The Green Flash (30 page)

I rang her and said I couldn't meet her at fencing because I was starting a cold.

‘You never have a cold,' she said.

‘Well, it's a sore throat. Same sort of thing.'

After a pause she said: ‘ David. Are you still there? I'm
sorry
about this morning. I was sorry to side with John, and I understand your frustration.'

‘Oh,' I said, ‘it's sweet nothing. I'd forgotten it.' Which I had.

‘
Really
? Are you serious?'

‘Quite serious. A vote was taken and that was that.'

‘D'you mean it?'

‘Of course.'

Another pause. ‘ Nothing else has come up?'

‘Nothing.'

‘So I shall not see you tonight after the fencing?'

‘Not tonight I expect I'll be in in the morning.'

‘Take a day off if you do not feel well.'

‘Thanks.'

After I had put down the telephone I dialled Derek. He sounded pleased.

‘His Lordship in person! Wow! Are you thinking of offering a line in chastity belts for the belted earls?'

‘It just occurred to me – I've nothing to do this evening and wondered if we could meet somewhere for a drink?'

His voice quietened again. ‘Fine. The Cellini?'

‘More prosaic. Such as the local pub.'

‘My pub's the Lamb and Flag. They put on a fair line in snacks. How about eight o'clock?'

‘Right.'

‘Mind if I bring Donald?'

‘Who's Donald?'

‘A friend. A ballet dancer.'

‘What ballet is he in?'

‘Resting at the moment. You know how precarious that life can be.'

‘Derek,' I said, ‘could we do without Donald?'

‘He won't be pleased.'

‘Displease him.'

‘Oh, very well. I'll tell him it's a Royal Command.'

We met at the Lamb and Flag. He was usually so well dressed that I thought him down at heel tonight. He was always making money one way or another, but spent it fast. He was also probably supporting Donald during his time of rest. There was always this attraction-repulsion thing going in my feelings for Derek. He was a good companion and his flippancies were welcome tonight as I told him of my visit to Scotland. We had a fair enough meal together and, apart from the fact that I had to withdraw my hand when he tried to pat it, all went well.

Late on he said: ‘What made you ring me tonight, matey?'

‘Hadn't seen you for a long time.'

‘I was thinking of you yesterday. Donald is too fond of garlic.'

‘That's nice. When your friend hovers around you with bad breath it reminds you of me.'

‘Well, you know how thoughts fly.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘Seriously, matey, I sometimes wonder, if you hadn't taken up with this Shona woman, we wouldn't have made a go of it together, you and I. Those were –'

‘Seriously, matey,' I said, ‘ you know darned well we never would have made a go of it together in the way you mean. As a relationship it wasn't on. And, if you recall, I fled the nest before I took up with this Shona woman.'

‘Ah, but not before you
met
her. It was just after you met her that you broke up our happy home.'

‘Never mind,' I said, ‘we've remained ‘‘good friends''.'

He grunted and finished his beer.

‘Aren't you sick of her yet?'

‘Not noticeably.'

‘Or your job?'

‘Nor that.'

‘I suppose you'll be leaving anyway now. That may make a difference in your affair with her?'

‘I don't know why everyone supposes I shall be leaving. I've inherited a title and a shabby run-down house with a few acres of rock and moorland. What am I supposed to live on – peat?'

‘Does that mean you'll need
more
money, to keep it up, not less, eh?'

‘Correct.'

He was thoughtful. ‘Another beer? It's my round.'

‘I'll get it,' I said, and did so.

When I came back he said: ‘I wouldn't say money was the root of all evil but it's the root of a lot of good ideas, and one or two ideas have been floating around recently whereby money could be made out of the perfumery industry.'

‘A lot of money is being made
in
the perfumery industry.'

‘Ah, but that's different. This would be a way – might be a way – of making a nice something out of one or two of the giants. Only this wouldn't be chicken feed like the little operation we ran together before your old woman latched on. This might be high flying enough to interest the big boys.'

