The Green Flash

  ‘Well … I am expecting someone. I don’t think I should –’

  ‘For five minutes only,’ said. ‘Or less, if your friend arrives. It would give us so much pleasure.’

  After a bit more stop-go she rose and came across to our table. We had, I would guess, more than seven minutes of pleasant chit-chat from which the sexual element was never entirely absent; then her friend – who looked like an American film producer – came in and bore her away.

  We settled to our fifth cocktail.

  Eventually Malcolm said grudgingly: ‘There’s a fellow called Arthur, Gilbert Arthur, who’s Controller of the Royal Household. Of course you could just write to him, impersonally, send samples of your products, ask for their patronage …’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or – if you wish – well, on the whole – you could write first to Sir Frederick Lukey – mentioning my name – it would help matters along. He’s the man, as it were, who oversees all these things.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘But don’t forget it will cost you something.’

  ‘Cost me something?’

  ‘Your firm. Not money, of course. Nothing so vulgar. But gifts in kind. It’s an accepted practice. After all, many of these people – controllers and the like – are very ill paid. The tradition has been long established. It can all be done very discreetly.’

  ‘Thank you, Malcolm. You’ve been very kind.’

  We separated with a degree of warmth hardly imaginable ninety minutes ago. He even said he thought his father, old Sir Charles, might be interested to meet me if I ever happened to be passing their way. I said I’d be delighted to do this sometime, not having the slightest intention of going near them.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, signalling for the bill, ‘I’ve put a few things together. Some Dryad perfumes. And our latest, Faunus. We thought your wife might find them useful. I’ve left them in the cloakroom. I’ll give them to you as you go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Malcolm, without blinking an eyelid. ‘ My new wife, in fact,’ he added; with a little satisfied smile. ‘Yes, she’ll be pleased to have them.’

  Within six months we were supplying soaps, bath essences and perfumes to the Royal Household. Whether they went to royal personages or were shared out among the staff didn’t much matter. It was simply that we could claim the accolade. Shona was very pleased with me.

  II

  In spite of all our teamwork in the shafts, sometimes out of step but generally jogging in the same direction, in spite of the success of what we did and the sense of getting somewhere that went with it, I never felt Shona’s equal. It was the same old stone in the jam, the thorn in the shoe. One thing was that John and she still owned the business. I was an employee – decently paid but on a salary. (Having become her lover hadn’t changed that.) But mainly it was the strength of her personality. She’d been in the business longer; everyone thought she was the tops. And I had this continuing old rowel sticking in my flanks of knowing her intellectually that much ahead of me and no way of making up the ground. Her taste was better, her culture deeper rooted; nearly always it was her judgement that created a product with an appearance of higher quality than those of her rivals. It wasn’t something she’d learned – I could have dealt with that; it was innate. Sometimes she put the stamp of her yes or no on a point at issue and wouldn’t condescend to say why. Maybe she couldn’t put it into words, but often and often she was shown to be right. I suppose you can’t build up a business of that sort without a flair, a touch of genius. Well, she had it, but it didn’t make me easy under the bit.

  Yet our affair went on and continued to work. In fact just to say it worked would be the understatement of the year. When I saw her again after a break of a few days my mouth would go dry; and I knew she was pretty far gone down the same road herself. While it lasted like this the friction had to be smoothed over, the blue touchpaper frizzled out with the firecracker unlit.

  I still saw Derek occasionally, and out of one of my meetings with him came the notion to set up a little private limited company of my own, just to make a bit on the side. Kilclair Ltd I called it, which is my middle name. I suppose you could say it all grew out of my adolescent resentment of her superiority, but I preferred to consider it as a perfectly legitimate and logical development of my position in the firm.

