Now, at five minutes to eleven, someone knocked at the front door of Borodino. Rex, at that very moment turning into his study, heard them with a mixture of irritation and alarm. Would it be a matter he could handle in five—no, he glanced at his pocket watch, nearer four minutes? Or someone who would want to come in and start going on?
One thing was certain. There was no way he could go into his study and settle down with someone standing on the front step. For a start they would spot him through the window. And he couldn’t draw the curtains without giving away the fact that he was in. Botheration take it. He opened the door. It was Gerald.
‘Rex—I’m sorry.’ He stepped inside. ‘I know you start work around now—’
‘Yes. At eleven o’ clock act—’
‘I simply have to talk to you.’
‘Is it about the food?’ Rex was supplying a tin of glazed pralines, having been dissuaded from preparing one of his famous curries.
‘No. Though it is about tonight. In a way.’
To Rex’s dismay Gerald walked into his holy of holies. Just strolled in, lifted yesterday’s pages from the seat of a tapestry wing chair, dropped them on the floor and sat down. Rex stood and hovered, unable to bring himself to sit behind his desk merely for the purpose of idle banter. He waited, but having moved in the first instance so decisively Gerald now seemed to have difficulty getting to the point.
He stared distractedly out at the garden—not seeing the bird table, a battleground of squabbling starlings and sparrows, or Rex’s great hound, Montcalm, absentmindedly truffling among the frosty cabbage stalks—while Rex stared, covertly, at him.
Gerald looked terrible. He had not shaved and looked as if he hadn’t washed either. His eyes were red-rimmed and crusty with sleep. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists while seeming to be unaware of the fact. Rex, genuinely concerned, put all thoughts of The Night of the Hyena aside and said, ‘Gerald old chap. You look completely done in. Would some coffee help?’
Gerald shook his head. Rex, who had drawn up a companion chair, could smell the other man’s breath, sour and stale with more than a hint of liquor. They sat quietly for several minutes and finally Gerald spoke.
‘This is going to sound pathetic.’ A long pause. ‘I don’t really know how to put it.’ He stared at Rex directly for the first time. Half despairing, half ashamed. ‘However described I’m afraid it’ll sound very odd.’
‘I’m sure it won’t,’ said Rex, already consoled for his lost day by finding himself in that most pleasant of positions, consumed by a curiosity that was about to be promptly satisfied.
Gerald had put this moment off again and again. Now there was no time left. And, old and garrulous though he might be, it had to be Rex. There was no one else that Gerald could even consider approaching. Yet how to find the words? Even exposing the barest bones of his dilemma must make him look a fool and a coward. For the first time he noticed the working of his hands and spread them on his knees, pressing the fingers hard against the grey flannel, forcing them to be still.
‘You said it was about tonight,’ said Rex helpfully.
‘Yes.’ He looked like a non-swimmer forced to the end of the high-dive board. ‘The fact is I knew Max Jennings a long time ago. There was some unpleasantness. We parted bad friends.’
‘These things happen.’ Rex tactfully hid his appreciation of what sounded like a very juicy mystery and tried to sound consoling. This wasn’t difficult for he was, at heart, a kind man.
‘Quite honestly,’ continued Gerald, ‘I didn’t think for a minute, when he saw my signature on the invitation, that he would come.’ That letter, so endlessly worked and reworked and all in vain. ‘I don’t know what his reasons are. He can be very…unpredictable. The thing is, Rex,’ his voice was taut with nervousness, ‘I don’t want to be on my own with him.’
‘Say no more,’ cried Rex, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘But what can I do?’
‘It’s simple really. Just don’t leave until he does.’
‘Of course I will. Or rather—of course I won’t.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t care to tell me—’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘You don’t mind, Rex?’
‘My dear chap.’
‘It might be a bit awkward. Sitting it out, I mean. After all the others have gone.’
‘You think that will happen?’
‘Yes.’
