A Polaroid of Peggy Page 17

  But to Lucille in person, I was the very essence of avuncular charm. I was so relieved, I told her, to have someone to help me out with my executive burden. If there was anything I could do to help her in any way at all, she wasn’t to hesitate to ask. And would she like to take over the responsibility for this account? And that one? And maybe this other one, but only of course if she felt she had the time? And pretty soon, I had managed to lumber Lucille with all the most unrewarding accounts, and all the most unimaginative clients that we had, while I retained nine tenths of the plums. And the tenth that I gave her, I was pretty sure, had worms inside it somewhere.

  With Lucille now buried deep beneath this avalanche of work, my days were relatively free and I could turn my attention to the pursuit of Peggy. The problem was, as I had indicated to Donald McEwan, that I didn’t have a clue where to start.

  I closed my office door and I took out a piece of paper with the intention of making a list of the facts that I knew. (I ought to explain here that my handwriting is appalling; it would make a doctor with the DTs blush. Even I can’t read more than about two words of it, so, in a case like this, I take extra special care and am very deliberate about the whole process.) I carefully centred the piece of paper in the middle of my desk. I ironed it flat several times with the heel of my hand, and then I finally took up my ball point pen. But, just as I was poised to write, I decided it wasn’t good enough for the job and called the faithful Julia to come in, whence I instructed her to go forth and find me one of those flashy fine pointed Stilo type things that art directors and designers like to use. And I wanted a brand new one. Black only would do.

  Eventually she returned with the required implement, but would only leave the office having first volunteered, as forcibly as she could, to write – whatever it was – for me, as she obviously anticipated that at some point she would have the job of typing it up and thus having to decipher the indecipherable. Eventually, I managed to usher her out of the door.

  I carefully removed the cap of the brand new arty pen and then, with a little flourish, I set it to paper. I wrote: Name, Last Known Whereabouts, Date of Last Known Whereabouts, People Who Might Know Her, Whereabouts of People Who Might Know Her.

  This seemed like a very sensible methodical start.

  Then I filled in the gaps under the headings. Under Name, I carefully wrote, P-e-g-g-y L-e-e, almost mouthing the words with my tongue hanging out as I went, much as a seven-year-old practising their handwriting would. I sat back and reviewed my handiwork. Hmm, Peggy Lee. Very nicely written. I could even read it. But was that her name? Really? Thanks to Peggy’s adamant refusal to abandon this ridiculous game that she’d started, I was never able to establish to my one hundred per cent satisfaction whether Peggy really was her proper given name, or just a nickname. So. I was forced to concede that the Peggy bit might be in doubt, and I put a question mark by it. With the ‘Lee’ though, I felt I was on solid ground, so I gave it a big tick.

  I moved on. ‘Last known whereabouts.’ Damned good question. What were her last known whereabouts? I wasn’t absolutely sure. Her last permanent address that I knew of was the apartment she’d shared with the loathsome Miller, but I had the distinct impression that it had been his apartment and would have been in his name. So all I could safely put was Manhattan. Then I added New York. I then added a comma and New York again, as in New York, New York. Then, after a few more moments cogitation, I put U.S.A. But, in all honesty, that didn’t seem likely to narrow the possibilities down.

  I moved on again. Date of last known whereabouts. That, at least, was easy. 1979, I put in big, very carefully drawn numbers. I then sat back and thought about the last time I’d seen her. The night of the Robert Palmer concert, that was it. Which was – when? August. Yes, almost certainly August. So I added a little dash after the 1979 and wrote A-u-g-u-s-t. I then wasted about twenty minutes reminiscing about that last evening before being woken from my daydream by some juicy oaths issuing from the street below. I stuck my head out of the window to see what was going on and found out that it was a dispatch cyclist who had been riding the wrong way down the street having an altercation with an elderly pedestrian who’d been foolish enough to be using a zebra crossing at an inopportune moment. I shut the window and, once more, bent myself to the task at hand.

