A Polaroid of Peggy Page 11

  “No Mr Williams, it’s all done. Looking forward to seeing you Saturday.”

  On the second, my pretext was to enquire as to the checking-in times.

  “Oh, any time after midday is fine with us Mr Williams.”

  On the third, I called back with apologies, but I had forgotten to ask about the checking-out times.

  “Oh no hurry on a Sunday, Mr Williams. Eleven would be good but you can leave your bags at reception and spend the whole day here if you like.”

  By the fourth time I was struggling, but I just needed to make absolutely, completely, beyond-any-room-for-the-slightest-doubt certain that Jerry Seinfeld’s management hadn’t come in at the last moment with an unrefusable offer to book out the entire place for his family and friends.

  “Er, awfully sorry to bother you, Mrs Gardner,” – I always laid on the English-ness at times like these – “but I wonder if you would just confirm that pets aren’t allowed?”

  “Why no, Mr Williams, I am afraid they’re not. Oh dear, did you have a dog you wanted to bring? It’s a little late to cancel for tomorrow.”

  “Oh good Lord, no. No. Bit of a fur allergy, that’s all.”

  “Oh really? Oh I am afraid we do have an old cat about the place.”

  “A cat? Oh that’s fine. Just dogs with me. Just dogs. No, not cat fur. Love cats, got one myself.”

  *

  By the day before I was beginning to feel a certain excited anticipation – or perhaps apprehension is a more appropriate word. I spent most of that Friday afternoon in the dubious company of Brett and Bart. After my experience at the photographer’s party I had foresworn the bong but they certainly hadn’t, and passive smoking ensured that my emotions were heightened. Unwisely, but in need of reassurance, I chose to reveal my insecurities.

  “Man, you mean you haven’t laid her yet? I thought you told us you were way past that like months ago,” said Bart.

  “Well, no, I didn’t. I don’t think I actually said anything specific.”

  “Jeez, you Brits – you are so gal-lant,” said Brett.

  “Yeh, right, gal-lant,” echoed Bart, finding this enormously amusing. And then he and Brett spent the rest of the afternoon, riffing, between draws, on the theme of my old world courtesy, enquiring variously if I clicked my heels whenever I greeted Peggy prior to kissing her hand, if I had lain down my cloak so that she might not have to step in a puddle, whether, whenever we went out together, a team of ancient female chaperones followed ten yards behind etc., etc. Being Americans, and stoned Americans at that, they got countries and eras hideously confused but, unconcerned about such niceties, they laughed like drains. And I, being British, bore it all with stiff, good humour.

  At home that evening, I swore at the cat, paced up and down, tried to watch a bit of telly to calm my nerves. But I took nothing in. So I decided the best course would be to go to bed early with a good book. Predictably I discovered that I could neither read nor sleep and eventually got up again at about two to make myself a cheese sandwich, but then discovered that there were too many butterflies in my stomach to cope with food as well. I went back to bed and laid there, snoozing fitfully and fretfully, until finally, at around six I accepted defeat and rose to prepare myself for all that might come to be.

  Have I mentioned my earring before? A few months before I had left England, I had ‘celebrated’ my twenty-ninth birthday – the year before is always worse than the actual marking of the next decade – and I had decided that what I needed to make the unambiguous statement that I was still a funky young rebel, was an earring. So I went to Selfridges, insisted upon receiving umpteen reassurances that I was not set upon an irrevocable course towards gangrene and certain death and then bit my lip and held my breath and the hand of the hole-puncher’s assistant while her boss mutilated my left ear. (At the time, I seem to remember, there was some received wisdom that left was hetero, right wasn’t.)

  I will skip the full story of the bleeding, the disinfecting, the endless twirling of the ring to prevent sticking, the constant removing and reinserting with left lobe cocked towards the bathroom mirror, the preening and self-congratulating on how terrifically Keith Richards I now looked. Suffice to say that many was the time my earring fell from my fumbling hands and I could be found on my hands and knees feeling for the bloody thing behind the lavatory.

  By today, on this day that was to be the day of days, I had long ago switched to a gold stud (with the usual butterfly back) feeling that it was slightly subtler and cooler than the original more piratical look, and indeed, much to my satisfaction, several people – Peggy I think, definitely Brett and Bart – had more than once complementarily remarked upon it.

  I think it perfectly understandable, given the importance I placed upon the events of the weekend, that I would, in the very early morning, lower East Side light, carefully inspect myself in the mirror above the bathroom sink, for signs of any blemishes that I might be able to eradicate or mask. And given my self-consciousness about my rapidly retreating hairline and the thinness of what remained behind it, no surprise that I turned my head this way and that to check out my head from all angles. But as to why I chose to unscrew the butterfly back of my gold ear stud, I can think of not one sensible reason. All I know is that I did it, and then, distracted by the cat suddenly announcing its entry into the bathroom by unaccountably brushing itself against my as-yet-untrousered legs – not a sign of friendliness I am sure, it knew exactly what it was doing – I somehow contrived to drop said butterfly into the unplugged sink. I looked down aghast to see it bounce – clink, clink and down and away into the sewers of New York.

  This was not the best of starts to the day.

