“Because your mother told me you’ve lost weight, and I said to her, Helen, he’s doing a job, the boy is doing ajob, of course he’s lost weight, a man loses weight when his mind is occupied, you and I both know that from the seventy-eight tour when I ate nothing but crisps and apples.”
“Dad. You sent me an emergency message.”
“I did, my love, yes, I did, I’m coming to it.”
Beauchamp closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. Vidal, beside him, had begun to walk slowly enough that a pensionerwith a shopping trolley could have overtaken him without breaking stride.
“So,” Hunter said. “You remember Martin?”
“Which Martin?”
“MyMartin. Martin Greaves. Been doing my teeth since nineteen ninety-six, did that thing with the veneer when I bit through a beer bottle in Amsterdam.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Martin has a son.”
There was a pause. Beauchamp had, over thirty-six years, learned to be extremely suspicious of this particular pause.
“Dad.”
“Gorgeous boy. Twenty-seven. Works in the cyber. You know. Computers. One of those jobs where nobody can tell you what they actuallydo, only that it’s terribly important, and they get paid for it in a way that makes the rest of us look like we’re being had. You know the type.”
“Dad.”
“Straight shooter, Hendrix. Straight as a die. Martin’s boy has always known his own mind. Came out at fifteen, did it at the dinner table between the soup and the lamb, Martin says he didn’t even put his spoon down for it, just said,Dad, I’m gay, pass the salt, and carried on. Now that’s a young man with —”
“Dad.”
“— presence of mind. Which I think is a quality you’d appreciate in a life partner. Is that what you young ones call them now? Or are you still comfortable with the term ‘boyfriend’? Maybe significant other?”
“Dad, I am atwork. Get to thepoint.”
Vidal made a delighted noise beside him, which Beauchamp ignored with every muscle of his face.
“The point, Hendrix, is that Martin and I were at his practice yesterday, I was in for my usual cleaning.Veryimportant, Rix.Have you arranged for yours this year? We got to talking, the way one does, about our boys. And Martin said that his Trevor had been on that app, you know, theapp, I forget the name of it, the gay one, not the one with the sheep.”
“Dad.”
“He’s had a terrible run of it, Hendrix, just an appalling run. The last one apparently had been three years into a marriage and hadn’t mentioned it! And Trevor had said to Martin,Dad, he’d said,I’m done with these city men, I want a proper man, a man who does a proper job, the sort of man who knows how to change a tyre, and Martin, bless him, looked at me over the hygienist’s light and said; Hunter, my Trevor would get on like ahouse on firewith your Hendrix.”
Beauchamp came to a complete stop on the pavement. “What the fuck have you done, Dad?”
“Language, my boy. So I showed him your picture. The one from the regimental do, you remember, the one where you look particularly dapper. Of all your brothers, you’re the one that really takes after me.”
“Dad, please tell me you didn’t.”
“Well, Idid, love, because you’re a very handsome boy and Martin is a man of taste and his Trevor has standards. Martin took a photograph of the photograph on his mobile and sent it there and then to Trevor, and Hendrix, my boy, my darling boy, I have given Martin your number and he has given it to Trevor, and Trevor is going to ring you.”
There was a pause.
“Today,” Hunter added.
“Dad, what thefuck.”
“Hendrix. Language.”
“What thefuck, Dad?”
