The New Republic

by Lionel Shriver

  “I have to warn you, Edgar,” said Nicola. “Some people can be unreliable, and we dislike them for it. They’re late for a party, and we don’t notice. They two-time women, we think they’re cads. They’re evasive, we lose interest. I worry that you could follow Henry’s lessons to the letter, and rather than slaver at your heels the press corps would shun you instead.”

  “That might make me lucky,” said Edgar crossly.

  “Boys like you and Henry like to take contraptions to pieces and see what makes them tick. But you could autopsy Barrington Saddler and lay his organs on the slab. You’d never find what you were looking for. It’s true that he had something. I’m not sure it has a name; charisma seems a little slight. Whatever you call it, he was a slave to it as much as his admirers were, and he didn’t understand how it worked any better than you or Henry. I don’t pretend to understand it, either, but I can assure you that it didn’t make him happy. It did sometimes make other people happy,” she added wistfully, “but Barrington wasn’t a nice enough person to take much pleasure in that.”

  “Poor baby,” Edgar scoffed. “Too many folks loved him. What a terrible problem.”

  “Barrington didn’t believe that his hangers-on loved him,” Nicola countered. “He thought they fell for a decoy. After all, when you love someone, what do you love? What he’s good at? If a woman only loved your writing or your aptitude as a solicitor, you’d be disappointed. I think you could even make a distinction between a person and a personality. Barrington’s retinue trotted after what he had. Not who he was.”

  Henry sagged. “You mean Barrington had something I don’t.”

  “Of course he did,” said Nicola gently.

  “And no matter what I do, I won’t ever have it.” Henry pressed his hands between his knees.

  “That’s right,” said Nicola, “and maybe that makes you fortunate.”

  “Bollocks,” said Henry.

  “I’m with him,” Edgar agreed. “What you’re describing doesn’t sound like a drag to me.”

  “Whether you’d like it for yourselves is of no consequence, since you can hardly pick it off a shelf at Marks & Spencer’s,” said Nicola, uncurling from her chair. “I have to finish dinner. Henry, have you had enough now?”

  Henry did look wrung out. He uncapped another White Diamond, but his wife hadn’t been referring to drink. He swigged, flopped back, and mopped his forehead. “Yeah.”

  Nicola padded from the room. She might as well have been carting away a pile of towels ten feet high.

  Chapter 15

  Any Slob Can Buy Shit

  EDGAR LEAPT AFTER the scant little black dress to help in the kitchen. He dreaded being left alone with Henry.

  Nicola’s kitchen was littered with strings of garlic bulbs and bunches of bright, lethal-looking chilies. Put-up pickles, flavored oils, fresh herbs in the window box: the whole culinary nine yards. Grated lemon zest lay drying on the windowsill; God forbid that the independently wealthy should throw a squeezed-out half-lemon away.

  “You do all the cooking? Sure got Henry spoiled,” said Edgar.

  “It used to be the other way around,” Nicola said quietly, dotting butter on roasted potatoes. “In the old days, he’d have beaten you in here, begging to be put to work. For years it was, Honey, do you need anything at the shop, don’t lift that by yourself, here let me . . . And the presents, so many, so endless, we’ve had to give most of them away. But it was more than things. You’ve a headache, sweetheart, let me fetch you aspirin, you stay put. Would you like a video, never mind what I want to watch. Are you cold, I’ll get your jumper, are you hot. It was a tyranny, really!” She stopped buttering to press the heel of her hand to an eye. “I could hardly get anything done, he was so intent on doing for me, and he was always in the way. At last I had to ask him to stop.” The other heel, the other eye. “So he did.”

  “Recently,” Edgar intuited, having finally realized she was crying.

  She bit her lower lip and nodded.

  “Do you two often . . . like tonight?”

  “Oh, we go through purges. They clear the air for a while. Henry’s convinced that if we’re not talking about it, then we’re lying. But talking doesn’t do any good! I know what he really wants explained: What did he do to deserve this? Of course the answer is nothing. Or, How could I? And the answer is I don’t know. Maybe I’d been happy for so long that I was bored with it.”

  “Couples stray,” said Edgar. “Part of the breaking-in process.”

