Murray has always thought of himself as a Mercedes driver, the S-Class in particular — a serious, manly car for serious, manly men. (Sir Alex Ferguson, for example, drives such a car, and Murray sees many similarities between himself and Sir Alex — both working-class Glaswegians who have made their way in the world; both hard men, generous and just, with a gritty inborn nobility.) But as fifty approached and he was still driving the second-hand Sierra, Murray had started to worry. He had started to lose sleep over the thought that he might never drive an S-Class — might never be an S-Class driver. Why it happened exactly when it did, he is not sure, but one ordinary day in July, on his way home, he stopped at Tony Purslow Ltd, the Mercedes-Benz dealer in Epsom. He was determined not to think about what he was doing — not until it was done — and everything was therefore slightly dreamlike. The salesman’s smart suit and friendly, serious welcome. The shiny Mercs. The heated seats and leather-covered steering wheels and illuminated vanity mirrors. Forms were filled out, credit checks run, hands shaken. If the salesman was surprised at the impatient urgency of his client, he was too experienced a professional to let it show. And less than an hour after entering the showroom, Murray was motoring home in a long, wide S-Class — smiling down the A24 towards Leatherhead in its fragrant, insulated hush. The following week was one of the happiest of his life. At work, he was dreamy and absent-minded. He spent a lot of time staring out the window, or sitting on his own in the smoking room. At night, unable to sleep, he would get out of bed, and twitch the drapes, and look down at the car’s silver bodywork in the steady greenish illumination of the street light. He would spend evenings sitting alone in the stationary car, occasionally going for a short drive. One night, he slept in the car, waking on the anthracite leather in the bright silence of the very early morning, surprisingly cold, a terrible pain in his immobilised neck, the windows frosted with condensation. He opened the heavy door — startling some crows who were strutting on the tarmac — and stiffly swung his legs out. The steering wheel seemed to have bruised his knees during the night …
‘You all right, Murray?’ Paul says. Murray nods. Paul starts to tell him about Mr Bannerjee. He does not seem interested — though he murmurs occasionally, he obviously isn’t listening.
Leaving the pub at ten past two, they make their way back through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, its massive trees, and the noise of Kingsway. The afternoon passes slowly (though less slowly than it would were he sober) until, when it is starting to get dark outside, just when he is standing up to go to the smoking room, feeling in his jacket pocket for fags and lighter, his phone rings.
It is Eddy Jaw.
‘Hello — Rainey?’ his blunt voice says.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where the fuck were you?’
The Old Cheshire Cheese is on Fleet Street, halfway from the High Court to Ludgate Hill. It is possible that Shakespeare frequented the old pub (it was rebuilt in 1667, following the setback of the previous year), a possibility somewhat oversold on the sign outside. It was, however, Dr Johnson’s local, and Dickens knew its dark, creaking, wooden interior and cramped stairs. More recently, from the end of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth — until they decamped to less dear offices where the docks used to be — it was usually full of journalists. Now the only newsmen are from Reuters, over the road; the others have been replaced by investment bankers from Goldman Sachs, and lawyers from the Middle Temple, and tourists — lots of tourists — and salesmen.
Entering the narrow brick passageway where the pub’s entrance is — under a huge old lantern with ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ in Gothic letters on its milky glass — Paul remembers, with some nostalgia, how he and Eddy Jaw used to work together in offices nearby, the offices of Northwood Publishing, and themselves spend long afternoons in the Chesh. That was some years ago, and it came to a sudden end when the contract they were working on was withdrawn. Which was a shame, because things had been very prosperous — ‘fucking dial-a-deal’ in the argot of the salesmen — and pushing open the pub’s broad door, Paul smells again, in the distinctive woody scent of the interior — similar to that of a Wren church — the spectacular success that the withdrawal of the contract had interrupted.
He remembers where they used to sit, in the square, skylit room — himself, Eddy, the Pig, Murray and the others. This part of the pub, he is disappointed to see, has been divided into smaller spaces, now full of people, so he makes his way to where the wooden stairs go down, and steadying himself with a hand on the low ceiling, descends to the vaulted rooms below — the former cellars — and down yet more stairs, stone this time, into the loud, high-ceilinged basement bar. It is half past five and every part of the pub is packed. Eddy is not there, so Paul goes back upstairs to his favourite place, the snug on the other side of the panelled entrance hall from the Chop Room restaurant (which does not seem to have changed much since the late eighteenth century, except that the waiting staff are now mostly Antipodean), where there is a fireplace with orange coals in a black grate, and a muddy painting of a man wearing a wig, and a window of thick, imperfect glass — he used to while away whole afternoons under that window — and wealthy American bankers talking shop. He decides that he should settle somewhere, or he and Eddy will spend the whole evening wandering through the pub, saying ‘Sorry, excuse me, sorry’, without ever seeing each other, so he goes back downstairs to a sort of mezzanine between the two subterranean levels, where a few small tables are squeezed into the painted brick alcoves formed by the ceiling vaults. One of these tables is vacant, and there he sips his pint of Ayingerbrau, lights a cigarette, and looks over the laminated menu, as if it were something utterly mysterious.
‘You’re not going to eat, are you, Rainey? That would really fucking throw me.’
Eddy Jaw has not changed. Stooping more than necessary under the low vault, he is wearing, as he always used to, a three-piece Hugo Boss suit with very short, stubby lapels — he looks buttoned-up, encased in olive cloth. His big face is perhaps fleshier than it used to be, but it was always fleshy. His hair is blond and cropped. ‘All right, Eddy,’ Paul says.
‘How the fuck are you, Paul?’
‘I’m all right. How are you, Eddy?’
‘I’m fucking brilliant. Do you want anything from the bar, another one?’ Paul glances at his three-quarters-full pint glass. ‘Course you do. What are you drinking?’ Eddy smiles significantly. ‘Prinz, is it?’
‘No, it’s Ayingerbrau.’
‘For fuck’s sake! What’s the matter with you?’
‘I’ll have the same again.’
‘No you won’t. You’ll have a fucking Prinz.’
Paul smiles, for a moment sincerely happy. ‘All right then.’ And Eddy’s broad back disappears down the stairs into the clamour of the bar. It is strange to see him again. He looks full of himself, thriving — very different from how he looked when Paul saw him last. Excluding Friday, that is. It was a few months after Northwood had lost the contract with International Money Publications in the summer of ninety-seven — they had all scattered, at the height of that summer, and gone their separate ways. Eddy had come to Murray’s barbecue, but after that he had disappeared, and none of them knew what had happened to him. Then, one wet November morning, Paul had seen him in Tottenham Court Road tube station. On his way to work at Archway Publications, Paul had been on the up escalator, and Eddy, a desolate face in the crowd, on the down, so it had been impossible to speak to him, and he had not noticed Paul. Paul has always remembered that sudden apparition of Eddy’s face in the crowd, the undisguised wretchedness of its expression, as the escalators shunted them past each other. It had been a low point in Paul’s own life — perhaps the lowest — and on the basis of nothing more than that glimpse, he has always assumed that for Eddy too that dank winter had been some sort of nadir. Perhaps it had not, but for Paul there is nevertheless a sense of shared experience — a sense sharpened to poignancy by their presence here in the Chesh; ensconced underground, unaware of the dark November evening above and able instead to imagine Fleet Street on a fierce July day. The taste of Prinz super-strength lager — unpleasantly spirituous and metallic — intensifies this effect. It was what they always drank then — except Eddy, of course. A Bacardi Breezer in his big fist he sits down opposite Paul, and clinks the neck of the bottle peremptorily on his pint glass. ‘Good to see you, Paul,’ he says.