened, Annabel left him six months before the breakdown did arrive.
They had parted sadly but reasonably amicably. Philip managed to block off four hours in his diary so that they could divide the records, the pictures and the furniture. They sold the house with the big garden full of trees that could have supported sturdy swings, the garden that had a pond that toddlers would have explored as a world of magic. They told each other that it was as well that they did not have children. It meant the break could be cleaner and less fraught. Annabel had looked at him thoughtfully and wondered whether he had ever loved her. Philip had looked thoughtfully back and wondered whether he could end the conversation and get back to the office without seeming unduly curt. There was no point in wounding a person like Annabel; her only fault had been not understanding the nature of business life. He consoled himself that she would be happier back in town, living perhaps in some sunny garden flat, taking up another teaching job, possibly marrying again
. She was a fine-looking woman and only thirty-three, she had many chances ahead of her and a handsome settlement that everyone had agreed was fair.
When she heard that Philip was in hospital Annabel felt no sense of having been proved right. She asked his doctors whether a visit from her might help or hinder. They said it couldn’t do any harm.
Philip was annoyed by his breakdown, but he assured Annabel that it was not going to stand in the way of any further progress up the ladder. People were much more enlightened these days, he said. Mental collapse was now looked at the same way as blowing a fuse. It was a matter of breaking the circuit—you restored it and then went on as before.
Annabel said she thought that when a fuse blew it meant that there were too many appliances working at the same time. It was a kind of a warning not to plug in so much at once. Could it not be the same for Philip? He said that her attitude was not constructive, he thanked her for visiting and he sent his regards to her father and his congratulations on new directorships.
Annabel sighed when she left the hospital. She looked back at her ex-husband and wondered what could anyone suggest to slow down his overactive brain?
Philip prided himself on being a realist. He hadn’t got as far as this, he told his doctors, without being able to listen to the professionals in their fields. If they told him categorically that he would not heal his mind unless he kept away from work, then he would obey. For three months he would absent himself from the business world that so drew his attention and his interests. He would follow their instructions to the letter. He would read no financial papers, see no colleagues, review no corporate strategy. Then, as methodically as he had learned his spoken Japanese, he would have conditioned himself like an athlete and be ready to return.
He tried going to concerts but his mind didn’t stay with the music.
He tried listening to his records but he began to resent those that had gone to Annabel in the division. He played golf only on courses where he would not meet his former colleagues. He bought a dog and walked it and himself mercilessly. And finally, in order to fill what he still found an achingly empty day, he agreed to go to a flower-arranging class. His doctor had said that there was something deeply satisfying about the constructing of shapes and the textures of petals and foliage. Philip doubted it gravely but felt that it would at least take up an afternoon for him in these endless weeks until he was considered fit to return to the real world.
The ladies in the class were pleased to have a gentleman in their midst. Maud and Ethel made coy little welcoming remarks and issued warnings. They would all have to look to their laurels … and, tee-hee, every other kind of greenery … now that they had a man amongst them. Men had a terrifying habit of winning prizes when exhibiting at flower shows. Philip didn’t feel it necessary to tell Ethel and Maud that he wouldn’t be with them long enough to take part in flower shows. He had always known an important rule for getting ahead, which was to let the Establishment think you were there forever. In terms of flower arranging, Maud and Ethel were the Establishment. He smiled a sheepish smile and they twittered appreciatively back at him.
Philip learned that today’s flower arrangement had to be a triangle, which was something he had never known, even though he had sat behind many of them at banquets. And you had to have a high central flower and two medium ones on each side, then everything was built within that framework.
All afternoon he worked busily, scrunching up chicken wire and sticking it firmly to the base of containers. Then he was moved to the “oasis” table, where he learned to soak a thing that looked like a mad dry sponge in water, having shaved it first to being the right shape. He heard of the glory of pedestal containers, things that looked to him a little like cake stands. He examined the pros and cons of the pin holder, a thing that looked like a miniature hedgehog crossed with a nailbrush. Maud loved these and thought they ran rings round oasis and chicken wire. Ethel had her reservations. Philip worked out the power base and decided to throw his lot in with Ethel but to give supportive whispers to Maud as well. When the time came to clear everything away he was utterly absorbed and muttering to himself, “Design, scale, balance and harmony,” which were the four chief principles of flower arranging.
“You’ll be fine if you keep that in mind,” said Maud with a twinkle.
“And even finer if you never stir without proper secateurs,” added Ethel.
“Properly sharpened, of course,” Maud warned.
“Strong enough to cut wire as well as flowers,” Ethel reminded him.
