Little Bits of Baby (5 page)

‘Perfidy,' said Marcus almost at once and grinned at them both. ‘Such a sad waste,' he added.

Five

Flawless in poison green, Jake's Vietnamese assistant handed him a file he had requested.

‘Peter Maitland's in the lobby for you, Jake,' she said.

‘Tell him I'll be right down, would you, Joy?'

‘OK. I've booked everyone for the breakfast meeting tomorrow, except Saskia, who's got one with Kevin and Max and the people from Forbes.'

‘Is she still on that account?'

‘So it would seem.'

‘Thanks. Have a good evening, Joy.'

‘You too, Jake.'

Jake's desk, like his office, was large and uncluttered. In the course of his swift rise through the company's creative department, desks and work spaces had grown progressively so. Now he reigned over an expanse of highly polished royal blue glass and a chamber of eggshell grey. His telephone was svelte and wittily transparent and he commanded an oblique view across the opera house roof and the twittering spaces of Covent Garden. No family photographs spoiled the understated beauty of the desktop, but in the discreet triangular abstract to his left, the pink blob was said to represent his son, the blue his loving wife.

Once he had been paid to have ideas. How to convince the public in few words and one image that none but the cat food, instant coffee or parti-coloured toothpaste in question could help distinguish one customer from statistically similar neighbours. He had successfully conveyed sophistication in lavatory paper (largely by daring to call it just that), lured men into housework with black rubber gloves and a plump majority into voting into power the decade's least palatable party. Now he was expected to create less and to oversee more. He convened meetings at which others, younger and keener, brought forth outrageous plans for selling the unsellable and he had some say in whose offices were to be enlarged and whose desktops rendered less frantic. His income was more than he and Candida would ever find time to spend, even had she not been earning twice as much again.

Jake's briefcase was stainless steel with black rubber lining and handles. Candida had bought it for his thirtieth birthday. It held special compartments for his newspaper and car keys but he never used these as it made the case look too empty. Floor-to-ceiling Japanese sliding doors separated his office from the conference room where they would hold tomorrow's working breakfast. If both doors were slid far to one side they uncovered a small fridge and drinks cabinet, slid in the other direction, they revealed a hidden wardrobe. He took his lightweight overcoat and left the office. Joy had collected his squash kit from the cleaners in her lunch hour. He found the bag beneath her desk and slung it inside the briefcase on his way to the lift.

Jake had been playing secret squash games with Robin's father ever since Robin ran away to be a monk. They knew each other vaguely before that, of course; from the countless holiday evenings Robin and Jake had sat out at the Maitlands' kitchen table setting the world to rights. Peter would wander in apologetically in search of his crossword or reading glasses. Jake would give him a polite good evening and Robin would tease him gently and offer him a beer, but Peter rarely stayed and never for long. Jake had often been the Maitlands' guest, but he had avoided moments alone with the grown-ups. He used to lie awake in his room until Robin came in to find him, then spend the day trailing in Robin's wake.

Then Jake and Candida. Well. Then It had happened and Robin had run away and they had all done Finals and Jake and Candida had got married. The news about Robin joining a monastery had filtered through. Jake forgot how exactly. They had all been slightly shocked at this apparent about-turn in Robin's principles, but their surprise was tempered with relief that he had not committed suicide as they had begun to fear, or run off with someone neither of them had met, as a kind of revenge. For some time after this, Jake had been meaning to pay a call on the Maitlands to make his peace, not least because locals were saying great things of the progressive kindergarten they had started and Candida was keen to send Jasper there when he was old enough, but Jake lacked courage. In the end it had been Candida, arguably in the more awkward position, who had broken the radio silence, driving over with cool impatience to the old Clapham house where she had spent so many childhood afternoons, and enrolling Jasper for the coming Autumn.

The squash games had been Peter's initiative. He had rung Jake at the office one day, out of the blue and suggested they meet for a talk. Flustered (he did not have an office to himself at that stage), Jake had suggested they have a drink together after work. Then Peter had pointed out that he no longer drank and made the counter-suggestion of a game of squash. Although he had opted out of the City, he retained the life membership he had taken out to a sports club along with the other stress sufferers.

