Mr. Chartwell (12 page)

“I’ve organised this as a surprise for you, I hope you know,” Black Pat answered. “It’s not every day you get surprised with a barbecue … or by a barbecue.” He smirked at the lump in the pillowcase as it swung.

“What’s in there? Is that something else I own?”

“Nope.” Black Pat upturned the case. A small bald shape fell out, crudely plucked and gutted. Two legs showed it was a bird with a pair of oversized feet. He picked it up, dangling the bird by a naked wing.

Esther wanted to leap up but not enough to actually do it. “What are you going to do with that?”

“This,” said Black Pat, tossing the wing. The bird landed with a sizzle on the wire tray.

Esther inched over to inspect. “What sort of bird is that?”

“Not sure,” said Black Pat, now the chef, poking the bird onto another side with a stick, then drawing it back. Fat dripped into the flames and sparked. “It wasn’t flying when I got it, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t fly.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Near a pond, it was standing near the water.”

“What colour was it?” Esther made the beginning of a diagnosis.

“A bit white on the beak, mostly black.”

“Black Pat, was it a coot?”

“Coot.” He experimented with the sound of the word, finding it amusing. “A coot.”

“You’re cooking a coot for us?”

“Not us, you. I’m cooking it for you.”

The coot had performed a rotation, the wire tray uneven. It was about to topple from the grill, but Black Pat stabbed it back with his stick.

A selection of other corpses were piled discreetly farther up the lawn, all spatchcocked by that butchering mouth. Was that a heron? she asked him.

“Heron?” he repeated, no authority on bird breeds.

“How many birds did you kill?”

“Dum-de-dum,” Black Pat answered in a breathy song, ignoring her. Then finally, “Don’t worry, none you knew personally.”

Esther had a new thing to examine, a horse chestnut leaf next to the fire, the wide green paddles ready for service. Probably cooked, the coot was barged to the edge of the barbecue. Black Pat’s stick knocked it off. The coot rolled to a stop on the grass. Black Pat jabbed it onto the leaf plate. Trickier than expected. He punted it with a hind leg. Esther wouldn’t see. Yes she did.

“There, that’s for you.” Black Pat performed a medieval bow.

Unpleasant: “Just me?”

“Bon appetite.”

“Appétit,” Esther corrected.

Black Pat’s final correction was uninspired. “Bon eat-it-up.”

The coot’s heat had wilted the leaf. Esther drew it to her and a section ripped loose. The bird was revolting. She pushed a finger at the hot meat. She cleaned the finger on the grass. Feeling Black Pat watching her closely, Esther twisted a drumstick. The coot held together. Black Pat’s anticipating eyes gave her no alternative. She lifted the whole bird by its leg and dared herself to bite it. The drumstick went to her mouth and then retreated. She brought it back and then moved it away. Here it came, another try. No, hideous, it wasn’t possible.

Black Pat had wanted some gratitude. What he got was this babyish ingratitude. In a gesture of magnificent clemency he let out a little canine whine. It was an invitation for the drumstick. Glad to be rid of it, Esther threw the coot over. He blocked it with his neck and the coot did a wild rebound and lobbed into the bushes. Black Pat went after it, crouching in the flowers, mashing them beneath him with a green popping of stalks.

“Please don’t do that,” said Esther. “You’re destroying my plants.”

“Am I?” said Black Pat, the idea incredible. More stalks popped. A lunge from the waist did this on purpose, the bushes shaking and crushed.

“You
are
destroying them,” Esther said, the moody narrator.

“Am I?” Such an irresistible game. He ended it, emerging with a hiking shoe in his mouth.

The brown leather had split with age, old dirt caked on the sole. Black Pat pitched the shoe onto the barbecue. Wood collapsed
from the main frame in a flare of orange ashes. He moved around the fire and blocked her view.

“Whose shoe is that?”

“Mine, now,” he answered. A big sheet of smoke, the smoke of a blazing shoe, hit them. Esther shuffled from the smoke on her heels and hands. Black Pat used a stick to dig through the tangle of burning laces, the shoe cooked. A quick, thumping paw stamped out the embers and he lay with his back to her in the dusty trough beside the bench.

“Are you really going to eat a shoe?”

“Are you really asking?” It was an original and difficult pronunciation, mouth crammed. He pinned the shoe with his claws and ate with the pigging guilt of a thieving dog.

