by William Boyd
“Sounds like fun,” Lorimer said to the young woman, who turned to look at him incuriously.
“Potts, say hello to Lorimer,” Torquil encouraged, “there’s a good girl.”
Lorimer unreflectingly offered his hand which, after a surprised pause, was feebly shaken.
“Lorimer Black,” he said. “Hi.”
“I’m Potts,” she said. “Don’t you love croquet? Oliver’s useless, such a bad sport.”
“And this shambling cretin’s Oliver Rollo,” Torquil said as the young man in pink trousers returned, strolling back with his ball. “Lorimer Black. Lorimer was at Glenalmond with Hugh Aberdeen.”
“How is old Hughie ?” Oliver Rollo said. He was tall, long-armed and quite overweight, twin pink spots on his cheeks, flushed from his short walk back up from the lower terrace. He had a big, loose jaw, thick, dark, hard-to-comb hair and the flies of his pink corduroys gaped undone.
“I haven’t the faintest,” Lorimer said. “Torquil won’t let go of this idea that I know him.”
“Right, cuntface, you’ve had it,” Oliver said, Lorimer quickly realizing he was talking to Torquil. He dropped his ball on the grass and seized his mallet.
“If you’re going to take a piss in my garden do you mind not fucking exposing yourself,” Torquil said, pointing at Oliver’s fly. “Bloody pervert. How do you stand it, Potts ?”
“Coz ‘e’s a larverly boy,” Potts said in the voice of a cockney crone.
“Because I’ve got a ten-inch dick,” Oliver Rollo said.
“Dream on, darling,” Potts said, acidly, and a cold glance flew between them.
A cheerful-looking, matronly young woman bounced out of the French windows that gave on to the croquet lawn. She had a big, shapeless bosom beneath a baggy, bright jumper covered in blue stars and dry blonde hair held off her face with an Alice band. Her cheeks were flaky with what looked like mild eczema and she had a waning cold sore at the side of her mouth. But her smile was warm and genuine.
“Lorimer Black, I presume,” she said, shaking his hand in orthodox manner. “I’m Jennifer—Binnie.”
There was a full-throated roar of disappointment from behind as Torquil missed a sitter. “Fuck fuck FUCK!”
“Boys,” Jennifer-Binnie called. “Neighbours, remember? And language, please.” She turned back to Lorimer. “Your girlfriend’s just called from the station. Do you want me to collect her?”
“Sorry? Who?”
Before Lorimer could ask further, Torquil was by his side, a hand squeezing his shoulder.
“We’ll pick her up,” he said. “Come along, Lorimer.”
As they drove to High Barnet in Torquil’s car Torquil apologized. He seemed excited, Lorimer thought, coiled and tense with a kind of manic energy.
“I should have checked first, I suppose,” he said, unconvincingly. “I had no time to clear things with you. Thought we’d be able to busk it. I told Binnie you’d only just started going out.” He grinned, salaciously. “Don’t worry, you won’t be sleeping together.”
“And just who is my girlfriend this weekend?”
“Irina. The Russian bint. You remember?”
“The sad one.” Lorimer frowned.
“I couldn’t ask her on her own, could I? What would Binnie think?” He patted Lorimer’s knee. “Don’t worry, I only got the idea yesterday. I didn’t have you lined up as chaperon all along.”
“Fine.” Lorimer wasn’t so sure about this. But it explained Torquil’s unnatural glee.
“She seemed a bit lonely, you know. Friendless. I thought this would cheer her up. But obviously I had to come up with something more persuasive for the Binns.”
“Obviously.”
“Oh, and I should apologize that the dinner’s black tie. One of Binnie’s little fads.”
“No problem.”
“And I apologize for the house too, while I’m in contrite mood.”
“Why?”
“You see, it was left to Binnie by an uncle of hers, a distant uncle.” He stopped talking and looked at Lorimer with an expression close to shock. “You don’t seriously think I’d choose to live in Barnet, do you? As soon as the market recovers I’m flogging it.”
He pulled up outside High Barnet tube station and they saw Irina waiting alone at the bus stop, wearing a duffle coat and carrying a red nylon backpack. Lorimer sat and watched Torquil go to greet her, kiss her on each cheek and talk urgently for a few minutes, Irina nodding wordlessly at his instructions, before he led her back to the car.
