He turned to Moggerhanger. ‘I thought you had enough old lags on your staff, without having to take on a young one.’
‘Here’s somebody who doesn’t intend to be an old one.’ I resolved from then on to bring that bastard crashing down as well if I could. ‘I don’t live at Number One Kangaroo Court anymore, not in the Garden Flat, anyway.’
Moggerhanger laughed. ‘Steady on, Michael. None of us do — or will.’
Lanthorn thought me too small to worry about. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken. I was usually able to uphold my standard of being the quiet sort, except where women were concerned, but here I had slipped up, because I should have denied being who I was when Lanthorn recognised me. That was the expected response, so that he could have chuckled inwardly, both at having spotted me and made me lie. Maybe there were some lies I was getting too old to tell. He forked red meat into his cavernous gob, then slopped half a glass of red Polly after it. ‘None of us knows what the future holds.’
‘That’s why we’re here tonight,’ Moggerhanger said. They were two crocodiles in the pool together.
‘Among other things, Claud.’
I loaded my plate. The radiators along the walls gave off a faint warmth, but Moggerhanger called: ‘I expected to see a fire in the grate, Matthew.’
Coppice stood by the door looking into space, a man in his late forties, with a pink face that would have seemed well fed if it hadn’t had an expression of worry stamped indelibly on it. The lines must have been there from birth, or from when he first went to prep school at six. Wavy grey hair was spread thinly over his skull. He wore flannels and sports jacket and heavy, highly polished shoes. A cravat decorated the spread of his Viyella shirt instead of a tie. He stank of whisky, and shook himself out of his vacant stare, saying with no tone of apology: ‘I thought the place was warm enough.’
‘I know what you thought,’ said Moggerhanger. ‘I can usually tell a mile off what somebody like you is thinking. You didn’t want to get your hands dirty, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, we all know that you can’t make a fire without getting your hands dirty, but that shouldn’t put you off when you know very well I like to see a bit of fire in the grate. It might not matter down south, but in Yorkshire it cheers me up. If you can’t do better than that you’ll find yourself back in Peppercorn Cottage. It’s a good dinner, though, I will say that.’
Lanthorn walked to the window and pulled a corner of the curtain to look out. ‘Throwing it down with rain. What a goddamn fucking hole Yorkshire is.’
‘Steady on,’ Moggerhanger said. ‘It’s no worse than any other, Jack.’
‘I was born not twenty miles away. Thank God I got out of it at fourteen.’
‘Stop worrying. He’ll be here in the morning. Come and get some more of this lovely grub.’
Lanthorn took his advice and advanced on it, and plied with his knife and fork as if the meat was helping him with his enquiries.
‘And I also noticed,’ Moggerhanger said to Coppice, ‘that my bed was made. Quite an advance on last time. Do you remember, when you served half-cooked pizza and a bucket of Algerian jollop?’
Several expressions passed over Matthew Coppice’s phizzog which our self-opinionated boss didn’t catch. If he had, he would have been careful from then on with his apparently humble servant. All the same, I felt sorry for Coppice and wondered why he didn’t walk out. Instead, he took a cigarette from his case and lit up with trembling fingers, then came to the table and poured a glass of wine.
Moggerhanger pulled a bundle of papers from his pocket and passed them to Lanthorn. ‘The only thing to do is do it, Jack.’
‘I’m not so sure whether I dare,’ Lanthorn said. ‘Or care to, if it comes to that.’
‘It’s a matter of options.’ Moggerhanger filled their glasses. ‘And how many of those do we have, these days?’
Lanthorn said something I couldn’t hear, so I sat closer to Alice. ‘I hope you realise I was serious about what I said to you in the car.’
She had changed into a skirt and blouse and freshened herself with new perfume. ‘I only remember the amusing parts.’
‘Maybe you already have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. I’m not old fashioned. Or maybe you have a husband, though as soon as I saw you I thought you looked too happy for that.’
‘I do like my commons, Claud,’ I heard Lanthorn boom out. ‘I smoke all I want, and eat red meat, and drink what I can hold. I don’t put weight on, either. I think it’s those vegetarians, non-smokers and mad dieters who are responsible for the country being in a decline. They’ve got no bloody drive or energy. If you can’t consume, what incentive have you got to produce?’
Moggerhanger laughed. ‘You should know, Jack.’
Alice smiled. ‘I’m divorced. I was married at twenty-two, and split up three years later. My husband was a smooth-talking con-man who wanted me to support him.’
‘You walked out?’
‘No. He found somebody who would. I was devastated, for a while. His burning ambition was to be idle. He saw idleness as the greatest virtue.’
‘You make my blood run cold.’
‘I haven’t had anything to do with any man since. I even stopped seeing my father. My mother was dead, so it wasn’t too difficult. He wanted me to go and live with him, because he’d retired from the bank. But I had my own flat: my husband was so idle he hadn’t even signed the lease.’
We sat with plates on our knees. ‘I’m really interested in what you’re saying. Your fine and subtle face has an expression which shows you’re at peace with yourself. To someone like me, who has a passion for work, to the extent that I’ve not had much to do with women in my life — nor men either, come to that — you’re the most attractive and fascinating person I’ve met. I’d like to get to know you.’
‘You may not find as much as you expect.’
I held a piece of meat close to her mouth.
‘No thank you.’
‘Let me be the judge of that,’ I said earnestly.
‘I’m up here to work.’ She sipped her wine. ‘And I’m dead tired.’
‘I think you misjudge me.’ I clinked her glass, and took a long swallow. ‘I’ve been sexually impotent since I was fifteen. All I do, when I can, and I don’t very often, is sleep with women, just for love and comfort. None of them have yet been able to induce me to have proper sexual intercourse.’
I’d used that ruse a couple of times before, yet I regretted trying it with Alice because it should have been possible to get her into bed by normal diplomatic methods. I was inveigled into such a statement because her claim not to have made love with a man for what must have been at least ten years struck me as an even bigger lie. The fact that I fell for it was my second mistake that night. Maybe I was tired as well. Or perhaps I hadn’t gone far enough and should cap it with a third lie by telling her I was queer.
‘We’ll be here for a few days,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think I’ll have time to take you on.’
Matthew Coppice gazed as if he envied me being so close to her. Well, I couldn’t share her with him and that was a fact. I’d have to call off my campaign and make a real effort the following day. There was a time for everything, and in this case it wasn’t now, but she didn’t know how right she was when she gave me a lovely goodnight smile and said: ‘See you at breakfast!’
Moggerhanger looked from his hugger-mugger game of cards with Lanthorn. ‘Being difficult, is she? The thing is, Michael, you don’t have the art of courtship. Nobody does, these days. But it’ll cost you a pony or two in flowers with her. And why not? It feels all the better when you get there.’