The New Leaf Read online

  THE NEW LEAF

  THE NEW LEAF

  Hugh Canham

  Book Guild Publishing

  Sussex, England

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  The Werks

  45 Church Road

  Hove, BN3 2BE

  Copyright © Hugh Canham 2013

  The right of Hugh Canham to be identified as the author of

  this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means,

  without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

  in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and

  without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Typesetting in Baskerville by

  Ellipsis Digital Ltd, Glasgow

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  A catalogue record for this book is available from

  The British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84624 968 6

  ePub ISBN: 978 1 90998 427 1

  Mobi ISBN: 978 1 90998 428 8

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  1

  I have been going over in my mind the strange things that have happened to me during the past year. In twelve months my life has changed beyond all recognition.

  First, I see myself with Zoë in New York last Christmas walking hand-in-hand in the freezing cold down Fifth Avenue and buying hot chestnuts. She was wearing a fake black fur coat and earmuffs to match; her cheeks were pink with the cold.

  And then, by contrast in Los Angeles at the New Year, swimming with her in the hotel pool under the palm trees and lying side-by-side and holding hands on the pool loungers as we dried off in the sun. She had on a minute bikini. And the next day in our room, when she announced that she wasn’t coming back with me to England.

  I was in bed hoping she would soon join me, but she just sat at the dressing table brushing her long, blonde hair.

  ‘But sweetheart,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go back tomorrow. I’ve got to get this deal finalised, I need the money. Can’t you come back with me for a few days – a week at most – and then if you like, we’ll fly back here?’

  ‘No, Greg. I’m staying right here. I see a lot of opportunities!’

  I got out of bed. I was naked, and went over to the dressing table and stood behind her. I gently put my hands over her breasts and then kissed the side of her neck. Normally this had the desired effect; but this time she shrugged me away and said, ‘You’re not going to get round me. I’ve made up my mind.’

  I looked at all 6 foot 2 inches of myself towering over her in the mirror. My James Bond image, carefully cultivated for the last twenty-five years, hadn’t faded too much. My hair wasn’t going grey, either on my head or chest or elsewhere. My facial expression was suitably ruthless and my body looked reasonably fit, although I was perhaps putting on a bit of weight. What was happening? Why didn’t she want me anymore?

  ‘Okay. If that’s the way you feel,’ I said crossly and went into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I had a cold shower. I needed it.

  When I came back into the bedroom, Zoë was sprawled in the middle of the bed, fast asleep in the black silk nightdress I had bought her in New York.

  I didn’t feel like moving her to get into bed. I went to my suitcase and took out the half bottle of Famous Grouse whisky I always carry with me when I’m travelling – I’m a bit mean about paying hotel prices for drinks – and poured myself a stiff one. I drew back the blinds a little and sat by the window, looking out over LA at night. The restaurant that had been on the corner of the road when I last stayed at the hotel had been demolished and some new erection was already shooting up in its place. Such is the way in Los Angeles.

  Zoë was only nineteen and a model, so I could see her point of view. But I knew I was effectively being ‘dumped’ for the first time in my life.

  Just after my forty-fifth birthday too. And at a time when I was getting distinctly nervous about my finances. I had been spending recklessly and I was going to have to borrow most of the money to do the next deal. I also suspected that my tax affairs were in a mess – my accountants would never give me a straight answer when I asked about them.

  I didn’t feel very well on the flight back to London. I think I had drunk too much. I was very upset about Zoë. She was lovely. Heathrow Airport looked like hell, shrouded in a thick fog with melting slush everywhere. God knows how the plane managed to land.

  Early the next day, still a bit jet-lagged, I had this meeting with my old friend/foe, Jasper Cohen, at his sumptuous office just off Regent Street.

  ‘Aha, had a good festive season Greg, by the looks of it! The States, wasn’t it?’

  For the third time, I was buying one of the companies which it seemed was surplus to his empire. My head throbbed during the negotiations, even after two large cups of black coffee. I looked at myself in the mirror in Jasper’s opulent marble-lined loo as I went to have a pee. God, I did look pretty awful! Bags under my eyes and a yellowish complexion. I put my tongue out and then quickly put it in again – I suspected this was more than a hangover and jetlag.

  I gritted my teeth and got on with the deal. Jasper could be so infuriating. He sat there grinning and massaging his great fat gut which was nearly bursting the bottom button of his shirt. Because of my throbbing head I think I let him get away with a few things I shouldn’t have. I didn’t feel in a fighting mood.

  The company I was buying had three freehold shops, all well situated and with living accommodation over, a large warehouse and a so-so leasehold Head Office near Baker Street. I’d inspected them all before making Jasper an offer and more or less sold on two of the shops to a property dealer I knew, which should make me a £200,000 profit straight away. I had no intention of running the company. I was buying it to sell off its assets. Unfortunately, it had fifteen employees and its Managing Director was sitting beside Jasper, looking pretty sour about the whole thing. No doubt the poor sod was wondering where he would end up! Why he was working in Jasper’s rombustious organisation, God only knew. Dressed in a black three-piece suit, he was about 7 feet tall, thin as a rake and very serious. Probably an accountant. He was going to be a problem and I’d have to discuss him with Jasper afterwards. He would undoubtedly cost a lot to get rid of; the other fourteen were just an annoying detail.

