Chapter Fifteen
All Olivia saw was gold and brown. All she felt was the kind of thick warmth that would make a person want to sit back in their finely upholstered, art deco armchair and sleep, if they weren’t savouring their whiskey cocktail.
She needed warmth; the church had been freezing and so had the wake, as a distant cousin had insisted on leaving the door open so they could chain-smoke selfishly on the threshold.
Olivia had risen countless times from her chilly seat next to dry Auntie Amelie to close it, but had eventually given up.
‘Had your father been ill?’ Leo asked her.
Olivia blinked against the brown and gold opulence of her surroundings. The gilt domed ceilings. The lit-up Lalique panels. The gleaming camphor wood.
‘No. No, he hadn’t been ill. He’d been fine.
’ She flicked at the corner of her cocktail menu.
‘He had an aneurysm.’ She exhaled. Her father had died on leaving the Gielgud Theatre that night with Gillian.
He had collapsed on the steps, falling to the street, dying instantly.
While she was on the Underground dashing home to King’s Cross to meet her deadline. ‘It was his birthday.’
Her voice wavered. She took a sip of her Churchill’s Courage – bourbon, maple syrup and white port – from a big fat tumbler.
If ever she needed a good old dose of British stiff upper lip, it was then.
A robust, ballasting drink to keep her upright and not spilling on to the carpet like rancid oil.
There were nuts on the table, olives; they hadn’t touched them.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Leo said tenderly. ‘That’s incredibly sad.’
She took another big sip, before setting down the glass.
A waiter appeared to discreetly check for depletion of nuts or olives, then glided away.
She stared at an illuminated panel of Lalique engraved glass above Leo’s head.
She didn’t want to crumple in front of Leo Greene, but what did it matter if she did?
What would it matter if she unspooled on the floor of the Ritz?
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘my father passing away was why I stood you up. It happened the night before our date.’
‘I’m so sorry, Olivia.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch. I couldn’t. I’ve just been a mess.’
‘I understand.’
‘I haven’t been able to do anything. Nothing.
I haven’t even been to work. And then before I knew it, it was today.
The funeral. I wasn’t ready for it, ready to say goodbye, and I still don’t want to say goodbye.
I want to say hello as I go into his flat.
I want to say hello and for him to make me a lemon squash, and I want us to tease each other and for Dad to call me Livvy Mivvie, after the lollies I liked as a little girl.
I told my friends to get in a cab after the wake, that I would walk – walk it off in the rain, but I can’t walk it off, can I?
It’s always there, this pain, and I don’t know how to make it go away.
’ She was softly weeping at the table now.
‘You know, some woman came up to me today and started blathering, “Oh, I know exactly how you feel. I lost my father two years ago, blah blah.” I didn’t behave well, Leo.
I snapped at her, saying I’m sure she didn’t, and she was so lucky not to be feeling like I did .
. . I wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘I left him and my godmother. We were at the Gielgud Theatre and I left them to go home and finish a film review. I wasn’t there. ’
She was sobbing. Leo let her. He was different today, she thought. He wasn’t flirty, or full of banter and deliciousness. He was what she needed. After a few moments, he spoke.
‘Was there anything you could have done?’ he asked her gently. ‘If you had been there.’
She shook her head, the tears still falling. ‘No. It was instantaneous.’
‘So, you couldn’t have done anything, said anything . . .’
‘No.’ She had been through all this with Stella and Annabel; they had said the same, but still, the guilt remained. She should have been with him, with them, when it happened. She should have been there in her dad’s last moments.
‘You have to see it that way,’ he said kindly. ‘That you couldn’t have done anything. It wasn’t your fault, what happened. It was just one of those tragic things. You could never have known, and even if you had, there was nothing you could have said, not in that moment.’
Her eyes filled with tears again. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.
‘I never said what I should have said. The things I should have said before, but I never did. There was so much time! I thought there was so much time! But there wasn’t.
