Graham Rappaport is a successful solicitor,
comfortably into his mid-forties, senior partner in a prosperous country
practice, pillar of his golf club, and a good father to his two teenage
daughters. He also counsels the bereaved on two evenings a week, because he
knows that good deeds are the most rewarding of actions.
All his friends admire him,
because he is a good man, and several wealthy local widows value his investment
recommendations, because Graham counts good financial advice every bit as
important as emotional support – particularly when it generates the odd copper
in commission. Opinion in the Home Counties market town where he lives
generally holds that he could shine as a JP, or a County Councillor, were he
not so devoted to helping mitigate sadness, and moves are afoot to co-opt him
as a fitting successor to the sitting, but ailing, Tory MP – for Jane Rappaport
is already an influential member of the local Conservative Party committee, and
the constituency ranks amongst the bluest of the blue. It is also commonly
supposed that the Queen will one day grant Graham an OBE.
However whilst his copybook
is seemingly spotless, Graham also has a secret weakness, for he is a man with
an adventurous libido. Nothing very daring, of course, because he is above all
cautious. But he does like to explore the back streets of Soho two or three
times a year, and have close dealings with hard-faced women who often know a
good deal more about married men than married men’s wives, and he has been known
to stand rather more close to his firm’s better looking secretaries than might
normally be considered proper, and look down over the shoulders of young girls
working in the accounts department, particularly when the weather is hot, and
they have come bare-shouldered, and sometimes bare-legged, to work. He has also
been seen dancing once too often with the firm’s divorced receptionist at the
firm’s Christmas party, and office gossip whispers that his car has been seen
parked outside the divorced receptionist’s house at a time when Graham claimed
to all and sundry that he had been out counselling.
However this afternoon he is
counselling for real, for he has a new bereavement client, a wealthy widow
named Patricia Rochford, fresh from burying her husband, and he is going to be
charming, and on his very best behaviour, because Mrs. Rochford is rather an
attractive woman in her late fifties, with a touch of ginger in her blonde
hair, and a figure very neatly trimmed in her grief, possessed of a truly bulging
portfolio of stocks and shares.
They have already met in his
office, for Mrs. Rochford has made it plain that she can handle grief, but
might welcome good financial counselling, and she has notably turned his
partners’ heads. But solicitors are pragmatic, and Graham’s partners have
benevolently stood aside, allowing him to mount a major campaign to win her
mandate as an investment adviser, and also – if he judges her rightly – to
prepare his ground for offering a little more recreation at a later date as
well, because Graham has a powerful inner feeling that this particular grieving
widow might possibly tire very soon of sadness.
In fact he hopes that today
might well prove a magic one in this desirable progression, for he is now
promoted from meetings at his office to an invitation to tea, and plans to
strive his utmost to convert a prospectively dull business encounter into a
cosy tete-a-tete, if Mrs. Rochford but gives him just half a chance – and of
course he is wholeheartedly persuaded that he totally deserves that chance, for
he is naturally shaping all his efforts in the very worthiest of causes, as
part and parcel of a most dedicated counselling package.
So he parks his gleaming BMW
tidily, pats at his neatly brushed hair, and practices a sober solicitor’s
smile at his rear view mirror before turning off his engine and engaging his
handbrake.
Mrs. Rochford’s house is
impressive, large and solid, a fine early Victorian vicarage, set at the end of
a short drive in grounds that Graham has quickly estimated with a professional
eye at a good acre and a bit. He is sure that it will be comfortably furnished,
with chintz loose covers on sofas and armchairs, an ancestral oil or two,
because Mr. Rochford’s family were leading local landowners, and some nice bits
of mahogany, not to mention a silver tea service and some good china, and he
will have the name of the local auctioneer on the tip of his tongue, just in
case the widow contemplates down-sizing, because the local auctioneer is a good
friend, and generous with his backhanders.
Nothing stirs, and it is a
good sign, because Graham hates to hurry. He checks carefully that he has a new
notepad in his smart black leather document case, that his glasses are
spotless, and that his pen and propelling pencil are both functioning smoothly.
Then he gets out of his car, stretches his legs, and admires himself in his car
window. A neat chubby face stares back
at him seriously, the face of a dark-suited man of good intent, and Graham and
good intent approve each other soberly.
He straightens his tie
fractionally, glances down at his feet to check that his toecaps are gleaming,
and marches across the widow’s gravel to rap briskly at her front door.
