The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers Read online

  Charlie stood up, took his blazer off, and hung it over a chair. Then he sat down again.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Quite warm in here, isn’t it? That dress suits you, Mrs Bendy.’

  She smiled complacently.

  ‘I still have quite a good figure,’ she said. ‘Or haven’t I? So vain of me to say so, isn’t it?’

  Charlie stood up once more.

  ‘You have a wonderful figure, Mrs Bendy,’ he said, in a hoarse voice.

  Mrs Bently went and stood in front of a long looking glass that hung near the door.

  ‘When we were girls, we were always made to do exercises to keep ourselves in good shape.’

  She started to flex her shoulders and arms in a way that emphasised her cleavage. Charlie watched in awe. As Mrs Bently performed these calisthenics she chanted: ‘I must, I must increase my bust - that’s what we always used to say when we did our exercises, Mr Summers-Stanton.’

  Charlie told me later that he had a theory about women; from a ‘ladies’ man’, one would have expected no less.

  ‘You see,’ he explained to me, ‘I’ve always felt that women want you to get on with it. They’re so practical. A lot of chat just bores them to death. I know you’ve got to send them flowers, and remember their birthdays, and so on. But all of that comes later. That’s a maintenance issue. At the critical moment, you’ve got to make a move. How bad can it be, after all? You might get a swift left hook. I’ve had a few of those in my time; one more isn’t going to make much of a difference. Or, you might get what you wanted. The main thing is, not to muck about.’

  I don’t know whether this analysis, shrewd as it may have been, was before or after the fact. At any rate, he stood behind Mrs Bently as she pretended to admire herself in the mirror, and put his arms around her waist. She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed back into him.

  ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t. You really shouldn’t do that.’

  Later, when they were in bed, Charlie admitted that in the moments of ecstasy permitted to them, in between the small dog climbing about among the bedclothes and trying to get under the sheets with them, the most difficult thing was knowing what to call his new mistress.

  ‘It was awfully hard not to call her Mrs Bently,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, on the first night, I think I did just that, at the critical moment.’

  Charlie also recalled how Mrs Bently had looked at him, when the lovemaking was over, and they were sitting downstairs again, drinking white wine and smoking cigarettes. Charlie was half dressed in his shirt, which I am afraid, if it was like Charlie’s other garments, would have had a greyish aspect, reminiscent of the ‘before’ look in television adverts for washing powder. He had on his trousers but no socks or shoes, and his bare feet, with their horny toenails, dug into the carpet.

  Mrs Bently was dressed in a silk wrap over her nightgown. She looked over the rim of her glass at Charlie with a mixture of affection and sad reproach. Charlie knew the look. It was one he had seen on the faces of other women in his life, other participants in Charlie’s dream of being what he called a ‘ladies’ man’.

  ‘They all look at me that way,’ he told me. ‘Of course, they have a bit of fun romping in bed with me, or I like to think they have fun. No lack of enthusiasm on Mrs Bently’s part, certainly. But afterwards it is always as if they were thinking: How on earth did someone like you talk your way into my bedroom? That’s what gets me. You might be good enough for them between the sheets, but when you’re back sitting in their front room with a glass of wine, they start to wonder whether you are what they really want, after all.’

  This impression was reinforced by Charlie and Mrs Bently’s first visit to the Stanton Arms a few nights later. In a small village, news of such romances travels fast. Charlie’s liaison with Sylvia Bently was, if not a matter of common knowledge, certainly of common speculation. More informed observers, such as Kevin the butcher’s boy, had predicted such a conjunction from the very beginning. As Charlie and Mrs Bently entered the Stanton Arms, she put her arm through his. He thought that this was very brave of her, and felt a sudden surge of affection for the poor thing. He squeezed her arm against his side as they came through the door. Then Mrs Bently stiffened in alarm, for she had noticed the vicar sitting in a corner. She withdrew her arm from Charlie’s. When they sat down, the vicar came over to greet them, and Mrs Bendy said, ‘Good evening, Simon. Did you know Mr Summers-Stanton has found me a dog?’

