‘I’ve got something for your father,’ he’d instructed in his booming voice. ‘I need you to give it to him before the party.’
With everything that had been going on with RedReef, Jim still hadn’t got round to seeing Saul, but as his father’s party was the following day, he knew he needed to make it happen. He hadn’t imagined for one moment that he’d be leaving Jennifer Wyatt in his bed. There was a certain irony to the situation: his visit to Saul’s was about to bring him full circle. After all, if it hadn’t been for his father’s agent suggesting Casa D’Or as a writer’s retreat, the Johnsons would never have met the Wyatt family, and Jim would never have crossed paths with Jennifer.
He smiled to himself. Saul had always been such a man about town, a larger-than-life character; his booming Brooklyn accent and unflappable personality ever present during Jim’s formative years. Dinner was often interrupted when Bryn had to take a call from New York, which almost always ended in shouting or laughter or both, and whenever Saul was in London, he’d be at the Hampstead house for dinner and shop talk into the early hours.
At last they pulled up outside an Upper East Side co-op. Jim knew the street well. Simon had a couple of blocks up here in the Desai residential portfolio, and they had even played with the idea of turning one of them into a deluxe hotel along the lines of the Mark and the Carlyle before they had received a deluge of objections from the wealthy residents nearby. Saul was probably one of them.
Jim announced himself to the doorman, who directed him to a lift, gold, with a tiny plush velvet seat inside, that made Jim feel as if he had gone back in time to the fifties. He rode to the eighth floor and rang the bell. A Far Eastern lady dressed in a navy tunic and slacks, an outfit he recognised as a carer’s, greeted him at the door, and Jim was ushered through.
He heard the noise first – a deep, long buzz – and then Saul appeared round the corner in a wheelchair. Jim was momentarily shocked to see him. He was old, thin and so frail that the chair seemed to drown him. But beyond that he was the same old Saul. His hair was now white, but still wild like a cartoon professor’s, the same mischievous brown eyes twinkling through heavy seventies-style glasses.
‘Hey, Jimmy!’ he cried, swivelling the chair to face him. ‘How d’ya like the place, huh?’
What had once been a glitzy reception room, the scene of many drunken debates between Bryn and his agent, had been stripped and rearranged into what was obviously a living space, with a desk and a narrow bed and a large TV set in the corner.
‘It . . . it has character,’ said Jim.
Saul laughed loud enough to shake the windows.
‘I brought the bed in here. I spend so much time in it I thought I might as well have the big window, the light,’ he said, bringing the wheelchair closer to Jim. ‘Look at you.’ He smiled, studying him. ‘All grown up. It’s good to see you, kid.’
‘It’s great to see you too, Saul.’
‘I’m surprised you remember me,’ he grinned, adjusting his spectacles.
‘You came round to our house at least twice a year until I was nearly twenty-one. Of course I bloody remember you.’
Saul laughed. ‘Hey, Lucille, fetch us a couple of drinks, wouldya?’
Jim was taken aback. ‘Saul, it’s not even lunchtime . . .’
‘I got a fifty-year-old Scotch in the cabinet. Better drink it, whatever time of day it is, before they confiscate it.’
‘Confiscate it?’
‘I’m moving into a home. Me!’
He gestured to an armchair as Lucille brought over a couple of measures of whisky.
‘Lucille’s become a grandmom, haven’t you, Lou?’ said Saul. ‘So she’s leaving me to help her own family. I haven’t got it in me to start with someone new, and I got to face it: an eighth-floor apartment ain’t the best place in the world for someone who lives in one of these.’ He tapped his hand against the side of the wheelchair.
‘I’m sure it will be social. Plenty of ladies to chase.’ Jim smiled.
‘That remains to be seen,’ snorted Saul. ‘Can’t do more than about two miles an hour in this, so let’s hope they got a few with bad hips. Anyway . . .’ He raised his glass towards Jim. ‘Good health, huh?’
Jim sipped the Scotch and grimaced.
‘Pretty smooth,’ laughed Saul, catching the expression. ‘I thought you’d be used to the good stuff now you’ve got that snazzy job with Simon Desai. And you can tell your boss that if he ever wants to sell his memoirs, I know five publishers that would have them like that.’
He clicked his fingers together in a slow but exaggerated gesture. Jim tried not to notice how much his hands were shaking.
‘Once an agent, always an agent, eh, Saul?’
‘You know I was still executive chairman of the agency until a couple of years ago. Problems started when I could barely walk to the boardroom, let along chair it. How’s your father?’
‘Good. You’ve heard about his CBE?’
‘Who hasn’t?’