‘I certainly wouldn’t say that.’
‘Wouldn’t you? Anyway, it is relatively unimportant. This is not a killer disease, you know. It only makes life difficult and renders you more prone to other complaints.’
‘Too bad.’
‘Yes. For the young and healthy, ‘‘ too bad’’ is a convenient phrase to cover most of the diseases of the old. Although I am not very old by modern standards. I am sixty-six.’
‘Oh?’ I said politely, and drove on.
After that there was silence for a while. I had fixed to go fencing with Shona tonight and she was to come back to my place after. Now I felt like cutting out the scene just for a day or two. Maybe I’d go along to the Cellini Club and see if I could get a rubber of bridge with Roger Manpole.
But did this rather silly argument this morning, in which I had been bested by John Carreros, really amount to anything? It was too petty to put on a big Achilles scene all for the sake of a few thousand pounds’ worth of goddamned foundation cream.
‘I did not know,’ John said, ‘in fact had no idea, that you were likely to inherit a title.’
‘Neither did I.’
‘I suppose it will make a considerable difference to your way of life. I have no doubt we shall be losing you.’
‘From Shona’s? I don’t think so.’
‘Of course it will be an asset now to have your name on our letterhead. But I should think you will have far too many obligations to continue to play your present active part.’
‘Perhaps I should make one thing clear, John. The title brings no money; so I’m not likely to be among your pampered rich.’
‘Come, come,’ said John, trembling fingers filling his pipe with the usual hay. ‘ You will soon make a good marriage. You must be among London’s most eligible bachelors now. It is a foregone conclusion.’
‘Foregone by whom?’ I asked politely.
He shut up then, and we drove on into London. We droned up Park Lane and waited for the lights at Brook Gate. Then he said suddenly: ‘I don’t think Shona looks well, do you?’
‘I thought she looked extremely well.’
‘She works too hard. All the extra responsibility of the enlarged company has been a great weight on her shoulders.’
‘Which Leo and I and others have helped her to bear. She doesn’t delegate readily, but she’s learning to do so more and more.’
The lights went green but it was a long tailback. He said: ‘You know, she is only ten years younger than I am.’
I stopped when the lights turned yellow, and a taxi behind gave an impatient toot.
‘I don’t think I can wear that story. She’s forty-six –’
‘No. Fifty-six.’
I shook my head. ‘Forty-six. Don’t come that on me. I’ve seen her passport.’
‘On which a false age is stated.’
‘Rubbish. You can’t do that. She was born in 1930.’
‘1920. I ought to know.’
We were off again down Upper Brook Street, and were stopped at the next lights, by Claridge’s.
‘Drop me at the Hanover, will you?’ John said. ‘I fancy a rubber or two of bridge. Thursdays is their day. Would you care to come in?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘I didn’t ask you again after that first time. I fancied you thought you were a little too good for us.’
‘Also you hated my guts.’
‘Not in so many words. I found you a little too brash and smart for my friends in the club.’
‘Some of them,’ I said, ‘were only just alive.’
‘Well, that is probably true. To a young man, anything over fifty is dead meat. Shona is dead meat, David. Mark my words. She pretends – oh, she puts a splendid face on it – but you can’t convert old flesh into young, however hard you try. She’s dead meat to you, David, mark my words.’
‘I’ll let you know when I feel that. It’s very warm-hearted of you to point all this out to me.’
John shrugged. ‘Perhaps I should have told you when you first became infatuated with her. Perhaps I was not so bitchy then.’
We drew up at the Hanover Club.
‘Incidentally,’ I said, ‘if what you say has any truth in it, Shona takes a risk every time she comes in or out of the country.’
‘Oh, the passport is quite genuine. Indeed it has been renewed since then. It was the naturalization papers that were forged. It cost her five thousand pounds, which was a lot of money in those days.’
‘Pull the handle towards you,’ I said.
‘And so unnecessary, don’t you think? What is the good of lying about one’s age? – life always catches up with one in the end. Thanks for the lift.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
II
I said to myself, it makes not a blind bit of difference. If you are a woman’s lover – and more than half in love with her – what the hell odds does it or should it make if she is twenty-three years older than you instead of thirteen? The woman is still there watching you with those cool, fondly assessing eyes. (Annoying at times but unchanged.) Nor has her face or her body changed. Shona was ageless – a bit like She in the Rider Haggard books (which incidentally I’d never read). Ayesha, the ageless.
Of course she’d done me up brown on this. But it was not specially me. It was a con she had thought up years ago (while I was still at school) to put over on the world at large. She had deceived her other lovers in the same way. But we had been so close; particularly in Barbados. Why could she not then have said …
But, the deed having been done, what woman would have said, David, my real age is fifty-six, breaking all the eggs in the basket? Probably she more than half believed her passport by now. Living with a man of thirty-three, even forty-six was a bit to confess to. To have admitted her real age would have put the years on her like a sack of coal. Psychologically and physically overnight. Her whole life, her whole mental balancing trick was geared to the age she had given herself. John was a prime bastard ever to have let it out.
I rang her and said I couldn’t meet her at fencing because I was starting a cold.
