How It All Began (12 page)

Marion stared across the table at him. Challenged, it would seem. Hoist with one’s own petard, is that it? Trust Uncle Henry to put you on the spot when it suits him.

“Well . . . actually, I’m not at all sure that I . . .”

“Someone well established in the BBC, or the other outfit—whatever it’s called.” He waved a deprecating hand. “One of those in charge of program making. I wondered initially about going straight to the top chap at the BBC, the . . . the . . .”

“Director-General, I think.”

“Quite. Find out who he is and put the proposal to him—but, on second thought, it makes more sense to deal with the people who’re going to actually
do
the program, don’t you think? So—who do you suggest?”

“I don’t . . .” she began. But I do, she thought. I’ve known for the last two minutes that I do.

Henry pounced on the hesitation.

“Yes?”

All right. It’s not going to come to anything, in any case, and all it means is that I look a bit of an idiot, unleashing Uncle Henry with this fantasy.

“Well, there is someone I did some work for a couple of years ago who does BBC documentary programs, I understood.”

“Ah. Senior figure?”

“Very, I think.”

“Excellent. What’s his name?”

“Her.”

“Oh. Really?” Henry had never quite got used to women in top positions, even after Mrs. Thatcher.

“Delia Canning,” said Marion wearily. “I’ll look up her details and phone them through to Rose.”

She had done up a Chelsea flat for Delia Canning; all cutting-edge sophistication, she remembered. Delia Canning will think Uncle Henry a figure out of the Ark. Sorry, Delia—but you’re a smooth operator and will get him off your back in a trice.

“Good girl,” purred Henry. “I knew you’d come up with the answer. Let’s ring for Corrie—I think she’s made us one of her jam rolls.”

Jeremy left Marion another text: “Hope uncle lunch not too trying. Tonight? Please, please.” There was a couple hovering around the new stained glass panels; their second visit, and he needed to chat them up a bit more, point out that Edwardian stained glass butterflies are the ultimate, you can hardly ever lay hands on them. Those panels had only come in a day or two ago, and were not yet priced; he slapped on another hundred quid as he crossed the warehouse to engage the couple.

Marion was being a bit iffy these days which was really boring of her, just when he needed all the support he could get. Mind, he had never assumed that this was forever, but he must have someone, and now was not the time to be looking around for greener grass, with the solicitor and the bank on his back. There had often been someone, over the last few years—a necessity, with Stella the way she was—but most had been passing fancies, and he’d felt Marion to be a tad more serious—more than a tad, really. So he needed her, he must keep her onside, at least until . . . well, he had no idea until what, or when.

The solicitor’s letters crashed through the door of his flat once a week. God, how he had come to dislike that flat; he had never planned on
living
there, it was just to be his London pad, convenient for the warehouse, convenient for—well, some personal independence. Instead of which it was apparently now his
hom
e—an abuse of the term. Home was the dear old Surrey farmhouse, with all its attractive things—Stella could do a place up nicely, you had to hand her that—and supper ready when he got in at night, and the girls all welcoming
and amusing, and Stella affectionate and attentive and not in one of her states.

The solicitor’s letters received cursory treatment. Jeremy would skim through the demands, then write a petulant and noncommittal response, the subtext of which was a further plea to Stella for direct contact: “Kindly convey to my wife . . .”

And not only did the bank refuse to consider a further business loan but they were getting shirty about the payments on the previous one. Well, stuff them. Jeremy had been fending off banks for the last twenty years and he knew how to do it. So far, anyway. Something would turn up—he’d find some gem and make a killing, or at least a small stash. He’d sort the bank out, one way or another. Eventually, surely, Stella would see sense and sack that bloody man and life would get back to normal, or as normal as it had ever been—one had never
wanted
a bog standard, nine-to-five existence.

