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I held out my hand.
‘How d’ye do?’ Mr Pratt squeezed it briefly while giving me a quick measuring glance before dismissing me as someone of no importance. ‘You know, Latimer, you shouldn’t let a little thing like a broken arm put you off. Why don’t you come down next weekend and join us for a bit of practice? You’d soon get your eye in again.’
‘No, thanks. I never enjoyed it above half anyway. I only played to please my father-in-law. Do you like the game, Roberta?’
‘I don’t like team—’ I began.
‘How’s the lovely Lady Anna?’ Reginald Pratt interrupted. ‘Why don’t you bring her along to some of our constituency dos? Shame for her to be sitting at home on her own while you have all the fun.’
‘She’s in France. And she hates this kind of thing.’
‘Oh. Pity. Still, no false modesty, Latimer!’ Mr Pratt had edged round so that his back was turned towards me. ‘You were a damned good player! Now, Leslie falls off every chukka, don’t you, old boy?’ He poked a finger into the ribs of the man who had come up to join us.
‘I like that!’ Leslie laughed until his face was pink. ‘Who was it fell off last week and smashed his own bloody stick to matchwood, eh?’
I put down my glass and walked into the dining room.
‘Roberta!’ shouted my father as soon as he saw me. ‘Come and meet Mrs Chandler-Harries.’
A middle-aged woman in a scarlet wool suit standing next to him was beckoning from across the room. I moved slowly between long tables decorated with arrangements of yellow spider chrysanthemums and blue napkins folded into mitres. Mrs Chandler-Harries seemed to have Reginald Pratt’s share of chin. It swelled in rolls above her pearls and quivered as she talked. My father (the rat) cleared off at once.
‘So this is Roberta.’ Flecks of red lipstick had transferred themselves to her front teeth. ‘Of course you won’t remember an old woman like me.’ She was right. She had hard, inquisitive eyes which travelled from the collar of my shirt to the toe of my shoe, pricing as they went. During the remainder of our conversation they trawled the crowd over my shoulder hoping to net bigger fish, returning only occasionally to my face. ‘You went to dancing classes with my little Nancy.’
I remembered Nancy Chandler-Harries. A poisonous child with a squint, which she could not help, and a boastful manner, which she could.
‘Nancy will laugh when I tell her I’ve run into you and where. She said wild horses wouldn’t drag her along to a lunch at the Carlton House with a lot of old fuddy-duddies. But then Nancy is so popular and has so many demands on her time.’
I kept my face expressionless with some effort. ‘How is Nancy?’
‘She’s engaged to be married to the most charming boy. His family have the most marvellous place in Hampshire. He’ll inherit the title, of course. His family adore her. Of course, though naturally I’m prejudiced’ – she gave a deprecating laugh which did not convince – ‘I must say I think they’re lucky to have her … winning ways … instinctive good taste … firm hand … poise … charm …’ I stopped listening. I disapprove of violence under any circumstances but after this I could cheerfully have taken little Nancy outside and put out her lights for good.
There are moments when one becomes aware that one is alone in an unsympathetic world. I felt depressed to the depths of my being. I acknowledged that it must be my fault. It could hardly be the rest of the world’s. Yet who could deny that Mrs Chandler-Harries was a complacent, insensitive … I realized she was looking at me expectantly.
‘Sorry. What did you say?’
‘Are you married or engaged?’
‘Excuse me, I really must … before the speeches begin …’
I turned away and began to move towards the door. Someone clapped their hands for silence.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Reginald Pratt was fiddling with a microphone. ‘Before we partake of this veritable feast’ – he waved a hand at the buffet table on which were stainless steel dishes of something sweltering beneath an apricot-coloured sauce: probably coronation chicken – ‘first I must say a few words about our late lamented Member, Sir Vyvyan Pennell. We extend our sympathies to dear Lady Pennell.’
The applause that followed was lukewarm.
‘Ghastly woman,’ murmured the man standing next to me, to no one in particular.
‘Sir Vyvyan did sterling work on our behalf and we shall all be the poorer for his sudden demise. That is to say …’ Reginald Pratt made a snorting noise, unpleasantly amplified. ‘… we would be the poorer were it not for the fact that we’re privileged to have in our new Member one who has done such … um … sterling work in the constituency of Hamforth East and comes to us as a new broom … blah … blah … blah.’
‘Hear, hear!’ came heartily from the audience.
Reginald continued to fumble through an obstacle course of clichés. I tried to get through the door but a large woman in a quilted waistcoat was leaning against it.
‘We are fortunate,’ Reginald Pratt continued, ‘to have as our representative in Parliament a man who combines the gift of the gab with an ability to get to grips with any number of subjects, ranging from …’ He consulted his notes. ‘… the need for more university places for the underprivileged to home ownership for council house tenants and—’
‘What about inheritance tax!’ someone called out.
