The Decision (8 page)

God, this turbulence was bad. There were bells going all over the place, unpleasant noises coming from various points in the plane, someone trying to get up to go to the loo, they all begged to be allowed, but they weren’t, they had to stay in their seats, however humiliating the consequences. That was another thing you became as a stewardess: a nanny. Scarlett didn’t even mind that.

They were on the way to Rome. She was looking forward to it, she liked Rome and she specially liked Roman men. Normally it was straight back the same day, but she had a couple of days’ leave and she had decided to stay. She was having a little fling with a pilot, who’d adjusted his rota to be with her. Well it was more than a little fling; it was an affair. He was married, but he was getting a divorce, so she didn’t feel too bad.

Sometimes Scarlett wondered what on earth her parents would think of her if they knew what she had become. A tart, they would call her. A slut. Which would be unfair, because she never slept with anyone unless she was very fond of him; she had only one relationship at a time and she never slept with anyone who was happily married or who had children. Of course they all lied, and said their wives didn’t understand them, but she always did her homework and checked their stories out. And she hadn’t actually had that many affairs. Three. Well, four, if you counted the first one.

She often looked back at the Scarlett who had been a strictly-broughtup virgin, who knew that once you’d slept with a boy you lost his respect for ever and you’d never see him again. The other girls had put her straight on all that; the conversations in the hotel rooms late at night were barrack-room lewd. They’d told her what a lot of fun she was missing and where and how to get herself sorted out so she wouldn’t get pregnant; she was still worried about the loss of respect, but Diana said that was an old wives’ tale – or rather an old mothers’.

‘Maybe when you’re really young and you don’t know the chap very well, but in a relationship, goodness, it’s fine.’

Scarlett, thinking herself properly in love for the first time, with an Englishman she had met in Paris, consulted the gynaecologist who was kind and practical, instructed Scarlett in the mysteries of the Dutch cap and sent her back to her boyfriend’s bed with her blessing. He was, as it turned out, as so many of them had turned out to be, married; but Scarlett enjoyed several weeks of happiness with him before making the discovery and, as a by-product, learnt to enjoy sex immensely. She just couldn’t believe anything could be so wonderful, so all-consuming, so triumphantly intense – and so conducive to self-esteem.

Diana’s fiancé was a regular soldier, a First Lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, serving out in Hong Kong, and as soon as he got promoted to Captain, they were getting married.

‘Can’t wait, it’s such a wonderful life in the army, and he’s an absolute dreamboat, Scarlett, you should see him in his mess kit.’

‘What’s mess kit?’ asked Scarlett curiously. She was learning a whole new vocabulary from Diana, every bit as foreign as the French, Italian and German of her passengers.

‘Oh, it’s what they wear in the Officers’ mess, not khaki, but bright red tunics and frightfully narrow navy trousers, so flattering.’

In spite of everything, Scarlett always felt rather honoured Diana had befriended her.

The plane had settled down again; Scarlett took a deep breath and went to collect the honk bags.

‘So, darling, how is the job? Still enjoying it?’

‘Oh, Gommie. I just adore it. And I’ve got the most marvellous news, I’ve been promoted.’

‘Really, darling, how awfully clever. I’ve never been promoted to anything in my life. Unless you can count getting married. And I don’t think Piers has turned out to be a promotion. Not nearly as rich as I’d thought. Good thing I didn’t have any brothers and all Pa’s money came to me or I’d be in a frightful bind. More champagne, darling?’

‘Oh, yes please.’

Eliza beamed happily at her godmother; they were having their monthly dinner at Claridges. Anna liked to keep up with Eliza’s life; she said it was much more interesting than her own.

‘So what is the new job?’

‘Well, Woolfe’s are going to do a new young department, called Younger Generation, or something like that. And, they think it deserves a young PR. To talk to the younger journalists. And, oh Gommie, you’re looking at her!’

‘My darling girl, that is just thrilling. You are clever. Well done. How exciting.’

