It wasn’t just about being left. It was about her mother being left. She looked at these occasional men, and whether they squatted on their haunches to ask her the usual questions about homework and television or, standing, jiggled their keys and muttered ‘Let’s be off,’ she saw them all in the same way: as men who would hurt her mother. Perhaps not tonight or tomorrow, but some time, without any doubt. She was skilled at developing fevers and aches and menstrual pain of a kind which demanded her mother’s attendance.
‘You’re a proper little tyrant, you are,’ her mother would say, in tones ranging from affection to exasperation.
‘Nero was a tyrant,’ Martha would reply.
‘I’m sure even Nero let his mum go out once in a while.’
‘Actually, Nero had his mum killed, Mr Henderson told us.’ Now that, she knew, was being pert.
‘I’m the one more likely to poison your food if this goes on,’ said her mother.
One day they were folding sheets, air-dried from the line. Suddenly, as if to herself, but loud enough for Martha to hear, her mother said, ‘This is the only thing you need two people for.’
They carried on in silence. Stretch wide (arms not long enough yet, Martha), up, grip at the top, drop the left hand, catch without looking, stretch sideways, pull, over and again and catch, then pull, pull (harder, Martha), then across to meet, up to Mummy’s hands, down and pick up, one last pull, fold, hand it over and wait for the next.
The only thing you needed two people for. When they pulled, there was something which ran through the sheet which wasn’t just pulling the creases out of the sheet, it was more, something between the two of them. A strange sort of pulling, too: you pulled first as if wanting to get away from the other person, but the sheet held you, and then seemed to yank you back off your heels and towards each other. Was that always there?
‘Oh, I didn’t mean you,’ said her mother, and suddenly hugged Martha.
‘Which one was Daddy?’ asked Martha later that day.
‘What do you mean, which one? Daddy was … Daddy.’
‘I mean, was he wicked or weak. Which one?’
‘Oh, I don’t know …’
‘You said they were one or the other. That’s what you said. Which one was he?’
Her mother looked at her. This obstinacy was something new. ‘Well, I suppose if he was one or the other, then he was weak.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘That he was weak?’
‘No, how can you tell if they’re wicked from if they’re weak?’
‘Martha, you’re not old enough for things like that.’
‘I need to know.’
‘Why do you need to know?’
Martha paused. She knew what she wanted to say, but feared it. ‘So that I won’t make the same mistakes as you.’
She had paused because she expected her mother to cry. But that part of her mother had gone away. Instead, she gave the dry laugh she specialized in nowadays. ‘What a wise child I’ve given birth to. Don’t get old before your years, Martha.’
That was a new one. Don’t be pert. What’s been giving you ideas? Now it was, Don’t get old before your years.
‘Why won’t you tell me?’
‘I’ll tell you all I know, Martha. But the answer is, you don’t know until it’s too late, if my life’s anything to go by. And you won’t make the same mistakes as me because everyone makes different mistakes, that’s the rule.’
Martha looked at her mother carefully. ‘That’s not much help,’ she said.
But it was in the long run. As she grew up, as her character was built, as she became headstrong rather than pert, and clever enough to know when to hide her cleverness, as she discovered friends and social life and a new kind of loneliness, as she moved from country to town and began amassing her future memories, she admitted her mother’s rule: they made their mistakes, now you make your mistakes. And there was a logical consequence of this, which became part of Martha’s creed: after the age of twenty-five, you were not allowed to blame anything on your parents. Of course, it didn’t apply if your parents had done something terrible – had raped and murdered you and stolen all your money and sold you into prostitution – but in the average course of an average life, if you were averagely competent and averagely intelligent, and more so if you were more so, then you were not allowed to blame your parents. Of course you did, there were times when it was just too tempting. If only they’d bought me roller-skates like they promised, if only they’d let me go out with David, if only they’d been different, more loving, richer, cleverer, simpler. If only they’d been more indulgent; if only they’d been more strict. If only they’d encouraged me more; if only they’d praised me for the right things … None of that. Of course Martha felt it, some of the time, wanted to cuddle such resentments, but then she would stop and give herself a talking-to. You’re on your own, kid. Damage is a normal part of childhood. Not allowed to blame anything on them any more. Not allowed.
