The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger

They passed through the door without meeting the waiter’s eyes. They heard the lock click angrily behind them.

And in the street – there in the City of London – the Coppinger brothers did something neither of them would have believed, when they got up that morning, that they would ever do.

They hugged.

Hugo walked away. He didn’t look back. He never looked back.

And Sir Gordon thought, Good Lord. We never said a word about Jack.

The evening ended, as it had begun, in silence

We’ve all seen them, those married couples in pubs and restaurants, sitting there in silence, not a word to say to each other. It’s easy to mock, feel a touch of contempt even, forget that maybe they no longer need to talk, know what the other is thinking without any necessity for words. It’s easy to forget that they know so much about each other that it’s almost impossible for them to think of any questions to ask each other. ‘What sort of music do you like?’ would be a devastating admission of lack of interest after twenty-nine years.

And Sir Gordon and Lady Coppinger had been married now for twenty-nine years. It felt like forty-nine. Their silence was not companionable, not shared. Their silence was prickly, and loud with all the things that were not being said. Their silence was deafening.

They were sitting at opposite ends of the oval table in the private room on the first floor of the Hoop and Two Colonels. It was a gastropub in these days when pubs in the country can no longer survive without being gastropubs. Sir Gordon liked it because it served largely good, plain, solid English food. Lady Coppinger disliked it for the same reason. If she ate there too often her legs would become even less slim than once they had been. There was nothing unusual about the place except its name. It was the only pub in the world called the Hoop and Two Colonels. Neither Sir Gordon nor Lady Coppinger was remotely interested in why it was so named. There was no money in knowing.

It cost Sir Gordon quite a sum to book the private room just for the two of them. The restaurant was full of atmosphere, crazy with beams, crammed with dressers laden with old plates. The private room was spare and pale and almost corporate. But it was difficult for them to eat in public. You never knew who’d be watching, finger on the button, ready to Tweet. ‘Saw Sir Gordon and Lady Coppinger at dinner. Hardly spoke. Devoted? I don’t think so.’ Or to phone. ‘You know who those are? Just popping out, sweetest, to phone the papers. Might be a photo opportunity, might bung me a few quid, might be able to get that trellising fixed.’ People! Bastards!

The private room could seat twenty, so by sitting at the ends they formed a little parody of the aristocracy at home. This evening that just irritated Sir Gordon. This evening he actually wanted to talk. But he couldn’t. He felt as if he was visiting a sick relative in hospital. Time dragged. Opening gambits died on his lips. After the ritual insincere ‘Happy birthday, darling’, the raising of his gin glass and her champagne flute – he hated flutes, he hated champagne – and her insincere ‘Thank you, Gordon’, she couldn’t even bring herself to say ‘darling’ there was an aching silence while they waited to order.

If one is telling of a meeting in which nothing was said, what can one do but relate what was not said? Prominent in this category, from Sir Gordon, was ‘What sort of a day have you had?’, closely followed by ‘Anybody phoned?’, ‘Any further disasters reported from the care home?’, ‘Has Luke forgotten it’s your birthday again?’, ‘Was Joanna’s card as uninspired as ever?’, and, coming up strongly on the outside, ‘Bought any more shoes today?’

From his wife there was no such profligacy. One silence strangled all others in their infancy. ‘Have you seen Mandy today?’

They gave their orders. Lady Coppinger’s ‘I’ll have the coquilles St Jacques and the pork stroganoff’ was a simple statement of defiance against the patriotism on which her husband traded. Sir Gordon’s ‘I’ll have the hare terrine and the Lancashire hotpot’ was spoken with the slight uneasiness that comes with the knowledge that every word one utters in public may be dissected for hidden meaning. The chef might phone the business section of a paper, whose gossip columnist might write, ‘May we expect news of an investment in the north-west from the Sir Gordon Coppinger Group? Certainly on Monday evening at his wife’s birthday dinner Sir Gordon chose not only Lancashire hotpot, but also hare terrine with Cumberland sauce. Straws in the wind? Maybe. But the north-west is one of the few parts of Britain in which Sir Gordon has no business interests.’ And the hare terrine. Woe betide him if he ever came out against hunting. The waiter might remember that hare terrine and accuse him of hypocrisy on Facebook. Bastards, waiters.

