Going Wrong (10 page)

As they were coming out of the cinema he saw Leonora and William Newton leaving ahead of them. Although he had spoken to Leonora that afternoon, he still felt at the sight of her those extraordinary and characteristic sensations, which were even stronger when on very rare occasions he came upon her by chance. His heart seemed to stand still, then to beat not faster but somehow more
loudly.
Those people who surrounded him and her, a considerable crowd of people, mostly young or youngish, who until he saw her had seemed attractive and colourful, some of them very well worth looking at, now faded to faceless shadows, the dead perhaps, or extras in an old monochrome film. Only he and she existed in the world.

This sensation lasted a few moments. By the time the crowd had faces again, he and Celeste, she and Newton were all out on the pavement. Leonora turned her head and looked straight at him. She was pleased to see him, he could tell she was. She was smiling her lovely, carefully governed smile and, taking hold of Newton’s sleeve, drawing him over in their direction.

“Guy,” she said, “you didn’t say you were going to the cinema.”

“Nor did you. This is Celeste. Celeste, Leonora.” He wasn’t going to utter Newton’s name.

“This is William.”

Loving her so much, he could admit to himself that she looked awful. A couple of hippies left over from the sixties they might have been, Newton in a pair of khaki cotton loons from Dirty Dick’s and a T-shirt that must have been pale blue before it was put through the cold wash with a lot of navy and red garments about a hundred times. Her dress was one of Laura Ashley’s less successful lines, bought no doubt in a sale three or four years ago, a now-faded or washed-out navy-and-white viscose print with elasticated waist and too-long short sleeves, a hem that came halfway down her awful scuffed red leather boots. Guy was pleased. A woman who would dress like that to go out with a man couldn’t care much about him.

He told them about the restaurant in Stratton Street and suggested they join him and Celeste. Newton said he didn’t think so, thanks. Guy’s eyebrows went up. Well, had they eaten or hadn’t they? They had to eat.

Guy thought a ghost of a smile crossed Newton’s face at that remark, he couldn’t think why. Newton was a bit taller than he remembered, by no means a particularly short man, though the horsy face and ginger hair were just as he recalled them.
And
he was wearing glasses. Guy thought that any young person with a scrap of self-esteem who had trouble with his eyes would have gone into contact lenses.

“We eat at home, Guy,” Leonora said. “We had something earlier.”

“That must be hours ago.”

“We’ll come with you and have something cheap,” she said. “We’ll have pasta, just one course.”

She wanted to be with him! Now they’d met she couldn’t bear to go straight home! She could see him in contrast to Newton. She could see him
with Celeste.
He felt a great warmth and affection for Celeste quite suddenly and he took her hand. The gesture was not lost on Leonora, who looked at their joined hands but did not take Newton’s. When they got to the restaurant the two women went straight to the ladies’ cloakroom. He was left alone with Newton and girded himself for a fight or a silence.

But Newton, who Leonora had said at lunch on Saturday was something at the BBC, a producer of documentaries on social questions or something equally boring, began to talk about the film they had just seen. He asked if Guy had liked it and why. Guy hadn’t much liked it but he found it hard to say why not, so he changed the subject by asking Newton if he liked Paris, if he had been there recently and would he have liked to have been there for the 200-year anniversary of the Revolution. He lit a cigarette because that helped him concentrate.

Newton didn’t wave the smoke away or anything like that, but he moved his chair a little. To Guy’s surprise he had a drink, the same gin and tonic as Guy himself, instead of alcohol-free beer, which might have been expected. He’d been to Paris in the spring, he said, to see the Gauguin exhibition, which he began to describe and praise. Guy wondered if this was designed to get at him, a snide attack on his hand-done original-oil-paintings enterprise. Newton seemed to see that he was bored, stopped talking about Gauguin and said Paris would be too crowded, and anyway he usually went to Scotland for a couple of weeks in August, though he wouldn’t be doing that this year.

Guy knew why he wouldn’t be doing it this year. Why he
thought
he wouldn’t be. Where had the women got to? They had been away ten minutes. Perhaps they were scratching each other’s eyes out somewhere over him. Scotland in August meant only one thing, as far as he knew. He had to find something to talk to the man about.