The house is silent for a
moment, and then the door opens and a young woman inspects him coolly. She is
slim, with green eyes set high in a long pale face dusted lightly with freckles
and framed in a halo of red-gold flame, sleek in a green silk dress that is
both exactly matched to her eyes, and really very smart for a country
afternoon.
Graham smiles his very best
professional smile, and twinkles with just a hint of roguishness. He knows that Mrs. Rochford has a daughter,
married to a computer wizard rich from linking photography and digital
technology in mysterious ways and generally away from home a great deal
criss-crossing the North Atlantic, and has heard her described as raunchy, and
a collector of scalps, and very possibly testicles into the bargain. He wonders
momentarily how she views counselling solicitors, and his hopes grow warm, for
Graham has a large opinion of himself, and secretly believes that a man might
very well please more than one woman at a time.
“I think I’m expected.” His
voice is creamy with charm and desire.
“You must be Mr. Rappaport.”
Green eyes examine him appraisingly, and may even be twinkling back at him, and
Graham feels his hand being clasped in a most welcoming gentleness. “I’m Laura
Whiting. My mother says you have been a great help to her, a great comfort.”
Gentle fingers hold him for several seconds longer than might be demanded by
convention, and Graham glows as he senses that he is almost being caressed. But
it is only a momentary encounter, and she steps back.
“We thought you might like to
join us for tea on the terrace, at the back of the house.” A slim hand gestures
at the open door behind her.
Graham follows her as she
leads, and is torn between noting the way her dress clings to her hips as she
walks, and a mental attempt to catalogue every potentially valuable object in
sight. The hall is hung with several oils, all of them impressive, and one
possibly a real treasure – an eighteenth century family group in a garden
setting, a pastoral idyll – and he also notes a finely turned and veneered
table and a couple of chairs that London salesrooms might be expected to die
for.
Flame hair and undulating
silk lead on through a large drawingroom towards open French windows, and
Graham’s mind clicks on faster than a computer, logging more pictures, more
furniture, an elegant grand piano and some good Georgian silver candlesticks.
The house is a real find, and really much too large for a middleaged woman
living on her own. He can sense that he has a duty to provide good advice on
turning one’s back on the past and moving ahead into the future, not too laden
with regressive emotional baggage, on downsizing and revising and rebuilding,
on creating a new space that might well eventually create its own need for a
selfless and well-informed male comforter.
But now he is out onto the
terrace, blinking in the sun. A finely chiselled face smiles up at him from a
chintz-upholstered garden chair, and he bends deferentially to touch the tips
of long cool fingers.
Mrs. Rochford is a picture of
grace: delicious in a smart saffron linen dress, relaxed in her chair with an
elegance that neither chubby and practical Jane Rappaport, nor Julia and Sonia,
Graham’s two stocky and rather ungainly teenage daughters, could ever hope to
emulate. She waves towards a chair set facing her, and Graham cannot but note
two very large diamond rings on her fingers, and his nostrils flare in
admiration as her movement scents the air with some delicate, but plainly very
expensive fragrance.
He perches respectfully, his
eyes humble, albeit a touch calculating. This is a time to abase himself and
serve, to know his place and at the same time to ingratiate himself.
“Ah, Mr. Rappaport. How good
of you to come.” Mrs. Rochford’s greeting is cut in the finest crystal, and she
binds him with hazel eyes for a searching moment. Graham looks down, lowering
his gaze with respect, but then quickly changes his mind and looks up again to
hold her eyes levelly, allowing himself just a flash of ardour. This may be a
time to serve as a lackey, but Mrs. Rochford is also a woman with a woman’s
needs.
She smiles faintly, and looks
away, and he notes the elegance of the silver Queen Anne tea service set on a
spotless cloth on the wrought iron garden table between them, and the delicacy
of china that must be early Wedgwood or Spode. He is admiring trinkets to slay
for.
“My daughter is making tea
for us, Hodge has the afternoon off.” The cool crystal voice peals from a world
where there are cooks to cook, and maids to clean, and encompasses everything
that Graham has ever sought to secure. He is alert on the edge of his chair
with all the eagerness of a well-trained pointer: he stands at the door to a
tabernacle, and waits on admission.
“I think you brought some
ideas with you.” Her voice rises on a gently interrogatory inflection, and
Graham scrabbles for his notes. He knows that he must first clear business
matters out of the way before he can move on to try laying the foundations for
closer, warmer discussions.
