Chapter Twenty
Vidal had put Young to work grating cheese at the far end of the table, and Beauchamp was being permitted, for once, to sit with his coffee and contribute nothing at all.
“Young, my darling, you must grate more firmly than that. You are handling it as though it were an egg. The manchego has feelings, but it is not made of glass.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And not sir, Young, not at this hour. You are in my kitchen and you are wearing your civilian jumper. Sir is for later, when I am being a nuisance in the car.”
“Right you are, sir.”
Vidal let out a theatrical sigh and returned to the hob. Young, unbothered, kept grating at the pace he had started at. Beauchamp drank his coffee, watched the back of Vidal’s head, and didn’t hear a word of the domestic comedy unfolding a yard from his elbow.
He ate Trevor alive, Hendrix.
The sentence had been sitting in Beauchamp’s head for two days now alongside ‘I don’t like him, Rix.’
That was the one that kept him up last night.
His father liked everyone. Hunter had adored Julian within ninety seconds of meeting him, and was now best friends with Dan Manly, a thirty-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who had turned up at the barn three years ago to flog his copies of The Watchtower.
Hunter didn’t dislike people. It just wasn’t in his operating system.
And yet he’d flat out told him that he didn’t trust Vidal. Vidal, who had Hunter’s same galumphing puppy energy. If anyone in Beauchamp’s life was built to meet Vidal and vibrate in the same manically upbeat register, it was his father.
“Beauchamp.”
Vidal had turned from the hob with a wooden spoon held aloft, and Beauchamp understood, belatedly, that he had been asked a question.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m miles away.”
“I can see that. I was asking whether you wanted tomatoes in yours, or whether you were going to continue your English insistence on eggs that are not on speaking terms with any other ingredient.”
“Tomatoes are fine, sir.”
“Tomatoes are fine, he says. Beauchamp, you will at the very least show them some respect. These are not tomatoes that have known the warmth of the Mediterranean sun. These are watery English tomatoes that have been ripened under a fluorescent strip in a Kentish polytunnel, but they are doing their best, and they deserve to be eaten by a man who understands what they are aspiring to. Young! What say you?”
“I’ll have whatever’s going, sir.”
“There! Young is a man who knows how to be fed.”
Vidal turned back to the hob. Young caught Beauchamp’s eye over the grater and returned to the cheese without comment.
The thing was, Hunter had not been wrong. Vidal had walked into that restaurant and made himself the centre of their table’s conversation. Vidal had eaten Trevor alive and had done all of it in front of Hunter.
But I like him, Dad.
He had almost said it then, in the heat of the moment with Hunter. The words arrived without warning, but he’d managed to close his mouth around them. Across the kitchen, Vidal was watching him.
? ? ?
Mercè made it to the corner of Mount Street before her legs gave out.
She didn’t collapse so much as decelerate, her tiny claws clicking slower and slower against the pavement until she came to a complete stop beside a bollard and sat down.
Her tongue, which was enormous relative to the rest of her, hung sideways out of her mouth.
She looked up at Beauchamp expectantly. They’d formed a system of glances now.
He scooped her off the pavement before Vidal could begin the performance of distress that was already gathering behind his eyes. “She’s fine, sir. Just done for the day.”
“She is not done, Beauchamp, she is conserving herself. Mercè is a Mediterranean dog. She is bred for short, purposeful excursions followed by extended periods of horizontal recovery. She is not built for your English marches across the tundra.”
“We’ve done one block, sir, in Mayfair. There’s no permafrost in sight.”
“It’s been a long block.” Vidal adjusted the collar of his camel overcoat and fell into step beside him.
“A punishing block, by Cardonan standards. In Cardona, a walk of this length would be followed by a three-course lunch and a nap of no fewer than ninety minutes. You have brutalised my dog with your Anglican commitment to suffering.”
Mercè, settled in the crook of Beauchamp’s arm, had already closed her eyes. He scratched behind her left ear and she made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a deflating balloon, her bald flank pressing warm against the front of his jacket.
It was a clear Sunday morning of the sort that London managed roughly four times a year before remembering itself, and reverting to its watery greyness.
The pavements along Mount Street were empty enough that Beauchamp had allowed the outing without excessive negotiation, on the condition that Young shadowed them from the opposite side of the street.
Vidal had linked his arm through Beauchamp’s free one during the second minute of the walk, and Beauchamp had permitted this on the grounds that extracting himself would require dislodging Mercè, who had only just stopped trembling. He was aware that this reasoning would not survive scrutiny.
“Beauchamp.”
“Sir.”
“You are scratching her behind the left ear. She prefers the right.”
“Noted, sir.” He moved his thumb to her right ear. Mercè’s back leg kicked once.
