A Shock to the System

by Simon Brett

  And what he was seeing at Stoughton denied him the opportunity of superiority. As the weekend approached, he had prepared a small armoury of pejoratives to describe the cottage. ‘Pokey’, ‘run-down’, ‘draughty’, ‘primitive’ and ‘damp’ vied with ‘tarted-up’, ‘precious’, ‘chocolate-box’ and ‘poncy’ as his imagination shifted.

  But the reality of the place blunted his weapons. The thatched roof, neat white paint and Tudor beams seen as Robert’s Scirocco drew up outside on the Friday evening had given hope for ‘chocolate-box’, but this had been denied by the building’s imposing proportions. ‘Primitive’ was rendered inapplicable by the neat Calor gas tank and the bright blue burglar alarm affixed under the eaves. Though its size and condition ruled out ‘pokey’ and ‘run-down’, as they entered the cottage Graham thought ‘draughty’ might still be in with a chance, but this hope was quickly dashed by the blast of central heating and open fire that welcomed them. He toyed momentarily with ‘overheated’ and ‘smoky’, but was forced to reject them as inappropriate. ‘Tarted-up’, ‘precious’ and ‘poncy’ met the same fate. It was just a very nice cottage, practical, skilfully modernised, well-equipped. Above reproach, even for such a skilled practitioner of reproach as Graham Marshall.

  And any hope that Robert Benham’s image might be shattered by a grotesquely unsuitable partner was dispelled as a girl issued from the kitchen to greet them.

  Before he met her, Graham knew her primary attraction — that she was a girlfriend rather than a wife. The more he saw of Robert’s life, the more he blamed the unfavourable comparison of his own on his ill-considered and premature marriage to Merrily. She was his handicap; she was the obstacle to the full realisation of his potential.

  He felt this with redoubled force when he saw how beautiful the girlfriend was. Not only beautiful, but famously beautiful. He recognised her face from his television screen. The pale blue eyes and black hair identified Tara Liston, an English actress who had made it in the States and been reimported to her own country in an internationally successful detective series.

  And Robert Benham actually possessed this creature who peopled the wet-dreams of the world. His recent weekend trip to Miami fell into place.

  And Graham’s last hope of comfort fell into oblivion.

  What was more, Tara Liston proved to be charming. His defensive wishful thinking that she might turn out to be a bitch, might even give Robert a hard time, dissipated through the evening. She was delightful, entertaining and apparently deeply in love.

  Graham made the mistake at one point of mentioning his mother-in-law’s name, brandishing it as if to show his own association with the glamour of show business, in the way that had proved so successful in his early days at Crasoco. Tara was of course charming about it and, jutting out a dubious lower lip, said yes, she was sure she had heard the name. But Graham felt deflated and shabby, like a man name-dropping in a pub.

  The dinner she cooked for them the first evening revealed no shortcoming in domestic skills, and an imagination that contrasted with Merrily’s predictable offerings from the Corden Bleu partwork.

  Neither Tara nor Robert could have been nicer to him. To compound his malaise, Graham had the knowledge that it all came from within himself.

  At the end of the meal, the talk moved to drugs and he brightened at the prospect of showing his cosmopolitan insouciance on the subject. Those rare and over-dramatised puffs of pot taken in Lilian’s Abingdon cottage would now stand him in good stead. Even though it was a good ten years since he had smoked, he spoke of cannabis with familiarity and enthusiasm.

  As Tara produced the little bag of cocaine, he realised his mistake, but he had already said too much. His refusal to participate, a reflex born of Calvinist upbringing and the fear of doing it wrong, left him feeling gauche and immature.

  He watched the others covertly, but it was Tara who held his gaze for the rest of the evening. He stared, with fascinated envy, at the neat, practised way in which she snorted the white powder and, later, the unambiguous intent with which she led Robert off to their bedroom.

  As he lay awake in his single bed, Graham’s mind lubriciously translated every creak of the old cottage to his own disparagement.

  And, once again, as was increasingly the case, the only thought that gave him strength and identity was the knowledge that he was a murderer.