He sketches his proposals
swiftly but deftly. Mrs. Rochford already holds most of her portfolio assets in
a trust, to protect her daughter, but Graham suggests some interesting switches
to increase her overall income, already a very tidy sum, and provide some added
capital growth potential. He also hints delicately at possibilities for
domestic asset realisations, just in case Mrs. Rochford should ever contemplate
moving, and he has his auctioneer friend very much in mind.
But hazel eyes cloud a
little. “I don’t quite think I need to sell up yet.”
It is a reproof, and Graham
is quick to back away. “Of course not, ma’am.” He speaks as though to a
duchess, and notes the approval in the way his listener shapes her lips. “But
this is a large house.” He cocks his head judiciously, and his movement speaks
volumes. “One day you may find it rather lonely.”
Mrs. Rochford’s lips purse a
little. “Perhaps.” But it is not a denial.
Graham smiles. He has made
his point. He goes on to generalise about economic and stockmarket prospects,
underpinning his expertise, and adds some thoughts about a current uptrend in
antiques and collectables. But he states no conclusions and forces no
compliance – he has baited his lure, and his prey will find her own way to his
net. He is concise and competent, neat and efficient, and he has noted all his
thoughts on two sheets of paper, which polishes them well. Mrs. Rochford is
intelligent enough to know her own mind, and his list of useful contacts
appended at the end includes a selection of very reputable stockbrokers and
auctioneers, all sworn verbally – though perhaps not in more binding form – to
percentage paybacks. Graham is a country boy, and he knows how rural
obligations are cemented.
He holds out his two sheets,
and looks up over them to gauge his penetration. Cool fingers take them, and
cool hazel eyes appraise him with perhaps just a twinkle of amusement. It is
plain that this woman knows his game, but judges it just. Perhaps her twinkle
even denotes approval.
Their twin inspection is broken
by an approaching rumble of small wheels. The girl in green silk arrives,
pushing a tea trolley laden with finely trimmed cucumber sandwiches and small
pastries and a neatly divided pound cake , a kettle steaming on a spirit lamp,
and a dish of quartered lemons.
Graham springs to his feet.
It is not a deference he pays to his wife, nor any female acquaintance, let
alone the divorced secretary from his office. But he knows how the cream of the
county conducts its affairs, and he wishes above all to be seen as correct.
The girl smiles a dazzling
response. “Please, don’t…” She gestures him back into his chair. “I’m sure
you’re tied up planning things for my mother.”
Mrs. Rochford holds up
Graham’s two sheets of paper. “Graham,” she pauses after the word, to make sure
her emphasis is fully appreciated in all quarters. “Graham is doing a first
class job.”
It is a brief phrase, but
enough. Graham realises that he has been subtly promoted from servant to friend
of the family, and he glows again.
The girl in green silk smiles at him with all the warmth that a
first class friend of the family might merit. “I only hope that my cucumber
sandwiches match your financial planning.” She is leaning towards Graham, and
her green silk dress is hanging away from the line of her body, and he finds
himself looking straight into a soft green-shaded valley between two small
rounded bosoms. He can see the girl’s nipples through the thin silk of her bra,
or perhaps he is imagining them, but it does not matter. Her incline is an
invitation, and he is momentarily her master, for it is for him to choose.
For a moment libido well-nigh
overwhelms him, and he licks his lips, because they are suddenly dry. But then
he closes his eyes, and makes a great effort. He must take possession of
himself, and regain total self-control.
“Do you take lemon in your
tea…, Graham?” The girl’s hesitation is arch, if almost infinitesimal, and it
is a hard struggle for him to suppress the glow rising within him. He is
accepted, and subsumed, he has joined the elect and he will feed at the table
of the blessed, he has glimpsed the valley of delights, and he will sup of the
pleasures therein.
Tea, after that, is almost an
anti-climax. Polite conversation flows, and a little gossip; they talk of local
politics, and county ebbs and eddies, and mother and daughter tempt Graham into
speaking a little of his aims and ambitions. Three souls are taking up
positions, and fate will determine. But Graham is convinced that he has made a
profound impression, and that he will reap where he has sown.
Then their shared tea
ceremony draws to a close, and Graham prepares reluctantly to leave. He glances
surreptitiously at his watch. He has stayed a fair while longer than he
expected, and he will have now to eat his evening meal alone, for Jane
Rappaport is accustomed to shaping her catering around her daughters’ needs,
and teenagers like to eat early so that they can keep their evenings free.
Mrs. Rochford, now Patricia
by invitation, seems reluctant to part with him. “You don’t really have to
leave yet, Graham, do you?” Her voice is tempting, even enticing. “I would like
to have shown you around – the house, the garden. I am sure a man of your
tastes would find much to interest you.” Now her tone is really quite tempting.
