The Trouble with Single Women Page 14

  Two hours later, the coffee table in the small sitting room was covered in memorabilia. Imogen had explained that she was organizing a school reunion and was collecting information on each of the old pupils who had agreed to attend. These mini-biographies were intended as a surprise from the organizing committee to the old girls, hence Imogen hadn’t asked Fee directly.

  Helen had dutifully produced photograph albums, school reports and cuttings from local newspapers such as the time when Fee had won a travel scholarship for an essay entitled, ‘Why I believe it’s important to venture afar’. (‘Afar’ in this case had been the Isle of Wight.)

  At one point, Helen disappeared upstairs and returned with a bright-green brocade dress.

  ‘This was the first time Fee was a bridesmaid,’ she explained. ‘She’s going to be a bridesmaid again in August, you know . . . Her best friend is getting married. That will make it three times and you know what they say—’ She sighed.

  Her language was that of a mother with a child who had never quite proved good enough; shortcomings were accentuated, achievements underplayed.

  ‘You’ve clearly done something very right in the way you’ve brought up Fiona,’ Imogen smiled. She knew that while Helen Travers might be disappointed in her daughter, she wouldn’t take kindly to a stranger supporting her in that view.

  ‘All three girls say I don’t praise them enough,’ Helen replied, her expression indicating that she thought this nonsense.

  ‘But then I never heard any praise when I was a child. On the contrary, it was the habit then to cut us down to size. It never did me much harm—’ she added defensively.

  ‘Still, I’ll be a lot happier once I know Fee is settled. Are you married?’ she asked suddenly. Imogen, who was helping herself to several photographs of Fee, in her teens and twenties, in a range of unlikely hairstyles, was caught offguard.

  ‘Married?’ Imogen repeated, considering what reply might be the most beneficial to her own interests. ‘Oh furiously,’ she answered.

  ‘What I mean is, we’ve been married for five years – on Saturday actually. It’s our anniversary. And I couldn’t be happier. He’s been such a support to me. Totally devoted. Marriage has turned my whole life round—’

  ‘But you don’t wear a ring?’ Helen queried sharply.

  ‘Eczema,’ Imogen whispered confidentially. ‘The ring gives me terrible eczema—’

  ‘Oh, I’ll tell Fee about your marriage,’ Helen answered, hungry for more propaganda to direct her daughter’s way. ‘I’m sure she’ll be delighted.’

  ‘Oh gosh, don’t do that. No, that would be a bit of a disaster frankly,’ Imogen smiled nervously. ‘Remember this is all supposed to be a big surprise. You know, hush hush!’

  Ten minutes after Imogen Banks had departed, while Helen was scraping the cold toast and congealed jam from her plate into the bin, a thought surfaced in her head.

  Imogen was a very distinctive name. And she couldn’t recall an Imogen in Fee’s class – or the class above. Or the class below. In fact, she couldn’t remember any Imogens at Farnleigh Comprehensive. Not ever.

  Helen Travers shrugged. Another sign of growing old. Of course, there must have been an Imogen at Fiona’s school. Otherwise, why on earth would such a pleasant person bother to spend a whole morning collecting another woman’s memories?

  Chapter Eleven

  GERRY RADCLIFFE, aged fifty-six, was the founder and star of F.P. & D. He sat in the office of his employee, Fiona Travers, and tried hard not to look. In fact, he’d spent most of his life, boy and man, trying not to look but, more often than not, he couldn’t help himself.

  The same excuse applied to those occasions when he stepped beyond looking and uttered a few choice words. He couldn’t help himself. Sexual innuendo was a language in which Gerry was particularly fluent. He frequently reassured himself that he would never, ever, do anything that anyone could constitute as improper, he was only being playful.

  His female employees, of course, had a much simpler explanation for their boss’s behaviour. Behind his back, they called him a dirty old man – charming to some at times, but to others, a pest.

  This was more than a nuisance. If, for instance, Fee Travers made a presentation that involved, say, the purchasing power of the Church of England, Gerry would somehow introduce the issue of whether teenage girls had wet dreams.

