What a Carve Up! (8 page)

The first thing Fiona said about the flat, after we had been talking a little while, was that she felt it needed some pot plants. She sang the praises of cyclamen and hibiscus. She waxed lyrical about the merits of cineraria and asparagus fern. She had gone crazy on cineraria recently, she said. It would never have occurred to me to buy myself a pot plant and I tried to imagine what it would be like to share this room with a living, growing organism as well as my stale litter of films and magazines. I poured myself another beer and fetched her some more orange juice and this time she asked me to put some vodka in it. I could tell she was a warm and friendly woman because when I came to sit next to her on the sofa in order to fill out her sponsorship form, she was quite happy to let our legs come into occasional contact: there was no shrinking away, and as I wrote down the amount and signed my name I could feel our thighs touching, and I wondered how this had happened, if in fact it was Fiona who had edged closer to me. And soon it became clear that she was in no great hurry to leave, that she was for some reason enjoying talking to me – I who had so little to give in return – and I could only conclude from this that she must in some brave, quiet, reckless way have been a little desperate for companionship, because although I was a poor companion that evening, and although my behaviour must certainly have frightened her to start with, still she persisted, and grew more and more relaxed, and more and more talkative. I can’t remember how long she stayed, or what it was we talked about, but I can remember enjoying it, at first, this unaccustomed business of talking, and it must have been quite a while, several drinks later, before I began to feel tired again and uneasy. I don’t know why this should have happened, because I was still enjoying myself, but I had this sudden and intense craving to be on my own. Fiona carried on talking, I may even have been answering back, but my attention had started to wander and she only regained it by saying something which surprised me very much.

‘You can’t switch me off,’ she said.

‘Pardon?’

‘You can’t switch me off.’

She nodded at my hands. I had gone back to the armchair opposite her and without realizing it I had picked up the remote control for the video. It was pointed in her direction and my finger had strayed to the pause button.

‘I think I’d better go,’ she said, and stood up.

As she made for the door, sponsorship form in hand, I made a sudden bid to save the situation by blurting out: ‘I think I’ll get myself one of those plants. It’ll make quite a difference.’

She turned. ‘There’s a little nursery on my way home from work,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll get one for you if you like. I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’

‘Thanks. That’s very kind.’

And then she was gone. For a few seconds after the door had closed behind her I experienced a peculiar sensation: a feeling of loneliness. But this loneliness was mingled with relief and before long the relief had taken over, swamping me and calming me and guiding me gently back to the armchair and to my two friends, my trusted companions, the remote control units for the television and the video, resting one on each arm. I switched the machines on and pressed play, and Kenneth said:

‘Well, a – a handsome face isn’t everything, you know.’

∗

I woke up the next morning with a sense that something subtly momentous had happened. The event, whatever it was, would clearly not bear analysis at this stage, but in the meantime I was anxious to take advantage of its most immediate symptom, which was a surge of mental and physical energy unprecedented in my recent experience. A handful of disagreeable tasks had been gathered, cloudy and lowering, on my mental horizon for some months now, but today it felt as though their weight had been lifted and they lay before me, unthreatening, inviting even, like a set of stepping stones which would lead me to a brighter future. I wasted no time lying around in bed. I got up and showered, made myself some breakfast, washed up and then began to hoover the whole of the flat. After that I went round with a duster, creaming off layers of dust so thick that I had to shake the cloth out of the window with every wipe. Then, tiring a little, I did a bit of desultory tidying and re-organizing. I was anxious, among other to make sure that certain papers were still to be found where I had left them many months ago, because I intended to re-acquaint myself with these and to start work on them again in the afternoon. They turned up after a search of perhaps thirty minutes, and I dropped them in a single pile on my freshly cleared desk.

This was without doubt an extraordinary day and to prove it I now did yet another extraordinary thing. I went for a walk.

My flat was at the rear of a large mansion block which fronted on to Battersea Park. Although this had been one of my main reasons for buying it, some seven or eight years ago, I rarely took advantage of the location. Circumstances sometimes obliged me to walk through the park, it’s true, but this was not the same as choosing to do so for the purposes of pleasure or meditation, and I would take absolutely no notice of my surroundings on these occasions. As it happens, I hadn’t intended to take much notice of them today, either, because when I set out on my walk I did so primarily in the hope that it would enable me to reach a certain decision, the taking of which, like so much else in my life, I had now been deferring for far too long. But it seemed that in my newly wakened state I was also less than usually capable of ignoring the world around me, and I found that I was beginning to warm to this park, which had never before struck me as being one of London’s most attractive. The grass was parched, the flowerbeds cracked and grey in the sun, but none the less their colours astounded me. It felt as though I were seeing them for the first time. Beneath a sky of impossibly pale blue, hordes of lunchtime sunbathers were surrendering themselves to the glare; occasional bits of clothing in garish primary colours shielded their pinkening bodies, while their heads throbbed to the beat of the sun and the deadening pulse of their ghetto-blasters and personal stereos. (There was a confusion of different musics.) The bins were overflowing with bottles, cans and the discarded wrappings of pre-packed sandwiches. The mood seemed to be one of festivity, with just a distant hint of tension and resentment – perhaps because the heat verged, as usual, on the unbearable, or simply because we all knew in our hearts that this was not the best place to be trying to enjoy it. I wondered how many other people were wishing that they could have been in the countryside; the real countryside, of which this park was in fact little more than a scurrilous parody. In the north-western corner, not far from the river, there was an attempt at a walled garden, and as I sat there for a few minutes it reminded me of the garden at the back of Mr Nuttall’s farm, where I used to play with Joan. But here, instead of that enchanted silence which we had taken so much for granted, I heard the rattling of lorries and the thunder of passing aeroplanes, and there were no sparrows or starlings to watch us from the trees, just strutting city pigeons and fat black rooks the size of small chickens.

