ONE

Simon Milson had recently returned from a tour of duty as Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Jedda. He had been married and was now divorced, with a son at a Preparatory School in Sussex and a daughter who lived with his wife. He was tall and thin with a pale complexion, strong hair and a face which in repose had a look of romantic melancholy but often broke into a cynical smile. He was thought amusing by his colleagues, charming by his mother’s friends, and attractive by the secretaries in the office – all of which might have made his divorce seem strange had the rupture not happened in Jedda, where several diplomats had recently been abandoned by their wives.

He now lived alone in a flat in Pimlico. In the evenings he would sometimes dine out with his friends; but more often he would eat alone because most of those he had thought were his friends had sided with his wife. This treachery was something which reinforced Simon’s pessimistic view of human nature. Sarah, his wife, had been what was once called ‘the guilty party’ – running off to England with a young geologist she had met in Saudi Arabia, suing for divorce, obliging Simon to sell her his share of their house in Kew as part of the settlement; and now living there with her lover, keeping Simon’s children, and entertaining Simon’s friends.

He had heard from his sister – who had never liked Sarah – that these friends – these false friends – would justify their preference for his former wife not just by praise of her wit and her cooking, but by dark remarks such as ‘it takes two to tango’. He had also heard it said that behind his ‘superficial charm’ there was cruelty and coldness; that his handsome and youthful appearance and easy, sardonic sense of humour concealed a destructive cynicism, a self-indulgent melancholy, a calculating egoism: yet the only substantiation ever produced in these discussions of his character came from one of the circle who had stayed with the Milsons in Jedda, who told the story of how Simon had refused to speak to Sarah for a whole day because she had given him a broken fried egg for his breakfast.

For a time after the divorce Simon had gone out with other women, but it was only for form’s sake. Never quite as lecherous as a modern man is meant to be, the rupture with his wife had doused what remained of his desire. He felt angry with all women for the harm done to him by one, and looked upon their bodies as baited traps. There were plenty of unattached women of the right age who were happy to go out with him, but with icy courtesy he kept his distance. In time, of course, these ladies – even those as lustless as he was – felt injured that he did not make a pass; so to save himself the embarrassment, and the women the humiliation, Simon now spent most evenings eating alone in front of the television – fish fingers or fry-ups with the egg invariably broken.

For lunch he usually went to the Travellers’ Club in Pall Mall, which since his divorce – and without an overseas allowance – had become an extravagance but was necessary all the same to his self-respect. His father had worked hard in the dull business of manufacturing office furniture to give his son a good education – by which he had meant a public school and Cambridge University. He had been proud when Simon had got into the Foreign Office, and although he was now dead, it was in deference to his father’s wishes that Simon continued as best he could to lead the life of an English gentleman.

A club, like an umbrella, seemed to Simon a necessary appurtenance for this life. Perhaps because he had been serving abroad at the time, he had never been affected by the democratic spirit which had swept over English manners and morals in the 1960s, leaving dukes in jeans and debutantes in dungarees. He even looked askance at those of his friends in the Foreign Office who wore corduroy blousons in their spare time to demonstrate their commitment to the Common Market. Simon dressed as he had always dressed – in grey, pin-striped suits during the week, and in tweed jackets and twill trousers at the weekend. He liked to think that the people he mixed with – particularly those in the Travellers’ Club – dressed in the same way, and was therefore irritated, one day in the early summer of 1979, as he sat drinking a glass of vermouth before lunch, to see a man of around his own age wearing an open-necked shirt and a sky-blue suit.

The man was slim with blonde hair, and he had on his boyish face the kind of selfconscious, flirtatious expression which Simon associated with homosexuals. He therefore looked away from this offensive intruder just as the intruder raised his plucked eyebrows and crossed the room towards him. To his horror Simon realized that this technicoloured pansy had been in his house at school.

‘Aren’t you Milson?’ he was asked. ‘Simon Milson?’

‘Yes.’ Simon half-rose from his leather chair.

‘You probably don’t remember me. We were at school together.’

Simon stood up altogether. ‘Of course …’

‘Fifteen, no, almost twenty years ago.’ He spoke in a soft voice with a trace of an American accent.

‘Yes. You’re Hope, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. Charlie Hope.’

Simon did remember Hope, the pretty boy of his year, but he was reluctant to renew the acquaintance of someone in an open-necked shirt and sky-blue suit who, he now realized, was lunching with one of the Club’s better-known queers. It was not his style, however, to snub anyone so he listened as Charlie Hope babbled on as if it was only a month or so since they had met. He said he was in films or advertising or films for advertising and had just come back from Los Angeles where he now lived ‘on and off’. ‘And what do you do?’ he asked Simon. ‘Didn’t you go into the FO?’

‘Yes,’ said Simon. ‘I’ve been abroad a lot.’

‘Are you married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Really?’ He looked almost pleasantly surprised. ‘No one in LA stays married for long, but I thought that over here …’

‘The wave of the Californian future has even reached our shores,’ said Simon caustically, glancing at the naked throat of his former friend.

Charlie Hope laughed nervously. ‘Marry late,’ he said. ‘That’s my advice.’

‘And do you intend to take it?’ asked Simon with a trace of malice in his voice.

Charlie returned a bland, almost innocent smile. ‘Yes. I’m getting married in November.’

Simon winced in anticipation of some reverent description of a gay betrothal, but to his astonishment Charlie said: ‘She’s divorced too.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Carmen.’

‘Any children?’

‘No, thank God. I wouldn’t want someone else’s kids.’

‘And you’re actually getting married?’ asked Simon incredulously. ‘Is it back in fashion in California?’

Charlie blushed. ‘Not really, no, but it makes it simpler for her to come over here, and for me to go over there. You know, visas and that sort of thing.’

The effete old man who had brought Charlie Hope into the Club looked sourly at Simon, as if to say this conversation had gone on long enough; so the two school friends exchanged telephone numbers, although on Simon’s part this was only a formality. He had no intention of looking Hope up, nor did he imagine that his pin-striped suit would appeal to Hope’s laid-back life-style, but just before he moved away, Charlie dropped the transatlantic twang which he must have picked up in Los Angeles and said in just the tone he would have used at school: ‘I say, Milson, do you remember Ludley?’

‘Willy? Yes. Why?’

‘I’m going to see him.’

‘Where?’

‘In the South of France.’

‘What’s he doing there?’

‘Drinking. That’s why I’m going out. I got a kind of SOS.’

‘From him?’

‘No. From Priscilla.’

‘Is that his wife?’

‘Yes. I assume so. Unless it’s a case of Kenya.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Didn’t they used to say: “Are you married, or do you live in Kenya?”’

‘Did they?’ Simon did not understand what Charlie was talking about, but the host was restless and so was Simon’s stomach so he simply said: ‘Well give him my regards.’

‘You should go and see him. I think he’s short on friends.’

‘Yes, well, I will if I’m down that way.’ Simon smiled and moved towards the door. The others stayed in the bar while he went through to the dining-room; but as he left his table after lunch he saw Charlie Hope tête-à-tête with the old bugger over strawberries and cream, and noticed that he had been made to put on a tie.