Sadly, people do not always realize how difficult and stressful the lives of the famous are.

Once again, too, Sir Gordon had to order a bottle of wine that cost in excess of £200. If he didn’t, his wife might wonder about the state of his finances. She might also discover – oh, perish the thought – that he had spent more on a bottle for his brother Hugo than he had on her.

Once the waiter had gone, Sir Gordon began to wish that he could end the silence, that they could talk, laugh, joke as once they had done. Christina was much more comfortable with the silence than he was. The silence put him at a disadvantage. And he was struck again by that sense of utter loneliness. This was awful. This was weak. He might be many things, but he was never weak. He must speak.

But to speak would be weak. He mustn’t speak.

But he couldn’t bear the silence any longer. He spoke.

His question was hardly worth all the agony that had preceded it.

‘Do anything for lunch?’

The question shrivelled in her gaze.

‘Of course not.’

‘Why “Of course not”?’

‘Gordon, I can’t eat twice in one day.’

She’d read the article about her appearance in Baden-Baden! She’d seen the comment about her legs!

The wine arrived and saved him further humiliation for a moment. He spent more than a minute swirling it round his mighty glass and sniffing it.

When the waiter had gone, the silence was absolute. She crossed her no longer quite so slim legs and the rasping of tights on tights was deafening. It was awful to feel no desire in these circumstances. He was a man of prodigious virility. Surely he could summon up at least a smidgen of desire?

The need to speak conquered him again. Inevitably, the subject was roses. Roses were her life. She had won no fewer than thirty-seven prizes for her roses, in various parts of the world, and her two slim volumes, Rose Breeding For Beginners and The Bush Pruner’s Companion, had winged their way to all her friends and most of her enemies.

Occasionally, when he caught her at work on her roses, he saw a trace of the enthusiastic, uncomplicated woman she had once seemed to be. Her face lost its wariness, its hauteur. It was still a beautiful face but it had slowly grown harder, thinner, more angular. He sometimes wondered if she had actually forgotten, over the years, that she had once been Miss Lemon Drizzle 1980.

He recalled her telling him, when they were courting, how thrilled she had been with the corner of his allotment her father had given her, how excited she had been when she first made carrot cake with her own carrots, how she had loved her very first rose bush. He had seen her slowly turn this new interest from a hobby to a business, from fun to finance, from colour to competition, from pleasure to prizes, from roses to rosettes. He had seen her stride through the Chelsea Flower Show like the goddess she now seemed to believe she was, as if she had bred not only roses but her own self as a lady of breeding. And he knew now that much of the responsibility for her transformation had been his. It was little wonder that his remark came out all wrong.

‘Thought up any new roses today?’

Even to him it sounded sarcastic. It was a huge mistake.

‘I do not think up roses. I breed them.’

She relapsed into silence, and the fact that he deserved it didn’t make it any easier to bear.

‘I do wish you had something to say, Christina,’ he said. ‘It is your birthday, after all.’

He noticed a flicker of astonishment in her dark brown eyes, and a brief glimmer of triumph. He had shown his weakness. She had reduced him to pleading, and to making a ridiculous non sequitur about her birthday.

The return of the waiter was quite a shock to Sir Gordon. The silence in the room had been so absolute that it would not have surprised him to have discovered that the rest of the pub had disappeared, that they were suspended in space.

‘Which of you’s the terrine?’ the waiter asked.

This ineptitude cheered Sir Gordon considerably. It was what he expected from the public. It was what he expected from waiters.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘Must be difficult to remember when there are so many of us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

When the waiter had gone, Sir Gordon found himself wondering if there was a name for a person who hated waiters. A waiterophobe?

He also wondered how it was that he was starting to wonder about things. It wasn’t like him. There was no percentage in wondering.

He took a large mouthful of hare terrine, liberally spread with Cumberland sauce. At that moment, with cruel timing, Christina spoke.

‘So, let’s talk,’ she said. ‘What have you done today?’

Oh Lord. She had bowled a googly. He chewed his terrine at unnecessary length and pondered all the things he couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her about meeting Fred Upson. She hated the man. His obsession with his expenses drove her into apoplexy. He couldn’t mention Luke’s paintings. In his eyes the fact that the boy had been shortlisted for the Turner Prize was a stain upon the whole family. He could tell her nothing about GI. To talk about his lunch with Hugo would be most unwise. And as for his afternoon … well!

