‘How much?’
‘Five thousand?’
James laughed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Freddy said, impressively straight-faced.
‘I’m not going to lend you five thousand pounds to bet with.’
‘Why not? I’ll be able to pay you back on Sunday…’
‘You will if she wins. What if she loses? Then what? Then I’ll never see the money again, will I? Why would I do that? Don’t be a fucking idiot, Freddy.’
Freddy looked away. He was sucking his teeth again—it was a habit he had had since school.
* * *
Later he finally spoke to Katherine. She finally answered her phone. He was standing in the living room, in the Gauloise smoke, slightly drunk. Freddy was out procuring more Jack Daniel’s.
‘Hello,’ he said, surprised. He had lost count of how many times he had phoned her since Sunday—he had stopped even hoping that she would answer. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m okay.’ She didn’t sound okay. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
They talked for while. This and that. He did most of the talking. Then he said, in an offhand way, ‘What were you doing last weekend?’
‘I saw Fraser.’
‘Did you?’ There was a silence which started to stretch out. ‘And?’
‘And it’s over,’ she said simply. ‘The love is dead.’
His instinct, since she was obviously in some sense in mourning, was to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ That seemed just too dishonest, though. He was not sorry. He was not sorry at all. The way she put it was so wonderfully absolute. It was dead. Her love for Fraser King was dead. He tried to keep his voice sombre when he said, ‘Well… how are you feeling?’
‘Very sad.’
‘Mm,’ he murmured as sympathetically as he could. ‘What did…? Where did you…?’
‘We went to Scotland.’
‘Oh. Well…’ And then finding himself with nothing else to say, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
She said nothing, so he went on. ‘And what have you been doing? For the last few days. I’ve been trying to call you…’ He was irritated to hear the querulous note in his own voice.
‘I know you have. I’m sorry.’
‘So what have you been doing?’ he said.
She said she had been shopping with her mother—furnishing the house in West Kensington.
‘And what are you doing for the rest of the week? At the weekend?’
‘I don’t know.’
He heard Freddy unlocking the front door. ‘Will I see you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, as if it was something she simply didn’t know.
‘Well,’ he said slightly exasperatedly. ‘Do you want to see me?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Do I want to see you?’ she said, as if putting the question to herself out loud would help. ‘I just don’t know. Maybe. Maybe if you think of something fun to do…’
Freddy was there, taking off his overcoat. James waved him away.
‘Do you want to come to Plumpton on Sunday?’
‘No,’ she said without hesitation.
‘That isn’t fun?’
She laughed—a weak laugh, like someone ill. ‘No.’
If he had not managed to feel very sorry when he heard of her sad weekend, he did feel something like joy when he heard her laugh. ‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘Okay. I’ll try and think of something fun to do. I’ll be in touch. Okay?’
‘Who was that?’ Freddy said, unwinding his long schoolboy’s scarf.
‘Um.’ James seemed to be somewhere else. ‘It was Katherine.’
5
Simon were well aware that he were sweating. He wishes it weren’t so hot in the hall. Staring out at the local membership with an impassive expression on his face, percolating in his tweed three-piece, he slides a hand through his hair. He had it done specially this morning, at the place in Trumpington. While he outstared himself from under the smock, the lass laboured over it for an hour with all the tools of her trade, and now it is a magnificently perfect peruke in silvered sable. The upper part looks like silky racoon fur. It is short at the sides—with flashes of wisdom at the temples, like the president in an American film—and neatly squared off on the pink neck. He knits his fingers in his humid tweed lap and tilts his head thoughtfully. They are on a makeshift stage, himself and the other VIPs, sitting in a line under the important lights, facing the party faithful. Politics.
On his feet at the podium, Nigel has been speaking for some time. Simon long ago lost the thread of what he was saying. From the stuff they send him in the post, he is familiar with Nigel’s positions on more or less everything. On Europe anyway. They are the same as his own positions. That was the point. (Mechanically, he joins in an episode of applause, without having heard the line that set it off.) What’s more, he is nervous about his own speech. He is up next.
For a long time, from his oblique angle of view slightly behind and to the left of him, he had kept his eyes loyally fixed on Nigel. He had noticed, staring at him for minutes on end from only a few yards away, how his dark hair, dense as fungus, tapered into two prongs on his thin neck. He had noticed the organic debris on the shoulders of his suit. The long fleshiness of his inelegant ears. He had noticed the way he kept flexing and straightening his left leg. After a while, however, it was a strain keeping his neckless head turned to two o’clock like that and, hoping that no one would notice and overinterpret the movement, he had let it find a more natural position facing the audience. They’re an elderly lot. (‘Half of this lot’ll be dead at the next election,’ he had whispered out of the side of his mouth to Mossy as the VIPs made their way through the hall and onto the platform, to pleasing applause. Mossy laughed at the impiety. ‘The ones that aren’t will definitely vote, though.’ When Mossy said ‘vote’ it sounded like ‘volt’.) What Simon would have liked to see is a few more people of his own vintage—serious men in their prime, mature and experienced, and deeply worried about the future of their nation. They all seem to be up on the platform, while what he sees in front of him puts him in mind of an old folks’ home. They are not of the present, these blue-veined people. They very obviously have nothing to offer the future. And the future is what is at stake here—the future of this island as an independent nation, and what the fock was more important than that?
An hour ago, out in the foyer, they talked through what would happen. When Nigel was finished, Simon would be introduced by Nick LaRue, the local party secretary, and would then speak for fifteen to twenty minutes. Fifteen to twenty minutes… He feels himself start to sweat more urgently. Even now, just sitting there, he feels exposed on the stage. When they talked last week about what he should say, Mossy told him to keep it light. Keep it personal. ‘Tell some jokes about mad European directives that have affected you personally.’ ‘Like what?’ Simon said, pen in hand. ‘I dunno,’ Mossy said. ‘Maybe something like, “They’ll be telling us we can’t use miles and furlongs next…” Doesn’t matter. You can’t go wrong with that sort of stuff. Just imagine you’re in your local. I’ve seen you in action there. You’ll be fine.’ Simon wishes he was in his local, in the Plough. His face twinkling with sweat, he is staring at the illuminated green exit sign at the far end of the hall. The first speaker of the evening was the party’s local MEP, Pierre Papworth. Still in his twenties and unsettlingly intense, Pierre is on the extreme wing of the party. He sometimes gets into trouble with things he says in the press—they are never ‘meant seriously’—and the members love him. When Pierre had finished, Nigel took a more statesmanlike tone.