‘I don't play,' Jake protested.

‘I'll teach you,' Peter replied. ‘The club'll rent you a racquet until you're sure you want to carry on.'

Jake was fairly fit, but his jogging sessions were intermittent at best, and fell off with the onset of colder weather. He tended to clumsiness and had a horror of ridicule but as soon as he saw Peter waiting for him at the club doors, greying and with that familiar unfocussed look to him, he realised that this was as much an effort for the father as for the son's friend-as-was. They talked of nothing in particular while changing and, as soon as they were closeted in their court, talked only of the rules of the game. Peter was an adept teacher, Jake an attentive pupil and they managed to fit in a first match before their time was up. The changing-rooms were crowded when they had finished and the two men showered and dressed in shy silence.

‘Want to go for a drink?' Jake asked as they left. ‘An apple juice, or something?'

‘Better not. I've got to get home. Do you want to play again next week?'

‘Why not? I certainly need it,' Jake replied and made an exaggerated mime of panting, still feeling ill-at-ease. ‘Same time?'

‘Yes. Jake?'

‘Yes?'

‘This sounds a bit strange but I didn't tell Robin's mother I was meeting you and I'm not going to. Not yet, at least.'

His oddly distant way of referring to his wife took Jake back years.

‘Would you rather I didn't tell Candida?'

‘Heavens no. I mean, that's your affair. But I'd rather she didn't tell any … Actually yes, it would be easier if you didn't. Would you mind very much?'

‘No.' Jake chuckled, strangely elated. ‘After all, I'm sure there are things she doesn't tell me.'

‘If you like,' Peter had offered, ‘You could keep your kit in my locker. I hide my squash racquet here. Andrea thinks it's one of those games that give you heart attacks so I just pretend I'm going to a gym.'

‘No, thanks. If she asks, I can just say I'm playing with someone from work.'

And they parted until the same time the next week. It was Jake's first deception of his wife. Although merely a trifling omission and nothing that he needed to cover up with complicated falsehoods, the accumulative deceit as, weekly, he deleted an hour from the account of his day, had come to weigh as heavily on his conscience as a full-blown love affair. (Not that he had pursued any such indulgence beyond the requirements of good manners.)

Seven years and some three hundred games later, Peter and he still pent up their meetings within the bare requirements of their sport, still held off from sharing so much as a carrot juice on leaving the club. They talked more though, not least because each was now considerably fitter and capable of panting more than half-sentences as he played. Curiously enough, the aggressions of the game did not prevent them from confessing their fears and weaknesses. Each now knew most, if not all there was to know about the other's marriage. The most important of their conversations however, dealt not with their women but with the son and friend whose absence had brought them such intimacy. Peter had admitted that he was partly to blame for Robin's inability to cope with life as the majority lived it. He had treated him too much as a son, he said, as someone who brought home school reports and prizes and made severe demands on a household budget; he had neglected to view him as an emergent adult. He confessed that the idea of having a child's respect had always frightened him out of getting too close to Robin.

Jake's birthday fell a few weeks after their first secret encounter. Peter had a parcel delivered to Jake's office. It was a squash racquet. The accompanying card was addressed ‘to my almost-son', a phrase so weighted with need that Jake was tempted to cry off from their next appointment. He had an alarming four successive nights of most unsatisfactory sex with Candida, however, and Peter was the only person with whom such things could be discussed. He sent him a thank-you card (disguised with brown envelope and typing as some kind of bill) addressing him as ‘my nearly-father' and their relationship became a sealed thing. He kept the racquet in the boot of his car; not hidden exactly, but undisclosed.

This was the first time that Peter had come to find Jake at his office. They had always met at the club. Seeing him here, sunk in one of the foyer's leather sofas beneath a shimmering
ficus benjamina
, pretending to read a magazine, Jake thought he now knew how a philandering husband must feel when his mistress comes out into the open to force his hand.

Peter fairly leaped up when he saw him approach. He laughed. Jake had never seen him this happy.

