Designs On You

A divorced couple have problems to work out in this observant short story by Alison Carter. Lena had a cunning plan to make sure her ex-husband found a new partner . . .

IDON’T know why you go to those lunches,” her accountant said. “I’m fond of their salads,” Lena replied. “You know what I mean. Why meet that man every fortnight when you don’t even like him?”

“That’s a bit strong,”

Lena said. “I keep an eye on Owen and I suspect he keeps an eye on me.”

She liked Henry, her accountant. He had been working alongside her for seven or eight years.

It was 1976 and Lena Fitzgerald was at the height of her success as a designer. She owned five London shops, the flagship store situated off Carnaby Street.

She and Owen Fitzgerald had married before her rise to fame. For 10 years their marriage had been good.

But then Owen had got jealous, and things had slowly gone bad.

Owen didn’t see it in the same way that Lena did.

“Not jealous,” he told her. “You will insist on putting words in my mouth.

“I think I was clear at the divorce hearing: I never saw my wife because she was never at home.”

“And you, Owen, insist on exaggerating. I was busy building a business, which takes time and effort, and I’m a woman so you didn’t expect that.”

Owen rolled his eyes. They bickered a lot about their shared past.

They worked their way through a big shared bowl of ice-cream without noticing while they sniped at each other.

Owen was a leather goods buyer for a department store.

Henry said that Owen had a chip on his shoulder.

“A heavy chip,” Henry said. “I think he likes it there, weighing him down.”

Henry didn’t like the fact that Lena paid her ex such high maintenance.

“That’s what the lawyers settled on,” Lena told him.

“It’s why I have lunch with Owen – to monitor what he’s doing with the cash. If I spot that he doesn’t need it, then . . .”

“Then what?” Henry asked. “Then I could whip a zero off those ridiculous cheques?”

Owen and Lena had been divorced for nearly four years and their lunch habit was ingrained.

Though they didn’t get on, they felt the need to keep tabs on each other.

“There were three late payments this year,” Owen said recently.

“I wouldn’t keep turning up if I couldn’t imagine you running off to some Pacific island and ‘forgetting’ to pay maintenance.”

Lena sighed and noticed that all the ice-cream was eaten. That meant she’d have to go back to work.

“Firstly,” she said, “it’s Maureen who manages the cheque book.”

“Ah, charming Maureen, who dislikes me even more than you do.”

“Grow up, Owen. Secondly, how would I create an autumn-winter collection from an island?”

“You’d find a way. You found a way to get me out of the house double-quick, back in ’Seventy-two.”

Lunches always ended in a fight of some kind.

At around the same time as this lunch a friend of Lena’s, Robyn, asked if Lena would ever get married again.

“You look great, you’re obviously a catch,” Robyn said. “And you liked marriage, didn’t you?”

Lena said it was unlikely. “I don’t know what makes you think I liked being married,” she told Robyn. “Did you notice how it ended?”

****

The summer was underway and Lena’s latest collection selling well, when an incident occurred in their usual restaurant.

Lena was increasingly wondering why they ate together when all they did was argue.

Owen said he liked the familiarity of the place, but everything about it – the wallpaper, the forks, their friendly waitress – made Lena restless.

It reminded her of

very bad times but also very good ones, and it muddled her.

When they’d met in the Swinging Sixties, Owen had been a fashion buyer.

Lena had set up a meeting in the restaurant in order to look slick and pretend she had fashion experience.

Maybe that heady time had brought together two people who should never have got beyond a starter.

“Lovely day, Mrs Fitzgerald,” the waitress, Christie, said.

“Isn’t it?” Lena said. “I may go walking in Golden Square later.”

Christie looked towards the door, waiting for Owen.

“With Mr Fitzgerald?” she asked brightly.

Lena frowned and

Christie blushed.

“Sorry – silly of me. Here are your menus.”

Christie knew they were divorced. She had been unlucky enough to observe the decline of the marriage.

Lena and Owen were tetchy with each other that lunchtime.

The heat didn’t help. London was oppressive. Hyde Park’s grass was turning brown.

They talked about Lena’s business, and Owen was sarcastic about Henry.

“It’s all ‘my accountant’ this and ‘my accountant’ that,” Owen said.

“I think we’re running out of civilised conversation,” Lena said.