  In truth, Gerry Radcliffe had not had carnal knowledge of another woman since marrying Marie-Jeanne thirty years before. Nevertheless he constantly implied in conversation that adultery was his main form of exercise. ‘It’s his pride,’ Mrs Radcliffe, born and brought up in Toulouse, would say. And shrug.

  The couple had four sons, all educated at public school and now ‘jobfree’. It was a word that Gerry preferred to use but he was well aware it injected a false sense of purpose into his sons’ aimless and expensive activities. All four were now in their twenties but, to Gerry’s incredulity, they continued to live at home.

  Now, Gerry Radcliffe examined the posters above the sofa and on each wall, mementoes of previous campaigns. He let his eyes take in the flipchart and the mess on Fiona Travers’s desk and the two dead bunches of flowers in elegant glass vases. Then, he had a second look.

  At that point, the woman sitting opposite him on the sofa suddenly shoved a plump hand with short stubby fingers down her neckline and heaved on what Gerry Radcliffe presumed was her bra strap. The massive wall that was her chest shifted upwards, causing the slogan written on her T-shirt to rise and fall.

  ‘Why lose out? Have a heart!’ the words read in a lop-sided wave. The man sitting next to the woman – a Jack Spratt squeezed to the edge of the sola by her voluminous proportions – cleared his throat. Gerry decided this was due more to innate nervousness than an attempt to warn him off. So he looked again.

  Then he glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told the couple on the sofa. ‘She shouldn’t be much longer. It’s not like her at all. She’s usually the first one in the office and the last to leave. More coffee? Tea? Mineral water?’

  The couple silently shook their heads left to right in unison, then giggled at their synchronization. They were both in their mid-thirties.

  ‘See how well suited we are? What did I tell you, Derek?’ the woman whispered triumphantly. Derek, her partner, wearing an identical T-shirt, grinned his approval.

  ‘You’re right again, Babs,’ he said. Gerry reflected that if the past forty-five minutes of desultory conversation between the couple was any guide, all they shared in common was their mutual desire to make a match.

  ‘Just off to the loo,’ he told the couple on the sofa. ‘Back in five.’

  Gerry was proud of F.P. & D.’s perspex and turquoise premises. Mrs Radcliffe had read somewhere that in ancient Greece turquoise was a colour considered conducive to thinking.

  ‘I may have many failings but at least I know myself well,’ he told his face in the bathroom mirror. He was a man who lived on a diet of delusion. He examined his features. A short grey crewcut, heavy eyebrows, square jaw. He dressed flamboyantly – always in bow-ties with colour co-ordinated spectacles, socks and waistcoats.

  Gerry straightened his bow-tie, flicked cold water on his face and smiled. He was happy. If Fee co-operated, as she usually did, by 2 p.m. this afternoon the company would be saying welcome to a fat, profitable contract.

  Babs and Derek, the couple on the sofa in Fee’s office, were the unlikely point at which Gerry Radcliffe hoped the corporate good times might really begin to roll.

  Fee drove into the office an hour late. She had left her flat on time. Just as she was crossing the road to her car, she had spotted Gill Booth, in a voluminous camel coat in spite of the spring morning, collar turned up, disappearing around the corner.

  ‘Hey, Gill!’ Fee had called out spontaneously. Gill had appeared not to hear. Why would Gill be so far out of her own area when normally she would be ferrying the children to school? And why hadn’t she told Fee she’d be in
the vicinity – or called in for coffee?

  It was only when Fee was pulling away from the curb that the idea came to her. Gill must be having an affair. Four minutes later, something hit the rear of Fee’s newly refurbished Fiat. It was a man in a Saab. He, in turn, had been shunted by Gill’s battered old Volvo.

  A queue of early-morning traffic had now formed in the street and the first tentative hoots had turned into a solid din.

  Gill’s face appeared at the passenger window of Fee’s car. Fee turned down the window and was about to ask if Gill was all right when she spoke first.

  ‘I’m watching you,’ Gill had spat threateningly. ‘If I was in your shoes, I’d be shaking.’

  Then she had turned on her heel and, addressing the fast-growing line of protesting car drivers, she had shouted at the top of her voice, ‘And you load of tossers can bloody well piss off!’

