A. Miller - The Faithful Couple

‘And such a pretty garden. Not yours, though. Never mind.’

Adam and Claire were selling up, cashing out. They couldn’t muster the surpluses that London had demanded, not the steeplechaser stamina nor the virtuoso chutzpah nor the money. London was spitting them out, north or east, to Essex or Cambridgeshire or Buckinghamshire, somewhere in the commuter belt, they hadn’t quite decided.

‘Nice clean bath,’ Patricia said. ‘I insist on a clean bath. Do these open?’ She pushed feebly at a sash window; it was paint-stuck and wouldn’t give. ‘They’ll need to get out, you see.’

‘Who?’ Neil asked, heaving up the panel for her.

‘Aesop. Aesop and Tallulah. They’re quite safe if they have a ledge or a parapet.’ She poked her head out of the window and peered down towards the front door and along the street. ‘All those sleeping policemen, they’re a plague. Still, nice light for the throne.’

Neil caught Claire’s glance before they realised that eye contact would be calamitous. She tried to swallow her laughter, disguising it as a warbled question. ‘Shall we see the other bedroom?’

‘Don’t,’ she whispered to Neil. ‘Please.’

Funny thing about the absurd: you could survive or ignore it on your own, but two made that impossible. Two made an audience, a confederacy, a secret.

‘Now, dear, this is much more like it,’ Patricia said. ‘They can shimmy down that roof and do their business in the garden there. Neighbours won’t mind, will they?’

‘Don’t think so,’ Neil said, straightening his face. ‘They’re very reasonable.’ Claire looked at the floor.

‘What do you do, dear?’

‘Wealth management. It’s a kind of fin —’

‘Yes, I thought so. He’s something in the City, that’s what I thought when I saw you outside. You’ll be moving somewhere bigger, I expect.’

‘Something like that,’ Neil said.

‘May I?’ Patricia said, gesturing towards the wardrobes. ‘Lovely. Lots of storage. Oodles. Will you have any more? If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Neil said. ‘Actually she wants me to get the snip.’

Keep a straight face and we can keep it going.

Claire fixed her eyes on the dressing table.

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you. You might change your mind. People do. Kitchen?’

Neil tried to meet Claire’s eyes again but she turned and hurried out. She had lost the weight that she put on with Ruby, Neil noticed. Her hair was still resplendent.

Patricia ran her texting finger along the kitchen counter and inspected it for dust. ‘They’ll need somewhere to sit down, of course,’ she said.

‘The cats?’ Neil asked. Claire spread a palm across her face.

‘Of course not. Not the cats. My grandchildren. I thought I explained. Yes, my son-in-law’s in the money business like you, dear, he’s away a lot — New York mostly, and lately these emergent markets, I’m not sure I’d put up with it if I were her, and between you, me and the gatepost I’m not certain I really trust him. Anyway I’m moving down to help a bit more. You know, after school, weekends.’

‘How old are they?’ Claire asked.

‘Eight and ten, little bit older than yours. Nice children. Bit spoiled. Bit noisy sometimes.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ Neil said.

‘Oh, it’s all right. The children are the main thing now, you see. We’ve sold the cottage — I have, I suppose. Now, this is lovely!’ She moved into the living room. ‘On the small side but lovely. Are these the original shutters?’

‘Yes,’ Claire said. ‘South facing.’

Patricia had a large mole on her cheek that matched Neil’s, he noticed, though hers was covered and advertised by a smudge of orange face powder.

‘Yes, I can see them bouncing around in here. But it isn’t much for the money, is it? And such a nice bath. Good luck to you both.’ She ran a hand across her pale hair and smiled. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, letting herself out.

Claire leaned against the closed door, burying her face in the crook of her elbow. Neil sat on the stairs. She looked up and they let their eyes meet. They wanted to laugh but the hilarity had passed. Neil felt a flutter of guilt, less over the old woman than for the fact of the confederacy, the temporary partnership that was somehow misaligned.

‘Drink?’ Claire offered again. The smile that he had once considered superior seemed, this evening, ingenuously hospitable.

Neil glanced at his watch and hesitated. He could still make Park Lane if he hurried. But he was here now. Surely Adam couldn’t be much later. ‘I’m sure he won’t be long,’ Claire added.

‘Go on then,’ Neil said. ‘Twisted my arm.’ His second, best chance to leave, and he turned it down.

Neil went through to the sitting room and scanned the bookshelves while she poured. Art books, history books, political memoirs, Adam’s bid to maintain his student-age idea of his intellectual self. There were too few books on Neil’s expansive shelves in Bayswater: some Rough Guides (Provence, Copenhagen, Istanbul, the last their intended, now aborted destination for that summer); some Ian Fleming novels; a few textbooks on finance and investment that Tony McGough had foisted on him. It was a caste affectation, Neil had always thought, this three-dimensional wallpaper, less a record of reading (he wondered how many of these books Adam had ever opened) than a signalling device or membership requirement for the upper-middle classes.

Claire came through from the kitchen bearing two full wine glasses and an open bottle of white. She set the tray on the coffee table. Neil took a glass and sat in the armchair, his arms resting perpendicularly in front of him.

‘He saw your man,’ Claire said. ‘At the consultancy. Alan somebody?’

‘He’s not really my man,’ Neil said. ‘I just, you know, know one of the investors. I put a word in, that’s all, really. Did they hit it off?’

‘It went okay, I think. He hasn’t heard anything yet, though. It would mean more money.’

‘Fingers crossed. I’m sure he — what’s that thing he says? — he spanked it.’

Adam’s career reminded Neil of whichever medieval king it was in O-level history who won all his battles but lost every war. All his paper distinctions and mandarin respectability had left him naggingly unfulfilled and, he had managed to confide to Neil, unexpectedly impecunious. He had a chance, thanks to his friend, to escape the Home Office for a private consultancy, where the work would be more varied and somewhat better paid. Money-wise, Adam was on his own, Neil knew. His parents’ house had been sold during the divorce, and had anyway turned out to have been mortgaged to its fake-Tudor beams.

‘It’s funny, I think the fact that it came through you, it complicates it. Do you know what I mean? Crazy, really, you’re his closest friend, the others have all…’

‘I know,’ Neil said. ‘I understand.’ He was pleased to be able to dispense this favour to Adam.

‘You boys,’ Claire said.

By contrast Neil’s had been the sort of mish-mash career that in another era would have connoted failure, but in his implied the perpetual, shark-like motion of success. He had quit Farid at the start of the previous year. Farid wanted the tenants of a retail development that he owned to overstate their rents in his paperwork, thus inflating the value of the building so he could borrow more against it. He deputised Neil to lean on them. Nothing to worry about, Farid assured him, the genuine rents would catch up with the fictitious ones soon. Up, up and away… It was inducements, not threats or anything more sinister, which Neil was supposed to distribute. Farid’s bankers, distracted as they were by his World Cup and Grand Prix tickets, were unlikely to spot the ruse. Neil had baulked. He walked out and into Rutland Partners, an investment fund for HNWIs: High Net Worth Individuals. Tony McGough was his new boss.