It Had to Be You

David Nobbs

It Had to be You

For the Goddard and Stubbs families, who have brought

so much pleasure into my life

Contents

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books by David Nobbs

Copyright

About the Publisher

Wednesday

A husband and wife were driving, in separate cars, towards two very different luncheon appointments. It was a glorious June morning, quite unsuitable for sudden death, yet only one of them would arrive.

Deborah Hollinghurst was driving along a quiet country road. She was in danger of being early, and she really didn’t think it would be stylish to be early, not today, not yet. So she was driving sedately, at a steady forty-five miles an hour along the winding road, to the irritation of the drivers of a couple of vans that had once been white. Her car was a convertible, but the roof was not down. She didn’t want the wind in her hair, not today. Next month she would be forty-seven. She was still lovely, but she was beginning to feel that her loveliness needed all the help it could get. Especially today. She felt excited, but also a little fearful. The fear was only faint, but it was getting stronger with every mile that she drove. She felt as if she was about to step off the edge of the world. Her world, anyway. She told herself that she didn’t have to step off. Nothing had been decided. She didn’t believe herself. She knew that everything had been decided.

A rabbit with myxomatosis stood at the side of the road, blind, impervious, a stone statue, like a ghastly garden sculpture of a rabbit. Deborah swerved to put it out of its misery, shuddered at the squelch of the tiny impact, on that glorious June morning, so unsuitable for sudden death.

A heron flapped slowly, contentedly across a field beside the road. Soon, if it had its way, a fish would meet its sudden death. The calm of the morning was illusory, its beauty marred by a thousand little tragedies.

To James Hollinghurst the morning had no beauty. The windows of the totally unnecessary 4 x 4 were closed, the air conditioning was on, his world was a mobile fridge, summer had no place in it, summer had been banished as a frivolous nuisance. He was on the M1, in the middle lane. He was in danger of being late, and he didn’t think it would be wise to be late, not today.

He was anxious. It was not going to be an easy meeting. He put his foot down. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five. He didn’t want to be caught on a speed camera, but anything was better than being late today.

He was listening to Classic FM. The adverts began, and he leant forward and pressed a button, which switched the radio over to another channel. He didn’t like the adverts. Their repetition irritated him. He had dark, unruly hair, thick untamed eyebrows, a high forehead and a low boredom threshold.

The next station that he found had music on it, or what passed for music. ‘Call that music,’ he shouted. He shouted at the radio a lot. It was what he had it on for. He was forty-eight. He was on quinapril, amlodipine and bisoprolol hemifumerate for his blood pressure, and simvastatins for his cholesterol.

Unfortunately the music stopped, and the DJ announced that he was going to speak to Tracey from Doncaster. James groaned. It was very possible that Tracey from Doncaster was a lovely girl. He often met people who were much nicer than the towns they lived in. But he didn’t think Tracey could tell him anything that he really needed to know at this moment. He switched back to Classic FM. The adverts were almost over.

‘We’ve more relaxing music for you in the next hour,’ purred the presenter in the honeyed, reassuring, faintly patronising tone adopted by almost all the announcers on Classic FM.

‘Relaxing?’ groaned James. He desperately needed to relax. Packaging was the first thing to suffer in a recession. If people had bought less, they had fewer things to pack. But he didn’t want to listen to relaxing music. He wanted to be transported into another world by great music. ‘I know you’ve done a lot for classical music,’ he told the presenter sorrowfully. After all, the man sounded nice and was probably kind to his wife. ‘But really, is that what you think great music is about? Did Beethoven say, “Darling, I think I created something memorably relaxing this morning”? Did Mrs Mahler find Mahler spark out as she brought him his morning coffee? “Sorry, Ingeborg, this symphony I’m writing is so relaxing I must have nodded off.” Give me great music. Stirring music. Please.’

He reached forward to press the button again, feeling a stab of pleasure at reducing the announcer to impotence. How he wished people could feel it when he switched them off. ‘Bad news, Monty. We’ve lost James Hollinghurst. The bastard was distinctly unimpressed. He’s switched over to BBC Radio 3.’