  “Not breaking in, breaking,” Nicola differed sharply. “You can glue people together again. But then your relationship’s like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It’s never the same. I can see you haven’t a notion what I’m on about, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”

  “Christ, you’re the babe in the woods.” Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. “You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe—bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love’s gonna last if it can’t take abuse.”

  “You sound like Barrington,” Nicola mourned.

  “Thanks,” said Edgar, taking out the salad. He meant it.

  Those two did seem to have laid something to rest for the time being, and at dinner Edgar asked how they met.

  “Dad raked it in with his bagel caper,” Henry began. “But I never touched him for much. Truth is, I used to be a bit of a waster.”

  “Henry was Melissa Goldberg’s toy boy,” Nicola teased.

  “Melissa had few financial cares,” Henry allowed. “She bought me stuff, I hung about. I guess she was busy. Banking.”

  “The stocking,” Nicola prodded.

  “Christmas morning, I unload my stocking, right? And I notice, Melissa seems more curious than me to see what’s in it. She keeps peering over, picking bits up and going, Brilliant!”

  “I used to work for Selfridges in London,” Nicola explained. “One of the services they offer is ‘personal shoppers,’ who buy customers’ Christmas presents for them.”

  “So Melissa and I had a row,” Henry proceeded. “If she couldn’t buy me presents herself I didn’t want them. Sorry, but I thought a personal shopper was so—”

  “Crass,” Edgar supplied.

  “Spot on. So I walk out. After Boxing Day I go to Selfridges and demand to talk to the poor sod who really bought my presents. I’d this idea I’d bring them back. On the other hand, the presents were class . . . Since Nicky has, you know—”

  “The touch,” said Edgar.

  “Besides, Nicky turned out to be—”

  “Gorgeous,” said Edgar.

  “So we went out, like, every night, and had a cracking time. We had fuck-all, but we was happy as Larry. And now. . .

  “Nicky says she told you about BA-321,” he veered. “But you know what’s real ironic? One of my pet peeves when I met Nicky was Lotto. The Tories brought in this Camelot-run national lottery, and suddenly it took twenty minutes to buy a Kit Kat at the newsstand. You had to queue up with a dozen tossers all hopped up over a ‘double roll-over.’ I thought they were daft. And lucky, like, when they didn’t hit the jackpot.”

  “You lost me,” said Edgar.

  “No one in his right head would want to win a lottery if he knew what was good for him. Me, I never bought those poxy tickets. I was dead sure a pile of dosh would ruin my life. And wasn’t I right.”

  “I thought the main problem was your money seeming tainted.” Edgar followed his hostess’s lead and forked a fried sardine whole, bones and all. “Maybe if you’d come by it some other way, like through a real lottery, you could enjoy it more.”

  Henry sighed. “Fair enough, that’d be part of it. And it didn’t help I’d had a wicked set-to with my parents before they got killed, about when was I going to make something of myself. But even without 321, I
knew I’d come into a fair whack of quid down the line from those freaking bagels, and I was dreading it. I never wanted to be stinking rich.”

  “You could have declined the jury’s award,” Edgar supposed. “And the inheritance. You must have some cousin who’d have relieved you of the awful burden.”

  Henry plunked his knife upright on the table. “Would you heave a trunkful of notes into the Thames?”

  “Of course not,” said Edgar.

  “Then why would I, mate? I look superhuman to you?”

  “Still, I’m sorry to seem dense,” said Edgar, taking a sip of the astoundingly good cabernet. “And I can see how benefiting from catastrophe would be uncomfortable. But why’s an instant fortune effectively a second disaster?”

  Henry’s eyes lit. “Not only can money not buy happiness. Money buys sweet F.A.! Especially when you didn’t earn it. It doesn’t make people like you. It makes them want to use you. Nobody thinks you’re smart or sexy or talented, and though they will laugh at your jokes you can never be sure why. Oh, and you’re not to have any more problems. You can’t complain. Far as everybody else’s concerned, I been paid off, like. I miss my sister like fury, but money’s meant to stop me whingeing. In fact, I’m supposed to sort out other people now, even the ones who call me a prat behind my back. Look at the hacks in Cinziero. Oh, they all wanted to be my best mate when I picked up their dinner checks. Well, I stopped. They pay their own bar tabs now. And how do they talk about me at the Rat when I’m not there?”