  Charlie felt that she could have at least called him by his first name in front of the vicar. That much was owed to him. The vicar joined them for a drink. His stipend did not extend to buying rounds, but his keen sense of his parish duties made him feel bound to accept offers of refreshment from others. Mrs Bently left without Charlie. He knew that the spare key would be under the boot scraper beside the back door, and that he was expected later.

  After half an hour he found himself at the bar, drinking a pint with Kevin and one or two other acquaintances from the village.

  ‘So you’m be sweet on old Mother Bently?’ Kevin asked him. When Charlie just looked into his beer, Kevin went on, ‘I thought she might be a bit too stuck up for the likes of you, Charlie.’

  Dave, the apprentice village undertaker, was encouraged by this licence on Kevin’s part.

  ‘It’s Charlie what’s doing the sticking up, ain’t it, Kevin?’

  There was some ribald laughter. Charlie raised his eyes to Kevin and Dave and said, in his iciest tone, ‘Don’t you speak like that about a lady. I know you’ve never met one, and never will, but show a bit of respect.’

  He fixed them both with his blue eyes, and there was a glint in them that hinted of real trouble. Charlie was a long way from being a physical coward, and the other two sensed it. After an awkward moment Dave muttered, ‘Din’t mean nothing by it, Charlie.’

  ‘Just having our bit of fun. Don’t take it so seriously,’ Kevin added.

  ‘I do take it seriously,’ said Charlie. ‘She’s a nice lady, and I won’t hear anything said against her. Or me.’

  When he left the pub a few minutes later, he felt a glow of pride. It would have been so easy to join in the laughter, but he felt protective towards Mrs Bently. Poor, vulnerable woman: right now she was cooking him some supper and later they would cuddle up in front of the television. Charlie knew she took some comfort in his presence. Who knew where the relationship might lead? He wondered whether he could ask her, later, to lend him twenty pounds, to cover a temporary shortage in cash flow.

  *

  Mrs Bently met Henry Newark the following Sunday, outside the village shop, as she was picking up her newspapers. Charlie was away that day: he had explained that he needed to go to Southampton to collect another shipment of ‘Yoruza’. In fact he was moving his weighing and mixing equipment, and his stock, from his lock-up in Gloucester to another, following a disagreement with his landlord about the amount of rent owing.

  ‘Good morning, Sylvia,’ said Henry in a kindly way. They were old acquaintances, if not close friends; Henry had agreed to act as best man at the wedding of Mrs Bently’s daughter a few years ago, in the absence of any suitable relation being available from the Bently family. Elizabeth’s father, Mrs Bently’s former husband, was tucked up somewhere outside St Tropez with a French girl half his age, and rarely, if ever, returned to England.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Henry,’ said Mrs Bently. Henry turned to go but then stopped, as a thought struck him.

  ‘Do you happen to know if Charlie Summers is about today?’

  Sylvia Bendy blushed so deeply it spread right down to her collarbones. She tried to speak as nonchalantly as she knew how, hoping that Henry Newark would not notice the change in her colour: ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t say, Henry.’

  Henry’s voice took on a confidential tone. Of all the local inhabitants of Stanton St Mary, he and his wife Sarah were the only ones who had not yet heard that Sylvia Bendy was walking out with Charlie Summers.
/>   ‘Only they seem to be worrying about his bill back in there,’ he said, jerking his head to indicate the shop behind him.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Another thing,’ said Henry. ‘They keep calling him Mr Summers-Stanton. It makes him sound as if he’s some sort of relation of ours.’

  Sylvia Bendy looked at him. ‘You mean he isn’t? I thought that was his proper name.’

  ‘Well, it may be,’ said Henry, ‘it may be. When I first met him he was just plain Charlie Summers. Of course, he may be a relation, going way back. One can never tell. But I must admit, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong end of the stick and think he’s my cousin.’

  Seven

  In November I accepted my annual invitation to visit the Newarks and shoot pheasants in the Stanton woods. I arrived at Stanton Hall the evening before the shoot, with a few other guests, a couple about the same age as the Newarks, and a single man, Freddie Meadowes, whom I knew slightly. Indeed, he was on my list as a possible future investor in one of our funds. Over dinner I became aware that Sarah was agitated about something. This did not escape the attention of Freddie Meadowes either.

