Peter Dickinson - Death of a Unicorn

‘That’s all over,’ he said.

I looked up.

‘No time for that sort of thing. Not any more,’ he said.

‘He does them incredibly quickly.’

Mr B gave me his toad look, pulled the mustard pot towards himself, took the spoon and began to smear parallel yellow lines on the table-cloth. I watched, shocked. There was something sacred about clean white linen, about the columns of folded table-cloths in Mrs Hamm’s cupboards at Cheadle, some of them stitched with my great-grandmother’s initials, as part of her trousseau, and therefore new in 1876, but still perfectly good thanks to the systematic rotation of the columns. Probably they’d all had mustard spilt on them over the years, but Mr B’s deliberate smearing was different. Each time he drew a line he reduced the space between it and the one before.

‘Our relationship with time is changing,’ he said. ‘We think of time as a constant, but it’s not. It is an accelerating process. In the Middle Ages . . .’

He drew a line on the table, a foot back from where he’d started.

‘. . . it might be a century between one serious change in society and the next. It made sense to plant oak trees.’

He began to move the spoon slowly across the rows, an inch above the cloth.

‘By the industrial revolution the gap was a generation, by the First World War a decade. Soon we will stop thinking in years and think in months. It affects us all. When our cities were built we invested in a hundred-year future, with sewers and roads and bridges and warehouses that would last. What businessman today will invest in a ten-year future?’

‘I’ve got a friend—the man you rescued me from at that dance, as a matter of fact—who says he’s going to be a millionaire by the time he’s forty.’

‘Perfectly possible, provided he remembers there is no future and therefore no past. The only time is now.’

‘What’s it got to do with what Tom Duggan writes?’

‘He is writing for here,’ said Mr B, pointing to a space two mustard-lines back.

‘A lot of people probably still think they are living there.’

‘Do you watch the television?’

‘We haven’t got one. There’s a set at one of my friends’. They can’t tear their eyes from it.’

‘Exactly. Your people who you think are living in the past are bored with the past, without knowing it. They will move on, all of a sudden, leaving Duggan stranded.’

‘In that case, why did you buy the paper?’

He swung round and beckoned to a waiter, then pointed to the mess on the cloth. The waiter took a clean napkin from the empty table next door and spread it over the mess, blotting it out. But I could still feel it was there, shocking, between the snowy layers.

‘Why did I buy Night and Day?’ said Mr B when he’d gone. ‘Have you surfed ever?’

‘Brrr, no thanks. I’ve watched people doing it at Brancaster but it takes a north-easter to get the waves up. I don’t see the fun in waiting around in a wind that’s come from Finland so that you can lie on your turn in the water and let a wave push you ashore.’

‘In Barbados we have learnt to do it on our hind legs. It is a healthy activity. You should come to Barbados and try.’

‘Oh, I’d love to.’

I don’t think I spoke with any special gush. I liked England, and because of the war and problems afterwards I hadn’t been abroad much. Two seasons skiing, and bicycles in Normandy, that was all. A squall threshed along the river. The idea of sun and blue waves and warm beaches made my skin crawl with imagined pleasure. I saw Mr B looking at me with his pop eyes half hidden by lowered lids.

‘Will you come and live with me?’ he said.

Of course my heart gave a bump and I felt my eyes widen. I suppose I blushed, because I do. But in a funny way I wasn’t surprised, though I certainly hadn’t been expecting him to say anything like that. As I’ve said, I’d half expected it my first evening out with him, but then I’d come to the conclusion that he liked my company occasionally because I was young and amusing and had a bit of snob appeal, but he’d want somebody much more sophisticated for a lover. And if you’d asked me, when he wasn’t there, how I’d react to such a proposal, I’d probably have said that my chief problem would be trying to hide my disgust at the idea. But he was there.

‘Be your mistress, you mean?’ I said.

‘If you choose to put it that way.’

‘How long for?’

Now he did the smile.

‘Hard to say,’ he said. ‘Nina left me after two years to marry a farmer in Mull. I kicked another girl out after six weeks and she tried to sell her story to the press.’

‘Tried?’

‘Stick to the point.’

‘You know I’m a minor?’

‘Until the tenth of August. I have considered that, but I would like your answer in principle.’

I thought about it. No, I didn’t, but I felt I had to pretend to. I could have said no—he hadn’t made it seem difficult. I looked at the sodden willows and two swans on the dark water for about ten seconds.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘In principle.’

‘You don’t want a day or two to think it over?’

I shook my head. Now I was shocked, astonished, frightened. It was him knowing my birthday. It meant he’d been thinking about it in his cold way. The name of the town we were in crossed my mind and that made me go scarlet. He was watching me and raised an eyebrow.

‘I wouldn’t have guessed you liked puns,’ I said.

‘I don’t . . . oh, I see. If it will set your mind at rest I hadn’t intended to make the suggestion this evening. But you looked so delicious at that moment . . .’

‘It was thinking about Barbados.’

‘We won’t be going there for some months, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t mind. What shall I call you?’

‘My first name is Amos.’

‘Does anyone call you that?’

‘Only my mother.’

‘Is she still . . .’

I could have bitten my tongue off. I don’t think a muscle or line in his face changed but I could feel he was hurt and furious. I reached across the table and took his hand. It was as small as mine, but dry and hard.

‘I haven’t had any practice,’ I said. ‘I’m bound to be clumsy at first.’

He squeezed my hand, turned it over, looked at it and let it go.

‘I’m an ugly little man,’ he said. ‘Try not to remind me. But I am not yet fifty.’

‘You are the most exciting person I’ve ever met.’

He patted my hand and pushed it away.

‘I want to talk about ways and means,’ he said. ‘I implied just now that I was able to keep my affairs out of the newspapers, but there are, of course, limits. We may have reached them. The combination of British prurience and British snobbery may prove too strong.’

‘I wouldn’t care.’

‘You would, when it happened. Furthermore there is your mother and Cheadle Trust.’

‘She can’t do anything except persuade the Trustees to cut off my allowance, and that’s a pittance. It’s all entailed and I inherit when I’m twenty-five.’

‘So I gather. But I hear your mother is a formidable woman, and in any case there is no point in creating problems where they can be avoided. I myself am not anxious for publicity. I am not a particularly rich man, though like your friend I intend to be. I operate by persuading richer men that they can trust me to use their money to their profit, and if they were to see my name all over the gossip-columns their confidence might be less. So what I propose is this: you will have to move out of Charles Street . . .’

‘I couldn’t possibly afford anywhere you could bear.’

‘Let me finish. I will of course pay the rent, but you will need to explain where the money is coming from. Todd tells me that these little pieces you’ve been doing are very popular with readers . . .’