A Vintage Affair Page 3

‘Oh God!’ She clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘I haven’t done the blinis!’

  ‘I’ll do them.’ I opened the fridge and got out the smoked salmon and the tub of crème fraîche.

  ‘You’re a fabulous friend, Phoebe,’ I heard Emma say. ‘What would I do without you,’ she added as she began sticking bits of rosemary into the lamb. ‘Do you know’ – she waved a sprig at me – ‘we’ve now known each other for a quarter of a century.’

  ‘Is it that long?’ I murmured as I began to chop the smoked salmon.

  ‘It is. And we’ll probably know each other for, what, another fifty?’

  ‘If we drink the right brand of coffee.’

  ‘We’ll have to go into the same old people’s home!’ Emma giggled.

  ‘Where you’ll still be getting me to check out your boyfriends. “Oh, Phoebe,”’ I said in a crotchety voice, ‘“he’s ninety-three – do you think he’s a bit old for me?”’

  Emma snorted with laughter then chucked the bunch of rosemary at me.

  Now I began grilling the blinis, trying not to burn my fingers as I quickly turned them over. Emma’s friends were talking so loudly – and someone was playing the piano – that I’d only dimly registered the ring of the door bell, but the sound electrified Emma.

  ‘He’s here!’ She checked her appearance in a small mirror, adjusting her hair-band; then she ran down the narrow staircase. ‘Hi! Oh, thanks,’ I heard her squeal. ‘They’re gorgeous. Come on up – you know the way.’ I’d registered the fact that Guy had been to the house before – that was a good sign. ‘Everyone’s here,’ I heard Emma say as they came up the stairs. ‘Were you stuck on the tube?’ By now I’d assembled the first batch of blinis. Then I reached for the peppermill and vigorously turned the top. Nothing. Damn. Where did Em keep the peppercorns? I began to look, opening a couple of cupboards before spotting a new tub of them on top of her spice rack.

  ‘Let me get you a drink, Guy,’ I heard Emma say. ‘Phoebe.’ I had taken the seal off the peppercorns and was trying to prise off the lid, but it was stuck. ‘Phoebe,’ Emma repeated. I turned round. She was standing in the kitchen, smiling radiantly, clutching a posy of white roses: just behind her, framed in the doorway, was Guy.

  I looked at him in dismay. Emma had said that he was ‘gorgeous’, but it had meant nothing to me as she always said that, even if the man was hideous. But Guy was heart-stoppingly handsome. He was tall and broad shouldered, with an open face and fine, evenly spaced features, dark brown hair that was cut endearingly short and dark blue eyes that had an amused expression in them.

  ‘Phoebe,’ Emma said, ‘this is Guy.’ He smiled at me and I felt a little ‘thud’ in my ribcage. ‘Guy, this is my best friend, Phoebe.’

  ‘Hi!’ I said, smiling at him like a lunatic as I wrestled with the peppercorns. Why did he have to be so attractive? ‘God!’ The lid suddenly came off the peppercorns and they shot out in a black arc then scattered like gunshot across the worktops and floor. ‘Sorry, Em,’ I breathed. I grabbed a brush and began vigorously sweeping, if only to disguise my turmoil. ‘I’m sorry!’ I laughed. ‘What a twit!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Emma said. She quickly put the roses into a jug then grabbed the plate of blinis. ‘I’ll take these in. Thanks, Phoebes – they look lovely.’

  I’d expected Guy to follow her, instead of which he went to the sink, opened the cupboard underneath and got out the dustpan and brush. I registered with a pang the fact that he knew his way round Emma’s kitchen.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I protested.

  ‘It’s okay – let me help you.’ Guy hitched up the knees of his City trousers then stooped down and began to sweep up the peppercorns.

  ‘They get everywhere,’ I wittered. ‘So silly of me.’

  ‘Do you know where pepper comes from?’ he suddenly asked.

  ‘No idea,’ I replied as I stooped to pick up a few in my fingertips. ‘South America?’

  ‘Kerala. Until the fifteenth century, pepper was so valuable that it could be used in lieu of money, hence “peppercorn rent”.’

  ‘Really?’ I said politely. Then I pondered the weirdness of finding myself crouched on the floor with a man I’d met a minute earlier, discussing the finer points of black pepper.

  ‘Anyway,’ Guy straightened up then emptied the dustpan into the pedal bin. ‘I guess I’d better go in.’

  ‘Yes …’ I smiled. ‘Emma will be wondering. But … thanks.’

  The rest of the dinner party passed in a blur. As promised, Emma had put me next to Guy, and I struggled to control my emotions as I politely chatted to him. I kept praying that he’d say something off-putting – that he’d just come out of re-hab, for example, or that he had two ex-wives and five kids. I’d hoped that I’d find his conversation dull, but he only said things that increased his appeal. He talked interestingly about his work, and of his responsibility to invest his clients’ money in ways that not only were not injurious, they could even be positive in their effect on the environment and on human health and welfare. He spoke of his association with a charity that was working to end child labour. He talked affectionately about his parents and his brother, whom he played squash with at the Chelsea Harbour Club once a week. Lucky Emma, I thought. Guy seemed to be everything she’d claimed him to be. As the meal progressed she frequently glanced at him or made passing references to him.

  ‘We went to the opening of the Goya exhibition the other night, didn’t we, Guy?’ Guy nodded. ‘And we’re trying to get tickets for Tosca at the Opera House next week, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes … that’s right.’

  ‘It’s been sold out for months,’ she explained, ‘but I’m hoping to get returns online.’

  Emma’s friends were gradually picking up on the connection. ‘So how long have you two known each other?’ Charlie asked Guy with a sly smile. The words ‘you two’, which had produced in me a stab of envy, made Emma blush with pleasure.

  ‘Oh, not that long,’ Guy replied quietly, his reticence seeming only to confirm his interest in her…

  ‘So what did you think?’ Emma asked me over the phone the morning after her party.

  I fiddled with my Rotadex. ‘What did I think of what?’

  ‘Of Guy, of course! Don’t you think he’s gorgeous?’

  ‘Oh … yes. He is … gorgeous.’

  ‘Beautiful blue eyes – especially with his dark hair. It’s a devastating combination.’

  I glanced out of the window into New Bond Street. ‘Devastating.’

  ‘And he’s a good conversationalist. Don’t you agree?’

  I could hear the hum of the traffic. ‘I … do.’

  ‘Plus he’s got such a nice sense of humour.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘He’s so nice and normal compared to the other men I’ve dated.’

  ‘That’s certainly true.’

  ‘He’s a good person. Best of all,’ she concluded, ‘he’s keen!’

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Guy had phoned me an hour earlier to ask me out to dinner.

  I hadn’t known what to do. Guy had tracked me down easily enough through Sotheby’s switchboard. I was elated, then horrified. I’d thanked him but said that I wouldn’t be able to come. He’d phoned me another three times just that day but I’d been unable to speak to him as I was frantically preparing for an auction of Twentieth-Century Fashion and Accessories. The fourth time Guy had phoned I’d spoken to him briefly, being careful to lower my voice in the open-plan office. ‘You’re very persistent, Guy.’

  ‘I am, but that’s because I … like you, Phoebe, and I think – if I don’t flatter myself – that you like me.’ I’d tied the lot number to a Pierre Cardin flecked green wool trouser suit from the mid seventies. ‘Why don’t you say yes?’ he pleaded.

  ‘Well … because … it’s a bit tricky, isn’t it?’

  There was an awkward silence. ‘Look, Phoebe … Emma and I are just friends.’

  ‘Really?’ I
inspected what looked suspiciously like a moth-hole on one leg. ‘You seem to have seen quite a bit of her.’

  ‘Well … that’s largely because Emma rings me and gets tickets for things, like the Goya opening. We’ve hung out together and had a few laughs, but I’ve never given her the impression that I’m …’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘But it was clear that you’d been to her flat before. You knew exactly where she kept her dustpan and brush,’ I whispered accusingly.

  ‘Yes – because last week she asked me to mend a leak under her sink and I had to take everything out of the cupboard.’

  ‘Oh.’ Relief swept through me. ‘I see. But …’

  Guy emitted a sigh. ‘Look, Phoebe, I like Emma – she’s very talented and she’s fun.’

  ‘Oh, she is – she’s lovely.’

  ‘I find her a bit intense, though,’ he went on. ‘If not slightly bonkers,’ he confided with a nervous laugh. ‘But she and I aren’t … dating. She can’t really think that.’ I didn’t reply. ‘So will you please have dinner with me?’ I felt my resolve weaken. ‘How about next Tuesday?’ I heard him say. ‘At the Wolseley? I’ll book a table for seven thirty. Will you come, Phoebe?’

