Nigel’s smile of welcome scarcely flinched as, thirty yards away, the wheels of the alighting helicopter sank deep into his croquet lawn. His greeting was drowned in the racket of the motor.
The party he and Joyce had asked Tania Edye and myself to was at their new house, Wargrave Manor, near Henley. We’d travelled down to it by limo, as did most of the guests, though some came by helicopter, like these whose noisy arrival coincided with our own.
The large, eighteenth-century, white-colonnaded house stood in twenty acres of parkland overlooking the Thames; although this was commuter belt it felt like proper country, for the grounds abutted on their own farm. Nigel was a prominent tycoon now. Trafalgar House, the property business he’d started, had recently become a public company. An article in The Times reported that he’d achieved this at the age of only twenty-eight, making himself £1.6 million on the flotation. But going public had been only the first step for Nigel; in the months that followed he took over City and West End Properties, plus a construction company and Hampton’s, London’s most prestigious chain of estate agencies. In just one year the value of Trafalgar’s shares doubled, and had continued to go up steadily ever since.
Tania and I had been living together for more than a year. Raven haired with a dramatic, high-cheekboned face, she was high spirited and liberated – as were most young women and men at that time. Post Pill, the rules governing social etiquette had changed; it was considered bad manners for a gentleman not to sleep with a lady the first time he took her out. And a lady felt mortally offended if he did not sincerely try.
Tania and I shared an understanding and enjoyed a rackety good time together. Both of us drank hard and I was using drugs – but by now so too were most people we worked or mixed with. My uncle, Tony Watkins, and his wife raised six-foot-tall cannabis plants beside their swimming pool, generously supplying friends and family, including my now-teenage brother Hamish at Gilston Road. Mother smoked occasionally, and even Nanny enjoyed it puffed in her face during the Queen’s Speech after Christmas lunch. And Father, who was writing a book on opium, grew poppies whose crushed seeds he smoked in his pipe.
Tania and I led a busy work and social life. The word ‘relationship’ had not been coined, it was something we did not discuss. We were seldom alone together, and when we were, neither of us brought the subject up. I’d made no secret about my views on children. As one myself I’d been an inconvenience to my parents, whose children had prevented them leading the lives they wanted. This attitude I understood, for I’d inherited it. I had no objection to other people’s, though they bored me rather, but I did not want to father one. I knew I’d be defective in the role, and my family’s genetic heritage was not a desirable gift to bestow on anyone.
On our arrival at Wargrave Manor we’d been led through the house’s spacious hall and public rooms into the garden to greet our hosts and join the eighty or so people in evening dress drinking champagne beneath the lamp-lit trees on the lawn, its view over the wide sweep of the Thames valley fading into dusk below. It was, as I remarked to Nigel’s pretty blonde wife Joyce, quite some spread.
‘You wouldn’t believe how much work it took to do it up! I’m exhausted!’ she exclaimed in her habitual vivid manner, and threw back her head to laugh with teeth and jewellery flashing in the light. And continuing work to run, we learned, for the grounds required four full-time gardeners, and the staff of the house comprised housekeeper, butler, cook and four cleaning women.
Plus a nanny and nursemaids, for the Broackes had three children, who’d made a brief, well-mannered appearance at the start of the evening. ‘There’d be no problem about us having children if we could afford to bring them up like that,’ Tania remarked.
‘Mmm,’ I murmured unconvinced.
Most of the guests were older than we were and came from the world of property and big business in London, plus a few who owned houses nearby. Not until late in the evening did I get the chance to talk to Nigel alone. ‘This house is fearfully grand,’ I said. ‘The colonnades, the south front … it reminds me of Stowe.’
He laughed, fanning away the smoke of his cigar. ‘Yes, but this house makes sense for us, it’s a fine place for the children to grow up. Besides, I want to stand back from Trafalgar’s day-to-day operation and be able to reflect.’
On what, I asked, how to live with a Labour government? Not at all, he preferred them to the Conservatives, the opportunities were greater, he said. ‘No, I want to become more reclusive and contemplative here.’ But when he was in town I could still reach him on his direct number, TRAfalgar 1805, he told me.
It was past midnight when the clatter of departing helicopters hinted that the time had come to say goodbye. As our host was walking us to the front door Tania challenged him. ‘You’re the richest man either of us know, Nigel. Tell me, what should we do to make a fortune?’
Mellow at the close of a successful party, he stopped to answer. Standing in the middle of the imposing hall, he cocked his large head to one side and beamed benignly down. ‘The true potential has simply not been fully understood. You must buy the largest possible property you can find with the largest possible mortgage you can raise,’ he told her, and the cigar held between his fingers tapped out the two essential truths, the fruits of his contemplation.
I didn’t want to own a flat, I much preferred to rent one; I disliked the idea of commitment and permanence, but when an acquaintance, Tony Carvel, called to say he’d stumbled on this unbelievable bargain in real estate I listened to the tempter.
