He looked up and said, ‘Sure. It’s in your diary.’
‘Can I cancel? I mean, can we do it another night? Something’s come up.’
Andy looked irritated. ‘Well, OK, if you must. What’s come up? Is there a problem?’
‘No,’ I said. I felt a little awkward. ‘Actually, some friends have asked me out to supper and I seem to have double-booked myself.’
He stopped looking irritated and started to grin. ‘Friends, Wilberforce? What is this friends business?’
Now it was my turn to be irritated. ‘I do have friends, you know.’
‘First I’ve heard of it,’ said Andy, cheerfully. ‘No, go for it, Wilberforce. Lighten up. Have a social life for an evening. We’ll do our thing some other night.’
I arrived at Hartlepool Hall at eight, and Horace opened the great hall door almost before I had tugged the bell pull. When he saw me he inclined his head, as he had before, but this time smiled as well. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me.
‘Good evening, Mr Wilberforce. Lord Edward and Miss Plender are in the kitchen. If you will follow me, sir?’
We crossed the hall and found a staircase into the lower parts of the house. Horace opened a door on to a large and surprisingly modern kitchen. It appeared to be filled with every sort of device known to modern catering: ovens, microwaves, a double Aga, an industrial-sized dishwasher, racks from which stainless-steel pans hung, and endless glass cupboards around the walls filled with wine glasses and different dinner services. In the centre of the room was a square marble worktop, with a sauce boat and some chopped-up vegetables sitting on it. A bottle of white wine stood there, with two half-full glasses beside it. There was no one in the room. Then another door opened at the other end of the kitchen and Ed came in carrying some objects on a tin tray, followed by a girl. They were both laughing, but stopped when they saw me.
‘Wilberforce,’ said Ed, ‘you made it! Well done. Horace, bring Wilberforce a glass of champagne. Or perhaps you’d prefer wine?’
I was going to ask for a glass of water but decided that would not do, so I just said, ‘Whatever’s open.’
‘No, no,’ said Ed. ‘Horace loves opening bottles. Horace, please bring Mr Wilberforce a glass of champagne.’
The girl behind Ed came forward and put her hand in mine. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Catherine Plender. Ed always expects everyone to know everyone. He’s useless at introductions. ’ She was about five foot six, with thick blonde hair and grey eyes. I thought she was absolutely beautiful and I found that I could hardly look her in the eyes. I shook her hand. I felt myself blushing.
I was saved by Horace touching my arm and saying, ‘Champagne, sir?’
I turned and took the glass, turned back and saw Catherine Plender smiling at me. I think she knew the effect she had had on me, and was gaining some slight amusement from it.
Ed held up a small brown carcass and said, ‘Any objection to roast grouse, Wilberforce?’
‘I’ve never had it.’
‘Then now’s the moment,’ said Ed. ‘Darling, can you shove them in the Aga, and we’ll all go next door.’
‘It nearly wasn’t the moment,’ explained Catherine. ‘Ed only remembered to get them out of the deep freeze about half an hour ago. Then I had to show him how to defrost them in the microwave. Then I had to show him how to peel a potato. Then I had to show him how to open a bag of frozen peas. Now I’ve got to finish making the bread sauce. All this because he told me it was cook’s night off, so he would get our dinner.’
The moment of awkwardness passed and we all laughed, Ed in a slightly abashed way.
Then he said, ‘Bring your drink, Wilberforce. Darling, we’ll be in the library.’
I followed Ed out of the kitchen and after a few minutes’ traverse of the house we came to a large book-lined room, the rows of books broken at intervals by glass display cases containing various bedraggled-looking stuffed birds. A log fire was burning in a stone hearth and, although it was not a cold night, we wandered towards it and sat on the fender.
‘You’ll love grouse,’ said Ed enthusiastically, as we sipped our drinks. ‘Have you never shot them?’
I was surprised that he would think that I ever would have, but then I realised that Ed expected everyone else in the world either to be like him, fishing in Iceland or shooting grouse in the Pennines. Or else he expected them to be like Horace, opening bottles of champagne for other people when required.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I never have. I don’t shoot.’
‘You don’t shoot? Why ever not?’ asked Ed. Then he blushed and said, ‘I’m so sorry. Perhaps you’re one of those anti-what-do-you-call-’ems. Quite all right with me if you are. Nothing against racing, I hope?’
‘I’m not anti-anything, as far as I know,’ I told him. ‘It’s just that I’ve never done it.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Ed. He looked chastened, as if I had told him I was sickening for something. Then he brightened up. ‘Well, there must be something you like doing. Do you ride? Do you fish? You can’t spend your entire time with computers, I suppose?’
