More Than You Know (14 page)

She liked that too.

He earned a great deal of money and he had a seemingly limitless expense account; his office was very grand and indeed like no office Eliza had ever seen. The agency was housed in a row of what had been three rather splendid buildings in Carlos Place, just off Grosvenor Square; the chairman was a legendary American advertising guru called Carl Webster. “Well, Americans invented advertising,” Jeremy said when she expressed surprise.

Lunches, when clients would be entertained in the dining room on the top floor of the agency, with its huge oval table and view across to the square, would often run from midday until six, when a switch would be made to cocktails and plans for the evening.

They were unashamedly snobbish; even the secretaries at KPD were very well-bred. “They all disappear and we have to get temps for Ascot week, you know,” said Jeremy. “And one of the typing tests includes
spelling
champagne
correctly, and
Bollinger
, of course. Then we know they’re suitable.”

Only the creative people, recruited from the art schools, were from the other ranks, as Jeremy called them; boys from secondary moderns, quick, sharp, and irreverent, with totally original ideas on design, and openly, if jokily, contemptuous of their social superiors.

The other thing that was absorbing Eliza, even more than her romance with Jeremy, was her new job. She absolutely adored it. As well as running around as general dogsbody at sessions and in the office, she was consulted endlessly by Fiona, and in the most flattering way, about ideas, plans, sessions—and what on earth they could do when they went to the Paris collections.

“Jack’s agreed we’ve got to cover the collections, but he says he simply will not have any crap about fabrics; he wants a proper idea. I can’t think of anything. Can you?”

Eliza said she’d try.

Sarah enjoyed the weekend—most of it, anyway. It was wonderful to see Charles, and it had been lovely to see Eliza; they had had the most marvellous walk together on the Saturday afternoon, Eliza chattering all the way. She was so excited about her new job, which did sound wonderful. And she had been out with Jeremy Northcott several times, it seemed.

“But don’t look at me like that, Mummy. I do like him and he likes me; we get on together very well, but that’s all.”

Sarah tried not to think beyond that, but it was difficult.

They all had a very jolly supper on Saturday night, and played Scrabble afterwards; Charles explained to Juliet that it was a family tradition.

“It’s Scrabble or the cinema, and there’s nothing on.”

Juliet protested that she was hopeless at Scrabble, and after about half an hour, when she was doing really badly, she started to sulk and said she’d like to go to bed, she was terribly tired.

“I don’t want to appear rude,” she said, “but I’ve had a terribly busy week, and I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

Sarah said of course she didn’t appear rude. “Just have an early night, my dear. Charles, what about some cocoa for Juliet—”

“Cocoa would be lovely. Charles, darling, would you mind?”

They started discussing the wedding plans next day, immediately after breakfast.

Juliet made notes in a pink spiral-bound exercise book into which she had already stuck photographs torn out of magazines of wedding dresses, bouquets, even honeymoon locations.

It was all perfectly natural, of course, Sarah thought, that she should be so excited, but she couldn’t help feeling rather sorry for Charles, who was clearly dying to get outside and to spend some time alone with his father. Juliet wouldn’t allow that; she said she wanted him very fully involved.

No doubt about who would be boss in that marriage …

After they had all gone, Sarah went for a walk and then came back and sat in the kitchen, next to the Aga—it being the only really warm place in the house—and tried to concentrate on the
Sunday Times
. It was difficult; she really couldn’t get worked up about the successors to the ailing prime minister, Harold Macmillan. It seemed very unimportant.

She was delighted—of course—that Juliet and Charles wanted to have their wedding at Summercourt, but it did seem to fly in the face of the natural order of things. She quite liked Juliet—but she just wasn’t quite what she would have expected Charles to have chosen. She had hoped for … well, someone a bit better than Juliet. She was simply—
Oh, stop beating about the bush
, Sarah thought—she was simply not quite their class. She was rather dreading meeting her parents; she could see they would have very little in common …

Like millions of other people, Eliza knew exactly what she was doing when she heard that President Kennedy had been shot. She was in bed for the first time with Jeremy Northcott. For the rest of her life she was unable to think of one event—with its attendant shock and sense of unreality—without the other.

They were in her flat, trying to decide what film to see that evening. It was a toss-up between a rerun of
La Dolce Vita
at the Curzon, which she wanted to see, and
Lord of the Flies
, which he did.

Eliza was very happy. Very happy indeed. She didn’t think about what might happen in the future; she was just enjoying the present.

The weekend looked good. She and Jeremy were going to a party on Saturday; Charles and Juliet were going down to Summercourt with the Judds; Sarah had wanted her to go, but she couldn’t face it.

“Do you want a cup of coffee while we argue about the film?” she said now, and: “Do you know, I wouldn’t mind,” he said. “Had one too many G and Ts at lunchtime. Mind if I put the radio on?”

He was a news junkie, always “catching the news,” as he put it. Eliza smiled at him, then turned her attention to finding the coffeepot; as she did so, she heard a newsreader’s voice: “… has been shot as he rode in his motorcade through the streets of Texas. It is not yet known how serious his condition is.”

When she heard the words “Mrs. Kennedy is at the hospital” she sat down abruptly and listened, stunned with a shock that felt personal, as the ghastly story was told. And when finally Jeremy said, “Dear God in heaven,” she went into his arms, surprised at her need for comfort.

They sat on the sofa in the drawing room, drinking the coffee and listening to the endless reports, repeating over and over again, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the president of the United States, is dead”—first the English voices, shocked and stunned, then the American ones, even more so, reactions from the crowds, first in Texas and then in New York, disbelieving, grief-stricken. They turned on the television, saw the photographs that would become iconic, of the Kennedys arriving in Texas, both untouchably glamorous, both smiling, waving, she in her Chanel suit and pillbox hat, he with his thick hair lifted by the wind. “It’s almost unbearable,” Eliza said. “Look at them; they were safe then, just an hour or so before. Oh I’m talking nonsense; sorry, Jeremy.”

“No, no, it’s not nonsense. I understand; I feel the same. It’s like some awful nightmare that we should wake up from. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really feel too much like going to the pictures now. What would you say to a nice quiet meal somewhere?”

“I’d say, ‘Hallo, nice quiet meal,’ ” she said, and grinned at him. It was a familiar joke of theirs.

“OK. San Lorenzo?”

“Yes, lovely,” she said.

San Lorenzo was surprisingly full. People obviously wanted to be with other people. There was talk of nothing else: who had heard, what they’d heard, how dreadful it was, how appalling for Jackie, who might have done it—it was the Mafia, it was the Cubans, it was the Russians.

Finally they had had enough. “Let’s go,” Jeremy said suddenly. “Your place or mine?”

“Yours,” said Eliza. “There’ll be at least two giggling girls at mine.”

“Possibly not giggling tonight.”

“You want to bet?”

Jeremy’s flat in Sloane Street was rather amazing. It was quite old-fashioned, admittedly, a mass of gilt mirrors and rather grand furniture and a very out-of-date kitchen, but it was luxurious beyond belief, room after room, high ceilings and tall windows overlooking private gardens. Her first thought when she went there (and her second and third, if she was honest) was how extremely rich he must be. Jeremy had inherited a very large amount of money from his banker grandfather, and when his father died, he would get an incredible house in Norfolk, pretty well a stately home with vast acreage, a flat in the South of France, and several millions more.