A Polaroid of Peggy Page 32
At five past ten, I walked into Twain unannounced and sat down. I was still the Executive Creative Director so they could hardly insist that I left but the hostility and suspicion from Lucille, Hattie, and Mick himself was palpable. (The various client and agency underlings just mimicked their superiors.) Vince, who I had been forced to sit next to because the only vacant chair was there, looked daggers at me and was in the process of sending me a warning note – I was close enough to get an idea of what he was writing – when his PA, Maxine, came running into the room and mumbled something into his ear about an urgent message from Geoff. Then she slipped him a folded note which he opened surreptitiously but which I, by pretending to drop a pen on the floor, and then reaching down and rising up again at a certain angle, was able to get half a butchers at. I thought it said something about a try-out but I couldn’t have sworn to it. Then Vince folded the piece of paper, stuck it into his pocket, apologised to Mick and left. He forget to pass me his warning note, but he flashed me a ferocious look on the way out which did just as well.
Nevertheless, his early exit gave me an opening and I jumped straight in. I insisted on pushing ‘Seinfeld Reborn?’ onto the agenda there and then, distributed my document, and made my pitch. It was received in hushed silence. Or stunned stupefaction, to put it another way. But as sceptical as he might have been, what could Mick Hudnutt say? Particularly as I made the specific point that, as it was I who had failed to check out Jerry’s availability and price in the first place – always good to chuck in a mea culpa if you can – the agency would be picking up the tab for the trip. Job done. I left the room as abruptly as I had entered and turned off my phone as I went. I had no intention of letting anyone call me to put a spoke in my wheels.
My flight was booked for the next afternoon, Saturday, and exhausted from my sleepless night and to avoid seeing anyone from the office, I intended going home for the rest of the day. I walked around to the hole in the wall to get some cash before getting back into the Porsche, but when I put my card in, the machine refused to pay out. My account was completely empty and by now, probably seriously overdrawn. But I needed money. I felt in the pockets of the Schott jacket – very unlike me to wear the same thing two days in a row but I had – just to make sure there weren’t a couple of crumpled tenners somewhere, but all I came up with was the receipt from Books Etc for ‘Monica’s Story.’ The good news was, of course, that it was convertible into cash, if I could get to accounts, but I couldn’t afford – or thought I couldn’t – to run into Geoff or Vince, so I decided to wait in the car until lunchtime, when I thought most of the agency would probably be out. So I tipped back the seat and had a snooze in the car until, just after one, when I sneaked back in, and successfully made it to the accounts floor. But then I realised that twenty pounds wasn’t going to get me very far. I thought about getting an advance for my trip but I was worried that the accounts girl might ask someone for authorisation and that might turn out to be Frank Connor who might tip off Geoff or Vince, and that my whole elaborate scheme would begin to unravel.
This was what lay behind my decision to do something I hadn’t done since I was as young and callow as the two idiots. With hindsight it looks a questionable decision as, indeed, it would have done with any foresight, but, having said that, I should emphasise once again my general loss of plot, in the context of which it was made. I had, you see, the jolly wheeze of doctoring the Books Etc receipt and fiddling my expenses. This wouldn’t have been possible if I’d been given the usual printed receipt but, having received a hand written one – in a strange mauvey, blue biro – I had been gifted an opportunity which I now lacked the common sense to miss. ‘Monica’s Story’ cost, as we know, £20. My idea – not in the least original, and one with which you yourself may be familiar – was to slip a ‘1’ in between the £ and the 2, thus making the cash-in value of the receipt £120. To accomplish this deception successfully, it was essential to use exactly the right colour and the same style of writing as on the original receipt.
But where to find the right colour of mauvey-blue? I looked on Julia’s desk. Royal blue. Navy Blue. But no mauvey-blue. I slipped into Lucille’s office. No pens on her desk at all. I went from desk to desk throughout the creative department – on a Friday lunchtime as empty as the Mary Rose – and found reds, greens, blacks and every shade of blue except the mauvey-blue I wanted.
