of speed.
Sir Gordon entered his card details.
‘If I add a tip, does it get to you?’ he asked.
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Good. Good. The question was purely hypothetical, of course.’
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘You will be. I’m not giving you a tip. You don’t deserve it.’
‘We closing in two minutes, sir.’
‘Excellent news. The outside world is so much more appealing.’
Sir Gordon noticed that Hugo had noticed that he had abandoned his habitual charm. He really must abandon it more. The gratification you could feel from being rude was brief, briefer even than the gratification of sex, but it was enjoyable both in anticipation and reflection. And he did particularly dislike waiters. He would smile at the memory of his remark as he ascended towards his office that afternoon. Besides, what was the point of being powerful if you were always polite? Where was the fun? No, he had used his charm too much.
Sir Gordon abandoned these thoughts reluctantly, and turned back to his interrupted speech.
‘Hugo, I’m telling you honestly, yes, I know the figures are difficult to believe, but I have very skilled men working for me, I have a marvellous organization honed over the years, I’d be a fool if I claimed that we can continue in this climate to give investors the returns they’ve become used to, but there’s not a shred of irregularity in what we do, and not even a particle of doubt in my mind that with my reputation, my record, my popularity, we will easily do enough business to keep our heads well above water and with no need of any form of illegality whatsoever.’
‘Well, I’m very pleased to hear that,’ said Hugo.
‘I wish my mother was alive so I could say those words directly to her in your presence. Then you’d believe me.’
‘I do believe you, Gordon.’
‘I wish my father was compos mentis so we could go together and—’
‘Gordon, I believe you.’
‘Rumour doesn’t help in difficult times. Can you scotch those rumours, Hugo?’
The waiter reappeared, jangling keys in one of the least subtle hints in history.
‘We’ll have to go. Gordon, I’m not a public figure like you but I have immense influence behind the scenes. I will do all I can to kill this creeping, insidious doubt. I just had to hear your denial of wrongdoing from your own lips. We had to share it as brothers. I’ve heard it. I believe it. End of story. Thank you for the wine, if not the lunch.’
They passed through the door without meeting the waiter’s eyes. They heard the lock click angrily behind them.
And in the street – there in the City of London – the Coppinger brothers did something neither of them would have believed, when they got up that morning, that they would ever do.
They hugged.
Hugo walked away. He didn’t look back. He never looked back.
And Sir Gordon thought, Good Lord. We never said a word about Jack.
The evening ended, as it had begun, in silence
We’ve all seen them, those married couples in pubs and restaurants, sitting there in silence, not a word to say to each other. It’s easy to mock, feel a touch of contempt even, forget that maybe they no longer need to talk, know what the other is thinking without any necessity for words. It’s easy to forget that they know so much about each other that it’s almost impossible for them to think of any questions to ask each other. ‘What sort of music do you like?’ would be a devastating admission of lack of interest after twenty-nine years.
And Sir Gordon and Lady Coppinger had been married now for twenty-nine years. It felt like forty-nine. Their silence was not companionable, not shared. Their silence was prickly, and loud with all the things that were not being said. Their silence was deafening.
They were sitting at opposite ends of the oval table in the private room on the first floor of the Hoop and Two Colonels. It was a gastropub in these days when pubs in the country can no longer survive without being gastropubs. Sir Gordon liked it because it served largely good, plain, solid English food. Lady Coppinger disliked it for the same reason. If she ate there too often her legs would become even less slim than once they had been. There was nothing unusual about the place except its name. It was the only pub in the world called the Hoop and Two Colonels. Neither Sir Gordon nor Lady Coppinger was remotely interested in why it was so named. There was no money in knowing.
It cost Sir Gordon quite a sum to book the private room just for the two of them. The restaurant was full of atmosphere, crazy with beams, crammed with dressers laden with old plates. The private room was spare and pale and almost corporate. But it was difficult for them to eat in public. You never knew who’d be watching, finger on the button, ready to Tweet. ‘Saw Sir Gordon and Lady Coppinger at dinner. Hardly spoke. Devoted? I don’t think so.’ Or to phone. ‘You know who those are? Just popping out, sweetest, to phone the papers. Might be a photo opportunity, might bung me a few quid, might be able to get that trellising fixed.’ People! Bastards!
The private room could seat twenty, so by sitting at the ends they formed a little parody of the aristocracy at home. This evening that just irritated Sir Gordon. This evening he actually wanted to talk. But he couldn’t. He felt as if he was visiting a sick relative in hospital. Time dragged. Opening gambits died on his lips. After the ritual insincere ‘Happy birthday, darling’, the raising of his gin glass and her champagne flute – he hated flutes, he hated champagne – and her insincere ‘Thank you, Gordon’, she couldn’t even bring herself to say ‘darling’ there was an aching silence while they waited to order.
If one is telling of a meeting in which nothing was said, what can one do but relate what was not said? Prominent in this category, from Sir Gordon, was ‘What sort of a day have you had?’, closely followed by ‘Anybody phoned?’, ‘Any further disasters reported from the care home?’, ‘Has Luke forgotten it’s your birthday again?’, ‘Was Joanna’s card as uninspired as ever?’, and, coming up strongly on the outside, ‘Bought any more shoes today?’
From his wife there was no such profligacy. One silence strangled all others in their infancy. ‘Have you seen Mandy today?’
They gave their orders. Lady Coppinger’s ‘I’ll have the coquilles St Jacques and the pork stroganoff’ was a simple statement of defiance against the patriotism on which her husband traded. Sir Gordon’s ‘I’ll have the hare terrine and the Lancashire hotpot’ was spoken with the slight uneasiness that comes with the knowledge that every word one utters in public may be dissected for hidden meaning. The chef might phone the business section of a paper, whose gossip columnist might write, ‘May we expect news of an investment in the north-west from the Sir Gordon Coppinger Group? Certainly on Monday evening at his wife’s birthday dinner Sir Gordon chose not only Lancashire hotpot, but also hare terrine with Cumberland sauce. Straws in the wind? Maybe. But the north-west is one of the few parts of Britain in which Sir Gordon has no business interests.’ And the hare terrine. Woe betide him if he