  ‘What’s troubling Sarah?’ he asked Henry before we went through to the dining room.

  ‘Ask her about the Christmas Fair,’ replied Henry. ‘You’ll get a fairly full answer.’

  Of course there was no stopping Freddie after that, and he brought the subject up over dinner.

  The Christmas Fair was an annual event, held by kind permission of the Newarks in the Great Hall at Stanton. This was a cavernous and chilly chamber that occupied the greater part of one wing of the house. An earlier Stanton, a Victorian property magnate, had caused it to be built, and perhaps as he decided upon its enormous dimensions, he was imagining the possibility of royal progresses stopping at Stanton Hall; or at the very least, the regular re-enactment of medieval banquets to the accompaniment of music from the minstrels’ gallery. It was certainly not a room well suited to domestic use, and the Stantons of nowadays rarely opened it up: except for the annual Christmas Fair.

  This fair was organised ostensibly for charitable purposes, and allowed ladies from around the county - occasionally followed around by their unfortunate husbands - to do their Christmas shopping as conveniently as possible. At the same time the fair gave them the chance to catch up on conversations with friends they might not have seen for as many as two or three days. Stalls were set out providing every sort of luxury one could imagine: children’s clothes from France, jewellery from Sri Lanka, men’s evening slippers with pointy toes from Turkey; quilted jackets and cashmere scarves and leather hats, in gorgeous colours, for ladies who wanted to bring a much-needed touch of glamour to a day’s shooting. There were stalls selling home-made marmalade, fudge and carrot cake. There were stalls displaying stocking fillers of the sort unwrapped by men on Christmas morning and regarded with a look of bemusement: gold-plated clippers to remove nose hair; sachets of bath salts said to cure baldness or reduce flatulence; cufflinks ornamented by tiny, bejewelled pheasants; brightly coloured silk ties embroidered with flying pigs or leaping salmon. You might say that everything you never needed, but always wanted, could be bought at the Stanton Hall Christmas Fair.

  Few of the goods on sale were cheap; some were undoubtedly expensive, and a very few were priced so outrageously that one almost felt compelled to buy them, for the distinction of having been seen to spend so much money by one’s friends and neighbours. Cash, therefore, did not often change hands, and the more modern stallholders had credit card machines so that each transaction was virtually pain free. It was very pleasant, and easy, to buy things at the Christmas Fair.

  Everyone who was anyone was there, every Christmas, clutching huge carrier bags.

  A committee of local ladies, which included Mrs Bently, helped arrange matters and allocate stalls and send out tickets, but Sarah Newark was, certainly in her own eyes, the presiding genius of the event; even if she did not involve herself in the details of its organisation. Sarah Newark ruled over it all, as the chatelaine of Stanton Hall should rule over such things. Henry was always obliged to do a tour of duty on the opening night, walking two paces behind his wife with his hands behind his back, rather in the manner of a royal consort, nodding to the stallholders he knew. Sarah would favour a few of them with a kind word. She never bought anything at the fair, but drove some sharp bargains afterwards while everyone was packing away their unsold goods.

  On her tour of inspection on the opening night of that particular fair, not long before the Stanton shoot, she was walking among the stalls when she stopped so suddenly that Henry, who was not paying much attention to anything, walked straight into her.

  ‘What is that man doing here?’ she hissed at him.

  ‘What man?’ asked Henry, disentangling himself. ‘Oh,’ he said, as he saw what Sarah was looking at, ‘well, that is a puzzle. You’d better ask Sylvia Bendy.’

  In between a stall selling different kinds of Iranian caviar, smoked salmon and quails’ eggs, and another that sold champagnes and fine wines, was a very small stall piled high with bags of dog food. A large placard invited visitors to introduce themselves, or better still their dogs, to the new Japanese dog food Yoruza. Charlie was standing in the middle of the aisle handing out leaflets. He did not see Sarah and Henry approaching because a tall, grey-haired gentleman in a green tweed jacket and brown corduroys was busy quizzing him.

