VII. Serena #4
‘Are you alright, madam?’ says the man at reception. ‘Can I get you some water?’
‘No.’ She fans herself with her hands. ‘I mean, no … sorry, yes. Yes please.’
He returns a couple of minutes later, proffering a chilled glass.
She presses it to her forehead then drinks the water in one go, forgetting to thank him.
By the time Jarvis appears, the heat has passed.
She allows Jarvis to place his hand proprietorially on the small of her back as he ushers her out of the door and into the street and the waiting black cab hailed by a liveried footman.
Don’t think about it, she tells herself. Just don’t think about it. If you don’t think about it, it’s almost like it never happened.
They don’t speak much on the way to the V the residue of her shame.
‘You don’t need to worry. I’d never breathe a word to Ben.’
Funny, it hasn’t even crossed her mind. She knows Jarvis won’t say anything. He’s always been the junior partner in that friendship, despite his money.
They climb the steps. Serena, relieved that he can no longer be seen to touch her, walks ahead of him, her head upright, her back straight. In the cloakroom queue she runs into Iso Malik-Edwards, who is wearing a Tom Ford stretch jersey dress straight off the Paris runway.
‘Serena, hiiiii,’ Iso says, in her South Carolina drawl. ‘I haven’t seen you in a minute.’
‘No, I’ve been …’ Serena isn’t sure how to complete the sentence. Where has she been? Nowhere. ‘Busy,’ she concludes, lamely.
‘I’m sure,’ Iso says. Her hair is slicked back in a tight chignon and her only jewellery is a pair of oversized molten silver earrings, hanging from her lobes like birds’ eggs. Serena feels frumpy and overdone. She wishes she’d chosen a more understated dress.
‘I was so sorry to hear about Felicity,’ Iso says now and she reaches out to rest her hand on Serena’s arm. Her fingers are cool against Serena’s skin.
‘Oh,’ Serena says. ‘That’s kind. Especially as I know she can’t have been your favourite person, what with—’
‘Water under the bridge,’ Iso says, with a coolness too marked for the words to be convincing.
‘Yes. Well. Thank you.’
Serena hopes that will be the end of it but Iso insists on walking into dinner together. Jarvis, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen.
‘Is Dom here?’ Serena asks, hoping to move the conversation on.
‘No, he’s working, you know the score. But your man is the star of the show tonight, isn’t he?’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘No? You Brits …’ Iso shakes her head, smiling to herself.
‘What do you mean?’
Iso always makes Serena feel on the back foot, as if she’s missing something.
She possesses an effortless confidence that Serena resents.
It’s as if Iso doesn’t need to pretend to be better than she is, which is mystifying to someone like Serena whose whole life is shaped by the projection of a cultivated image.
‘Oh, just …’ Iso says now. ‘You’re all so modest! You can never admit to liking the attention.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
She makes a point of absorbing herself in the seating plan, angled on an easel, the names written in copperplate.
‘It’s not a criticism,’ Iso adds hastily. ‘We Americans are far too brash.’
‘Yes,’ Serena says, scanning the list. Iso’s assumed intimacy is distasteful but she doesn’t want to be rude. One can’t be too careful and all that. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘There I am. Table one.’
‘OK Miss Fancypants! I’m on twenty-three.’
Iso squeezes Serena’s arm again. Serena, annoyed, withdraws it.
‘Nice to see you again,’ Iso says. ‘Perhaps we’ll catch up afterwards?’
‘Absolutely,’ Serena says. ‘Send my love to Dom, won’t you?’
Iso, already swishing away, swan-like, calls back over her shoulder: ‘I’ll be sure to.’
Her shoulder blades are fantastic, Serena thinks.
‘I’ll be sure to,’ she mimics under her breath as she winds her way through the outer tables to find her seat.
She wishes she could stop comparing herself unfavourably to other women.
Her judgemental nature is one of her most unlikeable characteristics but it’s too late to know how to change it.
She has always been taught that life is a competition – for success, for love, for looks, for money, for status.
So how could she not see her contemporaries as rivals?
She discovers she’s next to Richard Take, the irritating little man she did her best to avoid at the funeral.
‘Typical,’ she mutters. She is about to move the nameplates when she hears a jocular ‘Hello there’ and turns to find Richard Take himself.
‘Richard.’ Serena extends her hand, unsmiling.
