‘FRANCES, it’s me.’
‘Ah.’
‘We’re getting predictable.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I keep ringing up and saying “Frances, it’s me” and you keep saying “Ah”.’
‘So?’
‘So nothing. I just mention it in passing.’
‘Ah.’
‘There’s another one.’
‘Mm. How are you then? All right?’
‘Well, I am suffering a bit because someone kneed me in the balls.’
‘Perhaps that’ll teach you to stop chasing young girls.’
‘It wasn’t anything like that. It was . . . oh, never mind. Look, Frances, you remember when we last spoke . . .’
‘How could I forget it? You rang up and said “Frances, it’s me” and I said “Ah”.’
‘Yes. But on that occasion we also agreed that when I next rang up it should be with an invitation to something nice that you might like to do.’
‘I’m not sure that we agreed it. I said it’d be nice. I don’t recall you being that enthusiastic.’
‘Well, be that as it may. The thing is, I am now ringing to invite you out to something nice that I think you’ll enjoy.’
‘Oh yes? When?’
‘Saturday week.’
‘What time?’
‘Late morning till early evening.’
‘Ah.’
‘That’s another “Ah”, Frances. And, you know, the intonation of your “Ahs” is getting increasingly deterrent.’
‘Yes. The thing is, Charles, that that Saturday is the middle Saturday of Wimbledon.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, if you know that, then you should also know that I get totally hooked during the Wimbledon fortnight and spend every spare moment glued to the television.’
‘I do know that. That’s the point.’
‘What’s the point?’
‘The point is that I want to drag you away from watching Wimbledon on the television . . .’
‘But it’s one of the things I really enjoy!’
‘. . . and take you to watch Wimbledon in the flesh.’
‘Where?’
‘At Wimbledon.’
‘Oh. Charles, you’re not suggesting that you and I, at our age, drag ourselves over to Wimbledon in the early morning and queue for hours to –?’
‘No, Frances, I am saying I have two tickets to an executive hospitality suite at Wimbledon for that Saturday, and I am asking whether you would do me the honour of accompanying me there as my guest?’
‘Ah.’
‘Now that’s a much nicer “Ah”, Frances.’
‘Charles, bit of a crisis.’
‘What kind of crisis, Will?’
‘Got a meeting with Robin Pritchard at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning. About this new product. With him and the account executive from the ad agency. Thing is, Seb Ormond was going to go along with me.’
‘Why?’
‘As set-dressing, really. Told you I don’t want them to get the impression that Parton Parcel is just a one-man band.’
‘But it is just a one-man band, isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is, but that’s not the point. Having Seb sitting there looking dourly executive in his suit gives the set-up a bit of . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘Gravitas.’
‘The very word. Anyway, Seb’s cried off. Bugger’s going to Manila for a new washing machine.’
‘Seems a long way to go for a washing machine.’
‘Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Charles. He’s presenting the launch of a new washing machine out there . . . you know, standing up, reading from an autocue and getting paid a fortune for his pains.’
‘All right for some.’
‘Anyway, thing is, it puts me in a bit of a spot.’
‘Lack of gravitas, you mean?’
‘That’s it. You see, I want my set-up to look like a heavy-duty, solid company, so I can’t turn up to a big meeting on my own.’
‘I don’t quite see why.’
‘You take my word for it, I can’t. I know these people. Numbers count with them. So, Charles, reason I’m ringing is I wondered if you might be free to come along with me tomorrow . . .’
‘Oh. Well, Will, I’m very flattered that I’m the person you first thought of.’
‘Of course you’re not the person I first thought of! Nobody else was free.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come on, will you do it?’
‘I might not be free,’ said Charles loftily.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charles. You’re always free. Come on, help me out of a spot.’ There was a silence. ‘If you do, I’ll see that there’s something for you at the sales conference in Brighton . . .’
The bribe of work had its usual, instantaneous effect. Charles agreed to go to the meeting.