‘There’s this old geezer who’s been starting old folks’ homes, selling the rooms, then burning them down,’ he began excitedly. ‘He’s just gone to jail and there’s this house in Pont Street we could pick up the lease of for a couple of grand.’
‘That’s a frightful story,’ I said.
‘No, it’s a prime location, near where your mate Broackes started,’ Tony told me. We’d do up the three apartments and rent them for a handsome profit. So it was agreed; he’d do the work, I’d provide the money.
One warm summer’s day a few months later Tania and I were invited to Sunday lunch along with another couple by Robert Pilkington, a new acquaintance. We met for drinks in his fifth-floor Pont Street flat, intending to stroll from there to the Carlton Tower and lunch in the Rib Room.
Wandering over to the window, I looked down at the prosperous sunlit street and the row of small eighteenth-century houses on the other side. The ground floor of number 1 Pont Street, obliquely opposite, was an antique shop (now Drone’s restaurant), but the front door to the house itself stood modestly recessed beside it. A good address and a nice little property. And it was mine – or rather mine and Tony’s. As I stood, Bloody Mary in hand, regarding the place, it was not without a certain pleasure. Built of mellow brick, unassuming but well-proportioned, it looked a solid, respectable little house. I studied it with satisfaction, I’d come to terms with being a man of property.
Pilkington strolled over to join me. ‘See that house,’ he said, gesturing with his glass to number 1, ‘That’s a brothel. Peter Jacobs goes there every Tuesday afternoon to have his ass whipped.’
When I finally succeeded in reaching Tony on the telephone that evening he confessed that he’d inadvertently rented the first-floor apartment to Mrs Wilkinson, who ran two girls there. And we’d just signed a three-month lease. I was appalled – we owned a disorderly house, we could be sent to jail for it. Mrs Wilkinson and her hookers had to go. ‘Well, I’m not doing it alone. You’ve got to help,’ Tony said.
We called on her in Pont Street the following afternoon. I knew the flat well; I’d paid for the furniture, tasteful but hardwearing, and helped Tony put the place in order. But Mrs Wilkinson had rearranged and refurbished it for her specialised trade. Stocks built of heavy planking had been installed in the bedroom. The small living room where she received us was cramped by a leather-topped vaulting horse.
Mrs Sybil Wilkinson – ‘Sybs’ to her girls – was in her fifties and dressed like the Queen Mother. Her accent was ‘naice’, a refined south London. She gave us a cup of tea and heard us out graciously. She made no fuss when I told her she had to leave. ‘I’ll get my movers to take the apparatus out on Friday,’ she said. ‘But boys, you’re being silly. Really, this is unnecessary, my best client is a High Court judge.’
I dismissed her remark, wasn’t that what madams always claimed? But it proved to be true, and next week Tony took me to a specialised party given by His Honour and his actress wife in their gloomy Victorian flat in South Kensington. The other guests were already there when we arrived – two couples and a fat, Spanish-looking woman bulging out of a short tarty dress. After welcoming us and fixing drinks, the judge showed us his holiday snaps. We glanced through informal studies of his wife being imaginatively abused on the terrace of their rented villa on the naturist Île de Levant, and fellating the many friends they made while on vacation.
‘Interesting composition, what beautiful bougainvillaea,’ one murmured, leafing through the lurid deck. The conversation was banal, but held a sinister edge.
Soon there was a general move to the bedroom. This room, though much larger than those in Pont Street, was furnished in a similar fashion with much the same equipment; the décor was striking but oppressive. I was high on Methedrine, otherwise somehow none of this would have been possible. You had to be displaced, the nerves strung tight; the poet Cavafy writes, ‘the healthy body is unable to feel what is required’. Assisted by another female guest, the judge’s wife secured the fat woman face down across the vaulting horse, obeying his instructions delivered in a cold precise voice to raise her skirt. The performance was ritualistic, you knew they’d played out this scene many times before. It was disquieting, even menacing, to observe, but also highly erotic. Fastidiously the judge chose a cane from a selection laid out on the bed. With a sense of unease, alarm and appalled excitement I watched him give her a sound thrashing on the bare ass.
Occasionally we entertained at home. A week after Nigel’s party I’d asked a few people round to sample some majoum. A chewy paste like marzipan, it was made from kif and nuts and honey and tasted luscious. We’d each eaten our portion and were drinking mint tea, the recommended accompaniment. Procul Harum was playing on the record player and delicious warm lethargy was spreading through my limbs when I became aware of the telephone ringing behind the music. I picked it up.
‘Jeremy …’
It was Audrey Watkins, Uncle Tony’s wife. She sounded excited, but then she often was excited. A fast-moving, petite, pretty woman, excitement was one of the qualities Tony had married her for.
‘Jeremy …’ She said something I couldn’t hear, something about the swimming pool.
‘Hold on,’ I told her, and went to turn down the music. ‘What was that?’ I asked.
Her voice was frantic, ‘Jeremy, Tony’s shot himself.’
I heard a man’s voice speak in the background, the telephone was taken from her by their nearest neighbour, a movie executive. ‘He was in the pool, he’s gone,’ he said.