Miranda’s parents will be on their way. They are fairly tweedy, Miranda’s parents. Members at Newbury Racecourse. The four of them went once. Hennessy Day. Fuck, that seems a long time ago. It seems like something from another life, that afternoon.
Time passes.
—
The air sits thick and damp on the flat land of the common. There are people around — it is still summer, just, and the weekend. Ferns and bracken crackle as children rampage through their tired green fronds. Trees hang leafy limbs over dry bridleways. The showers that passed overnight just dampened the dust, and since dawn the sun has dried it. Falling through holes in the cloud cover, the sun is hot. It shines blinding white on the ponds.
James follows his son further out into the quiet of the common, away from the places where people are playing football, and dogs are sprinting after sticks.
He has been thinking, since Friday, whenever he has had time, about Noyer and the plot of land he showed him. He needs to come up with a plan himself, something he can present to Noyer, something obviously superior to his own idea of just plonking down a jumbo version of Les Chalets du Midi, full of shitty furniture. Eight chalets, was what James was thinking, and ten apartments.
They have left the rutted bridleway, its long brown puddles, and are pushing into the wood. Mature trees. Ferns everywhere, starting to turn on top, some of them. Keeping up with his son, wading through the damp ferns, leaves him short-winded. ‘Tom,’ he calls out. ‘Tom! Oi. Wait for me.’
Eight chalets, ten apartments.
Five million to do it all? More? Utilities need sorting. Access. Just a track now. Yes, more, probably.
Noyer won’t have that kind of money. Maybe one or two million he can put in.
So need say four or five million from somewhere. Leave Noyer with about — plus the land — about forty per cent. Will he be happy with that? With nearly half the profit? Double his money, pretty much. Should be happy: not doubling his money on Chalets du Midi, that’s for sure.
He has lost sight of Tom. ‘Tom!’ he shouts.
He will have to, on Monday, tomorrow, start thinking seriously about who he might go to for money. He is already thinking about it. He has some old names. Starting points. Tristan Elphinstone, for one. (Number still work? Will soon see.) He pocketed some cards, that evening at the Gherkin with Air Miles. Time to find those. The thing is, he should leave Esher first, if he goes to Air Miles’s people, probably. Shouldn’t he? Something dishonest, otherwise.
Or worse — to be sued by Air Miles would not be fun.
Leave Esher.
That would be a major step.
So many overheads these days, that’s the thing. Mortgage. School fees. Laima’s salary — the Lithuanian nanny.
He has not even told Miranda about Noyer yet. The Esher job is something she likes. It is quite well paid. It seems secure. She thinks he likes it too — all those jaunts out to the mountains. Once or twice, in the early days, she went with him. Skiing weekends. Pre-kids, of course. He started there at almost the same time they got together, that summer.
Leave Esher. The thought frightens him. Firm things up with Noyer first. Send him a plan — see what he says.
And suddenly the whole thing seems totally speculative, insubstantial. Talk.
Lost Tom again.
Panting slightly, James stands on the trunk of a fallen tree, the huge trunk half-submerged in the ferns. He sees Tom in the midst of them, inspecting something. He is aware of neglecting his son, of not even talking to him much, too preoccupied with his own stuff. His own plans.
This is his life, these things that are happening.
‘Tommy,’ he says.
The boy’s face looks pale, looking up at him from the sea of green ferns.
He has the clear blue eyes of his mother, not his father’s more troubled blue.
The day is windless.
It’s not a joke.
Life is not a joke.
7
1
Pearl Dundee, Murray’s mother, died, finally, on Sunday afternoon. The funeral was the following Friday.
Murray himself was late. Heads turned in the pews when he opened the cumbersome door of the crematorium chapel. It was bleak and pale in the chapel. Outside it had started to rain again. The minister, who had been speaking, had been saying something about ‘a long, full life’, waited for Murray to find a place.
Afterwards, while they stand outside, he explains to his sister Beckie that his flight from London was delayed.
‘Well, I told you,’ she says, impatient with him, ‘you’d’ve done better to come up last night.’
They are both dressed as if for the office, in dark suits. Murray in a murky tie. He offers her a cigarette and she takes one, and then they accept the condolences of some old lady — a friend of their mother’s, he thinks she must be, who Beckie seems to know. Mauve-hatted, the old lady tells him, as he lights his cigarette, that his mother was ‘a wonderful woman’.
‘Aye, thanks,’ he says, and sees his brother, Alec, emerging into the last day of September, the falling leaves, the shining wet tarmac. He has not spoken to Alec yet.
He has not spoken to Alec for years.
It seems he doesn’t own a suit, Alec — over his white polyester shirt, his black polyester tie, he is wearing a dark blue Puffa jacket. He’s almost unrecognisable, he’s lost that much hair since Murray last set eyes on him.
‘How’s young Alec?’ he says to Beckie. He says it with a smile, trying to be nice. ‘He’s put on a pound or two, anyway.’
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ she suggests.
Murray is still smiling, sort of, as she moves away, to talk to someone else.
Alec is talking to someone else as well, is filling the doorway of the chapel in his Puffa jacket so that the last few people left inside are having to wait. No one seems to want to ask him to move, to step aside to let them leave. It’s his mother’s funeral, that’s probably why.
Smoking hard, Murray turns to the road. The taxis are arriving, to take them to Beckie’s house for the drinks.
He shares a taxi with some old people.
One of them, an old man with smelly breath, old man breath, seems to know him.
‘So how are you, Murray?’ he asks, tightly holding the moulded plastic handle of an aluminium walking stick.
‘I’m okay, fine,’ Murray tells him. ‘Well, you know,’ he adds, ‘it’s a sad day and all.’
‘It is,’ the old man agrees. ‘Pearl,’ he says, ‘was a lovely creature.’
Murray moves his black leather shoes, and his eyes shift nervously to the sliding streets, the grey faces of the houses. Motherwell. It has been a long time since he was up here. Motherwell? No, actually. She passed away. The old man asks him something.
‘No, I don’t live in the UK now,’ he says.
‘Croatia,’ he says, in answer to another question from the old man.
‘Yugoslavia, it used to be part of,’ he says, in answer to another.
—
In his sister’s small house, even with all the people there, he is unable to avoid an encounter with Alec.
He is in the kitchen, tearing open another lager, when Alec is suddenly there — he’s helping out, seeing to it that everyone has a drink, passing round the peanuts. ‘Hello, Murray,’ he says.
‘Alec. Hello…’
‘You still voting Tory?’ Alec wants to know. His face has an upsetting fullness, a middle-aged quality. The shiny pink forehead is huge.
‘Tory?’ Murray says, and slurps from his lager. ‘Nah, those fuckers are too left wing for me now.’
Alec smiles extremely thinly. ‘How are ya anyway?’ he asks, without much interest.