We All Fall Down (29 page)

Tim called out from the next room. ‘Mummy.' She left him, saying as she passed by the table, ‘Maybe we should talk later, if that's what you really want.'

He remained sitting in the kitchen. He felt he didn't know his wife. He'd been married to her all these years, and yet she was an unknown. She was virtually a stranger. She could spring something like this on him, and he'd had no idea, no suspicion that it had been lurking there, in her head. For how long? For years, or since yesterday? He didn't know, because he didn't know the woman he was married to. He stood up. He had to do something. ‘I'll bring my things in from the car.'

She called back, ‘Did you remember to bring those things for me?'

‘Yes.' Outside, there was a faint breeze coming in from the ocean. Everything was still, and quiet, apart from the sound of a lawnmower in the distance. He felt alone.

Later, they went for a walk on the beach. Tim paddled in the shallows, holding his father's hand. Kate sat on the sand a short distance away, and although she was gazing in their direction, Hugh felt she wasn't seeing them. Then they went home and had tea and watched an old movie on the old television set. Almost everything he and Kate said was said to their son. They made only the briefest of statements to each other. Hugh hoped his son wouldn't go to bed, that maybe, even though he was still young, he'd be allowed to stay up until late, and sit between his parents on the sofa, as he was doing now. He would act like a soft pink buffer and so prevent them harming each other. But later, inevitably and – it struck Hugh – reluctantly, Kate said it was time for Tim to go to bed. Then they were left alone.

If they stuck to safe subjects, he thought, if they avoided talking about their marriage, about each other's feelings or about anything to do with the emotions, then they might get through the evening unscathed, and after that there would be a good chance they could build from there. Over time it was likely they could discuss an ever expanding range of subjects, even, eventually, their own marriage, and so finally reach a better understanding of each other. And perhaps, in the not-so-distant future, they could get back to the kind of relationship they'd enjoyed in the past, where there was both love and trust and – well, he wasn't sure what kind of words he could use to describe this dream, except that they'd been
good
together once; there hadn't been any of this warring and distrust. That's what he wanted, and surely that's what she wanted? They were, neither of them, ready to chuck it all in right now, not this easily.

‘Are you still painting?'

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

It was like a slap down. Straight off she was letting him know that he'd asked the wrong question. Why could he never work these things out? Why couldn't he better understand what his wife wanted, what she expected, to hear? ‘I just thought that you might have been too busy or something, that's all.'

‘If my mother looks after Tim I can sometimes get to my old class.'

‘And is it going well?'

‘Really well.'

‘That's excellent. I'm really pleased.' What a stupid thing to say. As if he wouldn't be pleased. ‘Have you still got the same guy teaching you?'

‘Yes.' She concentrated on the TV screen. He felt she was holding something back. He'd always wondered about her art teacher. What was his name – Warren? Was she having an affair with him? Had she slept with him? Or modelled for him? That would have been bad enough. What if she'd modelled for him in the nude? It was scarcely a good time to ask her.

She tousled her hair, rubbing her fingers through her spiky hair, a mannerism that had always struck him as false. He suspected it was supposed to demonstrate that she was clearing her mind or trying to bring it back from higher things, such as Art, to the mundane practicalities of everyday life. She frowned, then looked over to him as if she had only just become aware of his presence. They stared at each other in silence.

He stood up. He was finding it hard to sit so close to her. He paced up and down the small room. He wanted to get away, to leave Palm Beach, but how could that be? Was there now nothing they could say to each other? And what about his marriage? Shouldn't he want to stay and fight for that?

* * *

The next morning, at breakfast, she told him her parents had called to say they were coming down. ‘They'll be here for lunch.' She also told him that she quite understood if he wanted to head back home later in the morning, if he didn't feel comfortable seeing them – even though they'd love to see him again. She hoped he'd leave. She was worried because she'd forgotten to tell her parents not to mention her plan to move in with them. ‘Only for a short while, of course,' she'd told them, ‘until I'm ready to move back with Hugh.' She didn't want them to say anything to their son-in-law, especially not her father.