Of course he should never have written at all. That was his big mistake. He should have told the group he had asked and been refused. No one would be surprised. And when they wanted to see the letter, which they always did, he could say that Mr Jennings’ secretary had declined the invitation by telephone. It was Brian, suddenly offering to write himself, which had brought on such a panic. Gerald realised Rex was talking again.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, what if he turns up before anyone else arrives.’
‘He shouldn’t. I gave him eight instead of seven thirty. And if he does…’ Even to Rex, Gerald could not admit that he would then be reduced to hiding, like an animal in its lair when the dogs are scrabbling at the entrance.
‘I wish you’d told me earlier, Gerald. We could have changed the venue. Held the meeting somewhere else.’
‘Then he would simply have left when I did. No, this way at least I have some sort of control.’
‘Would you like to come and sleep over here—’
‘For God’s sake!’ Gerald exploded, screwing up his eyes and clenching his fists again. ‘This is how I think it best to handle things—all right?’
‘Of course. Sorry.’
‘No—I’m sorry.’ Gerald got up stiffly and moved towards the door. He added, even while knowing his words would probably be a waste of time, ‘I need hardly say—’
‘Oh, strictly between friends of course. Would you like me to come over at seven, Gerald? Just in case.’
‘Yes. Good idea.’ Gerald managed a weak smile. ‘And thank you.’
Rex escorted his visitor down the path and through the gate, enthusiastically attended by Montcalm. Gerald walked heavily, shoulders bowed. He did not even cheer up when Rex pointed out that, by calling when he had, he’d missed a visit from Honoria, who was, even now, pedalling stolidly away from Plover’s Rest.
Once more back in the house Rex made some coffee and sat at his desk. Not to work of course. As an object of fascination the Hyena, presently in Baghdad buying information from an anti-Husseinite cell, paled in comparison with this real life drama. Of all people, old Gerald—the last word in boring, perhaps even slightly pompous, respectability—had a past. Who would have thought it?
Rex was tempted to pop out to the phone box, barely a minute’s walk away, but hauled temptation firmly back. He must keep his promise, at least till the evening was over. He looked at the clock. Seven and a half hours to go. How on earth was he going to bear it?
Sue had cleared away after supper, stacked the dishes in the sink and was now laying the table for breakfast. Upturned shiny brown cereal bowls, bunny egg cups, ill-matched cutlery and a scruffy plastic tub of home-made muesli with a label designed by herself.
Overhead, music thumped loudly as Amanda supposedly did her homework. Sue always thought of her offspring as Amanda. Allowing her to name the child had been one of the last indulgences that Brian had seen fit to bestow. Even then he had not had the generosity to conceal his displeasure at her choice. Pretentious. Snobbish. Affected. The baby had been ‘Mandy’ from the day of her birth and, once Brian had really got the hang of high-rise/comprehensive linguistic mores, ‘Mand.’
Sue turned on the gas heater over the sink, which popped fiercely. She made a lot of noise washing the dishes, for Brian was in the downstairs loo which opened directly off the kitchen. He never attempted to go about his business quietly, regarding any such discretion as nothing more than middle-class prudishness. Sue, on the other hand, would put toilet paper in the bottom of
the bowl if visitors were present, to silence the splash. And as for doing plip-plops, well…
Now, after an especially defiant raspberry, she heard the squeak of the transom window opening. Brian emerged, doing up his zip. Crossing to the table, he started to fiddle with some school papers, standing them on end, jigging them into neatness, laying them on one side, tapping them level, turning them upright, jigging them again. Sue, tea towel in hand, bared her teeth in a silent grimace and stared out of the window.
Brian had his back to her. His jeans fell, straight as a yard of tap water, from waist to ankle. Sue remembered a friend at teacher-training college saying ‘Never trust a man with no bottom’.
She walked through the sitting room with the bread board, opened the front door and tipped the crumbs into the garden. Gerald’s halogen lamp was on. Sue walked down the path and looked out along the pavement. Parked on the forecourt of Plover’s Rest was a long, low silvery Mercedes. She rushed back into the kitchen, where Brian had fallen into the only armchair and was tackling the Guardian crossword.
