How It All Began (3 page)

This is how Marion met Jeremy Dalton—sourcing, not disposing. She was in need of the perfect fire surround for a client and had heard of this new place, just opened, in south London—an emporium, apparently, a cut above reclamation, just crammed with good things, run by some man with a genius for acquisition. So she had ferreted her way through an unfamiliar area and found this immense warehouse—a wealth of fire surrounds, Georgian through to art deco and beyond, you name it; stained glass panels, claw-foot baths, some mouthwatering Arts and Crafts pieces. And presently there was this man at her
side, Jeremy someone—helpful, charming, funny, absolutely on her wavelength. They spent ages talking, then coffee in his office, with just the right fire surround sorted, and she’d have to come back when she’d had a further think about the little cane settee…And so it all began, the way things do.

That was nearly a year ago. Jeremy’s wife Stella was not working with him in the business. She lived in Oxted, where he had had his previous, smaller, outlet, and was a doctor’s receptionist. There were two teenage daughters. Complications, then. Marion herself was uncomplicated, being childless and tidily divorced a while back.

The situation must be kept under wraps, they agreed—at least for the foreseeable future: the daughters; Stella, who was excitable and had had a depressive episode in the past. But with Jeremy in London most of the time, spending many nights in the small rented flat near the warehouse, there was really no problem about seeing each other. Of course, he was away quite a bit in pursuit of stock, but that had made for several happy periods deep in Wales or up in Cumbria, with Marion snatching some time off. There were plans for an excursion to Provence in the summer, in search of old armoires and bedheads.

T
he Daltons’ marriage broke up because Charlotte Rainsford was mugged. They did not know Charlotte, and never would; she would sit on the perimeter of their lives, a fateful presence.

The mobile phone was the smoking gun—Jeremy’s mobile phone. He was at home in Oxted, unknown to Marion, when she left the message; she had thought him to be in the flat, had left a message on the mobile, which as it happened was in his coat pocket in the hall of the family home in Oxted. Jeremy had gone home for the night, at Stella’s behest, to sort out a problem with a blocked wastepipe; Stella had a tendency to get in a state about minor domestic mishaps.

Jeremy had found himself without a requisite tool, and had driven off to see if a neighbor could help (the Daltons lived down an isolated lane). Meanwhile, Stella was anxious about the daughters, who were late back, and had discovered that the land-line was out of order. She searched for her own mobile, and realized that she had left it at the surgery. She would have to use Jeremy’s to try to locate Daisy and Emma. Taking it from his coat pocket, she went first to Messages: conceivably they would have left a message here, foiled by the errant land-line and Stella’s own not-answering phone.

Thus, Stella found Marion’s message: “I can’t make it on Friday. Have to escort Uncle Henry to Manchester—his PA out of action. Bother, bother. I’m so sorry. Love you.”

It was the “love you” that did it, of course. Otherwise—just a message from some female associate who might not have given pause for thought (though perhaps a bit intimate in tone…).

Oh, this betraying technology. Jeremy deletes his messages; he is assiduous about this, given the circumstances, but this time the technology was one step ahead (just doing its job); he has not had the chance. When he returned, Stella was waiting by the door, and all hell broke loose.

Marion arrived at Lansdale Gardens in a taxi to collect Henry and go on to Euston for the Manchester train. She was slightly late, and much distracted. She had slept badly, unsettled by a long phone conversation with Jeremy the evening before. Apparently Stella had initially tried to throw him out, there and then, charging back upstairs to hurl his clothes into a suitcase. He had managed to talk her into a holding position (the girls would be back at any moment, simply not fair to upset them, talk things through tomorrow, stupid to rush into something they might regret) but the position had not held: Stella had gone on the rampage the next day—hysterical outbursts, tearful phone call to her sister, renewed demands for his departure. Jeremy was now in London, continuing to negotiate with the increasingly volatile Stella. She was talking lawyers. Her sister had got on to Jeremy and told him that he would be held responsible if this situation compromised Stella’s fragile mental equilibrium: did he not remember that breakdown four years ago?

