A Polaroid of Peggy Read online

  “So,” I asked Harriet. “How do we start?”

  And her dapper assistant, Colin, appeared out of the ether, with letters of appointment to sign and billing addresses to take, and I was on the one way street to singledom. Meanwhile, somewhere else in London – very possibly in the building right next door – Alison was with her chap, doing the self same thing and emptying the Williams coffers by another £450 an hour. Only knowing Alison, I’d have bet a whole packet of chocolate digestives that she’d have got her chap for less, and that he – or she – no, it would definitely be a he – would turn out to be better than mine.

  I was definitely right about the last bit, although I am sure Alison thinks exactly the same.

  *

  October in Richmond. Leaves fluttering into the little well outside Donald McEwan’s basement window. Me staring blankly at them. With my new find-Peggy project to focus on, I no longer wanted to waste time on long bouts of introspection and I was at the point when, if I’d stuck to the pattern of previous rounds of Donalding, I might have been expected to ask for the bill, before buggering off into the Surrey sunset until the next mini-crisis occurred. But, with the drama of divorce soon to be played out in all its gory detail, I thought it might be a good idea to keep Donald hanging about in the background. I was bound to get upset and I would need someone to pass me a tissue from time to time.

  Eventually, I pinpointed one little thing that was very slightly bugging me, although I knew we could discuss it until the cows not only came home but had their supper and got into their pyjamas and started counting sheep – would cows count sheep? – could cows count? – before I got any kind of proper answer. So very slight was the degree of bugging that I had already almost forgotten what this little thing was, and was instead so fascinated by the possibilities of sheep-counting cows, that it was all I could do not to consult Donald on the subject of bovine numeracy. Even to me however, this didn’t seem like the best use of his time – or, more to the point – my money, so I eventually got back to the pre-cow problem.

  “Donald, there’s a bit of a paradox that I can’t quite square.”

  “That’s in the nature of a paradox, isn’t it?”

  I narrowed my eyes or whatever you do when you’re thinking ‘you see it’s not just me, you can be a bit of a clever clogs yourself despite all your WASPy Scottish wisdom.’

  “Yes, well, it’s this guilt I feel.”

  “Ah yes, guilt.” Donald brightened up. Guilt was meat and drink to a trick cyclist after all.

  “I mean, as soon as I even think about looking at the Polaroid of Peggy or watching ‘Seinfeld’” – we had, after my mandatory late arrival, wasted the first twenty minutes of the session while I explained the significance of all that – “I feel, well, I feel like a schoolboy being caught having a wank and yet—”

  “And yet—”

  “—and yet when I think of all the havoc I might be wreaking – which you have been kind enough to point out – when I go looking for Peggy, you know, barging in on her life, pissing off her husband – if she’s got one – screwing up her family – if she’s got one – doing all that, well it doesn’t make me feel guilty at all.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? Because I don’t. I mean why do I feel guilty about something totally trivial and yet don’t really give a fuck about doing real damage?”

  “Perhaps what you think of as guilt is just a fear of being caught.”

  “Well, what else is guilt? Isn’t it the little voice in your head catching you at it?”

  “Let’s see now. How about: the uncomfortable feeling that flows from a genuine sense – an inner conviction – that what you’re doing is wrong. Of course, what you’re doing might not be wrong at all, and you only have that conviction because of some silly idea you’ve absorbed – like having it drummed into you as a schoolboy that masturbation is bad.”

  “Yes, yes, well never mind the last bit. I don’t recall it ever being drummed into me that I mustn’t look at Polaroids or watch ‘Seinfield’. Quite the reverse with ‘Seinfeld’. No, let’s stick just with what guilt really is.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, tell me, when I have this feeling looking at the Polaroid of Peggy or watching ‘Seinfeld’, is that just a fear of being caught or does it come from an inner conviction that doing these terrible things is wrong?”

  Donald laughed.

