The Green Flash (3 page)

‘How does
any
quarrel begin? They were – jealous of each other – I believe. The slightest thing would start them off.'

‘It's not unusual, of course. When a son grows up it is a commonplace for him and his father to have a resentment of each other. We have all heard of Oedipus.'

She said: ‘I don't think it was quite like that. David was really quite
fond
of his father. That was the strange thing. That made it
worse
.' She wiped her eyes. ‘ Really. I suppose in a way they were a little jealous about
me
. They both –
wanted
me, wanted to be first in my attention, my love. I suppose you're right in a way. Sometimes I blame myself.'

‘Oh?'

‘Couldn't I – shouldn't I – have stopped it?'

‘Stopped what?'

‘This jealous, this rivalry I should have been able to do
something
.'

‘Perhaps subconsciously you were flattered.'

She blinked her tears angrily away. ‘ What sort of a wife and mother do you think I am?'

‘I did say subconsciously, Mrs Abden. After all, this also is not uncommon. Everyone wishes to be popular, to be desired.'

‘I've not slept properly since it happened, except with Nembutal. Even now I take Valium every day. It's been terrible. A nightmare. Mr Kingsley says he does not know how I have come through it.'

Eventually Dr Meiss said: ‘Will next Thursday be convenient? For me to see David again?'

‘I suppose we could manage the afternoon.'

‘At three, then?'

She wiped her eyes again, on her dignity now. Meiss said: ‘Has David not ever been to Scotland?'

‘Oh, yes. His father took him last year to see Loretto.'

‘Strange.'

‘What's strange about that?'

‘He told me he had never been. Does he not like it, I wonder?'

‘It may be. I don't know. Of course his father had quarrelled with his relatives up there. They never met or corresponded in any way.'

‘You are not Scottish, Mrs Abden?'

‘No.'

I

It was fairly well on in the swinging sixties that I met her, and I had just missed the worldwide celebrations for my twenty-fourth birthday.

The party was at Lady Rowton's. Maud Rowton, being the wife of a recently created life peer, was not sure of her way in society, and was trying to launch her daughter Caroline into the whirlpool of a Season. From my experience of the two previous years, when I had escorted any number of girls on any number of occasions, I knew better than she did the intricacies of getting ‘ in' the concentric circles which exist, of which only the inner two or three are anything but hell. Every year around these inner circles runs a pack of yelping girls who at the end of the summer have done all the proper and expected and expensive things, without ever having achieved the accolade of acceptance.

Caroline Rowton was a bright kid who unfortunately had inherited her father's lantern jaw. It was not this, however, that would mar her chances. Some of the girls in the very centre of things had faces like starving horses. It was just that her mother had not been to school with enough mothers of the right sort.

So I felt sorry for her in a detached way, and when Jerry Dawson, who had brought me, said would I stay behind and go to a dinner party after, I said of course, hardly listening to him, wondering why I had come. Was this the life I really wanted to lead: all this inhaling of other people's hot breath – bangles, jangles, cigarette smoke, high voices, high heels, fractured conversations, sweat, assessing eyes, polite masks, smeared lipstick, alcohol, flip, flap, standing about holding a glass, all a strain on legs, on shoulders, on bellies, on buttocks, on one's
patience
. But then I often asked myself questions like this. What life did I want to lead – if any?

‘Where did you say?'

‘It'll be at the Savoy. One of their chaps has stood them up.'

‘Fine,' I said. ‘Who's that woman by the window?'

‘The one in black? With the sleeves? Mme Shona.'

‘Who?'

‘My dear chap, you ought to know.'

‘Why?'

‘Well … our line of business.'

‘What – d'you mean the one who makes … Well, well, rather a surprise, isn't she? I always imagine these women as well-preserved old dragons of seventy-five.'

‘She'll get like that in her own time. Want to meet her?'

Did I? It might make a change.

‘Yes, I think so. She looks interesting.'

Jerry chuckled. ‘Oh, interesting is quite the word. But take care. She has a reputation.'