  Edgar paused. “Really want to know?”

  “I already know. They think I’m a poser. But if I’d decided to shift to Barba with no more than a fiver in my pocket, trying to make a go of journalism on my wits? They’d think I was real self-starter. Or at least they’d give me a chance.”

  Perhaps having detected a hint of scorn peeking through Edgar’s poker face, Nicola was eyeing him askance.

  “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we all go to Mauritius?” she proposed. “Tomorrow. No need to pack; we can pick up what we need there. Last-minute tickets are expensive, but Henry and I can afford them. Are you on board, Edgar?”

  “You buying?” Edgar asked gamely, stalling.

  “Henry just told you: we don’t do that anymore, and he’s quite right, too. We’d never be certain if you enjoyed our company or just wanted a free lunch.”

  “The Record pays me dick, Nick,” said Edgar, sinking back in his chair as his shoulders dropped two inches. “Have to pass on the piña coladas.”

  “She’s having you on, Edgar,” said Henry.

  “But did you see his face?” she asked Henry victoriously. “When Edgar realized he couldn’t wend off to an island paradise at the drop of a hat, he was relieved.”

  “ ‘Relieved’ is a little strong,” said Edgar. “I couldn’t even consider the idea is all.”

  “Maybe Henry and I don’t want to go to Mauritius, either,” said Nicola. “Or the Seychelles, or Majorca. But we’re forced to stare down fanciful schemes like that every day. You’re not. Who’s lucky?”

  “Freedom is a curse?” said Edgar with incredulity.

  “Freedom to do what?” Henry shot back.

  “Maybe Mauritius is nice this time of year.”

  “And you could lie on the beach and drink and eat and sleep,” said Henry. “Not bad for a break. But for a life?”

  “Henry, come clean,” said Nicola. “That’s not far from the way you spent your time when we met.”

  “In those days, being a dosser was an accomplishment,” said Henry. “Skiving is an art. Any slob can buy shit.”

  “Henry wasn’t always a layabout. He used to drive a London minicab. And working, you meet people, see places. Now Henry and I aren’t obliged to do anything. With deliveries, we needn’t leave the house.”

  “Either of you could still drive a minicab,” Edgar submitted.

  “Wise up!” said Henry. “Bad air, crap traffic, rude old bags, poleaxed lager-louts spewing in your backseat? You work because you have to. Work for fun isn’t work. Not to you, and not to anybody else.”

  “Listen, what are we talking here, thirty, forty million pounds?” Edgar asked squarely.

  Nicola looked embarrassed. “In that area . . .”

  “Have you two ever had a good time with it?”

  “Depends on your definition.” Henry shrugged. “Sure, we ate out and that. Nicky’s cooking is better. And we drank. Try buying yourself out of a hangover. We went places—Italy, Greece—where we ate out and drank. Hardly put a dent in the fucking money. And I started to get fat.”

  “It was cute,” said Nicola. “This little bloop . . .”

  “So why not install a home gym?”

  “I did,” said Henry glumly. “Couldn’t stick it. No locker-room banter, no bawdy jokes. Even missed the smell.”

  “How about philanthropy?”

  “Thought about it,” said Henry. “Nicky warned me off the starving Africans bit. She said Zambia’s a horlicks partly because aid messes up the local economy. I don’t totally understand it. Except for a while I dandered around Brixton, dishing out tenners. Got myself jumped once. Another time, one of the junkies I ‘helped’? ODed on my charity. The junkie croaked, for fuck’s sake. I start figuring, if money for nothing’s shite for me, why’d it not be shite for other blokes, too?

  “I could start a foundation. But for what? Education? I never went to university; I’d feel a hypocrite. Cancer research? People have to die of something; cure cancer, another disease takes its place. Or something appropriate, like. I could sponsor a ‘conflict resolution’ outfit. But most of that academic crowd are SOB apologists, like Ansel Henwood; and those profs only blather at conferences, which are a big wank. Maybe I don’t know what I think is important. And I’m ticked off having to think about it. I’m no good at it, ask Nicky. God’s honest truth, I’d rather be a dosser again.”