‘What a surprise finding you here,' Jake said. ‘Is everything OK?'

‘Yes, yes. Fine. You look well. Are you well?'

‘Couldn't be better. Well I could. I'm knackered.'

‘Good.'

‘Why?'

‘Jake, I know it's not, well, not what we normally do but do you think we could skip squash for once and go for a drink?'

‘Of course. There's a place next door. Come on.' He followed Peter through a revolving door and led him into the bar in the basement of the next building. He knew the management there so when he asked for the music to be turned down, it was. ‘Are you sure everything's OK?' he asked Peter as they perched on their stools.

‘Sure I'm sure, it's just that I've got some news for you that wouldn't wait.'

‘What?' Jake asked, but Peter was talking to the barman.

‘Yes,' he said peering closely at a cocktail menu. ‘Could I have this vegetable pick-me-up thing only without the vodka?'

‘Certainly, Sir,' said the barman. ‘Usual for you, Jake?'

‘Yup,' said Jake and turned back to Peter. ‘So tell.'

‘Andrea talked to Robin this morning.'

‘How is he?'

‘Fine. But he's coming home.'

‘Christ!'

‘Mmh.'

‘I mean,' Jake went on, ‘Great. Great for you, I mean. Andrea must be thrilled.'

‘She is,' said Peter. ‘So am I.'

‘Yes, and Candida will be glad to have got him as a godparent. He did agree to be one, didn't he?'

‘Oh yes. No problems there, I think.'

‘All the same.'

‘Mmh. Quite.' They fell briefly silent, and to watching the barman whizz up a mixture of carrot, celery, tomato and ice in his kelvinator.

‘When's he coming back?' Jake asked finally.

‘Soon. Any day now, I suppose. Maybe tomorrow. It hasn't really sunk in yet. Andrea only told me at lunchtime and I've spent the afternoon visiting Marcus.'

‘How's he? I should have asked earlier.'

‘Oh. Fine. That's to say, he's probably dying again and that's fine by him. He looks awful.'

‘Poor old chap.'

‘He's not that old actually. He must be about my age, well, maybe a few years older. He's aged so much these last few months, though; to look at him, you'd think he was my father.'

They drew themselves up slightly as the barman interrupted.

‘One vegetable pick-me-up, no vodka.'

‘Thank you,' said Peter.

‘And one usual.'

‘Great.' Jake's usual was a whisky sour made with bourbon. He raised his glass to Peter. ‘Well,' he said, ‘Cheers.'

‘Yes,' said Peter, and drank.

‘God!'

‘What?'

‘This is the first time I've ever had a drink with you outside of Clapham eight or nine years ago.'

‘So it is.'

‘It feels strange. As I was coming down in the lift – you'll think this is weird – but I suddenly thought it was rather like being accosted in the open by one's bit-on-the side. Not that you are; it's just how I felt.'

‘Yes I am. In a way.'

‘Can I tell Candida now?'

‘Is that wise? I'd have thought she'd be rather hurt.'

‘Not about all the rest, just the drink. After all, if Robin's coming back to be Perdita's godfather we'll all be meeting up soon anyway. It's the perfect moment to drop the cover. I'll say that you just rang up to tell me the good news and that we had a drink.'

‘I suppose I should tell Andrea too. Which reminds me.'

‘What of?'

‘I'm meeting her at the cinema in half an hour.'

‘Whereabouts? I can drop you off.'

‘Thanks, but there's no need. I can walk, it's only Soho.'

‘Ah. Peter?'

‘Mmh?'

‘Is he coming back for good? Does this mean that he's giving up Whelm?'

Peter stared at his nearly empty glass, sloshing the vegetable dregs from one side to another.

‘I don't honestly know. Would you rather he didn't?' Jake met his gaze and gave his board meeting laugh; half cough, half throat-clearance. ‘Mmh. Don't answer that,' said Peter and smiled. ‘When's the christening?'

‘Whichever Saturday we can all manage to be in the same place at the same time. If he's coming home straight away, probably the Saturday after this.'