A Polaroid of Peggy Page 16

  “Playing games, huh?”

  “Yes, playing games,” I repeated back to her but the challenging way she had first repeated it back to me made me slightly less sure that she was. (Told you – never play poker with a woman.) But by now, I was committed.

  “And the thing is, I just don’t understand why. Okay, it might have been funny for five minutes, but why would you want to have the advantage over me—”

  “Have the ad-vaaaan-tage over you?” Right, so now we were into the taking-the-piss-out-of-accents stage. The gloves were coming off.

  “Yes,” I said, evenly, determined to remain cool. “Why else would you not want to tell me what your real name was? And—”

  “I have. It’s Brenda.”

  “—and why would you want to have the advantage over someone who you are supposed to – to – to … ”

  “To what?”

  “To totally like, that’s what!”

  A pause. I looked at Peggy, holding her gaze. Not exactly with a smirk on my face, but expressing a certain satisfaction that I had made the decisive point. But Peggy wasn’t done. She looked back over her double malted milkshake, her eyes holding mine just as steadily.

  “And why, if you feel as much for me as you say you do, would you not be happy to call me by whatever name I wanted to be called?”

  Hmm. Touché. But the fight was still in me. I sprang back to my feet, did a forward roll, picked up my sword, and turned to face her again.

  “It’s not that I’m not happy to call you by whatever the fuck you want to be called – it’s – it’s—”

  “Yes, it’s what?”

  “—it’s – it’s a matter of trust, that’s what it is! If you love someone—”

  “Love?!”

  Shit. Why had I gone there? Still, no way out now.

  “Yes, love. Well, that’s the question, I suppose” – suddenly I spotted a chandelier I could launch a new attack from – “Yes, that is the question. Is it love? Because if love isn’t about trust – absolute trust – between two people, then what the fuck is it about?” (I had no idea what I was talking about, but I liked the sound of it.) “And if you can’t even bring yourself to trust me with your real name, for God’s sake, then what hope is there for us?”

  I stood there, legs apart, the tip of my sword at her throat. But somehow, in the blink of an eye, she rolled away, and was back on her feet again.

  “And if you trusted me, you wouldn’t keep asking me some bullshit question which has nothing whatever to do with love! If you trusted me you would know I had my reasons for whatever I said – and you wouldn’t keep doubting me!”

  That’s how it finished. With one of those ridiculous ‘if you trusted me/no, if you trusted me’ to-ings and fro-ings, a pointless, no-score draw. We paid the check – Peggy insisted on putting in her half, making some sort of point I suppose – and we left. There was a bit of an awkward silence as we walked, arm not in arm, to the subway station, but before we parted to go in our different directions, Peggy reached up and kissed me, and then, after a sheepish grin from me and a reciprocal one from her, she disappeared.

  So, as seemed to be the pattern, we sort of kissed and made up at the end, but those kinds of tit-for-tat spats, as ridiculous as they are and as this one certainly was, when you’re not really arguing about the thing you’re arguing about but because of some bruised feeling on one side or the other that gets completely forgotten in the heat of it all, well, they do, eventually, add up and take their toll.

  One thing was for sure. I wasn’t going to go near the question of Peggy’s name again. Peggy or even Brenda or whatever she wanted to be called would do – would have to do – from now on.

  *

  Peggy and I were, at this point, and for a few weeks after, in some sort of limbo. In popular usage, or at least the way I understand it, that basically means stuck in neutral with wheels spinning but no forward motion. Interestingly however, according to Wikipedia, the word derives from the Latin, ‘limbus’ which means edge or boundary, referring to the ‘edge’ of hell. And that, I would say, is a rather more accurate description of the way I felt. We had briefly become lovers at the Gardner Inn and I did, on two or three occasions, manage to cajole Peggy into repeating the experience, neon-lit, in the bedroom in my sublet. But she would never stay the night, which meant she went back to her flat with Miller, which meant in turn, to my mind, that, in a sense – the very important sense that she lived with him – she was more his than mine. And that I found intensely frustrating. Why the idea of having someone exclusively reserved for you – of you being her one and only – matters so much, I really don’t know. Maybe Peggy was right when she talked about me wanting to bop her on the head with a club and carry her back to my cave. Maybe it really was just some leftover primeval instinct. But, whatever the reasons, I found the situation very hard to deal with. And, in my place, who wouldn’t have?

