A Certain Age (14 page)

“Look, James,” he said. “Sorry about that copy-editor bitch. Whatever Jack Scrolls does is what Jack Scrolls
DOES.
You know that; I know that; your dear devoted fans know that. She didn’t know it, she’s out on her arse, you’re a genius, what’s for dinner?” He helped himself from the sherry decanter and poured one for Elaine. She said, “Thanks, darling,” and curled up on the couch to sip it. This wasn’t precisely the mise-en-scène I had envisioned, but it would have to do. I prayed to Jack Scrolls to get me through.

“I know,” I said, quietly. And for a moment, I had them exactly where I wanted them. It was like something out of Terence Rattigan. Ted, who had been tinkling at the piano, gently closed the lid and said, “What did he say, darling?” Elaine looked at him meaningfully. “He said, he knows.”

Now, this was more like it. This they could adapt for TV! I took a deep breath. Unfortunately, I’d forgotten to pocket the Marlowe Medal, and it would have broken the mood if I’d gone across the room to pick it up, so I steepled my fingers together instead. “Your big mistake was giving me the brogues on your return from Paris. You
WERE
in Paris, of course?” Elaine stopped breathing. Ted half rose from the piano stool. And I thought, I’ve got you. “I’ve been doing some thinking,” I said. “And I know what you’ve been keeping from me. I just don’t know how you thought you’d get away with it. It’s quite hurtful, incidentally, to be taken for a fool.” The tension was fabulous, but I could keep it inside no longer. “Elaine. Ted. It’s over. I’ve won the
Foot and Shoe Monthly
Best-Dressed Man of the Year Award, haven’t I?”

Elaine let out a laugh, and then sort of unravelled on the sofa in a great spasm of relief. I knew it. She had
HATED
hiding the good news. I think we were all really relieved! Hurriedly, she jumped up and put her arms round me. “It’s no good trying to keep a secret from you, is it, darling?” she said, kissing my cheek and beckoning to Ted, who – after pausing only to drain his sherry glass and pour himself another – came towards me with a big smile. “Well, James, we tried to keep it a secret, but if you know, you know.
Foot and Shoe Monthly.
Yes. Indeed. Congratulations! Well done. Couldn’t happen to a better-shod chap.”

I explained over dinner, which was fabulous incidentally, an utter triumph, how I’d used the Scrolls method to solve the mystery, and they both said how clever I was, and how much they adored the aubergine. It’s like the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time, I said. If you two went to Paris and didn’t tell me, it had to be
BECAUSE OF ME
. “Ah,” they said. Once I’d realised the significance of the brogues, there was nothing to it. Ted clapped me on the shoulder and said, “It must be really something to have a mind like yours, James.” And I said, as modestly as I could, that it was.

Scene Five: Epilogue

[
Whisking egg-white again; he’s happy, and having to pitch over the whisk
] It was a simple process of deduction. You see – ooh, soft peaks a-coming! – a lot of the evidence pointed towards the conclusion that Elaine and Ted have been having an affair, possibly since before we were married. But a) Elaine loves me, b) Ted holds me in the utmost
professional esteem, and c) it’s a well-known fact that you should never trust the most obvious explanation.

[
Whisking stops. Sighs happily
] Yesterday I had lunch with Ted at his club, to celebrate
A Brush Dipped in Death,
and I admitted to him, man-to-man, that I’d had to run through the affair scenario just to satisfy myself that it couldn’t be true. “An affair?” Ted laughed. “James, surely you know by now that Elaine and I share only one dirty secret, which is our admiration for
YOUR WONDERFUL WORK.
What have we always said? It’s one for all and all for one – and you’re the one, Jim. You’re the one!” I said I did know that, yes I did. He said it was unfair that one man should have so much: so much talent plus such good looks, not to mention such excellent taste in footwear. [
Faux-modest laugh
] Well, that’s what he said. As for the annual trip in July, he was about to explain that, but I interrupted. I wanted to tell him what I’d already deduced about that: that they went away each July because that’s when I’m usually finishing a book, when I need peace and quiet, and Ted said absolutely that was the reason and sorry about the terrible alibi; Frankfurt Book Fair, indeed! It just proved, though, didn’t it, what novices they were when it came to deceit? He said I was free to join them any time – they go to Venice – but he reckoned that if it was a choice between swigging boring old bellinis in Harry’s Bar and giving another magnificent Jack Scrolls mystery to the world, there was only one choice good old Jim Dance could take! [
Happy sigh
] And of course, he’s right. I live for my work. It is my life.

