“I have been keeping myself alive, James, which under the present circumstances ought to qualify as a Herculean labour worthy of —”
“I forbid you from ruining Major Beauchamp! Ilikehim, Vidal. I like Beauchamp very much. He was wonderful as Caroline’s equerry, which is precisely why I was the one who had him taken off the books so that he could go and help you get settled in like a civilised human being. Now I open my WhatsApp on a perfectly nice day and I find a photograph of him crouched on a rug, looking at you like you’ve personally hung the moon.”
“He was looking at thecupcakes, James.”
“He was not looking at the cupcakes.”
“How dare you! How dare the pair of you! I will not have my morning ruined by your filthy little insinuations. Major Beauchamp is an honourable, devoted, and exemplary man who is a credit to his country, and I will not sit here while you cast aspersions on the dignity of my Major.”
“Vidal.” Barnaby’s voice came in over the top of him, mild and amused.
“Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester.”
“He looks exactly like every single ex you’ve ever had.”
Vidal’s mouth, which had been opening for another attack against James, closed.
“I also know Beauchamp,” Barnaby went on, in the same easy register. He was trimming a cuticle on his free hand as he spoke. “He’s polite, he’s competent and restrained. Vidal, you’ve been falling for variations of this man since we were fifteen.”
“That is —”
“I can list them.”
“You willnot.”
“There was the rowing captain at Eton with the freckles. There was the Norwegian skiing instructor. The Carabiniere in Rome who arrested you for climbing the Trevi Fountain and who you ended up running away with for half a year. You still send him Christmas cards, don’t you?”
James was openly laughing now, a hand pressed to his mouth.
“Bash, you are being deeply unfair,” Vidal said. “I will admit, because I am a fair-minded man, that I have a historical fondness for a certain type. But the Major and I are not anything. We have a professional arrangement. He sleeps in the second bedroom because my mother bullied his commanding officer into agreeing to this arrangement.”
“Listen to me, Vidal. You’re in a strange mental state at the moment. You’ve lost your country, your father is in Geneva, and your accounts are frozen. I think that perhaps it’s not the best time for you to be spreading yourself thin between lovers.”
“He’s not spreading himself thin,” James said. “He’s just spreading.”
“James!”
“What?”
“I am onlyspreadingfor one of them, the pawnbroker. The one who looks like an extremely muscular Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “About that, Vidal,” Barnaby said. “How old is he?”
“Forty-four. Or thereabouts. Possibly forty-five, I have not asked, it would be vulgar.”
Barnaby sighed. It was the long, slow, put-upon sigh of a man who had been fielding variations on this telephone call since they were all in their late teens. “This is a horrible idea, Vidal…”
Vidal pressed the back of his free hand against his forehead and tipped his head against the pillows.
“Listen to me, both of you. I am going to say this once, and I will not be drawn into a Council debate on the matter, because I am a grown man and I have earned a degree of privacy in this lifetime. Connor is what Connor is, and we have an arrangement that suits us both. The Major does not see me in that way.He came home with two cupcakes for Adelina, with little pink candles in them, because I had told him about her last night when I was crying on the sofa and he had not known what to do with me. Do you understand what kind of man does that? He is —”
He realised, halfway through the sentence, that the small bright squares at the top of his screen had gone very quiet. Barnaby had stopped fiddling with his fingers and James had set his teacup down on the side table without taking his eyes off the camera.
“— he is agood man,” Vidal finished, on a slightly higher pitch than he had begun. “That is all I am saying. He is a good man and I enjoy his company. I am amused by him. I may take a certain pleasure in coaxing him out of his shell, because he has been buttoned up his entire life and somebody has to do it, but that is a thing I do with all of you English.”
“Mm,” said Barnaby.
“Do notmmat me, Bash.”
