“Yeah, well, I’ll worry about that when it happens, Edward.”
Mr N went to the side table where our drinks were and sipped from his whisky. “Well, I suppose as long as you both know where you stand.” He tipped his head to one side. “Do you both know where you stand? Is this something you’ve talked about, together?”
I grimaced. “It’s… tacit.”
“Tacit?” Mr N smiled.
I nodded. “It’s understood.”
“And is there no room for love in this terribly transactional view of human relationships, Adrian?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I said breezily. “When it comes along. Kind of thing there’s no allowing for. Another level. Boss level. Who knows?”
He just smiled, took his shot.
“Thing is,” I said. “With all due respect, Edward, you can afford to think the way you think and feel the way you feel because you’ve kind of got it all, know what I mean?” I smiled broadly to show there was no edge here, no jealousy involved. Just an observation. “Lovely wife, family, important job, country estate, flat in London, skiing in Klosters, sailing in the Med, everything you could ask for. You have the luxury of observing the rest of us from your Olympian heights, haven’t you? Me, I’m still scrabbling up the foothills. Knee-deep in scree down here, me.” He laughed at that. “Most of us are. We need to be clear-sighted, we need to see things the way they really are to us.” I shrugged. “Looking after number one. It’s all we’re doing.”
“And how are things for you, Adrian?”
“They’re fine, thanks.” I took my shot. Lots of aimless clacking and movement.
“Good. I’m glad for you. Barney talks very highly of you. What is it you do again?”
“Web design. Got my own company.” Which was nothing but the truth without being remotely like the whole of it.
“Well, I hope you do well, but you ought to know that no amount of success frees you of all problems.” He stooped, evaluating.
“Well, we all have our crosses to bear, Edward, no doubt about that.”
He took his shot, stood up slowly. “What do you think of Barney?” He watched the balls click and clack across the baize, not looking at me. He rechalked his cue, brows furrowed.
Ah-ha, I thought. I didn’t reply too quickly. Took a shot in the meantime. “He’s a great guy,” I said. “Brilliant company.” I put on a slightly pained expression. When Edward looked at me I took a breath and said, “He could choose some of his friends better.” I laughed lightly. “Present company excluded, obviously.”
Mr N didn’t smile. He bent to size up another shot. “I worry that he’s enjoying himself a bit too much. I’ve talked to the people at Bairns Faplish.” This was the broking company Barney worked for, Mr N having thought it would look bad to bring the boy straight into his own firm after graduation. Barney had told me himself that he’d needed intensive tutoring to blag his way from Eton into Oxford and had barely scraped a 2.2. Whatever that is. I thought it was an airgun pellet. “They’re a little concerned,” Mr N continued. “He’s not bringing in what he might. They can’t let that situation go on for ever. It’s not like the old days. Once, any idiot could be a stockbroker, and a lot were. Not good enough these days.” He flashed me a mouth-only smile, no eyes involved at all. “There’s a family name at stake, after all.”
“We’re all a bit wild when we’re young, aren’t we?” I suggested. Edward looked unconvinced. “He’ll pull straight in time,” I told him, looking serious. I could say this sort of shit fairly convincingly on account of being a bit older than Barney. I put my cue down on the table, folded my arms. “Look, Mr N, Edward, it’s always more pressure on a guy when he’s got a successful father, know what I mean? He looks up to you, he does. I know that. But you’re, you know. You’re a lot to live up to. It’s bound to be intimidating, being in your shadow. You might not see it, but that’s you being up in your Olympian heights again, isn’t it?”
He smiled. A little sadly, perhaps.
“Well, as you say, he could do with some better friends,” he said, leaning on his cue and surveying the table. “I don’t want to sound like some Victorian paterfamilias, but a little more of the straight and narrow would do him no harm.”
“You’re probably right, Edward.” I picked up my cue. “My theory is that he’s too nice.”
“Too nice?”
“Had it all too easy, thinks the world’s a nicer place than it really is. Expects everybody else to be as relaxed and good-natured as he is.” I shook my head. I bent to my shot. “Dangerous.”
“Perhaps you’d care to instruct him in life according to you. Oh, good shot.”
“Thanks. I could,” I agreed. “I mean I have, already, but I could make more of a point of it. If you liked. Don’t know that he’ll listen to me, but I could try.”
“I’d be very grateful.” Mr N smiled.
“It’d be my pleasure, Edward.”
“Hmm.” He looked thoughtful. “We’re off to Scotland next month, shooting. Barney and Dulcima have said they’ll be there for the first week, though I expect he’ll find an excuse not to come at the last minute again. I think he finds us boring. Do you shoot, Adrian?”
(Great, I think. I can make Barney come along by promising him the whole week’s my treat coke-wise and then I’ll be right in with Mr N!) “Never tried, Edward.”
“You should. Would you like to come along?”
Mr Kleist thought the lady took the news remarkably well, considering. He had done something he’d never thought to do in the several years he had been employed by her, and disturbed her while she was at her toilet. She had called him in and had continued to apply her make-up while she sat at her dressing table with him standing behind her. They looked at each other via the table’s mirror. Madame d’Ortolan had donned a peignoir before receiving him; however, he found that if he let his eyes stray downwards he could see rather a large portion of both her breasts. He took a half-step backwards to save both their blushes. There had never been anything of that nature between them. Nevertheless, when the cat called M. Pamplemousse unentwined itself from beneath the stool its mistress sat upon and gazed up at him, it was with what looked like an accusation.
Madame d’Ortolan sighed. “Harmyle?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am.”
“Dead?”
“Quite entirely.”
“Our boy has jumped the rails, then.”
“Indeed, ma’am, he might be said to be on the opposite track, heading in precisely the wrong direction, and at some speed.”
Madame d’Ortolan regarded Mr Kleist with a look of desiccated withering that most men would have flinched at. Mr Kleist was not the flinching sort. “He’s still being tracked?”
“Just. Two of the five report they managed to hang on by their fingernails, metaphorically. However, his next transition ought to be much easier to follow, apparently.”
“Bring him in,” she told him. “Hurt but unharmed.” Mr Kleist nodded, understanding. “And address all the correct targets individually and concurrently.” He nodded. “Immediately,” she told him, taking up her hairbrush.
“Of course, ma’am.”
Mr Kleist did his best to kick M. Pamplemousse accidentally on purpose as he turned away, but the creature easily avoided his foot and mewed with what sounded like self-satisfaction.
I sniff, blow my nose, look round. I am in another version of the building which housed the Perineum Club, back where Lord Harmyle is – at this very moment, I should think – lying on the floor, kicking and gurgling his way to a rather bloody death.
In this reality, the Vermyn Street building contains a parfumerie. The dark wood panels are mostly hidden by exquisite wall rugs and creamy, gently glowing light panels illuminating a smattering of tear-shaped perfume bottles arrayed on glass shelves. The air is laced with enchanting female scents and no one looks in the least surprised that I have just sneezed. The well-heeled clientele is composed mostly of ladies. One or two are with gentlemen, and there are a couple of other unescorted men besides myself. It is the men I find myself looking at. The shop assistants are mostly very good-looking young men. One especially chiselled specimen, tall and dark, smiles at me. I smile back, a little thrill running through me.