Jeremy had never believed in planning life. It’s nerds who plan and structure—the sort of people who go for the sort of job interview that says: “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” And of course they see themselves as a few rungs up the ladder, smug. Boring, boring. Far more interesting to take what comes, make what you can of it, veer off course if that looks like a good idea. Way back, he’d gone to university, to please his parents, but was soon tearing his hair out at the tedium of lectures and seminars; as for exams—forget it. He dropped out, or rather, slid off, and eventually admitted to his parents that actually he was going great guns with a market stall in the small town near the university campus; soap and cosmetics and stuff that you bought cheap in bulk and then sold for twice as much—magic! A guy in a pub told him how to do it and after a couple of weeks he was hooked. But he got tired of that in time, and then the mirror gave him a better idea—the old mirror he picked out of a skip and sold to his landlady for a fiver.

Skips did him proud for a couple of years. It’s amazing what you find. One person’s rubbish is exactly what someone else has been wanting. All that’s needed is the middle man—the man with the van,
and the yard on the outskirts of town: Jeremy. His granny died—bless her—and left him ten grand, so there was the van sorted and the down payment on the yard. He called it Jeremy’s Place—big quirky painted sign alongside the main road, and an ad in the local paper every week. He teamed up with a guy who was good at restoring furniture—the table with a leg missing, the chest that just needed a coat of paint—and who could help heave the lengths of wood. They had timber by the ton—spewed out of one house by builders, snapped up from Jeremy by some more impecunious do-it-yourself home owner. He was a conduit—through him, those with too much subsidized those who did not have enough, and in the process provided Jeremy with some cash.

He discovered that his own personality was an asset. People expect a junk yard to be run by some dubious character in a greasy T-shirt. Not by Jeremy, with his nice public school voice (Mummy and Daddy paid a wad for that) and his manners and his jokes and his helpfulness: “I’ll drop it over to you in the van—no problem.”

And so it all began. Jeremy’s Place is a long while back—he outgrew it, saw possibilities that were far more enticing, more productive. And had learned by then that the golden rule is never to plan. Something will turn up—dear old Granny chose a most tactful moment to kick the bucket, Jeremy did that nifty deal with the people demolishing a hotel—one thing enables another, if you seize the moment.

He’d had to get himself better informed. Once you’re into the more fancy stuff you need to be able to talk it up, to know your Georgian from your Victorian. Actually, he’d come to enjoy that. Book work in the service of exams had been punitive; book work in the interests of commerce was at first stimulating and then rewarding in itself. He found that he liked to find out, to check, to look up; he acquired quite a library on furniture, ceramics, stained glass, metalwork. When something remarkable came his way he would recognize it.

He did. From time to time there was a windfall—the lovely Spode piece in a box of rubbish, the murky old screen that when cleaned up turned out to be an early eighteenth-century treasure. He found out how to dispose of such things—where to get a decent price. Good
fun—negotiating with the big boys, the pukka antique specialists, who thought they could take a novice for a ride, and then found they couldn’t.

The pleasure of this game, for Jeremy, was its unpredictability. All right, you never knew from one month to the next what you’d be pulling in, but except for the occasional crisis period there had always been enough, and every now and then a positive surplus. In crisis periods you crossed your fingers, kept cool, and told Stella to stop fussing; in a surplus situation you moved Stella and the kids into a better house, bought a nice car, or took a business risk on Bickston Manor—and yes, that went off the rails but we all make mistakes.

Follow your nose, that’s the recipe for an interesting life. What’s the point of plotting and planning anyway? You might die tomorrow. That was Stella’s problem—one of Stella’s problems: she was always in a stew about what might happen and what can you do to stop it? You can’t. What you do is go with the flow, see where it takes you, spot the next possibility. One thing throws up another—that’s the charm of it.

The couple eyeing the stained glass panels were bothered by the price. At least the guy was. When he wandered off to look at doors and brass fittings Jeremy went to work on the girl for a bit and soon had her seeing she just must snap up the glass before someone else did. He saw the pair of them out to their car, all smiles and no pressure. They’d be back.

There were only a few other people around, and the Irishman was on hand. Jeremy went into the office for a quick coffee and a look at his messages. Nothing from Marion. In an hour or so he’d try her again. Meanwhile, time for another wave at Stella—she never replied but he kept at it: “Tell your horrid man to stop wasting paper. I want to talk. Love you—even if you don’t believe it.”