“Why are you eating like that?”

An ear rotated. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to eat in secret …”

Black Pat nudged himself round. He watched with the haze of his outer sight as Esther studied the shoe. And she recognised it in a wave of familiarity.

“… Black Pat, that’s Michael’s.”

He lowered his apologetic nose.

“You stole it from the shed?”

The shed was a gracefully rotting structure at the shady end of the garden. Padlocked, it contained the lawn mower and other tools, packets of fossilized seeds, and a stack of pots with the bloom of old terra-cotta. This shoe was from a pair worn by Michael. He had worn them when it rained, when he and his wheelbarrow had an engagement with manure; he wore them during autumn bonfires, laughing at Esther’s and Beth’s puckered faces as they braced for fireworks.

“You’re eating Michael’s shoe.” Esther’s voice ran with
warmth for the shoe. Her thoughts bucketed around the parameters of the coming anniversary. Black Pat was baiting her and she was afraid of the intention behind it. But then this was replaced by a type of flaccid affection. He was her disgusting companion. Company, it was company.

Oblivious, Black Pat clawed a morsel of leather from his teeth. He choked something up and then swallowed it down. He put his head on the ground. A gluttonous intake of breath made something catch in his throat with a
“Hyup!”
The cure was a hacking cough.

Esther stood up, the soles of her stockings brown with soil.

“Where are you going?” called Black Pat.

“To get a gin and tonic.”

“Can I have one?”

The joking hostility was only partly joking, the wound of Michael’s eaten shoe still red. “Why should I let you?”

“Because, because, because, because, because,” Black Pat said to the tune from
The Wizard of Oz
, speaking in a song, “because of the wonderful things I does.”

A curt response came from the kitchen doorway. “Everything you
does
is horrible.”

“Stop being,” Black Pat called after her with a rich grin, “so flirtatious.”

In the kitchen Esther made herself a drink. She selected the plastic watering can from under the sink for Black Pat, making a cocktail ten times bigger. Back in the garden she saw he had performed a vivisection on the shoe remains, taking it into separate parts and dealing them out in a fan of bits. A surgeon, Black Pat pored over each leather organ.

Esther’s toes scrubbed around, disturbing the display.

“Is that watering can for me?”

“No, me obviously.” Esther’s serious face was betrayed by a smile. Handing him the watering can, she said, “It’s absolutely ideal for you, admit it.”

A dubious solution, Black Pat took it anyway. He had drunk enough beer, the effect in him being an ambitious embrace of novelty. He pushed the nozzle down his throat, sucking at it like a foal, and bowled his eyes at Esther. The look was an exclamation mark, a victory for novelty. But he was serious when he next spoke.

“You can talk to me, you know … if you want.”

“About what?”

A cautious pause: “… About him.”

Michael? Esther said, “Why?”

“Because he was nice,” Black Pat answered. He heard himself. “He must have been.… You did marry him.”

Esther had this to say: “Yup.”

“So talk to me.”

A period of silence clipped past. “I can’t.” She said it again, to him and herself. “I can’t.”

Soft and ulcerous: “Esther, you can.”

And she practically did. But the hood came down. “Well, I don’t want to, so you’ll be waiting a long time.”

Black Pat was quiet for a moment, feeling the electricity that blossomed from the little casket of Esther’s chest. He lay there, feeling it. Then he said with a violating intimacy, “I can wait.”

7.45 p.m
.

“I
got this from the tree at the bottom of the garden,” Big Oliver said, striding through the French doors into the dining room. In an Olympic-torch hand he held an apple. “From the garden!” he repeated, looking at the apple as if it were the first on Earth. He took a bite and a chunk with core and pips came away. “Christ,” he said, sharpness pinching his face, “that’s
sour.
” The apple was abandoned on the table.

“I’ve had an idea,” Beth announced to the pages of last week’s newspaper.

“Oh yeah?” Big Oliver landed heavily on the sofa.

“Esther doesn’t want to stay with us, but—”

“She doesn’t? Did you keep trying?”

Beth chucked the paper to the floor. “It didn’t work, but I’ve got a plan.” She told him about Corkbowl. He was an intriguing
find, she explained, with excellent credentials; tall and charming. And as if being a tall charmer wasn’t enough, he could also potentially be a counterpart to some of her single female colleagues; she couldn’t think who, exactly, no, it wasn’t as though she had anyone in mind.…

“Cork what?”

