He held Meredith’s hand for a few seconds, reassured. She was a petite, slim woman with well-cut white-blonde hair and a slightly too large head for her body. This and her snub nose and widely spaced eyes made her seem, from some angles, a doll-like creature and, as if as a result of such a perception, she tended to affect, in company, a bubbly, nothing-gets-me-down, climb-every-mountain demeanour. But Ingram knew that she was a tougher and shrewder individual than the image she presented to the world. At moments like these — in the braying hell of Ivo’s party — he felt very glad that he was married to her.
“It’s been a long and trying day, my darling girl,” he said, in a low voice. “So the sooner we leave, the sooner we can—”
“Message received, over and out,” she said, smiling warmly.
“Lady Meredith Fryzer!” a man in a black T — shirt (with the same inane message as Ivo’s) shrieked at her, and took her in his arms. Ingram turned away, set his untouched purple drink down on a table and sought out the young waiter at the door and repeated his request for a glass of white wine, if that were possible, thank you so much.
He surveyed the room — no one was interested in him, a grey-haired, soon-to-be fifty-nine-year-old man in a dark suit and tie — and wondered who all these friends of Ivo were. Some of the men were clearly older than he (grizzled, bald, with patches of beard) but were dressed as adolescent boys in faded, ripped T — shirts, baggy low-pocketed trousers and unlaced trainers — he wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been carrying skateboards under their arms — still, as his gaze swung here and there, he saw there were also quite a lot of slim pretty women in the room, but all with slumped and sullen faces, or with watchful, guarded expressions, as if they expected a cruel joke was about to be played on them and they were going to be mocked in some way.
His white wine was brought to him and he sipped it with unusual gratitude, standing against a wall by the door, feeling the fatigue leave him a little. He thought he recognised an actor and someone else who was on TV as the people milled around — and there was a clothes designer. Yes? No?…He had no idea. He hardly watched television or read magazines, these days. Idly, he picked up a little bronze maquette from a table and thought it might be a Henry Moore — quite pleased that the name came to mind — and wondered again how Ivo managed to live so well for someone with no visible means of support apart from the £80,000 a year Ingram paid him as a non-executive member of the Calenture-Deutz board. Ivo and Meredith’s father, the Earl — the Earl of Concannon — had no money left and lived in a large modern bungalow outside Dublin. The family seat, Cloonlaghan Castle, was derelict and millions would be required to make it habitable. He suspected that Meredith gave Ivo money, on the sly, thinking he wouldn’t know — she was very fond of her younger brother, for some reason, forgiving him every trespass and humiliation. Smika, Ivo’s wife number three, had no money either (unless there was some trade in her erotic drawings). What had happened to Ludovine, the second, French wife? Tiny, feisty, with spiky orange-yellow hair — Yes, Ludovine, Ingram had liked her (he had paid for the costly French divorce, he now remembered). Ah, here was Ivo, heading towards him.
Ivo loomed up and Ingram dutifully registered his brother-in-law’s preposterous good looks, once again. His blue-black hair was lightly gelled, and his stupid T — shirt was tight enough to demonstrate how lean his forty-something torso was.
“Having a good time?” Ivo asked. “Chilling?”
“Fabulous,” Ingram said. “Any chance of a bite to eat? I’m starving.”
“What do you think of my T — shirt?”
“I think it’s hilariously funny. You should wear it all the time. People will fall over laughing.”
“You don’t get it, old man.”
“It’s as old as I am, you fool. I saw one of those at the Isle of Wight festival in 1968. It’s so passe.”
“Liar.”
“Why are you wearing it, anyway?” Ingram said. “Aren’t you a bit past it yourself?”
“I’ve had 100,000 printed up. We’re going to sell them outside every club in the Mediterranean this summer. From Lisbon to Tel Aviv. Ten euros each.”
“Don’t ever let anyone stop you dreaming, Ivo.”
Ivo’s look was one of pure hatred for a second, then he laughed in a fake, hollow manner, Ingram thought, clapped him on the shoulder and walked away. Ingram found some hard, shiny, shardy crackers in a bowl and munched on them for a while until a chef in white kitchen regalia and a toque announced that dinner was served.
There were twenty-four around the large dining table at the front of the house on the ground floor. Tightly squeezed in, Ingram thought, but by now he was past caring, having quickly consumed his fourth glass of white wine as they waited interminably for the main course. This ghastly evening was finite, he told himself, it would end, he would leave and he would never accept an invitation to dine at Ivo’s again for the rest of his life. This thought consoled and sustained him as he waited for the food with the rest of the guests, noticing he was as far away from Ivo as possible (Meredith was on Ivo’s right), placed between a woman who spoke hardly any English and one of the sullen-faced, pretty girls. She had smoked three cigarettes since sitting down and they’d only been served an insufficiently chilled, over-garlicked gazpacho, thus far. Ingram glanced at his watch — ten past eleven — there must be a serious crisis in the kitchen. He was the only man at the table wearing a tie, he realised. Then he saw to his astonishment that Ivo had his mobile phone on the table beside his pack of cigarettes. In his own home, Ingram thought: that is sad. Tragic. He turned to the sullen faced, pretty girl — who was lighting her fourth cigarette.
“Are you a friend of Smika?” he asked.
“No.”
“Ah, a friend of Ivo, then.”
“Ivo and I went out for a while…”
Ingram saw she was growing annoyed at his failure to recall her.
“Ivo and I stayed with you and Meredith at your house in Deya.”
“Really? Right…Yes…”
“I’m Gill John.”
“Of course you are. Gill John, yes, yes, yes.”
“We’ve met…A dozen times?”
Ingram heaped his apologies on her, blaming his age, encroaching Alzheimer’s, fatigue, hideous work crises. He remembered her now, vaguely: Gill John, of course, one of Ivo’s old girlfriends, between Ludovine and Smika. He always went out with pretty girls, did Ivo — Ingram realising that it was one of the automatic benefits accruing to a preposterously good-looking man. And Gill John was indeed pretty, though her expression, posture and demeanour seemed to exude bitterness in some way, as if life had consistently let her down and she was expecting nothing to change.
“Oh, yes, good old Ivo,” Ingram said, not having a clue what to say to this young woman, simmering in her anger and bitterness. “Great lad, good fellow, Ivo.”
“Ivo’s a cunt,” she said. “Not a ‘great lad’ or a ‘good fellow’. You know that as well as I do.”
Ingram wanted to say: then why are you here at his birthday party? But he contented himself with: “Well, not a grade-A cunt. Grade-C, perhaps. Though as his brother-in-law I might be biased.”
She turned to look at him, squarely. Pale eyes, high forehead, lips a little thin, perhaps.
“You just prove my point,” she said.
“I don’t follow.”
“About what unites all men.” She laughed to herself, cynically, knowingly.
“I can think of a few common factors,” Ingram said, wondering how the conversation had suddenly taken this abrupt swerve. “But I suspect not the one you have in mind.”