‘Adam,’ said Sophie, whose hand was on his arm. Why’d she been so upset to be described as ordinary? Getting things done, that was a compliment. As a radio producer, she held her station together. Lucy was staring at him with a dislike that astonished him. Margot called down to Cunnery to help her clear the soup bowls. Cunnery got up. Then M’Gurgan got up.
‘Do I have time for a fag outside before the next course?’ he said.
‘I might join you,’ said Lucy. The two of them headed off for the garden, carrrying their wineglasses with them. Melissa asked Sophie something and Sophie turned away from Kellas. Left by himself, Kellas picked up his side plate and weighed it in his hands and turned it over. The crockery was an attractive set of white china glazed with black line drawings by a post-Soviet caricaturist. Kellas clicked out a tune with the tip of his tongue on his palate.
There was an old man called Michael Finnegan/ He grew whiskers on his chinnegan.
Cunnery had bought the crockery from a famous Soviet kitsch restaurant in Moscow in the late 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union had made it possible for the cartoonist to celebrate the Soviet Union’s existence, and also to make money. Kellas had been to the restaurant: the crockery was expensive. He got up and went to the kitchen, asking if he could help, but the soup bowls were in the dishwasher already and Margot and the helper were starting to ladle stew onto dinner plates from a cast-iron casserole.
‘I’ll call the smokers,’ said Kellas. The stew smelled rich and fertile, like somebody’s happy ending. Kellas opened the back door and found himself in a small porch, made mainly of glass, darker than the kitchen and lighter than the night. He could see the shapes of Lucy and M’Gurgan on the patio, in their smokers’ poses, M’Gurgan holding the metal of the fire escape with one hand and his cigarette tip moving wide from side to side as he told his story, Lucy standing a few feet away, left arm across her chest and tucked in under her right elbow, taking her weight on one leg, head dropped back to blow a gust of smoke into the air.
‘Hey, tobacco lobby,’ called Kellas. ‘It’s time to eat.’ He waited until Lucy and M’Gurgan had put their cigarettes out and walked past him into the house before he went inside himself, closing the door behind him.
Kellas heard Betchcott and Melissa praising the stew to Margot. It was venison. The only reason Kellas had wanted to join the Iraq enterprise was in the hope of meeting Astrid there. He’d called
DC Monthly
to see if they were sending her, and where was the best
chance of bumping into her, in Baghdad, Kurdistan or Kuwait, but all they told him was that she didn’t work for them any more.
‘I did a fashion shoot deerstalking in Scotland a couple of years ago,’ said Betchcott. ‘Lots of fucking tweed. Gave all the models loaded shotguns. Look in their eyes, it was worse than giving cocaine, know? Plenty of that too. One of shot a fucking dog in the leg. Good shoot. The fucking spike heels on the carcass, it was classic. One of gave me a blowjob in the back of a Range Rover on the way down the mountain.’ Margot, Melissa and Sophie burst out laughing. ‘Did!’ M’Gurgan and Lucy turned away from their conversations and looked over. Sophie, Melissa and Margot were groaning and laughing and shaking their heads and demanding Betchcott name the woman, and he sat there with their faces reflected in his dark glasses, with his bold risking grin.
‘Worst thing was, could feel this little nose butting against my thigh when was down on me,’ said Betchcott. ‘Could tell had no septum left, about to collapse. Didn’t tell her. Shame, nice soft mouth.’
‘I can’t believe that you just said that,’ said Sophie.
‘Oh, Soph,’ said Melissa, through her laughing. Margot and Sophie had stopped. ‘It’s only a bit of ripe badinage. It’s what made English strong back in the Boswell and Johnson day, before the rot set in.’
‘Is that your next column?’ said Kellas. ‘Sanctity of family life and the lighter side of casual celebrity sex?’
‘What? I can’t hear you, Adam. You don’t speak very clearly.’
‘I didn’t realise we’d moved back to the eighteenth century already. That’s three centuries in two courses. We’ll be in the Dark Ages by the time the coffee comes round.’
‘You don’t like it when people are inconsistent, do you? That’s why you’re stuck in the middle of the middle class. You want to iron out all the peaks and troughs and flatten everyone to your level.’
‘Kids,’ said Cunnery.
Melissa ignored him. ‘It just breaks you up, doesn’t it, that I’m here at Liam Cunnery’s table and I’m enjoying myself. You can’t
bear it that I get on with working-class poets like Pat, and men’s men like Joe, and Marxists like Margot and Liam, and rich toffs like my fiancé’s family. Character transcends class, Adam. The only people I can’t tolerate are chippy, sanctimonious, bourgeois compy boys like you.’