“You remember Lorimer, don’t you?” Torquil said, smiling benignly as Irina climbed into the back seat.
“I think you were in restaurant,” she said, anxiously.
“Yes,” Lorimer said. “That’s me. Good to see you again.”
Lorimer buckled on the sporran and checked its positioning over his groin in the full-length mirror. He was pleased to be wearing a kilt again after so many years and surprised, as he always was, by the transformation it wrought on him—he almost didn’t recognize himself. He squared his shoulders, contemplating his reflection: the short black jacket with its silver buttons, the dark green of the tartan (Hunting Stewart, there was no Black Watch at the dress-hire agency), the knee-length white socks and their gartering of laces, criss-crossed above his ankles. This was, to his mind, as close to the Platonic ‘Lorimer Black’ as he had ever desired, as complete a metamorphosis as he could ever have wished for. His pleasure in his appearance momentarily dispelled the depression that was gathering within him at the prospect of the evening ahead.
He was sleeping in a room at the end of a long L-shaped corridor on the house’s second floor, under the eaves, a big atticy room with two dormer windows and with clearly unnecessary beam work supporting the ceiling but designed to foster an impression of antiquity. Torquil had apologized for the beams and for the half-timbering outside, for the brass sconces in the passageways and for the plum-coloured bathroom suite and the bidet when he had shown Lorimer his room. He continued to blame everything on the execrable taste of Binnie’s distant uncle (&Nouveau riche, lived in Rhodesia half his life), taking no responsibility at all for the appearance of his own home. Lorimer paced back from the mirror and turned sharply on his heel, admiring the perfect way the pleats of his kilt fanned out and swirled as he swung his hips.
He stepped out into the corridor and saw that Torquil was at the far end, minus his dinner jacket, holding the hand of a small, fair-haired boy in pyjamas who looked about seven years old.
“This is Lorimer,” Torquil said. “Say hello to Lorimer, he’s sleeping next door to you.”
The little boy’s eyes were wide at Lorimer’s Caledonian resplendency.
“Hello,” Lorimer said. “I know who you are, you’re Sholto.”
“Sholto, the famous bedwetter,” said his father, whereupon Sholto started to cry.
“It’s not fair, Daddy,” Lorimer heard him wail as Torquil bustled his son into his bedroom. “I can’t help it, Daddy.”
“Don’t be such a sissy. Take a joke, can’t you? Jesus Christ.”
Downstairs in the drawing room curtains were closed, candles were lit and there was a fire going, a real fire, Lorimer noticed, and gathered in front of it were Binnie, Potts, Oliver and another couple, introduced as Neil and Liza Pawson, the headmaster of a local school and his wife. Everyone was smoking except for Neil Pawson.
“I do love a man in a kilt,” Liza Pawson said, with forced bravura as he came in. She was a lean, bespectacled woman with a long, stretched neck, whose massive tension was clearly visible, a cursive blue vein throbbing in her temple. Her dress was daintily floral, spruced up with a homemade hint of evening lace added at neck and wrists.
“You’ve got to have the right arse for a kilt,” said Oliver Rollo, throwing his cigarette end into the fire. “That’s essential.”
Lorimer could have sworn, inwardly, that at the mention of the word’ arse’ a sudden coolness seemed to spread across his buttocks.
“Och aye, he’s a true Scot,” Potts said, standing behind him, the pleated hem of his kilt held high in her hands, “he’s no wearing knickers.”
Somehow Lorimer’s smile stayed pasted to his face, his scorching embarrassment was covered by the explosion of nervous laughter that followed and the loudly genial chiding of the irrepressible Potts and her famously naughty pranks. Lorimer’s hand was still shaking slightly as he poured himself a huge vodka at the drinks table, tucked slightly out of sight behind a baby grand covered in framed photographs.
“I understand your friend is from Russia,” Neil Pawson said, padding over for a refill. He seemed a blurry, indistinct, fair man, freckled, with dense blond eyebrows and a boyish lick of pepper and salt hair swept across his forehead.
“Who?”
“Your, ah, girlfriend. Binnie tells me she never wants to go back to Russia.”
“Probably. I mean, probably not.”
Neil Pawson smiled at him, amiably. “Binnie says she’s over here studying music. What’s her instrument? I’m a bit of an amateur musician myself. What does she play?”
