Girl on the Landing Page 10

  The committee room at Grouchers is a solemn place. There is a long mahogany table, its top inlaid with scratched green leather. Large mahogany chairs, fourteen of them, are placed around the table. The walls are lined with bookshelves that contain bound copies of the minutes of every meeting ever held in the club since the turn of the nineteenth century, and old suggestions books in which members have solemnly inscribed impractical ideas for improving the amenities of the club over the last hundred years or so. I took pleasure in browsing through these on quieter days when there was not much to do in the office. These books contain offerings such as, ‘Could the Club Secretary consider providing personal humidors to allow members to store their own cigars at the club?’ Last, but not least, are the volumes upon volumes of the Rules of the Club, amended every few years by Verey-Jones, and countless others before him. These books have an ecclesiastical look: bound in dark brown Moroccan leather and decorated with gold leaf, they recall scriptural works, and perhaps are invested with the same sacred qualities.

  Looking down on the room, from the wall at the opposite end to the chairman’s seat, is a sepia-coloured portrait of Emmanuel Groucher. He is seated in an enormous chair almost throne-like in its dimensions. His dress is not clearly depicted but hints at ermine (although he was never ennobled) or perhaps the robes of the master of an Oxford college (although he never went to university). In front of him is a half-pint bottle of wine and a glass. We all understand this reference. It is the club’s most prestigious asset, an investment made by Emmanuel Groucher in the first flush of his success as a wine merchant. He acquired, some time in the early 1900s, a share in a small vineyard in Beaune. This was known, at least in Oxford Street and the club, as Clos de Groucher. It was considered a huge honour to be offered a bottle and, although the vintages of recent years have not excelled, a few bottles make their way on to the club wine list every year. It is known by the younger members of the club, rather disrespectfully, as Grouchers’ Old Red Infuriator.

  Andrew Farrell glanced up towards the portrait, as if seeking permission to begin the meeting, and then said: ‘Well, now that we are all finally here, perhaps we might make a start. Michael, who is on our list today?’

  I read out the list of names proposed for the club, concluding with Mr Patel.

  The chairman said, ‘Ah yes, we’ll get to Mr Patel soon enough. Let’s keep him to the last, Mr Secretary.’

  We went through the list. For each name on it, I had to read out brief details of which school the candidate went to, what his job was, if he had one, and details of his other clubs. Then I had to read out the names of his proposer and the six members of the club who were prepared to support his election. It all went as smoothly as it usually did. There was only one objection to one name, from Mark Ansty.

  ‘We can’t allow that man in. He’s a bank manager. I mean to say, Chairman, if we start letting bank managers in, half the members will never dare come here. Imagine having a drink with a fellow you’ve been on your knees to half an hour before, trying to get an increase in your overdraft facility.’

  The chairman sighed. ‘If you learned how to play backgammon properly, Mark, you wouldn’t need an overdraft. I’m overruling your objection. In this day and age we have to be realistic in our choice of members and banking has become a perfectly respectable profession.’

  At last we came to Mr Patel. I read out his details: he had been educated at Harrow and was now managing director of a big American investment bank. Peter Robinson had proposed him and there were the required signatures of six supporters in the membership book. Before the chairman could say anything, Mark Ansty, who had been looking agitated while I read out the details, spoke loudly.

  ‘It might be all very well having bank managers in here, Chairman, if you say so, but surely we have to draw the line at a black bank manager?’

  Andrew Farrell opened his mouth to speak, but this time I cut in.

  ‘Chairman, David Martin has asked to speak to the committee about this application. I believe he’s waiting outside.’

  ‘Oh God, this is going to be a long morning,’ said the chairman. He put his head in his hands for a moment.

  ‘He has the right to address the Committee, under Rule 16b.’

  ‘I know, I know. You’d better let him in. Five minutes, no longer. Tell him that.’

  I stood up and went outside to find David, who was lounging about in the hall. When he saw me he took his hands out of his pockets and said, ‘The moment of truth, Gascoigne?’

  I could see that he was rather nervous. Andrew Farrell had that effect on people.

  ‘You wanted to say a few words to us, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, what I want to say is ...’

  ‘You can do all that inside,’ I said coldly. ‘You’ve five minutes to make your point. After that you will be asked to leave, and we will consider the matter among ourselves.’

  David straightened his back and cleared his throat, then went into the committee room.

  ‘Ah, David’, Andrew Farrell said. ‘You wanted to speak about Patel? The floor is yours. You have five minutes.’

  David Martin looked very nervous and his normal high colour had faded. He began to speak, at first with hesitation, but as he warmed to his subject, with increasing vigour.

  ‘I think the committee ought to consider the fact that Grouchers is a very traditional club and its members have very traditional attitudes. I don’t mean that we are racist. Some of my best friends are coloured people. The desk porter at the place where I work in the City is black. He’s a tremendous chap. Couldn’t hope to meet a nicer fellow. But I wouldn’t put him up as a member of Grouchers.’ He paused and looked around the table to see what sort of reaction he was getting. Mark Ansty gave him a half-smile. The rest of us were fairly stony faced, I think. David continued in a firmer tone of voice.

