Beauchamp watched Mercè turn a slow circle in her carrier and settle herself with her chin on her paws. “Sir, if I may. There’s a place not far from here that does an excellent burger. We could sit outside. I think the air would do you good. My treat.”
A bewildered smile pulled at one corner of Vidal’s mouth.
“Major, that is very kind. But I cannot possibly impose. You have already paid for Mercè’s check-up, and I will not have you paying for our lunch as well. I have some dignity left, you know. I am clinging to it by the fingernails, but it is there.”
“It’s not an imposition, sir. And it’s not a fancy place. Have you ever had Five Guys?”
“Have I ever —” Vidal sat up a little straighter against the window. “Major. I have had Five Guys. I will tell you a thing now, and you must promise me on your honour as an officer of the Household Division that it will go no further than this car, because if it gets back to certain quarters I will never hear the end of it.”
“On my honour, sir.”
“My friend Barnaby has becomebesottedwith the stuff. Truly besotted, Major, in a way that would distress his mother and bewilder his tailor. He has been ordering it on a frankly alarming schedule ever since he began conducting his sexual relations with Lex Murphy, the boxer. You will know the one I mean.”
Beauchamp knew the one he meant. The kiss between Lex Murphy and the Marquess of Ashworth at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, after Murphy had taken Morozov apart over ten rounds for the unified heavyweight title, had occupied most of the news cycle for a fortnight last autumn.
“I’m aware of the gentleman, sir.”
“Barnaby is so deeply in love with him that he has begun to eat hamburgers in cardboard containers without complaining about the grease. This is a man, Major, who once sent a bottle of Krug back at the Connaught because he detected a hint of cork. Now he is sucking malt vinegar off his fingers in a place with paper napkins. Love is a humbling thing…”
“It does seem to be, sir.”
“So yes. I have had Five Guys. I have, against every instinct of my upbringing, grown rather fond of it.” Vidal turned in his seat so that he was facing Beauchamp properly for the first time since the desk, and the smile had come back almost all the way. “I will accept your offer, Major, but only on one condition. You must allow me to repay you with a home-cooked meal. I will make you something proper. Something with garlic, and good oil, and a tomato that has been allowed to die a dignified death in the sun. Do we have an agreement?”
“We have an agreement, sir.”
“Good.” Vidal sat back against the headrest and laid one hand flat on the top of the carrier. Through the mesh, one yellow eye opened, found him, and closed again. “Driver, the Major will give you the address. I am, all of a sudden,ravenous.”
Chapter Six
Vidalfolded himself into the wrought-iron chair and let the silk of his robe fall across his knees. He had brought a glass of Albariño out with him to the garden and set it on the table at his elbow, where it had so far gone untouched. Mercè was inside on the sofa, refusing on principle to come out into the cold with him.
He thought about his father’s voice on the mobile earlier that day.
Carlos had begun with the courtesies, asking after Mercè before he asked after his son. Then, in the same even tone he used for press conferences and condolence calls, he had explained that the family accounts were frozen. The men in Brussels had drawn a line through the Montcada name on a list, and the line had caught the personal accounts along with the sovereign ones, and there was nothing, presently, that anyone in Geneva could do about it. The lawyers were looking. The accountants were looking.Mira, fill meu, això durarà.This will take a while.
Vidal had saidSí, papàinto the headrest of the Bentley because there was nothing else to say in the company of a driver and a Major. His father had gone on to explain that he could no longer count on the monthly disbursement that had landed in Vidal’s current account on the first of every month since he had turned eighteen. While their financial arrangements were being settled, he would have to live on what came out of the Sackville trust. This was a sum that would have struck most men of Vidal’s age as a small fortune.But you must be careful, my love. You have never had to be careful. I am sorry. I am so sorry that I am teaching you this lesson now and from so far away.
Vidal pressed the heel of his hand against his eye, and felt the first tear come.
It wasn’t the money that was bringing the tears out of him, because that was just an abstraction, a number on a screen. What he was mourning, sitting in this ugly garden in his beautiful silk robe, was the thoughtlessness of his former life. How he could look at a thing, decide he wanted it, and have it within the space of a breath without a single thought towards the cost crossing his mind.
The tears were flowing properly now, the way his grandmother had taught him.Cry, my love. Cry it all out now, because otherwise it will stay inside you and hurt you for thirty years.She had said it to him in the chapel after his great-uncle’s funeral when he was seven, and he had cried into the lace at her wrist until the front of her black dress was wet through.
He cried for the peonies and the sausages and the candles he had not yet bought. He cried for his father who was in a borrowed apartment somewhere off the Quai du Mont-Blanc, apologising into a telephone for a thing that was not his fault.
The tears slid down his face without sound and he didn’t wipe them away. Instead, he turned his face up towards the grey London sky and let the tears go where they wanted.
A shadow fell across him.
“Alright, mate?” Connor’s face was directly above his own, upside down, the angular jaw inverted, the blue eyes squinting down at him. His smile tightened at the corners when he took in the wetness on Vidal’s cheeks.
Vidal didn’t move to wipe his face. There was no point in pretending. He had been raised by men and women who cried at funerals and weddings, and the first ripe fig of the season. They would have been appalled at the English idea that tears were something to be hidden.
“Connor.” He tilted his head back a little further to bring the man properly into view.
It wasn’t a surprise to find him there. For the past week, Connor had been a fixture of Vidal’s mornings. He always found him out on the grass at the far end of the garden in his shorts, working through press-ups and sit-ups, while Vidal stood on the flagstones with Mercè under one arm and made conversation across the length of the lawn. By the third morning, Vidal had begun finding reasons to linger. By the fifth, he noticed that Connor was doing his press-ups rather closer to the flagstones than he had on the Monday.
Connor reached into his inside pocket and produced a handkerchief of white linen that he held out to Vidal. “Tough day?”