The reply that came to my lips seemed a trifle malapert, so I said nothing. It's strange what repression of the sort I'd just experienced will do to the frankest of men.

In a while I found myself going up to the throne. At the time I reckoned her about thirty-five, though a closer look added a year or two. No beauty, and I didn't think ever had been; and pretty wasn't a word you could ever use about her. Five feet seven inches tall, I was told much later, and weighed 117 pounds. Skin pale to dusky; hair black and a bit lank but capable, I was also to learn, of being disciplined, like many other things, to the order of its owner: two or three twists of the long fingers and it would be changed from low life to
haute couture
. Really handsome dark eyes, equable brows, big clever mouth. An air. Certainly a smashing-looking woman, I said to myself. It was a word you used in those days.

When Jerry Dawson had gone off I casually helped to refill her glass and she nodded her thanks, but Caroline Rowton was speaking to her so I had this minute or so to sum her up and to listen for the first time to the tenor bell of her voice, the too perfect English fretted with a lisp of accent.

‘You work for Yardley's?' Suddenly I was in the firing line. I met her brooding candescent stare for the first time.

‘I joined them earlier this year.'

‘Ah.' She nodded as if this explained something.

‘Not quite in your league, ma'am.'

‘Oh.' She shrugged, taking it without hesitation as a compliment. ‘They are
far
bigger than we are – and far older – longer established. But I agree, I do not look on them as rivals. I should not have thought …'

People came between us. ‘What would you not have thought?' I prompted when they had gone.

‘That you were in the business.'

‘Should it show? Like a shoulder strap?'

‘A shoulder … ah no.' A flicker of her thin lips. ‘But you know how it is: certain professions tend to attract types, certain businesses.'

‘In what way don't I fit the slot?'

She looked at me soberly. ‘Now you are asking for compliments.'

‘Not necessarily.'

‘No? … But you were expecting that.'

‘I never,' I said, ‘ask for anything.'

‘That I believe. Instead of asking, you would try to take.'

This was a little near the bone in more ways than one.

‘You read me well, Mme Shona.'

‘All right. All right … First, there are no such things as slots. Are there. I was wrong in that. What did you do before you joined Yardley?'

‘For a while I was not gainfully employed, Jerry stepped in and offered me this job.'

‘And what is
this job
? What position?'

‘Assistant sales director.'

‘You're young for that, Mr – er –'

‘David Abden. I don't think age should come into it, do you?'

She breathed out through her nose. On a cold day you could imagine fine visible discharges of smoky breath as from the nostrils of a thoroughbred mare.

She said: ‘Age has no privileges. Youth no virtue. It is what one does that matters.'

We were apart for a bit. I kept looking across at her, slim and straight in one of those black sheath things; this one with dazzling gold sleeves. I began to figure if there was anything in it for me. I hadn't had the least intention of staying in the perfumery business longer than it took to find something better or to rediscover one of the easier ways of making money, but I had to keep an open mind in all these things.

I couldn't get hold of Jerry, who was the centre of a crowd, but I saw Patrick Favill in a corner. Patrick was a television writer and sometimes worked for the press.

‘Shona?' he said. ‘I know her. Everybody knows her; but nobody gets
close
, as it were. What d'you want to know? She's Russian, of course. You know the legend, I suppose.'

‘If I've heard it I wasn't listening.'

‘They say she was picked up by American troops when they were invading Germany at the end of the war.'

‘So?'

‘They found her in rags, they say, barefoot, starving, but with books by Schopenhauer and Goethe clutched under one skinny arm. That's the story anyhow.'

‘What happened?'

‘Well, she claimed she'd walked all the way from – was it? – Kharkov or Lvov, begging, stealing, living off the land, sleeping under hedges, dodging the retreating armies. The American commandant didn't know quite what to make of her – thought she was some kind of ‘‘plant'' at first, but she convinced him she was on the level and only keen to put as much territory as she could between herself and Uncle Joe.'

I waited. He glanced at me, lifted an eyebrow. ‘So she ended up in Paris – lived there a few years – married, came over to England and a bit later started this business that everyone has heard about.'