  “Do you know what Donald? You’re a bloody genius. I don’t feel guilty about all the really big, bad things I might be doing and now you’ve convinced me that I don’t really feel properly guilty about the little things either. So basically, thanks to you, I have no guilt. Isn’t that exactly what a shrink is for?”

  Another session successfully concluded. Another bit of clever dick repartee to round things off. So glad I didn’t start on the ‘cows’ thing.

  And yet, underneath, I did have this uneasy feeling that I had touched on something that might actually matter. One of these days, I might even have the guts to face something seriously.

  *

  I am not going to get into the awful business of what happened when we told Florence and India. No matter how much they thought they already knew, and however many of their friends and classmates had been through it already, they weren’t, they couldn’t have been prepared for the reality. Because no-one ever is. Life, as they knew it, was going to be systematically dismembered and the pieces rearranged. And who knew how? Kids, as we all know, like routine. They like what they know – to the point of watching ‘Grease’ or ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ or ‘Wallace and Gromit’ again and again and again until they can recite every word from first to last and back. And then they’ll watch it again. And if you’ve ever so much as tried to offer a child a meal that they haven’t eaten at least a hundred times before, you’ll know how much they don’t like what they don’t know. The idea that children are better off out of an unhappy marriage seems to me to be dubious at best. My bet is that, given a choice, most children would rather soldier on with mummy and daddy at war than live in the cold peace of the post-divorce settlement. But the thing is, they aren’t given a choice, are they? Or at least Florence and India weren’t. As much as we might try to soften the blow, and, because we aren’t complete and utter bastards, we really did try, it was still basically a case of sorry, chaps, but you can either like it or lump it. So they lumped it. (And even when the children of a divorcing couple are grown up and living away, invariably they still don’t like it, because, whether five or twenty-five, the message they are being sent is the same: that the world, as they’ve always known it, isn’t worth saving. You’ve just taken all the souvenirs off their mantelpiece and smashed them to smithereens on the floor.)

  Before the day that I would much rather forget, when we sat the girls down and told them how it was going to be, Alison and I, needing to sort out the details of what we would say to them, had decided to treat ourselves to lunch at The Ivy. I suppose we thought it less likely we would start shouting at each other with all those high rollers around. (Lest you are concerned I might have given something away that I would later want back, let me reassure you that no sooner had Julia told me the booking was made, than I had her get Harriet Braintree on the blower to give me precise instructions on what I safely might or might not commit to. And I believe I’m right in assuming – and I’d certainly bet a pack of chocolate digestives on this as well – that Alison had had the same conversation with her chap.)

  “So,” I mumbled through a mouthful of Bang Bang Chicken, “we are going to tell them that it’s nobody’s fault, but that Mummy and Daddy don’t love each other any—”

  “No, we don’t need to say that.”

  “What then? That Mummy and Daddy love each other, but aren’t in love any—”

  “Don’t be absurd, Andrew. They’re twelve and nine. They won’t have a clue what the difference is. We’l
l just say we haven’t been getting on terribly well and we think it would be better if we lived apart for a while.”

  “For a while? Oh shit!” I’d spilled some Bang Bang Chicken on my tie. (Paul Smith.) I started to dab at it feebly with the San Pellegrino dampened end of a napkin – or serviette as Mavis would have called it, and which we, now, certainly wouldn’t, how bloody daft is that? – but I was obviously just making things worse.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, let me do that,” said Alison, and reaching to take over, she took the napkin out of my hand with one hand, and, with the other, pulled the tie halfway across the table – and me with it. It struck me that this instinctive wifely assistance was just like old times. And, since she had me by the throat, possibly just like new ones.

  After that, we went off the subject for a bit, but I got around to it again, as the waiter brought the main course. (Steak tartare and pommes frites for me, some zero calorie salad for her.)

  “So when you said, ‘for a while’, does that mean you’re thinking it might not be permanent?” I ventured.

