How It All Began

  “I am no good,” said Anton. “I have not done any. I try all the way, and not one.” He showed Rose the pristine page, smiling.

  Both were smiling, hugely. They had smiled their way along the platform, spotting each other from afar.

  “We’ll do it together, later. Actually, probably not—it’s too nice a day for crosswords. Aren’t we lucky!”

  It is, it is. A blue and green spring day, sun with his hat on, birds jubilant, trees in lavish leaf. Rose was carrying a basket, in which was the picnic. A modest picnic, but choice: smoked salmon sandwiches, quail eggs, lettuce, grapes.

  Anton had brought a bottle of wine. He took off his rucksack to show her. “It is from my country. One of the boys go home last week, and he bring it back for me. I hope you will like.”

  They made their way to Richmond Park. He told her that his mother had received the coat and scarf and was delighted.

  “I tell her you help me and she say I must thank you. She say it is the best coat she have, ever.”

  “My pleasure,” said Rose. “A lifetime’s shopping experience came in useful, for once.”

  Anton was surveying the park. “I think here there is no shopping. Not even Starbucks.”

  “That’s why we’ve got the picnic. But we have to earn it first. A mile, at least.”

  They walked, briskly. Anton was interested in the deer. “The book say this was always a place for deer—deer for the king to hunt, in old times. Look, over there, that one, that man one . . .”

  “Stag.”

  “Stag. He has . . . eight wife. And he have to keep them all for himself, I know. They are like that at home. Fight other stags to keep for himself.”

  “What a life,” said Rose. “Nothing but eating and fighting, and all to make sure your genes get carried on.” She caught his perplexity. “Genes . . . oh, help . . . the things we’ve all got that make us what we are, absolutely different from anyone else, and that we pass on to our children.”

  “Yes, yes. Like I have dark hair from my mother, and I need glasses for read, and I have tall from my father, and good with numbers, like him. And you? You have from your mother brown eyes, I have seen—what more?”

  “Hay fever,” said Rose. “It’s starting up now. Any minute I’ll be sneezing. You know—in spring, from the grass, the pollen.”

  “So for that you not say thank you to her. And from your father?”

  She thought. “I don’t know, really. He was clever—very clever. So’s my mother, but he was clever differently—very applied, and bursting with energy.”

  “So you have clever, and I think . . .”

  “No,” said Rose. “I’m not like them, that way. I’m . . . practical. I can get things done, but I don’t have their sort of mind.”

  “I think you do, like your mother. Same way of talk, sometimes. Same way of see, perhaps.”

  “Nonsense, I’m not a bit like her.”

  He was laughing. “I knew you say that. Nobody think they are like their parents. Everyone think we are quite different.”

  She smiled, shook her head. “I dare say you’re right. And all this started with the stag.”

  “And he think nothing at all. Not—I must make child—just, I must have many wife and fight other stag.”

  Rose sneezed. “There—I told you. This place is steaming with pollen.”

  “You want to go somewhere else?”

  “Certainly not.” She fished in her pocket. “I’ve got this stuff—that’ll help. We should go that way, I think—up the hill.”

  He told her that when he was a boy he had been taken to hunt deer, once, by an uncle. “We shoot. That is how I know what they do—he tell me. We shoot one and his wife cook and we eat, and I did not like.”

  “The meat? You didn’t like the meat?”

  “No, I did not like the killing. I liked to see the deer, not to kill it. But I could not say that, because that would be—not like a man. So I must enjoy. After that I never do it again—shoot.”

  “I’ve never killed anything,” said Rose thoughtfully. “Oh yes—mice. In traps. And I didn’t like that at all.”

  “If we do not like to kill,” said Anton, “in other times—old times—we would be no good. We would not eat.”

  “Quite. Made helpless by Tesco and Sainsbury, that’s us. I don’t even know how to clean a chicken—you know, take out its insides.”

  “Fish, I can do. I have go fishing too with my uncle. That I did not mind. And . . . clean, after. Cut open—take out.”