  Every perfumery business has its unsuccessful lines, from time to time, or overproduces on a successful one, or for one reason or another has surplus stock it wants to get rid of. In those days all the high-class producers simply ditched the stuff, so that nothing of theirs ever came on the market cheap. Ever since I knew about it this had distressed my Scottish Jewish blood. I decided that Shona & Co. should sell their surplus stuff to Kilclair Ltd at a knockdown price and Kilclair Ltd should sell it cheap in the north-country factories where no one would ever notice. Result, profit for Kilclair Ltd, and much better than a total loss for Shona Ltd. I knew it wouldn’t appeal to Shona, who had this frightful preoccupation with exclusiveness and cost. However, as far as I could see, she need never know the favour I was doing her.

  I made Derek a director – I owed him something, and this was the sort of extra perk he would appreciate. The other director was Crack – now Van – Morris. Since he joined the firm he had been living an exemplary life – in office hours anyway – and he’d found himself a girlfriend from somewhere and was going steady. Since his hope of promotion in his present job was nil, this would be a profitable side shoot for him without extra work, except the occasional weekend driving stuff up north.

  All this time I never knew Shona’s age, which showed some ingenuity on her part and some lowered eyelids on mine because, travelling abroad as we sometimes did, it was a question of filling up forms on aircraft, having your passport quizzed, sometimes handing the passports in at the hotel and then these being casually returned when you next collected the key to the rooms.

  Except when away, she kept to the same routine: an hour at the clinic every morning for face and body massage, and a week every three months in a health hydro in Sussex; fencing one or two evenings a week. She ate precious little but wasn’t really thin in a way that mattered. (Actually, in spite of being careful not to be seen in bright lights, she always looked younger without her clothes.)

  When we went to Paris she took me to a tiny flat in Montparnasse where her father lived with a middle-aged niece to look after him. He was a tall bearded old boy very deaf, and looked like Tolstoy. The flat was thick with Russian books and furniture that looked as if it had come from a stage set of The Cherry Orchard. He had been a schoolteacher until he offended Beria’s secret police. Because of her father’s disgrace Shona Maraskaya Pantelevitch had not been evacuated from Moscow with the Bolshoi – instead had stayed on and seen the war through, losing her mother from pneumonia and two brothers in Poland. Old Pantelevitch had a small crackly fire burning, and she sat cross-legged before it warming her hands while the light danced on the skin of face and neck. ‘ That second year of our war,’ she said, ‘it was the coldest winter ever, and my mother was ill. Of course the pipes had long since frozen and burst. I brought in bricks and mortar and built a stove in the middle of our living-room. It was smoky but it was heat. Fuel? Oh, the fuel was our furniture.’

  When I came back that year from my holiday in Barbados she said: ‘ David, do you find there sometimes younger women to your taste?’

  ‘I’m a lazy man. I can’t be fished.’

  ‘You go so regularly I wonder if you have a special favourite there.’

  ‘If I had, d’you think three weeks a year would keep the battery charged?’

  She slanted her eyes at me. ‘Maybe yes. Maybe no. In all your life you have calculation.’

  ‘Have me watched,’ I suggested. ‘Private eyes could go on business expenses.’

  ‘You stay at the same hotel always?’

  ‘Yes. You get to know people who come each year.’

  ‘Sometime I should like to
meet them.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said insincerely, and then, to duck the searching glance, I got up and lit a cigarette. ‘Sun and sea are what I look for, not conquests.’

  ‘But if you find one without looking? … No, don’t answer. It is all private. I must not ask. Indeed, my question was a general one, not a particular one.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten what it was.’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  ‘Well, then, the answer is no.’

  A day or two later she brought up the subject again.

  ‘You must meet many women younger than I.’

  ‘How’m I supposed to answer that?’

  She brooded a moment. ‘By saying yes.’

  ‘Then yes.’

  She said: ‘I think of all the pretty girls who represent us in the shops. Nubile young women – isn’t that the fashionable phrase? You go among them often. I see their eyes follow you. You would only need to raise a finger. I heard two talking of you the other day. It was very naive but very sensuous.’

  ‘You’re killing me.’

  She turned her head away. ‘Ah, well …’

  ‘Well what?’ I said. ‘Aren’t you content? I am. Age is not as important as you think.’

