The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger. David Nobbs

       We never said a word about Jack

      There were only two people in the world, one man and one woman, whom Sir Gordon Coppinger regarded as his equals. He had felt it about the man from the moment he first read about him. Garibaldi was his hero, his mentor, his example. He had felt it about the woman from the moment she laid her sword upon his shoulder. But there was also one person in the world whom he regarded as his superior. His brother Hugo – his elder brother Hugo. How important is that word ‘elder’. How irreversible is the luck of birth.

      Sir Gordon belonged in Canary Wharf, that upstart city outside the City. Hugo belonged in the City. Huge swathes of British history seemed to accompany him as he walked arrogantly towards the Intrepid Snail. Even the fact that he had been knighted seemed to Sir Gordon, in Hugo’s presence, to be a handicap. He was a man who had needed to be knighted. Hugo walked with the air of a man who has already been knighted by existence itself.

      The Intrepid Snail was situated on the ground floor of what had once been a bank. The walls were dark and their panelling was centuries older than that in the dining room of Rose Cottage. In its sombre recesses there had been placed sculptures of snails in varying degrees of intrepidity. The restaurant itself, however, perhaps in a forlorn attempt to persuade the masses to enter with equal intrepidity, consisted of rows of scrubbed pine tables, and looked like an upmarket works canteen.

      At one o’clock on this mild, windy Halloween day the masses had not been persuaded to enter. There were only two customers, middle-aged men in dark suits seated at a window table. They were leaning forward so that their heads almost touched and talking in such low whispers that they must either be indulging in deadly and important gossip or declaring a late flowering of homosexual love. The former seemed the more likely.

      ‘More gastropod than gastropub,’ commented Hugo Coppinger as his eyes took in the room in one brief glance. His well-cut suit bore not a trace of its cost. Its elegance was perfectly restrained. You would have sworn, if you hadn’t known him, that there was a woman in his life who had chosen his shirt and his silk tie.

      ‘It should be all right,’ he said with doubt in his voice. ‘It was slated by Giles Coren.’

      ‘I thought it was A.A. Gill.’

      ‘Him as well. It was slated by everyone. What do these food writers know?’

      The contempt which he poured into the words ‘food writers’ was pure Hugo, thought Sir Gordon. He didn’t know anyone who did contempt better than his banker brother. In the contempt stakes even Sir Gordon was an also-ran. And all this from a man born to humble stock in Dudley.

      A waiter approached with the air of a man who has been disturbed in the middle of a nap.

      ‘Have you booked?’ he enquired in a contorted accent that neither of them could identify.

      ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Hugo, ‘but perhaps you can squeeze us in.’

      Either the waiter had no sense of humour or he was deaf or he didn’t speak English or he had heard that remark five hundred times before. He led them, as they had known he would, towards the window table next to the whispering duo. Sir Gordon strode as erectly as he possibly could, striving for the extra inch that would place him on a level with his brother. Hugo let his shoulders sag just slightly, in order to hide that fateful inch. The ruse worked perfectly. Both men looked exactly five foot eight and a half inches tall.

      ‘Please!’ said Hugo. ‘We don’t want to sit near these people. We have matters of the utmost secrecy to discuss, and so, no doubt, do they. This is the City of London in crisis, man.’

      ‘You not want sit in window. Lovely view.’

      ‘It’s a disgusting view. I don’t want to see it. I want to go right over there, far from what our mother, mistakenly but nevertheless accurately, always called the maddening crowd.’

      Hugo plonked himself down at a table as far as possible from the other couple. The waiter, offended by having the table chosen by the customer, stomped off.

      On each table there was a single artificial red rose, standing in a glass vase shaped like a snail.

      The waiter emerged from the kitchens with food for the other table and the look of a man who was rushed off his feet. It must have been several minutes before he approached the two brothers. He handed them menus, and gave the wine list to Hugo, which irritated Sir Gordon.

      ‘Unusually quiet, is it?’ he asked.

      ‘No, sir. Always like this, Monday. Tuesday too. Wednesday, Thursday, a little more busy. Friday, you never know. Friday is unpredict.’

      ‘You do like chatting to people, don’t you?’ commented Hugo with just a trace of waspishness as the waiter ambled off. ‘The famous charm, overcoming even the reticence of a waiter who hates customers.’

      ‘I use it,’ admitted Sir Gordon. ‘I work it.’ He paused. ‘I think I despise it, actually.’

      He took the wine list off Hugo.

      ‘My turn, I think.’

      ‘I invited you.’

      ‘Irrelevant. We take turns.’

      ‘Fine. I accept graciously.’

      Sir Gordon had wondered if the menu would feature nothing but snails, but he needn’t have worried. It didn’t appeal particularly to these two men who could eat out anywhere at any time and were used to the best, but at least it wasn’t over-reliant on the eponymous molluscs, although the chef’s signature dish was snail bouillabaisse.

      ‘Snail bouillabaisse. What the hell is that all about?’ said Hugo. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. This French restaurant is not French. No Frenchman would insult their marvellous bouillabaisse in that way.’