Lorimer quickly ran through an entire orchestra of instruments before settling on the saxophone, for some reason.
“The saxophone.”
“Unusual choice. I’m a clarinet.”
He had to get away from this man. “She plays many instruments,” Lorimer said, recklessly. “Almost all of them: violin, timpani, bassoon. Strings, generally, ah, and oboe. The flute,” he said with relief, remembering. “The flute is her instrument.”
“Not the saxophone, then ?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes. Ah, there she is.”
Lorimer went enthusiastically to greet her, but saw Torquil was right behind, solicitous palm at the small of her back, saying, “Now who hasn’t met Lorimer’s young lady, Irina?” She was wearing a silvery satin blouse that made her skin appear even more blanched and bloodless, despite the lurid gash of her lipstick and the heavy blue shadow on her lids. In the subsequent shiftings and displacements that took place with these new arrivals being admitted to the circle, Lorimer found himself in a corner beside Binnie, glowing warmly pink, larger and more substantial somehow, in a voluminous dress made of quilted maroon velvet fitted with a bizarre short cape-effect around the shoulders, heavily embroidered. It made him feel hot just looking at her and he spread his legs slightly beneath his kilt, feeling his balls hang free, cooling. Marvellous garment.
“—So pleased you could come, Lorimer,” Binnie was saying, tiny pearls of sweat trapped in the downy hair of her upper lip. “You’re the only person I’ve ever met from Torquil’s work. He says you’re his only friend in the office.”
“I am? He does?”
“He says no one else has anything in common with him.”
He glanced over at Torquil who was handing round a bowl of quail’s eggs, leering at Potts, who had removed the shimmering, chiffony scarf that had been draped around her shoulders earlier, to reveal her modest cleavage.
“I say, tits out, Potts,” Lorimer heard Torquil observe, genially. “Oliver’s in luck tonight, eh?”
“Have a good look,” she said and with a finger hooked forward the front of her dress. Torquil took full advantage.
“Damn, you’re wearing a bra.”
“Isn’t Potts a scream,” Binnie said to Lorimer, beneath the ensuing laughter. “Such a sweet girl.”
“Why does everyone call her Potts? Because she’s potty?”
“It’s her name—Annabelle Potts. How long have you and Irina been going out?”
“Who? Oooh, not long.”
“Torquil says he can hear the distant chiming of wedding bells.” Binnie looked sideways at him, mischievously.
“Does he? Bit premature, I would say.”
“Such a pretty girl. I do love that Russian look.”
At dinner Lorimer was placed between Binnie and Potts; Torquil was flanked by Irina and Liza Pawson. An absurdly tall girl called Philippa was introduced to the company as the cook and she also served and cleared plates, with help from Binnie. They started with a tasteless, still partially frozen vegetable terrine and progressed to over-cooked salmon and new potatoes. There were eight open bottles of wine, four white and four red, placed randomly about the table and Lorimer found he was drinking almost uncontrollably, taking every opportunity to top up Binnie and Potts before refilling his own empty glass. Gradually, the desired anaesthetizing of the senses began to creep over him and an attendant mood of indifference replaced his earlier social terror. He was not relaxed but he ceased to care any more, ceased to worry.
Potts was rummaging for another cigarette in her handbag so Lorimer reached over for a candle. To his astonishment he saw Torquil place another four open bottles—two white, two red—on the table as Philippa cleared the remains of the salmon. There were now so many bottles on the table that he could only see the heads of the people opposite. Potts waved her cigarette negatively at the cheese, so Binnie set it down in front of him.
“—Couldn’t stand Verbier any more, too many grockles,” Potts was saying, “so I said to Ollie, what about Val d ‘Isere ? But he can’t stand the French schoolkids barging the queues. I said give me French schoolkids to German schoolkids—or do I mean Swiss? Anyway, I said, what about the States? And he practically had a fit. So we’re going to Andorra—anyway, peace at last.”
“Yeah. Thank God we both like Italy,” Oliver Rollo said.
Potts turned deliberately to Lorimer. “Where do you go?”
“To do what?”
“Ski.”
“I don’t. Not any more—I broke my leg very badly. Doctor’s orders.”
“Shame. Thanks.” She finally lit her cigarette from his proffered candle. “I must say, you’ve got a lovely, hairy bum, Lorimer.”
