I duly obliged. Sarah and Gail were both wearing the expressions which meant they had heard him say saddled with a racehorse so often that they had to grit their teeth now at each repetition.
‘Would you mind,’ I said, ‘telling me something of your background and history?’
‘Life story, eh?’ He laughed loudly, looking from Sarah to Gail to collect their approval. His head was heavily handsome though a shade too fleshy round the neck. The bald sunburned crown and the well disciplined moustache suited him. Thread veins made circular patches of colour on his cheeks. ‘Life story,’ he repeated. ‘Where shall I start?’
‘Start from birth,’ I said, ‘and go on from there.’
Only the very famous who have done it too often, or the extremely introverted, or the sheer bloody-minded, can resist such an invitation. Harry’s eyes lit up, and he launched forth with enthusiasm.
Harry had been born in a Surrey suburb in a detached house a size or two smaller than the one he now owned. He had been to a day school and then a minor public school and was turned down by the army because as soon as he left school he had pleurisy. He went to work in the City, in the head office of a finance company, and had risen from junior clerk to director, on the way using occasional snippets of information to make himself modest capital gains via the stockmarket. Nothing shady, nothing rash: but enough so that there should be no drop in his standard of living when he retired.
He married at twenty-four and five years later a lorry rammed his car and killed his wife, his three year old daughter, and his widowed mother. For fifteen years, much in demand at dinner parties, Harry ‘looked around’. Then he met Sarah in some Conservative Party committee rooms where they were doing voluntary work addressing pamphlets for a by-election, and they had married three months later. Below the confident fruitiness of successful Harry’s voice there was an echo of the motivation of this second marriage. Harry had begun to feel lonely.
As lives went, Harry’s had been uneventful. No Blaze material in what he had told me, and precious little for Tally. Resignedly, I asked him if he intended to keep Egocentric indefinitely.
‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ he said. ‘He has made quite a remarkable difference to us.’
‘In what way?’
‘It puts them several notches up in lifemanship,’ Gail said coolly. ‘Gives them something to boast about in pubs.’
We all looked at her. Such was her poise that I found it impossible to tell whether she meant to be catty or teasing, and from his uncertain expression, so did her uncle. There was no ducking it, however, that she had hit to the heart of things, and Sarah smoothly punished her for it.
‘Gail dear, would you go and make tea for all of us?’
Gail’s every muscle said she would hate to. But she stood up ostentatiously slowly, and went.
‘A dear girl,’ Sarah said. ‘Perhaps sometimes a little trying.’ Insincerity took all warmth out of her smile, and she found it necessary to go on, to make an explanation that I guessed she rushed into with every stranger at the first opportunity.
‘Harry’s sister married a barrister... such a clever man, you know... but well... African.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Of course we’re very fond of Gail, and as her parents have gone back to his country since it became independent, and as she was born in England and wanted to stay here, well we... well, she lives here with us.’
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘That must be very nice for her.’
Sad, I thought, that they felt any need to explain. Gail didn’t need it.
‘She teaches at an art school in Victoria,’ Harry added. ‘Fashion drawing.’
‘Fashion design,’ Sarah corrected him. ‘She’s really quite good at it. Her pupils win prizes, and things like that.’ There was relief in her voice now that I understood, and she was prepared to be generous. To do her justice, considering the far-back embedded prejudices she clearly suffered from, she had made a successful effort. But a pity the effort showed.
‘And you,’ I said, ‘How about your life? And what do you think of Egocentric?’
She said apologetically that her story wasn’t as interesting as Harry’s. Her first husband, an optician, had died a year before she met Harry, and all she had done, apart from short excursions into voluntary work, was keep house for the two of them. She was glad Harry had won the horse, she liked going to the races as an owner, she thought it exciting to bet, but ten shillings was her usual, and she and Gail had found it quite fun inventing Harry’s racing colours.
‘What are they?’
‘White with scarlet and turquoise question marks, turquoise sleeves, red cap.’
‘They sound fine,’ I smiled. ‘I’ll look out for them.’
Harry said his trainer was planning to fit in one more race for Egocentric before the Lamplighter, and maybe I would see him then. Maybe I would, I said, and Gail brought in the tea.
Harry and Sarah rapidly downed three cups each, simultaneously consulted their watches, and said it was time to be getting along to the Murrows’ for drinks.
‘I don’t think I’ll come,’ Gail said. ‘Tell them thanks, but I have got some work to do. But I’ll come and fetch you, if you like, if you think it might be better not to drive home. Give me a ring when you’re ready.’
The Murrow drinks on top of the golf club gin were a breathalyser hazard in anyone’s book. Harry and Sarah nodded and said they would appreciate it.
‘Before you go,’ I said, ‘could you let me see any newspaper cuttings you have? And any photographs?’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ Harry agreed. ‘Gail will show them to you, won’t you honey? Must dash now, old chap, the Murrows, you know... President of the golf club. Nice to have met you. Hope you’ve got all the gen you need... don’t hesitate to call if you want to know anything else.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, but he was gone before I finished. They went upstairs and down, and shut the front door, and drove away. The house settled into quiet behind them.
‘They’re not exactly alcoholic,’ Gail said. ‘They just go eagerly from drink to drink.’
Gail’s turn to explain. But in her voice, only objectivity: no faintest hint of apology, as there had been in Sarah’s.
‘They enjoy life,’ I said.
Gail’s eyebrows rose. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I suppose they do. I’ve never really thought about it.’
Self-centred, I thought. Cool. Unaffectionate. Everything I disliked in a woman. Everything I needed one to be. Much too tempting.
‘Do you want to see those photographs?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please.’
She fetched an expensive leather folder and we went through them one by one. Nothing in the few clippings that I hadn’t learnt already. None of the photographs were arresting enough for Tally. I said I’d come back one day soon, with a photographer. Gail put the folder away and I stood up to go.
‘It’ll be two hours yet before they ring up from the Murrows. Stay and have that drink now?’
I looked at my watch. There was a train every thirty minutes. I supposed I could miss the next. There was Elizabeth. And there was Gail. And it was only an hour.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’
She gave me beer and brought one for herself. I sat down again on the sofa and she folded herself gracefully onto a large velvet cushion on the floor.
‘You’re married, of course?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed.