Old Sins (62 page)

Nevertheless, he did finally get an offer of a job as junior editor with Doubleday at a modest salary. He looked up from the letter at the breakfast table, his brown eyes shining.

‘I’ve been offered a job, Dad.’

‘Have you now, son?’ said Scott, putting down his coffee and beaming benevolently at him. ‘What is it? Did that opening at Citicorp I gave you lead to anything?’

‘Er – no, not exactly,’ said C. J., who had kept that particular letter of rejection to himself for several days, bracing himself to tell his parents (he had had several and each one had upset them more than the last).

‘No, actually, it’s not banking, it’s publishing.’

‘Publishing,’ said Scott. ‘I didn’t know you knew anything about it.’

‘Well, I don’t much,’ said C. J., ‘but I don’t know anything
about banking either. And I think I’d like publishing better. And this is a wonderful offer. I’m going to be an assistant editor at Doubleday’s. It’s a terrific opportunity. I’d really like to take it, Dad.’

Scott looked at him, and bit back the words of discouragement and disappointment that were struggling to get out. The boy had shown some initiative, after all, and Doubleday’s were a good firm. He smiled at him.

‘That’s great, C. J. Well done. When do you start?’

‘In a month, Dad. So you don’t mind?’

‘No, no son, not at all. I’m proud of you, you’ve got there on your own initiative, and that’s a hell of a good thing to do. Write and accept it. Now here’s a letter from Julian; what’s he got to say, I wonder.’

He started to read and then drew in his breath sharply.

‘C. J., listen to this. Julian Morell says he has an opening for you in his London office. He wants you to join the management team of the hotels division. He’s hell bent on opening more of them, God knows why, and he’s got guys working on it night and day. He needs people to do feasibility studies of various sites worldwide. You’d be working on that side. It’s a hell of an opportunity, C. J. You’d do well. He says you could stay with him in London for a few weeks while you’re finding somewhere to live. He’ll pay you handsomely too. It says here, “. . . Tell C. J. he can have five grand and a BMW for starters.” Now that really is great, C. J., isn’t it? Listen, it would make me so happy to think that Julian and I could really put our friendship to work.’

‘But Dad, I already have a job. I don’t want handouts. It’s very kind of Mr Morell, but I really would rather not take it. You just said it was very good that I’d got the job at Doubleday on my own initiative. And I don’t want to go to London.’

‘Why on earth not?’ said Scott. ‘I’d have thought it would be just the greatest. All those old buildings, and you could go do your digging at the weekends. I don’t understand you, C. J., I really don’t.’

‘Dad, I know you don’t and I’m sorry. But my life is here, and my work is here, and I want to stay. I don’t want to work for Julian Morell.’

He was quite pale; he was so naturally conciliatory that every word pitted against his father felt like a self-inflicted wound.

‘Well, think about it at least,’ said Scott, disappointment and deflation echoing in his voice. ‘Don’t write to Doubleday’s for a day or two, and I won’t write to Julian.’

‘OK,’ said C. J. with a sigh.

‘There’s my boy. Now I have to go. I have a medical check this morning, this crazy ulcer is getting worse. Say goodbye to your mother for me when she comes down. See you later, C. J.’

‘Yes Dad,’ said C. J. absently. He sat reading and re-reading the letter from Doubleday for a long time. He was determined not to go to work for Julian Morell. But he trembled at the battles that lay ahead.

In the event there were no battles. Scott’s ulcer proved to be cancer and C. J. could clearly not deprive him of the pleasure in the last year of his life of seeing his son go to work for his oldest and dearest friend.

