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,