  ‘I’m curious about this Yoruza dog food. I don’t know it. I’m a breeder of show spaniels myself, and I’m always interested to find something new.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Charlie replied. Henry thought that he seemed a little wary.

  ‘People nowadays want to know what you are feeding the dogs, especially if they are about to buy one. I suppose that Yoruza complies with the new European Union Animal Feeding Stuffs Directive?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Charlie again. ‘I’m sure that it does. Would you like to buy a bag?’

  ‘For example,’ the old gentleman said pleasantly, ‘what percentage of this food is protein, and what percentage fibre?’

  Henry longed to hear Charlie’s answer, for he saw, or he imagined he saw, a look of fear and confusion cross his face, but Sarah dragged him away before Charlie could see them. Henry was unable to hear the rest of the interrogation, which may have been well worth listening to.

  ‘The effrontery of the man, selling his ghastly dog food in this house right under my nose,’ Sarah snorted, as she recounted this story while we sat at the dining-room table. ‘Poor Oogums nearly died from eating that stuff. Why Henry bought some I shall never know.’

  *

  The next morning dawned cold and grey and windy. We had a very acceptable day’s sport: the pheasants flew well, as the gusty wind got under their wings and made them go higher than usual. It was nearly dark by half past three when we came in to have tea in the hall. Then, one by one, the other guests left and Henry and I were on our own. We sat and talked for a while, first about the day’s sport. Then Henry said: ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said, you know.’ ‘Said about what?’ I replied, my mind still on pheasants. ‘About releasing some equity from the Stanton Hall estate and investing the cash in one of your funds. I thought I might go for it. After all, it’s just sitting there doing nothing.’

  ‘How much would you want to take out?’

  ‘How much do you think?’ asked Henry.

  ‘Well, we don’t normally start below a million. And you would need to bear in mind there’s a five-year lock-up on Styx II. That’s the private-client fund we’d put you into. You know we have a lock-up agreement with our private investors? Once you’re in, you can’t redeem your money for a while.’

  ‘Oh, I understand,’ said Henry wisely. I doubted that; no one ever really understood how we did what we did. I was not even sure that I understood myself.

  ‘But the money is safer with you than with some of the bigger funds, isn’t it?’
Henry continued. ‘I mean, you’re a hedge fund. Doesn’t that mean you always hedge your bets? And the returns look excellent. I don’t see that I can go that far wrong.’

  It was not my job to comment on such matters. Instead I said, ‘I tell you what we should do. Come up to London and meet my boss Bilbo. He’ll talk you through it all, and then we’ll see.’

  Before the conversation could progress any farther we were interrupted by Sarah. With an impressive and tireless disregard for what was appropriate to ourselves after a hard day’s sport, she had arranged a children’s tea party that afternoon for Simon, her eldest child. She announced that six children were about to arrive, and would we help organise some games for them? There was an unedifying exchange between Sarah and Henry, at the end of which it was agreed that after a token appearance at the tea party, we would go to the Stanton Arms for a drink, leaving Sarah and the nanny, Belinda, to get on with it.

  As soon as we could get away, we drove to the village in Henry’s old Land Rover. As we walked into the pub, the first person I saw was Charlie Summers, propping up the bar.

  ‘Henry,’ he said, as we walked in, ‘let me buy you a drink - and you too, Eck. What a surprise to see you both in here. Quite like old times.’

  Although it was only just past six o’clock, I had the feeling that Charlie was not sipping his first drink. Of course, Henry couldn’t bring himself to be uncivil to Charlie Summers, even if having a drink with him was the last thing he wanted to do just then.

  Charlie ordered the drinks, reached into his back pocket to pull out a battered leather wallet, searched inside it and then said to the landlord, ‘Bob, I’ve come out without any cash for some reason - put these on my slate, would you?’

  Bob looked as if he was restrained only by Henry’s presence from making a distinctly chilly reply.

  Henry rescued the situation by pulling out a twenty-pound note. ‘No, Bob, these are on me.’