But having put his shoulder to the wheel, C. J. did push at it with a vengeance. He worked hard at his new job, and put thoughts of archaeology and publishing resolutely behind him; hotels were clearly what Fate had had in mind for him and he went along with her as graciously as he knew how. And in actual fact he didn’t mind it as much as he had expected. His father had been right in one respect; he found London wonderful. He began a love affair with the city that summer, that lasted for the rest of his life; it consumed his heart as well as his intellect. Where other young men pursued girls or worldly success in their spare time, C. J. pursued London. Every weekend he walked, exploring, looking, learning the place, familiarizing himself with every twist and turn of his beloved’s form. He began with the centre, as it seemed to him, the City, and roamed the small lanes as well as the high, winding streets; wandering down tiny alleys, discovering shops, churches, workshops, that stood as if in a time warp. He walked by the river, under the bridges, explored the docklands; he went to all the markets in Whitechapel and Leather Lane and the Caledonian Road, buying, bargaining, being inevitably and hopelessly (but quite happily) cheated. He watched the newly opened hyper-chic Covent Garden taking shape, and mourned for the one he remembered from visits in his childhood, when the streets had been littered with vegetables and lorries piled
high with flowers had held up the impotent traffic. He visited a strange pot pourri of places: the Museum of Childhood, the Battersea Dogs’ Home, Pollock’s Toy Museum. He spent a whole weekend in Fleet Street and its environs, absorbing the smell and feel of the place, watching its twenty-four-hour day pass from one early dawn as the lorries thundered out of the bays with their load of newspapers to the next. He could have written a thesis on the churches and cathedrals of the city, from the sweeping majesty of St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, to the high self-conscious fashionableness of Chelsea Old Church and St James’s Spanish Place, which made him feel strangely at home and homesick for New York. He walked the residential areas: Belgravia, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Fulham; he knew the layout of every big store and small smart shop in the city. He ate in every kind of restaurant, from the chic eateries of Fulham and Knightsbridge to the more physically satisfying all-night cafes of Fleet Street and thence to the great English establishments, to Simpson’s in the Strand and Rules. He learnt the layout of the parks by heart: he visited Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, the Orangery in Holland Park, spent days in Hyde Park, rowed along the Serpentine; he sat in St James’s Park, and marvelled at the way it managed somehow to contain the English countryside, and he walked across Regent’s Park, and spent a dizzy, happy day at the zoo.

All this he did alone, for who after all, in the first phases of a love affair, wants to share the beloved; London was company and happiness enough, and he did not ask for any more.

And then he did not actually hate the job quite as much as he had expected. C. J. was a carer, and hotels were in the caring business; having overcome his initial distaste, he found he could actually get quite interestingly involved in how best to ensure the maximum comfort, visual delight and pleasure of one person for twenty-four hours a day.

Julian Morell was swift to realize that where C. J. worked, people tended to think more visually, more imaginatively, and he encouraged and nurtured him. He was a brilliant employer; as with his own daughter, he gave C. J. no special privileges, attention or opportunities – until they were earned. And as in the case of his own daughter, they were earned quickly. In eight months C. J. was promoted to deputy marketing manager,
Morell Hotels Europe, at a hugely increased salary – every penny of which he earned.

Julian had taken a considerable gamble in giving him a job at all, but in the event it had paid off. And it was making Scott very happy as he lay failing in his huge bed in the house in Oyster Bay.

Roz was very unhappy. More than she would have believed possible. She missed Michael Browning with every fibre of her being; she hated every beginning of every day.

When they had finally parted (at her instigation and against appalling opposition from him) she spent forty-eight totally wakeful hours, wondering if she could stand the pain and the knowledge of what she had given up. She, who had been looking for love ever since she had been a tiny girl sitting on the stairs and had heard her father’s voice rejecting her, had thrown it wantonly away. And not just love, but appreciation, acceptance, admiration, physical pleasure: simply so that she could be seen to be a worldly success, and to be taking up her position as her father’s rightful heir. And it might well be worth it, indeed she had to believe it was, but the price was horrifically high. She had expected to feel bad; what she hadn’t expected was to feel bad for so long. As the days became weeks, and the weeks a month, two, and her pain continued, she became angry and resentful.

It was very hard, even after this time, to stick to her decision; not to lift the phone, not to write, not to get on a plane. By one simple action, she knew, she could feel well, healed, happy again; but somehow she resisted. She had to.