  If I’d had any idea then where it would lead, I’d have said, ‘No. I won’t. Absolutely not. Never.’

  ‘Yes,’ I heard myself say …

  I considered not telling Emma, but couldn’t bring myself to keep it from her, not least because it would be awful if she somehow found out. So I told her on the Saturday when we met at Amici’s, our favourite coffee shop in Marylebone High Street.

  ‘Guy’s asked you out?’ she repeated faintly. Her pupils seemed to retract with disappointment. ‘Oh.’ Her hand had trembled as she lowered her cup.

  ‘I haven’t … encouraged him,’ I explained gently. ‘I didn’t … flirt with him at your dinner party, and if you’d rather I didn’t go, then I won’t, but I couldn’t not tell you. Em?’ I reached for her hand, noticing how red her fingertips were from all the stitching and gluing and straw-stretching that she did. ‘Emma – are you okay?’ She stirred her cappuccino then stared out of the window. ‘Because I wouldn’t see him, even once, if you didn’t want me to.’

  Emma didn’t reply at first. Her large green eyes strayed to a young couple walking hand in hand on the other side of the street. ‘It’s okay,’ she said after a moment. ‘After all … I hadn’t known him that long, as you pointed out – although he didn’t discourage me from thinking …’ Her eyes suddenly filled. ‘And those roses he brought me. I thought …’ She pressed a paper napkin to her eyes. It had ‘Amici’s’ printed on it. ‘Well,’ she croaked. ‘It doesn’t look as though I’ll be going to Tosca with him after all. Maybe you could take him, Phoebe. He said he was looking forward to it …’

  I sighed with frustration. ‘Look, Em, I’m going to say no. If it’s going to make you miserable, then I’m not interested.’

  ‘No,’ Emma murmured after a moment. She shook her head. ‘You should go – if you like him, which I assume you do, otherwise we’d hardly be having this conversation. Anyway …’ She picked up her bag. ‘I’d better be off. I’ve got a bonnet to be getting on with – for Princess Eugenie, no less.’ She gave me a cheery wave. ‘I’ll speak to you soon.’

  But she didn’t return my calls for six weeks …

  ‘I wish you’d ring Guy,’ I heard Mum say. ‘I think you meant a lot to him. In fact, Phoebe, there’s something I need to tell you …’

  I looked at her. ‘What?’

  ‘Well … Guy phoned me last week.’ I felt a falling sensation, as though I were sliding down a steep incline. ‘He said he’d like to see you, just to talk to you – now don’t shake your head, darling. He feels you’ve been “unfair” – that was the word he used, though he wouldn’t say why. But I suspect you have been unfair, darling – unfair and, quite frankly, idiotic.’ Mum took a comb out of her bag. ‘It’s not as though it’s easy, finding a nice man. I think you’re lucky that he still holds a candle for you after the way you threw him over.’

  ‘I want nothing to do with him,’ I insisted. ‘I just don’t … feel the same about him.’ Guy knew why.

  Mum ran the comb through her wavy blonde hair. ‘I just hope you won’t come to regret it. And I hope you won’t also come to regret leaving Sotheby’s. I still think it’s a shame. You had prestige there, and stability – the excitement of conducting auctions.’

  ‘The stress of it, you mean.’

  ‘You had the company of your colleagues,’ she added, ignoring me.

  ‘And now I’ll have the company of my customers – and of my part-time assistant, when I can find myself one.’ This was something I needed to pursue – there was a fashion auction coming up at Christie’s that I wanted to go to.

  ‘You had a regular income,’ Mum went on, swapping her comb for a powder compact. ‘And now here you are, opening this … shop.’ She managed to make the word sound like ‘bordello’. ‘What if it doesn’t work out? You’ve borrowed a small fortune, darling …’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

  She dabbed powder on her nose. ‘And it’s going to be such hard work.’

  ‘Hard work will suit me just fine,’ I said evenly. Because then I’d have less time to think.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve said my piece,’ she concluded unctuously. She snapped shut her compact and returned it to her bag.

  ‘And how’s work going?’

  Mum grimaced. ‘Not well. There’ve been problems with that huge house on Ladbroke Grove – John’s going insane, which makes it hard for me.’ Mum works as PA to a successful architect, John Cranfield, a job she’s been doing for twenty-two years. ‘It’s not easy,’ she said, ‘but then I’m very lucky to have a job at my age.’ She peered at herself in the mirror. ‘Just look at my face,’ she moaned.

