David Carswell was easy to spot in the VIP lounge at Heathrow. He was the opposite of a jolly fat man. He was a mean fat man who explained away his fat by claiming he had diabetes. He was eating buttered sugar buns, slurping coffee and pouting like the spout of a pitcher when Nick came up to him. In greeting, after two years of separation, he said, producing an even more intense reaction than usual from his employer, “I am frightfully worried about this Teekay desertion.”
“You don’t look it,” Nick said.
“Your father isn’t going to like it at all. Not one bit.”
“We are not going to talk about it.”
“It took you five months to set it up, and now you just walk away from it.” His accent was plum-perfect Oxbridge with just a soupçon of Hammersmith.
“Aarrgghhh!” Nick said.
“I think that is a desperately unfriendly attitude to take, Nick. It is hurtful and really uncalled-for.”
“Did you bring my clothes?”
“Marian could not find the winter underwear in your flat.”
“Did you buy me some winter underwear?”
“The shops were not open. It was far too early.”
“You brought everything else?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Whether you think so or not, Nick, I am entitled to an explanation about the Teekay.”
“If you had brought the winter underwear you would be entitled to an explanation.”
“You are being monstrous.”
“Do you have any silver?”
“Yes.”
“Call Marian. Send her to my flat. Tell her to look in the bottom drawer of the highboy in the second bedroom. Tell her to bring the underwear here.”
“Who will run the office?”
“I don’t care if it burns. Get me that underwear.”
Carswell got up. He waddled away three steps, then turned. “I can have them bring a telephone to me here.”
“Oh, no, you won’t. Go to a booth and shut the door.”
Nick glared at his back. The twit. He ordered tea. He was impatient to get Carswell out of there for good so that he could talk to Yvette at his leisure. It took Carswell twenty minutes to get back.
“Marian will be here in about an hour,” he said.
“Did you talk to Miles Gander?”
“He will be charmed to have breakfast with you tomorrow morning.”
“Good.” He decided to fire Carswell as soon as he could find a replacement. “That’s all. You may go, David.”
“It is Monday morning. I do have an extraordinary amount of work to do.”
“Well, go and do it.”
They shook hands limply. David waddled away. Nick asked for a telephone. He dialed Yvette’s number in Paris and instantly she was on the line.
“Yvette? Nick.”
“Nick? Oh, boy! Are you in town?”
“London airport.”
“Oh.”
“I am dazzled to know that I am this close to you. The Channel and a little hunk of France is all. Nothing like half the world between us.”
“How come you’re at the London airport?”
“I put it all in a letter to you and mailed it in Frankfurt.”
“I may not see it—I mean for a couple of months. I’m going to the States in about two days.”
“Where to?”
“New York first.”
“How long will you be there?”
“Through January. Then Jamaica or something.”
“Can we have dinner Thursday night? I have to go to Palm Springs but I can make it to your place by eight on Thursday.”
“Oboyoboyoboy.”
“It’s been almost four months.”
“I know.”
“Just talking to you is too much. I don’t know how I can be this close and not see you.”
“Don’t even say it, Nick.”
“Okay. So long.”
“I love you, Nick.”
He hung up in a pink daze. He drifted to the newsstand and bought paperbacks and magazines. Marian arrived with the underwear in a plastic shopping bag. She was a short, thin girl in a miniskirt. If she couldn’t afford to wear a long skirt in London in January, Carswell must be underpaying her.
“I had a crazy cabbie,” Marian said. “He must be fleeing the police. Aren’t taxis supposed to have speed governors?”
“How much do we pay you, Marian?”
“Twenty-three pounds a week. Why? I didn’t miss finding the underwear the first time round. David forgot to tell me.”
“Give me your notebook.”
In fullest holograph he wrote a note to Carswell saying that henceforth Marian was to be paid thirty pounds a week. That should annoy the repulsive twit, he thought. Marian stared at the note. “But—why, Mr. Thirkield? I’m really not very good at anything in an office. Honestly, I could have missed your underwear the first time this morning even if David had told me.”
“You weren’t good at anything in an office because you were underpaid,” Nick said. “Now that you will be paid properly you will improve enormously.”
“But I don’t want to spend my life improving at this. If I could find a husband I’d be away from you like a shot.”
“Perfectly all right.”
“You may not understand it, but you are trying to obligate me, Mr. Thirkield. It’s as though thirty pounds a week were my price. This could change my life. This could make me so obligated that I would stop looking for a husband and turn into an office creep like a girl David Carswell.”
“What do you want me to do, Marian? I’ll do whatever you say.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Thirkield.”
“I’ll take it back. Here, we’ll tear it up.”
“No,” she said glumly. “That’s all right. It’s my problem now, innit?” She turned away from him and walked toward the exit of the lounge.
The pink haze had lifted again.