But there was one thing, one tiny yet ineradicably painful thing for which she could never find the cure. She had left university and come to London. She was sitting in her office, pretending to be excited about her job; she had heart trouble, nothing too serious, just a man, just the usual mild catastrophe; she had her period. She remembered all that. The phone went.
‘Martha? It’s Phil.’
‘Who?’ Someone over-familiar in red braces, she thought.
‘Phil. Philip. Your father.’ She didn’t know what to say. After a while, as if her silence doubted his identity, he reconfirmed it. ‘Daddy.’
He wondered if they could meet. What about lunch one day. He knew a place he thought she might like, and she suppressed the question, ‘How the hell would you know?’ He said there was a lot to talk about, he didn’t think they should either of them get their expectations up too high. She agreed with him about that.
She asked her friends for advice. Some said: say what you feel; tell him what you think. Some said: see what he wants; why now rather than before? Some said: don’t see him. Some said: tell your mother. Some said: whatever you do, don’t tell your mother. Some said: make sure you get there before him. Some said: keep the bastard waiting.
It was an old-fashioned, oak-panelled restaurant, with elderly waiters who took world-weariness close to sardonic inefficiency. The weather was hot, but there was only heavy, clubman’s food on the menu. He urged her to have as much as she wanted; she ordered less. He suggested a bottle of wine; she drank water. She answered him as if filling in a questionnaire: yes, no, I expect so; very much, no, no. He told her she had grown into a most attractive woman. It seemed an impertinent remark. She did not want to agree or disagree, so she said ‘Probably.’
‘Didn’t you recognize me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘My mother burnt your photographs.’ It was true; and he deserved that wince, if nothing more. She looked across the table at an elderly, red-faced man with thinning hair. She had deliberately tried not to expect anything; even so, he looked shabbier than she would have thought. She realized that all along she had been working on a false assumption. She’d been imagining for the last fifteen or more years that if you disappeared, if you abandoned a wife and child, you did so for a better life: more happiness, more sex, more money, more of whatever was missing from your previous life. Examining this man who called himself Phil, she thought he looked as if he’d had a worse life than if he’d stayed at home. But maybe she wanted to believe that.
He told her a story. She absented herself from judging its truth. He had fallen in love. It had just happened. He didn’t say that to justify himself. He had thought at the time a clean break was fairer all round. Martha had a half-brother, name of Richard. He was a nice boy, though he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Normal enough at that age, probably. Stephanie – the name was spilt suddenly into Martha’s half of the table, like a knocked-over wine glass – Steph had died three months ago. Cancer was
a brute of an illness. She’d been diagnosed first five years ago, then there’d been a remission. Then it came back. It’s always worse when it comes back. It just takes you.
This all seemed – what? – not untruthful, but irrelevant, not a way of filling the exact, unique, fretsaw-cut hole within her. She asked him for Nottinghamshire.
‘Sorry?’
‘When you went off, you had Nottinghamshire in your pocket.’
‘I thought that’s what you said.’
‘I was doing my Counties of England jigsaw.’ She felt awkward as she said it; not embarrassed, but as if she were showing too much of her heart. ‘You used to take a piece and hide it, then find it in the end. You took Nottinghamshire with you when you left. Don’t you remember?’
He shook his head. ‘You did jigsaws? I suppose all kids love them. Richard did. For a while, anyway. He had an incredibly complicated one, I remember, all clouds or something – you never knew which way up it was until you were half finished …’
‘You don’t remember?’
He looked at her.
‘You really, really don’t?’
She would always blame him for that. She was over twenty-five, and she would go on getting older than twenty-five, older and older and older than twenty-five, and she would be on her own; but she would always blame him for that.