  Patience, yes, I could see the need for that. Mustn’t put any pressure on. More chance of the kitten coming down from the tree if you don’t frighten it with the fire brigade. But patience was never my long suit. Not that boldness was either. Although, boldness wise, I couldn’t see many options anyway. About the only thing I could have done would have been to call her bluff and tell that if she didn’t agree to come and live in my cave right now, I was going to stop playing and take my club home with me. And, as we all know how I am with the bluffing thing, we were, as I began by saying, stuck in limbo. Does it seem like I’m going round in circles? Exactly.

  If there were a science called emotional physics – which some snake oil salesman somewhere probably claims there is – it would be a basic law that frustration, unless released, slowly converts into anger. Overall, Peggy and I were still having a terrific time when we were together, and I was as convinced as ever that she was the one, but still this incipient anger was bubbling under – and when you start to show even the tiniest bit of anger, the other person gets angry back. That was probably a factor in our contretemps across the double malted milkshake, and it all came to the surface again, a couple of weeks later.

  The surface in question was red clay. The red clay of the Public Tennis Courts at Riverside Park on 96th Street.

  One day, having a drink after work, Peggy and I were discussing what we might do at the weekend, when some young preppie type, pushing past us on his way to the bar, heard his name called out and, swinging round to see who was doing the calling, narrowly avoided swiping me with the tennis racquet that was sticking out of the backpack he was carrying over his shoulder. He quickly apologised, and I replied with something to the effect that it really wasn’t a problem, I’d probably have done the same, they were bloody awkward things to carry, tennis racquets, weren’t they? Then off he went and I turned back to Peggy, who said, “You play tennis? You never told me that. We should have a game.”

  I was more than a little surprised. It had never crossed my mind that Peggy would be the sporty type. Maybe it was the fact that she was so lightly built, or maybe it was just that she was a girl – sorry about the sexist stereotyping – and a Jewish girl at that – and the ethnic stereotyping – but, as I say, it had just never occurred to me. I was, always have been, a big fan of most sports, and an enthusiastic if less than brilliant participant in one or two but I had never once discussed the subject with Peggy because, well, you don’t with girls, do you? Or maybe you do now, but this was 1979. Or maybe other people did but not me. Anyhow, we hadn’t.

  “Blimey,” I said, “Who are you? Chris Evert?”

  “No,” she said, “I’m left handed. I’m more your Martina type.”

  If I was surprised before I was shocked now. Of course, Peggy was making a fairly routine joke, yet there was something in her tone that told me she was only joking up to a point. Not only did she play tennis, but she clearly believed she played a pretty useful game. And as I had never heard
her say a single boastful word – she was much more given to self-deprecation than making even the smallest claim for herself – I could only think that she must be right. Quite amazing. A few moments ago I’d never even contemplated the idea of Peggy on a tennis court, now I was thinking she might be good enough to – to – well, yes, beat me. Heaven forfend! However, a challenge had been issued which no Englishman worthy of the name could refuse. And so the problem of what to do at the weekend was solved, and battle joined. Peggy made a call the next morning, and a court was booked for Saturday afternoon at three.

  I had brought my racquet with me from England, though never had cause to use it in New York until now. I found it buried in the back of a cupboard, a wooden Slazenger, the sort of thing that Bjorn Borg used, still held tight in its press. A racquet press! These days the very idea of one sounds as prehistoric as a flint headed axe. For those who have never beheld its wonders, think of a small, square wooden picture frame without a front or back. The press had two of these, positioned flat, one above the other, and between which you slotted the tennis racquet head, before tightening the adjustable springy screws at each corner which held the thing together. The idea, I think, was to prevent your wooden racquet from warping and to keep your strings of catgut – e.g. made from an animal’s intestines! – tight. And not only does it sound archaic, but when you carried your racquet in its press you bore the whole weight of its history. It weighed a ton. If, like the preppie type in the bar, you had swung round with one of those sticking out of your backpack, you could have taken somebody’s head off.