At first she had expected him to make approaches to her, to try to make her change her mind. But such behaviour was not Browning’s style. He was a proud man. If Roz told him she couldn’t give him her life, then he was not about to crawl round her, trying to change her mind. They had one last night together, when he made love to her again and again, angrily, despairingly: ‘This is what you are losing,’ his body said to her through the long, endless hours, ‘this pleasure, this hunger, this love,’ and in the morning he had got out of bed and left her without saying another word to her, not even goodbye.

She had wept for hours. That was in itself a rare event; she surprised herself by her capacity to feel. Physical pain, this was; her skin felt sore, her head bruised, her joints ached. She couldn’t think clearly, or concentrate or remember anything at all for more than sixty seconds. That went on for weeks. It was only when she flunked an important presentation that she remembered sharply and with a kind of thankfulness why she had subjected herself to this: precisely so that she could work and impress and succeed and excel.

She went home that night and took a sleeping pill, set her alarm for five-thirty. By six-thirty she had run three miles, showered and dressed; by seven she was in the office, dictating memos. That day she instigated a complete re-evaluation of all Juliana’s outlets, made a review of the advertising and arranged presentations from five new agencies; called the studio in for a major briefing on re-packaging three of the lines, and tried to persuade her father of the wisdom of putting small, Circe-style boutiques in the hotels.

‘I think it would work, Daddy. Let me give you some of my ideas.’

Julian looked at her white, drawn face and her dark eyes raw with the pain and saw how he could help her. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that for a while. I’m not convinced it’s right, though. I’d like a document soon, Roz. I can’t wait months. Can you let me have it in three weeks?’

She looked at him with weary gratitude. ‘Yes, I think so. Yes. I can.’

He looked after her with great respect as she went out of the room. He was deeply thankful that the affair with Browning was over; but it wasn’t entirely pleasant to see her so patently wretched.

Roz was too unhappy to think very rationally at the time, but later on it was to occur to her quite forcibly that she could perfectly well have done her new job in New York under the aegis of Miss Bentinck, rather than in London under her father, and continued to see Michael at the same time. It was yet another example of her father’s power over her, and his insistence that she recognized and accepted it.

The document she delivered was excellent: clear sighted,
financially well based, persuasive. Julian, who had not had the slightest intention of putting any boutiques in the hotels, agreed to do a test in the Nice and the London Morell. As this came under C. J.’s domain, he called him in.

‘Have lunch with Roz, C. J., and talk to her about her ideas. They’re interesting. She thinks these boutiques should not be just expensive little shops but have properly planned merchandise with a fashion consultant in each one to coordinate accessories. It’s a good idea. Let me have your views on it.’

C. J., who was pushing himself equally hard to try and numb himself against the pain of his father’s death, hurled himself into the project with fervour. He didn’t particularly like Roz, but he admired her and her ideas, and he enjoyed working with her; personally she terrified him, but on a business level she was a delight. Her brain was much more incisive than his, she could see her way through a problem or situation with extraordinary clarity. She was a brilliant analyst and a very clever negotiator. But she undoubtedly lacked flair and fashion instinct, her own appearance apart, and C. J. possessed both; they made an unbeatable team. It was a source of great sadness as well as huge pride to Madeleine that Scott missed seeing his son’s promotion to junior vice president of Morell Hotels by just three months. Roz was given the same title at the same time. It was an interesting period in the Morell empire.

‘C. J.,’ said Roz one night, just after Christmas, ‘why don’t we go through these designers’ names over dinner? I’m really hungry.’

C. J. looked at her warily. He was less frightened of her than he had been, but she was still far from the kind of dinner companion he would have chosen.

Nevertheless, it was a pleasant evening. They got through the list of designers (and a bottle of champagne) in half an hour and by the time the first course arrived they were sitting isolated from the in-buzzing and shrieking of San Frediano’s restaurant in the Fulham Road in a kind of euphoric relaxation. Roz was enjoying herself for the first time in months.

‘Oh, it’s the best feeling in the world, this,’ she said happily. ‘Don’t you think so, C. J.?’

‘Being round half a bottle of champagne?’

‘No, you fool, you know perfectly well what I mean. Finishing a difficult job, and knowing you’ve done it well. And knowing you’ve earned being round half a bottle of champagne. What a ghastly expression, anyway, C. J. Is that an Americanism?’