2 : England, England
ONE
PITMAN HOUSE had been true to the architectural principles of its time. Its tone was of secular power tempered by humanitarianism: glass and steel were softened by ash and beech; licks of eau-de-nil and acid yellow gave hints of controlled passion; in the vestibule a dusty-red Corb drum subverted the dominion of hard angles. The supernal atrium objectified the aspirations of this worldly cathedral, while passive ventilation and energy-saving showed its commitment to society and the environment. There was flexibility of spatial use and candid ductwork: according to the architectural team of Slater, Grayson & White, the building combined sophistication of means with transparency of intent. Harmony with nature was another key commitment: behind Pitman House was an area of specially-created wetland. Staff on the decking (hardwood from renewable sources) could eat their sandwiches while inspecting the transient birdlife of the Hertfordshire borders.
The architects were accustomed to client intervention, but even they lost a little fluency when glossing Sir Jack Pitman’s personal contribution to their design: the insertion at boardroom level of a double-cube office with moulded cornices, shag-pile carpet, coal fires, standard lamps, flock wallpaper, oil paintings, curtained faux windows and bobble-nosed light switches. As Sir Jack musingly proposed, ‘Rightly though we glory in the capabilities of the present, the cost should not, I feel, be paid in disdain for the past.’ Slater, Grayson & White had tried to point out that building the past was, alas, nowadays considerably more expensive than building the present or the future. Their client had deferred comment, and they were left to reflect that at least this sealed sub-baronial unit would probably be considered Sir Jack’s personal folly rather than an element in their own design statement. As long as no-one congratulated them on its ironic post-post-modernism.
Between the airy, whispering space created by the architects and the snug den demanded by Sir Jack lay a small office – no more than a transitional tunnel – known as the Quote Room. Here Sir Jack liked to keep visitors waiting until summoned by his PA. Sir Jack himself had been known to linger in the tunnel for more than a few moments while making the journey from outer office to inner sanctum. It was a simple, austere, underlit space. There were no magazines, and no TV monitors dispensing promo clips about the Pitman empire. Nor were there gaudily comfortable sofas covered with the hides of rare species. Instead, there was a single high-backed Jacobethan oak settle facing a spotlit slab. The visitor was encouraged, indeed obliged, to study what was chiselled in Times Roman:
JACK PITMAN
is a big man in every sense of the word.
Big in ambition, big in appetite, big in generosity.
He is a man whom it takes a leap
of the imagination fully to come to terms with.
From small beginnings, he has risen like a meteor
to great things. Entrepreneur, innovator,
ideas man, arts patron, inner-city revitalizer.
Less a captain of industry than a very admiral,
Sir Jack is a man who walks with presidents
yet is never afraid to roll up his sleeves
and get his hands dirty.
For all his fame and wealth, he is yet
intensely private, a family man at heart.
Imperious when necessary, and always forthright,
Sir Jack is not a man to be trifled with;
he suffers neither fools nor busybodies.
Yet his compassion runs deep.
Still restless and ambitious,
Sir Jack makes the head spin with his energy,
dazzles with his larger-than-life charm.
These words, or most of them, had been written a few years previously by a Times profiler to whom Sir Jack had subsequently given brief employment. He had deleted references to his age, appearance and estimated wealth, had the whole thing pulled together by a rewrite man, and ordered the final text to be carved on a swathe of Cornish slate. He was content that the quote was no longer sourced: a few years ago the acknowledgment ‘The Times of London’ had been chiselled out and a filler rectangle of slate inserted. This made the tribute more authoritative, he felt, and more timeless.