  ‘It’s a lovely face, Mum.’

  She sighed. ‘More furrows than Gordon Ramsay in a fury. None of those new creams seem to have made the slightest difference.’

  I thought of Mum’s dressing table. It used to have a single bottle of Oil of Olay on it – now it resembles the unguents counter of a department store with its tubes of Retin A and Vitamin C, its pots of Derma Genesis and Moisture Boost, its pseudo-scientific capsules of slow-release Ceramides and Hyaluronic Acid with Cellular-Nurturing, Epoxy-Restoring this, that and the other.

  ‘Just dreams in a jar, Mum.’

  She prodded her cheeks. ‘Perhaps a little Botox might help … I’ve been toying with the idea.’ She stretched up her brow with the index and middle fingers of her left hand. ‘Sod’s law, it would go wrong and I’d end up with my eyelids round my nostrils. But I do so loathe all these lines.’

  ‘Then learn to love them. It’s normal to have lines when you’re fifty-nine.’

  Mum flinched, as though I’d slapped her. ‘Don’t. I’m dreading getting the bus pass. Why can’t they give us a “taxi pass” when we hit sixty? Then I wouldn’t mind so much.’

  ‘Anyway, lines don’t make beautiful women less beautiful,’ I went on as I put a stack of Village Vintage carriers behind the till. ‘Just more interesting.’

  ‘Not to your father.’ I didn’t reply. ‘Mind you, I thought he liked old ruins,’ Mum added dryly. ‘He is an archaeologist, after all. But now here he is with a girl barely older than you are. It’s grotesque,’ she muttered bitterly.

  ‘It was certainly surprising.’

  Mum brushed an imaginary speck off her skirt. ‘You didn’t invite him tonight? Did you?’ In her hazel eyes I saw a heart-rending combination of panic and hope.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ I replied softly. Not least because she might have come. I wouldn’t have put it past Ruth. Or rather Ruthless.

  ‘Thirty-six,’ Mum said bitterly, as though it was the ‘six’ that offended her.

  ‘She must be thirty-eight now,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yes – and he’s sixty-two! I wish he’d never done that wretched TV series,’ she wail
ed.

  I took a forest green Hermès Kelly out of its dust bag and put it in a glass display case. ‘You couldn’t have known what would happen, Mum.’

  ‘And to think I persuaded him – at her behest!’ She picked up a glass of champagne and her wedding ring, which she continues to wear in defiance of my father’s desertion, gleamed in a beam of sunlight. ‘I thought it would help his career,’ she went on miserably. She sipped her fizz. ‘I thought that it would lift his profile and that he’d make more money which would come in handy in our retirement. Then off he goes to film The Big Dig – but the main thing he seems to have been digging’ – Mum grimaced – ‘was her.’ She sipped her champagne again. ‘It was just … ghastly.’

  I had to agree. It was one thing for my father to have his first affair in thirty-eight years of marriage; it was quite another for my mother to find out about it in the diary section of the Daily Express. I shuddered as I remembered reading the caption beneath the photo of my father, looking uncharacteristically shifty, with Ruth, outside her Notting Hill flat:

  TELLY PROF DUMPS WIFE AMIDST BABY RUMOURS.

  ‘Do you see much of him, darling?’ I heard Mum ask with forced casualness. ‘Of course, I can’t stop you,’ she went on. ‘And I wouldn’t want to – he’s your father; but, to be honest, the thought of you spending time with him, and her … and … and …’ Mum can’t bring herself to mention the baby.

  ‘I haven’t seen Dad for ages,’ I said truthfully.

  Mum knocked back her champagne then carried the glass out to the kitchen. ‘I’d better not drink any more. It’ll only make me cry. Right,’ she said briskly as she came back, ‘let’s change the subject.’

  ‘Okay – tell me what you think of the shop. You haven’t seen it for weeks.’

  Mum walked round, her elegant little heels tapping over the wooden floor. ‘I like it. It’s not remotely like being in a second-hand shop – it’s more like being somewhere nice, like Phase Eight.’

  ‘That’s good to hear.’ I lined up the flutes of champagne gently fizzing on the counter.

  ‘I like the stylish silver mannequins, and there’s a pleasantly uncluttered feel.’