Well of course it was visibly. Because I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. What I mean is, it was a big flinch, almost a jump. Big enough, certainly, to satisfy the square leg umpire.
He looked down at his braces and scraped at one of the brass adjusters with his fingernail.
‘At that stage. I see.’ Then he looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Philip, ‘but I feel as if I should ask you for your real name, before we go any further. I mean, if you’re not Arthur Collins, you know…’He trailed off, desperate and panicky, but not wanting to show it. Not in front of me, anyway.
‘My name is Lang,’ I said. ‘Thomas Lang. And let me say first of all that I absolutely realise how much of a shock this will be to you.’
He waved away my attempt at an apology, and sat there for a moment, chewing his knuckle while he thought about what he was going to do next.
He was still sitting like that five minutes later, when the door opened, and a girl in a stripy shirt, presumably Jane, stood there with a tea-towel and Ronnie.
The two women paused in the doorway, eyes flitting here and there, while Philip and I got to our feet and did our own lot of flitting. If you’d been a film director, you’d have had a heck of a job deciding where to put the camera. The tableau stayed as it was, with all of us writhing in the same social hell, until Ronnie broke the silence.
‘Darling,’ she said.
Philip, the poor dope, took a step forward at this.
But Ronnie was now heading for my side of the desk, and so Philip had to turn his step into a vague gesture towards Jane, and what happened with the coffee was this, and the biscuits got all like that, and would you mind awfully much being a love?
By the time he’d finished, and turned back to us, Ronnie was in my arms, hugging me like an express train. I hugged her back, because the occasion seemed to demand it, and also because I wanted to. She smelled very nice.
After a while, Ronnie disengaged slightly, and leaned back to look at me. I think maybe there were tears in her eyes, so she was definitely throwing herself into it. Then she turned towards Philip.
‘Philip… what can I say?’ she said, which was about all she could say.
Philip scratched the back of his neck, blushed a little, and then got back to the coffee stain on his shirt cuff. He was an Englishman, all right.
‘Leave that for a moment, Jane, will you?’ he said, without looking up. This was music to Jane’s ears, and she was out of the door in a second. Philip tried a gallant laugh.
‘So,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘So.’ I laughed too, just as awkwardly. ‘I guess that’s about it, really. I’m sorry, Philip. You know…’ We stood like that, the three of us, for another age, waiting for someone to whisper the next line from the prompt corner. Then Ronnie turned to me, and her eyes said do it now.
I took a deep breath.
‘Philip, by the way,’ I said, unhooking myself from Ronnie and stepping up to his desk, ‘I wondered if I could ask you… you know… if you’d do me a favour.’
Philip looked as if I’d just hit him with a building.
‘A favour?’ he said, and I could tell that he was weighing up the pros and cons of getting very cross.
Ronnie tutted behind me.
‘Thomas, don’t do this,’ she said. Philip looked at her and frowned very slightly, but she didn’t pay any attention. ‘You promised not to do this,’ she whispered.
It was beautifully judged.
Philip sniffed the air and found it, if not sweet, certainly less sour than it had been, because within thirty seconds of us telling him that we were the only happy couple in the room, it now looked as if Ronnie and I were about to have an argument.
‘What kind of favour?’ he asked, folding his arms across his chest.
‘Thomas, I said no.’ Ronnie again, really quite angry now.
I half-turned, speaking to her, but looking at the door, as if we’d had this argument a few times before.
‘Look, he can say no, can’t he?’ I said. ‘I mean, Christ, I’m only asking.’
Ronnie took a couple of steps forward, edging slightly round the corner of the desk, until she was nearly half-way between us. Philip looked down at her thighs, and I could see him judging our relative positions. I’m not out of this yet, he was thinking.
‘You’re not to take advantage of him, Thomas,’ said Ronnie, moving a little further round the desk. ‘You’re just not. It isn’t fair. Not now.’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ I said, hanging my head.
‘What kind of favour?’ said Philip again, and I sensed the hope rising in him.
Ronnie moved closer still.
‘No, don’t, Philip,’ she said. ‘Don’t do this. We’ll go, we’ll let you…’
‘Look,’ I said, still with my head down, ‘I may not get a chance like this ever again. I have to ask him. This is my job, remember? Asking people.’ I was starting to get sarcastic and nasty, and Philip was loving every second of it.
‘Please don’t listen, Philip, I’m sorry…’ Ronnie shot me an angry look.
‘No, that’s all right,’ said Philip. He looked back at me, taking his time, thinking that all he had to do now was not make a mistake. ‘What is your job, Thomas, by the way?’
That was nice, the Thomas. A sweet, friendly, rock-solid way to address the man who’s just stolen your fiancйe.
‘He’s a journalist,’ said Ronnie, before I had a chance to answer. The word ‘journalist’ came out as if it was a pretty horrible occupation. Which, let’s face it…
‘You’re a journalist, and you want to ask me something?’ said Philip. ‘Well, fire away.’ Philip was smiling now. Gracious in defeat. A gentleman.
‘Thomas, if you ask him, at a time like this, after what we agreed…’ She let it hang in the air. Philip wanted her to finish it.
‘What?’ I said, with a load of truculence.
Ronnie stared at me furiously, then spun on her heel to face the wall. As she did so, she brushed against Philip’s elbow, and I saw him arch slightly. It was beautifully done. I’m very close now, he was thinking. Easy does it.
‘Doing a piece on the breakdown of the nation-state,’ I said wearily, almost drunkenly. The few journalists I’ve spoken to in my life all seemed to have this in common: an attitude of perpetual exhaustion, brought on by dealing with people who just aren’t quite as fantastic as they are. I was trying to duplicate it now, and it seemed to be coming out pretty well. ‘Economic supremacy of multinationals over governments,’ I slurred, as if every dolt in the land ought to know by now that this was the hot issue.
‘For what paper would that be, Thomas?’
I slumped back down in the chair. Now the two of them were standing, together, on the far side of the desk, while I slouched away on my own. All I needed to do was burp a few times and start picking spinach out of my teeth, and Philip would know he was on to a winner.
‘Any paper that’ll have it, basically,’ I said, with a grumpy shrug.
Philip was pitying me now, wondering how he could ever have believed that I was a threat.
‘And you want some… what, information?’ Coasting down the final straight to victory.
‘Yeah, right,’ I said. ‘Just about the movement of money, really. How people get around various currency laws, sling money about the place without anyone ever knowing. Most of it’s general background stuff really, but there are one or two actual cases that interest me.’
I did actually burp slightly as I said that. Ronnie heard it and turned to face me.