  Next heading: People who might know her. Hmm. Well, Miller obviously. Mill-er. I pressed so hard writing M-i-l-l-e-r that I tore the paper. Annoying, but that’s twenty years of pent-up jealousy for you. I then added P-r-i-n-c-e, before, with a change of mind and mood, I crossed that out and replaced it with P-r-o-n-s-k-i. I dotted the ‘i’ with a flourish, more of a stab perhaps, making another hole in the paper. Take that, Mill-er!

  I moved on. I thought hard. Oh, yes, Noreen! N-o-r-e-e-n. But Noreen who? It was something vaguely Irish I seemed to remember. Began with a – a – Q! Quigley, that was it. Or, wait a mo, was it Quinn? Or maybe, it wasn’t a Q at all. Maybe it would come back to me – I’d leave it until later.

  Let’s see, who else? I sucked on the Stilo. There was her boss in casting but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Complete blank. And I’d barely spent five minutes with any of the other girls in casting – my default position with any girls in any office anywhere was to flirt, or try to, and I could hardly flirt with Peggy’s workmates, could I? So I’d hardly exchanged a word with any of the not-Peggys. And besides, that was all I had ever known them as: not-Peggys. Couldn’t see that being of much use if I tried to get Interpol involved.

  Who else? Bloody hell, there had to be somebody else. We hadn’t lasted for long but we’d managed five or six months. Surely, we hadn’t gone around in such a bubble that we’d never spoken to anybody else – or had we? Perhaps we had. There was Bart, I suddenly remembered, and Brett, but before I got down so much as the first stroke of a B, I realised that, even if I could find them, their brains would be so addled they probably wouldn’t remember me, let alone Peggy, or even that the year 1979 had ever taken place.

  I put the pen down and pressed my fingers to my temples, as if gripping my head would force something out of it. I twirled around in my office chair. Clockwise. I twirled back. And then back again. And then, on my second anti-clockwise twirl – or possibly my tenth – I caught Julia staring at me from her desk on the other side of the glass wall. I stopped abruptly and smiled. As you do. Julia smiled back – a smile of pity I would describe it as – and then, with a slight shake of the head, got up and walked away to the coffee machine or somewhere. With her out of the way, I took the opportunity to take on one of my favourite office challenges. How many rotations of my office chair could I manage with a single push? Using feet only, mind. No hands allowed. Strict World Officechair Twirling Championships rules applied.

  Important to keep straightening up your head, like ice-skaters doing one of those mental spins. Position feet together and at the right angle – 45 degrees to the side – for maximum leverage, grip arms of chair with hands, lean slightly forward and GO! One rev-o-lut-ion comp-le-ted, two rev-o-lut-ions comp-le-ted – good speed still being maintained, we’d definitely get to three, maybe even four, or maybe, just maybe, the holy grail of office chair spinning, FIVE! – “Talk us through it, Andrew. When did you feel the record was on?”

  And then in barges Vince, the bastard! I was slap bang in the middle of my third rotation, feet tucked up and arching my back for perfect body shape and minimum drag, when in he strolls without so much as a by your leave.

  I forced the toes of my chocolate brown Todt’s hard down on to the floor and ground to an inelegant halt.

  “Haven’t I asked you to fucking well knock when my door is closed?”

  “Oh yeah, right mate. Sorry. Deep in thought, were you? Immersed in the mysteries of the creative process?”

  I answered Vince with a grim little smile, invited him to park his ever widening bottom on the Eileen Gray, and cordially asked him
to state his business. Oh, yes, and I screwed up the piece of paper, aimed it at the wastebin and scored a basket. I hadn’t managed to get as far as Whereabouts of People Who Might Know Her, but I didn’t honestly feel that ‘No sodding idea’ merited recording, no matter how beautifully cursive my script might be.