‘I don’t do anything like that,’ I said. ‘I don’t ever seem to have had the time.’
Ed Simmonds was gripped by this revelation. ‘Seriously?’ he asked. ‘You really mean that all you do is work?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ I said. I wondered why I sounded so apologetic.
‘That is absolutely amazing,’ said Ed. ‘I mean - how old are you. I’m twenty-nine. You might be a year or two older, I imagine.’
‘I’m thirty-four,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s not too late then. You need taking in hand, Wilberforce. I’m going to instruct you in the art of having a good time. You don’t mind, do you? It will be very good for you; and, apart from Eck, there isn’t anybody better than me for knowing about that sort of thing.’
‘That’s what my friend at work says,’ I told him. ‘He says I ought to have a social life.’
Ed started to laugh, and his laughter was so infectious that I began to laugh with him.
‘A social life? Is that what it’s called? Don’t worry, Wilberforce, we’ll make sure you have a social life.’
He was still laughing when Catherine came into the room. My eyes left Ed without my willing them to, and turned to her.
‘Dinner is served,’ she said, giving a mock curtsey to Ed.
‘That’s Horace’s job, you know,’ Ed told her. ‘Union rules.’
The next morning Andy wandered into my office with two cups of coffee and handed one to me. As usual he sat on the corner of my desk.
He said, ‘We beat forecast again last month. About fifty thousand above budget profit.’
‘Good.’
‘Good? It’s bloody wonderful.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose it is.’
He looked at me with curiosity. ‘Have you got a hangover?’
‘No, you know I don’t drink.’
‘Then what is it?’
I wished he would go away. I didn’t feel up to his banter this morning.
‘Didn’t you enjoy your evening with your friends?’ he persisted. What made Andy a good finance director was that he kept asking questions. I wished for once he would stop.
‘On the contrary,’ I said. ‘It was very pleasant.’
‘Good,’ said Andy. ‘It’s good for you to have a social life, Wilberforce, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of business. All play and no work, and all that sort of thing.’
I said nothing, waiting for him to go.
He looked at me again and said, ‘You met a girl, didn’t you?’
‘Well, there was a girl there.’
‘And did you manage to meet her? Or did you do that famous Wilberforce thing you do with our best customers sometimes, and pretend they are not in the same room as you?’
‘I met her,’ I admitted. ‘Look, I’ve got some work to do ...’
‘You met a girl.’
‘Yes, someone else’s girlfriend, that’s all.’
He started to laugh. ‘Really, you shouldn’t be allowed out on your own,’ he said. ‘You go out to dinner for the first time almost since I’ve known you, and you fall in love on your first outing.’ He went on laughing and then stood up, crooning. ‘Wilberforce is in lurve . . .’
He left the room, thank God. I was not in love. He was talking absolute rubbish, winding me up for his own amusement, as he liked to do. I had liked Catherine. She was very amusing, and lively, and probably a good deal brighter than Ed. Why shouldn’t I like her? I put my head in my hands for a moment and shook it to clear from my mind the image of her laughing as we sat in the kitchen last night, the muscles moving in her throat. Out with the images of Catherine laughing, in with the software, I told my brain.
Only she had looked, as she sat there, like an angel.
The next weekend I drove out to Hartlepool Hall again. Ed had invited me to have a shooting lesson, on clay pigeons. It was part of his grand new scheme of Educating Wilberforce. I knew, or I thought I knew, that I represented a diversion for Ed. I was his project. He was going to teach me to shoot, or to fish, or to ride. He was going to take me racing. There was even a half-promise that I could go and stay at the end of August at the family’s other house in the county, Blubberwick Lodge, to watch a day’s grouse-shooting. I still could not really believe that there might be a simpler explanation: that Ed Simmonds actually enjoyed the company of someone so different from his usual circle, and that he wanted nothing more from me than my company.
When I drove to Hartlepool Hall I half-hoped Catherine Plender would be there, and I half-hoped that she would not. When I arrived at the house, and Horace took me through to meet Ed, it was soon clear that she was not. I felt a strong sense of disappointment. Ed took me out through the back quarters of the house, through stable yards, and coach yards, and down a path behind the kitchen gardens, beside a long brick wall with a lean-to structure running along it.
