Nicholas Searle - The Good Liar

promised Betty.’ He holds out the orange carrier bag as evidence.

‘She said she’d like to borrow them.’

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‘Oh yes,’ says Roy, looking at him steadily.

Stephen places himself on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward,

elbows on thighs, jacket still on despite the heat, ready to leave.

After a pause Roy asks, ‘Your work going OK?’

‘Fine,’ replies Stephen. ‘It’s going well. I’m on my way to a meet-

ing with my supervisor, actually.’

‘Hard taskmaster ,is he?’

‘He’s all right, Gerald. Keeps me on the straight and narrow. I

need that.’

‘I can see that,’ says Roy, and they fall silent.

‘What is it exactly you’re studying?’

‘The Jacobite Rebellion,’ says Stephen eagerly. ‘Specifically John

Graham, his role in the instigation of the movement and his influ-

ence on the Fifteen and the Forty- Five.’

‘Really?’

‘It’s a pivotal period in our history, with the Hanoverian succession and the struggle between Scottish Catholicism and Presbyterianism.’

‘Very interesting I’m sure. I never was one for history. Not the

academic type. What’s the point of looking back? I ask myself.

What’s done is done in my humble opinion. You’ll never undo it.’

‘But you may begin to understand it.’

‘Oh yes. I suppose so. I don’t mean to knock it,’ says Roy. ‘I bow

to your greater knowledge. Just not for me, that’s all. All that living in the past.’

The clock ticks, measuring the distance between them.

‘Oh well,’ says Roy, ‘each to his own.’

‘I’d better be getting on,’ says Stephen. ‘I said I’d be at Gerald’s by six.’

‘ Righty- ho,’ says Roy, and turns to the window again. In his head Stephen has already left.

3

The beginning of autumn, as is customary after a summer whose

occasional promise failed to materialize, is perversely fine and

warm.

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Roy ventures out for a stroll, to get out of the house. Betty has

commenced her fussy cleaning routine. The racket of the vacuum

cleaner and the disruption of his having to move his feet while trying to sit in peace with the newspaper are usually enough to stir him.

She picks up items, sprays, dusts and tidies away the detritus of his existence, splashes water in invisible places and flushes the lavatory, all the while humming with tunelessness and cheerfulness in equal

measure. He cannot bear a repeat of the excruciating mini- lecture on the toilet habits of ‘little boys’ to which she once subjected him.

He felt almost sorry for her, she was so embarrassed, poor thing.

So he has mumbled that he will get out from under her feet and

leave her in peace, and now shuffles his way across the cobblestones in shambling discomfort. Only once he is out of sight of the house

will he be able to pick up his feet and quicken his pace.

It is a real effort, but a necessary one, to convey this message of infirmity. It has demanded thought, planning and occasional

self- denial to suppress that reflex urge to vigour. But this way is in his interests, and Betty’s too. They know their places. Betty is far better off contentedly managing the household and its quirks, preparing his meals and keeping everything sanitary. This is what he

has aimed for.

For the moment. His ambitions range somewhat more adventur-

ously than simply securing the ease of someone else catering to his needs. It’s a neat trick to pull, to be sure, but he also wants one last punt, one final heart- stopping session at the roulette table. And he thinks Betty is the one to enable it. The cessation of purposeful

activity rankles, and Betty can – inadvertently of course – help him scratch the itch. There will be a series of delicate balances to manage. That is his forte, he thinks fondly.

He is now some distance from the house and nearing the dark

passageway that gives on to the pedestrian area. He feels it is safe to move faster. But just as he does so he finds he has to slow again. His heart is pounding, he is breathless and he feels vaguely nauseous

and faint. He reflects that perhaps he is not in the tip- top condition he likes to imagine. He is no longer of an age for bravado. He tot-ters on, somewhat disorientated.

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In the Little Venice Coffee Shop he orders a cafetière and a slice

of chocolate cake smothered in cream. This is his haven. He has few indulgences, but decent coffee is one. Not many places in England,

let alone in this small cathedral city lying nicely out of sight and out of mind in the Wiltshire wilderness, have the competence to purchase good Arabica beans and produce something palatable from

them. This is one, and it has the gentility of good service too, solicitous but with a spine of efficiency. When the coffee arrives he sighs, closes his eyes and breathes the aroma. If he suspends disbelief

sufficiently he can imagine that he is sitting in a cafe in Vienna or in a well- upholstered Konditorei in some bourgeois, complacent German town. All German towns are of course bourgeois and

complacent, he thinks. He can imagine, but only briefly, and is soon brought back to dog- shit England. Maybe sixty years ago, he thinks; more like seventy, and the rest. He unfolds his newspaper and is at peace.

At last he has gone out. It seems the only way to rouse him from

that seat in the afternoon is to start to clean. She occasionally has to resort to leaving the house, for fictitious tea with fictitious

friends, or an imaginary shopping errand, so that she can compose

herself, bring her heart back to near normal and find the right face again.

He has his routine. He rises earlier than she does. Occasionally

she is woken by his movements as early as six, as he clatters in the kitchen preparing his cup of tea. Then, after an hour or so, she hears him slide across the floor and clump slowly up the stairs. He remains in bed for a further two or three hours before reappearing.

This is a good thing, since it provides her the opportunity to start her day at leisure. She can go into the small bathroom and, while

she is running her bath, clean the toilet and the area of vinyl floor around it. At the outset this task made her gag. How could one elderly man spray his urine so indiscriminately across the surfaces yet apparently be so oblivious? But she has become inured to it. Roy has proved impervious to her requests to develop strategies that either 18

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deal with the problem after the event or avoid it altogether. He

simply looks at her uncomprehendingly and says nothing.

Still, this is a small price to pay in the greater scheme of things, she tells herself, as is the full range of his idiosyncrasies. Though the idiosyncrasies – altogether too pleasant a term, she thinks – are accumulating into a tidy stack, she continues to put up with them

for the longer- term benefit.

She will bathe and take a leisurely breakfast before Roy reap-

pears, having shaved. He will sometimes have laid waste the

bathroom once more with his ablutions. She knows to ensure that

the newspaper is at hand on the small kitchen table and he will cast a sceptical eye over it while she busies herself with his breakfast. It took several mornings of his opening and slamming cupboard

doors cluelessly for her to realize that it is easier this way. He will take the toast from the plate while giving his attention to the broadsheet he holds deftly in his left, slightly trembling hand at reading distance. From time to time he will make an acerbic comment