“I heard that,” Oliver boomed from across the table. “You leave his bum out of it. What’s wrong with my bum?”
“It’s fat and pimply.”
Liza Pawson forced her face into a smile. Neither of her partners,
Torquil nor Oliver Rollo, had spoken to her for at least twenty minutes, Lorimer had noticed, but now Oliver’s interjection had freed up Binnie, who went in search of more bread.
“What exactly do you do?” Lorimer heard Liza Pawson ask Oliver. No, he thought, don’t ask them about their jobs, they hate it, it makes them depressed. “Are you in the same line as Torquil?” she persisted.
“I sell houses,” Oliver said brusquely through a soft mouthful of cheese, turning away immediately. “Bung down the red, Torq, will you?”
“Do you miss Scotland, Lorimer?” Binnie asked, returning to sit beside him once again.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Lorimer said, relieved for once not to have to lie but not keen, all the same, to encourage this line of questioning. He brought Potts into the conversation. “Have you ever skied at Aviemore?”
“I love Scotland,” Binnie said, fondly nostalgic. “We used to shoot every year in Perthshire. Do you know Perthshire ?”
“We’re further north,” Lorimer said, as vaguely as possible.
“Aviemore,” Potts said. “Is that the Grampians?”
“Cairngorms.”
“Do you shoot?”
“Not any more, I ruptured an ear-drum, doctor’s orders.”
“You are unlucky with your sports, Lorimer,” Potts said, slyly. “What about bridge?”
“Whereabouts north, exactly?” Binnie persisted. “Any more cheese anyone?”
“What’s for pud?” Torquil cried.
“Urn, Inverness, sort of area, place called Loch—” he urged his dulling brain to work—“Loch Kenbarry.”
“That’s in Ireland, isn’t it?” Potts said.
“I understand you play in an orchestra,” Liza Pawson said to him, leaning across the table desperate for conversation, candle flames dancing in the lenses of her spectacles.
“No, not exactly.”
“I heard you and my husband talking
about musical instruments. A group of us have formed a small chamber orchestra. I thought he might be trying to recruit you.”
“No, I don’t play, it’s—” he gestured across the table at his supposed girlfriend, his prospective fiancée, and realized he had completely forgotten her name. “It’s her, she, ah, she’s the musician. I work in insurance.”
“No shop!” Torquil yelled at him. “Fine that man. Who’s for some brandy?”
Lorimer’s untouched creme brulee was whisked from his place by a looming Philippa.
“Now you’re talking, Helvoir-Jayne,” Oliver Rollo said, punching the air.
“Loch Kenbarry.” Binnie frowned, still trying to place it. “Is that near Fort Augustus ?”
“Nearish.”
Potts offered him one of her cigarettes for the seventh or eighth time that evening. He declined again and fetched her a candle. She leaned forward to the flame and lowered her voice, holding her cigarette poised, and said, hardly moving her lips.
“I must say I’ve found it very exciting with you sitting beside me, Lorimer, naked under your kilt.”
“Binnie,” Torquil said impatiently.
“Sorry, darling.” Binnie stood up. “Shall we, ladies?”
Lorimer could imagine Ivan Algomir’s snorting bray of derision. The women left the room? Potts shot to her feet and was away, Liza Pawson moved more uncertainly. Only the Russian girl did not budge.
“Irina?” Binnie said, gesturing towards the door. Irina. That was her name.
“What is? Where are we—” For the first time that evening she looked to Lorimer for help.
“It’s a custom,” he explained. “A British custom. The women leave the men at the end of the meal?”
“For why?”
“Because we tell disgusting jokes,” Oliver Rollo said. “You got any port in this pub, Torquil?”
Lorimer was pleased with himself. When the ladies had left the room, and as Torquil and Oliver fussed pedantically over the lighting of their cigars, he asked Neil Pawson about his chamber orchestra and the man talked happily about his passion for music, of the difficulties and rewards of running an amateur orchestra and, moreover, spoke at a pedagogic, headmasterly pitch of conversation that brooked no interruption for a full ten minutes. It was only Oliver Rollo’s insistent throat-clearings that alerted Torquil to the fact that terminal boredom was setting in and he suggested they withdrew and joined the ladies for coffee in front of the fire.