There remained only one desk to check – that of mouthy idiot. And there I saw it. A cooler head, a more calculating fraudster might have thought to palm the mauvey-blue biro and remove to his own office before committing his crime. But I, impatient and careless, and simply not thinking, opted to slip the ‘1’ in right there. Not easy though: I bent over the desk, checked the writing already on the receipt, did a couple of practise ‘1’s on a piece of paper lying on mouthy idiot’s desk, then pressed the receipt firmly down with one hand, and went to make the clean downward mauvey-blue stroke with the other. But just as I did so, I sensed a sudden presence, and head jerking up and pen-holding hand jerking with it, I saw mouthy idiot standing beside me.
I did not doubt for one moment that mouthy idiot was the perp of many similar felonies for his expression said nothing if it wasn’t ‘I know exactly what you’re up to, mate’. And that being the case, I suppose I could have given him a sort of ‘honour amongst thieves’ wink before casually strolling out. But instead, embarrassed and flustered, and with his laughter ringing in my ears, I pushed past him and fled back down to accounts. I handed in my receipt to the girl behind the little window who looked at it with obvious suspicion, hardly surprising given that the ‘1’ had a pronounced squiggly aspect, more like a tadpole than a numeral. She stared me in the eye, challenging me to come clean, but I held my nerve, claimed my £120, and since I was a partner in the firm, she could hardly refuse to pay out.
I went home and found an envelope on my doormat. Inside were the tickets for the 3 p.m. Saturday BA flight to JFK and a voucher for the Helmsley Hotel on 42nd St. All as requested. Thank you Julia. I made a point of not checking my phone messages, and took the phone – the landline as we now call it – off the hook. I made a sandwich (with my freshish M&S bread), and passed the afternoon and evening watching the remaining episodes of series nine – including the two part finale, which, I learned from the video cover, had been seen by seventy-six point three million people when it was first broadcast the year before in the States, and had been written by Larry David – an authentic genius in my opinion – who’d returned to the show specially to do it. I felt rather sad when it was over. And yet, also, an odd sense of – what? Closure? Didn’t seem very appropriate if it was, because, surely, I was on the verge of a new life-changing, beginning.
I took a shower and tried to sleep. And now, feeling much calmer, with my preparations all in place and nothing to stop me, I slept long and deep. In the morning, I awoke, packed a few things – should I take a tie? two ties? – and carefully checked I had Peggy’s address and number, and the Polaroid. I certainly didn’t think I would have any difficulty recognising her but I just thought I should have it with me. Superstition again I suppose. Nonsensical. Primitive. Aren’t we all?
First thing in the morning I went to Tower Records in Whiteley’s and bought a couple of Greatest Hits CDs for the journey. Peggy Lee and Chuck Mangione, just as you’d expect. A few hours later I was in the back of a cab on the way to Heathrow, my Walkman CD player switched on, Chuck’s magic trumpet floating through the headphones.
Track 1. ‘Feels So Good’.
Chapter 23
Tinton Falls and New York, 1999
I sat humming along to Peggy Lee (who else?) oozing out of the sound system – ‘The Best is Yet To Come’ (what else?) – in the rather splendid vehicle I had hired from Avis on 43rd St, just around the corner from the hotel. It was by no means their cheapest model but I was on company business. So I was on the company credit card. Besides today, after all, was my fiftieth bir
thday. And if making it to half a century isn’t an excuse for pushing the boat out – or in this case a nifty blue Mercury Cougar – then what is?
