A Love of Two Halves Read online

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ I explained. ‘It’ll take way too long now. I’m going to have to park up and walk.’ Angrily, I turned her off.

  I took a left turn, and pulled over to the side, got out my phone, opened the map and zoomed in. There was no obvious route to the stadium, under or over the motorway, at least by car. But a thin line on the map over the motorway probably indicated the footbridge that I recalled. And there were no yellow lines on these streets. I pulled up the handbrake, got out, looked around. Would a £75,000 Mercedes Benz convertible be safe on this street for two hours on a Saturday afternoon? If I drove to the car park now, I’d miss the first ten minutes; if I were able to walk from here, maybe I’d just get there for kick-off. Would those extra ten minutes, in all probability drab and goalless, be worth risking the theft or disappearing wheels of a motor probably worth more than a house in this district?

  What the hell, it’s insured, I reflected. Covered as long as I closed the doors and locked it. I bent over to grab my scarf off the passenger seat, stood up again. I paused to wrap the white, blue and gold woollen garment around my neck – silly, really, like being a schoolboy again, I know – and took another look around me before walking down the pavement, still unsure of exactly the correct route, but confident of my sense of direction. After I had taken a few steps, a young woman came out of her house and to her front gate, perhaps to watch the tourist go by, or perhaps just to call her kids in. She was pale, dark-haired, beautiful and exhausted. It was as though her body reached the fence first, only for her soul to take its time in catching up. It seemed a while since her symmetrical face had been creased by a smile. I caught her eye, and wasn’t sure if this was involuntary or not. Since my diversity training, I tried to make it a policy, when asking advice or directions, not to approach the most attractive woman, and, if so, certainly not to flirt. But in this case she was the only individual at hand, and her countenance seemed genuine and friendly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Can you get to Elland Road by turning left at the end of this street? I think you can. Years since I’ve been here.’

  ‘Not in your car,’ she replied. ‘But there’s a footbridge over the motorway. Once you get to the other side, you’re on Elland Road. Stadium’s a few hundred yards to the right.’

  ‘Ah, I thought there was a bridge, just forgot where it was. Thank you so much! Um, will my car be safe here?’ I felt bad about asking.

  She gave a cynical look. ‘Tell you what. I’ll ask my professional-car-thieving teenage sons to give yours a miss. They’ll be disappointed, mind. They’re on for a bonus if they hit their targets.’

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude about your neighbourhood, it’s just I’m in unfamiliar territory. It’s all a bit disorientating. Anyway, you’re not old enough to have teenagers!’ I scolded myself. That was flirting, wasn’t it? A bit. Still, can’t get into trouble with HR out here.

  ‘Run along, love,’ she replied, in a motherly fashion, as though I were her son; she was actually probably a few years younger than me. ‘You’ll miss t’ kick-off.’

  As it turned out, there were many other fans heading towards the match, so I found the bridge and the stadium easily enough, just getting into my seat for the start. The first ten minutes were indeed rather drab and goalless. For the remaining eighty things perked up, and there were even a few goals, but one more for the opponents than for our side. The large stadium, graced by international players in Euro ’96, was only half full. It was, I reflected, starting to look shabby at the edges after its upgrade two decades earlier. I was ill at ease for the first half, and not only owing to the frustrating patterns of play by the home side: the passing moves that never quite worked out, the crosses that sailed over the attacking players in the box, the shot from distance that went closer to the corner flag than the goal; plus the late challenges, shirt-pulling, dives and yellow cards of a typical mid-table clash in the English second tier. It was a late season affair, with neither side bidding for promotion, nor at risk of the drop, so there were no high stakes or great anxiety.

  Normally, I liked to arrive early: to go to the club shop, wander around the ground, smell the burgers and fries, listen to the excited chatter of the children as they posed with their parents for pictures in front of Billy Bremner’s statue by the stadium shop, perhaps have a beer before ascending to my seat, usually high up in the stadium. I didn’t live close enough for a season ticket to be worthwhile, and I was often travelling for work on the weekend, but I came whenever I could. When I couldn’t attend, I would check the score every few minutes on a sports website, and be genuinely upset for hours when I learned that Leeds had lost. Following a team is more like a social virus than a hobby; an irrational obsession punctured by brief periods of collective joy. In most aspects of my life, I insisted upon a rational justification, so this tribal affinity was my one exception, my little neurosis. And perhaps it did serve a purpose: creating a haven of working-class normality that kept me grounded, I would tell myself, or stuck in my boyhood, a psychologist might say, or just giving me the excuse to shout at people without fear of an employment tribunal.

  I was late because I had agreed to an 8 a.m. call with one of my consultants, Luke, who said it was important. It wasn’t, and he annoyed me. His main objective – though I admit I wasn’t paying full attention, but rather was wondering about the line-up for that afternoon’s match and checking the traffic situation on the M25 – seemed to be to rubbish the record and the plans of a colleague, Tony, who I rated. Luke probably saw himself as a rival for when I was to be moving on, which was not in my plans, given that it was my company – well, in spirit, at least. If you’re going to play internal politics, don’t pretend you’re talking strategy, and don’t involve your boss. Especially on match day. Except that, technically, I was no longer sole shareholder, something I had to remind myself almost daily. Still, I was the founder, and still the CEO.