  “No, not really,” she said, absent-mindedly taking one of my frites – old habits die hard. “I mean I’m not thinking it won’t be permanent. I don’t know, suppose I thought it might soften the blow.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. And then, “Oh for fuck’s sake Alison, will you stop eating all my bloody chips! If you wanted chips why didn’t you order some of your own?” (Old habits really do die hard.)

  Eventually we agreed on the following: that we would tell Florence and India that for the time being Daddy would be moving into the spare room – I wasn’t giving up my rights to the house just yet – that eventually Mummy and Daddy would be living in separate homes, but they, Florence and India, would have homes with each of us and that they could come and go whenever they pleased – seemed unlikely but they might be seduced by the prospect of power – that they would see just as much of us as ever they had before – which in my case, at least, could hardly be an exaggeration as, to be honest, it had never been that much, and for Florence, well, would it really matter anyway, because how much can you see of anybody through a slammed door? – and that, although it might seem a bit strange to begin with, we would all be much, much happier in the long run.

  Well that was the plan, and we all know what happens to plans. As I’ve said, details of the actual conversation en famille – pretty much the last we ever had en famille – and possibly the first – will remain unrevealed. Apart from two small details which say a lot and nothing at the same time.

  First, India wanted to know about what was going to happen to Anneke. Alison and I looked at each other blankly, because, bizarrely, this was one pretty crucial detail we had completely overlooked. After a silence, Alison played for time by saying that it was wonderful that India was thinking of other people – which remark might, at any other time, have brought forth a snort of derision from Florence but, on this occasion, very movingly for me, just saw her put her arm around India – and then added that we would discuss everything with Anneke just as soon as we had finished this family meeting. Which, of course, we would have to. It occurred to me, as I am sure it would have done to Alison, that this question of what, precisely, the arrangements for the nanny were to be, really was going to force us to focus on the exact details of all our living arrangements rather than just deal in airy fairy platitudes about sharing homes and whatnot.

  Second, they wanted to know about Spot. Here, calling on my many years of experience as family Snap champion, I managed to get in first. I told them how much I loved Spot, as they all knew, but I knew Mummy loved him just as much, maybe even more, so if Mummy wanted to have Spot to live with her, then I would grin and bear it. This was such a magnanimous offer that Alison could hardly be seen to refuse it. Thus I made myself a self-sacrificing hero to the girls. Thus, I could ensure that I could hang up my pooper scooper at last. And thus I proved I could still earn a little of Alison’s grudging respect. When things with Doug settled into their inevitable routine and when the novelty of that routine eventually wore off, I was fairly sure she would look back on my adman’s smart-alec incorrigibility with at least a little nostalgia. Or then again, possibly not. But at this dismal lowpoint in my life, I needed to grab at whatever straws of consolation I could find.

  *

  Anneke wasn’t the slightest bit surprised by the news or in the least bit fazed. But then, why would she be? Probably half her nanny mates had been in the same situation.

  Anneke being not just South African, but Afrikaans, did not speak English as a first language. (I’d once made a remark to Alison about her muscular calves being ideal for trekking which hadn’t amused Anneke, because, unfortunately, she’d overheard it, and it hadn’t amused Alison because I had obviously been taking note of the nanny’s legs.) With her slightly limited vocabulary and her flat, vaguely guttural accent this could sometimes give the impression she was a little brusque. But on this occasion her unintended directness had the doubtful benefit of making me face an unwelcome reality.

  “So,” she said, “wool thet mean the girls wool be with Elison mainly during the week” – we insisted all our staff call us by our first names – “end they’ll be wuth Endrew for lark, one night a week, and, lark, every other weekend? Thet’s how ut usually sims to work. Except thet wuth Thelma’s people (another Afrikaans nanny and family) the Ded’s always away so thet doesn’t always heppen. And the Ded of the kids Vera (another Afrikaans nanny) looks after, he’s got a new girlfrind end the kids don’t lark her so they don’t spend much tarm with him arther.”