As Owen pronged chips on to his fork she observed that his hair was shorter. He looked like he’d looked that first day in 1963.

Then, she had told him he was the perfect clothes horse for the slim-trouser, Beatles haircut look. That seemed a century ago.

“The green’s good,”

Owen said, nodding at her outfit. “That’ll sell.”

Lena had on a grassgreen sleeveless jumpsuit from her collection.

“Maybe on a twenty-yearold,” she grunted. She had seen herself in a shop window and thought she looked terrible.

They paid the bill with a strict fifty-fifty split. Lena found the exact change.

“There, fifty-four pence,” she said. She dropped the money on the table and got up, finding – to her dismay – that the jumpsuit was stuck to her bottom.

“You don’t have to be exact,” he said.

“I do,” she said, “since you’re always so concerned to get your pound of flesh with those cheques.”

“It’s too hot for this,” he said.

“Well, I’m off,” Lena said. She stood on the other side of the road in the shade.

Usually Owen came out immediately and they set off in separate directions, but he didn’t emerge.

Lena was about to walk away when she saw a woman of thirty or so approach the restaurant.

She was wearing a piece from Lena’s 1975 range, a khaki safari dress.

The woman went inside. Lena crossed over the road and looked through the window. The new arrival was talking to Owen.

Lena felt offended.

She marched back inside and approached the table.

The woman’s gurgling laugh seemed to be bouncing off the walls, and Owen was laughing along.

“You didn’t say you had a second lunch booked today,” Lena said.

Both of them turned to her, surprised.

“Joan, this is Lena,” Owen said, “my –”

“‘Your’ nothing,” Lena interrupted. “Don’t you think it’s a bit vulgar – one in and one out?”

She became aware of the quiet – two dozen people trying not to look.

“Never mind,” she said. “Time to get back to work.”

She left the restaurant almost at a run. Christie caught up with her as she reached the street corner.

“Mrs Fitzgerald!” Christie called out. Lena stopped.

“That was a colleague of Mr Fitzgerald’s from the department store,” Christie said, panting.

“She comes in with her husband and a daughter on Sundays.”

Lena felt silly.

“He should have told me,” she said. She pressed a hand to her forehead.

“Gosh, it’s boiling, and

I’m getting cross. I haven’t been married to that man for years.” She laughed.

“Four years,” Christie said.

Lena decided, there and then, not to meet her ex-husband for any more lunches, particularly in a drought when London’s tarmac was baking.

He could have as much of her money as he liked. She didn’t care about him, who he saw, or what he did.

****

Lena was true to her word. She told Owen that work had got too busy, and he didn’t argue with her.

She was busy: the summer lines were proving profitable and there were plans afoot for a major expansion for next year.

Henry voiced a note of caution.

“Lena, you’re doing well but overheads are large and unpredictable – the central London shops, the salaries. You need a bit of padding in the bank.”

“Is that Henry-speak for cuts? Because I don’t want to lose any of the brilliant new people we took on.”

Henry drummed his fingers on the desk.

“I have suggestions.”

“Go on.”

“Your maintenance payments are high.”

“I suppose, but I can’t change that, can I? They were settled by the court.” Henry spoke carefully. “You pay them while he’s unmarried.”

“Well, yes, I guess so.” This was a new concept for Lena.

“What if he wasn’t unmarried?” Henry said. “He’s stilll young. I bet he’s had thoughts of marriage.”

Lena thought of the woman in the restaurant. That woman hadn’t been Owen’s girlfriend, but how naïve was it to assume that there wasn’t one?

Owen was an attractive man. He could get married again, Lena thought, startled by the idea.

A memory of their own wedding popped into her mind.

“He may be hesitating,”

Henry said gently.

Lena’s eyes opened wide. “You mean he’s staying single to keep the income?”

Henry shrugged, but Lena’s mind was clearing.

She had been so wrapped up in work that she hadn’t thought about that. It was a distinct possibility.

It took a Henry to observe these things.

“If Owen got married, maintenance would cease?” she asked.

“Yes, if he got married again, then you could tidy all this up, Lena.

“Separate your affairs and move on.”

Lena gave a light laugh. “Isn’t this a weird discussion? I’ve no reason to suppose he’s even got a . . . a girlfriend.”

Henry laughed, too.

“Yes, it’s hard to meet people once you’re not in your twenties and partying.