Marion had tried to be soothing and level-headed. She felt her own situation to be eminently undesirable. No one wants to break up a marriage; no one wants to be seen as the blunt instrument. Both she and Jeremy had thought that the status quo could go on indefinitely; both were a touch uncertain that this relationship was forever, though neither would have admitted as much to the other, at this relatively early stage. Time would tell, both had been privately thinking, while enjoying an invigorating liaison, an unexpected tonic. But now they were scuppered.

So Marion lay awake, then plunged into fitful sleep at five in the morning, and surfaced to a rushed shower and breakfast. When she reached Lansdale Gardens she felt light-headed; Henry’s robust welcome was jarring. Here was a man who had clearly had a good night’s sleep and was looking forward to the day ahead.

“Hello, hello. Taxi all set, is it? Rose has left the tickets and everything on my desk—just a question of grabbing them and we’re off.” He vanished into the downstairs cloakroom. Marion looked at herself in the Regency mirror, yawned, attempted a quick makeup repair. Henry emerged, fussed around the house looking for his keys and getting into his coat, and they went down the front steps to the waiting taxi.

At Euston, Marion looked at the departure board, and turned to Henry for the tickets. At which point both realized what had happened. Each had assumed that the other had taken the tickets from Henry’s desk. Along with the letter from the university about where to go, and Henry’s lecture notes.

Consternation and exasperation were gracefully contained: this was a public place. “My fault
entirely
,” Marion (inwardly cursing him). “I didn’t make myself clear,” said Henry (feeling that he damn well had—oh, Rose, where art thou?). Marion set about quick remedial work: replacement tickets, assurances to Henry that she could get through to Manchester on her mobile for instructions, once they were on the train. Henry said grimly that he would have to spend the journey putting together some emergency notes; one had after all given this particular lecture God knows how many times before. “Politics and Personalities in the Age of Walpole” should more or less trip from the tongue.

Once settled in the train both fell silent. Marion had found a notepad in her bag for Henry to use; he delved for his pen and stared frowning at the paper; she set to work on the mobile and eventually achieved a helpful voice at Manchester University.

The midlands rolled by. Henry made the occasional note. Marion appeared to be reading the paper but was far too distracted to concentrate. She was thinking of the Jeremy situation, and realizing that this
could not have come at a worse time. Both she and Jeremy had problems already, over and above the pressures of a clandestine love affair.

Marion was experiencing a sharp fall in client numbers; Henry’s portfolio was nothing like as plump as it had been, and Jeremy was having difficulty in borrowing from the bank to fund his recent business expansion. The indigent couple (and the many others like them) do not come into this story; they are relevant, but they are hunkered down nameless out of sight, much as Charlotte Rainsford lurks on the perimeter of the Daltons’ lives. Were it not for them, things would have been different.

Henry was not much bothered about the depletion of his portfolio; he had a nice index-linked pension, and plenty of cash on deposit. Marion, on the other hand, was worried. She had only a couple of serious money clients on her books at the moment; the phone rang less often, fewer people looked in at the showroom. Even the well-off were tightening their belts, it would seem. Smaller bonuses to fling around, other businesses feeling the pinch, just like her own; no make-over of the house this year, no holidays in the Seychelles, Bermuda and Klosters. Without work in hand, the overdraft—hitherto nicely under control—would start to climb. The notion of debt scared Marion; solvency was decency.

Jeremy had borrowed heavily to acquire the warehouse; he now needed more cash for some improvements and repairs. He had rushed to get the place up and running, to install stock and bring the punters in, and was now realizing various deficiencies. The derelict junk-yard needed to be made into a viable car park—customers were complaining about the lack of parking in the area. They were complaining equally about the disagreeable toilet facility, and you could see them always looking around for somewhere to sit down for a few minutes. Jeremy was determined to do up an elegant customer reception area, and install a proper cloakroom. The banks were less enthusiastic.