  He was woken on the Saturday morning by more creaking. It was probably just the complaint of old beams at the impertinence of central heating, but again he provided an alternative, diminishing interpretation.

  The envy he felt was, however, qualified. He did not wish he had Merrily with him, her angular body by his side to be rolled over and enjoyed with comatose morning compliance. It was a pleasure to be on his own. No wife, no squabbling children to force him out of bed on some expensive errand of ferrying.

  And no responsibility for the attractive surroundings in which he found himself. The guest bedroom had been recently decorated. The straight lines of white gloss on the window-frames gleamed. The wallpaper clung close and lovingly round the contours of old plaster. The white emulsion on the ceiling and brick chimneybreast was immaculately even. It was the work of a professional, another sign of the financial latitude that bachelordom allowed. Graham contrasted it with the hasty do-it-yourself efforts of his own home, the slight mismatches of wallpaper patterns, the brushstroke whorls on surfaces that should have had another coat, the scalloped outlines of windowframes that Merrily had attacked with her usual imprecision.

  The guest-room’s one flaw, a breadcrumb edging of unpainted plaster around the washbasin, offered Graham no chance of ascendancy over his host. The basin was obviously such a recent addition that its installation was not complete; it was just a matter of time before ‘the little man’, obedient to Robert Benham’s dictates, finished the job.

  The cottage had ceased to creak. Either its beams had adjusted to the change in temperature or the passions in the other bedroom had been sated, and Graham felt a kind of peace. This was the life for him. . other people to do everything, their services adequately remunerated, every offloaded responsibility a financial transaction rather than a tangled mess of duty, bargaining and blackmail. He needed to live on his own. A service flat was the answer, with ‘little men’ responsible for the tedious functions of cleaning, decorating and repairs, little men who could be bawled out for any deficiencies in their contractual obligations. The excessive responsibilities of family life might perhaps be justified, speciously, by love; but when love had gone, they became no more than a form of exploitation.

  Being away from Merrily and the children crystallised the thought that had been forming slowly over months or maybe years — that he had outgrown them, that mentally he had set them aside from his life, that they were not included in any projections he made of his future.

  Recognising this fact gave him a sense of relief, the feeling of a decision reached.

  But his repose was disconcerted by a flutter of fear. It was not the thought of the murder, whose shadow seemed now a source of strength rather than of panic, but the question of why Robert Benham had summoned him for the weekend.

  The reason given had been for an opportunity to talk about work, specifically about departmental staffing and the rival claims of maintaining the existing establishment and making cuts in the cause of efficiency. But Graham understood Robert well enough to suspect a deeper motive. The Head of Personnel Designate had had ample opportunity — which he had used — to check the relevant files, and Graham did not flatter himself that his own opinions on the subject were going to change Robert’s intentions. No, there was another purpose in the invitation.

  And though he could not yet define that purpose, the knowledge of its existence made Graham feel on his guard. He was not there to be consulted, but, in some obscure way, tested.

  The nature of the test did not become clearer as the weekend progressed. Everything seemed very leisurely, Robert’s office abrasiveness smo
othed. As a pressured executive should, he took the opportunity to relax. And though this, like all his actions, was a conscious decision, it did not seem forced. Graham, for whom constant comparison with his rival was becoming a habit, felt himself by contrast tense and unnatural.

  The communal day began round ten with a large breakfast. The time Tara spent in America showed in the frizzled bacon, pancakes and scalding black coffee.

  Then came the brief tour of the estate, including the identification of the paddock as a potential helipad. Work was not mentioned, though Robert had to take a couple of calls which obviously concerned the affairs of Crasoco. One of the calls involved his checking some facts stored on the office computer and Graham tried to keep his mouth from gaping as Robert produced a small briefcase, dialled through on the telephone, set the receiver on two rubber pads and had the information printed out. ‘Bit of a lash-up,’ the younger man apologised when the transaction was complete. ‘I’m going to get a proper terminal rigged up when I have a moment.’