I had just pulled onto the side of Galloping Way, Tinton Falls, New Jersey, not quite bang opposite to, but giving a clear view of, the rather imposing home of Dr Myron Davis and his wife Vivien. (It appeared there was gold in them thar teeth.) I had been up early to make the supposedly hour and a bit trip but, having had to fight my way through the midtown rush hour traffic to the Lincoln Tunnel, and then work out what or where the New Jersey turnpike might be, and then get onto the I-95 (South but so easy to go North) and then make sure I didn’t miss the exit for the US 9 (which I did) and then – oh never mind, I got there in the end, even if it did take twice as long as it should have done.
But as it happens, the delay served my purposes. It meant that it was not likely that I would arrive before Myron left for work – assuming he didn’t now spend his days on the golf course which to judge by the splendour of his house he very well might – and that I would be able to ring Peggy’s bell without running into him. And my long, inadvertently circuitous, journey had provided the opportunity to listen to all of Peggy Lee’s Greatest Hits. (Even Peggy Lee wasn’t called Peggy, by the way. Or even Lee. She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in 1920. And, as the whole world knows, she wasn’t, curiously, the only star of her generation to have been a Norma first.)
The song for which Peggy Lee is most famous is, probably, ‘Fever’, recorded in 1958, and although it was on the CD, it’s not my favourite and I fast-forwarded through it. There are two Peggy Lee tracks of which I am particularly fond, and ‘It’s Been A Long Long Time’, playing now as I sat in Galloping Way, and which I’d filled the Cougar with a good half a dozen times on the way from New York, is one of them. Of course, at that moment, it would have been doubtful if there were any song ever recorded by anyone which would have resonated more.
I checked my watch. Twenty past nine. There was a car parked on the street right outside their front door – or rather next to the beginning of the long pathway that ran from the street through the perfectly mown ‘front yard’ to the door itself. A visitor of some sort I presumed, but I couldn’t contain my jumping heart much longer, so I took a deep breath, turned the other Peggy off, and walked up the path and rang the doorbell.
I waited. Only a few seconds in reality, I’m sure, but it was one of those occasions when so much seems to hang on the outcome that any waiting is simply unbearable. And then the door swung open, and for a moment, I swear, I literally stopped breathing. Corny. Clichéd. Mills and Boone. But I can’t think of any other way of putting it.
I looked at her. Gawped would probably be more accurate. It was unbelievable. She looked exactly the same. Exactly. The same tumbling black hair, the same flawless skin, the same sweetheart lips, the same brown black almondy eyes, the same slight suggestion of a mischievous smile playing around the corners of her mouth. And she stared back at me. Neither of us spoke. Neither of us seemed to know what to say. And, then at last, she said, “Excuse me, do I know you?”
For an instant, the most appalling thought went through my head. Were the appearance of unblemished youth and the complete lack of recognition part of the same dreadful condition? And then I realised they were, only there was no reason to be appalled, and there was nothing dreadful about it.
“Peggy?” I ventured, but already knowing the answer.
“Oh my God, you want my Mom! I’m sorry, for a minute there, you – er – you kind of looked – like you thought you knew me.”
“Well, yes, I did. Only I thought you were her.” I paused and looked again. I looked down to my feet. Was the outside floor level lower than inside? Because, now I thought about it, she did seem a bit taller than I remembered. But otherwise – I felt in my pocket and pulled out the Polaroid of Peggy. It was uncanny. Exactly the same – maybe a little less full in the face and a little slimmer than Peggy in the Polaroid, but then she’d been a little bigger in the shot than in the most of the time I knew her. No, it was extraordinary. I showed her.
“Oh my God,” she said again. “That’s my Mom! Wow! Where did you get that? When was it? Who are—”
“It was 1979,” I said, “Central Park. A Dr Pepper Concert. Robert Palmer—”
“Robert who?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “For the misunderstanding, I mean.” I thought about Florence. She would have been absolutely horrified to have been compared to a girl of twenty let alone a woman of forty-eight. Still, this girl was obviously a few years older than Florence. How old I wondered?
“No,” she said, “No problem. Look, let me go see if my Mom can see you. She’s with the physio at the moment,” – ah, the physio, must be the visitor parked outside – “but let me tell her you’re here. Can I give her your name?”