Now he stood in the exact centre of his double-cube snuggery, beneath the Murano chandelier and equidistant from the two Bavarian hunting-lodge fireplaces. He had hung his jacket on the Brancusi in a way that – to his eye, at least – implied joshing familiarity rather than disrespect, and was displaying his roundedly rhomboid shape to his PA and his Ideas Catcher. There had been some earlier institutional name for this latter figure, but Sir Jack had replaced it with ‘Ideas Catcher.’ Someone had once compared him to a giant firework, throwing out ideas as a Catherine wheel throws out sparks, and it seemed only proper that those who pitched should have someone to catch. He pulled on his after-lunch cigar and snapped his MCC braces: red and yellow, ketchup and egg-yolk. He was not a member of the MCC, and his brace-maker knew better than to ask. For that matter, he had not been to Eton, served in the Guards, or been accepted by the Garrick Club; yet he owned the braces which implied as much. A rebel at heart, he liked to think. A bit of a maverick. A man who bends the knee to no-one. Yet a patriot at heart.
‘What is there left for me?’ he began. Paul Harrison, the Ideas Catcher, did not immediately activate the body-mike. This had become a familiar trope in recent months. ‘Most people would say that I have done everything a man is capable of in my life. Many, indeed, do. I have built businesses from the dust up. I have made money, few would deny that. Honours have come my way. I am the trusted confidant of heads of state. I have been the lover, if I may say so, of beautiful women. I am a respected but, I must emphasize, not too respected member of society. I have a title. My wife sits at the right hand of presidents. What is there left?’
Sir Jack exhaled, his words swirling in the cigar smoke which fogged the lower droplets of the chandelier. Those present knew the question to be strictly rhetorical. An earlier PA had naively imagined that at such moments Sir Jack might be in search of useful suggestions or, even more naively, consolation; she had been given less demanding employment elsewhere in the group.
‘What is real? This is sometimes how I put the question to myself. Are you real, for instance – you and you?’ Sir Jack gestured with mock courtesy to the room’s other occupants, but did not turn his head away from his thought. ‘You are real to yourselves, of course, but that is not how these things are judged at the highest level. My answer would be No. Regrettably. And you will forgive me for my candour, but I could have you replaced with substitutes, with … simulacra, more quickly than I could sell my beloved Brancusi. Is money
real? It is, in a sense, more real than you. Is God real? That is a question I prefer to postpone until the day I meet my Maker. Of course I have my theories, I have even, as you might say, plunged a little into futures. Let me confess – cut your throat and hope to die, as I believe the saying goes – that I sometimes imagine such a day. Let me share my suppositions with you. Picture the moment when I am invited to meet my Maker, who in His infinite wisdom has followed with interest our trivial lives in this vale of tears. What, I ask you, might He have in store for Sir Jack? If I were He – presumptuous thought, I admit – I would naturally be obliged to punish Sir Jack for his many human faults and vanities. No, no!’ Sir Jack held up his hands to quell the likely protests of his employees. ‘And what would I – He – do? I – He – might be tempted to keep me – oh, for not too long a stretch, I trust – in a Quote Room of my own. Sir Jack’s very personal limbo. Yes, I would give him – me! – the hard settle and spotlight treatment. A mighty tablet. And no magazines, not even the holiest!’
Sotto chuckles were appropriate, and were duly provided. Sir Jack walks with the deity, Lady Pitman dines at the right hand of God.
Sir Jack strolled heavily across to Paul’s desk and leaned towards him. The Ideas Catcher knew the rules: eye contact was now required. Mostly, you preferred to pretend that working for Sir Jack required hunched shoulders, lowered lids, unbreakable concentration. Now he panned upwards to his employer’s face: the wavy, boot-black hair; the fleshy ears, the left lobe pulled long by one of Sir Jack’s negotiating tics; the smooth convexity of jowl which buried the Adam’s apple; the clarety complexion; the slight pock-mark where a mole had been removed; the mattressy eyebrows with their threads of grey; and there, waiting for you, timing how long it took to get your courage up, the eyes. You saw so many things in those eyes – benign contempt, cold affection, patient irritation, logical anger – though whether such complexities of emotion in fact existed was another matter. Reason told you that Sir Jack’s technique of personnel-management consisted in never offering the mood or expression obvious to the occasion. But there were also times when you wondered if Sir Jack was merely standing before you holding in his face a pair of small mirrors, circles in which you read your own confusion.