‘That is to say, taxation, of course and … and artesian wells for the Sudan—’
‘Bugger the Sudan,’ muttered a man in green tweeds to the woman in the quilted waistcoat. ‘If you ask me this fellow’s a damned Socialist.’
Mr Pratt realized that his audience was becoming restless. ‘Well, you don’t want a long speech from me—’
‘Hear, hear!’ cried the wits.
‘Suffice it to say, I’ve known him a good while and there’s no doubt he’s an excellent chap and quite terrifyingly clever into the bargain. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Burgo Latimer.’
The man who had fed me peanuts took Reginald’s place at the microphone. He acknowledged the applause with a raised hand.
‘Thank you, Reggie. I must begin by paying my own tribute to Sir Vyvyan, who, unlike most Members of Parliament, was not in love with the sound of his own voice …’
Roars of laughter greeted this.
‘Too drunk to stand up,’ muttered my neighbour.
‘The man was an alcoholic,’ said the woman in the quilted waistcoat. ‘It said in his obituary he made his last speech in nineteen sixty-nine. God knows why he was paid a salary.’
‘I can’t claim such modest reserve,’ continued the new MP for Worping. ‘I intend to speak in the House on Friday on the subject of terrorism in Europe. The recent murder by the Red Brigades of the unfortunate Mr Aldo Moro, a crime as pointless as it was inhuman …’
Mr Burgo Latimer had his audience’s attention immediately. Everyone there was concerned about threats to civic order. He made a short, eloquent speech and looked thoroughly at home in his surroundings. He radiated confidence. The chest of every man listening seemed to swell with the certainty that they had their finger on life’s pulse. Despite the stuffiness of the room every woman looked rejuvenated.
The applause afterwards was enthusiastic. The woman in the quilted waistcoat darted forward to secure her seat. I was through the door in a moment and breathing the salty air of freedom. I spent an enjoyable three-quarters of an hour in Worping’s two antique shops, bought a cream jug which I could ill afford but which I was almost certain was Worcester, and ate a tomato and cheese roll, watching the breakers pounce like cats on to the shingle and attempt to claw the pebbles back into the sea.
I merged with the crowd as the lunch ended. My father was flushed with wine, coronation chicken and the sort of self-congratulatory, status-confirming conversation he enjoyed. He had not noticed my absence.
‘Not a bad do, on the whole,’ he said as we sped home. ‘Though I’m not sure about the new chap. I don’t like a politician to make jokes. Running the country’s a serious business. You can be too clever.’
‘Surely cleverness is always a good thing.’
‘Not when it means you can’t see the wood for the trees. Latimer’s the kind of Conservative who wants to appeal to the lower orders with a lot of socialist-type reforms. Putting more money into state education. It won’t wash. People don’t want their taxes spent on reforms they’re not going to benefit from.’
‘If what you say is true, he obviously isn’t that clever.’
‘Well, he thinks he’s clever. That’s what I mean. It’s the same thing.’
‘Not at all. Everyone secretly thinks they’re clever. But a few people really are.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t chop logic with me, Roberta. It’s a damned unattractive trait in a woman.’
We travelled the rest of the way in silence. The telephone was ringing as I walked into the hall. I picked up the receiver. I was still angry but I attempted to sound even-tempered.
‘Hello?’
‘Roberta? This is Burgo Latimer. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
‘Dinner? I couldn’t possibly—’
‘Please don’t say no. If I don’t have a decent conversation with somebody human I may go mad. I’ve had all I can take of the burghers of Sussex. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anyone on this earth who feels remotely as I do about anything. It’s a lonely feeling. Surely you know what I mean?’
I remembered liking his voice before, that hurried way of speaking, as though his mind was working furiously.
‘Should you be a Conservative MP if you feel like that?’
‘Can you think of a single job in which you don’t have to put up with people whose company you don’t enjoy?’
I thought of my own job. Of my boss, who was known to everyone as Dirty Dick because he was ineptly lecherous; of Marion in the antiquarian books department who was a poisonous gossip; of Sebastian in Musical Instruments who was morbidly touchy and difficult.
‘How do you know we have anything in common? I don’t suppose I said more than twenty words.’
‘That’s because I did all the talking. I want a chance to repair that. Besides, I knew before the twenty words. One does know these things.’
Was he right? It was true that I had felt disappointed to discover that he was, of all breeds of men, a ‘scurvy politician’, historically despised, universally mistrusted. I remembered that he also had a wife.
‘I’m afraid I’d rather starve to death than set foot in the Carlton House Hotel again.’
‘There you are! We do feel the same. I think you’ll find where we’re going the food will at least be all right.’
‘You seem to presume your invitation’s irresistible.’
‘I’m hoping against hope.’
The truth was, I was not only lonely myself but also horribly bored. Oliver was dear to me but not much of a companion as he was asleep most of the time I was awake. My parents limited their communication to exchanges of practical information and complaints. Mrs Treadgold and I had a handful of conversational topics – my mother’s progress or the lack of it; Mrs Treadgold’s own health which was undermined by every germ, allergy and chronic disability to be found in her medical dictionary; and the previous night’s television programmes – which we ran through dutifully each day. The friends of my childhood had left Sussex years ago and fled to London or abroad.