Laura Whiting smiles
bewitchingly. “We have some chicken breasts – I had thought of roasting them
with tomatoes and aubergines, with a glass or two of Sancerre on the side, and perhaps
a little dish of crème brulee to follow, if you have a sweet tooth.”
It is a siren call of
seduction, and Graham hesitates. He is enormously tempted, for he has heard it
said that Mrs. Rochford’s daughter is one of the best cooks for miles around,
with an ability to hostess the kind of dinner parties that send lesser women
into paroxysms of jealousy and rage, and he knows very well that his best hope
at home must be for cold pork and mashed potatoes, with a small chunk of dried
up cheddar and an elderly cheese biscuit to follow, washed down with a single
bottle of cold lager.
“Oh, do please stay.” Laura
Whiting leans forward again, and he crumbles. Chicken breasts are temptation,
but they are less than nothing by comparison with this soft green valley that
beckons. Crème brulee will be his undoing, but he must be undone. He hesitates,
and he is lost.
“Er, I’d better call my
wife.” It is the first time since his arrival that he has acknowledged any
familial obligation, and it sits wholly askance with his hopes and dreams.
“Of course, of course.”
Patricia Rochford is perfectly understanding. “Laura will show you the phone.”
Graham follows flame hair and
undulating green silk again, and now the silk is vibrant with a barely secret
invitation, and he is totally subsumed by lust. He has to make a determined
effort to hold himself back from clutching at her as she stops in her mother’s
drawingroom, and he drowns in her dazzling smile.
The phone rings out, and he
shapes his excuses as he pictures all his hopes. He has a feeling that he might
be heading for a late evening, and he needs to conjure persuasive phrases, for
Jane has also heard rumours about the divorcee, and he must shield her from
alarm.
Laura Whiting returns to her
mother, and the two women smile at each other. But their eyes are rather stony
for a social exchange.
“He’s very pushy.” Laura
stands looking down at her mother, and she is positioned so that she can keep
one eye on Graham, now talking into the telephone, and safely out of earshot.
Patricia Rochford shrugs slightly. It is plain that she is well aware of Graham’s aims and ambitions. “He’s vain.”
The younger woman smiles
again, and this time her face is very hard. “But not much of a stallion.”
They both consider the
thought, and Patricia Rochford gets to her feet. “He needs teaching a lesson.”
Her voice cuts her words out like chips of ice. But then her eyes light again
as Graham returns to the garden terrace.
“Ah, Graham. Laura is going
to clear up and prepare dinner whilst I show you around.”
She takes his arm, and Graham
swells with pride, tinged just a little with lust. He smiles lubriciously at
Laura as she starts to busy herself with clearing away the tea things. He has
read of men bedding women in pairs, mothers and daughters even, but such things
have always remained beyond the borders of his wildest imaginings. Yet now he
seems to be entering a dream, and his imagination starts to whirl within him.
Patricia Rochford guides him
through her drawingroom into an opulent diningroom, and her hand is warm on
Graham’s arm. They climb a staircase lined with more family portraits, and a
stag that must be a Landseer, and Graham stares longingly through an open
doorway into a bedroom where a huge bed calls him like a magnet. But it is not
to be, not yet to be, and they descend again, to tour an immaculate garden, and
he must perforce admire shrubs and parterres and bedding plants, when a bed is
his only ambition.
Patricia Rochford chats
amicably as she guides him, and they are cementing a friendship. But Graham
takes care to observe all the proprieties, and keeps a little distance from
her. He is a cautious man, and it is better that she makes the running.
They return to the house, and tempting food
smells scent the air, and they sip sherry until they are summoned to table.
Laura’s meal is delicious – everything that Graham might have expected, and
more. They start with a home-made shrimp pate on home-made oatmeal biscuits,
and chicken breasts become proxies for far more lascivious pleasures. Laura
fills his glass, and then again, and again, and Graham protests in vain,
because he is assured that a spare bed awaits him if he feels he is drinking
too much, and he is pampered, and flattered, and made to feel very significant,
and he is nicely stuffed, like a piglet being fattened for a wedding.
He gorges himself on crème
brulee, and sips gluttonously on an oak-matured Armagnac, and he is in heaven.
This is a bliss that no man could normally attain, and the fact that his
pleasure is straying so far beyond the frontiers of his everydays is a promise
that he has merely reached the bounds of a known world, to step out on a path
leading onwards and upwards into what he increasingly hopes will prove a most sensual
paradise.