  Dressed in an old white cable knit sweater I had dug up from somewhere, and an ancient pair of Dunlop Green Flashes (long before they were fashionable again) but wearing black socks, because I couldn’t find any white ones, I found my way to Riverside Park. Personally, I think it’s pretty bad form to fall about laughing when your opponent walks on to court, but it didn’t stop Peggy.

  She, on the other hand, was dressed immaculately – and very prettily I had to admit – in a sweet little white tennis dress with her black hair swishing about in a ponytail. And in her hand she carried one of those, then revolutionary, Prince aluminium racquets with the huge heads – huge when compared with my wooden jobbie, actually still commonly used in 1979 but soon bound for the museum. Yes, it was to be Smith and Wesson versus bow and arrow and we all know what happened to the poor bloody Injuns.

  It got worse. We began to knock up and the very first ball she hit to me – massive backswing, almighty thud, perfect weight transfer – had so much top spin it bounced straight over my head. I picked the ball up and casually – as casually as I could – I looped it over the net on her backhand side. Thwack! Back it screamed, and just as I was getting my feet in position to return it, the ball suddenly dipped, hit the ground and then reared up and over my head again. A topspin backhand as well as a forehand! You have to be very carefully taught to play one of those. I looked up at her, then back at my little wooden Slazenger and smilingly shook my head as though our mismatched weaponry was the problem. But I had already seen enough to know that she could have been playing with a pool cue and still got the job done.

  Even so, slightly miffed at the reception she had given me when I walked onto court, slightly angry at the continuing impasse over her living arrangements, slightly aghast at the prospect of being beaten by a GIRL, and being anything but slightly competitive by nature, I did not feel inclined to just chuck in the towel.

  I decided to fight fire with – lobbing.

  Lobbing – to hit the ball high in the air rather than straight across the net – is an entirely legitimate shot in tennis. Except when it’s not. And when it’s not is when you are lobbing not to win the point but in order to slow the game down, to take the pace off the ball so your opponent’s timing is out, to wind him, or in this case, her, up to the point where she loses her rag and her concentration and makes lots of damned fool mistakes which, having been made, lead to even more, and thus to eventual, humiliating defeat.

  That was the plan. It wasn’t very British but history shows there can be exceptions – usually when the British are involved. The trouble with the plan was that you have to at least be able to get racquet on ball in order to be able to lob in the first place. I think you can imagine how often I was able to do that.

  At the end of the first set, the score of which I have no intention of divulging, Peggy sportingly offered to swap racquets, an offer which I bad temperedly refused. In the second, during which she was obviously taking it easy – and thus irritating me even more – I did manage to lob the ball on the odd occasion, giving her the opportunity to demonstrate what a fine overhead smash she had. About the only points I ‘won’ were due to me insisting the ball was out, when a blind man without a stick would have known that it wasn’t. (Peggy, even more annoyingly, if such a thing were possible, refused to argue, and accepted whatever I said.)

  After two of the most one sided sets of tennis that can ever have been played, we sat down on the chairs at the side of the court, me puffing like Thomas the Tank Engine, her still as fresh as a daisy. Somehow I had to find a way to stop my teeth from grinding, to find a way to say well played, to simulate some sort of pretence of good sportsmanship – either that or look an utter tosser.

  So I turned to her to mumble, as best I could, my grudging congratulations, and she just burst out laughing. In the mood I was in, and knowing me, I could have easily responded by swearing at her and storming off in a pathetic, self-defeating paddy. (I have done it often enough.) But, thank the lord in whom I do not believe, for once I did not. She just looked so bloody fabulous, was radiating such good humour, was so obviously making light of the whole ridiculous situation and not just fun of me, that I could hardly fail to see the funny side too.

