The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger. David Nobbs
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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.’