Stella deleted Jeremy’s text. How typically thoughtless of him to send texts, given that treacherous little message that had triggered all of this. In any case, Paul Newsome had advised her not to reply to
anything—letters, e-mails, texts, whatever. Responses from her might compromise future negotiations: “That is what I am for, Stella—the buffer between you.” They were on first name terms now, though he always spoke hers with a certain formality. It was she who had said, “Oh, I can’t go on calling you Mr. Newsome.”

Her sister said divorce took absolutely ages. The friend for whom Paul Newsome had done so well had been at it for a couple of years. Gill said there was absolutely no point in rushing things, you had to make sure that there was the best possible arrangement for yourself and the children. Actually, there seemed to be no alternative to delay, in any case, since apparently it was impossible to get going properly until Jeremy saw fit to serve up a solicitor of his own: “Your husband’s intransigence—perverse intransigence, if I may say—has us somewhat stymied at the moment.”

Gill was saying that it could well be that subconsciously Stella had been wanting a divorce for a long time. After all, he hadn’t been exactly the ideal husband, had he? Of course, Gill has never liked Jeremy and made that clear long ago. Actually Gill doesn’t really like men in general. Stella had sometimes felt that if you were as determinedly unmarried as Gill then you couldn’t have much of an idea what it is like to be in a marriage. Gill ran dog training courses, was a churchwarden, and had a staunch circle of women friends whose lives also centered around dogs. Stella had once wondered if she might be gay, which would have somehow made her more—well, emotionally normal. But no, apparently not. Gill didn’t want or need anyone, just dogs. She was eight years older than Stella, had bossed her around when they were children, and then after their mother died young she had become Stella’s support and lifeline, which suited them both. Stella would reach for Gill whenever she felt things were getting too much for her, and if Gill thought Stella was heading for one of her nervous crises she would drop everything and come over, at which point Jeremy would leave home until she had withdrawn once more.

Gill said Stella was basically unstable—not her fault, quite possibly something genetic, they’d had an aunt who was like that too—and
what she needed was lots of support in her tricky times, and people who understood that she shouldn’t be upset. Some breeds of dog have that tendency, and it’s just a question of management. Gill knew a therapist who said that of course family circumstances are crucial in a case like Stella’s, her husband must be aware of his role; whenever Gill referred to this she would raise her eyebrows and sigh. They both knew what she meant. Gill had a vast acquaintance; she drew on many people for expertise, from the latest in supplementary medication to counseling at one remove, and of course for the provision of a top divorce lawyer. Both Gill and Stella were grateful for Paul Newsome; Gill had wondered about coming along with Stella for some of her sessions with him, but somehow he hadn’t seemed very keen.

Paul Newsome was going to cost a bit. Mercifully Stella had the money her parents had left her, which was in shares and building societies, safely tucked away. Gill had always been firm that Stella must never let Jeremy get at it, and thank goodness. In fact Jeremy didn’t even know about it.

At the moment, Stella couldn’t work out how much she was missing Jeremy, or what she felt about missing him forever. She was too angry with him to feel anything but resentment; the intimate sign-off from that Marion woman was seared into her brain: “. . . love you.” The last thing she wanted was to see him, to hear the excuses, the protestations, the promises. She just wanted him out of sight and, while not out of mind because that was impossible, out of the house and out of her daily life. So long as he was not there, and silent because she refused to listen, she could try to stay calm and resolute—and really, she was surprised at how level-headed she had been since she had decided that it was divorce, and that was that. She had had no real crisis days, few shaky ones, she wasn’t taking the pills, or not many. Each time she went to see Paul Newsome she felt—empowered, yes, that was the word. This was the first time in her life that she had taken a big strong decision, all on her own. Oh, life was all decisions—but paltry decisions, like where to go for the summer holiday, and what to get the girls for Christmas. This time, she had redirected her entire
life, she had taken control, she had not allowed an event to floor her, but had made it the occasion for a radical move. In the twenty years of her marriage, it had always been Jeremy who directed things—by being either broke, so it was worry, worry, or having a windfall, so it was let’s move house again. Now it was her turn.