‘Is she still married?'

‘I think so. But one doesn't hear much of him.' Favill's nose quivered at the sight of another drink approaching. ‘ Thanks, darling.' He sipped. ‘One can't of course get much personal corroboration of the story from her. I've asked her and she just shrugs and smiles. One can understand.'

‘Why?'

‘It dates her.'

I began to calculate. ‘She could have been in her teens.'

‘Who knows? They say she studied for the ballet and took it up again in Paris. But it's all very vague. We've tried to persuade her to let us do a profile, but no dice.'

When she came to leave I happened to be by the door.

‘Mme Shona.'

‘Yes?'

‘You left something,' I said, ‘unexplained.'

‘In what way?'

‘Certain professions, you said, attracted certain types and that I didn't look a type you would have expected to find in our business.'

She half smiled. ‘Later I withdrew it. Don't you remember?'

‘All the same …'

She considered me, then shrugged as if shrugging away an unwelcome familiarity. ‘ In our business as in all there are the professional men who run our affairs with talk of sales, of cash flow, of balance sheets and the like. I did not think you looked one of those.'

‘Too much of the amateur?'

‘No, I wouldn't have said that either.'

‘Actually, I
am
one of your dull professionals –'

‘But aside from professionalism there is the need for flair. It is what distinguishes us from many other ‘‘gainful employments.'' '

She had remembered and had turned my words against me.

‘That I'm still learning,' I said. ‘The novice has to begin somewhere.'

‘You plan to stay in our trade?'

I glanced towards Jerry Dawson. ‘It depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On what it has to offer.'

‘I doubt if there is
that
much.'

She said this with a sort of sly good temper.

‘Well, it remains to be seen.'

An attractive female of indeterminate age with a peaches and cream complexion was holding out a sable cape for Mme Shona to put on.

‘Ours is a small world, Mr Abden.'

‘Indeed. I should like to continue our conversation sometime.'

The woman beside her opened her eyes at me as if I'd been guilty of a remark beyond my proper station.

Mme Shona inclined her head. ‘ Of course.'

But it was said so non-committally that it could have been interpreted in many ways, one of them being the snub her acolyte clearly thought I had asked for. But when she had gone Jerry Dawson said: ‘You've made a mark there. Take care. She might even fancy you.'

‘I might even fancy her,' I said.

‘That'll be the day,' he replied.

II

Going straight is a strain – not just on the finances, but on something inside yourself that isn't satisfied.Sometimes the need to break out is like lust: without it the world is monochrome; you don't get your lungs open deeply enough.

But, like it or leave it, enough is enough: the last thing I wanted was a repeat show of last year. So I toed the line – nearly, anyway. The only thing I got involved in was a sharp switch of cars on a fire insurance claim at a garage; that brought me in about a thousand pounds.

Actually it had been a pretty lousy year, and I marked up my obligations to the two or three characters who had stood by me. Chiefly Jerry Dawson, who had found me this job in Yardley's I'd scraped in simply as a junior salesman, but then somebody quite early on discovered that I'd got a ‘nose'. It turned out that I could pick out scents, unexpected essences or what have you, give an enlightened opinion as to whether something they had blended with pine oil was likely to be heavy or light and what it actually smelled of – the definitive smell, that is. So though my occupation was still mainly to sell the damned stuff I was shoved up the ladder. Jerry was delighted and I certainly hadn't objected since they upped my salary at the same time.

The other individual who'd done me a good turn was this Derek Jones whose flat I was sharing. I'd known him on and off for about four years, a tall thin chap with bright wicked blue eyes and as bent as they come. As soon as he heard I was on my uppers he insisted on offering me a bed in his flat and I'd been there ever since. Terribly good company, and in the early weeks, when I was not going on all cylinders, he'd expected, and got, more than friendship. But I'm not really that way at all, and it hadn't worked out the way he wanted. I stayed on because I genuinely liked him – rare in me – and the place was cheap and convenient and I didn't have the incentive to find anything else.