‘Well … I don’t know. It seems rather odd. We hardly know each other …’
‘I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.’
FIVE (#ulink_407f7cc9-373c-5186-b523-4f1e7c32e01d)
‘You’ve missed some wonderful scenery,’ said Kit.
I opened my eyes. I had been asleep.
‘Where are we?’
‘In the car-park of the pub where we’re stopping for lunch. I’d better put the hood up. You never know in Ireland when it’s going to rain.’
‘But it’s gloriously sunny.’
‘That doesn’t mean a thing. You’ll see.’
While Kit fastened the canvas roof I took stock of our surroundings, yawning. The inn, which stood on the main street of a small village, was low, white-washed and charming. Behind it rose dark trees and, behind them, more mountains.
‘Look at those mountains. That pair like raised eyebrows.’
‘Rather as you might expect, they’re called the Paps of Anu. She was a goddess of fertility.’
‘Of course. I should have known. But, being a woman, it never occurred to me that they bore the remotest resemblance to breasts.’
‘Can we men help behaving like children in a sweet shop when you women are so delicious and desirable?’
I examined myself in the rear-view mirror. Neither epithet could with truth have been applied to me. ‘I’ll need a little while in the Ladies’ with soap and a comb to get the smuts off my face and my hair to lie down.’
‘You go ahead. I’m going to nip across to that telephone kiosk to let my host know I’m about to descend on him.’
‘Supposing he’s away? Or he already has guests?’ I still felt guilty about having disrupted Kit’s plans.
‘He never goes away. And the house is large and infinitely accommodating. Don’t worry. The Irish are tremendously relaxed about these things. Dean Swift once travelled into the country to have dinner with some friends at the house of a stranger. Swift was a difficult, acerbic sort of fellow, as I’m sure you know, and he grumbled all the way there, but he was so delighted with the welcome he received, the standard of cooking, the excellence of the cellar, the elegance of the house and the arrangements made for his comfort, that he stayed for six months. Ireland’s changed since those days but the Irish themselves are as gregarious as ever.’
‘I can’t imagine many people I’d want to have to stay for six months. Certainly not someone as exacting and irritable as Swift.’
‘I shall do my best to be neither of those things.’
Ten minutes later I emerged, much tidier, from the cloakroom to find Kit sitting at a table in the bar, smoking a Gauloise, a bottle of wine in a plastic paint bucket full of ice at his elbow. I sat beside him and took a sip of wine, which was not good but not bad either. The bar was fairly dark and despite the warmth outside a fire burned in the hearth. We were the only people there.
‘This is lovely.’ I meant not just the wine but the liberating feeling of being a stranger in an unknown land.
‘I hope it’s cold enough. The Irish mostly drink beer and whiskey. An ice bucket is an unknown quantity outside the big towns.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I think it’s all charming.’ I admired the artwork, several religious pictures in primary colours, a photograph of the Pope in a cardboard frame decorated with tinsel and a reproduction of Holman Hunt’s Light of the World.
‘T’ere ye are at last, madam.’ A waiter came over to our table and winked at Kit. ‘Worth waiting for, wasn’t it? Madam’s as lovely as a rose. And what’ll you both be eating now? We’ve chicken or fish. But I’m t’inking the fish is a little past its best. I don’t say it’s off exactly but it’s got a smell on it I shouldn’t care to bring t’rough the house.’
It was the first time I had heard the famous brogue in its native setting: th pronounced as t and s preceding a consonant softened as in ‘pasht its besht’. It was beguiling.
We decided on the chicken and I asked for a glass of water.
‘I suspect the fish doesn’t exist,’ said Kit when he had gone. ‘Only he wanted, in a true Irish spirit of hospitality, to have an alternative to offer us.’
‘Really? How friendly and kind. Rather different from the English attitude, isn’t it?’
‘The Irish and the English have little in common. Except that neither nation is celebrated for its food. If I were you I’d have cheese instead of pudding. There isn’t much you can do to ruin a piece of good Irish cheddar. The last time I ordered apple pie in a country pub it was brought to my table in its cardboard box to reassure me it wasn’t a cheap homemade effort. The waitress kindly squirted the blob of cream from the aerosol can in front of me. You can understand it, really. When the majority of the population once lived on potatoes and buttermilk anything from a shop seems like luxury. The white tags on tea-bag strings are known as “wee glamours”.’
‘Not really?’ I laughed. ‘I think that’s delightful.’
Kit smiled at me. ‘I must say it’s cheering to be with someone who’s so ready to be pleased.’
‘I expect I sound idiotic. It’s just that recently things have been rather … difficult. This seems so different. It’s a relief to have left it all behind.’