  Were the headaches of being full-time in the business still worth it? I wondered as I joined the dejected fans trickling out through the gates. I could afford to retire, or at least semi-retire. The main problem was that I did not relish the idea in the slightest: for me, work was not a means to an end, it was all that gave my life purpose. Almost every activity associated with leisure filled me with a suffocating sensation of boredom and futility: golf, gardening, the theatre (surely only of appeal at the end of a working week, and with a date), a round-the-world cruise. The purposelessness of ‘leisure’, the undoubted tedium and, of course, the lack of anyone to share the moments with was a prospect that filled me with dread. Old age was not an illness to insure against, it was simply an inconvenience to be mitigated. I would still want to work in my eighties, just maybe start at ten in the morning, do four days a week. As for seeing the world, I had clocked most sites worth viewing on days off between overseas assignments. On the few occasions that I encountered the backpacking fraternity, their ambition to do little more than tick off the next glacier or ancient ruin, a routine clocked as progress, struck me as banal. The Instagram generation seemed to be taking such sensation-seeking quests to new depths, or rather shallows.

  I could write a book, perhaps – or have it ghosted; writing anything more than 800 words seemed like a chore. Something along the lines of a memoir; or ‘thoughts on leadership’, that could get me some TED Talks or even an invitation to Davos. I didn’t need the money, or the work, or even the networking, but I might finally become attractive to the opposite sex for some quality other than my earning power, if I managed to time the jokes well and get a few thousand hits on YouTube.

  I had drafted a book proposal, based on my experience in the run-up to the financial crisis, and I showed it to a publisher friend of mine. He told me it was too technical, and lacking in drama. But wouldn’t the public want to know the real reasons for the crisis and the austerity that followed? I asked him. His reply was that even the political class weren’t that interested. They had identified their preferred scapegoats based on who they fell out with at uni.

  She was in her front yard again when I returned to the car. It was April, still broad daylight. She raised her thumbs, smiling in triumph, ready with a quip about there being very nearly the requisite number of wheels remaining on the car. At least I had made her smile, even if only with my verbal gaffe from earlier.

  I still felt bad about asking if the car was safe. ‘Sorry again,’ I said. ‘I was a bit rude earlier. I was just thinking, you see, that my situation was a bit like The Hosepipe of the Vanities. You know, the movie.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘I mean The Bonfire of the Vanities – sorry, the wrong title of the movie sticks in my head. It’s quite amusing, actually; I made a translation error all those years ago. Hoguera, Manguera, they’re similar words in Spanish, you see.’

  ‘Um, yeah. Still meaningless.’ But she said this in an amused fashion, not mocking.

  ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities is a movie in which a Wall Street guy drives into a New York neighbourhood he doesn’t know by mistake and, well, it all goes wrong from there.’

  ‘Why was it in Spanish, if it’s set in New York?’

  ‘It wasn’t. I was watching it in Buenos Aires with subtitles.’

  ‘Long way to go. Wasn’t there an Odeon nearby?’

  ‘I was working on reward strategies for a multinational company’s South America division. First posting abroad. Loved it. Bit of a collapse of the currency when I was there, but good to see history happening, I guess. Great experience. Really good opera and tango as well.’

  There was an awkward silence. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘This seems a really friendly neighbourhood. I really didn’t mean to cause offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ she
replied, sharply, but not unkindly.

  ‘That’s a terrific picture. Is it a painting or a print?’ I asked suddenly, noticing a teenage girl carrying a large framed picture, a boldly coloured image. She was about to enter the young woman’s home.

  ‘It’s a painting,’ replied the girl, tall, slim and confident, afro hair in cornrows. She had high cheekbones, and a startlingly intelligent face.

  ‘This is my daughter, Bronte,’ said the woman.

  ‘Who’s it by?’ I asked.

  ‘Me,’ said the girl, proudly.

  ‘Wow, that’s impressive. In the style of Frida Kahlo, kind of magical realist.’ The painting was of a tree supporting palatial rooms, the interiors of which were visible through a missing wall, like an opened-out doll’s house. While the composition was a fantasy, there was extraordinary realistic detail in the rooms’ interiors: rich woven carpets, standing lamps and an elegant four-poster bed in one of the two rooms. At the base of the tree was a silver-coloured antique car, and a silhouette of a man in the driver’s seat.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to do A-Level.’

  ‘So you should. That is most impressive.’

  The girl seemed to switch quite sharply from pride to modesty, and bowed her head a little before turning to proceed indoors, clutching the frame underneath her arm, taking exaggerated care to avoid catching the corners on the door frame.

  ‘Hold on a minute, love. May I see it properly now?’ the mum asked of her daughter. ‘You wouldn’t let me yesterday.’

  ‘OK.’ Coyly, she held it for her mother to view.

  The mum appeared quite moved and stunned, even more impressed than I. ‘That’s like my dream,’ was all she said.