  *

  By ten o’ clock I had recovered my composure sufficiently to choose, pack, and re-choose and repack a bag – the choice of which was itself a matter of considerable conjecture – and then shave, shower and, minus my earring but with a hole in my ear which I was sure would be noticed and pointed at by every passenger on the subway, to get myself to Grand Central. The fact that I wasn’t due to meet Peggy until midday did not overly concern me. Better much, much too early than too late. I wandered about Grand Central looking in bookshops, stopping at coffee shops, grabbing a bagel from Zabars and generally filling in time; at one point I suddenly realised that I did not have my bag in my hand and, panic-stricken, I had to rush back along the barely remembered route until I found the coffee-shop, in which, miraculously, it still was. But mainly the time was taken up watching the minute hand on the Grand Central clock tick slowly round. Given Peggy’s ready acquiescence to the weekend plans, I wasn’t overly worried that there would be some last minute hitch – like Miller suddenly falling on his knees and imploring her not to leave – but with all that hinged on this, even being unduly worried was enough to make me extremely antsy. (On the subject of Miller, by the way, I had said not one further word to her, and I pledged myself, no matter what the temptation, to maintain my silence through the weekend.)

  In the event, Peggy showed up not just on time, but five minutes early, right by the enquiry counter, in the centre of the main concourse just like we’d arranged. As I walked up to her, she reached up, pulled me towards her, kissed me full on the lips for a good few seconds and then said, “You’ve taken your earring out. Better.”

  “Yeah, well. You know. I thought it was a bit last year.”

  And off we went.

  Chapter 9

  Mid-air and Richmond Upon Thames, 1999

  London, 1979–1989

  I flew back to London as preoccupied as on the way out. But, for the first time in months it was not Peggy I was dwelling upon. It was those treacherous bastards, Vince and Geoff.

  My association with Vince had begun nearly twenty years previously, just after I had come back from New York. McConnell Martin had, by then, fully absorbed the old London agency I had worked for, and having
done a stint on Madison Avenue, and having once received the benediction of Todd Zwiebel – even if our relationship had later cooled – I had returned, if not yet a made man, then certainly a coming one.

  *

  Vince was a young account executive, who had done a few months in the Sydney office straight out of ‘Uni’ as he called it – it was not then a term that had been adopted in the motherland – and then, with a burning desire to see Earls Court, had handed in his notice, climbed on a plane, had a quick gander at the Acropolis, irritated the bulls in Pamplona, chundered at the Munich Beer Festival, and, according to him, fucked half the women from the Atlantic to the Aegean, before completing the de rigueur six-week, Kombi- borne dash around Europe. Having run out of money, he had then thrown himself on the mercy of McConnell Martin, London, and – probably because the guy who interviewed him was gay and took a fancy to this stocky sun bleached little chap who sat eagerly before him – a fancy which Vince, ever with the eye for the main chance, would have done nothing to discourage – he was taken on.

  Professionally speaking, Vince was wet behind the ears but, being Australian, not entirely without self-confidence, and, being Vince, had a keen sense of which stars it might be useful to hitch his wagon to – he was always far too shrewd to gamble on just one. Amongst others, he chose mine. I don’t know quite when I began to notice him, but he was soon hanging about the office bar in the early evenings (converted from its daytime role as canteen) and was a keen participant on the quarter size snooker table and on the football table. Now I think about it, the football table was probably the fawning ground that he quite deliberately chose.

  I wouldn’t claim to have the world’s greatest eye-to-hand coordination and, when at the snooker table, pot white was, as often as not, my game. But on the football table I was a whiz. I had spent hours, days, weeks, forever, in my local youth club picking up all the flash little tricks and feints from the older kids and whenever, as an adult, I saw a table, I felt bound to bung in my 20p or whatever, and take on all-comers if playing singles, or if it was doubles, then find a stooge who was prepared to play defence while I dazzled in attack. One evening Vince volunteered to be that stooge, and soon he seemed to have the job on a semi-permanent basis.

  Having just returned from the States once more unattached, and only too aware of the fact, I was never too willing to go home after work and sit in front of the telly brooding about my lonely life. Vince, who was not only a quick learner on the football table but also had the wry Australian take on life which I have always found bloody funny, would, as often as not, join me and some of the other guys when we went on to the The Jolly Brewers – the pub around the corner from the agency – after the office bar had been shut, and after that come on with us to the Greek or Italian or Indian restaurant, wherever it was we chose to round off the evening. Frequently he and I would be the last patrons to be shepherded out of the door by Vassos or Vittorio or Vikram. Yes, Vince was five years younger than I – quite a lot in your twenties – and yes, he was an account guy – a role normally considered to be strictly below stairs by us aristos of the creative department – but, soon, I had come to accept that Vince was, more or less, my best mate.

  And if we were mates after work, then it was bound to follow, I suppose, that we would see more and more of each other during the day. He’d drop by my office for a chat, and I by his, and then bit by bit – I really have no idea how – he somehow ended up being the junior bag carrier (dismissive term for account handlers used by creatives) on some of the accounts I was working on, and then, as I had a couple of successes and the awards and promotions followed, he became a more senior bag carrier. It seemed inevitable that when I first became first deputy, and then, finally reaching the pinnacle, executive Creative Director of McConnell Martin, I would find Vince, too, supping at the top table.