’ She took a deep, sobbing breath. ‘I never told him how proud I was of him, like he always said he was of me. I never told him!’ And this she had not said to Annabel and Stella.
Not this part. It had stayed in her head.
‘I didn’t always show it, either, that I was proud of him, or where I’d come from.
I got rid of my accent as soon as I could, when I went to uni.
I told people I was from Pimlico, which was the truth, but I let them assume which side of the area, which class.
I bought him stupid, snobbish presents he was bemused by.
I wanted a lot of clichéd things: to better myself, to climb out of the gutter.
But it wasn’t a gutter.’ She started to cry.
‘It wasn’t a gutter at all. It was my dad and me, and we always did just fine.
I was moving away from that world, he knew that, but I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t proud of him!
I never told him that I was proud of his creativity, and I was proud of how he brought me up on his own, and I should have done. I thought there was more time.’
As she’d spoken, Leo had sat there and soaked up all of her words. She appreciated his sympathetic face, the warm planes and consoling contours of it. Walking here, she had been trying to forget Gillian’s at the funeral: tired and pinched and never looking directly at her.
‘And my godmother, I think she blames me for not being there when it happened. For going off, for being late on my deadline. She’s been distant with me, and I asked her today, the first time I could bear to, did she resent that I wasn’t there?
When he collapsed? That she had to deal with it on her own?
And all she said was she had “no words”.
No words! And I never had the right ones for my dad.
Not the ones I should have said. And now it’s too late.
Sorry,’ she sniffed. ‘You must think I’m being really irrational. ’
‘You’re allowed to be irrational on the day of your father’s funeral,’ Leo said calmly.
‘You’re going to have a lot of complicated emotions for a while, and that’s OK.
You can do this, you can. You can get through this.
I bet your father knew you were proud of him.
’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sure he did. And I’m sure your godmother will come around, in time. What was his name?’
‘Charlie,’ she said miserably, and his name brought her to fresh tears.
‘He was Charles Albert Sackville. Thank you for asking that.’ Leo had the right words, she thought.
His words were a soft balm to her, more than the whiskey, more than the cocoon-like warmth of the Ritz.
He may not understand the working-class father, the roots of her past so thick and strong they buckled the pavement outside Charlie’s flat, but he had the empathetic words she craved tonight.
‘Then, cheers to Charlie,’ said Leo, and he raised his tumbler.
They sat in silence for a few moments, Olivia absorbing the happier sounds around them.
Refined chatter, coats slunk on and off.
And the hush, in some places, of seduction.
Stockinged toes climbing a leg under suit trousers.
Whispers of later bedroom plans. Soft giggles and rumbles, married people up from the suburbs, celebrating, away from the children, role-playing, pretending they were someone else entirely.
She wished she were someone else entirely, but she was glad Leo was not. He was here. He had been gentle and solicitous. On the way here he had threaded his arm through hers like a ballast and had held her up as they’d headed through the streets.
‘How’s your dad?’ she asked.
‘You really want to change the subject?’ Leo looked at her quizzically.
‘I need to,’ she said. ‘Just for a minute. I need to talk about something else. I read something about Isaac Feu last week. Some big new venture he’s undertaking – a chain of three restaurants.’
Leo sighed. ‘If he gets the investment . . .’ he said cautiously. ‘There’s been some premature reporting . . . But yes, he has big plans. Always big plans. Are you sure you want to change the subject?’
‘How did your dad get famous?’
Olivia had seen Isaac Feu recently, scowling from the cover of a huge hardbacked cookery book.
A stained apron, an untamed thatch of red hair, his arms folded high on his chest. Inside the book, that she’d picked up absent-mindedly in a bookshop, pretending she was still a normal member of the human race, were amazing-looking dishes displayed on rustic work benches, and slabs of butter were whisked into absolutely everything.
Leo frowned. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’ll order us two more drinks.’
He called over the waiter and it was only after they had two fresh cocktails sitting in front of them, and she asked him again, and insisted she wanted to talk about him now and not her, that he began.