  Why didn’t Jasper sell off the company assets himself? Something to do with his tax position, apparently.

  ‘Another striptease act?’ he asked as he was showing me out.

  ‘Could be,’ I replied, smiling through a slight wave of nausea. ‘We must have a word later on the phone about the MD.’

  But first I called my lawyers so that I could go and see them and instruct them on the deal. I always liked to get things done quickly, once terms have been agreed. Then I called my secretary, Gloria. Through the ringing tone I imagined her sitting at her desk in my office’s reception area tossing her hennaed locks, filing her nails and wreathed with fumes from her Rive Gauche perfume.

  ‘Darling, it’s me. What’s the name of t
hat doctor in Harley Street that everyone goes to these days?’

  ‘Greg, are you ill!?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just want a check-up.’

  ‘Dr Smith. Unusual, isn’t it? I’ll give you his number. He’s apparently particularly good on urogenital diseases.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I snapped.

  Gloria could be very cheeky.

  As I punched in Dr Smith’s number walking up Regent Street, I realised I was frightened.

  My solicitors’ offices are on the twenty-third floor of one of those City tower blocks. When it was built, the fashion was to have double glazed windows from ceiling to floor. I dislike the place. You can see vague reflections of yourself in the glass.

  I had difficulty concentrating on giving instructions to George, the fat but amiable partner I deal with. His private office is very small and of course he had to have his assistant and a trainee present. I was seated right next to one of the windows and kept having an irresistible desire to look down at the road below. Each time I did it my stomach turned over – it was completely different from looking out of an aeroplane window. I suppose the fear of falling from a great height comes to everyone from time to time and that afternoon I was having it badly!

  I kept having visions of Zoë’s naked body while George talked about technical legal details. When I wasn’t thinking I was falling into space or visualising the naked Zoë, I was worrying about going to see the doctor.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look that well today, Greg,’ George said as we parted.

  ‘No, I’m going for a check-up this afternoon.’

  ‘Good. I hope everything’s all right!’

  By late afternoon, I was sitting in Dr Smith’s waiting room; he had ‘fitted me in’. I’ve always been afraid of doctors and this one appeared very formidable, sitting behind an exceptionally large desk in a grand consulting room as I was shown into his presence by an elegant, uniformed nurse.

  ‘Tell me why you’ve come to see me.’ He was rather brusque and smelled strongly of aftershave; probably about fifty-five, short hair, horn-rimmed spectacles and a very expensive-looking grey suit.

  I told him. He went through the rigmarole of examining me and asking me a lot of questions. He looked into my ears, down my throat, into my eyes and tapped my knees with one of those long-handled hammers. He slapped his hand on my stomach. ‘Bit flabby, aren’t you?’ he said smugly. I didn’t take to him.

  I was then handed over to another nurse – small and dumpy – who led me into a little room where she took my blood pressure and then wired me up to an ECG machine. Finally, she took blood samples. I’m terrified of needles, they always hurt, and I looked away when I saw my dark red blood oozing into the tube. I was asked to give a specimen of urine. It did look a bad colour – sort of darkish browny-yellow.

  Then Dr Smith saw me again. This, I soon realised, was ‘crunch time’.

  ‘Tell me, how much do you drink?’

  ‘Well… er…’

  ‘Please be frank and specific otherwise I cannot make a proper diagnosis. What have you had to drink during the last few days?’

  ‘I’m feeling a bit jet-lagged,’ I said, ‘but I’ll do my best.’ I could hardly remember, but I admitted to roughly half of what I’d had in LA and on the plane and since I’d been back.

  He made a note.

  ‘Smoke?’

  ‘No cigarettes. Just cigars.’

  ‘How many a day?’

  ‘Two, maybe three.’

  ‘Size?’

  ‘Oh, you know, those Romeo and Juliet things.’

  ‘No, I don’t! Show me how long.’

  ‘Um… about four to five inches.’

  He made another note.

  ‘Exercise?’

  ‘Well, I’m a businessman. I don’t have much spare time.’

  ‘I see. Well, I should have the results of the blood tests by tomorrow afternoon. Make an appointment with my reception please to come and see me then after two-thirty, and we’ll have a further talk.’

  He looked at me stonily through those horn-rimmed spectacles. Obviously he didn’t approve of my lifestyle.

  ‘Oh God,’ I thought, ‘I’d better stay in for once this evening,’ as I took a taxi back to Brook Street, thinking on the way that I should have walked to get a bit of exercise. But I was feeling awfully tired.

  ‘Just cancel the dinner at the Casino,’ I told Gloria, who was indeed haloed in Rive Gauche, but actually doing something on her computer. ‘Say I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘Aren’t you really?’

  ‘No, don’t I look it?’

  ‘Um… Well, few of us look our best after the festive season.’

  I ignored this remark and didn’t even bother to stop and ask about my messages. I went straight up in the lift to my flat. It was nearly six and I would have normally had a glass of champagne and then a bath, but instead I made myself a cup of black coffee and sat on the sofa looking out of the window at the bare plane trees outside, lit up by the street lamps against the night sky. I switched on the television and watched the news. Somebody had been murdered; the rest was not very interesting. Over the newsreader’s voice, I could hear my ghastly old nanny telling me off, ‘You’re a naughty boy, Gregory, and one of these days it will catch up with you!’

  Leaving Dr Smith’s surgery the following afternoon, I headed north across the Marylebone Road into Regents Park. I had my thick overcoat on. I don’t think it was particularly cold, but I felt as though I was walking somewhere near the Arctic. I sat down on a park bench and kept going over in my mind what the doctor had said: ‘Of course, it’s up to you, but in my opinion if you don’t change your lifestyle you’re going to be seriously ill in the near future! The tests show that you are drinking too much alcohol. Your blood pressure is very high, so is your cholesterol and there are irregularities in your ECG.’

  A vision of that bloody nanny came into my mind again, wagging her finger at me, and coming out with another of her favourite phrases: ‘Gregory, you’ve got to turn over a new leaf!’

  So I replied to the doctor, ‘You mean I’ve got to turn over a new leaf !?’

  He seemed to thaw a little at this.

  ‘Well, that sort of thing,’ he said, smiling. ‘It would be a good idea if you could give up alcohol completely for the time being, but if you can’t do that, you should try to limit yourself to twenty-one units per week. I’ll give you a sheet of paper which sets out exactly what that means. If you must smoke, only have one cigar a day and for goodness sake take some exercise. Walk, go swimming, join a gym.’

  It was going to be very difficult to start a new regime immediately. My lawyers were meeting with Jasper’s lawyers tomorrow at my office and I hoped to sign the share sale agreement. Then, in the evening, I was looking forward to a little dinner I’d set up with a few business acquaintances. The day after that was Saturday and one of my horses was running at Sandown – he stood a good chance of being placed, so I’d have to be there… The new-leaf turning would have to wait until Sunday. But as a token of my resolve, I walked all the way from Regents Park back to Brook Street and felt much warmer when I got there.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Gloria.

  ‘Oh, not too bad.’

  ‘Stay off the booze, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, that sort of thing.’

  Gloria really was very decorative and I loved seeing her sitting in my reception area, but she could be very irritating! I went straight into my office and tried to concentrate on some computer printouts of the stock of the company I was buying from Jasper.

  Why do lawyers always look so bloody miserable and carry such large bags? George came with not one but two assistants; both with enormous bags. I was very glad I’d agreed an overall fee in advance. George had wanted to charge me by the hour and no doubt those two assistants would be costing me £250 per hour each! Jasper’s lot looked as though they’d come straight out of a synagogue, although I k
now Jasper himself is not religious. He told me. I think his exact words were: ‘Load of bloody bullshit!’ However, I supposed it was tribal loyalty. One of his blokes had one of those skullcaps held in place with a hairclip and he did actually smile a bit. The other three (two of them must have been accountants to safeguard Jasper’s tax position, no doubt) were as glum as my ‘team’, as they will call themselves.

  I had, of course, been through all the draft documents with George the previous day and made a list of the points to watch. The two things that worried me most were: (a) the fate of the Managing Director, and (b) the amount of stock the company was carrying in its warehouse and shops. I had agreed with Jasper that I would take the stock at cost, which was the normal sort of thing, but when I’d first studied the computer printouts which he’d sent me I was very worried. The stock was worth nearly a million – roughly twice what I thought it would be, and unbelievably there were 10,000 teddy bears! Yes, it was a company that imported and sold toys called ‘Toy Boy Limited’. One of Jasper’s little jokes, no doubt. He was very fond of jokes!

  ‘Jasper,’ I said on the phone (I was not feeling at my best, part of my brain mulling on turning over the new leaf), ‘the stock figure is about twice what I’d expected!’

  ‘Yes, we’re well stocked, aren’t we!’ he replied, chuckling.

  ‘But for God’s sake, ten thousand teddies. Is this for next Christmas?’

  ‘Er, no… ’

  ‘How the hell did you get so many teddy bears?’

  ‘Well, there was a mistake!’

  ‘Yes… ’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By your highly-paid MD, no doubt?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘So you want me to buy your expensive MD and his bloody mistake?’

  ‘The company comes as it is.’

  ‘Or not!’

  ‘Come on, Greg, we’ve agreed terms. Stock at cost!’

  ‘Why didn’t you sack him?’

  ‘He’s got six kids.’

  Jasper’s a mean sod, but he has a bit of a soft centre.

  ‘I see. So I’ve got to take on ten thousand teddy bears, a fool of an MD and his six kids!’