‘Like Roger Manpole?'

‘Like Roger Manpole.'

‘How is the big phoney?'

‘Bigger than ever. He's gone into horse racing in a sizeable way.'

‘Well, that's as good a way as any to lose money.'

‘It's as good a way as any to get in with the best people.' I sipped at my new beer, which I realized now I didn't want. Nor did I want the sweat and the noise of the people around me.

‘What is this splendid gum game you're dreaming up?'

‘What expressions you use, dear … Oh, it's all very embryo at the moment. Matter of fact, it was our little flutter that gave me the idea – disposal of surplus stock.'

‘It's been done.'

‘There's always a new angle to an old trick. An insider like you can be a help.'

‘I've heard that somewhere before.'

‘Well, matey, do give me warning if you're thinking of leaving Shona's. I'd like that.'

‘I'm giving you warning I'm thinking of leaving the Lamb and Flag,' I said. ‘ It's nearly ten and the snake-house fug is overdone. So be a good lad and finish your beer.'

‘You not having yours?'

‘My father was a soak,' I said. ‘And I met another of my family in the same way in Scotland.'

III

I said to myself, what the hell difference does ten years
make
? She's still the
same
person, exactly the
same
person, as she was before. If she was attractive to me last week – as she certainly was – she must be attractive
this
week. Jesus Christ, I said, she's barely a year younger than my mother.

I got home and almost wished I'd asked Derek back. But I knew if I had that he'd have taken it the wrong way. I snorted a little laughter at myself. I needed
company
. Not company in bed, just company. David the loner, the man who has learned to rely only on himself, needs a friend to chat to. Even a friend to talk about
this
to.

Of course I could go out and pick up a tart, a
young
tart, go to her pad, tell her there'd been a misunderstanding at home. She'd never guess what. Only I didn't really want sex, especially bought sex; it was a bore. And anyway they all used such cheap scent.

I

In the egalitarian society in which we were supposed to be living, being a ‘sir' should have made no difference at all. Instead, you noticed how people's eyes changed. Not all, of course, but too many. No difficulty about credit in shops. The cocktail party, the business meeting, even people in the firm, even Mr Schmidt of TBM Ltd, even my neighbours on the floors below; the garage. (I was negotiating to sell the DB6 and buy one of the new Jaguar XJSs, with its twelve-cylinder fuel-injection engine.) I was also receiving a lot of appeals, the confident assumption being that I was now worth half a million and anxious to give most of it away. And a number of invitations from Scotland: would I open this or present that or be a guest speaker at a dinner to commemorate the other. I used my secretary at Shona's to do the paperwork. After a while it would settle down and die away.

Things were no longer right between Shona and me, but we got along. In fact it was just the sexual act that went missing; I was in her company a lot, and often privately too; I made excuses about the other and she accepted them with only the occasional questing comment.

Once she said very directly: ‘ Did something happen in Scotland, David?'

‘Something? How come?'

‘Did you meet another woman whom you fancied more than me?'

‘I did not. And you can stand on that, as the boxers say.'

‘Yet this – all this – cannot have grown out of a quarrel over the withdrawal of a foundation cream.'

‘I don't know what ‘‘all this'' is. But I can tell you
nothing
has grown out of the foundation-cream fiasco that adds up to a bag of beans. Except a few more complaints from a few more spotty girls.'

She stared at me narrowly, the skin taut on her smooth high cheekbones. God, it was still such good skin! There must be
something
in her preparations.

‘So then you are just tired of me?'

‘Not except when you ask crummy questions.'

‘It is not crummy to be concerned when something so good has been between us and suddenly it vanishes like a puff of smoke.'

‘Like the green flash,' I said.

She made a move of distaste. ‘That we shall perhaps not see now.'

I put my hand on her arm, feeling its steely firmness under mine. A little lick of desire moved again. ‘Maybe you have a right to be concerned, Shona. Maybe you should have an answer. But, search me, I haven't got it. And if I don't know the answer, how can you?'

