‘Oh?’ Sheila thought she could see the slightest chink in Jack’s armor. ‘I’ve not eaten either,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we have something together?’
Jack, finishing the peach noisily, looked at her, trying to find some barb, some catch: there was none. So, smiling, nodding, he graciously accepted her invitation, and suggested that they open a bottle of wine for starters.
Turning into Marlborough Place that evening, Miles wondered how Partridge and the old boy had found out about his use of the computer. Pete Saville must have left something for them to find, something he should not have left. They had probably questioned him, and he would have talked straightaway. He had no defense, after all.
Whoever it was that had talked to Felicity on that night, he was a goliath beetle. Miles was clear enough about that. Goliath beetles were very fragile indeed, and therefore very hard to collect. They flew through their forest terrain at great height, rarely alighting on the ground, where predators and collectors awaited them. This was the figure of the enemy: hard to catch, soaring above the mundane world, and when captured, brittle as spun sugar.
He opened the door to his house, wondering again, with slight vertigo, how much it must be worth. Sheila and he had bought it in the sixties, and even then it had been an expensive ruin, albeit an expensive ruin in St. John’s Wood. A fortuitous inheritance on Sheila’s part had ensured that they could buy two floors’ worth, and Sheila had loved it from the first tentative visit. Dry rot in one of the walls a few years ago had cost a thousand pounds to fix, and Miles feared more incursions, more deterioration. It was in the nature of buildings to fall down; all one ever did was shore them up.
There were voices in the living room, loudly conversational. He listened at the door for a moment.
‘Come in, Miles, for Christ’s sake,’ called Sheila. ‘Why do you always have to skulk at the door? I can always hear you, you know.’
Inside, Sheila lay along the sofa, a glass of tawny wine in one hand. From the tawniness, he guessed that one of his better clarets had been opened. But, to his dismay, he saw on the floor not one but two empty bottles: the last of his ’70. Sheila smiled toward him with catlike superiority. Jack, legs dangling over the arm of his chair, let a long-stemmed glass play between his fingers. It was empty.
‘Good evening, Miles,’ said Sheila. ‘Is it that time already? It seems like only half an hour since we finished lunch, doesn’t it, Jack?’
Jack merely nodded, enough of his wits left to know that to speak would be to betray his all-too-evident condition.
‘Mind if I join you?’ Miles made to sit on the sofa, and Sheila shifted her legs helpfully. Clearly, she thought that some kind of victory had been won over Miles, and that she could now claim Jack as an ally in her struggle. They had eaten lunch together. Miles could see the whole sequence unfold, compounded by his own earlier rejection of his son.
He felt sick to his stomach. It was impossible these days when there were three of them in the house. He wondered why Jack bothered to come home at all. There could be no halfway house, no no-man’s-land. Always it had to be two against one.
‘Oh, by the way,’ said Sheila, ‘Jack thinks there’s wet rot in the larder.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ said Sheila. Lying half along the sofa, her legs curved toward the floor, she was like an insect, her body divided into abdomen, thorax and head. The aroma of her drunkenness was all around, cutting Jack off from him, bringing the conspiracy to fruition.
‘Maybe we should sell the place then.’
Sheila shook her head loosely.
‘House values continue to rise,’ she said with absolute clarity, ‘at a higher rate in areas like this than anywhere else in Britain. If we wait just a few more years, Miles, we can sell up and buy a palace elsewhere. We’ve been through all this.’
Jack laughed, as Miles had hoped he would.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked Sheila, annoyed.
‘Listen to you,’ said Jack. ‘The best part of three bottles of wine, and you can still spout economics like Milton Keynes.’
‘That should be Milton Friedman,’ corrected Miles. ‘Or do you mean Maynard Keynes?’
Jack looked at him, a little puzzled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What did I say?’
‘You said Milton Keynes,’ said Sheila, bursting into laughter and throwing herself forward.
‘Is there any wine left?’ Miles asked now, sure that his wife and son were less of a combined force than he had at first feared. Sheila was still laughing, and Jack studied her in stilted horror.
‘Loads,’ said Sheila. ‘Get another bottle. And watch out for that rising damp.’
‘Wet rot,’ Jack corrected quickly, his voice stabbing the air.
‘Well, whatever,’ mumbled Sheila, all laughter gone.
‘Right,’ said Miles, examining the quietened room, ‘let’s have ourselves a little party, shall we?’
But the room remained silent after he left. The party had already finished.
He wondered whether Sheila could really always hear him outside the door. Until recently, he had thought himself infallible. Now he knew differently.
He brought another bottle of wine into the room. Sheila was reading, while Jack still played with his empty glass.
‘Here we are then. You could well be right, Jack. There does seem to be a patch of rot in the floor timbers. We’ll have it inspected.’
He opened the bottle and poured three generous glasses, then set his own aside for the moment, allowing the young wine at least a slender chance to breathe. Jack gulped his own down without tasting it.
‘Sorry about lunch, Jack. I had to see Billy Monmouth. It was all shoptalk.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘What was Billy saying, then?’ Sheila turned the page of her book.
‘You know Billy. Gossip mainly.’
‘We haven’t had him round for a while, have we?’
The fact was, they had no one round these days. Their friends — the married couples — had disintegrated like old houses.
‘No, we haven’t,’ said Miles, and the conversation stopped there. Dead.
Ten
He was being followed, and none too subtly. Already in a bookshop a man had approached him asking for a light, though no smoking was allowed. Then another man — different face, same eyes — had asked him the time. So Pete Saville was moving now, weaving through the narrow streets of the city, trying to lose the men. He didn’t want the streets to get too narrow though, or too quiet, for that would be asking for trouble. He had enough trouble as it was.
He didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t mean anything. Their accents were English, but that meant nothing either. He had counted four of them so far, four or just maybe five. Oh God, what had he done? He was sure that it had something, everything to do with Miles Flint. Mr. Partridge had warned him. Miles bloody Flint and his bloody snooping. He dived into another street, seeking a telephone box, not knowing who to ring. Perhaps he should turn and confront them. Yes, why not? Every reason in the world.
Pete Saville was scared.
This was no game, no Armorgeddon. It was real, and it was dangerous, perhaps lethal. He glanced back. Two following on one sidewalk, two on the other. Walking briskly. Hands by their sides. Almost casual.
What had he done?
He turned corner after corner. Saw a bus and made a run for it, but it moved off ahead of him, leaving him flailing at the wind. There were people about, some of them giving him curious looks. He could tell them, but tell them what?
Oh, he was scared, how he was scared.
So run, and keep on running. But they had decided to make their move. They were gaining effortlessly, coming nearer, nearer. And now a fifth man was calling out his name, patiently, as though paging him in a hotel. Pete Saville didn’t feel as though he were in a hotel.