“He’s only just started working at the library. I’m going to invite them both round to lunch.”

“You know”—Big Oliver was in discussion with the ceiling—“I feel like we’ve had this conversation before, literally yesterday, about you shoving yourself into Esther’s love life and it turning out badly.” He glanced at Beth. “Isn’t that weird?”

“No, it’s nothing like that, nowhere near anyone’s love life. This is an innocent meal with friends.”

“Friends like Cork man.”

“Cork
bowl
. I thought I would invite him as a precaution. He’ll force us to have fun.”

“Why wouldn’t we have fun?” A realisation. “Hold on, when are you planning to have this lunch?” Big Oliver groaned, the answer obvious. “Sunday? Oh, Beth.”

“So you see, having Corkbowl around will stop us moping.”

“Don’t you think we’re allowed to mope?”

“We all miss him, of course we do, but missing isn’t the same thing as moping.” Beth leant her head. “It’s been two years, Big Oliver. Michael would hate us being like this, Esther especially. And don’t think he wouldn’t give you a hard time for it.”

Big Oliver wasn’t convinced. “I’m still not really sure it’s a good idea.”

Beth weighed it up. “Rubbish, it’s a great idea. And anyway, what else is Esther going to do? At least she’ll be here with us.”

“But on
that
day, Beth? On the day of Michael’s … on his, you know.”

Beth’s foot went down on the newspaper and rustled it. “It might take Esther’s mind off it all—give her some relief, even if it’s only for a short time. I’m worried about her. She seems … I can’t explain it … she seems like Michael.”

“Michael?”

“Sort of. When he was moving into his … when it started on him and he …”

Big Oliver put an arm round Beth’s shoulders and jostled her. “Okay, okay, listen, what about if you talk to her about the lunch, just mention it in a casual way and see what she makes of it. You never know, I could be wrong and she wants to do it.…”

A pause of analysis. “You have been wrong before.”

“Frequently.”

“Constantly.” Beth was quietly persuasive. “You’re also an idiot.”

Big Oliver said, “That’s what they say in some circles.”

“And if you take advice from someone you believe is an idiot, who’s the bigger idiot.…”

“That’s what they say in every circle.”

A smile appeared and then amplified. Beth said, “So that means I probably should ask Es if the idea’s stupid before we totally disregard it.”

“Um-hm.” Big Oliver nodded in a gesture of measured consent. “I suppose we may as well get Esther’s verdict on our stupidity, because then we’ll have evidence that we are completely stupid, and we’ll be proved right.”

“Perfect, perfect,” said Beth, always a pervert for bad odds. “I love being proved right.”

1.20 a.m
.

“G
od in heaven, you stink,” Churchill said without looking up from his book. Lying in the hot bath his body was the rosy pink of a boiled gammon. The evening had gone undisturbed so far. And now the dog had clumsily reappeared near the linen closet. He reeked of alcohol and strenuous physical effort.

Tears of condensation wept down the night-blackened windows, the bathroom filled with steam. “We quite enjoyed your little hiatus,” Churchill said, turning the page. “I had expected you earlier.”

“I had another appointment,” Black Pat said, slurring his words and regretting the amount he had drunk. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“No need to apologise, you bushy popinjay,” Churchill said. “Your company is never much appreciated around here.”

Black Pat didn’t answer at first. Then said, “I had a barbecue to attend.”

Churchill turned to look directly at him, amazed, water sloshing over the tub sides onto the tiled floor. “That explains the stench of foul liquor, although I wouldn’t have thought it was very professional to drink on the job.”

“It wasn’t a job,” Black Pat replied. He sniffed delicately at Churchill’s slippers until Churchill’s book caught him on the side of the head.

Churchill said to the dog, “You’re telling me you were invited?”

He answered pretentiously, “I would hope so, being as it was my barbecue.”

The absurdity of it forced Churchill to smile. It was a tart, unwelcome smile. “Well, well, well.”

Black Pat went to make a pithy comment but caught one of his paws and pitched into the towel rail, dragging towels down over him.

“You’re drunk!” Churchill broadcast to the room, watching from over the rim.