  Yes, I suddenly saw, this was very probably what it would be lark, and I didn’t care for the sound of it at all. Didn’t lark his girlfrind? What if I had a girlfrind and Florence and India didn’t lark her?

  “Well,” said Alison, seeing the evident dismay which must have been registering on my face, and nipping in before I started hatching a plan to kidnap the girls and take them back to the ancient family shtetl in Lithuania, “we don’t quite know what the arrangements will be just yet, but you may rest assured Anneke, that your job is perfectly secure.”

  “Oh thenk you Elison. Bar the why, ken you till me if ah well git a rarse, you know, for working unn two dufferent homes?”

  I looked at Alison, Alison looked at me, and we both looked at Anneke, who looked back at us both, eyes as big as dinner plates, the very picture of just-off-the-farm naiveté.

  That’s the great advantage of being someone in Anneke’s position. You might just be being bloody cheeky and, quite deliberately, be taking a right liberty, but you can get away with it because no-one can ever be certain beyond a reasonable doubt that you’re guilty of anything worse than the not very heinous crime of lack of subtlety in a foreign language.

  Besides, unless we wanted to recruit a replacement – ‘family in throes of self-destruction seeks experienced etc.’ – we just had to grin and bear her.

  So Alison thanked her for taking the time to speak to us, I uncorked the first bottle I could lay my hands on, and my soon to be ex-wife and I sat in gloomy silence, quaffing long and deep.

  I once asked a friend of mine, who’d been through it all, if he had a word of advice about getting a divorce.

  “Yes,” he said, “don’t.”

  I doubt that it will have any more impact on you than it had on me, but, for what it’s worth, I pass his advice on.

  *

  Not surprisingly, given all the turmoil in my life and in my head at this time, my spirits, as you may have noticed, were up and down like a yoyo. Like a yoyo that was a lot more down than up.

  My humour wasn’t improved by my failure to make any headway in my search for Peggy. I tried calling McConnell Martin in New York but HR wouldn’t give me the time of day beyond telling me that even if they had been permitted to pass on any details of past employees, which they most definitely weren’t, their 1979 records w
eren’t computerised and, if they existed at all, were probably archived on microfiche in an underground vault.

  Then, after re-reviewing all the remaining evidence, or lack of it, I decided that it might just be worth going down the New Rochelle route. But how? We were still really in the relative infancy of the internet in 1999 and although BWD had its IT geeks, I didn’t think it would be wise to ask for their help. Doubtless the news would soon find its way back to Geoff and Vince, something I would not, for obvious reasons, have welcomed. I was certainly not up to speed myself and preferred conventional methods, so I called international directory enquiries. (Remember them?)

  After an age spent listening to a lot of whirring and beeping I found myself transferred to ‘Information’ somewhere in New York. My first stop was Lee’s Eyewear but I couldn’t get the name of the street off the tip of my tongue. It turned out not to matter. I was assured there was “presently no record of any organisation of that name, sir” anywhere in New Rochelle. Nor of a Herb Lee, or a Barbara on Overlook Road, one street name I could not fail to remember. So either they had moved away or, it sadly crossed my mind, had died. I asked about a Marvin Lee at the same address – perhaps he had inherited the house – but got the same answer. I even tested the operator’s patience further by asking about a Peggy or a Brenda Lee, because, well, you never knew, but, of course, I did know and I turned out to be annoyingly right.

  I did get the number of Temple Israel, the Lee’s synagogue, and called to find out if they could put me in touch with Herb or Barbara but the first World Trade Centre attack in 1993 and other terrorist scares had already cranked up the security paranoia to the point that no Jewish organisation would divulge the details about anything to anyone without a thorough background check and certainly not to some bloke calling from a strange and distant land – as anywhere abroad is to most Americans; and as it certainly was to the elderly, clearly deaf volunteer (surely, they couldn’t have been paying him) who was manning the Temple Israel phones when I called.