‘This used to be our bakery,’ said Ed. ‘I remember it was still going when I was a child. It was fuelled by coal from our drift mine. The bread was baked in here and the heat was used to heat up water, which was taken away in pipes to warm the peach house. The bread was like rock. If you dropped your slice of toast you were quite likely to break something with it. I was so relieved when they decided to pack it in and I was allowed to eat Mother’s Pride like everyone else.’
We came out past the bottom of the kitchen garden, and into a field that fell steeply away to a small stream at the bottom. At the top of a grassy bank stood a man beside a contraption I realised was a clay-pigeon trap.
‘Morning, George,’ said Ed. ‘This is Mr Wilberforce I told you about. I want you to help him a bit with his shooting.’
‘Done it before, sir?’ enquired George.
‘No, it’s my first time,’ I told him.
‘Don’t worry, we’ll soon have you hitting clays just as good as his lordship there.’
‘Now then, George,’ said Ed, ‘I’m not sure if you meant that as a compliment.’
The keeper grinned and then bent down to open a leather gun case that lay on the ground at his feet. He opened it up, took out the disassembled parts of a shotgun and quickly put the gun together. It was a thing of beauty: a walnut stock, silver chasings on the sidelock, and a number one in gold on the barrel, showing that it was one of a pair.
‘Try that for size,’ George suggested, and showed me how to fit the gun tight into my shoulder and how to swing with it on to an imaginary target.
‘Don’t drop it, for heaven’s sake,’ said Ed. ‘A pair of those guns costs about fifty thousand to replace.’
After a lecture about gun safety I was allowed to walk down the slope with Ed and try my luck at shooting clays. George the keeper sat on a seat behind the clay-pigeon trap at the top of the bank, protected from any inaccurate or careless shot of mine by a sheet of corrugated iron.
‘Remember, Wilberforce,’ said Ed: ‘blot the clay out with the end of the barrel as it comes over you, and fire, all at the same time.’ Then he shouted, ‘Pull,’ and two black discs sailed overhead and glided harmlessly into the trees beyond.
‘Was I meant to shoot them?’ I asked.
‘Next time I shout, ‘‘Pull,’’ get your gun up to your shoulder and fire as soon as you like. Remember, you’ve got two barrels, one trigger for each.’
He shouted, ‘Pull,’ again and before I knew what was happening I had fired two shots.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘You powdered both of them,’ said Ed ecstatically. ‘Well done! A right and a left first time you’ve ever shot. I can’t believe it. Did you see that, George?’
‘He’s a natural, sir,’ shouted George from the top of the bank.
For the next hour they made me fire at clay after clay. I missed some of them, but hit a few.
We walked back to the house, leaving George to pick up the empty cartridge cases and undamaged clays. The sky was brightening, there were patches of blue everywhere now, and the day was warm. The dew was nearly off the grass. I felt pleased I had done so well, and Ed was delighted by my newly acquired shooting skills.
‘Well done, Wilberforce,’ he said. ‘I tell you what we’ll do. If we’ve got any grouse this year, you shall come out to Blubberwick with us one day in August. You can watch how it all works and, if you’d like, we’ll give you a minder and you can try a few shots yourself.’
A little while later we parted, as Ed was going to Thirsk Races for lunch and the afternoon, and I was going back to the office. I thanked him again, and he replied by asking me to come to dinner the following week. ‘Eck’s coming,’ he said, ‘and Annabel Gazebee. You’ll like Annabel. Oh, and Catherine, of course.’
I accepted. All of a sudden I had new friends, a new life. It felt very odd, but as I drove back to the office I decided it was a good feeling.
So began a long summer different from all the other summers I had ever known. That was the summer when I passed from being frozen in permanent adolescence, like some juvenile mammoth overtaken by the ice sheets, into a new state of being. As I thawed, new emotions overtook me, and new longings. Now, instead of begrudging time not spent in my office I began to count the hours, on those evenings when I had an invitation from one or other of my new friends, until I should be out of the office and once again driving up the little road that wound up the side of the hill. There were many such invitations. It seemed as if I spent every spare moment with people, no longer always on my own. Each time I went out to dinner, or to Sunday lunch, I met more and more new faces. I discovered after a while that there was an inner circle. Whether the circle had formed itself around Ed, or whether it had formed itself around Francis Black, I was not quite sure. The inner circle was Ed Simmonds himself, Francis Black, Annabel Gazebee, Catherine Plender and Eck Chetwode-Talbot. Sometimes we met at Eck’s large and rambling farmhouse, where Eck, who was a surprisingly good cook, entertained us. We dined several times at the Plenders’ house, Coalheugh.