When Bret leaned forward and lit the cigarette for her, he noticed that she was trembling. He wondered why. He found it difficult to believe that he could cause anyone to become so distressed. 'Jesus!' said Nicola and blew smoke high into the air so that it made little clouds in the plastic vines that hung from the ceiling.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pina coming. Bret detested her and decided to flee to the toilet but he was too late. 'And you know my husband,' Nicola was already saying, her voice strangled as she was enveloped in Pina's beefy arms, and drowned by a babble of Italian chatter.
Bret stood up and edged sideways to keep the table between them and nodded deferentially. Pina looked at him, rolled her eyes and yelled in Italian. Bret smiled and gave a little bow to acknowledge what he thought was some flowery Roman compliment but it turned out to be Pina shouting for more menus.
When they'd ordered lunch, or more accurately when they had agreed to the meal that Pina decreed they should have, Nicola went back to talking about the settlement.
'Your lawyer is a bastard,' she said.
'Other people's lawyers are always bastards. That comes with the job.'
Nikki shifted her attack. They do what you tell them.'
'I don't tell them anything. There's nothing to tell. The law is explicit.'
'I'm going to California. I'm going to sue you.'
'That won't get you anywhere,' said Bret. 'I don't live in California and I don't own anything in California. You might as well go to Greenland.'
I'm going to take up residence there. They have communal property laws in California. My brother-in-law says I'd do better there.'
'I wish you'd start using your brains, Nikki. The money my father left me is in a trust. We're not really a part of the Rensselaer family. My grandmother married into it late in life: she changed her children's name to Rensselaer. We never inherited the Rensselaer millions. I just have an allowance from a small trust fund. I told you all that before we were married.'
She waggled a manicured finger at him. 'You're not going to get away with this, Bret. I'll break that damned trust fund if it's the last thing I do. I want what I'm entitled to.'
'Dammit, Nikki. You left me. You went off with Joppi.'
'Leave Joppi out of this,' she said.
'How can we leave him out of it? He's the third party.'
'He's not.'
'Nikki, dear. We both know he is.'
'Well, you prove it. You just try and prove it, that's all.'
'Don't drag it all through the courts, Nikki. All you'll do is make lawyers rich.'
'Who's having the insalata frutti di mare? yelled the waiter into their ears as he bent over the table.
'I am,' said Bret.
'You want the sole off the bone, madam?' the waiter asked Nicola.
'Yes, please,' she said.
Bret looked down at the mangled lettuce upon which sat four cold damp shrimps and some white rubber rings of inkfish, and he looked at Nicola's delicious filleted sole. 'Melted butter?' said the waiter, 'and a little Parmesan cheese?' Nikki always knew what to order: was it skill or was it luck? Or was it Pina?
Bret noticed that the bejewelled woman at the next table was feeding pieces of her veal escalope to a perfectly brushed and combed terrier at her feet. 'It's like a damned zoo in here,' he muttered, but his wife pretended not to hear him.
Nikki abandoned her sole fillets and put down her knife and fork. 'I gave you everything,' she said again, having thought about it carefully. 'I even came to live in this lousy country with you, didn't I? And what did I get for it?'
'What did you get? You lived high on the hog, and in one of the most beautiful homes in England.'
'It wasn't a home, Bret, it was just a beautiful house. But when did I ever see my husband? I'd go for days and days with no one to talk to but the servants.'
'You should be able to cope with being alone,' said Bret.
'Well, old buddy. Now you'll be able to find out what it means to be alone. Because I won't be there when you get home, and no other woman will put up with you. You'll soon discover that.'
'I'm not afraid of being alone,' said Bret smugly. He pushed the shrimp salad aside. His wife was always complaining of being alone and today he had an answer ready: 'Lots of people have been: Descartes, Kierkegaard, Locke, Newton, Nietzsche, Pascal, Spinoza and Wittgenstein were alone for most of their lives.'
She laughed. 'I saw that in the letters column of the Daily Telegraph. But those people are all geniuses. You're not a thinker… not a philosopher.'
'My work is important,' said Bret. He was put out. 'It's not like working for a biscuit factory. A government job is a government job.'
'Oh, sure, and we all know what governments do.'
'What do you mean by that?' said Bret, with an uncertainty that was almost comic.
'They make the rules for you, and break them themselves. They hike your taxes and give themselves a raise in pay. They take your money away and shower it on all kinds of lousy foreign governments. They send your kids to Vietnam and get them killed. They fly in choppers while you're stuck in a traffic jam. They let the banks and insurance companies shaft you in exchange for political campaign money.'
'Is that what you really think, Nikki?' Bret was shocked. She'd never said anything like that before. He wondered if she had been drinking all morning.
'You're damn right it's what I think. It's what everybody thinks who hasn't got a hand in the pork barrel.'
Alarm bells rang. 'I didn't know you were a liberal.' He wondered what the security vetting people had made of her. Thank goodness he was getting rid of her; but had any of this gone down on his file?
'I'm not a goddamned Democrat or a Liberal or a Red or anything else. It's just that smug guys like you doing your "important work for governments" make me puke.'
There's nothing to be gained from a slanging match,' said Bret. 'I know you must be disappointed about the house but that's outside my control.'
'Damn you, Bret. I must have somewhere to live!'
He guessed that Joppi was getting rid of her: suddenly he felt sorry for her but he didn't want her back. 'That apartment in Monte Carlo is empty. You could lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment.'
'Lease it from the trustees for a nominal payment,' she repeated sarcastically. 'How nominal can you get? Like a dollar a year, do you mean?'
'If it would end all this needless wrangling, a dollar a year would be just fine. Shall we agree on that?' He waved a hand to attract a waiter, but it was no use. The staff were all standing round a table in the corner smiling at a TV newsreader who was being photographed cuddling a smooth-coated chihuahua. 'Do you want coffee?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Yes to both questions: but I want furniture – good furniture – in the first, and cream and sugar in the second.'
'You've got a deal,' said Bret. He was relieved. Had Nikki resolutely pressed for the Thameside house it would have put him in a difficult position. He would have had to resign. There was no way that the Department would have tolerated him getting into a divorce action, and the risk of its attendant publicity. And yet if he resigned, where would that leave Fiona Samson? He was the only person who knew the whole story, and he felt personally responsible for her mission. There were many times when he worried about her.
Bret looked up to see his chauffeur Albert Bingham easing his way through the crowded dining room. 'What now?' said Bret. Nicola turned round to see what he was looking at.
'Good afternoon, Mrs Rensselaer,' said Albert politely. He reasoned that ex-wives sometimes resumed their authority as employers, and should not be slighted. I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir, but the hospital came through on the car phone.'
'What did they say?' Bret was already on his feet. Albert wouldn't interrupt the lunch unless it was something very important.
'Could you be early?'