‘Oh yes. Those hats. Drank like a fish towards the end. Tom preferred not to notice. Tom likes to maintain the family image.’ The cutlets were tiny, delicately done, and served with a sauce Madère; she cut one in half and raised it to her mouth.
‘It’s quite a relief to be married to old Marsh. As an American, he doesn’t grasp all the implications of being a Squire gel, so I’ve escaped all that. More or less.’
Broadwell gazed at her over his glass. In her late forties, Deirdre Kaye had grown rather like her brother. There were the same strong features, the same marked lines beside the mouth, even the same way of carrying the head. He enjoyed their relationship, and was not sorry that it was no closer. He also reflected that she was more Squire-like than her brother.
‘Belinda simplifies my life. “Cut out all that English bullshit,” she’ll say. Not that she hasn’t plenty of bullshit of her own. By the way, she informs me that The Times may cease publication. Staff troubles – the unions, of course. Can you credit it? Life won’t be the same. I’m one publisher who’ll suffer if the TLS goes.’
‘Belinda’s fun for you, Ron. What you deserve. They are tasty, aren’t they?’
‘Was Tom very upset by Patricia’s death?’
‘You know Tom. Nothing upsets him. One of his worst characteristics. Now he is head of the family, etc. We don’t see much of Adrian, except at Christmas. I guess being a Squire boy is a bit of a responsibility. Notice Tom always looks first-rate. Ideal telly fodder.’
‘He came over very well on the box. More wine? How is his relationship with Teresa? I daren’t ask him, not after the great bust-up at my house last New Year’s Eve.’
‘I’m getting such an alcoholic in my old age. It’s all a mess. I suppose you know he’s not actually at Pippet Hall any more? First he stayed at his club, now he’s got a flat somewhere in Paddington, of all places.’
‘I know. Chops were good. He could have stayed with us. The dogs are worse than children, though. Mind you, the first meal we ever had here was the best.’ He wiped his lips on his napkin and grinned at her. She had grown softer over the years – not to mention plumper.
‘There was a woman Tom had the hots for a while back. He thought Marsh and I didn’t know, but I happened to find out. Sheila Lippard-Milne. Rather a saucy bit of goods, saucier than Teresa by a long chalk.’
She drained her glass and beckoned the waiter over.
‘I know Sheila. I published a book by her husband. He’s a bit of a wet, but quite a sound art historian. What about sweet? Our Hungarian tart as usual?’
‘Two Dobos Torta,’ she told the waiter. ‘I think the waiters change every year. This chap’s a Cypriot or something. The chef seems permanent, thank God. They’d make a good pair.’
‘The chef and the waiter?’
‘Tom and Sheila Lippard-Milne. He needs jollying up.’
‘We’d make a good pair. Then your Marshall could marry my Belinda.’ He reached out and took her hand.
‘My God, Belinda’d eat Marsh …’
‘Missed you while you were in Greece.’
‘You never think of me. It was nice to escape the strikes, I suppose. The hotel on Minos is dreadful, not even picturesque. I took along my watercolours, like a good Squire gel, but never used them.’
‘The sign of an irredeemable nature,’ he said, beaming at her.
The sweet trolley arrived. The Dobos Torta looked and tasted as delicious as in previous years.
3
A View from the Beach
Pippet Hall, Norfolk, June 1977
The world underwent one of its amazing simplifications. First and nearest was the great band of beach, decorated in bas-relief with a complex ripple pattern; then a sliver of sky-coloured lagoon left by the retreating tide; then a band of lighter sand, then a drab donkeyish strip of distant fern and grass; then a band of dark green, formed from the long line of Corsican pines which stood guard between land and beach, allowing pale sky among the colonnades of its trunks; then the enormous intense blue summer sky, sailing up to zenith, beyond capturable reach of camera.
The equipment and human figures were reduced to toy scale by the expanse of beach.
Thomas Squire was wearing a blue canvas shirt and a pair of brown swimming trunks. He was up to his knees in almost motionless sea, moving steadily towards the shore.
Beside him was a gorgeously tanned girl in her mid-twenties. Her thick fair hair streamed over her shoulders in the light off-shore breeze. She wore a black bikini with artificial white roses stitched round the line of her breasts. She was laughing and vivacious, the very embodiment of seaside girls on posters everywhere, and paid Squire no attention as he acted out his part.
‘The sea is always close to our thoughts in Europe, because it has played such a part in history. It may also have played a considerable part in pre-history, if mankind reverted to marine life at a stage in its early career. I think of that theory whenever the annual summer pilgrimage to the nearest strip of beach begins. The human race then shows a tendency to cluster like penguins on the shores of the Antarctic, as if we were all about to revert to the sea again, having found life on land a little too complex.’
