A Polaroid of Peggy Read online

“When was that then?”

  “For fuck’s sake Andrew, just for once in your life can you stop being such a bloody smartarse?”

  Well, we both knew the answer to that one.

  She took a tissue out of her bag, dabbed her eyes, and breathed slowly out.

  “So I thought, a few days in Scotland would be a chance to see how we all got on as, as …”

  “As a family?”

  “Well, in a way, yes.”

  “Except you’re not a sodding family are you? Not without me. It’ll be my family and – er – Doug.”

  Now it was my turn to start getting teary. I paused for a moment to compose myself – or rather to prevent myself from falling on the floor in a grovelling heap.

  “And what if your little half-term trial doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t hit it off with them?”

  “Well, it won’t be the end, I don’t suppose. But it’ll be a pointer. If he can’t make it work, he’s not the guy for me.”

  “They’re not easy you know.”

  “They’re as easy and as difficult as any kids. He knows the score. I have two children. We come as a package or not at all.”

  “So is that the plan?” I asked, feeling utterly dejected. “You and Doug and the girls? What about me?”

  “No,” she said. “That is not the plan. They’ll have a home with me if they want one – and with Doug – maybe – eventually – if it works out. And I presume, they’ll have a home with you. You’re their father, not Doug. They’ll share their time between us. I don’t know how exactly, but we’ll find a way. If we want to, that is. And I do.”

  The weird thing is that even when, like me, you have accepted that love – on both sides – has long since flown out of the window, and you have, you think, been prepared for all of this, when it comes it still comes as the most profound shock.

  As sorry for myself as I was feeling, I still couldn’t bring myself to blame Alison. Instead, as people always do in these circumstances, I reserved my ire for the third party – in this case, the architect overseeing the extension of my basement and the demolition of my marriage, Dougal-call-me-Doug. Not being consumed with raging jealousy didn’t prevent me from feeling thoroughly fed up with him and I could have cheerfully knocked his cocky block off.

  And no, the joke wasn’t lost on me. I could see how ironic it was – how entirely poetically just – that I should feel so wretched, when, just like Doug, I was myself preparing to chase after another man’s wife – also assuming Peggy had a husband. But would this sobering experience, and the prospect of the even more sobering ones yet to come – the breaking up of the family – the loss of my home – all the horrendous collateral damage of separation – give me pause for thought?

  I think I can best answer that question with another: Would Spot stop scratching his balls?

  Chapter 14

  New York and New Rochelle, 1979

  “Love the neckties, man,” said the tall, black, shaven-headed, zootily suited, and very, very cool sales guy in Barney’s. “Love the neckties.” (In my moviemory he is wearing wrap around shades, but he was working in the middle of a big store on Sixth Avenue, half a block from natural light of any kind, so he can’t have been, can he?)

  The ties to which he was referring were being worn by me. Two of them. At the same time. It was my latest fashion statement, and, I have to say, probably my greatest ever single moment as a fashion icon. I had risen one morning and questioned, perhaps in the manner of Einstein suddenly coming up with E=MC squared, one of the fundamental precepts by which humankind has always lived. Why, I asked, should a man be restricted to one tie?

  And for a few weeks thereafter, during which period this all-time highpoint of my fashion life was reached, when this black guy from New York paid tribute to my convention busting sartorial breakthrough – and no, I don’t think he was gay and coming on to me – yes, I say again, I wore two ties tied around my neck at the same time. (If you want to try this at home, you wear an open-necked shirt and have the knots tied along side each other but separated, an inch or two below the collar. But do take care: the effect on the casual passer-by, as my experience showed, can be devastating.)

  My two ties made quite an impression on Brett and Bart.

  “Man, whatever you’re smoking, we want some too,” they said, and I am not altogether sure they were joking.

  And when Peggy saw me desporting this look one day in the office elevator she smiled, shook her head and muttered “So what’s wrong with the other one?” – a reference to the old joke about the Jewish woman who gives her son two ties and then still manages to take offence when she sees him wearing one.

