Father and son took the first sip together and both smacked their lips in appreciation, another part of the ritual that needed to be observed. Then Ewan Urquhart took in the occupants of the pub and nodded recognition to Jude. She smiled back.
“Cold enough for you?” he asked, falling back, as most Englishmen do in casual conversation, on the weather.
“Pretty nippy,” Jude agreed, following the convention. She decided it wasn’t the moment to engage in further talk. On their previous encounter Ewan Urquhart had not endeared himself to her. But the introduction had been made and who could say when a tame estate agent might suddenly become a useful source of information? She continued to talk to Carole about Friday’s impending visit of Gaby and Lily. But through their desultory conversation they managed to hear what the Urquharts were saying at the bar. Doing so was in fact unavoidable. Ewan Urquhart was one of those men who thought it was his God-given right to talk loudly.
“Do you know, Ted, what an absolute chump my son has been today…?”
“Tell me about it,” said the landlord.
“He only managed to turn up for a viewing of a property having left the keys in the office. Client wasn’t best pleased about that, let me tell you.” While the litany of his incompetence was spelt out, Hamish’s reaction was interesting. He looked apologetic, but at the same time almost grateful for the attention, as though undergoing such criticism was an essential part of the bond with his father. Hamish had apparently been cast early as the family buffoon, and it was a role that he played up to.
“Client was one of these city slickers,” Ewan Urquhart went on, “investing his obscene bonus in a country cottage. Kind of guy for whom time is money. Wasn’t best pleased to turn up to the property and find he couldn’t get in. Gave you a bit of an ear-bashing, didn’t he, Hamish?”
“Yes, Dad,” came the sheepish reply.
“So, needless to say, a call comes through to the office and I have to leap into the Lexus, take the keys and smooth the city slicker’s ruffled feathers. Turns out all right, actually, because when I get chatting to the chap, turns out he’s an Old Carthusian just like me.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?” asked Ted Crisp.
“Old Carthusian? Means I went to a little educational establishment that goes by the name of Charterhouse. Rather decent public school, as it happens. So of course when the city slicker finds out we went to the same school we’re all chums…and of course Hamish wouldn’t have had the same connection, because you were too thick to pass the Common Entrance, weren’t you?”
“Yes, Dad,” Hamish agreed, once again apparently proud of his inadequacy.
“Anyway, so once again I got the boy out of a mess. Which means that you’re bloody well paying for the drinks tonight.”
“Of course, Dad.” The young man’s wallet was out immediately; as yet no money had changed hands.
“And you can buy a drink for your sister when she arrives too.”
“Will do.” Hamish Urquhart looked at his watch. “She said she’d be along about six-fifteen. Got some class or other up at Clincham College.” Carole and Jude pricked up their ears at that. “Guarantee she’ll be on the G and Ts. Ted, could you take for the pints and do me a large G and T too?” The young man’s bluff bonhomie sounded like a parody of his father’s. “And won’t you have one yourself?”
“No, thanks,” the landlord replied. “I don’t have anything till the end of the evening. Otherwise I’d drink myself into an early grave.”
“And we don’t want that happening, do we?” said Ewan Urquhart heartily. “I’m sure you’re just like me, Ted, want to keep going as long as possible, becoming more and more curmudgeonly with every passing year, eh?”
“I reckon I’m pretty curmudgeonly already,” said the landlord as he poured tonic into a double gin with ice and lemon.
“Nonsense, nonsense. You’re a fine upstanding English gentleman. Which is more than can be said for that fellow we had in the office this afternoon, eh, Hamish?”
“I’ll say. He was very much an ‘oriental visitor’.” The young man put on a very bad cod-Indian accent for the words.
“Not that we weren’t punctiliously polite to him, of course. And, actually, nowadays it’s all right. I mean, even ten years back I’d have had to be very discreet with someone like that…you know, suggesting that the Shorelands Estate in Fethering was maybe not quite where they should be looking…maybe they could find something more suitable in Brighton. But now half of the people on the Shorelands Estate are of dusky hue.” Ewan Urquhart let out a bark of laughter. “Soon I would imagine the Residents’ Committee there will be worrying about white people moving in next door to them!”
Ted Crisp guffawed too readily at this for Jude’s liking. But she and Carole were distracted by the appearance through the door of a girl who was undoubtedly Hamish’s anticipated sister. In her the ginger tendency of her father and brother was transformed into a mane of pale golden hair and their thickset bodies had been fined down into a slender voluptuousness. Her pale skin was flushed red, presumably by the February cold. She wore a Barbour over jeans and big fleece-topped boots. There was no doubt from the expression that took over Ewan Urquhart’s face that she was the apple of her father’s eye.
“So what’s kept you, Soph?” he asked, as he enveloped her in a large hug. “I didn’t think you had classes as late as this.”
“No,” she said lightly. “Had to do some work in the library.” Her voice had been trained at the female equivalent of Charterhouse.
“Well, I’m not sure I approve of all this book-learning for women. Women are only really good for three things. Cooking and cleaning are two of them…and…” Hamish and Ted Crisp joined him in a chortle of male complicity. He had spoken in an over-inflated tone of self-parody, but deep down he clearly believed in what he was saying.
“Anyway, your timing’s good in one respect. Your brother’s just bought you a drink.”
“Oh, thank you, Hamish.” She took a grateful swig of the gin and tonic.
“No prob, Soph.”
“And shall I tell you why the drinks are on him tonight?” Without waiting for a prompt, Ewan Urquhart once again recounted the tale of his son’s ineptitude. At the end the girl gave her brother a little hug and said, “You are an idiot.” Her tone was the affectionate one that might be used to an over-eager puppy.
“So what have they taught you today?” asked Ewan, sharing his next observation with Ted Crisp. “Have to be doing a constant cost analysis on this higher education lark, you know. The amount they get charged for tuition fees these days, you want to know where the money’s going.”
“Yes,” the landlord commiserated, “I’ve heard about it. The debts these kids come away from university with, all those student loans, they’re never going to get out of the red, are they?”
“Well, at least young Sophia doesn’t have that problem.” He pronounced the second two syllables of her name like ‘fire’. Then, with a tap to his back pocket in the vague proximity of his wallet, he explained, “Muggins here’s footing the bills for everything. So come on, what did they teach you today?”
“We had a class on Eisenstein, and then some work-shopping in the Drama Studio. It’s for this show we’re doing.”
“Huh, play-acting,” her father snorted. “Not my idea of hard work. You know what my daughter’s studying, Ted? Drama and Film Studies. They seem to be able to do degree courses in anything these days. Media Studies, Dance, Pop Music, Fashion, you name it. Probably be doing degrees in bloody Shopping before too long. Wasn’t like that in my day…”