  ‘I quite understand why people like Peter Robinson take the view that Mr Patel would be a good member of the club. Peter thinks he’s being progressive. He thinks he’s shaking the club up, modernising it. But I’ve got news for Peter. A great many members here don’t want to be shaken up. They don’t want to be modernised. That’s why they are members here in the first place. We all just want to preserve a little piece of England, here in Mayfair, where English people can speak and behave as their fathers did, without being apologetic, or politically correct, or embarrassed by each other.’

  I noticed once again how difficult it was for English people to use the term ‘British’, at least without having their fingers crossed behind their back.

  Mark Ansty said, ‘I think David is making a jolly good point.’

  Andrew Farrell said, ‘Mark, pipe down, and let David finish. No discussion until he has concluded and left the room. Two minutes, David.’

  David Martin continued.

  ‘Thank you, Andrew. I don’t have very much more to say. Just this, really: Grouchers was established as a club for English gentlemen. Mr Patel may be a gentleman - I don’t know, I’ve never met him. But he isn’t an English gentleman. If he is made a member, it will split the club. That might happen even if he is blackballed. I’m glad I’m not in your shoes, chaps. If you make the wrong decision here today, I honestly believe it will be the end of this place.’ Then David nodded to us all and walked out, with a great deal more composure than when he had come in.

  His remarks produced a thoughtful silence. Then Andrew Farrell sighed and said, ‘If I was looking for someone to tell me what a gentleman was, David Martin wouldn’t be very near the top of my list. However, he has made some points which, unfortunately, will resonate with some of the membership. I hope I don’t need to remind anyone, Mark, that anything said inside this room must never be repeated out there.’ He waved his arm to indicate the main rooms of Grouchers, although he could equally have been referring to the rest of the known universe. ‘Does anyone have any comments? Michael, couldn’t you persuade Peter simply to withdraw the application? I know he’s a partic
ular friend of yours, and whatever one might think of David Martin’s remarks, there is going to be one hell of a row if this application stays in the book. I think we all realise that.’

  I was silent for a moment, thinking about it all. Then I said, ‘I see it all very simply, Andrew. The club is bound by its constitution and its rules, unless and until the members decide to change them. The rules of this club are very clear: any member may put up anyone he believes to be a gentleman, and if he can persuade six other members to support him in that view, then that candidate is clearly eligible for election. Any attempt by any member of this committee to dissuade a member from sustaining such a proposal would, in my view, be an unconstitutional act. Peter and his friends think Mr Patel is a gentleman. I’ve met Mr Patel and I must say, I too think he is a gentleman. Therefore this committee has no grounds to do anything other than nod this through, and the rest is up to the membership.’

  There was another silence when I had finished speaking and then Verey-Jones said, unexpectedly, ‘Gascoigne is absolutely correct in what he says. I support his remarks entirely.’

  Andrew Farrell looked around the room as if for support, but there was only Mark Ansty and, having been snubbed by his chairman, he was not about to speak up for him.

  ‘Very well,’ said Andrew Farrell. ‘Let Patel’s name go through. But I fear for the future.’

  7

  You Think You Know Someone, but You Never Really Do

  After I dropped Michael off at the station, I drove back to Caorrun for the last time that year. If it had been the last time ever, I would not have minded. That gloomy valley and all those gloomy hills: even on this sunny morning I felt oppressed, even threatened, by the dark slopes and the grey crags like teeth. As I drove, I thought about Michael. I had seen him in a new light the night before last, and as a result I was thinking about him in a new way. You think you know someone, but you never really do.

  It wasn’t the words Michael had used, about genes and hunter-gatherers and things that I had never heard him mention even once in ten years of marriage. It wasn’t just that. First, it was the thought that I was married to someone, slept beside him, talked to him at dinner and sometimes at breakfast, and had as a result built a picture in my mind of a solid, dull, respectable but, above all, good man. A good man who loved golf and fishing, and who talked about safe subjects with safe people: he would discuss golf with golfers, fishing with fishermen. He never had arguments with people. He hated confrontation. He liked to talk to people he knew would agree with what he had to say. He used conversation as a way of reaffirming his existence, not of exploring new ideas. That this same man had become obsessed with the idea that the British were really from the Pyrenees - was that what he had been saying at dinner? - had shaken me. Michael had never spoken about such things to me; he had kept his thoughts hidden even though this was apparently something he really cared about, mad as it seemed.

  For a while I concentrated on getting off at the right exit on the roundabout that took me back on to the A9. Then I thought, if he had mentioned the subject to me, I would have been unable to hide my indifference. Maybe he realised that. But it wasn’t just that, either.

  When Michael had turned on David and snarled at him to listen, I had seen someone else looking out from Michael’s eyes. It wasn’t Michael any more behind them. It wasn’t anyone I knew. Correction: it wasn’t any thing I knew. The hairs had risen on my forearms and on the back of my neck, and I could feel them doing the same now, as if static electricity were running through me.