  For Fee, this side of Gill Booth was a revelation. She had watched her friend grow, well, quite matronly in the last couple of years. Out of her mouth, Fee had come to expect monologues about the advantages of Montessori teaching not invectives.

  She was impressed. And not at all bothered by Gill’s warning. She had long realized that the only way of convincing Gill that she was not having an affair with her husband would be to explain in explicit terms how deeply unattractive she found him. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that to a friend.

  Continuing her drive into work, she thought again about Gill’s behaviour.

  ‘Jealousy, paranoia, heartbreak and a rear fender that resembles a boomerang are among the many least attractive results of this ridiculous business called love,’ Fee said out loud, as she manoeuvred her car into her parking space.

  ‘Thank God, I’m no longer involved.’

  Babs Lockyer, thirty-one, and Derek Berry, thirty-three, had now been waiting in Fiona Travers’s office for two hours. Each had phoned work to say they were sick. Both were glad of the extra rime this allowed them to spend together, although conversation had long since dried up. There are only so many times, as life-long dedicated Elvis fans, you can relive the plot of Jailhouse Rock or discuss the less well-constructed Blue Hawaii.

  They had been introduced seven weeks earlier, decided they were in love fifty-five minutes later and become engaged on the following day. A week ago they had been asked to present themselves at the office of F.P. & Daughters, so they could tell ‘One of the Classic Love Stories of Our Times’. Except that, having arrived, nobody appeared interested in hearing their tale. Certainly not the cretin sitting in front of them who kept examining himself in the stainless-steel pencil holder on the desk.

  At 10.15 a.m., a woman appeared in the office. She wore a black trouser suit, white T-shirt and gold ear-rings. Derek noted that she had shiny hair and she wasn’t as pretty as his Babs – too skinny – but she’d do. And she had a nice smile. She was smiling now.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Fee asked. ‘It’s my office? Or are you waiting for me?’

  Babs and Derek looked blankly at her. Then Babs said shyly, ‘We’ve come to tell our story as an inspiration to others.’

  ‘I see,’ Fee smiled brightly. ‘Look, why don’t I bring us all some coffee? I’ll be back in a mo.’

  Babs and Derek resumed holding hands. Each had been silent and alone for so long it was now a privilege to share the silence with somebody else.

  Fee found Gerry Radcliffe in one of F.P. & D.’s boardrooms. He was on the telephone. Also in the room was Gina Masters, his personal assistant for fifteen years. At the outset, she had handled the boss’s predilection for talking dirty by feigning deafness for several hours. Now, Gerry rarely lapsed in her presence. It was too time-consuming.

  ‘He’s out for the rest of the morning,’ Gina explained to Fee as she invited herself into the office and took up one of the turquoise chairs. ‘So we’ve got to get through a lot before he leaves.’ Gerry raised his eyebrows at Fee by way of a greeting.

  Fee and Gerry Radcliffe got on well, not least because he had poached Fee from her previous employers. He also paid her £10,000 a year more – an increase that still placed Fee considerably behind Claire Harper, as Claire had quickly pointed out. Fee had proved a good investment for Gerry’s company. But he remained wary of Fee.

  First, because he secretly fancied her and intensely disliked the vulnerability this engentlered in him – not least because, for all his talk, he wouldn’t dream of ratting on his wife.

  Second, he had become aware that while Fee always maintained she enjoyed her work, he sensed a growing disillusionment. Personally and professionally, he couldn’t afford to have her resign now.

  He was right about Fee’s attitude to her job. Her working day appeared to have stretched to encompass almost every evening too. This was partly because of the growing success of the company and partly because Fee had difficulty in saying no.

  In addition to the long hours, she was also becoming increasingly dismayed by the manipulation of people’s emotions which was at the core of F.P. & D.’s endeavours. Initially, she had been able to ignore her doubts, influenced by Gerry’s justification of his business.

  ‘If Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments,’ he’d explained more than once to Fee in the early days, ‘don’t you think he would have needed a little help with projection and packaging and finding a place in the market?

  ‘And wouldn’t it have helped if his followers had prepared the customers for his arrival? Now, does that little extra help invalidate the importance of the Commandments? Of course, it doesn’t. It gives them an ethical boost. It’s a public service.’