The swallowing of the terrine could be delayed no longer.

‘I gave a job to the Fortescue boy. Terribly public school. Bathed in naivety and enthusiasm. I’ve sent him to Porter’s Potteries Pies.’

‘Excellent.’ She almost smiled. ‘I hate that Fortescue man.’

He thought, but did not say, ‘You didn’t need to tell me that. It’d be easier just to tell me when you don’t hate somebody.’

‘And?’

‘What do you mean – “And”?’

‘And what else have you done? I hardly think that took all morning.’

He took another mouthful of the delicious terrine, and again chewed for as long as he dared.

‘Oh, you know,’ he said at last. ‘Meetings and things.’

‘You’ve become very secretive lately, Gordon. Particularly in the last seventeen years. So, nothing to report. The little lady wouldn’t understand all those dreadful economics.’

‘Well, since the world’s economists don’t seem to, you probably wouldn’t.’

‘Lunch?’

‘What?’

‘Did you have lunch?’

‘No.’

‘No lunch? Gordon! What’s happening to you? You’ll waste away.’

‘Well, I mean, I had a quick sandwich. In the office.’

‘Fetched for you by the grim Grimaldi?’

‘Yes, as it happens.’

‘What sort of sandwich was it?’

Suddenly there was too much talking – far too much.

‘What is this – the Spanish Inquisition?’

‘I’m interested. You always say you hate sandwiches, and now I learn you had them today and naturally I’m fascinated to know what kind of sandwich was so delicious that you overcame your habitual repugnance.’

‘Tuna and cucumber.’

‘Tuna and cucumber! Gordon, that is so Pret A Manger. That is so Network Rail. That is so Welcome Break. You cannot expect me to believe it.’

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t believe it.’

‘Because Hugo told me you lunched with him.’

‘Oh, was that today? Oh God, yes. Yes, it was. The tuna sandwich must have been Friday.’

Oh God. If my millions of admirers could see me squirming like this.

Christina smiled. It struck him how her smile had also changed over the years, hardened into a reaction not to the world but to her own thoughts about the world. It had become as spiky as some of her roses. Yet it still had a faint, disturbing echo of what it had once been.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘I was thinking, what if your millions of admirers could see you squirming like this?’

‘Have you finished?’

They hadn’t heard the waiter come in.

‘I see not a speck of food left on our plates. I think we may safely deduce that we have finished,’ said Sir Gordon, clothing his sarcasm in a smooth smile.

‘Thank you, sir.’

The waiter slid noiselessly out on shoes that must have been oiled with WD40, or perhaps with ‘S’ssh! The Ultimate in Squeak Removal’, made in Sir Gordon’s factory on the outskirts of Droitwich and destined, he hoped and believed, to consign WD40 to the pages of history. Or was he being over-ambitious again, as he had been with Germophile? Germophile! He didn’t even want to think about that episode.

In his effort not to think about Germophile, something Christina had said suddenly struck him.

‘You’ve spoken to Hugo then?’

‘I wondered how long it would take for that fact to sink in. Yes. He phoned, asked if he could bring anything for Saturday. I told him there was no need to bring anything except himself. I told him he was gift enough. The poor sap lapped it up.’

‘Hugo isn’t a poor sap, darling.’ He regretted that ‘darling’. ‘Poor saps don’t have houses in Eaton Square, Cap Ferrat, Venice, Rhode Island, and Bermuda.’

‘He’s a poor sap emotionally.’

‘He’s a banker.’

The opportunity for rhyming slang cannot have escaped either of them, but they said nothing.

‘Who’s the hotpot?’ interrupted the waiter like a gunshot.

It had to be an act.

When the waiter had gone, Sir Gordon took a mouthful and discovered that the hotpot was a very hot hotpot indeed. He gasped, tried moving the meat around in his mouth so as not to burn any bit of skin too much. Few wives could have wasted such a moment.

‘And your afternoon?’

While he dealt with his explosive mouthful, Sir Gordon thought desperately about his desperate afternoon. What could he tell her? Jack wasn’t mentioned in the house, which was hardly surprising in view of the gift that he had left her all those years ago, the gift that she had once, briefly, welcomed. (I could explain this now, but I choose to string you along. These are not generous times.)