He and the girl were almost ashore. There were no waves, only the purest warm ripples of water which glided up the beach like liquefied sunlight.
‘The sea that most possesses the European imagination is the Mediterranean, the sea at the middle of the Earth. It’s the cradle of our culture, the home waters of Greece and Rome. This is not the Mediterranean but the North Sea. I love this stretch of the North Norfolk coast, and the docile summer North Sea, not only because it is much less crowded and despoiled than most of the Mediterranean coast, but because I happen to live within ten miles of this particular beach. As you see, the water in late June is entirely warm enough for our Sex Symbol to sport in.
‘If I mentioned the name of the beach, that advertisement would cause it to become crowded within a year.
‘Such is the power of advertising. Advertising in various media frequently makes use of the sea and, of course, of sex symbols such as this young lady by my side. If I mentioned her name, she would become a character, not a symbol; such is the power of names.
‘Her skin is really white, not brown, but she has applied suntan oil to satisfy tradition. The image of brown girl in blue water has proved strongly evocative ever since sea-bathing became fashionable last century.
‘You may believe that such images demean women. Perhaps you think they demean the Mediterranean or, in this case, the North Sea. I don’t. We are all symbols to each other as well as real people. The experience of the imagination gives life savour.
‘People have a down on advertising. Of course I can see why, just as I can see why they have a down on smoking. Yet people go on smoking and derive at least temporary pleasure from it. I derive a lot of temporary pleasure from advertising, and am practised at separating the commercial from the aesthetic side of it; it’s a trick I learnt from my children, who are connoisseurs of TV advertising. Adult moral disapproval of advertising spoils our enjoyment, just as the Victorians found that moral approval of a painting enhanced their enjoyment of it.’
He and the girl were heading up the beach, splashing through a shallow lagoon. In the water lay a large beach ball with the word ‘NIVEA’ on it. Squire kicked the ball out of the way. Taking the towel wrapped like a scarf round his neck, he put it round the damp shoulders of the girl, talking cheerfully at the same time.
‘Some enemies of advertising claim that advertisements show a too perfect, too happy world against which reality can never compete. I disagree. George Bernard Shaw said that perfection was only achieved on paper; utopia is only achieved in adverts. We need to be reminded that it exists even if it is attainable only by purchasing Domestos or Horlicks. Enemies are, in any case, blind, and have not noticed how often adverts on television show things going wrong; catastrophe has become a new sales gimmick. Here’s a current advert for Andrex toilet paper or, as they put it more refinedly, toilet tissue.’
Squire broke off and the cameras stopped. He and the Sex Symbol sat down abruptly on the hard sand. They looked at each other and laughed.
‘Just fine that time, Tom,’ Grahame Ash said, coming up from behind the cameras and removing his ear plug. ‘You must be exhausted. And you, Laura. Good day’s work, both of you. At that point we cut in the ad with the little dog running into the garden with the toilet roll in its mouth. Great. Thanks very much, everyone.’ The director waved his hands above his head. The crew moved nearer and doled out cigarettes.
His PA, Jenny Binns, called, ‘Remember, nine o’clock tomorrow at Mr Squire’s house, without fail everyone, okay?’
‘We’re all going over to Blakeney to a hotel for posh nosh this evening,’ Ash reminded them.
‘Count me out of that, Grahame,’ Laura said. She scrambled to her feet and clutched her arms, rubbing them and shivering. ‘Ooh, this isn’t quite Singapore. I’ve gone all goosey.’
Squire put an arm round her shoulder and kissed her ear.
The men were talking about the good filming conditions as they gathered their gear together. Hartisham Bay stretched to either side of them, punctuated to the west by a low headland on which the window of a parked car glinted in the sun. To the east, the sand seemed to extend for ever. Some distance out to sea, a cluster of what looked like rocks were visible now the tide was low. It was the remains of Old Hartisham Priory, which had been overtaken by coastal erosion in the Middle Ages.
‘Let’s go,’ Ash said. ‘Forward march. Jenny, did you book us a table for this evening?’
‘Of course, Grahame,’ said his assistant, sweetly. ‘Haven’t I been booking you tables all round the world?’
There was still half a mile between them and the path through the dunes. Squire and Laura Nye trudged along together, she gripping the crossed ends of his towel, still wrapped round her neck. The others straggled along behind, exchanging insults and laughing. They fell silent on reaching dry sand above tide level, where the going immediately became harder. The cameras were dragged on sledges. The equipment van, the generators, and their cars were parked on the other side of the dunes, in the shelter of some pines.
As Laura went with the wardrobe girl to the caravan that served her as dressing-room, Squire stopped and waited for Ash. The four other members of the team streamed past them. Summer sun made their movements dazzle.