“Shoot, do you?”

“Only in self-defence,” said Newton, “and no grouse has attacked me yet.”

Whoever said that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit was right, thought Guy. “It’s surprisingly easier to become a good shot than you might think. There’s something very satisfying when you bring down your first bird.”

“If that’s the way you look at things, yes, I expect it is. Considering the stalwart band of thickies who do it so excellently, it must be. I shouldn’t care to shoot birds or animals. The fact that they’ve been bred for the purpose of being shot rather makes things worse.”

“What would you like to shoot then? People?” Guy laughed rather loudly at his own joke.

“I’ve managed to live for thirty years in reasonable contentment without shooting anything, Guy, and I expect I can go on in the same way for another thirty. A death-dealing banging about doesn’t appeal to me.”

“A man should be able to handle a gun,” Guy said. “I belong to a rifle club. Of course we shoot at targets.”

Newton slightly inclined his head, the way a bored person does who doesn’t really want to be rude but doesn’t care much either. Guy said, “The girls have been a long time.” Another nod from Newton. Guy didn’t know what made him think of it, but having thought of it, he felt an unexplainable surge of excitement. “Ever done any fencing?” he said.

Now Newton turned to look him fully in the face. He looked right into Guy’s eyes. The smile was there again, very slight, somehow in the eyes and inside his head rather than in any movement of the lips. Guy saw that his eyes, which he would have remembered as greyish or fawnish out of Newton’s presence, were in fact a deep blue-grey, of that shade which is less like an animal’s than any other.

He took a long time replying. Then he said, “At school.”

“At
school?”

“And a bit later on. You belong to a fencing club, do you?”

“Me? No, why should I?”

Guy knew Newton must be getting at him, something he wasn’t going to put up with, and he was about to repeat his question when Leonora and Celeste came back. They both looked pleased with themselves, Guy thought. Leonora asked what they had been talking about and Newton said, grinning, that it had been about martial arts.

They gave their orders, Leonora and Newton sticking to their decision to eat pasta, though Guy did his best to make Leonora change her mind. He didn’t care what Newton ate. That wasn’t quite true, as he would really have liked to see him eat something poisonous, something laced with cyanide perhaps, or infected with one of those fashionable germs, listeria or salmonella, and roll about the floor in front of the women, groaning and frothing at the mouth. He hated Newton and his grin and his cool clever eyes. He was talking more about fencing now, or rather about early prize-fighting, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when—before the days of bare-knuckle fighting—men attacked each other on public stages with blunted blades and often with “sharps.” Guy thought it an unsuitable subject at table and with women present.

This then was an example of Newton’s vaunted “conversation.” Apparently he possessed a pair of sabres which, crossed, ornamented a wall in his flat in Camden Town. He was thinking of selling them; Leonora didn’t want them in their new home. Guy would have liked to know where they had in mind but wasn’t going to ask. Celeste asked.

“I’m selling my flat. Leonora’s selling her share of their place to her friend, who owns half of it already.”

“Rachel’s grandmother died and left her some money, so she’ll buy my half,” Leonora said. “We’re not in a hurry, anyway. I shall live at William’s place in the meantime.”

Why did no one ever tell him these things? Why was he kept in the dark? It was a wonder that Rachel bothered to work at all, the way her rich relatives kept dying and leaving her slabs of wealth. His steak arrived, an enormous bloody wedge of it, which he fancied Newton was looking at in a mocking way, though when he raised his eyes he saw that the other man had his back to him and was saying something to Celeste. Guy was drinking rather a lot. No one wanted any more out of the second bottle of wine, so he finished it and began drinking shorts, dry martinis without ice, though it was so warm.

Before the bill came Newton leaned towards him and said they would split it.

“Absolutely not,” Guy said. “I invited you.”

“Please, Guy,” Leonora said, “we’d much rather.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, I wouldn’t entertain it for a moment.”

“Well, thanks for entertaining us then,” Newton said and he immediately got up and went off to the men’s.