He accelerated with a sudden surge of impotent anger, and swung out into the fast lane. Surely, the way James was driving, if one of the Hollinghursts was to have a fatal accident that day, it would be him?

Not so.

Deborah came to a rare straight stretch of road. Four cars were proceeding smoothly in the opposite direction. A fifth, a Porsche, was overtaking them at speed. Suddenly she realised that it was going to be a close-run thing, if she didn’t slow down to let the driver through. Why should she, though? He was the one at fault, arrogant, rich, spoilt, in his expensive car. He deserved to have a moment of shock, of doubt, of fear. She’d brake, of course she would, she’d have to, but not for a couple of seconds.

It was the worst decision she ever made in her life.

It was also the last decision she ever made in her life.

A tall man, elegant in white linen, sat at a window table in the pink and cream restaurant, toyed with a glass of rather average house white and looked out over the gardens, which sloped down towards the gently flowing water. He wouldn’t like his name to be revealed. He shouldn’t be there. He’d chosen the place because he wasn’t known there. He’d kept his wits about him, and he was certain that nobody had followed him. The only private dick he needed to be concerned with was the one in his sharply creased trousers, which was so stimulated that he was finding it hard to keep it private. Let us allow him his precious anonymity – for the moment, at least.

There’s no need to name the hotel either. One of the things that had most attracted him to it was its obscurity. It was a long way from anybody he knew, and a long way from anybody whom the woman he was expecting knew. Let’s just say it was the Whatsit Arms, prettily situated on the banks of the River Thingamayjig, just outside the pleasant but not distinguished little village of Somewhere-juxta-Nowhere. It was mentioned in no guidebooks. It had no Michelin stars. It was perfect.

He had the table furthest from the door. He sat facing the door. Every time anybody entered he felt a frisson of excitement, soon dashed. My God, he said to himself with a wry internal smile, as he watched the lunchers enter, we’re an ugly race.

He wasn’t surprised that she was late. He’d expected her to be late. It was stylish for a woman to arrive late, and she was very stylish. He’d guessed that she would be eight, nine, perhaps ten minutes late. It was correct, and he always liked to be correct, which was why he’d had to be so secretive. There was no way what he was doing today was correct. A clandestine lunch with a married woman. Not his style at all. And, of all married women, this one.

Not just lunch, either. Or so he hoped. Not half an hour ago he had booked a double room for the night, just in case. He could hardly believe that he had been so bold. But if things went well, and if the mood was right, and if he did manage to persuade her, it might be disastrous to have to go through all the business of booking, of pretending to be a married couple, of giving false names. Do you need any help with your luggage? We have no luggage. Only baggage.

He’d had to give a name of course, fill in a form. Mr and Mrs Rivers, Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole. Utterly unbelievable, but it had aroused no suspicion from the Hungarian receptionist, whose skin was like a white pudding he had once eaten in the Languedoc. He’d blushed slightly at the boldness, the wild optimism of his choice of house number. He couldn’t remember ever having been even remotely risqué before. What had got into him? Love? Madness? The girl hadn’t reacted. Perhaps they didn’t use that term in the villages around Lake Balaton.

Suddenly he realised that he was wearing his wedding ring, and that might be tactless. He stood up abruptly, then calmed himself down and walked out of the restaurant, trying to look insouciant. He went to the Gents and forced the ring off his finger. He had never taken it off before, and it didn’t come easily, this was taking time, she would arrive before he got back, he began to panic. His finger felt trapped inside the ring.

At last it came off, and he breathed more easily again. But now he needed a pee, his third in the last hour. He had rarely been so nervous. Oh, hurry, hurry, lazy prick. She’ll be there. She’ll have arrived and found him absent, the great moment ruined.

He walked back, trying to look calm and carefree. She wasn’t there yet. For a moment he was glad.

Twelve minutes late. Thirteen. He began to feel just faintly uneasy.

James was late. The traffic had been heavy, but he should have allowed for that. And the BWC (Big White Chief) was a stickler for punctuality. The summons to the head office in Birmingham would have been unnerving at any time, but the recession was beginning to bite, the coalition’s threatened cuts hung heavily, and he felt very nervous. It shamed him to feel so nervous.

He drove past the ugly, glass and stained concrete building that housed the world HQ of Globpack. He turned right at the side of the building, then at the back turned left. A bar blocked his way into the car park. It irritated him that the intercom was so inconveniently placed that he had to get out of the car to speak into it. The intense heat of the city was a shock after the iciness of his car.

‘The car park’s full,’ announced a crackly disembodied Birmingham voice with barely concealed delight.

He gave his registration number, and added, ‘I have a space reserved.’

‘I have no record of this, I’m afraid,’ said the voice, sounding more pleased than afraid.

James swallowed. He found it difficult to be assertive to people when they weren’t on the radio.

‘I think you’d better find me a space,’ he said. ‘I’m the Managing Director of the London office.’

The bar rose. James got back into his car. Its iciness was a shock after the intense heat of the city. He drove in. The car park was full. He managed to squeeze his Subaru into a corner, at a somewhat humiliatingly awkward angle. Every little setback was making him feel even worse about the day’s prospects. He strode towards the ugly back of the building, which was called, as it deserved to be, Packaging House.

He had forgotten the four-figure security number that would unlock the back door. He would have to go round the front. He was getting later and later. This was bad. He didn’t feel like the Managing Director of the London office. He felt like an underling. And that was what he was, in reality, when he was meeting the Managing Director of the whole global venture.

He longed to break into a run, but in this heat it would have brought him out in a sweat, and that would have been disastrous. The BWC was a stickler for hygiene. Americans usually are.

As he walked towards the main entrance, James remembered something his father had said. This tended to happen at moments of stress. The voice came clearly to him from that Christmas fifteen years ago.

‘I feel guilty about you, James. I haven’t dealt with my children fairly. I’ve given Charles my artistry, Philip my brains, and you my eyebrows.’

How typical of his father, to have wrapped a grenade in a coating of sympathy. Fifteen years, and it still rankled. If only Deborah was with him, striding beside him on her long, strong, fleshy farmer’s daughter’s legs. He closed his eyes for a second in a sudden revulsion at how he had treated her, and almost fell as his foot caught the raised edge of a paving stone.

Careful, James. Get a grip.

Easily said, but in a few minutes he would know what this summons was all about. Surely it couldn’t be the sack? He’d been chosen to make the speech on behalf of the company at the big luncheon next Wednesday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Globpack UK. They’d hardly do that and then sack him.

Or would they? Maybe that would give out a sign of the company’s ruthlessness very effectively. No, he wasn’t secure.

Nobody was.

And even if it wasn’t the sack, it might be the dreaded news that the London office was to move to share premises with the global HQ – in Birmingham. That would be almost as bad.

Globpack! How had they come up with that? He had inherited a bit of his dad’s artistic taste, and he found it hard to believe that a career that had begun in the Basingstoke Box Company had led him, inexorably, to being employed by a firm called Globpack.

Another intercom outside the main entrance.

‘James Hollinghurst to see Mr Schenkman.’

The doors opened, with, it seemed to James, a sigh of resignation. We don’t want to let him in, but we can find no reason not to.

‘I have an appointment with Mr Schenkman. I’m afraid I’m late.’

The receptionist winced sympathetically, phoned Mr Schenkman’s office, and then said, to James’s surprise, ‘He’s coming down.’

Did this mean … could it mean … lunch? His spirits rose.

In the early years of their relationship, James had enjoyed many lunches, lunches marred only by the fact that the giant American was so abstemious that James had felt like an alcoholic every time he took a sip of his wine.

And now here the man was striding gigantically and rather aggressively over the even more gigantic foyer.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ said James, just before he was enveloped in Mr Schenkman’s global handshake. ‘The traffic!’

Dwight Schenkman the Third frowned. James felt that the frown said, Anticipation of difficulty is halfway towards success in the intensely competitive world of global packaging. No. He was becoming paranoid. The man was addicted to verbosity, but he must stop attributing quite such pompous words to him.

‘Could I have a taxi, please, to go to the Hotel du Vin?’ said Mr Schenkman to the receptionist.

The Hotel du Vin. James’s spirits took another cautious leap, then plummeted. When you feel insecure, no signs are good, and this could be a way of saying goodbye, and thank you.

A taxi pulled in almost immediately. James felt that they always would, for Dwight Schenkman the Third.

‘Hotel du Vin, please.’

The moment the taxi had slid away from the main entrance, the immaculately groomed American leant forward and said, ‘Driver, we’re actually going to the Pizza Express.’

James raised his bushy eyebrows, those unwelcome gifts from his father.

‘Couldn’t let them know that in the office,’ explained Dwight Schenkman the Third. ‘One word out of place, and the shares could slide. Confidence is fragile in the intensely competitive world of global packaging.’

The man in the white linen suit studied the menu for the third time. There were two misprints. There was ‘loin of God’, which was careless, and ‘expresso coffee’, which was ominously ignorant.

Thirty minutes. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. The serious doubts began.

At the next table they noticed ‘loin of God’, and the conversation turned to misprints on menus.

‘In a restaurant I went to in the Ardeche,’ said a crayfish cocktail, ‘there was a starter of “avocat farci”. It was translated in the English version as “stuffed lawyer”.’

There was laughter.

‘I wouldn’t have ordered that,’ said a soup of the day. ‘Too tough.’

There was more laughter.

‘Too expensive,’ added a chicken liver pâté, and there was yet more laughter.

All this laughter hit the man in the white linen suit like a punch in the stomach. He was in a state of anxiety that no laughter could penetrate. Suddenly he was convinced that something serious had happened.

He still didn’t think of an accident, though. He certainly didn’t think of death. It was the third day of Wimbledon. The day smelt of strawberries and cream. It wasn’t a time for accidents.

His first thought was that she had fallen ill, was in hospital, couldn’t phone, hadn’t dared to reveal their secret plans. That would be surprising, though. She was very fit.

He shook his head, to rid it of these speculations. A rather plump, middle-aged woman, lunching with a woman of similar age, caught his eye, and he tried not to look as if he was waiting for someone who hadn’t turned up. This irritated him. Why should he care? No wonder she hadn’t come, if that was the amount of confidence and poise he had.

No … on second thoughts … on second thoughts that was exactly what he thought she had had … second thoughts. She had seen the road ahead. The clandestine meetings. The lies. The deceptions. The hurt. She had decided that she didn’t want to have to be Mrs Rivers, of Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole.

He wasn’t worth it.

This was ridiculous. There was some utterly trivial explanation. Any minute now she would breeze in, smiling her apologies with that memorable wide smile of hers.

But she didn’t.

The Pizza Express was like … well, it was like every other Pizza Express. Just about Italian enough to be acceptable to the sophisticated, not so Italian that it discomfited the gauche. Warm enough to be pleasant to enter, cool enough to discourage a long stay.

A Polish waiter approached, trying to look Italian, trying to pretend to be really rather excited to see them. His insufficiently practised Eastern European smile foundered on the rock of Dwight Schenkman’s face.

‘Anything to drink, gentlemen?’

God, I could sink a Peroni.

‘Just a small sparkling water, please,’ said Dwight Schenkman.

Maybe a glass of the Montepulciano, thought James. A large one. But the words died in his throat.

‘Still water, please.’

James studied the menu. How, when the main course was mainly pizza, could there be dough balls as a starter? How much dough could a man consume?

‘How’s the lovely Deborah?’

‘Very well. Very well indeed.’

‘You’re a lucky son of a gun.’

‘I know I am. More than I deserve.’

‘And Max?’

‘Great.’

‘And Charlotte? The absent Charlotte?’

‘Still absent.’