Besides, how could he admit to his wife that he had felt unable, after his lunch with Hugo, to face the Coppinger Tower? He could never confess such weakness to her. And how could he admit that his heart seemed to have opened up, and that he’d felt an overwhelming need to see his younger brother, who had not quite enough of the family brains, not quite enough of the family spunk, not quite enough of the combination of brains and spunk that had been given to Sir Gordon and to Hugo by the brutality of chance. How could he admit to Lady Coppinger that he had hunted for Jack with the intention of trying to help him, even though Jack had rejected all help for ever?

And hadn’t found him, not in Soho, not under the arches of Charing Cross, not in Waterloo, not under any of the bridges of London. And how the wind had blown.

‘I just went back to the office actually. Caught up on some paperwork. Didn’t see anybody.’

‘Except the grim Grimaldi, presumably.’

Did she know?

‘Except the grim Grimaldi, yes. She brought me her grim coffee, and a grim rock cake from the grim canteen.’

He felt a slight twinge of shame at his disloyalty in calling the canteen grim. The canteen and the adjoining restaurant on the eighth floor were fine. The only reason he didn’t use them was because his presence inhibited everyone else from saying anything meaningful to each other. The strength of his ears was legendary.

Talk faded, fluttered feebly, died. Sir Gordon grieved, searched for answering grief in his wife’s dark eyes, and found none.

‘Have you finished?’

‘Once again the total absence of any even minute morsels of food remaining on any of our plates or in any of the dishes would suggest that we are seriously deluded if we believe that we haven’t finished.’

‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir.’

If only he had managed to see Jack.

Could Jack have died?

How would they find out if Jack had died?

He became aware that Christina had been speaking.

‘Sorry, I missed that. I was thinking,’ he said.

‘Gordon! How brave. Taking up a new activity at your age.’

He was so tired of her sarcasm – though not, curiously, of his own.

‘So, have I missed anything interesting?’

‘God, no. I just asked what you were doing tomorrow. I know my questions aren’t very imaginative but I am trying because you said you wanted me to talk. ’

‘So you’re trying new things as well. The obedient wife. Very nice.’

For a moment he thought he’d got away with it. He really didn’t want to talk about tomorrow. Two events dominated tomorrow’s agenda, and he didn’t want to talk to her about either of them. But then she repeated the question.

‘So what are you doing tomorrow?’

Tomorrow … lunching with the Earl of Flaxborough, who lives, not surprisingly, at Flaxborough Hall, which is, also not surprisingly, just outside Flaxborough, and in which ‘a proposition of some interest will be put to you’, according to the Curator of the Coppinger Collection, Peregrine Thoresby. What a feast of sarcasm about his glamorous life and his neglect of her that would inspire if he told her. And in the evening … well …!

‘Tomorrow? Nothing much. Can’t remember.’

‘Oh, come on, Gordon. You always remember. You don’t even need a diary.’

‘No, honestly, tomorrow, routine bits and bobs, that’s all. Tuesday’s never very stimulating. Oh, and I won’t be back for dinner. I have a meeting.’

‘With Mandy?’

‘Who’s the tiramisu?’

He was grateful for the interruption; he had never been so grateful to a waiter, but he didn’t show it.

‘Has it not dawned on you yet that I choose the British dishes, because I am British and proud of it, and my wife deliberately, in order to annoy me, chooses the most foreign dishes she can find on the menu?’

‘So you are the Eton Mess, sir?’

‘Oh, well deduced, Mr Einstein.’

Oh God, now those dark eyes were gleaming. In his eagerness to show the waiter how much he hated him he had revealed to Christina how deeply she had got under his skin. What a disaster, what an Eton mess.

‘You’re avoiding my question. Are you seeing the marvellous Mandy tomorrow night?’

‘I wasn’t avoiding your question. The waiter interrupted, with the genius of his ilk. I didn’t get a chance to reply.’

‘You’re avoiding it now. Are you seeing Mandy?’

‘What is this obsession with Mandy?’

‘That’s what I ask myself. Are you seeing her tomorrow night?’

Why was he so reluctant to lie? Was he losing his nerve? Did he think she would be able to tell that he was lying?

