The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [44]
“Only once since we had lunch together.” She looked at me quizzically. “You don’t remember who I am, do you?” she asked as she devoured a cocktail sausage.
I smiled.
“Don’t be silly, Susan,” I said. “How could I ever forget?”
She smiled.
I confess that I remembered the white queen’s name in the nick of time. Although I still had only vague recollections of the lady, I certainly would never forget the lunch.
I had just had my first book published, and the critics on both sides of the Atlantic had been complimentary, even if the checks from my publishers were less so. My agent had told me on several occasions that I shouldn’t write if I wanted to make money. This created a dilemma, because I couldn’t see how to make money if I didn’t write.
It was around this time that the lady who was now facing me and chattering on, oblivious to my silence, telephoned from New York to heap lavish praise on my novel. There is no writer who does not enjoy receiving such calls, although I confess to having been less than captivated by an eleven-year-old girl who called me collect from California to say she had found a spelling mistake on page 47 and warned that she would call again if she discovered another. However, this particular lady might have ended her transatlantic congratulations with nothing more than good-bye if she had not dropped her own name. It was one of those names that can, on the spur of the moment, always book a table at a chic restaurant or a seat at the opera, which mere mortals like myself would have found impossible to attain given a month’s notice. To be fair, it was her husband’s name that had achieved the reputation, as one of the world’s most distinguished film producers.
“When I’m next in London you must have lunch with me,” came crackling down the phone.
“No,” said I gallantly, “you must have lunch with me.”
“How perfectly charming you English always are,” she said.
I have often wondered how much American women get away with when they say those few words to an Englishman. Nevertheless, the wife of an Oscar-winning producer does not phone one every day.
“I promise to call you when I’m next in London,” she said.
And indeed she did, for almost six months to the day she telephoned again, this time from the Connaught Hotel, to declare how much she was looking forward to our meeting.
“Where would you like to have lunch?” I said, realizing a second too late, when she replied with the name of one of the most exclusive restaurants in town, that I should have made sure it was I who chose the venue. I was glad she couldn’t see my forlorn face as she added airily, “Monday, one o’clock. Leave the booking to me—I’m known there.”
On the day in question I donned my one respectable suit, a new shirt I had been saving for a special occasion since Christmas, and the only tie that looked as if it hadn’t previously been used to hold up my trousers. I then strolled over to my bank and asked for a statement of my current account. The teller handed me a long piece of paper unworthy of its amount. I studied the figure as one who has to make a major financial decision. The bottom line stated in black lettering that I was in credit to the sum of thirty-seven pounds and sixty-three pence. I wrote out a check for thirty-seven pounds. I feel that a gentleman should always leave his account in credit, and I might add it was a belief that my bank manager shared with me. I then walked up to Mayfair for my luncheon date.
As I entered the restaurant I observed too many waiters and plush seats for my liking. You can’t eat either, but you can be charged for them. At a corner table for two sat a woman who, although not young, was elegant. She wore a blouse of powder blue crepe-de-chine, and her blond hair was rolled away from her face in a style that reminded me of the war years and had once again become fashionable. It was clearly my transatlantic admirer, and she greeted me in the same “I’ve known you all my life” fashion as