‘Brian… Brian…’
‘Now what are you getting excited about?’ He spoke as if she spent her entire life in a ferment of agitation.
‘Max Jennings is here.’
‘I think not. It’s barely ten past seven.’
‘Who else could it be?’
‘Who else could what be?’
‘The car.’
‘Your grammar’s more bizarre than your cooking, woman. And that’s saying something.’ Brian had an irritating, snickery little laugh. He gave it now. Hyuf, hyuf.
‘If you don’t believe me, go and look.’
‘I can see I’ll have no peace until I do.’ Sighing, Brian made a great show of marking the crossword clue as if it was a riveting passage in some vastly long epic, drew on his knitted hat and gloves, which were keeping warm on the Aga, and strode out into the cold dark.
He stared sternly at the German beauty gleaming like pulsing steel in the hard white glare. It struck him as deeply unsatisfactory. Not in any way the sort of vehicle you would expect the child of cruel, poverty-stricken parents with an inclination to suicide to be riding around in. He rushed back in out of the cold.
‘He must be pretty insecure to need a car like that.’ Brian picked up his paper, sighing and smoothing it carefully, though it had not been touched since he flung it down. ‘Now… “Friday’s child gives one a thrill”.’
‘Frisson.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘What?’
‘I do the crossword.’
‘Why can’t we both do it?’
‘Because you always hold me up.’
Sue dried the last dish and hung the tea towel neatly over the metal arm of the sink heater. ‘We’ll have to go soon anyway.’
‘There’s fifteen minutes yet. We don’t all drop everything and jump to it just because someone semi-famous blows a whistle.’
Sue’s round moon face flushed. Over her head Take That increased in volume. Amanda clomped down the stairs, in her weighty platform shoes, clomped into the kitchen and over to the fridge.
‘Hi, Mand.’ Brian immediately put the Guardian down and bestowed upon his daughter’s back an alert and interested look. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Awri.’
Mandy, having taken some apple juice from the fridge, now thundered over to the cake tin.
‘You won’t want your supper,’ said Sue, nodding towards a tray covered with a clean cloth.
Mandy hated sharing meals with her parents. A couple of years ago she had demanded the right to eat only in her room. Brian and Sue, united for once, refused. Mandy had simply stopped eating altogether and how were they to know that she was buying, begging or stealing food elsewhere. They stuck it out for three days then, terrified of anorexia, gave in. Now she helped herself to three flapjacks.
‘You don’t need—’
‘Leave the girl alone.’
Mandy disappeared next door and switched the television on. Sue mopped the draining board, her thoughts on the evening ahead. She wondered what Max Jennings would be like. She had never met a real writer, though she had been in Dillons once when Maeve Binchy was signing copies of her latest bestseller. Unable to afford the book, Sue had stood on the sidelines while those who could queued up. She watched Maeve smiling as she asked the buyer’s name and inscribed a personal message in The Copper Beech.
Sue had so wanted to go up to her. To ask how she got started. How it felt the very first time you sold something. Where she got her ideas from. Eventually she was in the shop so long she felt everyone was staring at her. In a flurry of discomfort she bought a paperback, using money she had been saving for some new brushes.
Standing on a pine bench she opened a cupboard over the breakfast niche and took down the iced carrot cake.
‘Such a palaver.’ Brian would have been horrified had he known how closely his sentiments paralleled Honoria’s. ‘And for what, basically? Some scribbling hack hardly anyone’s heard of.’
‘People buy his books.’
‘They buy his books because they haven’t read them. If they had it’d soon be a different story.’
‘Well. Yes.’
‘Now where are you going?’
‘To put some make-up on.’
‘We’re due there in five minutes—OK?’
‘But you said—’
‘F.I.V.E., five.’
Brian gazed sourly as the long-boned, stooping figure of his wife left the room. On the stroke of seven thirty, when she hadn’t come down, he put on his hat and gloves and left, slamming the door loudly behind him.
