“So,” says Martin, “who is going to get the evening rolling?”
And Sarah says, “Christing shit!” which are very much not words anyone is allowed to say in this room.
In unison they follow her eyes to the French windows, outside which the intruder light has snapped on to reveal a tall black man in a black woolly hat, sporting a big salt-and-pepper beard and wearing a long black coat over camouflage trousers and big black boots. He is looking in at them all as if they are exhibits in a zoo. Or perhaps it is the other way round.
“Who in God’s name is that?” says Gavin.
“I have absolutely no idea,” says Martin, sounding more intrigued than startled.
“Is he a neighbour?” asks Sofie.
“Of course he’s not a bloody neighbour,” says Gavin.
“Why is that a stupid question?” asks Sofie.
Leo puts a consoling hand on Sofie’s back. He has tried to stand up for his wife in the face of his brother’s rudeness before and it has never turned out well. “Is someone planning to let him in?” he asks.
Madeleine says, “He does not look like the kind of man I want inside the house.”
The stranger knocks twice on the glass, slowly and deliberately.
“Nor,” says Martin, “does he look like someone you’d want to leave standing in your garden.” He does not recognise the man. He has dealt with a good number of eccentric, difficult and unpredictable people in his time, some of them patients, some of them family members of patients. He has on a small number of occasions been threatened. Brain surgery is a risky business and desperate people do not handle statistics well.
“I’m actually quite scared?” says Anya. The question thing is something she has been doing for the last few months, not wanting to be assertive or seem needy.
“It’s all right.” Sofie strokes her hair. “He’s probably just cold and hungry.”
“Grandad is going to kill him,” says David, as if this is obvious and unremarkable. It is precisely this kind of comment that makes his father worry that his son will spend a significant part of his adult life in mental institutions.
“Let’s see what he wants.” Martin gets to his feet.
Madeleine says, “Do not let him in.”
Her husband pauses. “I’m not sure sitting here watching him is a long-term option.”
“Perhaps we should call the police,” says Madeleine.
“And say what?” asks Gavin. “ ‘There’s a black chap knocking on the French windows’?”
“In the absence of any better ideas…” Martin unlocks the door and swings it open. A great belch of snow and freezing air enter the room. A couple of cards fall from the mantelpiece, clattering softly onto the log basket and from there to the floor.
“What can we do for you, sir?”
“Are you not going to ask me in?” The man has a breathy tenor voice. They’d expected Trinidad or Hackney but the accent is from some less obvious third place.
“I wasn’t planning on it, no.”
“It’s bitter weather out here, and I’ve come a good distance.”
“I’m less interested in where you’ve come from,” says Martin, “and more interested in what you’re doing in my garden.”
“That is a poor welcome on a cold night.”
“I think it’s a pretty decent welcome in the circumstances,” says Martin.
“This is freaking me out quite a bit,” says Sarah.
“Better than listening to Leo reading Seamus bloody Heaney again,” says Gavin, just loud enough for Leo to hear.
“Do you want money?” asks Martin.
“I was hoping for hospitality.”
“Let the chap in,” says Gavin.
“Gavin, for God’s sake,” whispers Madeleine.
“Give him a glass of brandy and a mince pie so he can warm up and tootle off on his merry way,” says Gavin. “Spirit of the season and so forth.”
Leo says, “Gavin, I am really not sure that’s a good idea.”
Anya shifts her chair next to her mother’s chair and squirrels under her protecting arm.
“Five minutes,” says Martin.
The stranger steps inside. He wipes his feet in the same slow, deliberate way in which he knocked on the glass, like someone demonstrating the wiping of feet to people who have not seen it before. Martin closes the door behind him. The stranger takes off his woolly hat and dunks it into a pocket.
They can smell him now, more agricultural than homeless. Leather, dung and smoke, something very old about it, Mongol horses on the high steppe. Yurts and eagles. His greatcoat is Napoleonic, scuffed black serge with actual brass buttons and a ragged hem. Snow melts on his shoulders.
“Compliments of the season.” Gavin hands him the promised victuals. “Made by my mother’s own fair hand. Five stars. Lots of fruit in the mincemeat.”
“Please, Gavin,” says Leo quietly, “don’t be a twat.”
The stranger sips the brandy, savours it and swallows. He takes a bite of the mince pie. He closes his eyes. To an outside observer it might look as if the family were waiting for a score out of ten.
Martin is turning over old memories. If the man had shorter hair and no beard…
The stranger nods. The mince pie is good. The room relaxes. He takes a second sip of the brandy and steps forward to put the glass and the mince pie down on the table. Emmy and Sofie scootch their chairs back a little to avoid being touched. The damp hem of the stranger’s coat brushes Emmy’s knee. He steps back into the centre of the room. There are pastry crumbs in his beard. “Who wants to play a game?”
“None of us want to play a game,” says Martin firmly. “We want to get on with the pleasant evening we were having before you arrived.”
The stranger ignores, or perhaps fails to hear, the edge in Martin’s reply. “Surely someone wants to play a game.”
“You’ve had something to drink,” says Martin. “You’ve had something to eat. I think that now it might be a good idea if you were to continue with your travels.”
“I was on my way here,” says the stranger.
There is a short silence while everyone digests this, then Gavin says, “Stop dicking us around, all right?”
“Gavin,” hisses Sarah. “Jesus Christ.”
The stranger opens his greatcoat. There is a deep poacher’s pocket on the left-hand side which sags open with the weight of a sawn-off shotgun. Anya’s intake of breath sounds like a hiccup. David says, “Wow.” The stranger lifts the gun out of the pocket, pushes the After Eights and the cheese plate to one side, slides the spare wicker mat into the cleared area and lays the gun gently on top of it so that it doesn’t scratch the polished walnut veneer.
“Oh my God,” says Madeleine.
Leo’s mouth hangs open.
Anya begins to cry.
“Is that a real gun?” asks David.
“Let’s assume it is, shall we?” says Martin.
But David’s question is apposite, because there is something odd about the gun, a hint of steampunk about it, the faintest possibility that it could be a theatrical prop, despite the weight everyone could sense when it touched the surface of the table.
“Oh my God,” says Madeleine again. She is hyperventilating. “Oh my God.”
“Someone really, really needs to call the police,” says Sofie.
“Have we met before?” Martin asks the stranger. He has decided that this is, ultimately, a medical problem and this has allowed him to step back into a role he hasn’t filled for a long time and which feels very comfortable indeed.