‘But what will I have to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, just sit there holding a briefcase and look like you’re making a mental note of everything that’s being said.’
‘Why?’
‘It’ll intimidate them a bit. Always a good idea to have one person at a meeting who doesn’t say anything – it makes all the others terribly self-conscious about what they’re saying. And raises the gravitas quotient.’
‘Ah. Right. But isn’t Robin Pritchard going to think it’s odd, me being there? I mean, he last saw me as a forklift truck operator. I don’t think forklift truck operators have a particularly high gravitas quotient.’
‘Don’t worry. He’ll be seeing you in a different context. I’ll tell him you’re part of the Parton Parcel set-up and that that’s why you did the first job. It won’t be a problem.’
‘If you say so. What voice shall I use?’
Charles rather fancied using the one he’d developed for Thomas Cromwell for A Man For All Seasons at Worthing (‘This play is as well-made as a mahogany sideboard, and the acting was matchingly wooden’ – West Sussex Gazette). Or possibly his Sir Benjamin Backbite from that Cheltenham School for Scandal (‘The only scandal about this dire production was that Arts Council money helped to fund it’ – Gloucester Citizen).
But such speculation was quickly curbed by Will. ‘I told you, you don’t say anything.’
‘But –’
‘And if you do have to say anything, you use your own voice.’
‘Oh. OK.’ He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t a little disappointed.
‘And, again, no giggling.’
‘Promise.’
‘One other thing, Charles . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Suit.’
‘Ah.’ Then, hopefully, ‘You don’t think the suit I’ve got could be –’
‘Charles . . .’ The intonation said it all.
‘No. I see. Right.’
‘Point is, actually, if you’re going to be doing much more corporate work . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Which you do want to, don’t you . . .’
‘Oh, yes, yes, sure.’ The reply was instinctive. It wasn’t particularly corporate work he wanted to do, just work.
‘Well, it really is about time you started building up your wardrobe. I mean, for every time you’re asked to do a forklift truck operator, you’re going to be offered ten executives.’
‘Hm. So what you’re saying, Will, is that I’m going to have to buy a suit?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
‘And before this meeting?’
‘Right.’
Charles was torn. Buying a suit was unbelievably low on his list of priorities. On the other hand, if that investment was the necessary key to a whole new field of lucrative work . . . ‘OK, Will, I’ll buy one in the morning. Where is the meeting? Out at Stenley Curton?’
‘No, it’s in London. But, Charles, we must meet before the meeting.’
‘What, you need to brief me?’
‘Good heavens, no. But you don’t think I trust you to buy a suit on your own, do you?’
They met, as arranged, at Oxford Circus. Charles was a bit vague about where to go from there. ‘John Lewis pretty safe, isn’t it? Or Marks & Spencers sell suits these days, don’t they?’
He thought he was doing rather well, given how long it had been since he made a comparable purchase. Two ideas for where to go straight away – not bad. But the expression on Will Parton’s face told him that he was not doing well at all.
‘For heaven’s sake, Charles, we’re dressing an up-to-the-minute executive here, not a Leader of the Labour Party.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re after something with a bit of style.’
‘Oh, come on, a suit’s a suit, isn’t it?’
‘No, it isn’t.’ Will slid into his ‘affected artist’ voice. ‘A suit’s like a theatrical performance, love – it can look as if it’s been totally grafted on from the outside, or it can flow from within so that one cannot tell where the personality stops and the suit begins.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Charles was reminded of an occasion in the sixties. He had been in Stratford, wearing a former suit, an ancient voluminous garment in fuzzy charcoal tweed inherited from his father, and had met an actor wearing a collarless Beatle-style number in identical fabric.
‘Look,’ Charles had said, holding his sleeve against the other actor’s, ‘same material.’
‘Yes,’ the actor had responded waspishly, ‘but I had a suit made out of mine.’
Will hailed a cab and took Charles to Covent Garden. There he led him into a long narrow shop. The graphics over the door were so trendily minimalist that Charles couldn’t read what the place was called. Once inside, Will showed a determination to kit his friend out as a minor mafioso.