  I smiled briefly and nodded back to indicate I had ‘got it’ and then she added, as she stepped out on to her floor, “You coming like that on Sunday?”

  I have never been quite sure whether she was deliberately provoking me to do so, but, as you have doubtless guessed, that was the effect it had. I did, of course, give a lot of thought to exactly what I would wear for my first meeting with Herb and Barbara, who would, I was by now pretty convinced, become my parents-in-law someday. And yes, I did hum and hah about whether the two tie look would be entirely appropriate for a New Rochelle optometrist – I had made sure I was fully briefed – and his former elementary schoolteacher wife. But Peggy had assured me that Herb was not a guy averse to shaking his fist at the establishment and that her Mom (Mom? Never could get used to that, she’d have to be Mum to me) would always go along with whatever Peggy said. In the end, as I prepared for another trip on the New Haven line from Grand Central, I told myself that the best way I could present myself would be to be the real me, a guy who didn’t always run with the crowd, who marched to the beat of his own drummer, who conformed to these and all other hackneyed old clichés about not being a conformist, and that right now, that meant wearing two ties. And so, early on that fateful Sunday morning, I looked myself in the eye in the bathroom mirror, hummed ‘My Way’ while I tied my two knots, and then, confident that I had made the right decision – reasonably confident anyway – set off for the subway and lunch with the Lees of New Rochelle.

  *

  If I did harbour the odd doubt about the universal appeal of the two tie look, that was mainly due to a rather untimely meeting with Todd Zwiebel. As I have said, Todd, the far sighted American who had seen Madison Avenue potential in me, had now climbed to the very top of the greasy corporate pole. The Chief Creative Officer of the World or The Manatee as Bart or Brett had, one bong filled day, decided he should be called (to explain: Manatee=Seacow=CCOW=Chief Creative Officer of the World) usually sat in his magnificently situated office on the north west corner of the executive floor, the fifteenth of the McConnell Martin building, which had the very finest views of Madison Avenue as it extended uptown. And it was at this gorgeous panorama that he could normally be found gazing while pontificating upon where he should go for lunch or by what time he could slip away to his summer place in the Hamptons, or his winter one in the Adirondacks. Or whatever else it is, that those at the very top of the corporate greasy pole in America have to pontificate upon.

  On this day however, the day I wore my two ties and saw Peggy in the elevator, the Friday before the Sunday lunch with the Lees, the Manatee was not in his office but floundering round the creative department looking to pressgang any unwary uncreative types he could find into working the weekend on a campaign for a brand of shampoo, which its Vice-Prez for Marketing had personally informed Todd, would be washed right out of McConnell Martin’s hair unless a brilliant new TV spot was forthcoming PDQ.

  Todd, having risen as high as he had, was not in the habit of deferentially knocking on his acolytes’ doors and thus barged straight in to Brett or Bart’s office just after bong time. (Which, any day of the week, was more or less any time.) Fortunately, in readiness for just such eventualities, the bong was always positioned behi
nd the door and out of sight to the casual entrant, and the fan switch was always within reach of Bart or Brett’s hand. Moreover, either because he was so preoccupied with the imminent departure of the shampoo account or with the problem of what time to get the limo round to take him to whichever of his weekend retreats he wanted to go to or because he had never familiarised himself with the fragrance of marijuana – which seems unlikely – Todd, incredibly, seemed not to notice anything amiss, aroma-wise, when he walked in on us.

  Yes, us, because I was there as well as Bart and Brett. He did however notice my two ties, at which he looked askance, before enquiring whether any of the three of us wanted to avail ourselves of the career opportunity of a lifetime by spending the weekend working on the said shampoo spot.

  “Sure thing,” said Bart and Brett, pretty much in unison. “Saturday, Sunday. Whenever. Anything to help out.”

  Which comment, I have to say, shocked me to the core until it quickly dawned on me that you didn’t hold down a reasonably well paid job when you spent half your supposedly working day smoking weed, unless you were prepared to bend with the wind when the occasion demanded it. I, however, bearing in mind my lunch invitation, could make no such offer.

