‘Just one more call. Will be quick, I promise. What’s the code for Streatley from here?’
Again it was a recorded answer. Steen’s voice gave the number. ‘Marius Steen speaking. Not available at the moment. Ring later, or leave a message after this noise.’
Miles had the complete kit. Not only the shining new camouflage clothes, but various shining new containers of tackle. A waterproof khaki bag to hang from one shoulder, a long black leather rod-case to hang from the other, and an assortment of neatly dangling nets, stools and bait-boxes. As he laid out his instruments on squares of cloth like a surgeon, he said, ‘You know, Pop, fishing’s a very good relaxant. Relaxation is important to anyone in an executive position.’
They were sitting on the bank opposite Steen’s house, Miles on a new folding chair of shining chromium tubes, Charles on a relegated wooden stool. He had chosen the location deliberately, assuring Miles that it was a very promising swim, that the swirlings of the current denoted barbel pits and that the overhanging trees were a good lie for large pike. It was all nonsense, but it was in the right language and Miles was impressed.
So Charles had a good view. The bungalow didn’t look so large from the back, just discreetly expensive, a low white outline from which the lawn sloped gently down to a neat concreted waterside. To the left there was a small boat-house whose locked doors gave on to the river.
The bungalow showed no sign of life, and there had not been any when they had driven past on the road. Charles had persuaded Miles to stop and tried ringing the bell on the gate. No reply.
But somebody had been there overnight. Not only was there the evidence of the changed recording on the telephone. The puddles outside the bungalow gates showed fresh tyre-marks. Steen was certainly around somewhere; it was just a question of waiting; and, in the meantime, fishing.
‘I think the thing for these sort of conditions,’ said Miles, ‘is a swimfeeder.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. Quite definitely. Filled with a gentle and bread-paste mixture, with a couple of gentles on a number twelve hook, I think it’d be a cert for bream.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yes. Or roach.’
‘Hm.’
‘Well, that’s what it recommended in this angling magazine I was reading. I reckon these are the sort of conditions it described. More or less.’
‘Yes.’ Charles flipped his line out into the water. He’d been lent an old relegated rod with two mottled bamboo sections and a greenheart tip, a plastic centre-pin reel and a yellowed quill float. He’d put a couple of maggots on a small hook. He sat and watched the quill being borne along by the current and then leaning over as it tugged at the end of the swim.
‘Have you plumbed?’ asked Miles.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Plumbed the depth of the swim. You’ll never catch anything if you don’t do that. You see, what the angler has to do with his bait is to make it imitate as nearly as possible the conditions of nature. In nature things don’t dangle awkwardly in the water. They flow, carried along by the current, a few inches above the bottom. Depending on the season, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you like a plummet? I’ve got one.’
‘No thanks. I’m trying to give them up.’
Miles was silent, preoccupied with opening his latest piece of equipment. Proudly he stripped off the packaging and screwed a limp length of fibreglass to the end of his sleek fibreglass rod. Charles looked on with an expression of distaste which Miles took for admiration. ‘Swingtip.’
‘Ah.’
‘Best sort of bite-detector for bottom-fishing.’
‘Ah.’ Charles reflected how Miles always talked out of books. His son in-law was the least spontaneous person he’d ever met. Nothing came naturally; it all had to be worked at. Whatever interest he took up, he would begin by a painstaking study of the language and then buy all the correct equipment, before he actually did anything practical. Fishing was the latest accomplishment which Miles thought the young executive should not be without.
Again Charles found himself wondering about Miles and Juliet’s sex-life. Had that been approached in the same meticulous way? ‘Well, here we are on our honeymoon, Juliet darling. What I will do, when we are in bed and an atmosphere of mutual trust and relaxation has been established, is to practise a certain amount of foreplay. This is likely to begin with a kneading or massaging of the breasts in an accelerating stroking motion. This will be followed by manual clitoral stimulation…’ The idea was intriguing. Charles wondered if he was becoming a dirty old man. But it was intriguing. Guiltily, he disguised his interest in a standard father-in-law question. ‘Miles, have you and Juliet thought of having a family?’
Miles sat up with irritation. He’d just been trying to squeeze a split-shot on to his line and it had popped out of his fingers. ‘Yes, Pop, we have. We reckon in about four and a half years I should have gone up at least a grade, so, allowing for the usual increments, and assuming that the mortgage rate doesn’t rise above the present eleven per cent, I should think we could afford to let Juliet stop work then.’
There was no answer to that, so Charles sat and looked out over the water to Steen’s bungalow. Nothing. It was very cold. The air stung his face and he felt the ground’s iciness creep into his feet through the soles of Miles’ relegated gum-boots. His body was stiff and uncomfortable. Always got like that when he sat still for a long time. He felt his years. A sure sign he needed a drink.
Miles had now completed the cat’s cradle at the end of his line, and had loaded the perspex tube of his swim-feeder with a porridgy mash of bread and maggots. Two favoured maggots squirmed on the end of his size twelve hook (hooked, no doubt, as the books recommend, through the small vent in the thick end). Miles rose to his feet and fiddled with the knobs of his gleaming fixed-spool reel. ‘The important thing,’ he quoted almost to himself, ‘is to remember it’s not brute force with a fixed-spool reel; just a controlled flick.’
He made a controlled flick. The line jerked and maypoled itself around the rod. The contents of the swim-feeder sprayed from their case like shotgun pellets and landed with a scattering plop in the middle of the river.
Charles didn’t say anything, but controlled his lips and looked at his float. As he did so, it submerged. He struck, and reeled in rather a good perch.
Four hasty pints before the pub closed at two saw Charles through lunch, and there was a bit of wine too. ‘Le Piat Beaujolais Primeur,’ said Miles ‘-young, robust and slightly petillant, ideal with meat dishes.’ (Obviously he had read a book on wine too.) The combination of alcohols anaesthetised Charles so that he could even watch the holiday slides of Tenerife without excessive pain.
They were not very varied-‘Juliet in front of a shop… and here’s Juliet in this bar place… and this one’s of Juliet sitting on a rock… and here’s Juliet in a boat-that was the day we went for a boat trip…’ Obviously Miles did not trust her with his camera or there might have been a matching sequence of ‘Miles in front of a shop… Miles in this bar place…’ etc. References in the commentary to shutter speeds, and exposures and lenses demonstrated that Miles had read a book on photography too. Charles let it all flow over him. Time was suspended, and he was too fuddled for darker thoughts.
The peaceful mood lasted until he stood alone on Goring Bridge. Miles and Juliet had offered him a lift to Pangbourne Station, but they’d got some people coming and were very relieved when he said he’d get a minicab to Reading. Miles had been dropping heavy hints about how difficult it was to get petrol and how he intended to use the Cortina ‘for emergency uses only’. (By moving up from the level of salesman in his insurance company, he’d sacrificed a firm’s car and was rather careful about using his own.)