“D’you know I have male friends who seethe with envy at all the beautiful women you know, Lena?” She blinked.

“I suppose I do know some in my line of work.”

“Why not introduce Owen to a few?”

****

Lena knew it was ridiculous to be shackled to Owen for ever.

“And you’re not taking from him,” Henry reminded her as they worked on arrangements for a cocktail party, “you’re giving.” “You’re right,” Lena said. She was careful. She didn’t invite several women she liked very much.

“It’s just to avoid complications,” she said. “I can’t have Owen falling for Jenny, or Rula, or Alison – they’re too close to me.”

Henry was a little impatient about her scruples but gave in.

“After all,” he said, “this is just for fun, really.”

When Lena met Frederica La Salle in Regent Street after a visit to her seamstress’s premises, a light turned on in her mind.

The party was coming up in a few days and Lena felt that this was fate.

Frederica had been a very impressive girl in their

art school year – a bit wild, always in demand. Lena invited her on the spot.

“I’d love to!” Frederica said. “It will be super to step out of the fine art bubble and chat about knickerbockers and bandanas, or whatever’s

‘in’ this season.

“I must buy ‘Cosmopolitan’ some time – I’m always busy with silly old painters and sculptors.”

“I must come to your gallery again,” Lena said.

“Do.” Frederica laughed. “But it’s all tremendously contemporary in there right now – it may go right over your head!”

****

“She’s ideal for him!” Lena told Henry. “Not only gorgeous but divorced herself. She’s fun, solvent, and he’ll adore her.”

“Because you do!” Henry said with a grin. “Ideal!”

“Well . . . we were at art school together,” Lena said.

She wasn’t sure that she and Frederica had ever been bosom buddies, but Frederica was clever and glamorous, and the owner of a gallery in Mayfair.

The day of the party dawned and the guests gathered on the roof terrace of the office in front of a glorious sunset.

Frederica looked amazing in an electric blue off-theshoulder number.

If Owen didn’t take to her, Lena thought, there were others where Frederica came from.

She watched Owen enter, surprised to have been invited, glancing round at the assembled company. He looked trim in a widecollar white shirt and jeans.

Lena watched him take a glass and reminded herself that there was plenty of time to find Owen a fiancée. No need to rush.

But Frederica seemed to get on like a house on fire with Owen. She laughed a lot and went back and forth to refill his glass.

Lena wondered if he’d get to talk to anyone else.

“Great, great choice,” Henry whispered to Lena. “I think we may have jumped the first hurdle!”

Frederica called the studio a few days later to say she’d had a wonderful time at the party.

She dropped into the conversation that she and Owen had met at his work.

“I’d forgotten how attractive your ex is,” Frederica said. “He took me into the window display stores at the shop – such huge fun!”

“Well, I’m delighted,” Lena said.

“If I stole him would you come at me with a kitchen knife?” Frederica asked. Lena laughed.

“He’s a free agent,” she said.

Lena happened to pass Owen outside Liberty’s a few days after that.

She had been inside spending too much money, a sure sign that she was tired and stressed, and several cardboard carrier bags hung from her arm. “Lena,” Owen said. “Owen,” she said. “It’s still too hot.”

“Horribly hot, yes.”

“Did you and Frederica La Salle have a super time in that store room?” The question came out more pointed than intended.

He waited a moment before replying.

“You don’t have to be sharp, Lena.”

They parted in silence, and Lena felt dejected. At home she flung her bags down and poured a gin.

The plan was working; there was a possibility that her path and Owen’s would diverge entirely, that she’d save herself several thousand a year, and that her life would be tidier.

A month passed and

Lena heard nothing from Owen or from Frederica. Then Henry came to work one morning full of news.

“Frederica La Salle is expecting a proposal!” he said. “I’ve got this second hand, but . . . you haven’t had anything from your ex?”

“No,” Lena said. “Why would I?”

She wished Henry would go away; she didn’t want to hear gossip about anybody.

“She called me,” Henry said. “I think she wants to pass the news to you indirectly, which is sweet of her, don’t you think?”

“I’m thrilled,” Lena said. “Will you tell my assistant I’m going out for lunch?” Henry looked surprised. “But we’ve got the meeting.” He ran a hand along the desk. “I did think we might consider lunch.

All work and no play, et cetera.

“I know a nice Italian in Knightsbridge.”