doses of carefully-chosen poison.
The whole family took Echinacea against colds, regularly, although they still got them.
“It keeps her happy,” he said. “You know how mothers are.
And it’s cool by me if my mother’s unstressed. You know what I mean?”
Pat thought she did. “That’s cool,” she said.
And then he told her that he came from Aberdeen. His father, he said, was in the oil business. He had a company which supplied valves for off-shore wells. They sold valves all over the world, and his father was often away in places like Houston and Brunei.
He collected air miles which he gave to Wolf.
“I can go anywhere I want,” he said. “I could go to South America, if I wanted. Tomorrow. All on air miles.”
“I haven’t got any air miles,” said Pat.
“None at all?”
“No.”
Wolf shrugged. “No big deal,” he said. “You don’t really need them.”
“Do you think that Dr Fantouse has any air miles?” asked Pat suddenly.
6
They both laughed. “Definitely not,” said Wolf. “Poor guy.
Bus miles maybe.”
Inside the Elephant House it was beginning to get busy, and they had to wait to be served. Wolf suggested that Pat should find a table while he ordered the coffee and the sandwiches.
Pat, waiting for Wolf, paged through a glossy magazine which she found in a rack on the wall. It was one of those magazines which everyone affected to despise, but which equally everyone rather enjoyed – page after page of pictures of celebrities, lounging by the side of swimming pools, leaving expensive restaurants, arriving at parties. The locales, and the clothes, were redolent of luxury, even if luxury that was in very poor taste; and the people looked rather like waxworks – propped up, prompted into positions of movement, but made of wax. This was due to the fact that the photographers caked them with make-up, somebody had explained to her. That’s why they looked so artificial.
She turned a page, and stopped. There had been a party, somebody’s twenty-first, at Gleneagles. Elegant girls in glittering dresses were draped about young men in formal kilt outfits, dinner jackets and florid silk bow-ties. And there was Wolf, standing beside a girl with red hair, a glass of champagne in his hand. Pat stared at the photograph. Surely it could not be him.
Nobody she knew was in
But it must have been him, because there was the smile, and the hair, and that look in the eyes.
She looked up. Wolf was standing at the table, holding a tray.
He laid the tray down on the table, and glanced at the magazine.
“Is this you, Wolf?” Pat asked. “Look. I can’t believe that I know somebody in
Wolf glanced at the picture and frowned. “You don’t,” he said.
“That’s not me.”
Pat looked again at the picture then transferred her gaze up to Wolf. If it was not him, then it was his double.
Wolf took the magazine from her and tossed it to the other end of the table.
“I can’t bear those mags,” he said. “Full of nothing. Airheads.”
He turned to her and smiled, showing his teeth, which were very white, and even, and which for some rather disturbing reason she wanted to touch.
“Your name,” said Pat to Wolf, as they sat drinking coffee in the Elephant House. “Your name intrigues me. I don’t think I’ve met anybody called Wolf before.” She paused. Perhaps it was a sore point with him; people could be funny about their names, and perhaps Wolf was embarrassed about his. “Of course, there’s nothing wrong with . . .”
Wolf smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “People are often surprised when I tell them what I’m called. There’s a simple explanation. It’s not the name I was given at the beginning.
That’s . . .”
Pat waited for him to finish the sentence, but he had raised his mug of coffee to his mouth and was looking at her over the rim. His eyes, she saw, were bright, as if he was teasing her about something.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said quietly.
He put down his mug. “But you do want to know, don’t you?”
Pat shrugged. “Only if you want to tell me.”
“All right,” said Wolf. “I started out as Wilfred.”