  “I’ve never done that. Gone fishing. I must have the wrong kind of uncle.”

  “And I did not mind that we kill the fish. Not like shooting the deer. Why is that?”

  “One doesn’t relate to fish, exactly. Whereas deer are—cute, pretty.”

  “So in other time I would have to eat only fish,” said Anton.

  “And I would starve.” Rose laughed. “And be overrun by mice. Actually, it wouldn’t be like that at all. We would both have had uncles—or parents—who would have taught us to be appropriately bloodthirsty. We’d have killed without a thought.”

  “I think I prefer now. With Tesco.”

  “Lunch, in fact, is Waitrose. Talking of which—do you think it’s time to look for somewhere nice to have it?”

  They chose a place with an agreeable view, and settled down on the grass. Rose unpacked her basket. “There—smoked salmon. I hope you like it.”

  “And very small eggs. I have not seen those before.”

  “Quail eggs. Considered a delicacy.”

  Anton opened his wine, and filled paper cups. He sighed—a rich, luxuriant sigh. “This is—how can I say?—today is—I think I am in heaven.” He turned to look at her, raised his cup of wine. “Thank you, for make heaven.” He looked away, quickly, waved a hand at the park—the trees, the grass, the deer. “Now, when I am at the building site I think of this.”

  Presently, they walked again. Faster this time, intent upon covering ground, talking occasionally, then falling into an uninhibited silence. Rose thought, when you are able to be with a person and there is no need to talk, something has happened. She felt exhilarated—by the exercise, the intensity of the spring world around them, by his company. When they paused for a rest, sitting for a while on a bench under a huge oak, she told him about holidays in her childhood.

  “Mum and Dad liked to walk. We did some of Hadrian’s Wall once, that’s up in the north, country that’s very—wild and open. The opposite of this, really.” After a moment, she added, “You’d like it. I wish . . .” Her voice trailed away. She rummaged for a tissue, felt him looking at her, blew her nose, looked back, and saw that he knew what she wished.

  There was a silence. He said, “Perhaps one day I go there. When I am an accountant. With some money, and a car.” He smiled.

  “Mum says your reading gets better and better.”

  “Yes, I think so. A little longer, and I start to look for a job.”

  “Good. Great. Actually, I can’t quite imagine you in an office. You don’t seem an office kind of person. But not the building site, either—definitely not that.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I am an office person. But only because I have to be. Because that is what I can do, always—good at that, so that is how I can earn money.”

  “Well, I’m one too, of course, in a very small way. Any accountancy is done by me, and I’m not good at it. Luckily, it’s just sorting his bills and writing out checks for him to sign.”

  “How is your office? What is it like?”

  “Why?”

  “Then I can think of you there.”

  “Oh . . . It’s a small room looking out over the garden. Desk, and filing cabinet, and a brown armchair I don’t much use. And a print of eighteenth-century London over the fireplace.”

  “What do you see from the window?”

  “Grass that needs cutting—that reminds me, I must ring the contractor
s. A couple of trees at the end—there’s sometimes a squirrel that jumps from one to the other. And pigeons, always.”

  “Now I see it,” he said gravely. “Good.”

  They sat in silence. She got up. “Let’s walk.”

  The day had tipped from morning into afternoon and now, as they walked, it became late afternoon, the sunlight softer, the shadows longer. They were heading toward the road that would take them back to the station.

  “We go, I think,” said Anton. “We go, I am afraid.” He bent to pick something up. “How do you call this?”

  “An acorn. You know—from oak trees. Left over from last autumn.”

  “Acorn. There—another word.”

  “Not a very useful one.”

  “You never know when you may need.” He held the acorn in his hand, closed his fist over it, put it carefully in the pocket of his leather jacket. He looked at her, smiling. Did not look away. Nor did she. For seconds. Too long. Not long enough.

