Chapter Eighteen
Vidal had been at the kitchen table ranting for the better part of forty minutes, and Beauchamp was beginning to suspect that no power on earth could stop him.
Beauchamp turned the page of the security briefing he was, in theory, working through at the other end of the table. He had stopped reading some pages ago. He was sitting at the table to listen, and they both knew it.
He couldn’t get past the fact that Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester worked under the delusion that he could influence Vidal.
The other thing that struck him was that Barnaby knew about Connor, and the fact that Vidal was talking to his friends about Connor meant that this thing between Vidal and his neighbour had gone beyond the casual.
“Do you know what I said to him, Beauchamp? I said, Barnaby, ménage à trois, you absolute fucking hypocrite. Because Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester would not currently have an Olympic boxer in his bed were it not for me. He would be a monk, Beauchamp. A handsome, well-tailored, Olympic-eventing monk, lying alone in his enormous bed, reading a biography of Wellington. For FUN, Beauchamp! Do you know what got him there?”
“No, sir.”
“A glass dildo from Murano that I sent him as congratulations for winning his Olympic gold. It is the finest gift I have given anyone in my adult life, and now its beneficiary has the temerity to lecture me about my choices.”
Beauchamp’s mobile buzzed against the wood of the table, saving him from having to comment on Vidal’s dildo largesse. He glanced down without lifting it.
DAD: EMERGENCY CALL NOW.
He breathed out through his nose and rose from the table.
“Beauchamp?”
“It’s my father, sir. Do excuse me.”
He lifted the mobile and made for the doorway. Vidal, who had never read a room in his life, was on his feet and following before Beauchamp had reached the corridor. “What is wrong with him? Is it the chickens again?”
“Sir, I’d appreciate a moment.”
“You shall have all the moments you require, Beauchamp, in my company.”
Too tired to try to argue this point, Beauchamp thumbed the green Accept Call circle and brought the mobile to his ear. “You all right, Dad?”
“Hendrix, my darling boy.”
“What’s the emergency?”
“Now, before you start, before you get yourself in a state, I want you to know that I am perfectly well. No one has died, no one has fallen down the stairs, the chickens are in robust health and the eggs are coming through brown as God intended. However, I am in The City.”
Beauchamp stopped in the middle of the corridor and the dull throb behind his right eye began on cue.
“I am in London, Hendrix, I am at this very moment standing in the lobby of Claridge’s having a coffee that costs nine pounds, and I have come to take my boy out to lunch.
I have a table at one o’clock at that place in Marylebone you used to like when you were small, the one with the tiles, you remember, where they did the —”
“Dad. I’m at work.”
“You’re always at work, my darling.”
“That’s because I have a job.”
“Yes, I am aware. I’m very proud of this. But you have to eat, and I am here, and I am not here often, and I should very much like to sit across from you at a table for an hour and look at your face. That’s all.”
Beauchamp closed his eyes. “Dad, I can’t leave the flat. The principal —”
“Major Beauchamp. May I have the mobile, please.”
He felt Vidal’s fingers prise it from his hand. Vidal had it pressed to his own ear inside a heartbeat, already moving back down the corridor.
“Mr Beauchamp! Oh, Mr Beauchamp, what a delight, what a delight this is. My name is Vidal, I am your son’s principal, and I must apologise on his behalf for the extraordinary rudeness he was about to show you.
He was about to refuse you, can you believe it?
He was about to tell his own father, who has come all the way to London, that he could not spare an hour of his day for lunch.
I will not have it. The Major goes where I go.
We shall come to you. One o’clock, you said?
At the place with the tiles? We shall be there.
Yes. Yes. Of course. Mr Beauchamp, you are a treasure.
I look forward enormously to making your acquaintance. Goodbye.”
He swept the mobile away from his ear, pressed end with a triumphant flourish, and held it out at the end of his arm for Beauchamp to take.
“There.”
Beauchamp didn’t take his mobile back. He stood in the corridor with his hands at his sides and looked at Vidal, and said nothing at all for a count of three. “Sir?”
“Yes, Beauchamp?”
“His name isn’t Beauchamp.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My parents never married. His name is Morrow. Hunter Morrow. And I know that you’re my employer, but it’s really not up to you to make decisions like that for me.”
Vidal lowered the mobile a fraction. His eyes had gone very dark, and the theatricality had drained out of his face. “Beauchamp, your father has come to London.”
“I’m aware, sir.”
“He has come from Oxfordshire to see you. You cannot tell him no.” Beauchamp held his ground.
Vidal took one step closer. “If my father were in London this morning, Beauchamp, and if he had rung me to say that he had a table at Claridge’s for us, do you understand what I would do?
I would walk out of this flat in my dressing gown.
Nothing in this country would keep me from that table. ”
Beauchamp’s jaw set. He looked at Vidal, and he understood with immediate clarity that he was going to lunch with his father and Vidal.
The man had already clapped his hands together once, the sound of it bouncing off the parquet and the high ceiling, and was sweeping past him down the corridor with the mobile still held aloft.
“I shall change. I shall be ten minutes. Do not put on your brown suit, Beauchamp, wear the navy one with the open collar, and please for the love of God do something with your hair. You cannot meet your father with it parted as though you were eight years old.”
“Sir, I’ll go by myself.”
“We shall need to take Mercè, I cannot leave her in the flat for lunch, she is in one of her moods, and will hold the grudge.”
The door of Vidal’s bedroom shut behind him with a decisive click, and Beauchamp was left alone in the corridor.