When Rex opened the door to Max Jennings he was sure, straight away, that Gerald had nothing to worry about. There was something so warm and appealing, so immediately friendly, about the man. Even when he found himself facing a total stranger and showed a certain amount of surprise the amiable smile remained. Rex introduced himself.
‘Gerald’s upstairs.’ He took the visitor’s camel coat, which was both light and soft as silk. ‘But I am empowered, as they say, to offer you a drink.’
‘How kind.’ Max looked across at the tantalus, which had one decanter missing, and at the heavy tray of assorted bottles. ‘Tonic water please.’
‘With ice and lemon?’
Wondering, indeed hoping, that this choice meant Max was a reformed alcoholic, Rex flourished the tongs. The visitor seemed already quite at home. He was strolling round the room touching things, looking at pictures, bending sideways to read book titles.
Rex noticed, with a little thrill of comprehension, that Gerald’s wedding photograph had disappeared. By the time he had found and sliced a lemon a solution for this manoeuvre had been worked out. The unpleasantness in the past to which Gerald had referred was obviously connected with Grace. They had both loved her but, thinking to know the promptings of her heart, she married Gerald. Alas, on accidentally meeting Max again she realised her mistake. But by then, her life tragically ebbing away, it was too late.
As Rex handed over the drink he looked as sympathetic and understanding as he possibly could without actually giving the game away. Max was sitting comfortably in an armchair, gazing at the long, low coffee table covered with food.
‘I hope I’m not supposed to eat all this.’
‘Good heavens, no,’ Rex laughed. ‘The others will be here any minute.’ Then he remembered that Max had been told the meeting didn’t start till eight. How much there was to keep track of, to be sure, when one was playing a part. He felt a fleeting sympathy for the Hyena, which train of thought led him to wonder if it would be discourteous to take advantage of the present situation to ask Max a few questions. Helper’s perks and all that. Why not?
‘I write spy stories,’ he said, sitting on the sofa, ‘and I was wondering how much time you think one can decently spend on the details of relevant weaponry. I’m very interested in armoured vehicles—the one-ton Humber Hornet especially. I’ve written roughly t
en pages describing its various functions. Do you think that’s too long?’
‘I do rather,’ said Max. ‘I’d’ve thought your readers will be wanting to get back to the plot long before then.’
‘Ah, now.’ Rex looked shy and somewhat disconcerted. ‘That is something I have a problem with, plot. Plot, characters, dialogue and descriptions of the natural world. Apart from that, I’m fine.’
Max sipped at his drink, seeming to turn this over, then said, ‘Have you thought about writing non-fiction, Rex? Perhaps a textbook, as you obviously have such specialised knowledge.’
But then the doorbell rang. It was Laura. And no sooner had she taken off her coat than Honoria and Amy arrived.
Laura was more than a little surprised to find herself at Plover’s Rest for, since Honoria’s visit, she had changed her mind about the meeting a thousand times. Veering from knowing she could not bear to see Gerald to knowing she could not bear not to see Gerald; from being sure one minute that she knew exactly how she felt (hated him, hated him) to being sure the very next that there was no way she could possibly know how she felt till their next meeting. The relief when she realised that he was not actually in the room was so tremendous that she was overcome by dizziness and almost fell. This sensation was re-triggered the moment she sat down, when the door was opened again. But it was only Brian, closely followed by Sue, red-faced and puffing from the effort of trying to catch him up.
Brian gave a curt nod in the direction of the guest’s armchair. Sue smiled shyly and shook hands, concealing her surprise, for Max was nothing at all as she had expected. Sue had been picturing a big bluff tweedy man perhaps smoking a pipe. Max Jennings wore tweeds, true, but they were closely woven, beautifully cut and the colour of driftwood and he was smoking slender brown cigars. His heavy linen shirt was the extremely pale shade of green that used to be called eau-de-nil. It was impossible to guess how old he was for, although he had snow-white hair springing back in deep waves from his forehead, his clear, lightly tanned skin was quite unlined. And Sue had never seen such eyes. Brilliant azure. The blue of Moroccan skies. Matisse blue. He was slightly built and not very tall.
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