‘Isn’t it? And it means I can go into meetings with the buyers, stuff like that. I just can’t believe it. Lindy – that’s my boss – is so generous too. She says it was something I said that gave her the idea, and she’s told Mr Woolfe that. And she’s so young-thinking even though she’s quite old, I mean at least thirty-five, I’d say—’

‘Thirty-five! My God, Eliza, and she can still get herself about?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Eliza, missing this irony entirely, ‘and she’s really with-it, too.’

‘With-it? What does that mean, darling?’

‘Oh, gosh, well, sort of – sort of young and trendy. You can apply it to anything, cars, clothes, music …’

‘I shall remember that,’ said Anna, smiling at her, raising her glass. ‘It’s one of the reasons I like seeing you, darling, keep myself up to date. Well, congratulations. Now what about your love life, anything interesting happening there?’

‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Eliza firmly. ‘I’m a career girl, Gommie, and a very ambitious one. Love, getting married, doesn’t fit into my plans at all at the moment.’

‘Better not let your mother hear you saying that,’ said Anna Marchant.

‘What you doing this weekend then, Matt?’

‘Oh, not sure.’

Matt grinned at Paul Dickens, one of his fellow negotiators – well, OK, fellow trainee negotiators – at Barlow and Stein, Commercial Estate Agents.

‘Group of us going down the coast Sunday. Should be good. Going to be hot, they say. Want to come?’

‘Well …’ Matt did want to go – a lot. But he’d promised Mr Barlow to work on Saturday and if he didn’t finish he was quite prepared to work Sunday as well. He wanted to get promoted and fast, and he needed Mr Barlow to be pleased with him for that.

It wasn’t exactly a difficult job; the only requirement was legwork. There was a stack of letters to go out to a great many small businesses in the area, asking them if they were looking to expand their offices and letting them know that Barlow and Stein had every type of premises to show them if they were; it would save a lot of money if they could be delivered personally.

Barlow and Stein was a small agency, based just off Great Portland Street and specialising in commercial property. Their clients were the fast-expanding businesses cashing in on the boom in every area of commercial life. London was the place to trade and its commercial heart, the City itself, was the centre of world finance.

‘It’s got fewer restrictions than any other capital city, that’s the thing,’ Matt told Scarlett over a drink one evening. ‘It’s like a bloody magnet, the money just comes pouring in, banks, insurance and that. And they need office space, all these people, loads of it.’

‘An awful lot of my passengers are businessmen,’ said Scarlett, ‘specially in First Class, coming in from God knows where, Paris, Rome, Berlin. It isn’t half strange thinking of Germans as customers rather than the enemy, but I’ve got used to it now. And then Boack fly them in from the States, they all say London is the place to be, you’re right.’

Matt knew that he was on the brink of doing well. He woke every morning feeling upbeat and confident, positively looking forward to going to work. All the way in on the bus – where he sat in his new suit from the Fifty Shilling Tailors, a piece of brown paper set carefully down on the seat to keep it clean – and the bowler hat Mr Stein insisted he wore – ‘it looks so much more professional, Matthew, puts you up there with the accountants and the bankers, and looks as if you really know what you’re doing’ – he studied his work place, the great bustling burgeoning city, and felt proud to be a part of it in however small a way.

He knew he had the army to thank for much of his progress. He’d chosen to go into the Royal Engineers, and learnt stuff which he could see he could find very useful in his future life as a property tycoon. They’d done things like constructing Bailey bridges and studying mechanics and road building, and he’d learnt to drive which he could never have afforded otherwise and managed to get himself put on a vehicle maintenance course. And then he’d played every sport available to him, fraternised with the locals – he tried not to think what his father would have to say if he knew he was snogging (and worse) with Germans – and some of the ATS girls were very … well, friendly. Sex was one of the things he missed most out in civvy street. There was precious little opportunity of getting a girl into bed when you shared a room with your brothers. It was one of the many reasons he, like Scarlett, yearned for a place of his own.

He’d left the army as Corporal Shaw, RE, with two stripes on his arm, a tough young man rather than the stroppy boy who’d gone in; and he went to the Labour Exchange on the very day of his demob, got a temporary job as an office boy and spotted an advertisement for the job with Barlow and Stein a few weeks later.

