There had been times when Bernie had believed her. He had produced the odd thing, after al , the odd one-off, showy thing, and he had been an angel a few times for friends with favours to cal in, who were taking a bit of a risk on a rising unknown, or a rival, or a comeback star. But mostly he knew he was an agent, a hugely successful, extremely hard-headed agent, with an unrival ed spread of contacts and a greater range of artists on his books than anyone else in the North-East. He was, professional y, in a different league from Margaret Rossiter, and the fact that she not only didn’t seem to care but also declined to acknowledge the difference was both an irritation and a chal enge. He looked forward to their dinner. She was, after al , official y a widow now and that new state of affairs must – surely it must – create in her just a little of that attractive vulnerability which was both to his taste and to his purpose.
Dawson had roused himself from his slumber along the back of the sofa to inspect Margaret briefly before she went out.
She stood in the doorway of the sitting room and said to him, ‘Wil I do?’
Dawson considered.
‘Scott would say lilac was a Queen Mother colour,’ Margaret said.
Dawson yawned.
‘I won’t be late,’ Margaret said. ‘I’ve got my pearls on, so there’s nothing to pinch, except you, and nobody but me would want you.’
Dawson shut his eyes again. Margaret switched off al the lights but one lamp and let herself out of the front door. The taxi driver, she noted, did not get out of his cab and open the door for her. He looked no more than twenty. He had the radio on at ful volume. Footbal commentary.
‘Passenger on board,’ Margaret said loudly.
He glanced at her in his rear-view mirror.
‘What?’
‘I’m here,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m in the car. You have resumed work.’
He turned the volume down a very little.
‘We’re playing at home!’ he said, as if that justified everything.
‘And we’d better win,’ Margaret said. ‘I don’t want us slipping back to the second division. You won’t remember it, but in the early 1990s, we were nowhere. I remember the Gal owgate end at St James’ Park almost empty. Now turn that off, and concentrate on driving me.’
He glanced at her again. His gaze was startled. Then reluctantly he turned the radio off and pul ed away from the kerb.
‘You remind me,’ he said conversational y, ‘of my nan.’
‘The taxi driver,’ Margaret said, a bit later, to Bernie Harrison, settled in the alcove table with a glass of Laurent-Perrier in front of her, and a napkin across her knees as stiff with starch as if it had been plasticized, ‘told me I reminded him of his grandmother.’
Bernie raised his glass.
‘Did you tel him to turn his radio off?’
‘Certainly I did.’
‘Wel ,’ Bernie said, ‘you’l be a grandmother one day. More than I’l ever be.’
Margaret gave him a quick glance. Renée Harrison had never looked like a childbearing woman, but then you could never tel , you could never dismiss a childless woman as not having wanted children. And Bernie had wanted them al right; Bernie hadn’t wanted to put another child through a single childhood like his own.
‘You’d have made a wonderful father.’
‘I would. I envy you that boy.’
A waiter put a huge, plum-coloured, tassel ed menu into Margaret’s hands.
‘That boy,’ she said, ‘wil be thirty-eight on his next birthday. Thirty-eight. No wife, no children, not even a girlfriend at the moment. And don’t say there’s plenty of time yet, because there isn’t. He’s getting set in his ways and they’re not good ways.’
Bernie indicated something to the waiter from the wine list.
‘A Pouil y-Fumé, Margaret?’
She looked up from the menu.
‘I haven’t had that for years—’
‘Then you shal have it tonight.’
She looked round.
‘I haven’t been anywhere like this for years, either.’
‘Traditional French,’ Bernie said with satisfaction. ‘Plenty of cream and butter. None of this fusion and foam twaddle. I recommend the fish.’
‘The sole,’ Margaret said. She put the menu down. ‘I can say this to you, Bernie, because I’ve known you almost as long as I’ve known myself, but Scott worries me.’
Bernie indicated that she should drink her champagne.
‘In what way?’
‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘he’s aimless. He’s drifting about when he’s not at work, his flat looks as if it belongs to a student and he doesn’t seem to know where he’s going. He’s too old not to know where he’s going.’
‘We’l start with the coquilles Saint-Jacques,’ Bernie said to the waiter, ‘and then the lady wil have the sole and I’l have the turbot. You’l take the sole off the bone.’ He held his menu out, and then he said to Margaret, ‘Vegetables? I never do.’
‘Spinach,’ she said. ‘Spinach, please. Just steamed.’
‘Drink up,’ Bernie said, ‘drink up. Plenty of young men nowadays are like Scott. I see it al the time. One good thing about the music industry is that they don’t differentiate between work and play, they just live music al the time.’
Margaret drank some champagne.
‘His work I’m not worried about. He does his work. It’s the rest of his life that bothers me. He doesn’t have a focus.’
Bernie put his glass down and looked at her.
‘Do you?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Do you have a focus?’
‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘I have a structure—’
‘We al have that.’
‘I have my work and my home and my son—’
‘Yes?’
‘But to be honest with you, Bernie,’ Margaret said, putting her own glass down firmly, ‘I’ve felt a bit adrift since Richie went, I’ve felt that I’ve lost a dimension somehow, that some kind of power supply’s been shut off.’
‘Ah,’ Bernie said.
‘What’s “Ah”?’
‘Wel , I wondered.’
Margaret folded her hands in the space between the paral el lines of the cutlery.
‘And what did you wonder?’
‘I wondered,’ Bernie said, leaning forward and laying one heavy hand on the cloth not very far away from Margaret’s folded ones, ‘I wondered how his death had affected you.’
‘What did you feel after Renée?’
He smiled down at the tablecloth.
‘Devastated and liberated.’
‘Wel , there you are,’ Margaret said, ‘and add to that the sense that you’ve got nothing to prove any more, so the savour goes out of a lot of it. I’m not a bravely achieving abandoned woman any more, I’m just a working widow, and I don’t, if I’m honest, feel the same energy. I’m doing as much, but I’m driving myself. I can’t quite remember what it’s al for. And when I look at him, I wonder if Scott—’
‘I don’t want to talk about Scott,’ Bernie said. ‘I want to talk about us.’
Margaret drew herself up.
‘No sentimental nonsense, please, Bernie.’
He winked.
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
Margaret gave a mild snort.
‘You were a pest when you were nine and you have every potential to be a bigger pest now. You and Eric Garnside and Ray Venterman—’ She paused. Better not to bring up Richie’s name.
‘Both dead,’ Bernie said.
‘We were different ends of the school,’ Margaret said, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Boys and girls. And you boys lay in wait for us after school, you and Doug Bainbridge—’