"No, I wouldn't."
The twin boys wanted Rupert Bear. A visiting girl called Hubbie wanted Black Beauty. The conciliator in me chose Peter Rabbit, and I was coming to the bit about Peter's father having an accident in Mr. McGregor's garden when I heard Simon's footsteps ascending the stairs.
"Hullo, Tim, nice to see you," he said, all on one note, as he offered me a lifeless hand. "Hullo, Pet. Hullo, Clive. Hullo, Mark. Hullo, Hubbie."
"Hullo," they said.
"Hullo, Clare."
"Hullo," said Clare.
I went on reading, while Simon listened from the doorway. In my weightless state of mind I had hoped he might like me better now that I was a fellow cuckold. But he didn't seem to, so perhaps it didn't show.
* * *
The duck must have been frozen, because parts of it still were. As we hacked our way through the bleeding limbs, I remembered that this was how we had always eaten, when we ate our frightful meals together: potatoes boiled to a sludge and school cabbage floating in a green lake. Did their Catholic souls derive solace from such abstinence? Did they feel closer to God and further from the herd?
"Why are you here?" Simon asked in his dry, nasal voice. "Visiting a spinster aunt, actually," I replied.
"Not another filthy rich one, Tim?" said Clare.
"Where is she?" said Simon.
"No, this one's indigent," I told Clare. "Marlow," I told Simon.
"Which nursing home?" said Simon.
"Sunnymeades," I said, giving him a name I had plucked from the yellow pages and hoping it was still in business.
"Is she an aunt on your father's side?" Simon asked.
"Actually she's a cousin of my mother's," I said, forestalling the likelihood that Simon would telephone Sunnymeades nursing home and establish that she didn't exist.
"Are you growing many grapes, please?" sang Anna Greta, who had been elevated to guest for the evening.
"Well, not a bumper harvest, Anna Greta," I replied. "But fair. And first tastings extremely promising."
"Oh," Anna Greta exclaimed, as if astonished.
"I inherited a bit of a problem, quite honestly. My uncle Bob, who founded the business for love, put a lot of trust in his Maker and rather less in science."
Clare gave a hoot of laughter, but Anna Greta's jaw sagged in mystification. For some inexplicable reason, I forged on.
"He planted the wrong grapes in the wrong place, then he prayed for sun and got frost. Unfortunately, the life expectancy of a vine is twenty-five years. Which means we must either commit genocide or keep on fighting nature for another ten years."
I couldn't stop. Having derided my own efforts, I exulted in the success of my English and Welsh competitors and deplored the tax burdens imposed on them by an uncaring government. I painted a fulsome picture of England as one of the ancient wine-growing countries of the world, while Anna Greta gawped at me with her mouth open.
"Poor you," said Simon.
"So let's hear about this underaged girl you've shacked up with," Clare cut in recklessly; after two glasses of Romanian claret, she was capable of saying absolutely anything. "You're such an old dog, Tim. Simon's absolutely green with envy. Aren't you, Si?"
"Not in the least," said Simon.
"She's beautiful, she's musical, she can't cook, and I adore her," I proclaimed gaily, grateful to have an opportunity to extol Emma's virtues. "She's also warmhearted and brilliantly clever. What else do you want to know?"
The door opened, and Petronella stormed in, her blond hair brushed over her dressing gown, her blue gaze fixed on her mother in an expression of ethereal agony.
"You're making so much noise I can't sleep!" she protested, stamping her foot. "You're doing it on purpose."
Clare led Petronella back to bed. Anna Greta moodily cleared away the plates.
"Simon, I've got a bit of office shop I need to try out on you," I said. "Could we possibly have quarter of an hour alone?"
* * *
Simon washed while I dried. He wore a blue butcher's apron. There was no machine. We seemed to be washing up several meals at once.
"What do you want?" said Simon.
We had had these conversations before, in his joyless eyrie at the Foreign Office, with jaded Whitehall pigeons eyeing us through the filthy window.
"I've been approached by someone who wants to be paid a lot of money for some information," I said.
"I thought you'd retired."
"I have. It's an old case come alive."
"You don't have to bother with those; they'll dry by themselves," Simon said. "What's he trying to sell you?"
"A forthcoming armed uprising in the North Caucasus."
"Who's rising against who? Thanks," he said as I handed him a dirty saucepan. "They're rising all the time. It's what they do."
"The Ingush against the Russians and Ossetians. With a little help from the Chechen."
"Tried it in '92 and were trounced. No arms. Only what they'd pinched or bought at the back door. Whereas, thanks to Moscow, the Ossetians were armed to the teeth. Still are."
"What if the Ingush equipped themselves with a decent armoury?"
"They can't. They're scattered and dispirited, and whatever they get hold of, the Ossies will get more of. Weapons are the Ossies' thing. We had a story in last week that they've been buying up Red Army surplus in Estonia and running it down to the Serbs in Bosnia with the help of Russian intelligence."
"My source insists that this time the Ingush are going for broke."
"Well, he would, wouldn't he?"
"He says there's no stopping them. They've got a new leader. A man called Bashir Haji."
"Bashir's yesterday's hero," said Simon, vehemently scouring a very pitted saucepan. "Brave as a lion, great on a horse. Black-belt Sufist. But when it comes to fighting Russian rocketry and helicopter cavalry, he can't lead a brass hand."
We had had conversations like this before. In Simon Dugdale, the art of debunking secret intelligence had found its master. "If we believe my man, Bashir is promising to provide high-tech state-of-the-art Western weaponry and send the Russians and Ossetians back where they came from."
"Listen!"
Slamming down his saucepan, Simon splayed a wet hand in my face but managed to stop it a couple of inches short.
"In '92 the Ingush popped their garters and made an armed march on the Prigorodnyi raion. They had some tanks, a few APCs, a bit of artillery—Russian stuff, bought or plundered, not a lot. Drawn against them"—he grabbed his thumb with his spare hand—"they had North Ossetian Interior Forces"—he grabbed his index finger—"OMON Russian special forces; Republican guards; local Terek Cossacks"—he had reached his little finger—"and so-called volunteers from South Ossetia flown up by the Russians to cut throats for them and squat the Prigorodnyi raion. The only support the Ingush got was from the Chechen, who lent them so-called volunteers and a bit of weaponry. The Chechen are pals with the Ingush, but the Chechen have got their own agenda, which the Russians are aware of. So the Russians are using the Ingush to drive a wedge into the Chechen. If your man is seriously telling you that Bashir or anyone else is planning a full-scale organised attack on the enemies of Ingushetia, either he's making it up or Bashir's gone potty.",
His outburst over, he plunged his arms back into the suds.
I tried another tack. Perhaps I wanted to draw something out of him that I knew was there. Something I needed to hear again as an affirmation of Larry's emotional logic.