  “You obviously think a packet is wasted on us, Edgar,” said Nicola. “What would you do with it?”

  Edgar’s mind washed blank. Even in his imagination, as soon as he made the world infinitely available it went flat.

  “Go skiing?” Edgar put forward in desperation. Actually, he’d burned out on skiing five years ago, weary of the fuss, the drives, the lodges, the assholes, and the gear.

  “All year?” asked Henry with a grin.

  “Hang-gliding, then,” said Edgar. “Or I could join an expedition up Everest.”

  “See?” Henry leered. “You’re already killing time.”

  “There’s always cars and stereos,” Edgar supposed lamely.

  “Boats and private planes,” said Nicola, refilling Edgar’s wine glass. “When I taught remedial English in the East End, I had my students compose their own best- and worst-case scenarios for ten years later. The nightmares were fabulous: lush with fantastic fears, hilarious with misadventure. The pipedreams were all the same: a string of products and brand names. They read like mail-order catalogs. My students’ visions of the Good Life were so vapid and depressing that you could have got the two assignments confused.”

  “Forty million pounds,” Edgar marveled, “and it goes to Mr. and Mrs. Gandhi.”

  “We did need a place to live,” said Nicola, “and in that department we overdid it. At first we’d no idea where we wanted to settle, so wherever we camped for a few weeks, well, we bought the house. But otherwise? We picked up a few new CDs, but my sound system worked fine. Henry bought me a new bicycle. We didn’t want much else.”

  “If I were rich, I could do favors,” said Edgar. “I could give Henry here a ticket to Barba to drag him away from Melissa Goldberg and start him in journalism.”

  “I wouldn’t be grateful,” said Henry. “I’d be cheesed off you didn’t cough up better than one filthy ticket. Economy! You’d think Moneybags could spring for First Class.”

  At last it arrived: what Edgar would do with loads of cash, enough to do nothing for the rest of his life.

  Everest, schmever
est. He’d do nothing for the rest of his life.

  “Okay, honestly?” Edgar admitted. “With a wad that thick, I’d ice down a case of Pete’s Wicked Ale, order in whole roast pheasants from Dean & DeLuca, and spend from now to eternity watching TV.”

  Nicola laughed. “How much does it cost to be saved from yourself?”

  “You’re starting to twig,” said Henry. “Why the money’s a curse. Because you’re lazy. Everyone’s lazy. Types like Win Pyre think I got it easy. But it’s bloody hard writing an article, to wordage, when you don’t have to. The irony of this dosh making my life ‘easy’ is that everything I drag myself off my bum to do is harder than ever. Meanwhile, I can’t buy friends, a reputation, a career, or my own wife’s heart.”

  Despite his attempt to be flip, Henry choked a little on the last phrase, and tossed back a glass of that splendid cabernet as if it were cherry Coke.

  Chapter 16

  A Whiff of the Old Bastard Himself

  BY THE TIME he careened home to Abrab Manor Edgar was pretty plastered. Not ready to call it a night, he slipped one of Barrington’s R&B compilations into the CD player and poured himself a finger of bourbon that came out a tad generous, since the bottle slipped. In the atrium, he mounded the pillows rimming the pool into a nest. Spurning the modern fluorescent lights overhead, he lit the paraffin lanterns lining the walls in sconces. Edgar was kidding himself if he expected to plow through more than three paragraphs of Beneath de Cabelos: Women of Cinziero. Edgar could only think about one woman of Cinziero.

  At least this low-print-run rip-off from an academic press—130 pages for $55!—gave his eyes something to rest on to keep the mosaic floor from spinning. As the print danced, Edgar was torn between imagining what he might do with forty million pounds and what he might do with Nicola Tremaine. In fact, as the lanterns threw deceptive shadows, the pillows lining the other side of the pool seemed to depress, as if Edgar’s leggy fantasy had extended along the opposite rim.

  Yet when Edgar next looked up, those pillows didn’t look dented but mashed flat. The lantern flames wafted; the vento whistled through the skylight seams; wind flutes on the patio huffed in a mocking minor key.