“Yes, wait, no, look it was meant to be a surprise. Would you mind just saying, I don’t know, that – that an old friend is here to see her.”
“O-kay. I guess.”
She obviously thought it was a little strange – and it obviously was, so I said, “Look, I’m Andrew.” No reaction, English guy called Andrew and no reaction, so I’d never been mentioned. “But would you mind not saying that to her? I mean, I’m sure she won’t mind – it’ll just be more fun.”
“Oh sure, sure. I’m Betty by the way.” And then she dashed off.
Betty I thought. How nice. Betty after her grandmother, Betty Lipschitz. Then it occurred to me, that meant Betty must be dead, as Jewish people don’t usually name their children after living relatives. I was reflecting, rather nostalgically, on to my trips to New Rochelle when young Betty returned.
“Hey, I’m afraid she’s real busy with the physio for a little while. She’ll be through in about half an hour. Would you like to come in and wait?”
Since we still hadn’t established the whereabouts of Myron, I wasn’t absolutely sure I did want to go in, so I said, “Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll just go and get a coffee somewhere, then come back in half a hour. Please tell Peggy that.”
“Oh. Okay,” said Betty. “Sure.” And gave me a glorious Peggy of a smile, and shut the door.
So I drove around until I found a cafe – it turned out to be a Starbucks, still, it is hard to believe, a novelty to me, as they hadn’t opened in the UK until the previous year – and spent the next half an hour of my fiftieth birthday having a cappuccino and observing the citizens of suburban New Jersey. I thought of calling Florence and India – I did feel a little guilty at having suddenly abandoned them – but it was only for a few days, and I couldn’t see how I could get in touch without raising awkward questions – where are you? why can’t you tell us? – that I didn’t want to answer. Besides, it was only for a few days, and I was still angry with them for being so disinterested in my birthday.
Then I drove back but the physio’s car was still there, so once again I parked close to, but not right by, Peggy’s house; a place from which I could see without being easily seen. I waited – the physio couldn’t be long, and sure enough, within a minute or two, I saw the door open and a young woman in a white, nurse-like frock step out. She turned to speak to someone in the doorway – would I at last get a glimpse of Peggy? I did, but not the one I expected. As the physio made the first few slow steps down the path, still half facing the house and talking as she went, I saw a wheelchair push forward over the threshold of the door and stop. And there sitting in it, quite unmistakably, was Peggy, smiling and waving the physio goodbye.
*
There are certain moments in your life when you learn a great deal about yourself. Or so I have heard people say. But mostly, I suspect, what is really happening is that you are simply receiving confirmation of what you have already known deep down for a very long time. I suppose it might be just about possible that, if someone with whom I was living were struck down by illness or injury and forced into
a wheelchair, I would be able to find a way to cope. But, as much as I believe that it is the connection of minds that really matters – the wavelength thing – and as much as I believed in the strength of my connection with Peggy, I knew that I could never enter into a relationship with anyone, no matter how I felt about them, if they were in a wheelchair. Callous. Unfeeling. Selfish. Even possibly self-defeating. Yes, maybe, all of those things. But, in that instant when I first saw Peggy in the wheelchair, I knew that there was no point in pretending I could ever do or be otherwise. Even before the physio had reached her car, I had turned the Mercury around and was heading back to New York.
*
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy fucking fiftieth birthday to me. I spat the words out as I lay on top of my king-sized bed in the Helmsley. Yes, I was bitter. Yes, I felt sorry for myself. And yes, I could see the ironic, self-damning truth that it was me I felt sorry for and not Peggy in her wheelchair. Ironic alright, but I found it hard to raise a smile. I can usually see the funny side of most things but although – being me – I was already, in a dark corner of my mind, punning away – ‘I don’t know, maybe we could make it work at a push’, that kind of thing – I wasn’t even amusing myself.