Had that been a dig at him for using a phrase which a clever bastard like Newton might think was incorrect or out of date or silly or whatever people like him did think? He was instantly sure that Newton was double-crossing him and meant to sneak up to the waiter and pay his share before the bill came to Guy. That this had not happened, that the bill when it came was for the four of them, surprised him very much. What was the man up to? What was his game?

A taxi now had to be secured. Leonora looked tired, she looked as if she hadn’t enjoyed the evening, had found it for some reason a strain and was now worn out. She had seen Newton and him together of course for the first time. Was she, after what she had seen, having—glorious idea!—second thoughts about Newton? Had she compared them and Newton, as he must, had come out wanting?

“If you’re going north,” he said to Newton, “why don’t you take the first taxi? Leonora can come with us and we’ll drop her on our way.”

“I can’t do that, Guy, I’m staying at William’s till Friday. And we won’t take a taxi, we’ll go by tube.”

“Green Park to Warren Street and then up the Northern Line,” said Newton, smug and cool. “Nothing easier. Good night. Good night, Celeste, it’s been nice meeting you.”

In the taxi Guy said, “I should have asked her for his phone number. If she’s at his place, I won’t be able to talk to her tomorrow.”

“Try the phone book,” said Celeste.

“Yes, he’ll be in the book. What did she say to you all that long time you were in the Ladies’?”

“This and that. She talked about us and about William.”

“He’s a bit of a shit,” he said.

“I liked him, I thought he was very nice.”

“But you can’t imagine a woman falling in love with him, can you? The idea’s grotesque.”

“I’ll tell you what she said if you like. She said she was really happy to see you so happy with me. She said I was beautiful and you were lucky to have me and she was sure you knew your luck and she hoped we’d be very very happy. D’you want to know what else she said?”

“Not really,” said Guy. “It doesn’t sound very inspired. I don’t suppose you want to come back with me, do you? Not if you have to get up early for that L’Oréal job. I’ll tell the driver to go along the Old Brompton Road, shall I? Celeste, you’re not crying, are you? For God’s sake, what is there to cry about?”

Guy fell asleep very quickly and dreamt he was fighting William Newton with swords. They were in Kensington Gardens, on the lawn by the Albert Memorial below the Flower Walk. It was very early in the morning, dawn, the sun not yet risen, and there was no one about but they themselves and their seconds. His second was Linus Pinedo and Newton’s was a man whose face Guy couldn’t see because it was covered by a fencer’s mask. Guy had done a certain amount of fencing some four or five years before, had taken lessons and belonged to a club, but had given it up in favour of squash, which was so fast and better exercise. But in the dream he was very good, he was like some thirties’ film star in
The Prisoner of Zenda.

His aim was only to wound Newton, though perhaps severely, but the man was clearly terrified and scarcely able to put up a defence. Guy, intending a thrust to his left arm—Newton, at any rate in the dream, was left-handed—jumped forward, executing the move called the balestra, followed it by a flèche at great speed, which passed in a single swift lunge through Newton’s heart.

Newton made no sound but sank on to his knees, his foil dropped, his hands clasped together on the forte of Guy’s sword. He fell over onto his side onto the green, now blood-splashed, grass. The death rattle issued from his pale lips and he gave up the ghost in the masked man’s arms. Guy withdrew his sword, which came out clean and shining.

Linus looked into Guy’s eyes and said, “That’ll give you breathing space, man. That’ll give you time.”

Guy felt happy, he felt an enormous relief. Newton was dead, so Leonora couldn’t marry him. Now he could discover
at his leisure
the slanderer who had poisoned her mind against him. He bent over the dead man, feeling grateful to him, almost caring for him. The masked man, in a single swift gesture, took off his mask and revealed to Guy, who was now trembling and horrified, his identity. It was Con Mulvanney.

In the morning, still quite shaken from the dream, Guy looked up Newton’s number in the phone book, found his address in Georgiana Street, which he then looked up in the ABC London Street Atlas. Linus’s opinion in the dream, that getting Newton out of the way would give him time, now returned to him. Newton might not, as a man, be a serious threat, but he was
there
and Leonora would marry him on September 16, no doubt soon regretting the step she had taken, though by then it would be too late. One thing to be glad about was that divorce was relatively easy.