  ‘Thank you. But in some ways it must be. Do you know, I have no fear of death at all. It means nothing. But I have the greatest fear of becoming old.’

  ‘Growing old like your father?’

  ‘Oh no … Not like that. When I am his age maybe I shall be reconciled. No, it is the growing old before that – in the next ten years, or whenever it may be. I know I am good-looking. All my life I have been good-looking. I remember the first time going into a restaurant with my father and mother when I was twelve: men stared. My mother was quite upset; she thought it was bad for me, me being so young. My father said: ‘‘Are you surprised, Elena Maraskaya? I am not surprised.’’ Ever since then.’ Shona breathed through her nose. ‘ Ever since then. When I go into any public place people look – not just men, people. I enjoy it! It is meat and drink to me. So I dread, as if it were the cholera, coming to a stage when that will no longer be. When I shall have all the emotions and desires of a woman and find my body has become a shell. If one could so regard it, it would be funny. As in a nightmare I dread the time when I shall walk into a restaurant and all the men will continue to eat their roast beef!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you don’t need to worry just yet. That is, if you can bear to take the opinion of one man.’

  She kissed me. ‘Do you know in France they call a nightmare a cauchemar? I often think it should be translated as bed-mare.’

  ‘I know one or two women like that,’ I said.

  She laughed, comforted, and began to dress.

  If I’d had a conscience this time, it was not about another woman. In fact, I’d had only ten days in Barbados. The previous ten had been taken up visiting various factories on behalf of Kilclair Ltd and in getting the venture on the move. Derek didn’t have the patience or the talent to go around, and Van Morris hadn’t the appearance, though he was fine for delivering the goods. Once the thing got going it could be slotted into my ordinary routine.

  For my ordinary routine meant a good bit of travelling, even just round England. At Shona’s I now needed two more men, and we took them on. John Marks and Leo Longford were both young and eager, Marks having been in advertising, Longford with Elizabeth Arden.

  In spite of our early success, the Shona line didn’t really quite take off in America as we’d expected; it became a goodish market, and after a year or so it cleared the initial outlay; but the figures never went over the top. Shona never came up with any suggestion that my quarrel with Marini had a bearing on these results, and probably it didn’t, because once a thing is in the shops it stands or falls by the quality of the stuff and the way it is put over in advertising. But sometimes peculiar things happened, and I wondered.

  About this time I fell into the habit of spending one evening a week with Shona without the bedroom as the ultimate end in view. Sometimes we went to a foreign film but more often were just together in her flat. We’d eat a lazy meal and talk a bit or read, or she would play the piano, which she did well if you accepted that her range was limited. A bit of the simpler Bach or Scarlatti, or more often people like Scott Joplin, who was just then coming back into favour.

  In my travels in England I’d been to Leeds a dozen times since I took on the job but had never gone to Quemby. There was nothing there for me. But one thing and another now made me think about a call. Meeting Shona’s father. And meeting my own cousin; weakening of the old Abden resolve, so to speak. But the real reason – was it excuse? – was this fencing business.

  I had been fretted to find myself outpointed by relative beginners, and particularly by people like Shona and Erica Lease, who were women and therefore I should have been disadvantaged and yet could more or less pick me off at will. At Loretto I’d fancied my chance as a fencer. I suppose the problem in Kensington was that I was too big-headed to take lessons from the various experts there and thought I could get on without them. I couldn’t – or I didn’t quickly enough. I knew that in my old room in Burton House, Quemby, there should be three books on fencing I’d bought when I was about eighteen, all by a chap called Roger Crosnier, and called Fencing with the Foil, Fencing with the Epée, and Fencing with the Sabre. I’d tried to buy them in London recently and was told they were OP. At the time – when I’d first bought them and read them – I’d thought them good. If it could be done, it would be nice to improve my style without lining up some tutor.

