Too depleted himself to deal with other people’s problems, Jason hung up after twenty minutes and ducked in to The Prince of Teck pub for a quick drink. As so often these days, he ended up staying for several. There was a filthy old upright piano in the bar. Jason, his inhibitions loosened and his emotions suitably numbed, sat down to play a few numbers. He was good, and the customers liked it. As a result, the landlord kept plying him with free drinks and, before Jason knew it, it was eight o’clock at night and he was in no fit state to make small talk with Tati’s potential Hamilton Hall investors.
‘Lovely to see you,’ Tati was saying, escorting an elderly earl and his young consort to the front door, admiring the girl’s mink as they said their goodbyes. Soon there was only one couple left, George and Madeleine Wilkes. Already parents at the school, Madeleine was a vastly wealthy sugar heiress and George a Mayfair gallery owner and renowned raconteur. Unlike tonight’s other guests, the Wilkes’s were actually friends. Even so, Tati was ready to call it a night, and she could see Madeleine Wilkes yawning in the drawing room and sneaking furtive glances at the grandfather clock.
‘George is in the kitchen,’ Tati hissed at Jason, pulling him to one side in the hallway. ‘Make yourself useful for once and go and find him. Mads wants to leave.’
‘OK,’ Jason said sheepishly. ‘I’m sorry I missed the party.’
‘Are you?’ snapped Tati. ‘Somehow I doubt that.’
‘Really. It wasn’t deliberate. I lost track of time. I …’
‘We’ll discuss it later. Just pull George out of the drinks cabinet and send him on his way.’
George Wilkes was in his early fifties, a gentle, funny, softly spoken man with the sort of mellifluous Irish accent that made women want to sleep with him and men want to buy art from him. He was one of the very few Hamilton Hall ‘contacts’ whom Jason considered a friend. Despite their difference in ages, and despite the fact that George was a successful self-made man while Jason was more of a lost boy, George Wilkes never treated Jason Cranley like an appendage of his glamorous, successful wife. Instead he talked to him about art and music, and the limitless possibilities of the future.
‘You’re young, Jason,’ George Wilkes would tell him. ‘You don’t have to have it all planned out yet. Relax. Try new things. Life is long.’
A conversation with George Wilkes almost always left Jason feeling happier and more optimistic. He’d often wondered how different life might have been if he’d had George for a father instead of Brett.
‘Ah! Jason. The prodigal husband returns. In the doghouse, are you? Come to hide out in the kitchen with me?’
From his ruddy cheeks, dishevelled hair and slurred speech, it was clear that George was even drunker than he was. Jason gently prised the bottle of Laphroaig out of his hand.
‘Actually, I’ve been sent to summon you.’ He gave a rueful smile. ‘The girls are tired. Mads wants to go home and Tatiana wants to begin the long process of slicing off my scrotum with a rusty penknife.’
‘Ouch.’ George winced. Helping himself to a slice of chocolate cake from the leftovers on the kitchen island, he sank down into an armchair with the air of a man who had no intention of going anywhere. ‘So come on then. What’s your excuse this time? Where were you?’
Jason told him the story, such as it was.
‘I should have been here. For Tati. I promised,’ he finished, contritely.
‘Sure, well, it’s important to keep promises,’ George agreed. ‘But you had to talk to your mother.’
‘That’s not why I was late,’ smiled Jason.
‘No, well, you were late because you were at the piano, weren’t you? You’re a musician, boy! An artist. Tatiana knew that when she married you. Artists get carried away sometimes.’
The way George put it made Jason feel wonderful. Not like he’d got drunk in a pub and ended up banging out a few tunes on an old upright. But as if he were part of an elite group. As if he were ‘other’. Special. Tatiana did her best to support him, but she never made him feel like that. Not the way George did.
Just thinking about Tatiana now brought Jason down to earth with a bang.
‘Yes, well. It was hardly the Royal Albert Hall,’ he mumbled.
George Wilkes looked at him, his head cocked curiously to one side. ‘You see, why do you do that? Put yourself down all the time?’
Jason laughed nervously.
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s the Albert Hall or the room over your mum and dad’s garage,’ said George. ‘It’s what you’re doing that matters, not where you’re doing it. And what you were doing was making music. Music that people enjoyed. You’ve got so much going for you, Jason. Open your eyes, boy.’
Jason looked into the older man’s kind, understanding face with a gratitude that bordered on love. Perhaps he was drunker than he realized? Or George was. Or both. Just then, Madeleine Wilkes appeared in the kitchen doorway.
‘Do get a move on, George,’ she said briskly, like a mistress calling an errant dog back to heel. ‘I’m knackered and I want to go to bed. And poor Tatiana’s dead on her feet.’
Eventually, after some cake-related negotiation, George was dragged out of his chair and led to the front door.
‘Thank you for everything, angel,’ he said to Tatiana, kissing her on the cheek. In a whisper he added. ‘Go easy on the boy, eh? I don’t think he meant it.’