Chapter Seven
They had got as far as the corner of Mount Street and South Audley when Mercè, who had been trotting at Vidal’s heel on stiff determined legs, sat down on the pavement and declined to take another step.
Vidal stopped mid-sentence. He had been halfway through a theory about the decline of the British strawberry, which had started over a smoothie he’d bought somewhere near the Bayswater Road, and he abandoned it without ceremony to crouch down in his camel overcoat and peer at his dog.
“Mercè, mi amor. What is this? Have we given up?”
Mercè declined to meet his eye.
“Major.” Vidal straightened and turned to him with both palms spread in appeal. “She has walked the full circuit. It is further than she has gone in a month. We cannot ask for more.”
“No, sir.”
“You will carry her.”
It was not a question. Beauchamp bent, scooped the dog up with both hands, and settled her against the front of his jacket where she fitted neatly into the hollow between his lapel and his shoulder. She sighed once, with great feeling, and closed her eyes.
“Good.” Vidal fell into step beside him, close enough that the sleeve of his coat brushed Beauchamp’s at every second pace.
“Now. Where was I? The strawberries, Beauchamp. The strawberries are a crime against the concept of the fruit. They look very fine, I will give them that, they are uniform and red and gleaming in their little plastic punnets, but when you put one in your mouth it is like eating a piece of damp cotton wool that has been shown a photograph of a strawberry.”
Beauchamp made an affirmative sound at the back of his throat and walked. He was committing several protocol breaches every thirty seconds of this journey, but at least he’d rejected the offer of a smoothie. He couldn’t walk around with his hands occupied, because then who’d carry Mercè?
He was walking a principal through a public thoroughfare without a secondary officer in line of sight.
Protocol specified that he walk behind and to the left of Vidal, but at the top of Mount Street Vidal had taken his elbow, steered him into the configuration he wanted, and declined to let go until Beauchamp was level with him.
He was also carrying a Chinese Crested in his left arm in full view of Grosvenor Square, which was not a specific prohibition in the manual but was, he felt, implicit in the spirit of the thing.
“— and the tomatoes, Beauchamp, do not even start me on the tomatoes, because we have agreed that I am not to be started on the tomatoes before teatime on a weekday, but the strawberries are the thin end of a very grave wedge, and one day when you are old and I am older we shall look back on this period as the moment when —”
Beauchamp’s mobile buzzed against his ribs.
He shifted Mercè into the crook of his right arm and fished the handset out with his left. The screen read DAD. Underneath it, three words: EMERGENCY CALL NOW.
His father’s last EMERGENCY had concerned a discrepancy in the colour of the eggs being laid by his Oxfordshire chickens.
Hunter had spent forty minutes on the mobile unpicking his own failures in avian husbandry, at the end of which Beauchamp had been required to point out that two of the hens were the sort that laid white eggs, which Hunter had bought from a woman at a farmers’ market in 2019 on the recommendation of a session drummer who had once toured with Fleetwood Mac.
The EMERGENCY before that had been a wasp in the house.
But there was also the possibility of a true emergency here. After all, his father was now sixty-six and living alone in a converted barn with three flights of stairs, exposed oak beams, and no close neighbours. One day, that EMERGENCY might involve a broken hip following a fall.
He thumbed the green ‘ACCEPT’ button.
“Dad? What’s wrong?”
Beside him, Vidal’s head turned sharply. Beauchamp saw, in his peripheral vision, the man’s dark eyes go soft.
“Hendrix,” said his father, warm as anything. “Darling boy. Are you eating?”
“Dad…”
“Because your mother told me you’ve lost weight, and I said to her, Helen, he’s doing a job, the boy is doing a job, 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 pensioner with a shopping trolley could have overtaken him without breaking stride.
“So,” Hunter said. “You remember Martin?”
“Which Martin?”
“My Martin. 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 actually do, 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 at work. Get to the point.”
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. Very important, 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, the app, 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 a house on fire with 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, I did, 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 the fuck.”
“Hendrix. Language.”
“What the fuck, Dad?”
“I love you, my boy.”
“Listen to me. You cannot just give my number out to people! Who even is this Trevor?”
“He’s a lovely boy, Hendrix, he really is, Martin showed me a picture and he’s got beautiful eyes. Gentle eyes that you could really gaze into. I love you.”
Beauchamp held the mobile against his ear for two full seconds after his father had rung off, on the principle that if he lowered it immediately Vidal would take it as an invitation to start jabbering away.
When he’d braced himself sufficiently, he lowered it, slid it back into his jacket pocket, and resumed walking with Mercè adjusted against his shoulder. He kept his eyes fixed on a point eight feet in front of his own shoes.
Vidal walked beside him in perfect silence for all of five seconds before his curiosity exploded out of him.
“Major. Your name is Hendrix.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hendrix Beauchamp.” Vidal said the name slowly, like he was tasting it against his tongue. “Hendrix Beauchamp. I must sit with this. I must give it the reflection it deserves. Your father, I take it, is a musical man?”
“He had a career in music, sir.”
“Had a career.” Vidal’s expression warmed. “You must tell me everything. But not now: we have more pressing matters. Trevor!”
“Sir, I am not going to discuss —”
“Major. Major.” Vidal caught his elbow and slowed him in the middle of the pavement, quite serene about the pedestrians obliged to step around them.
“Listen very carefully, because I am about to do you the great kindness that no one in your chilly island nation will do, which is to give you my opinion. You are going to receive a telephone call today from a man named Trevor, and you are going to have to decide how to respond to him. I am going to help you.”
“I’d prefer if you —”
“First question. Are you free on Saturday?”
“Sir.”
“Are you free on Saturday, Beauchamp? This is a logistical enquiry. It is not a trap.”
“I am on duty, sir.”
“You are on light duty on Saturday evening, because I have told the Private Secretary’s office that I intend to be in for the night and require no security presence past eight, as I shall be washing my hair. You may take Saturday evening. Consider it a gift.”
“Sir, with respect, I’ve not agreed to —”