  “What about you, Angus?” asked Todd.

  “Andrew,” I said.

  “Yeah well whatever. Can McConnell Martin count on you, Andrew, like these fine fellas?”

  “Well, normally Todd I would say yes, like a shot, of course I would and I can definitely do Saturday, no problem, but Sunday, I’m afraid, I’m, er, tied up.”

  The Manatee gave me a look so wounded, it was as though I had personally driven a speedboat straight over him, and the propeller had cut him to pieces. Then pride helped him stage a partial recovery.

  “Well Andrew, it is Andrew isn’t it? I’m kinda surprised at you. Especially given all the personal interest I have taken in you—”

  “Yes, and you know how much I appreciate that Todd, but it’s just that this Sunday—”

  “Yes, yes, I know, you have more important things to do than to help out on one of McConnell Martin’s most important clients. Well, half a job is not really any better than no job at all, so you needn’t worry about Saturday either.”

  And with that the Manatee swam off, but not before giving an approving nod in Bart and Brett’s direction and taking one more swing at me.

  “And why the hell are you wearing two ties? This is Madison Avenue, not the fucking Kings Road you know.”

  After that my relations with Todd Zwiebel were never quite the same again, and the two-tie look, however big a hit it was with Barney’s high priest of dude-ness, may well have contributed to the shortening of my days in New York.

  *

  Herb met us at New Rochelle station in some kind of Pontiac, one of those huge, overpowered, underperforming boats, a ‘sedan’ – truly my very favourite American word, one which they have never succeeded in exporting but which, for me, immediately conjures up images of the fantastical American cars that I grew up goggling at in the ‘Observer Book of Automobiles’. (One of a series of pocket sized reference books that little English boys pored over in the fifties.) This sedan was of much more recent vintage but still as enormous and American as tradition demanded. Herb seemed to be a jolly sort of chap, greying crinkly hair, horn rim glasses – from the family firm I presumed – and of medium height and build as the TV cop shows have it. If he noticed my two ties or anything else about me, he made no comment during the wallowy drive back to the house which was in a wonderfully named street for an optician to live in – sorry, optometrist, the distinction between which he would later explain – called Overlook Road.

  Barbara, who also had crinkly hair (but less grey) also wore glasses – I expect they gave themselves a discount. Hers were sort of butterfly shaped which rather fitted with the way she fluttered out of the house, apron on, to greet us. I had half expected Peggy’s younger brother, always referred to as Marv, to be there too but he apparently had more compelling things to do than give the once-over to Peggy’s latest.

  In we went to the house, which was exactly as I expected it be, unfussily decorated in not quite the latest style and generally very ‘homey’. I loved it. I got the tour, saw the enormous kitchen with the humungous fridge, the den with the Lazy Boy and the TV – massive by the standards of the day – and the cable control that, this being 1979, was still attached by a wire; and outside there was, of course, the now rusting basketball hoop fixed above the ga-raage. It was all there, and like I say, I loved it. I had no problem at all in imagining future little Williamses running about here.

  We finally ended up back in the ‘lounge-room’ where we had now been joined by Peggy’s grandmother about whom I had been gently forewarned.

  “She’s a little deaf,” Peggy had said. “Well, no, maybe a lot deaf. And she’s kind of in and out of it, if you know what I mean. She probably won’t say a whole lot.”

  Herb introduced us.

  “This is my mother Betty Lipschitz. Ma, this is Andy.”

  “Hello, I’m Betty Lipschitz, Herb’s mother. I’ve heard a lot about you Miller.”

  A little embarrassed laughter followed. Personally I wasn’t too thrilled but I was a big boy and she was a muddled old lady and obviously I had to laugh along with the rest of them. Peggy did try to put her straight but I wasn’t optimistic that she’d succeed.