He left mid-morning. Tim clung to him when he said goodbye. ‘Don't go, Daddy.'

‘I have to get back, darling.' He picked him up.

‘Why?' Tears welled up in Tim's eyes. He stared at his father, his face right up close to his own. Hugh dabbed his son's eyes with a tissue. ‘Don't cry. I'm going to see you again soon.'

‘When?'

‘Very soon.' But the boy wasn't fooled. He started to cry, quietly, persistently, without let up. Kate took him off Hugh, but he couldn't be consoled. As Hugh reversed down the driveway, she hated him for causing their little boy so much hurt.
He just drives away and leaves me to cope. That's what he's always done.
She wondered if he was going off to meet someone, maybe the person he'd been with after that funeral. She wasn't sure now, looking back, that she'd ever really trusted him, and a lack of trust was hardly a good foundation for a marriage. All those nights he worked back at the office, and all those young secretaries. His assistant, Sarah, what about her? She was pretty – very young, but pretty. And Fiona, he'd always been close to her. Advertising was notorious for its promiscuity, and wasn't that what the business was all about anyway – deception and lies? Hugh would be good at those. Lying and deception would come naturally to an advertising executive. She wondered how long he'd been deceiving her.

He hadn't always been like that. It was only in the last few years that he'd changed. At the beginning, when they first met, he'd been different to any man she'd been out with.
Decent
was the word that best summed up that difference; he was a decent human being. He was less self-involved than other men she knew, more interested in her. She liked that, and the fact he was more worldly than her, and happy to advise her on so many things – finance, politics, culture, good restaurants, so many different areas. She knew nothing about any of these. Even her knowledge of art was superficial, whereas he could explain so much. And then, of course, there was sex. She'd been a little conservative in that respect, certainly more cautious than some of the girls she'd gone to school with. She could remember at least two of her classmates ‘going all the way' with boys and being quite brazen about it; one of them even showing her a packet of birth control pills and describing in a very cool and worldly voice what a man looked like ‘down there' when he was excited, and what it felt like when he was inside you. She hadn't been a virgin when she started going out with Hugh, but she might as well have been. When she was twenty-two, there'd been that one man, Ben Shields, who'd done it with her, or
to
her, just as, she later discovered, he'd done it with practically every other girl in their circle. They'd only gone out a few times before he passed on to the next one, his next victim. Sex hadn't been an awful experience, but nor was it particularly memorable or enjoyable. After Ben, she made the decision to save herself for someone special, conveniently blocking from her mind the fact that it was now a little late to do so. That special someone turned out to be Hugh. She went to bed with him before they were married partly because everyone she knew was going to bed with someone at that time, but primarily because she told herself that he was definitely the one. Not wanting to appear too innocent in Hugh's eyes, she built Ben up a little, exaggerated his importance in her life, and said the sex had been ‘great, really good'. Yet she also told him, and was being totally honest when she did so, that Hugh was the best lover she'd ever had.

There was a time when he enjoyed being her guide and mentor. In later years he hadn't been so keen on the role, but this was more likely because she'd grown tired of being his pupil, and had reached a stage in life when she wished to discover things for herself; forge her own path and form her own opinions.

This didn't stop her continuing to believe in his dreams. He'd once had dreams. He never spoke about them, but she knew they were there. He was ambitious; not in an overweening, trample-everyone-else-underfoot kind of way, but with a definite desire to succeed. And she had no doubt that he would, despite her father's lack of faith in his abilities. Her father had a problem with his son-in-law being in advertising, and never bothered to hide his belief that Hugh didn't work in a real profession. Ergo, he was not good enough for his daughter.

‘It's an occupation that has elevated itself to the ranks of a profession without ever having received the nod from any outside official body. It's all nonsense, darling. Look at that Singleton fellow. I wouldn't want him to be a member of my golf club, I can tell you. And those Saatchi brothers in England – Iraqi Jews, say no more.' But he did – as if his thoughts on the matter had been bottled up for far too long. ‘One of them may be a Lord, but only thanks to that greengrocer's daughter. They look after each other, those sorts. These advertising fellows are no better than greengrocers themselves – salesmen. Everything falls off the back of a truck, and if it doesn't then they do their best to drag it down to that level. Like Charles Saatchi and his art collection. It's not art, darling, it's commerce. He buys and sells art as if he was a stallholder in Petticoat Lane – which he could well have been at some stage in his life.'