  The hitch in this line of argument, of course, was that F.P. & D. spent most of its time flogging cars and designer labels and supermarket chains, not ethics.

  ‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Will had advised Fee at one moment of crisis, ‘tell people you work with the EC.’

  ‘The EC?’ Fee had queried.

  ‘The Emperor’s Clothes,’ he had answered with a smile.

  Now, Fee watched Gerry on the telephone, coaxing and cajoling an irate client.

  ‘Sales up 5 per cent?’ he was saying. ‘But that’s bloody fantastic. Congratulations. I’m glad we listened to that suggestion of yours about the free plastic rose . . . such a clever touch. Oh, we thought of it, did we? Well, never mind, great minds think alike—’

  After ten minutes or so, he put down the phone and blew Fee a kiss across the desk.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Ready for what?’ Fee replied, always wary of Gerry’s passion for the double entendre.

  ‘Ready for the best break of your career so far.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Fee questioned.

  ‘Repositioning romance . . . We’re—’

  Fee was up and out of the chair and on her way through the door. She’d heard enough.

  ‘Have a heart!’ Gerry shouted after her retreating figure. ‘Have a heart, Fee!’

  Forty minutes later, Fee and Gerry Radcliffe were fifteen miles outside London. They were being driven to a country house in Surrey, the home of Harry Macklin, millionaire founder of the Have a Heart! dating agency; also known as HAH!

  It was then that Gerry Radcliffe remembered Babs and Derek. The couple were now enjoying their third hour of togetherness on the turquoise sofa in Fee’s office.

  He phoned Gina. ‘Send them home in a cab. Make a new appointment. Promise them a free wedding. Oh, and why don’t you give them a couple of those T-shirts I’ve still got in my office? The ones we designed for the Meat Marketing Board?’

  ‘The ones with Love Me Tender and a piece of steak on the front?’ Gina questioned.

  ‘That’s them, no other bugger will wear ’em.’ Gerry Radcliffe smiled and turned his attention to Fee.

  ‘Babs and Derek, lovely couple. I want you to meet them. I want you to realize where this business has traditionally been anchored so that you can understand how far it still has to go—’ He searched his employee
’s face for signs of encouragement. Seeing none, he resumed his efforts. He wasn’t a salesman for nothing.

  ‘Now, about this Harry Macklin. He’s the man who, I promise, hand on heart, will change your life.’ His voice resounded with conviction. This came from the fact that Gerry always personally believed what he said, no matter how much others might consider it bullshit.

  ‘He has money, he has vision – and he is about to give us a fat slice of the largest-growing market in Europe. Now, Fee, I bet your next question is, “What is the largest growing market in Europe?”

  ‘Is it religion? No, it is not. Is it interior design? No, it is not. Is it men’s fashion? No, it is not. Is it Japanese takeaway? No, it is not.’ He paused for effect.

  ‘The biggest market in Europe is L-O-V-E. I am talking ready-to-wear romance. Mail-order amour—’ Fee’s wariness was beginning to annoy him. He paid her to be positive, for God’s sake.

  He persisted. ‘Harry Macklin owns the Have a Heart! organization. He’s expanded it from a dating agency into a variety of associated ventures . . . a lonely-hearts magazine, a chain of social clubs for singles . . . a singles holiday company. You know the kind of thing—

  ‘Fee, I can’t believe that I’m offering you involvement on such a big deal. Am I good to you – or am I not?’

  She smiled wanly, then replied, ‘If you’re asking me will I take on the Macklin contract, the answer, I’m afraid, is no, Gerry. I’m not interested.’

  No.

  It had been so easy. Why couldn’t she manage to say it more often?

  ‘No, no, no,’ she repeated, relishing the sound.

  Gerry laughed. ‘Go on,’ he chuckled. ‘You never say no. At least,’ he added, smirking, ‘not if it’s anything to do with work. You’re not the type. You know that, Fee.’

  ‘The answer is still no,’ Fee repeated.

  He ignored her. ‘Macklin wants to put a couple of ideas to you. He wants to give you the once-over, see if he thinks you’re up to the job.’