“There. You see? She adores you. She has adored you since the night you arrived, when you held her at arm’s length and she repaid your stand-offishness by pissing —”
Beauchamp’s mobile went off in his jacket pocket in a sustained vibration that rattled against his ribs. Mercè flinched, her eyes snapping open, and let out a high thin whimper that cut the sentence out of Vidal’s mouth mid-syllable.
He fished his mobile out of his pocket, not needing to look at the screen. Hunter had been ringing at odd hours all week, outside his usual Sunday rhythm. Beauchamp rejected the call and slid his mobile back into his pocket in one motion.
Mercè was still whimpering. He shifted her higher against his chest and cupped a hand over the back of her head, as she buried her face into the gap between his collar and his jaw.
“That was your father.”
Beauchamp kept his eyes on the pavement ahead. “Sir.”
“Beauchamp, you must ring him back.”
“I’ll ring him later, sir.”
“You will ring him now. I will walk ahead with Mercè, you will have all the privacy the pavement allows, and you will tell that delightful man that you have received his call and that you love him very much.” Vidal had stopped walking.
He turned on the pavement to face Beauchamp.
“You know, I have been meaning to say. We must have him to dinner. I will cook. I will do the partridge, the one with the sherry and the figs. I have been craving an audience for that dish and your father is exactly the kind of man who would appreciate the effort. Tell me, does he eat game? Of course he eats game! He lives in Oxfordshire and probably shoots half of what he eats. He strikes me as a manly man. Beauchamp, ring him back this very minute and tell him he is to come to Mayfair on Saturday.”
Beauchamp’s stomach did an unhappy turn.
“It would be an enormous pleasure for me to spend more time with him, Beauchamp. He is the most interesting man I have met in this country to date. I want to know about the band, the records. This man has lived a life.”
“That he has, sir.”
“And you have been keeping him from me. I am beginning to take it personally. The man has come to London twice in three weeks and we have had one lunch, and on that occasion I was so busy entertaining Trevor that I barely got a moment with him. This will not stand. You will ring your father and you will fix it.”
Beauchamp had to get off this topic before Vidal started dreaming up sides for the partridge. “Sir…please, we need to talk about something important. It’s been a month and a half, sir.”
Vidal blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Since I started. The secondment is a three-month appointment. We’re halfway through, and once it’s up, the Palace will reassign me.
Which means we need to start thinking about your private security arrangements.
Your mother asked me to stay in the flat with you, and I’ve done that, but the arrangement was always meant to be temporary.
You’ll need a private contractor. Someone who can manage the day-to-day without relying on Crown resources.
It’s time for me to start putting names together, doing the vetting, making introductions. ”
Vidal had gone very still beside him. His arm was still threaded through Beauchamp’s, but had stiffened. “You are leaving.”
“I’m being reassigned, sir. There’s a difference.”
“There is no difference whatsoever, Beauchamp, and the fact that you believe there is tells me everything I need to know about the poverty of the English language when it comes to — no.” He pulled his arm free.
“No. We are not discussing this. Not today. Not on a Sunday when the weather is fine, and I wanted to take my dog for a walk with my favourite Major without talking logistics.”
“Sir —”
“I said no, Beauchamp.” He held up one finger. “This conversation is over.” Vidal turned away from him and walked three quick strides ahead until he drew level with Young on the opposite pavement.
“Young!” He called across the street without breaking stride. “Tell me something. Do you have a middle name?”
Young, who had been maintaining his cover successfully up to this point, looked up grudgingly from his mobile. “Sir?”
“A middle name, Young. A second name. The one your parents gave you because one was not enough. Do you have one?”
“Er…yes, sir. David.”
“David! An excellent name. And do you like it?”
“It’s…it’s all right, sir.”
Young’s eyes found Beauchamp’s over Vidal’s shoulder with the wordless plea of a man who had never had to deal with the full focus of Vidal’s attention on him. Beauchamp gave him the smallest nod, ride it out, and fell back a half-step, Mercè gone boneless against him.
Vidal kept up a running commentary for the rest of the walk, aimed exclusively at Young and Mercè, while Beauchamp carried the dog and said nothing.
By the time they reached the Mayfair building, his shoulders had tightened enough that he was going to need an ibuprofen and a lie-down.
Vidal swept through the front door without looking back at him, and Beauchamp followed at a careful three paces, Mercè’s weight the only thing keeping his hands occupied.
At the landing, Vidal turned towards the second floor. He held out both hands. “Mercè, please.”
Beauchamp passed her over. Vidal tucked her under one arm, and without so much as a glance in Beauchamp’s direction, walked to Connor’s door and knocked twice.
Connor opened it in a T-shirt and jeans, a tea towel slung over one shoulder. “Alright, sweetheart. Come in.” Vidal stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind him with a decisive click.
Beauchamp stood on the landing staring at the closed door for longer than he should have. Then he turned and walked up the stairs to the empty flat with Young.