Martindale belly-laughed without enthusiasm. He kept the pub in the village, the Red Lion, and had enough cash-flow problems not to need the burden of his customers' difficulties.
'Say nothing, admit nothing. If you have to say anything tell them the dog ate the receipts. Come on, Frank, don't bring your troubles in here. Trouble-free zone, this bar. Come on…'
Frank looked into the thin face with its dour smile. He had been nursing a pint for half an hour. The regular gang was in and there had been whispering before the landlord had come over with the cloth to wipe the spotless table. It had been good of Martindale to fetch him up to the bar.
Vince cuffed his shoulder.
'Not right, not that you've got the tax man on your back, not you. What about a game of arrows, Frank? Tell you, each time you go for treble twenty you reckon that's the tax man's face. Last time they came sniffing round me, I told them to piss off. Oh, I can get down and do that chimney of yours next week, don't think I'd forgotten…'
Vince was the local jobbing builder, a one-man band. The previous November's big storm had shifted some of the roof tiles, and he'd gone up a ladder in the wind and rain with the sure-foot grip of a mountain goat. If he'd waited for the storm to blow out, the rain would have been in the attic and dripped into their bedroom, and it would have been a hell of a big job. Vince talked too much, played at being a hard man but wasn't.
It embarrassed Frank that he'd brought his problems into the pub. If a guy was asked here how he was, he was supposed to say he was fine. If he was asked if he was well, he was supposed to say he was in good shape. Everyone there had problems, came in for a drink to forget them.
There was a short, awkward silence, then Gussie said, 'Shall we throw together?'
'Why not, Gussie?'
'You've an education, do you know about Australia, Frank? I'm thinking of going there, next year. What a team, you and me you take first throw. If it dries up a bit, a couple of weeks, I'll be down to dig your garden you should be thinking of getting your vegetables in.'
Gussie passed him the darts. He was a big, strapping, amiable youth. Thick as a railway sleeper, not the full shilling, but he kept his mother and the younger children on the pittance he earned as a labourer in the piggery. He propped up the bar most nights and talked to the older men as a bread-winning equal. He dug the vegetable garden in less than half the time it would have taken Frank, and charged too little. Nice boy, but he'd never get to Australia.
Paul took the empty glass from his hand.
'No argument, my shout be a pint, right? You've had one quiet one, time now for three noisy ones right, Frank?'
'That's very kind of you, Paul, thanks.'
'I'm thinking of co-opting you on to the village-hall committee, you being an engineer. Won't be any problem, they'll do what I tell them. Place'll fall down if we don't do something, and I'm the only one with the wit to realize it. I reckon we'd work well together, being friends. Of course, I'd take the main decisions. You up for it?'
'Be pleased to help.'
Paul was not the chairman of the village-hall committee, or of the parish council, but his way always won through because he was better briefed than any of the others. His life was the village, as had been his father's and grandfather's. Inquisitive but harmless. If his ego was massaged, he gave his friendship without condition, and Frank Perry, former salesman, could manipulate vanity with the best of them. He even quite liked the man.
He played darts with Vince, Gussie and Paul through the evening. He didn't talk much, but let the conversation ripple round him and warm him.
'You heard, Paul, what's happened at Rose Cottage?'
'Heard it was under offer do you know what they were asking?'
Gussie chipped in, 'I was told it was over a hundred grand, and there's more to be spent.'
'The last thing this place needs is more bloody foreigners no offence, Frank.'
'We only want people here who know our ways and respect them.'
As the games were restarted, as the pints kept coming, Frank threw more accurately it was his home, his friends were the publican, the jobbing builder, the piggery labourer, the big man of the village-hall committee and the parish council… God, he needed friends because there was a blue-jacketed pamphlet hidden among his papers where Meryl wouldn't find it. He and Gussie lost both their games and it didn't matter to him.
He stepped out into the night.
They were going their own way, and behind him Martindale was switching off the bar lights. His friends shouted encouragement to him.
'Good luck, Frank.'
'Keep smiling.'
'Frank, I'll be in touch about the hall, look after yourself.'
For a year he had been without friends. From the time the last of the minders had driven away, left him to his own devices, until the day he had come with Meryl and bought the house on the green with a view to the sea, twelve endless months, he had been without friends. He had lived in a one-bed roomed flat in a new block a couple of streets away from the centre of suburban Croydon. In all those months, trying to wear his new identity, he had never allowed himself more than half a dozen words on the stairs with any of the other tenants. They might have been good, kindly, warm people, but he hadn't felt the confidence to test them. Fear of a slip, of a single mistake, had isolated him. The first Christmas had hurt. No contact with his son, he hadn't sent a present; no cards hanging from ribbons; no visit to his father and mother in the Lake District for the New Year. Through that twenty-four hours he had sat alone in the flat and listened to the televisions, the laughter, the cheerfulness echoing up the stairwell, and he'd seen people arriving, arms loaded with wrapped presents. His company had been a bottle. When he ventured out to pubs as the evenings lengthened, he always took a chair and table furthest from the bar and the camaraderie. He had learned that he mattered to no one. He had sunk, the signs were clear enough to him, and it had taken a supreme effort to shake off the loneliness. He had started to read the trade magazines and look for small freelance work. The second company he'd visited had employed Meryl. He could remember, so clearly, that he had bounced away from the company's offices with a contract in his pocket and her smile in his mind.
He waved over his shoulder and their laughter, fun among friends, roared after him. He walked on and wondered where he would find an old wing-mirror to lash to a bamboo pole.
'What makes you think, Mr. Markham, that you have any of the qualifications required for modern banking?'
'I'm used to high-pressure work. It matters when I make decisions that I've chosen the correct option. I can work on my own, and I can work with a team.'
She sat wrong way round on the chair, leaned on the back of it, splayed her legs either side of the seat so that her skirt rode up.
'Balls, about 'high-pressure work', but the right sort of balls. Hit 'team', it's an emphasis word, they like that. Why, Mr. Markham, do you wish to walk away from the security ha, ha of safe civil-service employment? You could join us, you could be found unsuitable and out on your ear with your bridges burned. Why?'
'My present work, and you'll respect that I'm bound by confidentiality, has been challenging and responsible but, the nature of the beast, it's limited. I'm capable of spending more time in the fast lane. I don't expect to be found unsuitable.'
'Great, that's what they want, arrogance and they want the rounded man. Mr. Markham, what are your hobbies, recreations? Shit!'
It was the telephone.
'So, they don't want to hear about Herefordshire churches… No?'
The telephone stayed ringing.
'Hill-walking give them long-distance hill-walking, exploring the inner man. You can't move for bloody bankers on Snowdonia or Ben Nevis, for Christ's sake, and skiing.'
He couldn't ignore, any longer, the ring of the telephone bell.
'I'll field it.'
It was Fenton, opening with a caustic, savage quip about clock-watching. Had he gone on the stroke of five? He was to get back in, soonest. There was no apology for the time of night at which he was summoned back. He left Vicky. If he'd stayed longer she'd have killed him or lifted the skirt higher. He drove into central London, against