  Then a beer was thrust in to my hand – yes, a Miller – please, no, not that, but what could I do? – and, as is the custom on these occasions, we all stood around wondering what to say. During this little hiatus it occurred to me that neither of Peggy’s parents looked the slightest bit Chinese. (And neither for that matter did Betty Lipschitz.) I couldn’t really see that much behind Herb and Peggy’s glasses but I scrutinised their eyes for any signs of almond-shaping and it seemed to me that all four looked much rounder than Peggy’s. Were hers some kind of genetic throwback to the Li days in the Ming dynasty? As much as I liked the idea of the Beijing shtetl, I was finally forced to conclude this had been just another of Peggy’s little stories. At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to explain any Chinese connection to Mavis.

  The silence didn’t last for long – the two ties soon worked their magic.

  “That’s quite a look you have there, Andy,” said Herb. “That what they’re wearing in the Village these days?”

  I heard Mavis tut-tutting in my head when I realised I would be Andy to the whole Lee family as well as to Peggy, but as the only alternative was to say something ridiculously stuffy, I made a silent apology to Mavis and just addressed the question.

  “Well, maybe soon. Could happen,” I said, thinking of the black fashion guru in Barney’s. Who knew: there might be mannequins wearing two ties in their window this very minute.

  Herb and Barbara looked at me blankly. Then Peggy enlightened them.

  “He’s British so he doesn’t like to come right out and say it, but he means it was all his own idea.”

  “Really,” said Barbara. “My!” Which could have meant anything from wow, how incredibly avant-garde of him, to, just who is this lunatic my daughter has brought into my home?

  “Well, I think that’s terrific,” pronounced Herb. “I like a guy who blazes a trail!” And with that, we were ushered into lunch where, not unnaturally, spectacles became a topic of conversation.

  “Get those in London?” asked Herb, pointing at my own glasses with a fork, as Barbara served up a pot-roast or something else suitably American. (I was too keen to make a good impression to worry about food, and I have no proper memory of what we ate.) I nodded to indicate that yes, I had purchased my glasses in London.

  “Whadyapayforem?” he asked through a mouthful of whatever it was.

  Barbara frowned disapproval at Herb asking such a direct question.

  “What? What?” demanded Herb. “We’re in the business. H
e knows that. You told him we were optometrists right?” Now he waved his fork at Peggy.

  Americans, I realised, aren’t keen on knives at meals except for cutting, and I self-consciously looked at my own knife and fork filled hands and quickly set the knife down at the side of my plate, not wanting – two ties notwithstanding – to look anything but one of them. Peggy confirmed that, indeed, she had informed me of the family interests in optometry, and then, after a bit of discussion about the relative costs of spectacles in New Rochelle and London – “Course, it’s another story in Manhattan, right Barb? They charge what they like there” – and then the previously advertised explanation of the differences between an optometrist and an optician, not forgetting that an ophthalmologist was different again, during which I really’d? and is-that-so’d? as many times as I decently could, and after I had complemented Barbara on her wonderful cooking and accepted her offer of second helpings without, as I’ve said, having the slightest idea of what I was eating, we got to the dessert, which was probably apple pie or key lime pie or whatever else it is Americans give you.

  At this point, or maybe it was with the coffee, the photograph albums came out, and I saw pictures of Peggy at six months, Peggy at two, three and four, Peggy at seven at Marv’s fifth birthday party, Peggy at thirteen in braces, Peggy dressed for her high school prom – “New Rochelle High, fine school,” Herb threw in – Peggy in her gown and mortar board at her graduation ceremony from NYSU – “Remember that day, Herb?” reminisced Barbara, “Such a pretty town, Binghamton” – and then the album was hastily shut by Barbara on a shot of Peggy with some bloke who I didn’t get a proper look at, but who, I had a nasty suspicion, might have been Miller.

  Then Herb had the bright idea of showing me round New Rochelle and away we went, Barbara driving, Herb acting as tour guide. (Mrs Lipschitz stayed at home.) Herb put particular emphasis on the sights on Quaker Ridge Road which, coincidentally, included ‘Lee’s Eyeglasses, serving New Rochelle since 1965’. The Pontiac idled, and the windows descended electrically – still, in 1979, a rather exotic touch to me – while we examined its rather faded charms.