Here he realises that he is
growing just a little tipsy, and a tiny warning light flashes. But his two
companions are the very soul of warmth and understanding and encouragement, and
both now have a certain way of smiling at him, and are now playing on words
with him in ever more tempting sallies, that he is certain soon all will be
permitted without let or hindrance, and he swamps his light with several more
mouthfuls of Armagnac, and it fades, and is then wholly extinguished.
Laura Whiting clears the
table, and carries plates away, and then soft dance music fills the air. It is
Latin American, a tango, perhaps most sensual of all dances, and she essays a
few steps before him, and her body is an open invitation.
“Do you dance, Mr. Rappaport?”
Graham stares at her in
surprise, for it is several hours since she has used his surname. But she is
smiling as she speaks, and holding out her hands, and moving her body in quite
the most irresistible gyrations, and he rises to his feet, swaying just a
little, to join her.
They dance, and he can feel
her body pressing against him, and then he dances with her mother, and he is
moving with two women in need of a man, and he is a man, and he knows that he
must soon do what is expected of him. But he is also hot, and sweating a
little, and he does not demur as Laura peels his jacket from his shoulders, and
he is slavering as she sheds her dress, to dance alone in front of him in her
pale green silken slip, and her mother is a shadow in the background, and turn
must take turn, and he is now completely naked, but for his socks.
Suddenly the room explodes in
a blinding flash, and is immediately plunged into total darkness. Graham looks
around him wildly in the dark, but he can see nothing. He covers himself with
his hands, and he is riven with terror. The room is silent for a moment, and
then he hears a mocking laugh.
“Congratulations, Mr.
Rappaport. We’ve caught you on candid camera.”
Another moment of icy fear,
and the room is lit again. But now Graham is alone, and his clothes are strewn
untidily at his feet. He snatches them up in a panic, and buttons his shirt and
zips up his trousers with trembling fingers. His head starts to thump
unpleasantly, and all his earlier joy and expectation and euphoria are now just
distant memories. He has stumbled unwittingly into some kind of nightmare, and
he must escape.
Somehow he finds his way back
to the front door of the house and stumbles out to his car, his tie trailing
from one of his jacket pockets. Somehow he manages to find his way back onto
the road and head for his home, pausing on the way to tidy himself and check
that he has all his possessions. Somehow he manages to creep up to his marital
bed and fend off sleepy marital questions. Somehow he sleeps.
Breakfast next day is a tense
meal. Graham’s mind is a frozen landscape of conjecture, agony, and worse. He
is short with Jane, and curt with his daughters. He knows that he has been made
the victim of some kind of bizarre practical joke, some dreadful female prank,
and he has an awful presentiment that he has not heard the last of it. The
papers arrive, and he picks at them listlessly, his mind wholly elsewhere, as
Jane opens a large brown envelope bearing her name, though no other address,
nor any stamp.
She takes out a large
photograph, and catches her breath, and Graham glares at her. They are alone in
their kitchen – both Julia and Sonia have left for school. She does not look at
him, but lays the photograph on the table, and quickly gets to her feet. A
moment later she is gone.
Graham glances irritably at
the picture, and then stares at it in horror. It is a large, and remarkably
clear, black and white print of him naked but for his socks, his face contorted
in a leer that he might have intended as seduction, but is now only a wholly
repellent grimace. His hands snatch at it, his fingers rip it to shreds. But
the damage has been done, and he knows that he is going to have a very, very
hard task ahead of him explaining this dreadful thing away, if he is ever to
explain it away.
He is in his car a moment
later, heading for his office. He must escape to a peaceful haven, and assess
what he must do next. The building is empty, and he sits at his desk and holds
his head in his hands. His mind whirls. He is normally a very self-possessed
and precise man, planning every working day with dry and careful exactitude.
But normality has flown out of the window.
His secretary knocks at his
door, and it is a strange omen, for she normally enters his room without any
warning. But Graham sees that she is now carrying a large brown envelope that
she has already opened, and his blood freezes.
She smiles slightly as she
places the envelope in front of him, and it is a smile tinged with contempt.
“Lots of copies came early this morning, Mr. Rappaport, one for each of the
partners. The bank have rung to say they’ve had a couple as well.”
Graham looks down at the
envelope, but he does not touch it. He is suddenly a broken man. He must hide,
but he has no place of concealment, he must run, but he has no destination.
Ridicule has no place in a world where prudence and gravity are masters, and he
knows, with a totally despairing certainty, that he has just wholly and
completely enshrined himself as a fool.