  A little breeze had got up. Rose put an arm into her jacket, began to shrug it on. He reached behind her to help, then his hand lay on her shoulder. For a moment, for an everlasting moment, so that she would feel it still on the way home in the Tube, sitting there distracted. This can’t be, mustn’t be. This must not happen. But it has.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Henry was beginning to flag. He hadn’t realized that filming was such a laborious process. He hadn’t realized that it involved so much standing around doing nothing. He hadn’t reckoned with endless discussion between the director, Paula (the tall, fair woman who had come to Lansdale Gardens), the cameraman, the sound man, the boy Mark, a further acolyte whose role was not entirely apparent. He hadn’t understood that they would spend the day roaming London in pursuit of suitable locations at which to film a snatch of Henry talking about the seamier side of eighteenth-century London life with, if possible, an emotive accessory to hand.

  One of these, a Big Issue seller, was being difficult. He was prepared to act as a backdrop, but only at a price. The price had just gone up; he had whipped out a mobile phone, presumably in order to contact a colleague about the going rate, and was now holding out for thirty.

  “Thirty pounds?” said Henry, incredulous. “Just to stand behind me when I talk?”

  So it seemed.

  In Henry’s view this particular Big Issue seller was more of a Dickensian than a Hogarthian figure. The Artful Dodger incarnate. He said so, but nobody took any notice. Eventually, a deal was struck. Henry was placed at the right angle to the Big Issue seller and filming, at last, took place.

  Once again, he fluffed. There were never more than a few sentences of the script to be delivered at any one spot, but somehow he could never get them into his head. He had not written them in the first place. That is to say, Mark had written them, they had been sent to Henry ahead of the day as a courtesy; Henry had made a few adjustments and amendments, most of which had been ignored.

  “OK,” said Paula patiently. “Let’s go again.”

  They did. And again. The Big Issue seller was doubled up.

  They moved on. Paula had been keen to find some prostitutes. But where? “It’s a bore. Since they cleaned up the King’s Cross area you don’t know where to find them. At least I don’t. Oh well, we’ll have to do without. But I want some really rough types—though not necessarily today. Knife crime, if possible.”

  Mark suggested the emergency entrance at one of the main hospitals, on a Saturday night.

  “Now that’s an idea. But would we be allowed to film?”

  “I can always get on to their PR people and try.”

  Henry listened aghast to this exchange. They were now outside a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, where a young man sitting cross-legged with a dewy-eyed dog across his lap had attracted the crew’s attention. “Nice,” said Paula. “Go and talk to him, Mark.”

  Mark came back, shaking his head. “It’s forty, or he says he’ll have to be moving on. I’ll need to get some more cash.” He disappeared into the bank.

  Henry sat down on the bench at a nearby bus stop. His knee hurt. His feet hurt. He had a headache. He wished he had not after all decided to leave Rose behind; she would have been moral support. He could have complained to her. The cameraman was saying that street people just weren’t as thick on the ground these days, were they? A problem when you’re looking for background color for a project like this. The sound man went to get coffees from the Starbucks across the road. Henry clutched a horrible plastic cup and eyed the wretched script once more—set out in large font and triple spacing in deference to his eyesight. He thought of those young chaps whistling up hillsides while holding forth about the Middle Ages, and wished them luck; he knew now why he had settled for a life of desk-bound scholarship.

  Filming took place alongside the young man and the dog, after cash had changed hands. Henry gazed anxiously at the camera, willing the right words to flow.

  “Youth was short, in eighteenth-century London. Brief, and . . . and precarious. The fortunate few found an apprenticeship. The rest . . . um . . . the rest . . . oh dear.”

  “Cut,” said Paula.

  He tried again. “. . . The rest fought for survival, the flotsam and jetsam of the city, many forced into crime and prostitution.”

  The dog had risen from the young man’s blanket and now started to bark. The young man yanked at its lead: “Just fucking shut up, you.”

  “I think we’ll move on,” said Paula. “I’m not sure I care for this location, anyway.”