  And that was Peggy for you. Or rather, that was Peggy for me.

  *

  And then at last, breakthrough. As though that moment of joy after the tennis was the catalyst, as indeed it may have been, Peggy called me one morning, a couple of days later, to say that she guessed I ought to know that she’d spoken to Miller, that she’d packed up her things and that she was moving into Noreen’s that evening. And no, she said in response to my scepticism, there was no chance of her changing her mind. This was really it.

  Frustration released. Wish fulfilled. Love victorious. For a while, that’s really how it seemed it was going to be. And when she finished the call by asking me if I’d like to come to New Rochelle the next Sunday to have lunch with her family, well, it was all I could do to prevent myself from calling Mavis and telling her to get herself a hat and climb on to the next plane over.

  Lunch in Nooroeshel! We were going to be Rob and Laura all over again.

  Chapter 13

  London, 1999

  It was September, most of us were back from our summer holidays, and it felt, as it always did, as though we were at the beginning of a new school year. If we weren’t wearing freshly cleaned and pressed uniforms and carrying satchels of newly covered exercise books with our names written on them and underlined in three different colours, there was still a sort of natural impetus, a feeling that this was the time for great new projects to begin, that pages could be turned, that the future started now. Fitting then, that my great new project, the hunt for Peggy, should be about to get underway. But although I was about to turn my attention to that, I had other fish to fry first.

  I looked through the wide vertical blinds that hung down over the glass wall of my office and across the corridor into another very similar one. This office, newly constructed over the summer (which involved some expensive remodelling of the creative department’s offices to accommodate it) was almost a replica of mine, but not quite. (Very deliberately, and at my insistence, not quite.) It was about twenty per cent smaller and instead of having the epic views of the Fitzrovia street scene which my office, as estate agents like to say, ‘enjoyed’, it faced a rather forb
idding ‘well’ in the middle of our building, and its occupant looked out at a meshing puzzle of pipes, or, if she was nosey, into other offices, which, on winter nights, if their tenants forgot to close their blinds, might reveal that all human life was there.

  The she-occupant in question was, of course, Lucille Wood, now officially my deputy. She didn’t have a sign on her door to prove it, because advertising agencies don’t do ‘status’ in quite that way. But they certainly do it – business class or scum class airplane seats, company credit cards or not, own office or open plan desk, and, in this case, the lesser position and proportions of Lucille’s office compared to mine.

  However, I was well aware that small countries had been known to build mighty empires so I was keeping a careful eye on things. I didn’t imagine her ambition would stop at being deputy anything and, from what I gathered, she and Vince were still an item, or, as the office wags had it, ‘she was getting her Legga over’. In other words, she would be in his ear at every opportunity and wheedling away to get him to do goodness knows what.

  Faced with the prospect of an enemy alliance I had decided to make some political arrangements of my own. We had a youngish woman account director who went by the uninventable name of Atalanta du Vivier. (‘Hattie’ to her pals.) Hattie was a statuesque bottle blonde Oxford graduate. (Despite Bradley, Williams and Dutton’s own unimpressive academic qualifications, we only went for the best. It made us feel better, E to P wise, to have Oxons and Cantabs stacked up on our mantelpiece.) Hattie had the urban yet posh accent that marked her out as having been to one of those London private schools that teach self-possession to A level – actually, the very same school that Florence and India attended, a coincidence which, when discovered, gave us a sort of natural kinship – and which I could then exploit. My Machiavellian plan was – well I wasn’t quite sure what it was – but I figured that getting Hattie into my camp might prove useful, and, when somebody left, and we needed a new account director on the cereal business that we’d won earlier in the year, I lobbied, subtly, but, in the end, successfully, for her to get it. I also made sure that she knew that I had. Q.E.D. she knew she owed me. Though Will had now left, Lucille was still working on the business and so Hattie and she would be spending a lot of time together. At the very least, I reckoned, one or two titbits of useful intelligence might come my way.