  I found the turning off the A9 and drove up the single-track road. My heart, as always, sank as the great mountain of Beinn Caorrun came into view. I drove on out of the woods and into the clearing where the house stood, and I felt its desolation just as sharply as I had the first time I ever saw it.

  I parked by the front door, which was open, and Rupert came out to greet me, wagging his tail. I looked in the kitchen for Mrs McLeish but there was a note on the kitchen table from her, saying she had gone back to her cottage for half an hour. Oddly enough, I had scarcely ever been in Mrs McLeish’s cottage - she always came over to us. Mrs McLeish was as much a mystery to me now as when I had first married Michael. She had been here since he was a child, and through the death of both his parents she had been the one person who had kept Michael, and indeed the whole Beinn Caorrun estate, going. You would have thought that she would have become almost like a member of the family, a surrogate mother, a cosy family friend. Yet she was none of those things. Small, upright, with a pale, square face, her mousy hair touched by the first frost of age but in every other way unchanged in the ten years I had known her, she kept herself to herself. She was incredibly efficient, quite capable of keeping accounts and doing VAT returns, as well as dealing with builders and shepherds and all manner of people when Michael wasn’t there. But her relationship with us, even with Michael, seemed remote and wary. She and Michael looked at each other and spoke to each other with the knowledge of many years and of a shared family history, but in my presence, at least, she called him ‘Mr Gascoigne’ or ‘Mr Michael’. No one could tell me where she had come from, or whether she had any family. Michael simply used to say, ‘She just turned up one day at the front door, not long after I was born, and asked for a job. As it happened, my parents needed a housemaid. Now she runs the place. And keeps me organised.’

  There had been a Mr McLeish, of course. He had come and gone in the space of two winters. His wife threw him out when she discovered he loved Famous Grouse and Johnny Walker more than he loved her, and spent a great deal more money on them. There were no children. His name was never mentioned.

  On a whim, and because Rupert looked as if he wanted a walk, I decided to go up the track to find her. Rupert followed me, stiff legged.

  Mrs McLeish must have seen me coming because she met me at the door of her cottage.

  ‘I was going to come down anyway, a bit later,’ she said.

  ‘Can I come in for a minute, Mrs McLeish?’ I asked. I hadn’t come that far (five hundred yards and uphill) only to walk all the way back again. And I suppose I needed company too, even if it was only Mrs McLeish. I didn’t want to be in the Lodge on my own for some reason.

  Mrs McLeish looked disconcerted for a second, and I wondered whether there was a frightful mess inside, but when she stepped aside and beckoned me in, the room looked immaculate. I felt that she still thought of me as an interloper, and she was probably right: it was easy to see that my heart wasn’t in Beinn Caorrun. She had devoted her whole life to the place, and the family that lived in it, so I suppose it would have been a miracle if she had liked me. All the same, she was not unfriendly.

  ‘The kettle’s on. Come in and have a cup of tea.’

  We walked through the sitting room to a little kitchen and I stood around while Mrs McLeish busied herself making the tea. Her movements were all briskness and efficiency. Then we took our cups - bone china, I noticed - back into the sitting room. There was rather a good kneehole desk against one wall, with photograph frames on it, and I couldn’t help looking at them as I went past. My eye was drawn to the black-and-white photograph of a youth, shirtless, with tousled blond hair, standing on a wooden jetty beside some lake or loch. He was holding up a large fish - it might have been a pike - by means of a weighing hook slipped in between its gills and was smiling into the camera with eyes full of fun and mischief. He looked rather beautiful, like a young pagan god.

  ‘Is that one of your nephews, Mrs McLeish?’ I asked, for she had seen me pause to look at the photograph.

  ‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘That’s Mr Gascoigne when he was sixteen.’

  I blushed. It wasn’t one of hers; it was one of mine, and I hadn’t realised. I bent and examined the photograph more closely: could that lean torso be the soft white body I occasionally glimpsed underneath Michael’s pyjamas? Could that impish smile, that glint of something irrepressible in the eyes of this boy, have come from the same face that I saw st
aring at the Daily Telegraph every day? It was, as I looked again, just possible that this boy had grown into the man who was now my husband, but something seemed to have been lost along the way.

  Mrs McLeish gestured for me to sit down.

  ‘Come on, Mrs McLeish,’ I said firmly. ‘Tell me what he was like when he was a child.’

  She put her head on one side, considering. She reminded me of a sparrow contemplating one more hop towards a breadcrumb lying by the chair of a pavement caf’.

  ‘He was very wild when he was young, Mrs Gascoigne. His mother often said he would be the death of her. But everyone in Glen Gala loved Mikey.’

  ‘Mikey?’

  ‘That’s what everyone called him. He was very popular, especially with the girls.’

  My Michael hardly knew what to say to members of the opposite sex. He was a nightmare at dinner parties. The only place where he seemed to feel comfortable was at that ridiculous men’s club he belonged to, although I suppose it got him out of the house. The young man - the young Mikey - did not look much like a future member of Grouchers.