‘Kids!’ said Cunnery, raising his voice and his hands. ‘Please.’
‘There’s more venison, if anybody would like some,’ said Margot.
Smiling broadly, Melissa got up and left the room towards the stairs, passing Kellas. As she passed, Kellas said, without turning round: ‘Bring your fucking demons to my door. I’ll wrestle them all.’ Melissa didn’t speak and they heard her feet going upstairs.
Kellas glanced at M’Gurgan and Lucy. Now Lucy was talking quietly to Pat while he ate, looking down at his food.
‘I do wonder,’ said Kellas to Cunnery. Cunnery raised his eyebrows. ‘About you having Melissa here. And Joe.’
‘They’re friends. It’s—’
‘Yeah, I know. I know. Only what it is – it makes me think about being a young reporter in magistrates’ courts. There’s the guy in the dock, the accused, with his hands behind his back, flexing his knees, with the scars on his cheek and the tattoos on his neck, looking straight ahead. And in front of him there’s two lawyers. There’s his guy, the lawyer who’s supposed to be defending him. And there’s the Crown Prosecution Service guy, the one who wants to have him banged up, wants to see he doesn’t get bail. They’re supposed to be on two opposite sides. One of them’s on his side, and the other is his enemy. And they’re all standing there, waiting for the magistrates to come in. And the guy in the dock sees the two lawyers, the one who’s against him and the one who’s for him, talking to each other. He sees they know each other pretty well. Then he sees they’re making jokes. They’re laughing. They’re friends. They don’t mean anything they say to the magistrates when they ask for bail or for bail to be refused. They don’t give a fuck about whether he gets bail or not. They don’t care about him. It’s only a game.’
‘You’re not in the dock, Adam,’ said Cunnery.
‘It’s your readers. They read you in
Left Side
and they read Melissa in the
Express
, or at least they’ve heard about her, and it sounds as if you really believe, as if it matters, as if there must be some outcome. A struggle between right and wrong, good and evil, and you’re on different sides. They don’t know you’re sitting down to dinner together at your table. As if it’s a game. Two teams in the same club.’
‘You went out with her, didn’t you? You shared a bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t agree with what she writes?’
‘It’s foul.’
‘So who’s the hypocrite?’
Kellas blushed. ‘I couldn’t help it. The right-wing ones are so dirty.’ Melissa came back into the room and sat down, not looking in Kellas’s direction. Sophie leaned across Kellas and asked Cunnery about Tara’s school. Kellas looked at Lucy and M’Gurgan. Both were sitting without saying anything now, looking down at their plates while they lifted food to their mouths, like an old couple in a restaurant who had no more to say to each other. Kellas was about to ask Lucy about her work when he realised that Lucy and M’Gurgan’s silence was single, shared silence, a shaking, dangerous one. Lucy put down her knife and fork quite suddenly as if she had remembered something and asked Cunnery where the bathroom was. She was a little out of breath. He said there was one on the first floor, but could she use the one at the top of the house instead so as not to wake Tara. Lucy went out and after a moment M’Gurgan got a text message to call his agent and apologised and went out into the garden.
Kellas declared a wish to switch to white wine, and said he could go to the kitchen to look for a clean glass. He said hello to the helper as he passed her. She was cleaning up. She didn’t say anything back. Kellas went into the porch. He could just see M’Gurgan climbing the fire escape to the first floor. Kellas went back to the dining room, walked past the table and out and began climbing the stairs. When he got to the first-floor landing he stopped and listened.
He heard what could have been a plastic cup of toothbrushes falling over and M’Gurgan snorting and giggling. He heard feet on a creaking floor. Tara’s bedroom doorway lay dark and open a couple of yards away. There was an alien smell of other people’s cleaning products. Kellas climbed the last flight of stairs to the top of the house. All the doors were open except one. Trying to move quietly, he walked towards it. He heard a tiny sound, which could have been a sound Lucy made at M’Gurgan kissing her while he touched her. Then he heard Lucy say, in a slow murmur: ‘Your wife could be listening at the door right now.’
‘Look at me,’ came M’Gurgan’s voice. ‘Just put your hand there. D’you like that?’
‘Hate it,’ said Lucy and laughed.
‘You’re not wanting me to stop, are you?’
Lucy drew in breath. ‘No.’
‘Did you grow up in the country?’
‘In Hampshire. Oh. Mm. Why?’
‘I was thinking about what the lassie says in a bit of Burns.’ They were both speaking very quietly.