The tension grew with every devastating drip of politeness. Now he had to take his turn at asking questions, and there was a problem. The names of Dwight’s wife and family escaped him entirely. He had once begun a correspondence course to improve his memory. ‘That’ll be a futile gesture,’ Deborah had predicted, and she’d been right. Halfway through the course he’d forgotten all about it.

‘Everything all right with your family?’ he enquired.

Pathetic. The lack of detail was blatant. But the BWC didn’t seem to notice. He took a photograph from his wallet.

‘We have our very first grandchild.’ He handed James a photo of an ugly, podgy baby being held in the excessively ample arms of an unrealistically blonde lady with slightly stick-out teeth. In the background was a bungalow of quite spectacular dreariness. ‘Who do you think that is?’

Inspiration, that rare visitor to his life, struck James.

‘Dwight Schenkman the Fifth?’

‘Yessir!’ This was said so loudly that several people in the vicinity turned to look.

‘Lovely,’ said James. ‘They make a lovely couple. And is that their home? It looks … cosy.’

‘James, that is exactly what it is. Dwight’s very New York, but Howard’s a real home bird. That’s his wife, Josie. James, it gives me great pleasure that you, my old friend, my trusted manager of the London office, think that Josie and Howard make a lovely couple. Thank you.’

James looked desperately for sarcasm and found none. But ‘old friend’, ‘trusted manager’. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

The waiter scurried across with their water, and asked if they were ready to order.

‘Absolutely,’ said Dwight Schenkman the third without consulting James. ‘James?’

‘I’ll have the capricciosa, please.’

‘Great choice, James. I’ll have the Veneziana. I like to feel I’m giving 25p to Venice. It’s a great little town. And those dough balls sound nice to start. You going for the dough balls, James?’

‘No, thank you.’ How thankful he was that he hadn’t made any comment about them.

‘We’ve had some great lunches, haven’t we? Le Gavroche. Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Claire and the lovely Deborah.’

Claire! Must remember that. Claire. An éclair with the e on the end instead of the beginning. Easy-peasy.

‘And now the Pizza Express.’

‘Hard times?’

‘Got it in one. What’s your view of the state of the packaging industry, James?’

‘Difficult, Dwight. We pack what people buy. We can’t pack more or less than that. We’re a kind of barometer of the economy.’

‘I like that.’ The BWC rolled the phrase round his mouth as if it was a glass of premier cru Chateau Margaux. God, James could do with a glass of wine. Any wine. ‘A barometer of the economy. I’ll remember that.’

Of course you will. You remember everything, you bastard.

Dwight Schenkman the Third leant so far forward that James could smell his toothpaste and his aftershave.

‘To business,’ he said.

James’s heart began to pump very fast. Thank goodness he’d remembered to take all his pills.

‘There are two elements to this, James. A global element and a UK element.’

The pumping of James’s heart began to slow just a little. It didn’t sound like the sack.

‘In the short term, James, I am requiring every element of our global operation to make a fifteen per cent cut across the board. Across the board, James, from personnel to toilet paper via water coolers and stationery. I need your specific proposal as to how this target may be met in Bridgend and Kilmarnock, and I need it within six months.’

James knew how difficult this would be, but all he could feel was relief, immense, shattering relief. He had been given a job to do. He had not been sacked.

Dwight’s dough balls arrived. Since he was far too well bred to talk with his mouth full, and since he was an exhaustive chewer, his outlining of James’s greatest challenge came with long interruptions.

‘There is a real possibility, James, that we might have to consider transferring some, if not most, of our total British production capacity to …’

James tried not to watch the curiously sterile rhythmic movement of Dwight’s jaw as he chewed.

‘… Taiwan. Well, there are other possibilities, but Taiwan is favourite as of this moment in time.’

As opposed to this moment in space, thought James irreverently.

‘In six months I will have received estimates of the saving that we can achieve by moving production to Taiwan. I want you to set up a committee to give me another report producing equal …’

James took a sip of his water and tried to pretend it was gin.

‘… savings in the UK. Otherwise, Taiwan it is. In which case we could …’