As for that decision, it was arrived at soon enough. Earlier in the week I had received a bank statement, and this morning I had opened it to discover, not very much to my surprise, that I was heavily overdrawn. In which case, something would have to be done about the pile of manuscript now lying on my desk. With luck – perhaps with the aid of a miracle – there might just be money to be raised on it: but I would have to read it through as quickly as possible, so that I could decide how to approach the relevant publishers.

I started on this task as soon as I got back to the flat, and had managed to read about seventy pages when Fiona called by in the early evening. She brought two large paper carrier bags, one of which had foliage spilling over the top.

‘Gosh,’ she said. ‘You look different.’

(I remember these rather absurd exclamations of hers, now. ‘Gosh’ was one; ‘Crikey’, another.)

‘Do I?’ I said.

‘I caught you on a bad night, didn’t I? Last evening, I mean.’

‘Maybe. I’m feeling more … with it, tonight.’

She put the carrier bags down on the floor, saying: ‘I brought these round right away. They need re-potting. If I can leave them here, I’ll just go and freshen up and things, and then I’ll come and give you a hand.’

When she had gone I took a peek inside the bags. There were plants in one and a couple of fair-sized earthenware pots and saucers in the other, along with some bits of shopping, and a newspaper. It was a long time since I had looked at this particular tabloid, but remembering that today was a Friday I took it out of the bag and thumbed rapidly to a page near the middle. When I found what I was looking for I smiled a private smile, and started to read through it: without much interest at first, but then, after a few lines, I frowned and something chimed within my memory. I went into my spare bedroom, the one I used as a study (the one I never went into), and came back with a large box file full of newspaper clippings. I was looking through these when Fiona returned.

She took her bags through into the kitchen and set about repotting the plants. I could hear the noise of things being moved about and taps being turned on and off. At one point she said: ‘I must say your kitchen’s awfully clean.’

‘I’ll come and help in a minute,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate this, you know. I must reimburse you.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘Ha!’

I had found the cutting, which I pulled out of the box with this small cry of triumph. It was a vindication of my powers of recall, apart from anything else. I laid out today’s paper on the dining table, opened at the appropriate page, placed the cutting next to it and read both items again carefully. My frown deepened. When Fiona came in carrying one of the plants, she said: ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink.’

‘Sorry. Of course. Only I was just looking at this column. What do you make of it?’

When she saw that I was looking at her newspaper, Fiona became defensive: ‘I didn’t buy that, you know. I found it on the tube.’ She glanced at the identical pictures of Hilary Winshaw which headed each page, and grimaced. ‘That dreadful woman. I hope you’re not going to tell me you’re a fan.’

‘Not at all. But I do have a professional interest. Read them while I get you something, and let me know what you think.’

The column had been running for more than six years now and still bore the title PLAIN COMMON SENSE. The photograph at the top hadn’t changed, either. It was here, every Friday, that the great television mogul and media personality could be found airing her views on any topic which happened to seize her wandering fancy, holding forth with equal conviction on issues ranging from the welfare state and the international situation to the length of hemline sported by members of the royal family on recent social outings. Countless thousands of readers seemed to have been charmed, over the years, by her endearing habit of professing almost total ignorance of any subject which she chose to discuss – her speciality in this regard being a willingness to put forward the most strident opinions relating to controversial books and films while cheerfully admitting that she had been unable to find the time to read or see them. Another winning feature was her way of making the reader feel generously included within her circle of intimates, by being prepared to write at extraordinary length about the minutiae of her domestic arrangements, in tones which would rise to a pitch of righteous indignation whenever she described the vagaries of the successive builders, plumbers and decorators who seemed to be in permanent attendance at her enormous Chelsea home. It’s an interesting but little known fact that for pouring out this torrent of nonsense, Ms Winshaw was paid a yearly fee equivalent to six times the salary of a qualified school-teacher and eight times that of a staff nurse in the National Health Service. I’ve got proof of that, as well.

The two items which I’d chosen for comparison found Hilary in a political frame of mind. Although they were separated by roughly four years, I present them here as Fiona and I read them that day: side by side.