Simon Brett - A Shock to the System

The dinner she cooked for them the first evening revealed no shortcoming in domestic skills, and an imagination that contrasted with Merrily’s predictable offerings from the Corden Bleu partwork.

Neither Tara nor Robert could have been nicer to him. To compound his malaise, Graham had the knowledge that it all came from within himself.

At the end of the meal, the talk moved to drugs and he brightened at the prospect of showing his cosmopolitan insouciance on the subject. Those rare and over-dramatised puffs of pot taken in Lilian’s Abingdon cottage would now stand him in good stead. Even though it was a good ten years since he had smoked, he spoke of cannabis with familiarity and enthusiasm.

As Tara produced the little bag of cocaine, he realised his mistake, but he had already said too much. His refusal to participate, a reflex born of Calvinist upbringing and the fear of doing it wrong, left him feeling gauche and immature.

He watched the others covertly, but it was Tara who held his gaze for the rest of the evening. He stared, with fascinated envy, at the neat, practised way in which she snorted the white powder and, later, the unambiguous intent with which she led Robert off to their bedroom.

As he lay awake in his single bed, Graham’s mind lubriciously translated every creak of the old cottage to his own disparagement.

And, once again, as was increasingly the case, the only thought that gave him strength and identity was the knowledge that he was a murderer.

He was woken on the Saturday morning by more creaking. It was probably just the complaint of old beams at the impertinence of central heating, but again he provided an alternative, diminishing interpretation.

The envy he felt was, however, qualified. He did not wish he had Merrily with him, her angular body by his side to be rolled over and enjoyed with comatose morning compliance. It was a pleasure to be on his own. No wife, no squabbling children to force him out of bed on some expensive errand of ferrying.

And no responsibility for the attractive surroundings in which he found himself. The guest bedroom had been recently decorated. The straight lines of white gloss on the window-frames gleamed. The wallpaper clung close and lovingly round the contours of old plaster. The white emulsion on the ceiling and brick chimneybreast was immaculately even. It was the work of a professional, another sign of the financial latitude that bachelordom allowed. Graham contrasted it with the hasty do-it-yourself efforts of his own home, the slight mismatches of wallpaper patterns, the brushstroke whorls on surfaces that should have had another coat, the scalloped outlines of windowframes that Merrily had attacked with her usual imprecision.

The guest-room’s one flaw, a breadcrumb edging of unpainted plaster around the washbasin, offered Graham no chance of ascendancy over his host. The basin was obviously such a recent addition that its installation was not complete; it was just a matter of time before ‘the little man’, obedient to Robert Benham’s dictates, finished the job.

The cottage had ceased to creak. Either its beams had adjusted to the change in temperature or the 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.