‘Surely this is too big,’ whispered Charles, as he shambled out of the changing booth in a slightly shiny striped ensemble, which hung off him like the skin of an elephant six weeks into a crash diet.
‘He thinks it’s too big,’ said Will, gleefully cruel.
‘It is the style,’ said the razor-thin shop assistant, with a waspishness which raised the possibility that his father might have worked at Stratford in the sixties.
‘Feels quite lightweight, too,’ Charles persisted. ‘I like a suit with a bit of bulk. You know, for the winter. Got to keep warm.’
‘It’s summer,’ said the young man, with a contemptuous flick of his pony-tail.
‘Yes, but got to think ahead.’
‘And since most offices these days are air-conditioned, today’s executive tends to favour the lighter fabric.’
‘Oh.’
‘And have a topcoat to wear outside when the weather’s cold.’
‘Ah.’
‘We do have an extensive range of topcoats if you –’
‘Ah, er, no, thank you,’ said Charles, who had just caught a glimpse of the price ticket on the suit. He looked across at Will and flapped his arms like an apologetic penguin. ‘What do you think?’
‘Hm. It’s a bit sober, isn’t it?’
‘Sober?’
The writer turned maliciously to a hanging suit in pale flecked tweed, whose effect was of home-made cream of mushroom soup with croutons in it. ‘This makes a bit more of a statement, doesn’t it?’
Charles scotched that idea very quickly. ‘Yes, but it’s a statement from which I would firmly wish to dissociate myself, thank you very much.’
They ummed and erred. The young man wondered whether the gentleman would look better in a light brown herringbone (but in a defeated tone which implied he didn’t really think the gentleman would look better in anything).
Charles took another look at himself in the mirror. He pulled the looseness of the double-breasted jacket away from his stomach. ‘At least this is quite flattering to the fuller figure,’ he chuckled.
‘No, actually, sir,’ said the young man, ‘the style does look rather better on someone with a proper figure.’
‘Oh well, perhaps I should be shopping for a new figure rather than a new suit,’ Charles suggested, with a grin.
‘Wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ the young man murmured, fingering one of his earrings.
‘That one’s a good fit,’ said Will. ‘Gives you a bit of edge, certainly.’
‘Is “edge” what we’re looking for?’ asked Charles cautiously.
Will glanced at his watch. ‘We haven’t got too long to piss about. I think we should go for it, Charles.’
‘Well, If you’re sure –’
‘Yes, we’ll have it.’
‘If that’s your decision,’ sighed the young man, in the manner of someone whose recommendation that Caesar stay at home on the Ides of March has just been overruled.
‘Right, you’d better keep it on, Charles. Oh no, first you need a shirt and tie.’
‘I’m wearing a shirt and tie.’
Protest was vain. He was dragged over to another display and kitted out with a soft cotton shirt whose sleeves were puffy enough to play Hamlet in, and a silk tie with a design that Braque might have knocked up and rejected while prostrated by flu. The tie, he noticed, cost as much as the last suit he had bought.
Paying was a problem. Charles had just achieved the unachievable and, following an ugly sequence of threatening letters, managed to pay off the debts on both his credit cards. At that unaccustomed moment of solvency, he had resolved to impose on himself a rigid regime of economy. That this intention was serious can be judged from the fact that he even – briefly – contemplated counting, and if necessary rationing, the number of bottles of Bell’s whisky he bought.
Still, the road to hell is paved with plastic. He drew out the card and once again plunged deep, deep into debt.
He tried to convince himself that the clothes were a valuable investment for his career, but natural cynicism made such casuistry impossible.
While he changed into the shirt and tie, the shop assistant bundled his old clothes into a plastic carrier, which he placed on the floor behind the counter.
‘Could I have those, please?’ asked Charles, as he was about to leave.
‘Good heavens,’ murmured the young man, lifting his eyes to heaven. ‘You mean you want to keep them?’