  *

  I left the office early that night – with the most burdensome bits of my in-tray now weighing Lucille down, there wasn’t a lot of reason to stay. So as not to encourage my staff to follow my feckless example, I told Julia in a loud voice that I was going out to do some research – old habits die hard – and exited the building. But instead of going directly home, I went to HMV in Oxford Street, made for the video department and purchased series 1 to 6 of ‘Seinfeld’. (At this point, series 7 to 9 had yet to be screened in the UK.) I used the company credit card, of course. As far as HMRC were concerned, watching ‘Seinfeld’ was an essential part of my job.

  I had planned to take the videos home to watch them – that is to say, sit there mooning over Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who, I had discovered, was the actress playing Elaine/Peggy – at the earliest opportunity. But as I wedged the Porsche into a parking space between a couple of Lexi, I realised this might excite a little comment, so I left them in the car and decided it would be less riskily done at the office. (What risk, you might ask, given that the state of marital relations at New Pemberley was at an all-time low, at least until tomorrow, when it would probably be even lower? So I wanted to gaze adoringly at a few old videos – where was the harm in that? None at all, you might say, indeed it was my inalienable right, but, as we’ve discussed before, it is perfectly possible to know you’re as innocent as a lamb and to feel bang-to-rights guilty at one and the same time.)

  Instead, it still being early, I wandered in to the house, hoping to spend a bit of the old quality time – I hate that expression – with the girls. Florence, hips gyrating, was busy spreading half a jar of Nutella on a slice of cholla – must have been her Jewish genes coming through – while wearing headphones attached to a portable CD player from which Ricky Martin and ‘Living La Vida Loca’ were leaking so annoyingly loudly that India, who was trying to watch a cartoon on Sky, kept shouting at her to turn it down – a perfectly reasonable request I thought, but Florence, of course, couldn’t – or wouldn’t – hear a word, no matter how high the pitch or the increase in volume of India’s voice. Anneke, meanwhile, was busily laying the table for the girls’ dinner which like every other day – as Alison insisted it should be – was as green and leafy as any nutritionist would advise, but which would be left three-quarters uneaten by Florence and India, who had either a) already stuffed their faces with Nutella etc as Florence was now doing or b) would, having begged to be excused from the table, immediately go off and eat five bowls of sugary cereal. To complete the scene, Spot was sitting on the sofa – from which he was expressly forbidden – scratching his balls furiously, quite heedless of the propriety of so doing in the presence of impressionable young girls. In other words, it was early evening much as it always was in New Pemberley, and nobody seemed the least perplexed by this little tableau, except possibly me, who wasn’t usually around to witness it.

  “So how was school?” I said brightly to Florence, leading, as usual, with my chin.

  No response. I said it again, louder.

  Still, no response. I walked around the kitchen until I stood squarely in her eyeline and said it again, louder still.

  “WHAT?” she yelled back. I gave it one last, very loud, shot.

  Florence took off her headphones just long enough to look at me blankly and say “Alright” in – well, now that I thought about it, in exactly the same bored monotone that I used to say it to my parents. Then she put her headphones back on and gyrated out of the room and up the stairs.

  I didn’t have much better luck with India. I went to sit next to her to share in her cartoon watching experience, trying to think desperately of a question to ask other than, “How was school with you then?” But absolutely nothing came to mind. In India’s case it did at least elicit more than a one word reply. She couldn’t quite manage to tear herself away from the telly to the extent that she could turn and face me, but she was able to report that she was to be in the junior school play – it was usually some kind of musical – that would be put on towards the end of the Christmas term.

  “What’s the name of the show?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Good part?” I asked.

  “I’m an old Jewish woman or something.”

  Really? Was it some sort of nativity play they were doing? I was never quite comfortable about my half Jewish children doing overtly Christian things, but I wasn’t going to make a fuss about it.

  “Do you have any speaking lines?” I asked.

  A shake of the pony-tailed head.

