“So, Julia, how do you see your future?” he asked, as he nosed the car out into the rush-hour traffic along the Great West Road. “You’re not going to stay a secretary for ever, are you?”
“Actually I was hoping to get into television production.”
“Television production?” he said, with obvious surprise.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, quite frankly, we don’t have much room for women on the television side. Not unless you want to sit on the production line all day, plugging in valves. I suppose I could always have a word with Bill Harvey down at our Bristol plant.”
“I was talking about television programs, not television sets.”
“Oh, I see,” he nodded, and thought about that for a while. Then he said, “So that’s it, you’re thinking of spreading your wings. Goodbye Wheatstone’s, hallo fame and fortune?”
“I’ve had a great time at Wheatstone’s, don’t get me wrong. It’s really helped me to get my head together.”
“Well, good. Good. I’m glad about that. I wouldn’t like to think of your head being … you know. Apart.”
They stopped at a red traffic signal and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Here, do you think, or there?” he asked her.
“Oh, there, of course. I mean, what do you have here? Black-and-white, seven-inch screens, and less than three-quarters of a million viewers in the whole country. Back there, whole series get canceled if they can only attract an audience of three-quarters of a million.”
“I suppose you’re right,” said Frank Mordant. He pulled out and overtook a crowded double-decker bus. “Still … there’s a lot to be said for staying here, isn’t there? It would be very much easier for you to make your mark in television here, knowing what you know. Having that … background, as it were. I mean, look at me. I only got a ‘D’ in physics, but look at me now. Production director of the second-largest electrical company in Britain. Four thousand pounds a year. Plus perks.”
They crawled at two to three miles per hour through the tangle of traffic that would take them in to the Chiswick roundabout. It didn’t help that a baby Austin had broken down in the outside lane, and a young man in his shirtsleeves was frantically cranking the starting-handle. Up above them, autogiros swarmed through the evening sky like fireflies, their engines droning, carrying scores of wealthy businessmen home to Windsor and Lightwater and Sunbury-on-Thames.
“Look,” said Frank Mordant, “why don’t we stop for a quick drink? There’s a jolly little pub just along here.”
“Really, Mr Mordant, I have to be getting back.”
“Come on, one drink won’t hurt! You deserve it, after everything you’ve done today. All that filing. I know you think I’m a slavedriver, but your efforts don’t go unnoticed, you know.”
Julia felt desperate, but she couldn’t say no. She had refused Frank Mordant’s offer of a mint humbug once and he seemed to have taken it as a personal affront, keeping her working till well past six o’clock. “OK, then,” she agreed. “Just one drink.”
“That’s the ticket!” He steered the Armstrong-Siddeley into a side street and did some very complicated parking behind a rusty Wolseley. On the corner stood a small Victorian pub, The Sir Oswald Mosley, with cream-painted walls and maroon woodwork. Frank Mordant ushered Julia in through the engraved glass doors into the saloon bar. It was thick with cigarette smoke but it was almost empty, except for a spotty youth in a green tweed sports jacket playing the fruit machine and an elderly man with a beetroot-colored face and a mournful Staffordshire bull terrier lying by his feet.
The landlord appeared behind the curved mahogany bar with a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, and one eye scrunched up against the smoke. “Your usual, Mr Mordant?” he said, reaching up for a bottle of Glenlivet malt whiskey.
“Thank you, Norman. And what would you like, Julia?”
“Oh, just something non-alcoholic for me. Maybe an orange juice.”
A television was flickering on a shelf behind the bar. The sound was turned down but Julia could see what was happening. Hordes of people in sarongs were pulling down barriers and burning British flags. More trouble in Burma.
They sat down at a small marble-topped table and Frank Mordant raised his glass and said, “Cheers, m’dear.”
Julia took a sip of her warm reconstituted orange juice and tried to smile.
Frank Mordant looked around. “This isn’t a bad little place, you know, especially when it livens up a bit. You should come in here for Gold Cup day. Norman lays on quite a spread. Sandwiches, pork pies. That kind of thing. I call it my secret headquarters.”
Julia shook her head to show that she didn’t understand.
“Well, all of us have to have somewhere, don’t we? You’ve got somewhere, surely, even if it’s only a cupboard?”
“I keep some stuff in a drawer, sure. My Walkman, you know, and a whole lot of photographs.”
Frank Mordant nodded. He took out a packet of Capstan cigarettes and tapped one on the table top. “I don’t miss it, you know. Life’s been much too good for me here.”
“Don’t you miss anything, or anybody?”
“Oh, yes. I was married, you know, believe it or not. Pretty girl, Daphne, met her in Brighton. We had a daughter but she was a spastic and we had to put her in a home. Then I got into trouble with my car business. Cars, that was my line.”
He lit his cigarette and blew long funnels of smoke out of his nostrils. “There was a silly business over another woman, too. In the end, I thought, why not? Start all over again. Start afresh, if you know what I mean.”
Julia didn’t have to say anything. She knew exactly what he meant. It was the chance to start over that had attracted her to stay here, too. She had been halfway through a TV production course at University of California at Santa Cruz when she had fallen for Rex Pittman, and she still couldn’t think about Enya’s Orinoco Flow without a shiver. That was the music he had played when they had first made love: the 48-year-old professional TV writer and the deeply impressionable 21-year-old student. “Whenever you hear this song, you’re going to remember this night,” he had told her. But here, of course, nobody had ever heard of Enya.
It had all ended badly. Rex’s neurotic wife Nessa had found out about Julia and deliberately walked through a plate-glass door at Julia’s parents’ house. Rex had left Nessa and taken Julia to Baja for a week. Swimming, talking, sailing, drinking tequila sunrises and making love. But in the end they had to go back, and when they went back they discovered that Nessa had critically injured their three-year-old son James by pouring scalding water over him. James died two weeks later, in terrible pain.
That was why Julia was here. Mostly, anyhow. It was a way to begin her life all over again, where nothing and nobody could reach her.
Frank Mordant finished his whiskey and nodded toward her glass. “Fancy another?”
“No, no thanks. I really have to be getting home.”
“How is it, your flat?”
“Well, to be honest, it’s far too big for just one person. Way too expensive, too. My landlady just put it up to £2.17s.6d a week.”
“I say. That’s a bit steep, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t know if I ever want to share again. I liked Mary, but I always felt like I had to be on my guard. I think she suspected me, you know – but of course she never knew what it was that she suspected me of.”