I
could
of course have answered her. I could have said: ‘ Yes, you stupid bitch, you lied to me and this is the result I don't want to lay an old woman of fifty-six.' But first I couldn't quite muster the viciousness to say it, and second, that wasn't really the issue. The question I had to answer was
why
– since nothing in effect had changed except in my thoughts – did this mean such a hell of a lot to me?
Why
did I feel so strongly about it?

I thought, so let it drift around in my mind for a few weeks. The knowledge of her age will either get the better of my need for her, or my need for her will get the better of my knowledge of her age.

II

It was Christmas before I went to Scotland again. Shona's father was ill, and she said she must spend the break in Paris. I stayed in London and then at the last minute decided to whistle up to Wester Craig and look at it again. There was a certain masochism in the notion, because the place would be as cold as an icebox, with no central heating, and lucky if I cut my way through the drifting snow. But I'd just taken delivery of this sleek white Jaguar and felt like trying it out.

The engine was sensational, whispering power with none of the traction-engine noise of the Aston. Just to look at it, cramming the enormous bonnet, gave me an aesthetic lift.

It answered the slightest call like a dream.

On the other hand at anything over ninety the Aston would tuck in its tail and lie solid on the road with some sort of centripetal adhesion; at over a hundred and twenty the Jaguar began to feel lighter and a bit less secure.

Wester Craig wasn't three feet deep in snow but pickled in a sort of perpetual autumn, with the cold old sun gleaming heatless in the sky and all the pines and things clubbing together to maintain a pretence of false verdancy. I had rung them up this morning so they knew I was on my way. Fires blazed in the dining-room, the drawing-room and my bedroom. Dark fell smartly as soon as I arrived (I had left London well before dawn) and a tinsel moon fell on the loch and the spiky trees. Mrs Coppell – who was always smiling and cheerful; maybe it was her
nature
– gave me smoked trout with roast duck to follow and apple tart. I drank a Charmes Chambertin 1961 and thought well of old Malcolm. I slept late and solidly. Coppell, raking out the ashes and setting a light to a new fire, woke me as the sun peered over the shoulder of the hill.

It was another fine, dry day; the house biting cold in a way new to me since schooldays. There were three semicircles of heat, deriving from the three fires; everything outside those orbits was like a morgue, like a fashionable New York restaurant in the summer. You latched on to the Scottish cult for tweeds; did they ever take baths? To strip off one's clothes and stand under a shower was an exercise in masochism.

24th December. Coppell said, would I like to go shooting? Shooting what? I asked. Well, he said, there wasn't much, unless, he added with a peculiar look, I fancied an eagle. They were a dire pest in the district, seizing McVitie's young lambs. To get rid of one or two of them would be a public benefit.

Christmas Eve. While I was not full of the milk of human kindness or a wish to make my fellow men rejoice, I didn't really feel I wanted to down an eagle just for the fun of it. Had I known that it was against the law to shoot them I might have thought again. Fortunately maybe, Coppell didn't understand my peculiar nature.

I said I'd walk to the sea.

‘To the loch, sorr?'

‘No, the sea.'

‘It is further away than it looks, sorr. Upwards of four miles. Will I saddle Chieftain? He's a good sober animal to ride.'

The last time I had ridden a good sober animal was when I was nineteen, and then not with any great success, so I said no to this too and went off in the direction he pointed.

It was certainly rough old land, the path this way not much more than a sheep track – which, I gathered from the droppings, it was mainly used for. As you got nearer the sea, sharper and larger rocks began to jut out and there was a steep sheer mountain on the left. Where I came off my own meagre acres I don't know. There was only one cottage to be seen all the way. As I slithered down to the foreshore large gulls chattered overhead, and I crunched across to the edge, to where the waves crimped and hissed and played crap with the pebbles. I skimmed a few stones on the sea. At least you couldn't complain about the air. One way to pass Christmas Eve.