  And that concluded the interview. A second later she sprang up and ran out to greet Alison, whose key she heard turning in the lock of the front door. Then I heard Florence thundering back down the stairs to do likewise. I couldn’t help but sit there in front of the telly despondently wondering why my entrance earlier hadn’t elicited the same response. I turned to Spot who continued to scratch his balls and I couldn’t fail to see that sometimes that was the only option.

  A few seconds later Alison walked into the kitchen with a daughter hanging on to each arm.

  “Andrew,” she said cheerfully – and therefore, suspiciously, “we have something to ask you?”

  We? I knew when I was about to be stitched up and I was about to be stitched up now.

  “Oh really?” I said, as neutrally as I could manage. “What would that be?”

  “We-ell,” she said, casting a conspiratorial look at first India and then Florence – both affectionately clutching her arms tighter by way of response. “You know Dougal, the architect?”

  Did I know Dougal the fucking architect? Was she fucking mad? What the hell – but even as all this was rushing through my mind, though not yet out of my mouth, Florence let out a peal of laughter and said, in a fake, very proper voice, pretending to mimic Alison, “Dougal the architect! Oh, Mummy really.”

  Now, what the hell did that mean? Well, I’ll tell you what I thought it meant. In fact, I was bloody certain what it meant. It meant that Florence knew that Dougal was much more than a bloody architect, that’s what it meant. I was aghast. I looked across at India? Did she know too? Surely not, she was only nine, but I could see a look in her eyes that told me that even if she didn’t know whatever Florence thought she knew, she too knew that architecture wasn’t the only string to Dougal’s – Doug’s – whoever he was’s – bow. She might not have known the grisly details or have any idea what the grisly details might be, but she knew. (And later I thought about all the kids of divorced couples in Florence’s class, and thought well, why wouldn’t she know?)

  “So,” I said, grim faced, “what?”

  “Well,” continued Alison, still upbeat – impressively indefatigable in a way – “Dougal’s family has a little place in Scotland—”

  “It’s so beautiful, Daddy,” interrupted Florence, “Doug showed us the photos.”

  Did he, by George? When was that I wondered?

  “And they’ve got wild ponies on their land,” said India.

  On their land? Not in the Gorbals, then.

  “Anyway,” continued Alison, on the sofa now, sitting up straight, legs together, and brushing her skirt down, a mannerism of hers when she was getting down to business. “Dougal has very kindly asked Florence and India and me to stay there over half term, and we wondered if you’d mind.”

  ”Half term?” I said, “But they’re only just at back at school.”

  “Yes, but we have to organise flights and stuff. You know how it gets booked up.”

  “Oh please Daddy, please say we can go.”

  What were the options?
Have a blue fit and make myself look a complete shit in front of the children. Or accept defeat.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, making a pointless effort to play for time, but we all knew that Alison had done all the thinking already. Later that night, of course, I cornered her upstairs. She was in the bathroom taking her make-up off.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” I demanded. “Couldn’t you at least have had the decency to have asked me on your own?”

  Alison stopped looking in the mirror, then sat on the edge of the bath, and looked up at me sadly. And kindly I think.

  “Look Andrew” she said quietly, “I’m sorry if it seemed like you were being manoeuvred—”

  “Seemed like!”

  “—but if I’d asked you on your own you’d have just gone ballistic and said not at any price.”

  Which was probably true.

  “And I could have taken them without asking you at all. I could have just said I’d been offered the place by a friend and I wanted to have some girls-only time.”

  Which was also true.

  “But I wouldn’t do anything behind your back.” She paused, slightly sheepish. “Well, not this anyway.”

  Then she looked up, held my gaze for a moment, and tears began to well in her eyes. Was it an act? How can you ever be really sure? But I didn’t think so.

  “Andrew, Doug wants – no, I want to sort this out properly. It can’t go on like this. I want to be with him and I’m sick of all the secrecy.”