  ‘I know,’ the girl replied promptly.

  ‘May I look at it more closely?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure,’ replied the girl, who handed it to her mum, beside whom I was standing. I moved a little closer, with the pretext of examining the painting. Our shoulders touched briefly. I thought she would step aside, but, if anything, she nudged herself slightly closer to me, maintaining the contact. A tingling sensation of physical euphoria ran through my body for the first time since… well, probably the first time ever, in terms of intensity.

  ‘The technique is very advanced,’ I said, striving to keep my voice calm, and concentrate on the painting, not the woman holding it. ‘Some young artists think that originality of concept is enough, and they skimp on the execution, but here you see real detail and craft.’

  ‘I spend ages getting the colours right,’ said the girl.

  ‘How do you know which colours?’ asked the mum.

  ‘I just know,’ she replied, as if it were obvious. ‘Are you an artist?’ the girl asked me.

  ‘No, but I have a friend who’s an art professor. I would like to show her this work.’ There was an unexpected silence between them. I added hastily: ‘Sorry, I don’t know you.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said the mum. ‘It’s a kind offer. My name’s Karen.’ She returned the painting to the girl, who tucked it under her arm and went indoors, and then she turned to face me.

  My gaze met her blue-grey eyes, but I worried that my overflowing desire would be too obvious, so I glanced down. ‘I’m George,’ I replied. ‘Your daughter is very talented.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘She is rather brilliant, isn’t she? Gets it from her dad, I think.’

  At the mention of ‘dad’ I felt acutely deflated, but was determined to remain polite. ‘Do they work together in a studio?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Actually, he’s not on the scene. But he’s not a bad guy at all. Long story. Very long story.’

  ‘Listen, I didn’t mean to pry. So rude. I’ll be on my way. So sorry.’

  ‘Really, nothing to apologise for,’ she said. ‘Um, are you serious, about having her work assessed?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. I felt extremely uneasy about proposing an exchange of phone numbers, fearful of scaring Karen by being too forward or flirtatious. ‘Perhaps I could call in after the next home match?’

  ‘OK,’ she replied.

  There was a hesitation, as if she were considering inviting me in. With no invitation forthcoming, I said: ‘I’ll be getting on my way.’

  ‘Bye then,’ she said. ‘Nice talking to you.’ There was brief eye contact once more, and a jolt of electricity through my body. She disappeared inside. After I had got into the driving seat, I sat still for a while, too agitated to concentrate on the dull mechanics of driving. It was not a warm day, but the sun on the windscreen had heated the car and I was sweating. I gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and took three or four deep breaths. I started the engine, more for the relief of the air conditioning than with an immediate desire for motion. I pretended to be looking at a message on my phone, so that Karen or a passer-by wouldn’t be wondering why I was staring at nothing, like someone who was mentally ill. After a good few minutes, I put the car in gear and moved away.

  3

  Life’s a lottery

  I paused for a very long time in the tiny front yard, just looking at the front door, breathing rapidly like I’d just seen a unicorn. I could hear George’s car still running, and I wanted to turn around and start talking to him again, but I guessed he was answering a message and I didn’t want to intrude. My heart was beating at twice the usual rate. I eventually managed to take some deeper, slower breaths, calmed the heart down, and went inside. Bronte was waiting for me.

  ‘So, there’s this posh car outside our house, and you start chatting with the driver,’ she said, as I poured her a cola and myself a wine.

  ‘It wasn’t like that. Just some Leeds fan who were lost, trying to find the stadium car park. He asked me the way to the ground.’

  ‘And then you just happen to bump into him after the match as well! Still, he seemed nice. Liked my picture. Had you been chatting long?’

  ‘No, he was just asking the way.’

  ‘Not seen a Mercedes Benz on our street before.’

  ‘Sure we have.’

  ‘He’s not from round here, then.’

  ‘No, he’s from Surrey.’

  ‘I thought you said you hadn’t been chatting long!’ Bronte was giggling, both eyes wide open with amusement. ‘Smart guy in a sports car shows up, and you run out into the street, start flirting.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all!’ I protested, though I could feel my cheeks warming as I blushed.

  ‘Go on then, what’s his name? Piers? Guy? Does he know David Beckham?’

  ‘George, but we didn’t exchange phone numbers. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick entirely! He was offering to help you!’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘No. I mean I don’t know! Not like I checked.’

  ‘You so did. You’re busted! You’re a terrible liar. Did you show some cleavage?’

  ‘That’s an outrageous thing to say, Bronte. We just had a little chat. He asked if the car would be safe round here, then he apologised for being rude, which he wasn’t really. And he admired your painting. If he gets you into the Royal College of Art you’ll be thankful that I flirted with him. Chatted, I mean! Friendly chat!’ I corrected myself too late, blushing furiously. She just laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘Now shall we watch the lottery, then? After that, we’ll turn the telly off for music hour.’

  ‘OK, Mum, change the subject.’ She rolled her eyes again, but friendly like. She was grinning from ear to ear, and then giggled a little more. Cheeky girl, but clever, so clever. From her dad. Well, maybe from me a bit as well.