‘How nice to see you again in more cheery circumstances,’ he says, taking it.
He is wearing a black turtleneck underneath a jacket and his thinning hair has been closely cropped against his skull.
One of those health-tracking things is on his left-hand ring finger. No doubt all part of his new image.
‘You find injured servicemen cheery?’
He looks aghast.
‘Gosh. No. I didn’t mean that. It’s terrible what these brave servicemen and … and … er, women, go through, isn’t it? And yet they never complain. They just get on with it. A lesson to us all in the spirit of resilience and good old British gumption, don’t you agree?’
She leaves a pause, then says: ‘So have you recovered from your time as a waste-disposal expert?’
Serena did not watch Richard Take on the reality TV programme Shit Happens!
but Cressida and Hector were fans of the show.
Cressida told her that one of the ‘most iconic’ moments was when Richard tried to unblock an industrial cistern and ended up covered in faecal matter.
Apparently Richard had wiped the gloopy brown liquid from his eye mask and, with remarkable sangfroid, had then turned to the camera and said, ‘A little shit doesn’t bother me.
After all, in Parliament I’m surrounded by them. ’
‘It was sooooo funny,’ Cressida said, before going on to explain that Richard had now launched his own ‘merch line’ with T-shirts featuring the relevant freeze-framed moment and the tagline ‘A little shit doesn’t bother me’.
Hector was also impressed and now follows the former MP on TikTok. ‘He’s actually a decent bloke, Mum,’ Hector said. When she asked why, her eldest son replied, ‘He’s just who he is.’
It seemed a low bar, but Serena let it go.
It was nice to hear Hector proffer a positive opinion.
Most of the time, he rattled around in adolescent fury about any number of unrelated issues: how unfairly maligned Jordan Peterson was; how the North should be annexed from the rest of England; how unrealistic the new Netflix drugs drama was; why women were no longer the real victims of inequality and why the Oblivion Oil protesters belonged in jail.
He was terrifyingly right wing – much more so than Ben says he was at that age and much more than she was becoming in her forties.
The other day, she’d read an opinion piece in the Guardian and agreed with every word.
Admittedly it had been about the benefits of a plant-based diet rather than nationalising the railways or anything but still, the point stood.
‘Yes, just about,’ Richard Take is saying. ‘It was a pretty life-changing experience, actually. Good for me to remind myself what challenges the normal men and women of this country face.’
‘Getting sprayed with poo?’
‘Ha! No, no. Eking out a living on the breadline. Thinking that those privileged posh blokes in Westminster don’t understand people’s real lives.
It really made me stop and reflect. And you know, Serena, when you get out on the street, the average man or woman is much more understanding than the tabloid press would have us believe. They get it.’
Serena wishes the other guests on their table would arrive.
‘Y’know, they understand. Because what red-blooded male hasn’t found himself in a situation where his urges – entirely natural urges, mind you – occasionally get the better of him?’
He looks at her with an expression that is both earnest and patronising, his hands steepled like an inspirational Silicon Valley tech boss. She realises, a fraction too late, that he is expecting an answer.
‘I—’
And then – blessed relief – a gong sounds, there is a flurry of activity and everyone takes their seats.
It’s always been an impressive location, Serena thinks, as she accepts a glass of Sauvignon from a bow-tied waiter.
The tables have been laid out along a broad hallway dotted with statutes from classical antiquity.
To her right, just beyond Richard Take’s small but shinily perceptible bald patch, is a marble of Judith and Holofernes.
She remembers the story from school: Holofernes was a general sent to subdue the Jews.
Judith, a widow, went to the Assyrian military camp, captivated Holofernes with her beauty, got him drunk and then cut off his head, returning to her city bearing it aloft as a trophy.
Humility triumphing over pride. But also, Serena thinks, a woman perceived as powerless overturning preconceptions through the sheer force of her rage.
She drinks her wine and wonders how much effort it must have taken to cut through the neck tendons and spine.
‘Darling, you’re here.’
Ben’s touch on her shoulder. She turns to face him. He kisses her cheek. In that moment, she forgets to be furious and is grateful for the fact she isn’t scared of him.
‘Of course.’ She smiles. ‘I’m sorry I missed your calls, I—’
‘It’s fine – we’ll speak later. Have you seen Martin?’