‘Dad, I'm not going to argue with you about this. I don't have a problem with how Hugh makes a living. I also don't have a problem with someone who supports the arts, even if he does profit from it.' It was her dearest wish that she could one day make money from her own art. If only Charles Saatchi would snap up some of her canvases.

Her father ignored her. ‘Those advertising fellows are no different to those upstarts in the city. Not stockbrokers, who belong to a long established and respectable profession. I've known some fine stockbrokers in my time. No, I'm talking about those finance people – dealers, I think they call them. Do nothing but shove money back and forth around the world, certainly nothing you could call productive. Yet they receive salaries and bonuses that are nothing short of outrageous.'

‘I'd have thought that being unproductive, as in not actually producing something with your hands, would be an excellent qualification for professionalism.' Then added pointedly, ‘In your books.'

‘I'm not sure that I follow you, darling.'

His wife offered up an opinion, tentatively, as if torn between the desire to support her daughter and a reluctance to step out of line with her husband. ‘I think you're being a little unjust, dear. I think some of the advertising you see on television is very clever.'

He snorted, looking quite scornfully at her.

‘Dad, the truth is, you wouldn't have been happy with any man I chose. And that's very sweet of you – believing none of them were good enough for me – but you're not living in the real world.'

‘Not convinced about that, darling. That fellow you brought round for Sunday lunch once. Think it was a couple of years before you were married. Now he was a good chap.'

‘Simon! You can't still be going on about him?' She was astonished that he still recalled a suitor who'd barely registered in her own mind. ‘Now he was seriously boring. That's why I invited him round for lunch. I knew you two would get on well together.'

He either ignored the insult, or else it failed to penetrate his consciousness. ‘Thought he was an interesting fellow, myself.'

‘Interesting … accountant. That's an oxymoron if ever I heard one.'

‘Make interesting amounts of money, that's for sure. Sharp as tintacks from what I hear.'

In those early days, Kate had seen her future husband as someone vaguely heroic, or at least with the potential to become heroic; a leader. Also, ideally, he would become rich. Her parents had always been well off, and she had never entertained the possibility that she'd be able to live on or below the poverty line. She wanted to paint, yes, but she had no illusions about starving in the cause of art, or living in a garret. That would be going too far.

* * *

Hugh Drysdale did not appreciate he was to be hung out to dry until he was, did not believe he was going to be stitched up until he felt the needle prick his skin, never conceived of the possibility that he might be marched to the slaughterhouse until he was already there, suspended from on high, throat slit, intestines and other vital organs removed, emasculated and twitching. He was somewhat naïve.

It was like being back at school and being summoned to the headmaster's study. The call itself was unnerving. The fact that it came from Russell's secretary, Lynne, didn't help.

Hugh passed someone in the corridor who said, ‘Cheer up, mate, it may never happen.' He recalled after the meeting that this may have been Julian, but he couldn't be sure. He could remember the words clearly, but that was only because he loathed the expression so much.

Russell was writing, or pretending to write, when Hugh entered his office. His ostentatious gold Mont Blanc fountain pen was certainly in his hand. It was more likely he was only pretending to write because Russell hardly ever put pen to paper. His pen was an affectation. The man was more of a texter, a tapper or – his number one preference – a speaker. Russell could really only deal with phones, really only verbalise, in the crudest possible way, the basic emotions that welled up from somewhere deep beneath his bulky exterior. He looked up now as if Hugh was interrupting him, as if his mind was engaged on other, more pressing matters. Hugh, again, had the feeling it was an act. ‘Ah yes, mate, come in,' pretending he had completely forgotten, and could only now vaguely recall, asking Lynne to summon him.