  By late morning they were outside a shopping mall. Mark had found street musicians here on a reconnaissance trip, and it was thought they could be an interesting accompaniment. However, they were not to be seen today.

  “Sorry,” said Mark. “I should have booked them.”

  But Paula’s attention was focused on a group of youths milling around outside a DVD outlet: “Now those would be good.”

  The youths were all hooded, shouting, and barging into unwary passersby. “Hmmn,” said the cameraman. “Might not be entirely cooperative.”

  “Henry could engage with them,” said Paula. “We could have him go up, say something. If it got out of hand—well, pull out.”

  Mark was murmuring that he wondered about health and safety. At that moment the youths noticed the camera and began to advance, yelling obscenities.

  “Maybe not,” said Paula. “OK—we’ll break for lunch.”

  A pub was found. Henry did not care for pubs. He never went into pubs. He had expected something rather better: Rules or Wiltons. But at this stage any respite was welcome. The place was fairly crowded and the group split up; Henry found himself alone with Mark, who was being gratifyingly attentive. He had brought Henry a glass of red wine and the menu: “I’m afraid it’s not exactly haute cuisine, but some of it sounds possible.”

  Henry was gracious. “The plaice and chips, I think. They surely can’t go too far wrong with that.”

  Over food and drink Henry expanded. He was in reminiscence mood and found Mark a most appreciative audience: “That’s so fascinating, that you knew Harold Wilson so well . . . Isaiah Berlin! Goodness!”

  “Dear boy, one has made it one’s business to know people. I used to lunch with Macmillan from time to time. Let me tell you about that . . .”

  Mark was not a boy but rising thirty. He did not so much listen now as assess. The Henry who is talking—unstoppably—is quite another Henry from he who has just hesitated, fluffed, dried: “You have to understand that Bowra had his limitations. A conversationalist—yes, indeed—an entertainer, even, if one wants to be slightly snide, and don’t get me wrong, one relished his company, but where his scholarship is concerned there are those who are disparaging, dismissive even. Now you may have heard that . . .”

  Mark had not, and had no need to. What he now understood was that when it came to discussion—and denigration—of personalities Henry was an ace
performer. Rubbish with a script, but can he talk! Let him loose on his own ground and you’d be away.

  He said, “Did you ever come across A.J.P. Taylor?”

  Of course Henry had known Taylor. And Trevor Roper. Historians a specialty. “Now, Geoffrey Elton . . .”

  Mark sat back, complacent. He could see that this program would probably be dumped, and anyway he had his own agenda. He was finding Delia Canning tiresome to work for, he had a line to a producer at an independent company, and he had an idea to pitch. He smiled encouragingly at Henry.

  Those designer tiles. The customized lighting system, also newly delivered and unreturnable—another hefty bill. A further week of the Poles. Marion watched her overdraft spiral out of control.

  “Mr. Harrington’s secretary no longer works here.” The voice is entirely neutral. Or so it would seem.

  Marion said, “It is essential that I reach Mr. Harrington. Can you tell me where he is?”

  The voice cannot. “I’m afraid I have no information as to Mr. Harrington’s whereabouts at the present time.”

  Marion said, “I don’t believe this.”

  There is a fractional pause, a distant exhalation, possibly a sigh, as though the voice may have gone through this before.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  Indeed, who is to help her? Not the bank, which squats there smugly piling up the figures. Not the nice Poles, who do not know what looms, and work away, smiling a welcome each time she arrives at the flat, which blooms with Farrow & Ball and the choicest of fittings. The Poles ply Marion with coffee or tea, whistling as they work. The one with the sprained ankle is hale once more, and assiduous: “Power shower good. See!”

  Nothing like this has ever happened. Clients have behaved as clients should. They have paid up, they have paid on time, their checks have not bounced. Marion realized that she has had ludicrous faith; she has believed that you can trust people—most people—the people with whom you have dealings; she lacks the essential skepticism that drives business. She remembered an accountant who once said laconically: “I always assume the other guy is bent until he proves otherwise.”