‘You never have a cold,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s a sore throat. Same sort of thing.’
After a pause she said: ‘ David. Are you still there? I’m sorry about this morning. I was sorry to side with John, and I understand your frustration.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘it’s sweet nothing. I’d forgotten it.’ Which I had.
‘Really? Are you serious?’
‘Quite serious. A vote was taken and that was that.’
‘D’you mean it?’
‘Of course.’
Another pause. ‘ Nothing else has come up?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So I shall not see you tonight after the fencing?’
‘Not tonight I expect I’ll be in in the morning.’
‘Take a day off if you do not feel well.’
‘Thanks.’
After I had put down the telephone I dialled Derek. He sounded pleased.
‘His Lordship in person! Wow! Are you thinking of offering a line in chastity belts for the belted earls?’
‘It just occurred to me – I’ve nothing to do this evening and wondered if we could meet somewhere for a drink?’
His voice quietened again. ‘Fine. The Cellini?’
‘More prosaic. Such as the local pub.’
‘My pub’s the Lamb and Flag. They put on a fair line in snacks. How about eight o’clock?’
‘Right.’
‘Mind if I bring Donald?’
‘Who’s Donald?’
‘A friend. A ballet dancer.’
‘What ballet is he in?’
‘Resting at the moment. You know how precarious that life can be.’
‘Derek,’ I said, ‘could we do without Donald?’
‘He won’t be pleased.’
‘Displease him.’
‘Oh, very well. I’ll tell him it’s a Royal Comman
d.’
We met at the Lamb and Flag. He was usually so well dressed that I thought him down at heel tonight. He was always making money one way or another, but spent it fast. He was also probably supporting Donald during his time of rest. There was always this attraction-repulsion thing going in my feelings for Derek. He was a good companion and his flippancies were welcome tonight as I told him of my visit to Scotland. We had a fair enough meal together and, apart from the fact that I had to withdraw my hand when he tried to pat it, all went well.
Late on he said: ‘What made you ring me tonight, matey?’
‘Hadn’t seen you for a long time.’
‘I was thinking of you yesterday. Donald is too fond of garlic.’
‘That’s nice. When your friend hovers around you with bad breath it reminds you of me.’
‘Well, you know how thoughts fly.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Seriously, matey, I sometimes wonder, if you hadn’t taken up with this Shona woman, we wouldn’t have made a go of it together, you and I. Those were –’
‘Seriously, matey,’ I said, ‘ you know darned well we never would have made a go of it together in the way you mean. As a relationship it wasn’t on. And, if you recall, I fled the nest before I took up with this Shona woman.’
‘Ah, but not before you met her. It was just after you met her that you broke up our happy home.’
‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘we’ve remained ‘‘good friends’’.’
He grunted and finished his beer.
‘Aren’t you sick of her yet?’
‘Not noticeably.’
‘Or your job?’
‘Nor that.’
‘I suppose you’ll be leaving anyway now. That may make a difference in your affair with her?’
‘I don’t know why everyone supposes I shall be leaving. I’ve inherited a title and a shabby run-down house with a few acres of rock and moorland. What am I supposed to live on – peat?’
‘Does that mean you’ll need more money, to keep it up, not less, eh?’
‘Correct.’
He was thoughtful. ‘Another beer? It’s my round.’
‘I’ll get it,’ I said, and did so.
When I came back he said: ‘I wouldn’t say money was the root of all evil but it’s the root of a lot of good ideas, and one or two ideas have been floating around recently whereby money could be made out of the perfumery industry.’
‘A lot of money is being made in the perfumery industry.’
‘Ah, but that’s different. This would be a way – might be a way – of making a nice something out of one or two of the giants. Only this wouldn’t be chicken feed like the little operation we ran together before your old woman latched on. This might be high flying enough to interest the big boys.’
‘Like Roger Manpole?’
‘Like Roger Manpole.’
‘How is the big phoney?’
‘Bigger than ever. He’s gone into horse racing in a sizeable way.’
‘Well, that’s as good a way as any to lose money.’
‘It’s as good a way as any to get in with the best people.’ I sipped at my new beer, which I realized now I didn’t want. Nor did I want the sweat and the noise of the people around me.
‘What is this splendid gum game you’re dreaming up?’
‘What expressions you use, dear … Oh, it’s all very embryo at the moment. Matter of fact, it was our little flutter that gave me the idea – disposal of surplus stock.’
‘It’s been done.’
‘There’s always a new angle to an old trick. An insider like you can be a help.’
‘I’ve heard that somewhere before.’
‘Well, matey, do give me warning if you’re thinking of leaving Shona’s. I’d like that.’
‘I’m giving you warning I’m thinking of leaving the Lamb and Flag,’ I said. ‘ It’s nearly ten and the snake-house fug is overdone. So be a good lad and finish your beer.’
‘You not having yours?’
‘My father was a soak,’ I said. ‘And I met another of my family in the same way in Scotland.’
III
I said to myself, what the hell difference does ten years make? She’s still the same person, exactly the same person, as she was before. If she was attractive to me last week – as she certainly was – she must be attractive this week. Jesus Christ, I said, she’s barely a year younger than my mother.
