‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know. You’re trying to make me say that because my family have kept it as a wild bay for eighty years I should continue to do so. You forget that we originally bought it for commercial exploitation. In any case your whole idea is based on a misconception. I am the man who was born in Halifax. Any feelings I have are appropriate to that man. In fact my feelings towards Halifax are that it was a place to get away from and never go back to. But the man I am could not have been born here. Suppose my mother had not run off and joined my father, she would most likely never have married. But if she had, and had then had a child, that child would not have become me. Even if the father had been my father, that is still true. We are who we are by the accident of a moment. ‘You ought to know that. You are one of a pair of twins because of a momentary readjustment of molecules in a uterus twenty-two years ago.’
He lolled back on the soft bench-seat of the car, his brown face more toad-like than ever because of his impenetrable sun-glasses. His voice too had the reptilian creak which came when he was talking about something important to him. I had learnt more about him today than in all the rest of our friendship. I even knew his age, born ten years before the First World War, ‘not yet fifty’—just. I wondered if he guessed how effective it was, bringing Jane in. I’d often tried to imagine what would have happened if Jane and I had never separated, if we had been born as I. The idea was part of my fairy-tale world in which everything was all right; and now that world contained the image of a curious toad-like boy and his yellow toad-like mother coming to this bay so that she could teach him his letters in the sand. For some reason the mental picture, combined with B’s real face in front of me now, made me see something I hadn’t seen before.
‘You’ve got Negro blood, haven’t you?’ I said.
He didn’t answer for several seconds. I cursed myself for my stupidity. Then he said, ‘Does it matter?’
‘Not to me. Not a scrap, darling, honestly. It’s just interesting.’
‘The true reason why the other planters chose to have nothing to do with my grandfather was that he had married a quadroon. My mother is therefore an octoroon.’
‘How lovely. That’s a word I’ve never come across except in crossword puzzles.’
‘It is a word which has ruined lives.’
‘I suppose so. But it’s nothing compared to the Halper side of you, is it? That must be fantastically strong. If we had a baby I wonder whose face it would have.’
‘Mine, of course. That’s why we’re not going to.’
‘I think we’d get a slightly yellow Millett. You can see this piggy nose in the Long Gallery, snuffling out under wigs and over ruffs for generations. Even old Lely couldn’t do much about it.’
‘The Halpers would win all the same.’
‘Got you!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Whatever you say you’re secretly proud of your family.’
‘My family is still alive, in me.’
‘It won’t be much longer unless you start doing something about the next generation.’
‘Haven’t you noticed? My grandfather did quite enough to let me off the obligation.’
‘You’re scared of losing to the Milletts. I bet you . . .’
‘Don’t be a fool.’
‘I’m serious, I think. I mean . . . you see, I’ve been wondering why you let me bully you into coming out here. You’ve hated it, haven’t you? I think it might be your way of telling me what you think about me and Cheadle. That it isn’t worth it, I mean. I ought to get loose from it and do something else with my life. Like . . . Do take those beastly specs off. I can’t see what you’re thinking.’
‘I am thinking that if you say anything more about babies I shall boot you out.’
Booting me out was a running joke, though the possibility of it being true always gave me a slight kick, and him too, I think, reminding us of the tricky balance we’d set up and the certainty that we were going to fall off the wire one day—though when it happened it was not going to be anything like this.
‘I’ve thought of a new and thrilling revenge,’ I said. ‘I shall picket your bridge club and proclaim the story of my wrongs on a sandwich board.’
‘The police will move you on.’
‘Policemen eat out of my hand.’
This was part of the game. B enjoyed fending off imaginary attacks on his power-bases, though he was incapable of producing the mildest leap of fantasy in response to my flights. We might have gone on for some time if a car hadn’t drawn up behind us and blared its hooter. B drove forward, found a turning-place and reversed into it. As the other car came by I saw that the driver was the boring property developer, Henry van Something, with whom I’d had to put up all through an endless dinner party a couple of evenings before. He waved to us and drove on.
‘Are you selling it to him?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t stand that.’
‘There’s a syndicate. It’s quite a big deal.’
‘Worse still.’
I woke in the middle of the night and knew without reaching out to feel that B wasn’t there. Normally he willed himself asleep in two minutes and slept all night, turning once as if he was a chop being fried. I lay for a while, listening to the distant whisper of the sea, then got up and went out on to the balcony. He was leaning on the rail in his pyjamas, staring out towards America. There was no moon, but lots of stars above and fireflies in the garden. Apart from them sea and land were pitch black and it was nothing like as warm as you’d expect a tropic night to be. I slid my arm up under his pyjama top and ran my fingers over the knotty muscles below his shoulder-blades. He seemed not to notice.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Just money?’
‘No. There’s enough of that. Or there would be. It’s in the wrong place.’
‘Can’t you move it?’
‘I thought I could. Been setting it up for years. But now . . .’
‘Because of Mummy?’
‘Partly.’
‘Can’t you just buy her off?’
‘Why should I?’
‘I had an idea. It came to me in my sleep. Would you mind if I bought her off?’
‘A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?’
‘But would you let me?’
‘Up to you. But I’m not going to lend you the money.’
‘I know. But I could sell my sapphires.’
He grunted.
‘They’re insured for two hundred and fifty thousand,’ I said. ‘I know you don’t get as much as that, and just as sapphires they aren’t worth it. It’s Mary’s stone makes the difference. But I thought if you helped me find someone to buy them we might get enough. We could make it a condition they didn’t tell anyone for a couple of years. I can go on wearing the replica if I have to. Would it help? Would it make any difference?’
He was silent so long I thought he’d stopped listening.
‘You’re certain they’re yours to sell?’ he said.
‘Daddy left them to me outright. They’re not entailed or part of the Trust or anything.’
‘Odd.’
‘I’ve always thought he wanted me to feel I had something of my own which I could do what I liked with. I wasn’t a complete slave to the house.’
‘I suppose it’s a possibility. I told you it was only part of the deal your mother proposed?’
‘You don’t have to explain. Jane told me. That’s nonsense. We may look alike but we’re not swaps. Jane thinks so too.’
‘So do I.’
He said it without thinking, a casual comment on a side-issue to the main business, but it was a fantastic relief to hear. I put my head on his shoulder and leaned against him. Both our bodies were chilly with the night air, but as the warmth came back between us I persuaded myself I could feel him beginning to relax.
‘It might be a possibility,’ he said at last. I’ll have to sort it out. Would your mother stay bought?’