  It was in September when I was next in Leeds, and I thought whether to call when they were all out and bully a maid into letting me into my old room. But it was nearly eight years since I’d been back – in these days there might well not even be a maid – and anyway one did not have to act as if one were scared of the family. Chances were by the eighteenth of September the two lumpish girls would be back at their academies, and if I called in the early afternoon old Kingsley would be at his office in the city wrangling with contractual torts. That left only Mother. I could, I thought, face a brief and solitary encounter with Mother.

  It was a showery day, and I drove out in my new Aston Martin DB6, a car I’d discussed with Malcolm and bought earlier in the year. It had the Vantage engine and a manual gear-shift, which was so much faster as a car and sweeter to drive than the automatic version, except that it had a pig of a clutch. I wondered if Mother remembered the days when we used to have hairy cars. Old Kingsley, though rich enough, usually drove a Rover not much younger than himself.

  Quemby is halfway between Leeds and Harrogate and just off the A658. The Kingsley house was about a mile from the village in a group of six large houses built probably in the twenties. The fat car tyres crunched over the loose shingle of the drive as I drew up in front of the oak door with its stained-glass panels and hanging lantern. A feature of the house was a big fan window on the first floor which lit up the hall and staircase. It had stopped raining, but the heavy beech trees dripped into little pools formed in the drive. I saw there was a Volvo in the double garage, which was a hopeful sign.

  I rang the bell, which went ding-dong. Somehow you would have thought they would have grown out of that. A dog barked.

  A lady in her early fifties came to the door. A green flowered apron over a pink silk and lace afternoon frock. She’d put on weight since I saw her last.

  ‘Hullo, Mother,’ I said.

  She swallowed a couple of pebbles, stared at me as if I were a ghoul.

  ‘David!’ she said, her expression tentatively changing for the better. ‘What a surprise! Whatever brings you here?’

  ‘Passing,’ I said. ‘Thought I’d call.’

  ‘Come in! You gave me quite a shock. I was expecting someone else. At least, I thought they were early but I thought it must be them.’ She stood aside and I went in.

  I looked round the hall. Nothing much changed. I kissed her. She was
using L’Interdit.

  ‘Come in here,’ she said, leading the way into what I suppose Kingsley would call the lounge.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘you’ve had it redecorated. And that’s a nice Georgian table.’

  ‘Yes, Kenneth and I picked it up near Knaresborough. Got it very cheap. Of course it was in bad condition. He put a lot of work in on it. Kenneth is very clever with his hands.’

  ‘And a new dog,’ I said, as a terrier came waggling in.

  ‘Yes, that’s Sandy,’ said Mother, standing cautiously in the doorway. ‘Perry got a canker in his ear.’

  Extra weight made her more Jewish-looking: it was in the flared nostrils, the eyelids, the curve of the lips. Still very handsome but no longer the woman I had once been in love with. And the expression in her fine eyes was not really the expression for a woman regarding her first-born.

  ‘Have I come at a bad time?’

  ‘No, not really, David. Pleased to see you. As a matter of fact I have three ladies coming for bridge today, but they shouldn’t be here for half an hour yet. I was just – cutting some sandwiches.’

  I said: ‘ Do you still have a maid?’

  ‘Only in the mornings.’

  ‘Then I’ll come in the kitchen while you finish off.’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t let you do that! Are you staying long? You could stay the night. Kenneth will be back at six.’

  ‘I have to be on my way. Actually I came just to pick up one or two of my things.’

  ‘Things?’ she said. ‘What things? There wasn’t much … you didn’t leave much behind.’

  ‘Chiefly books,’ I said, propelling her into the kitchen. ‘ No, I didn’t leave a lot behind. I didn’t gather much moss.’

  She stood over the table. Smoked salmon and brown bread and butter. She made a move or two to continues but her fingers were a bit of a jumble. She looked at the pink carnation I was wearing.

  ‘How are the girls?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, fine! Edna’s the brainy one. We hope she’ll get into Oxford and read Law. But of course it’s early days yet. Marjorie is the pretty one, but –’