  Graham gave what he hoped was a knowing nod. Then there was a call from Tara’s London agent.

  After that, Robert switched on the Ansaphone and drove them down to the local pub. ‘Feel lost if I don’t get my Saturday lunchtime drinking,’ he announced as they set off. It seemed out of character, an unexpected heartiness; maybe, Graham hoped maliciously, an overconscious attempt at being a man of the people.

  But no. At the pub Robert was obviously well-known, more than a weekender imposing himself on a rural community. He seemed to have a social mix of friends, with whom three rounds of drinks were consumed. Graham, having missed earlier cues, offered to buy the fourth round, insisting that he felt like another. Few of the group wanted more, but having made his statement, he felt obliged to buy himself a fourth pint, along with the couple of halves that were all the others demanded.

  Four pints were more than he was accustomed to and more than he wanted, but he had committed himself. Half-way through the fourth he had to go and pee, which felt like another admission of failure.

  When they left the pub, Robert, who seemed unaffected by the alcohol, said they’d drop Tara off at the cottage. ‘She’d better start cooking. Doing her Chinese number for us tonight.’

  They, meanwhile, would go down to Bosham and have a look at ‘the boat’.

  When Tara was dropped, Graham felt obliged to go into the cottage for another pee, and had to ask his driver to stop twice more on the way down to the boat’s mooring so that he could relieve himself by the roadside. Robert made no comment, but Graham had a feeling of points lost.

  There was no nouveau riche hesitancy about Robert’s dealings with the boat. He clearly knew about sailing and the knowledge was not a recent acquisition.

  First they went to the quay and got into a rubber dinghy, which Robert rowed expertly round to the mooring. The slapping of water gave Graham an unpleasant queasiness in the stomach.

  Robert kept up a flow of sailing information to which his guest only half listened. He knew nothing about boats and had never had much interest in them.

  ‘Hope to get a deep water mooring in time,’ the expert confided. ‘Have to watch the tides here, she’s grounded when it’s low.’

  Graham nodded.

  ‘Tide’s ebbing now, so we can’t take her out. Have to wait too long to get back on the mooring. We’d miss Tara’s Chinese magic. Sorry.’

  Graham, in whom the queasiness was shifting over to nausea, said he didn’t mind.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, though, with a bit of luck. If we make an early start. I just wanted to come down today and check everything’s shipshape. Boatyard had her out for an overhaul.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Not that these fibreglass hulls need much maintenance. Just needed a bit of refitting.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There she is.’

  He pointed ahead. The boat was called Tara’s Dream. Robert provided a lot of statistics and details, but all Graham took in was that she was about twenty foot long, had four berths, but was ‘quite a nippy little mover’.

  Neatly Robert rowed up to the stern. ‘You hang on, make her fast, I’ll just open up.’

  He leapt nimbly from the dinghy into the well of the boat, while Graham clung to the transom. The combined motion of the two vessels compounded his queasiness. Water splashed up in little spouts between them. Graham struggled to bend and tie the stiff nylon painter round a rail.

  Robert, steadying himself against the lashed boom, moved forward to the cabin entrance. He reached into his pocket for a bunch of keys, selected the right one and opened the padlock. With a flourish, he pushed against the top hatch, which rattled on rails away from him, opening a little cockpit. Then he lifted out the vertical board and entered the cabin to stow it.

  His torso emerged from the opening and he waved.

  ‘Come and have a look at her.’

  Graham didn’t enjoy the leap and scrambled into the boat. He felt absurdly unstable standing up in the dinghy, and not much better on the boards of Tara’s Dream.

  ‘Surprisingly roomy, isn’t she?’ said Robert as his guest lurched into the cabin.

  It didn’t look roomy to Graham. Claustrophobia added to his unease. In the forepart four bunks were somehow crammed, shut off ‘when required for privacy’ by a thick curtain. The rest of the space, barely enough, Graham thought, for the two of them to turn around in, was ‘galley, dining area, everything else’. He was shown folding tables, seats that doubled as storage lockers, more overhead stowage and neat double gas rings behind a curtain recess. ‘Calor,’ said Robert, revealing the blue cylinder. ‘Hope the boatyard checked it was full. Tara’s cooked some wonderful meals here, you know.’

  Graham gave yet another nod and grunt of apparent interest. He didn’t like it at all. The cramped conditions reminded him of a holiday with his parents when they’d rented a caravan near Hunstanton. He had been in his teens, too large for such enforced proximity. The holiday had been another example of Eric Marshall’s penny-pinching, and Graham remembered he had made a vow at the time that, when he had the freedom to choose, all his holidays would be in luxury hotels.

  But the caravan hadn’t suffered from this awful rolling motion. With shame, he realised he was desperate to pee again, and had to disturb Robert, who was checking the free-running of a halyard, to ask what he should to about it.

  ‘Head’s in there.’ Robert pointed to what looked like a cupboard. ‘Easier if you just go over the side. Not into the wind, though, or you’ll get your own back.’ He laughed coarsely.

  Graham felt exposed and ridiculous as he faced the picturesque frontage of Bosham and peed. The beautiful row of houses looked somehow formal and disapproving. No doubt full of retired admirals and other sailing hearties armed with binoculars. A huge picture window on the end house seemed to gaze at him with particular disapprobation. When he had finished, he slunk back into the cabin, hearing Robert’s feet booming overhead as their owner went through an interminable sequence of checks on the deck.

  Graham looked out dismally at the shifting rectangle of daylight visible through the hatch. The tiny high windows of the cabin were curtained and let in little light. The rigging chattered incessantly. The boat creaked and lurched in its endless irregular rhythm. He looked up at the grooves along which the top hatch ran, and longed for it to be closed. He looked at the Robson’s padlock on the vertical board and longed for it be locked up again. He longed to be on shore.

  Eventually Robert Benham’s grinning face appeared at the opening. ‘They’ve done a good job. Usually do, but I have to check. Have to rely on the boatyard more than I’d like to. Don’t have the time myself.’

  And at last the words Graham had been longing for. ‘O.K., let’s be on our way.’

  The sensation of incipient nausea stayed with him through the evening, which was a pity, because Tara’s Chinese cookery matched her other accomplishments. Graham could not do justice to the perfect Peking duck or its spicy acce
ssories, though he managed to keep up consumption of the excellent red wine Robert had produced.

  He also had a couple of brandies, refusing Robert’s offer of a small cigar. ‘I enjoy one every now and then,’ his host asserted, as usual making his habits sound definitively correct. When the cocaine was again produced, Graham said he felt tired and went up to bed. Under the duvet, his last thought was of being threatened. There had still been no talk of work.

  He was in a deep sleep before any creaking the others might set up could disturb him, but he woke at three with the sour taste of vomit in his mouth. He wasn’t actually sick and gradually the nausea passed, but he was left with that naked wakefulness that offers no hope of real rest for the remainder of the night. His mind became a corridor for a cavalcade of unwelcome thoughts.

  He must have slept again eventually, because he was woken by a hearty Aran-sweatered Robert at seven. They needed an early start, the guest was reminded, because of the tides, and because Tara had a plane to catch in the afternoon; so if they were to get any time on the boat, they’d better move.

  To Graham’s surprise, the actual sailing was enjoyable. Robert displayed no impatience with his guest’s ignorance of the sport; indeed he showed great generosity, constantly offering the tiller, flicking loose sheets which his guest had jammed, or calling warnings as the boom swung across. There was no attempt to score points or to crow about his and Tara’s practised expertise. Graham almost wished there had been. Cockiness from Robert would have given him a moral lever; generosity left him completely unmanned.

  Tara had provided a picnic up to her usual standards and Robert supplied two bottles of crisp Sancerre from the cool-box. They finished up with coffee made on the little gas ring. The early April day showed promise of summer and his idyllic surroundings only made the meanness of Graham’s thoughts seem the more reprehensible.

  Back to the cottage by three. Miraculously the other two had already packed and had to wait while Graham snatched his belongings together.