Henry found that note-taking became tedious. He dozed off a couple of times, woke to jot down a few more points, accepted another coffee from the trolley. He was not too concerned, confident enough that the complexities of eighteenth-century politics would spring readily to
mind once he was on his feet in the lecture theater, though he was annoyed that the wording of a particular witticism escaped him for the moment. Never mind, it would arrive once he was under way, in full flow. He was after all known for his fluency and spontaneity—not for nothing had he been in demand as a speaker on both sides of the Atlantic. All the same, it was tiresome not to feel that he had the ballast of his old outline of this lecture; Rose would have seen to it, too bad she had had to let him down, good of Marion to come but so far her performance fell short. Henry made a few more notes, irritated now, and then sat back to stare at the passing scenery, and doze again.

They arrived in Manchester and progressed seamlessly from the station to the university, where suitably deferential officials were standing by to conduct them to the lunch. Henry cheered up. He always enjoyed being lionized. There were twenty or so people for the lunch party; it had clearly been made an occasion for the university to entertain some of its supporters. Captains of industry, Marion saw, skimming down the guest list, local bigwigs. This was an annual event; the lecture by a visitor of distinction.

Henry had the Vice-Chancellor to one side of him, and a Professor someone on the other—a youngish man to whom he turned with a benign inquiry about his field of interest: “Know your name, of course,” (he didn’t) “but can’t for the moment recall…”

The man grinned. Said that he believed Henry would have known his old tutor, way back—contemporaries, he rather thought. He mentioned the name, a smile still on his lips. He knew all too well of what he spoke: this was one of Henry’s archenemies, a man with whom he had waged intellectual war for many a year. Henry represents—with pride, let it be said—the last gasp of the Namier school of history, the insistence that events are governed entirely by politics and persons. The old enemy was an ideas man, a political theorist, nicely contemptuous of that reductionist vision of how the world works. And now here was one of his disciples, one of his acolytes. The old enemy was dead, so Henry had the advantage of him there, but he was serving up this ace from beyond the grave. His protégé had a Chair. A rather prestigious Chair, indeed: Henry had managed a glance at the guest list.

The day was now tarnished. Henry made a few chill remarks to the man, who was polite—urbane, indeed—self-confident, and appeared to be suppressing amusement. Henry abandoned him as soon as possible and took refuge in the Vice-Chancellor.

Marion, meanwhile, was doing rather better. She had engaged at once with the man to her right, who introduced himself as “George Harrington—a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Clark. I gather you’re looking after our distinguished visitor. And are you also in academic life?” Marion told him what she did; her trade sounded distinctly lightweight in the context of the occasion and the company but Harrington displayed interest, asked questions.

“How satisfying—creative and constructive. I’m just a money man, I’m afraid.” He named a financial institution. “One of those people everyone hates at the moment.” A wry smile. “Though actually I do have a little personal sideline that is more in your area.”

He bought and restored flats in London for rental purposes, it emerged. “It’s a sort of hobby, I suppose, a diversion. I even see it as vaguely creative”—an apologetic laugh—“making something pleasant out of something neglected. I cater for the top end of the market—foreign diplomats, businesspeople. It’s pretty low down the creative scale, but an antidote to the day job—figures, figures, figures. But my creativity is limited—I’m good at the bricks and mortar side but I can be all at sea when it comes to bathroom fittings and curtains. My PA helps out but I’m not sure she always gets it right.”

Marion was paying close attention. She liked this man: his self-deprecating manner, which masked, she suspected, considerable status within his own world. This was some rather high-up money man, for sure. He had a certain charm, but not too much—Marion was well aware that charm can be both self-serving and deceptive. His talk was entertaining: a recent visit to China and the disconcerting food encountered, the temporary loss of his BlackBerry a few days ago, rendering him “helpless and useless, a salutary experience, we are only as good as our technology these days.” His financial institution had funded some new IT installations for the university, which was why he had been invited here: “Though after the BlackBerry event I
wonder if we are doing them a favor.” He encouraged Marion to talk of her own life, was amused by her account of the search for a marble bath to meet the requirements of an opera singer. “I can see you have to be versatile—take the client’s deplorable taste on the chin. I too have to pander to clients, but at least it doesn’t involve marble baths.”