Something made Lucy gasp and she said: ‘It’s a bit late for poetry now.’
‘It’s where the lassie says nine inch will please a lady. And then she says: “But for a koontrie cunt like mine, in sooth, we’re nae sae gentle; We’ll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine, and that’s a sonsy pintle.”’
Kellas walked away from the bathroom door, went downstairs and used the bathroom there. When he came out, Tara was standing in front of him, blinking in her nightie.
‘I’m sorry. I woke you up,’ he said.
‘It wasn’t you,’ said Tara grumpily. ‘It was that lady screaming upstairs.’
‘Oh, really? I didn’t hear anything.’
‘There was a lady and she screamed. Did you like my piano playing?’
‘Yes, it was lovely.’
‘Melissa thinks I should have my own band.’
‘How old are you again?’
‘I’m ten.’
‘All you need is to practise more.’
Tara’s face folded into itself like paper and she let loose an unfettered wail.
‘You see?’ said Kellas, squatting down and putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘You see what happens when people tell the truth? It’s nasty medicine. Come on.’ He stood up and took her hand. ‘Let’s go downstairs. All the grown-ups are telling the truth down there and I feel just like you.’ He heard the bathroom door open upstairs and he led the weeping Tara away and down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said when they reached the basement. ‘Lucy was in the bathroom at the top and I had to go.’ Tara ran down the table into the arms of Margot. Kellas sat down just as Lucy came in.
‘He said he hated my piano playing!’ wailed Tara.
‘Not in so many words,’ said Kellas. ‘I’m really sorry I woke her up.’
‘It wasn’t him! It was the lady screaming upstairs.’
Sophie looked at Kellas, and at Lucy, who seemed confused and out of breath, and not so pale as she had been. Sophie leaned close to Adam and whispered: ‘You could at least have come back a few minutes apart.’
‘I’ll take her, darling,’ called Cunnery to Margot. ‘You go and get the pudding.’
M’Gurgan came in from the garden and sat down.
‘Everything OK?’ said Sophie. ‘That was a long call.’
‘I thought he was quick,’ said Kellas.
‘Long enough for you,’ said Sophie. She looked angry.
‘Was he saying something about me?’ said Lucy to Sophie, nodding at Kellas.
‘The agent was on about the film deal,’ said M’Gurgan.
‘Is there a film deal?’ said Kellas. Too many people were talking and some difficult, rare cocktail of emotions was shifting inside him. His soul was being driven down, into some deeper place than he had known of, while his body tingled and felt strong and light and cold.
‘Some Hollywood big-shot has optioned it, but you know how it is, it’ll probably never get made,’ said M’Gurgan.
‘It bothers me about you that you didn’t have the patience to take her home and do it there, out of a child’s earshot,’ whispered Sophie in Kellas’s ear.
‘Did you have to tell Tara what you thought about her piano playing?’ said Margot, as she laid a piece of chocolate cake in front of Kellas. ‘She’s only ten.’ She sounded tired, long-tired, as if she’d been acting not-tired all evening and had just given up.
‘What did you say to her about me?’ said Lucy to Kellas. She was trembling slightly. Perhaps she was about to cry.
‘Nothing,’ said Kellas. M’Gurgan was excavating forkfuls of cake and shovelling them into his mouth.
Melissa came down the table, leading Tara by the hand. Tara climbed onto Cunnery’s lap and curled up there. He put his arms round her. Melissa looked at Kellas, opened and closed her mouth, shook her head and said: ‘God forbid that you should ever have children.’
Kellas looked down the table at Betchcott. Betchcott stared back, grinning. It occurred to Kellas that he hadn’t seen Betchcott smile until now. Betchcott wasn’t grinning at him, but grinning with him. You are just like me. Kellas put down his hand to pick up a spoon. A curious thing happened. Both his hands acted, and instead of lifting the spoon, they lifted the plate with the cake. Only by a couple of inches, before he put it down and rested his fists on the table. His senses dimmed and he began to follow a willed sort of dream where he got up and walked through the house and, in a small far room, came across Astrid, working, and she turned from her work and looked at him and smiled.
Kellas was distracted by a voice. He realised Cunnery was talking
to him, jigging Tara up and down on his lap, about whether America and Britain would invade Iraq, and what would happen if they did. He talked about oil, and imperialism, and Israel, and how cruelly Britain had behaved when it was master in Mesopotamia. He talked with confidence, knowledge and accuracy about the history of the region. After a while, when Kellas didn’t say anything, Cunnery asked Kellas what he thought.