By the following week Philip had bought three books on flower arranging and had been to two exhibitions. But none of this did he reveal. Never let the Opposition know the breadth of your research had always been his motto. He looked at the Opposition, twenty-two pleasant women who loved the soft autumnal colors of the yellow-and-orange demonstration they worked on today. They stroked the honeysuckle lightly, and admired the chrysanthemum and golden lilies. They sighed their admiration over the elegant way that the flowers were arranged in an old brass oil lamp and the warm foliage of golden privet and variegated ivy as a background. Philip had read so widely on the subject during the last week that he thought the brass container was a little obvious and that something more original might catch a judge’s eye. But he kept this to himself and asked Ethel and Maud companionably about other inspired ideas they might have had. When Ethel mentioned the possibility of using an old casket or brass box, Philip felt a surge of excitement. This indeed is what they should have done to win points. A casket with the autumn flowers tumbling down over it was exactly what would have taken the rosette, the trophy or whatever it was that they were all out to win.
As the weeks went on Philip brought all his attributes into play. He had details of the next exhibitions, potted biographies of the judges who might judge the competitions, their likes and foibles. He was a master of disguise. He knew just how to stick the oasis or the pinwheels to the base of the container so firmly that nothing could ever detach from a mooring. He saw the wisdom of putting his arrangements with a light behind them, how to put a little chlorine or bleach in the water on the rare occasions when water could actually be seen. He knew that you worked the larger flowers and larger leaves into the center of any arrangement and got smaller as you went out to the edges. He began to have little patience for those who couldn’t grow their own greenery even in flats with small balconies. He was not adverse to working on dried-flower or even silk-flower arrangements.
“They’re not the real thing, of course, but very cheering to greet you back after a holiday,” thought Philip.
The doctor said that his anxiety level was not noticeably lower. Philip protested strongly; he had obeyed every single rule to the last letter, he said.
“Have you tried that nice, relaxing flower arranging yet?” the doctor asked.
“Oh, yes, I go every week.” Philip was impatient to be away. His mind was exercised by a special Halloween arrangement involving pumpkins, catkins and berberis.
“Do you get involved in it?” the doctor asked.
“Very.” Philip was terse. He managed to avoid looking at his watch, and put on instead a smile that he thought signified relaxation. The doctor thought it a grimace of pain, and there were several more questions and answers before he could escape to the garden center for further supplies.
Philip won the club’s own Christmas trophy hands down. He did the church Christmas flowers, which was a huge honor and brought his own containers rather than use the existing narrow-necked, carafe-type vases presented by guilds and Mother’s Unions over the years. Chancel flowers and pedestal groups with tumbling winter jasmine, whole poinsettia plants incorporated rich berried hollies. It was a triumph.
Well, it was a triumph for Philip. Not for the ladies who had done the Christmas flowers for years.
At the big New Year’s Winter Flower Competition, Philip carried all before him with his vaguely Oriental arrangement based entirely on the Alder pink-ting
ed catkins. He was interviewed for specialist journals as well as the national papers about the prize-winning display and spoke long and fluently about how a well-shaped branch could last for weeks, how it was important to choose one with small clusters of black cones and how the best should be kept and dried for winter use. He told a local television news reporter that he had hammered the ends of the stems well and soaked them in warm water overnight. At no time did he mention the club to which he belonged; he thanked neither Maud nor Ethel for their training, there were no flattering acknowledgments to the efforts of the runners-up.
Philip had always understood at business that the way to get on was to accept the praise gratefully and give what might be considered interesting insights into how the success had been achieved. It was never considered wise to make one of those Oscar-night speeches thanking everyone in sight. It deflected attention from the success in question, it hinted at a lack of confidence, it took away the limelight. Nobody wanted to hear of the people who had not won the trophies.
He smiled as he placed the silver cup on a table in the small and elegant house on Chestnut Street where he now lived. He might arrange a low white creation beside it later on in the year. When there were sweet pea and little white bud roses, carnations and a background of very pale fern. But no, that was not realistic. By spring he would be back at work. Only a week to go and he could start to think about it again.
He would spend that week arranging his study and getting ready the tools of his trade. Reluctantly he knew that he would have to get rid of the tools of the other trade, and say goodbye to the oasis, the chicken wire, the pin holders and the collections of useful standbys, the ferns, the trailing ivies and the catkins.
Still, that doctor had been right. It had been useful—the term of flower arranging. And now he didn’t need it anymore. The rather sour Ethel and Maud, who had not congratulated him sufficiently, the colorless ladies who attended the same class every week, who had been so open and friendly at the start.