passions in the other bedroom had been sated, and Graham felt a kind of peace. This was the life for him. . other people to do everything, their services adequately remunerated, every offloaded responsibility a financial transaction rather than a tangled mess of duty, bargaining and blackmail. He needed to live on his own. A service flat was the answer, with ‘little men’ responsible for the tedious functions of cleaning, decorating and repairs, little men who could be bawled out for any deficiencies in their contractual obligations. The excessive responsibilities of family life might perhaps be justified, speciously, by love; but when love had gone, they became no more than a form of exploitation.
Being away from Merrily and the children crystallised the thought that had been forming slowly over months or maybe years — that he had outgrown them, that mentally he had set them aside from his life, that they were not included in any projections he made of his future.
Recognising this fact gave him a sense of relief, the feeling of a decision reached.
But his repose was disconcerted by a flutter of fear. It was not the thought of the murder, whose shadow seemed now a source of strength rather than of panic, but the question of why Robert Benham had summoned him for the weekend.
The reason given had been for an opportunity to talk about work, specifically about departmental staffing and the rival claims of maintaining the existing establishment and making cuts in the cause of efficiency. But Graham understood Robert well enough to suspect a deeper motive. The Head of Personnel Designate had had ample opportunity — which he had used — to check the relevant files, and Graham did not flatter himself that his own opinions on the subject were going to change Robert’s intentions. No, there was another purpose in the invitation.
And though he could not yet define that purpose, the knowledge of its existence made Graham feel on his guard. He was not there to be consulted, but, in some obscure way, tested.
The nature of the test did not become clearer as the weekend progressed. Everything seemed very leisurely, Robert’s office abrasiveness smoothed. As a pressured executive should, he took the opportunity to relax. And though this, like all his actions, was a conscious decision, it did not seem forced. Graham, for whom constant comparison with his rival was becoming a habit, felt himself by contrast tense and unnatural.
The communal day began round ten with a large breakfast. The time Tara spent in America showed in the frizzled bacon, pancakes and scalding black coffee.
Then came the brief tour of the estate, including the identification of the paddock as a potential helipad. Work was not mentioned, though Robert had to take a couple of calls which obviously concerned the affairs of Crasoco. One of the calls involved his checking some facts stored on the office computer and Graham tried to keep his mouth from gaping as Robert produced a small briefcase, dialled through on the telephone, set the receiver on two rubber pads and had the information printed out. ‘Bit of a lash-up,’ the younger man apologised when the transaction was complete. ‘I’m going to get a proper terminal rigged up when I have a moment.’
Graham gave what he hoped was a knowing nod. Then there was a call from Tara’s London agent.
After that, Robert switched on the Ansaphone and drove them down to the local pub. ‘Feel lost if I don’t get my Saturday lunchtime drinking,’ he announced as they set off. It seemed out of character, an unexpected heartiness; maybe, Graham hoped maliciously, an overconscious attempt at being a man of the people.
But no. At the pub Robert was obviously well-known, more than a weekender imposing himself on a rural community. He seemed to have a social mix of friends, with whom three rounds of drinks were consumed. Graham, having missed earlier cues, offered to buy the fourth round, insisting that he felt like another. Few of the group wanted more, but having made his statement, he felt obliged to buy himself a fourth pint, along with the couple of halves that were all the others demanded.
Four pints were more than he was accustomed to and more than he wanted, but he had committed himself. Half-way through the fourth he had to go and pee, which felt like another admission of failure.
When they left the pub, Robert, who seemed unaffected by the alcohol, said they’d drop Tara off at the cottage. ‘She’d better start cooking. Doing her Chinese number for us tonight.’
They, meanwhile, would go down to Bosham and have a look at ‘the boat’.
When Tara was dropped, Graham felt obliged to go into the cottage for another pee, and had to ask his driver to stop twice more on the way down to the boat’s mooring so that he could relieve himself by the roadside. Robert made no comment, but Graham had a feeling of points lost.
There was no
First they went to the quay and got into a rubber dinghy, which Robert rowed expertly round to the mooring. The slapping of water gave Graham an unpleasant queasiness in the stomach.
Robert kept up a flow of sailing information to which his guest only half listened. He knew nothing about boats and had never had much interest in them.
‘Hope to get a deep water mooring in time,’ the expert confided. ‘Have to watch the tides here, she’s grounded when it’s low.’
Graham nodded.
‘Tide’s ebbing now, so we can’t take her out. Have to wait too long to get back on the mooring. We’d miss Tara’s Chinese magic. Sorry.’
Graham, in whom the queasiness was shifting over to nausea, said he didn’t mind.
‘Tomorrow morning, though, with a bit of luck. If we make an early start. I just wanted to come down today and check everything’s shipshape. Boatyard had her out for an overhaul.’
‘Ah.’
‘Not that these fibreglass hulls need much maintenance. Just needed a bit of refitting.’
‘Oh.’
‘There she is.’
He pointed ahead. The boat was called
Neatly Robert rowed up to the stern. ‘You hang on, make her fast, I’ll just open up.’
He leapt nimbly from the dinghy into the well of the boat, while Graham clung to the transom. The combined motion of the two vessels compounded his queasiness. Water splashed up in little spouts between them. Graham struggled to bend and tie the stiff nylon painter round a rail.
Robert, steadying himself against the lashed boom, moved forward to the cabin entrance. He reached into his pocket for a bunch of keys, selected the right one and opened the padlock. With a flourish, he pushed against the top hatch, which rattled on rails away from him, opening a little cockpit. Then he lifted out the vertical board and entered the cabin to stow it.
His torso emerged from the opening and he waved.
‘Come and have a look at her.’
Graham didn’t enjoy the leap and scrambled into the boat. He felt absurdly unstable standing up in the dinghy, and not much better on the boards of
‘Surprisingly roomy, isn’t she?’ said Robert as his guest lurched into the cabin.
It didn’t look roomy to Graham. Claustrophobia added to his unease. In the forepart four bunks were somehow crammed, shut off ‘when required for privacy’ by a thick curtain. The rest of the space, barely enough, Graham thought, for the two of them to turn around in, was ‘galley, dining area, everything else’. He was shown folding tables, seats that doubled as storage lockers, more overhead stowage and neat double gas rings behind a curtain recess. ‘Calor,’ said Robert, revealing the blue cylinder. ‘Hope the boatyard checked it was full. Tara’s cooked some wonderful meals here, you know.’
Graham gave yet another nod and grunt of apparent interest. He didn’t like it at all. The cramped conditions reminded him of a holiday with his parents when they’d rented a caravan near Hunstanton. He had been in his teens, too large for such enforced proximity. The holiday had been another example of Eric Marshall’s penny- pinching, and Graham remembered he had made a vow at the time that, when he had the freedom to choose, all his holidays would be in luxury hotels.
But the caravan hadn’t suffered from this awful rolling motion. With shame, he realised he was desperate to pee again, and had to disturb Robert, who was checking the free-running of a halyard, to ask what he should to about it.