I got home and almost wished I’d asked Derek back. But I knew if I had that he’d have taken it the wrong way. I snorted a little laughter at myself. I needed company. Not company in bed, just company. David the loner, the man who has learned to rely only on himself, needs a friend to chat to. Even a friend to talk about this to.
Of course I could go out and pick up a tart, a young tart, go to her pad, tell her there’d been a misunderstanding at home. She’d never guess what. Only I didn’t really want sex, especially bought sex; it was a bore. And anyway they all used such cheap scent.
Chapter Seventeen
I
In the egalitarian society in which we were supposed to be living, being a ‘sir’ should have made no difference at all. Instead, you noticed how people’s eyes changed. Not all, of course, but too many. No difficulty about credit in shops. The cocktail party, the business meeting, even people in the firm, even Mr Schmidt of TBM Ltd, even my neighbours on the floors below; the garage. (I was negotiating to sell the DB6 and buy one of the new Jaguar XJSs, with its twelve-cylinder fuel-injection engine.) I was also receiving a lot of appeals, the confident assumption being that I was now worth half a million and anxious to give most of it away. And a number of invitations from Scotland: would I open this or present that or be a guest speaker at a dinner to commemorate the other. I used my secretary at Shona’s to do the paperwork. After a while it would settle down and die away.
Things were no longer right between Shona and me, but we got along. In fact it was just the sexual act that went missing; I was in her company a lot, and often privately too; I made excuses about the other and she accepted them with only the occasional questing comment.
Once she said very directly: ‘ Did something happen in Scotland, David?’
‘Something? How come?’
‘Did you meet another woman whom you fancied more than me?’
‘I did not. And you can stand on that, as the boxers say.’
‘Yet this – all this – cannot have grown out of a quarrel over the withdrawal of a foundation cream.’
‘I don’t know what ‘‘all this’’ is. But I can tell you nothing has grown out of the foundation-cream fiasco that adds up to a bag of beans. Except a few more complaints from a few more spotty girls.’
She stared at me narrowly, the skin taut on her smooth high cheekbones. God, it was still such good skin! There must be something in her preparations.
‘So then you are just tired of me?’
‘Not except when you ask crummy questions.’
‘It is not crummy to be concerned when something so good has been between us and suddenly it vanishes like a puff of smoke.’
‘Like the green flash,’ I said.
She made a move of distaste. ‘That we shall perhaps not see now.’
I put my hand on her arm, feeling its steely firmness under mine. A little lick of desire moved again. ‘Maybe you have a right to be concerned, Shona. Maybe you should have an answer. But, search me, I haven’t got it. And if I don’t know the answer, how can you?’
I could of course have answered her. I could have said: ‘ Yes, you stupid bitch, you lied to me and this is the result I don’t want to lay an old woman of fifty-six.’ But first I couldn’t quite muster the viciousness to say it, and second, that wasn’t really the issue. The question I had to answer was why – since nothing in effect had changed except in my thoughts – did this mean such a hell of a lot to me? Why did I feel so strongly about it?
I thought, so let it drift around in my mind for a few weeks
. The knowledge of her age will either get the better of my need for her, or my need for her will get the better of my knowledge of her age.
II
It was Christmas before I went to Scotland again. Shona’s father was ill, and she said she must spend the break in Paris. I stayed in London and then at the last minute decided to whistle up to Wester Craig and look at it again. There was a certain masochism in the notion, because the place would be as cold as an icebox, with no central heating, and lucky if I cut my way through the drifting snow. But I’d just taken delivery of this sleek white Jaguar and felt like trying it out.
The engine was sensational, whispering power with none of the traction-engine noise of the Aston. Just to look at it, cramming the enormous bonnet, gave me an aesthetic lift.
It answered the slightest call like a dream.
On the other hand at anything over ninety the Aston would tuck in its tail and lie solid on the road with some sort of centripetal adhesion; at over a hundred and twenty the Jaguar began to feel lighter and a bit less secure.
Wester Craig wasn’t three feet deep in snow but pickled in a sort of perpetual autumn, with the cold old sun gleaming heatless in the sky and all the pines and things clubbing together to maintain a pretence of false verdancy. I had rung them up this morning so they knew I was on my way. Fires blazed in the dining-room, the drawing-room and my bedroom. Dark fell smartly as soon as I arrived (I had left London well before dawn) and a tinsel moon fell on the loch and the spiky trees. Mrs Coppell – who was always smiling and cheerful; maybe it was her nature – gave me smoked trout with roast duck to follow and apple tart. I drank a Charmes Chambertin 1961 and thought well of old Malcolm. I slept late and solidly. Coppell, raking out the ashes and setting a light to a new fire, woke me as the sun peered over the shoulder of the hill.
It was another fine, dry day; the house biting cold in a way new to me since schooldays. There were three semicircles of heat, deriving from the three fires; everything outside those orbits was like a morgue, like a fashionable New York restaurant in the summer. You latched on to the Scottish cult for tweeds; did they ever take baths? To strip off one’s clothes and stand under a shower was an exercise in masochism.