‘We want someone with energy,’ Mr Stein had said at the interview. ‘Energy and common sense. And nice manners of course.’

Matt said he had plenty of energy and a fair bit of common sense, and that he hoped they could see he had the other commodity.

‘My mum used to box my ears if I was cheeky.’

‘Good for your mum,’ said Mr Barlow.

Matt got the job and felt immediately as if he had come home. This was a world he was completely comfortable in; he seemed to understand how it worked in the most fundamental way. Wherever you looked there were new buildings going up, or old ones being refurbished.

There were the big boys of course: Jack Cotton, Charles Clore, Joe Levy, and Matt’s personal hero and role model Harry Hyams, who’d made twenty-seven million by the time he was thirty-nine. That’s what Matt was going to do, possibly rounding it up to thirty million. It wasn’t a dream or even a hope, it was what he planned with a hard-edged certainty, he was going to build and own properties and fill them with the thousands of new companies that were also being spawned by the booming economy.

‘It’s a bit like a blind date,’ said Mr Stein when he was explaining the business to Matt. ‘There they both are, girl and boy, building and tenant, both perfect for each other, not knowing the other exists, needing an introduction. That’s where we come in. You don’t have to be a genius, Matthew, just a bit sharp. You’ll soon learn.’

Matt didn’t have to learn sharpness; it was in his bones. Within weeks Mr Stein was leaving him to show clients round premises on his own.

He didn’t realise until much later how fortunate he had been in Mr Stein; how excellent was his grounding, how profound was his advice.

‘Two things count in this business, son,’ he said over a pint of warm beer one evening. ‘One is that you have to be a gentleman. Your word is your bond. You can’t let someone think they’ve got an office and then a week later tell them they haven’t, just because someone’s come in with a higher offer. This is a small world, Matthew, and people have to trust you. And you’ve got to be able to get along with people, mix with all sorts. All gossip this business, especially at the higher level.’

There was one thing which Mr Stein didn’t mention and which Matt had no need to learn either, and that was the importance of hard work. And not just office work; if there was anything to be done, Matt did it, however disagreeable. The army had taught him that too. Indeed one day when the Barlow and Stein toilets were blocked and no plumber was to be found, Matt went out and bought caustic soda, a rubber plunger and some heavy-duty gloves and cleared the offending pipes – temporarily at least – himself. When some simpering typist said she really didn’t know how he could do such a thing, he told her about Charles Fullerton-Clark who had once been ordered to scour the army lavatories with a razor blade, and had sung rugby songs while he did it.

He decided regretfully that he couldn’t go down to the coast with Paul Dickens.

He set out for the City as soon as the offices closed that Friday evening, reckoning it’d be better to get that side over so that he could be in the West End on Saturday, good fun even if he was working; he’d delivered about fifty letters when he heard someone calling him.

‘Matt! Over here, Matt, it’s me, Charles Clark.’

And there he was on the other side of Lombard Street, waving at him. He’d never have recognised him, Matt thought, he looked exactly like all the other toffs round here, rolled umbrella, bowler hat, pinstripe suit. But he seemed genuinely pleased to see Matt, grinning and waving him over.

‘It’s jolly good to see you, old chap,’ said Charles, slapping him round the shoulders. ‘What are you doing here? Got time for a pint?’

Matt said he thought so and followed him into the King’s Head on Lombard Street.

‘Remember Matt Shaw?’ said Charles to Eliza next day. ‘He was in the army doing basic training with me. You met him with me at Waterloo one day.’

They were having a drink in the Markham in the King’s Road: the newly dressed King’s Road, filled with pretty young people, glamorous cars, and the clothes boutiques that were replacing the old food shops, all following their leader, Mary Quant, who had opened Bazaar, the very first of them, as early as 1955. No one would believe it had been there that long, Lindy had told Eliza. ‘It seems so absolutely brand new, but it’s just one more proof of Mary’s genius.’