‘No, I am not seeing Mandy tomorrow night. I’m seeing two Croatian businessmen. Croatia’s an up-and-coming country. I need to get in there.’

After that, they ate their delicious desserts in silence.

Suddenly the door burst open and a woman in her early thirties, wearing a witch’s hat and a very short dress, lurched into the room, saw them, and shrieked with laughter.

‘Oops, sorry, I thought it was the Ladies,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Sir Gordon unnecessarily.

‘Oh gawd, I’m bursting,’ said the drunk young woman.

‘Too much information,’ said Sir Gordon.

‘Do you know where the Ladies is?’ the drunk young woman asked Christina.

‘I have no idea,’ said Christina frostily.

‘Blimey, you’re on your pud and you haven’t been yet. You must have a strong bladder. I’ve got a very weak bladder. I go all the time. Pee, pee, pee, that’s me.’

Oh, Christina, your face. Your fury. Your scorn. The lower orders, how common, how vulgar. Your denial of your birth, your childhood, your mum and dad, your moments of glory as Miss Lemon Drizzle. Oh, Christina.

He conveniently forgot, in his scorn of her scorn, that he also despised the lower orders. But, curiously, this evening he did not despise this intruder. Oh, silly drunk young woman in your witch’s hat, he thought, I will help you find the Ladies.

And he did. Without difficulty. With charm.

And that disturbed him. Maybe he had only done it to irritate Christina, and he often went through rituals that he despised and hid his scorn in charm, but he found that he did not despise this young woman who might have very good reasons to get drunk. He found the incident rather endearing. He thought the young woman was fun.

That was worrying.

He returned, looked at his wife’s icy face.

‘It’s odd. Today has been strangely dominated by urine. At breakfast I thought of the horror of needing to pee on the Kingston By-Pass. In the office, I imagined our receptionist’s boyfriend peeing in a sodden Sussex hedge. In the lift I realized I needed to pee and then I found myself describing young Martin Fortescue as a long streak of piss – though only to myself admittedly – and then in the afternoon I found myself in agony, while I was searching for Jack, and I did something I’ve never done, I took an enormous risk, not a paparazzo in sight, but still a risk, I peed under Blackfriars Bridge. And now this poor girl with her weak bladder, what a day.’

Of course he said none of that. The evening ended, as it had begun, in silence.

A great deal nearer than the Solway Firth

Sir Gordon felt slightly uneasy on his visit to Flaxborough Hall. This was the real deal. Rose Cottage truly was only a cottage after all.

He felt uneasy from the moment Kirkstall nosed the Rolls-Royce up the long drive towards the beautiful Jacobean frontage, through parkland laid out by Perspicacity Smith centuries ago.

There were signs, it was true, of slight but disturbing decay. Some of the bushes needed pruning. Branches that had been ripped off trees by the recent gales still lay on the ground. The mellow red-brick walls were in need of pointing. A gutter here and there hung loosely. Drainpipes were rusty.

The eighteenth Earl of Flaxborough stood at the top of the steps to welcome them, almost as if Sir Gordon and Peregrine Thoresby were royalty. Here too there were signs of slight but disturbing decay. He looked frail. He seemed to have become slightly too small for his clothes. He was beginning to droop, as if his long legs could no longer bear the weight of his even longer body. He had stretched his thin hair bravely over his scalp, to little avail.

‘I am so delighted to welcome you to Flaxborough,’ he said, in a melodious voice steeped in history.

There was a slight stiffness to his walk as he led them through the great hall into a large drawing room. The chairs in which they sat felt as if dust sheets had only just been removed from them. A chill hung over the house. Damp clung to the walls like a nervous child. It would have been tactless to look at the plaster too closely.

‘The bells aren’t working,’ said the Earl apologetically. ‘Excuse me while I round up some sherry.’

Perhaps the Earl’s stiffness was just a result of the damp, but when he had gone Peregrine commented, ‘He walks as if he has the burden of history in his bones.’ Peregrine had a great mass of curly black hair which made him look much younger than his forty-eight years. His voice was almost as posh as the Earl’s, but thinner and more strident. ‘Did you notice that little habit he has of glancing behind him? Is it fanciful to imagine that he is seeing seventeen Earls of Flaxborough marching behind him, watching what sort of a fist he is making of managing his inheritance?’