  It was about the time that I got ‘the big office’ that Geoff joined the agency.

  He was the same sort of age as Vince, actually a couple of years younger, but he already had a growing reputation in the business and, much to Vince’s initial annoyance which he didn’t do a lot to hide, came in at a higher level than Vince, as the agency’s Senior Account Director on its biggest piece of business. But though only in his late twenties, Geoff was prematurely grey – always useful if you’re young and ambitious – and evinced a cool solidity to enhance the effect.

  Although now officially ‘management’ and running the creative department of McConnell Martin London, I was still writing my own stuff too, and, in ’88, I had my own big years at DADA and at Cannes and at all the other innumerable ‘and the award goes to’ dinner and dances. I had written a couple of campaigns, one for a vacuum cleaner and one for a brand of jeans, that had floated the boats of the various juries, and I was becoming a hottish property in London, frequently quoted in ‘Campaign’ with accompanying photograph, always unsmiling and intense as is considered appropriate for creative types. And always too, with my shaven head first laboriously dabbed with panstick to make sure that it didn’t shine too brightly in the camera lights. (Having conceded the lost battle with baldness I had by now decided to assume control of the situation by the daily removal of the remaining fringe around the sides.) Several other agencies tried to tempt me away with all manner of goodies on offer, but after accepting all the invitations to lunch at Le Gavroche and breakfast at the Connaught, I always decided that McConnell Martin was the place where my bread was buttered the best.

  And then one day, or rather one evening, at the McConnell Martin Christmas party in ‘89, Vince asked me to step outside for a moment, and there, on the steps of the Park Lane hotel where our shindig was in full swing, I found Geoff drawing deep on a B and H in the chilly night air. It was Geoff who, without even the most perfunctory of near-bush beatings, stubbed the butt out under his black brogued foot, and then made me the offer I was to discover I couldn’t refuse: to start a new agency, just me and the pair of them, all as equal partners. And, with Vince looking on approvingly, Geoff added that Charles Mullins, chief executive of McConnell Martin’s biggest client, whose business, of course, he looked after, had made him a personal promise that the account for a new range of products that they were about to launch would be awarded not to McConnell Martin but to Williams, Dutton, Bradley. (I always remember, that when making that first pitch to me, outside the hotel entrance, he put my name first.)

  If you were writing a textbook on gob-smacking and wanted a picture to illustrate the front cover, mine would surely have been a shoo-in. I don’t know which surprised me more, the up-front, no fucking about delivery of the offer, or the fact that Geoff and Vince had never before demonstrated the slightest attachment for each other and yet, here they were, side by side, hatching a plan that must have taken months of careful gestation. Or, even more astonishing, the incredibly risky – but, as it proved, correct – assumption that I wouldn’t walk straight back in to the do and spill the beans to Gerry. (Gerry Morgan, CEO of McConnell Martin.) If I’d done that, there would have been no new agency to get the new account and they would have both been summarily slung out on their respective ears. (Of course, had I done that, they would have immediately been on the phone, scrabbling about for someone else to be the Creative Director of the new outfit, but I am pretty sure that it was me, out of whose creative arse, Charles Mullins, for some reason, thought the sun shone, who had served as the shiny bit of mirror that had dazzled him into submission and that, without me, they would never have got off the ground.) Not that, as the whole advertising world now knows, it ever got to that. And it was, in fact, this, their willingness to take the bungee jump without a safety net, their sheer fucking chutzpah, that was, I think, the clincher for me. They had shown that they had the cojones – and if you’re going to bust out and start an agency on your own, and be, from day one, in no-holds-barred competition with the agency you have just quit, at war, to the death if necessary, with the mothership, then cojones – above tale
nt, application, cash flow, and all the other things that count – cojones are what you need the most.

  Once he had finished his initial stunning speech, Geoff, said not another word, and neither did Vince. They simply stood there, watching me, waiting for what must have seemed an eternity to them, to see if the gamble of their lives – the gamble that I would forsake the cushiest of creative billets from which I would not, despite the blandishments of so many, previously be budged, to join them in the cold, cold world outside. It was a moment so significant in my life that I don’t have one of my usual can’t-have-been-the way-it-really-was moviemories of it. I am sure that I snapped it in my mind and retained the image exactly as it was: my subjective view of them standing there, the collars of their DJs turned up against the cold; and, as I re-examine the picture closely, I see not a single bead of perspiration on their brows. Cojones, yes, they had all you would need, and they were the coolest of customers too. Not bad qualities to have in your business partners.

  Eventually, I managed to speak, and after the opening stuttering overture of something like ‘Jesus! Fuck me! Christ! Well, I wasn’t fucking expecting that!’ I finally had the composure to ask a few sensible questions.

  “Are you telling me you have told Charles I am on for this without even fucking asking me?’

  “No” said Geoff. “We told Charles that without the business you’d never do it, but with it, we’d bet our lives – professional lives anyway – that you would. And we’ve just bet our professional lives haven’t we?”