‘This,’ said Mowbray, on schedule, ‘is what I call a drink. Cheers, Miles.’
‘Cheers,’ replied Miles, stifling a schoolboy smirk.
‘You know, up in Scotland they serve fifths or even quarter gills. No wonder they’re a nation of alcoholics.’
‘They’re not, actually, a race of alcoholics, Richard. And they possess the most civilized licensing laws I know of.’
Miles sounded hurt.
‘Sorry,’ said Mowbray, ‘I keep forgetting you’re Scottish. It was just a joke.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘This is quite a good place really,’ said Mad Phil, turning to them both.
Miles left the Lustra early, feigning tiredness, and walked to South Kensington station, changing onto the Jubilee Line at Green Park. He caught the mid-evening hiatus, and only a few washed-out businessmen sat in his carriage. Mowbray had started his speech about circles within circles, infiltration, double agents and double-double agents, and Miles had felt a need to leave.
‘Jeff Phillips believes me,’ Mowbray had said. ‘So do others in the firm. If anything goes wrong on a case, one of our cases, we’re suspicious.’
‘Then I would have thought, Richard,’ Miles had said, ‘that I would have been on your files as a potential double agent.’
‘But you are on our files, Miles. You’re under suspicion.’
Well, good luck to them. Good luck to the Mauberley Barmy Army and its witch hunt. Perhaps Mowbray thought this a speedy and efficient way to make his mark on the firm, and more important, on its overseers. But it was also going to make him an awful lot of enemies. He was staking all or nothing on plucking a fine, sharp needle from the haystack. Perhaps Miles should remind him that needles have a way of making people go to sleep for a very long time...
Darkness was falling, early and cool. His car was parked a distance from the house, not for security reasons but because parking spaces were so difficult to find. A bird had left a large token of its esteem on the roof of the Jag. His father had always said that birdshit was lucky. His father had nurtured some curious notions.
He was still a distance from his house when he saw a man emerge from the gate and walk confidently away in the opposite direction, toward Abbey Road. Through the dusk, Miles was uncertain for a moment whether it had been his gate or not, but as he neared the house he felt sure that it had been. The man had looked familiar, too, even from a distance. He had disappeared now, and Miles walked thoughtfully to his front door, opening it quietly, standing in the hall for a moment, sensing its warmth, seeking a scent, a presence.
He went to the living-room door and listened, then, remembering Sheila’s words, opened it quickly. The room was empty. There was a bottle of wine on the floor, and, quite correctly, a single glass beside it. The bottle was half empty, and a little of the missing half was still in the glass. Nothing was out of place. Leaving the room, he gave the hall scant attention, moving up the staircase silently. He could hear Sheila now. She was in the bedroom, humming a tune. But first he went to Jack’s room. Here, too, everything was as it should be. There were posters on the walls, curling, faded memories of adolescence, and paperback books on the floor and packed into a secondhand bookcase. Miles had studied this room before, curious as to its secrets. Nothing was wrong.
Except the fact that the low single bed was still warm with a slight musk of body heat.
Downstairs again, sweating, Miles opened the front door and slammed it shut. He opened the living-room door, looked in, then closed it again.
‘Miles? I’m up here.’
He took the stairs two at a time and entered the bedroom. Sheila was packing some clothes into a small case. Miles felt his insides jolt, as though they wanted suddenly to be his outsides.
‘Hello there,’ Sheila said, folding a cardigan.
‘What are you doing?’
‘This? Oh, I’m throwing a lot of my old clothes out. There’s a jumble sale at the church, and I thought they might be glad of... Miles? What’s wrong? You look ghastly.’
‘No, no, I’m all right. Been a busy day, that’s all.’ He sat down on the stool at the dressing table.
‘This doesn’t mean that I’m about to embark on a spending spree, you know,’ said Sheila, as though this might have been what was worrying him. But Great God, he had thought for a second that she was leaving him, he had really believed it.
‘You’re back early,’ she said now.
‘Am I?’ He checked his watch. ‘Yes, just a little, I suppose.’
‘What was wrong? Company not to your liking?’
‘Something like that.’
‘That’s always been your problem, Miles. You’ve never learned to adapt. You’d never make a diplomat.’
‘And what have you been up to?’ he asked quickly, giving her the chance to recall that someone had just left.
In reply, she picked up a green coat from the heap on the bed and studied it.
‘Do you remember this, Miles? You brought it home one day, said you’d bought it on impulse. The only coat you ever bought me. It’s well out of fashion now.’
‘You never liked it.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I can’t remember you ever wearing it.’
Sheila just shrugged, perhaps thinking him a little drunk and edgy, and folded the coat into the case. The case was now full, and she pulled the clasps shut.
‘Shall we go downstairs?’ she suggested.
In the living room, he mentioned the wine.
‘Well,’ said Sheila, ‘if you can go slinking off to barrooms with your friends, what the hell, I can drink by myself.’
‘Fair comment.’
‘What was the pub like, anyway?’
‘It was a wine bar.’
‘Pardon my mistake. Why are you so snappy?’
‘Snappy?’
‘Yes, snap, snap.’ She clapped together her hands as though they were an alligator’s jaws. ‘Snap, snap.’
‘Well, the wine bar was bloody foul.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
He paused, swallowed, mumbled something about needing a glass of water. Sheila reminded him that there was plenty of wine left.
They finished the wine between them, listening to Shostakovich. Miles checked the kitchen, on the pretext of making a sandwich, but found no more evidence, no washed-up wineglass or recently emptied ashtray. At last he excused himself and went to his study. He remembered Jack’s practical joke, the beetle. It was in a drawer of his desk and he brought it out, making it jump at his command. Thank God there was something in his life he could control.
That Sheila had made no mention of a visitor was damning enough in itself, but then there was also the bed, still warm. He thought of all the revenge tragedies Sheila had read, all the dark tales of cold, furtive couplings. Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a forked one. The beetle jumped. He heard Sheila begin to climb the stairs, calling down to him that she would see him up there.
‘I won’t be long!’ he called back.
Surely, he reasoned, Sheila was intelligent enough not to let a man come here. But, having considered this, he thought, too, how ideal the situation had been, with Jack out of the house again and he, Miles, out drinking. He knew that his telephoned excuses to her often resulted in a long night away from home. Everything had been perfectly set up for a deception, for a long-deferred meeting. For everything. The warm bed, which grew hotter in his memory, would be cold and neutral now. Just as the Arab’s smile had faded away to nothing. They seemed part of the same process of disintegration.