The waitress, I realised, was someone I’d spent a very energetic afternoon with last time I dined here. And across the room was a fairly well-known horsewoman who had once taken me back to her hotel in Piccadilly. I pretended
not to see her, but I knew she was looking at me, so I ran my hand through my hair. Having secret knowledge like that, like the fresh memory of the soft and delectable Laura – well, it makes you feel … infallible.

While Ted signed for the lunch, I wondered aloud when the judges would be contacting me about the award, and he said that, actually, he had phoned
Foot and Shoe Monthly
this morning. Everyone at the magazine – which Ted
OWNS
, of course; I’d forgotten that – was really thrilled that I had won it.

I said I was sorry to appear pushy: it was just second nature in me to want to tie up any loose ends, narratively speaking.

“Well, omniscience is a burden, James,” Ted said, “but you must always remember that it is also a gift.” And I put my hand on his and, catching the eye of that little cutey waitress, said, “Ted. Ted. Oh, don’t I know it.”

Scene One: Tina is dressing for dinner; huffs and puffs as she puts on a frock, tights, shoes etc. Remote boat engine noise. Some sort of on-board TV documentary

It’s a terrible thing to say, and I know Pat will go, [
laughs
] “Ooh, hark at Tina,” the way she’s done since we were five years old – “Ooh, hark at Tina, Mum!” – but I was sitting on my tod this morning, on the top deck, at dawn as it happens, blimey these tights are a bit short – oof! uff! – oh that’ll do, and I suddenly realised what goes wrong on these holidays Pat and me come on. Magic mascara. [
Opens mascara
] I love you. [
While applying mascara
] I’m not saying it wasn’t nice on the deck there, all by myself without my sister. I could see the banks of the deep blue
lake chugging by. The sky’s all mauve. Chilly, mind, I took the blanket. Downstairs they were getting the breakfast sorted. And all round, as far as you could see, there was just desert – Nubia, can you believe it, grey Nubian desert all around this lake, grey – like the colour of the stuff you see spinning round in the Dyson and think, “Blimey, where did that lot come from? I haven’t got a single thing that colour.” So. It was lovely. I’m not going to turn round and say I was unhappy. It was just – I know, “Ooh, hark at Tina!” – I realised it’s the same old people on this boat. [
Pause
] Roasted peach lipstick, they’re having a laugh. And I felt this wave of disappointment, yeah? The Waters of Nubia with the same old bunch; this dull old lot who’ll be like lambs to the slaughter for Pat.

Now it’s not that I dislike all this. If Pat turned round and went, Tina, why don’t you take holidays on your own in mud huts in Mongolia if you dislike our trips so much, I’d go, Pat, that’s not fair. I always look forward to the social side of our holidays, as for example didn’t I suggest we spend a couple of evenings at my house, Pat, wrapping each other like mummies in Andrex so we could excel in the traditional Nile cruise party games? So I’m very optimistic before we set out, and even when we get to the departure lounge and everything – in fact, my problem, Pat, and it’s why both my marriages have ended in muck and bullets, is I’m too optimistic about people, which leaves me susceptible to anti-climax. “Ooh,” goes Pat, “hark—” Well, you know what she’s like by now. But it’s true. I do, I hope for too much. And then, when your beloved husband Tony turns out to be a weakling, and your beloved Marty turns out to be a drugs fiend, and everyone who’s signed up on a cruise across this Nubian lake towards the great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel
turns out to be an ex-council tax officer from Hastings who stares at Pat with his gob open thinking she’s a cross between an angel and a genius
AGAIN,
well, I just feel a bit let down.

Do you think anyone’ll notice I’ve made a right dog’s elevenses of my hair? See, here I am dressing up for dinner, knowing Pat will be blowing everyone away, including me. Why can’t there be people on these boats who can blow Pat away? Just once would be nice. The contrast with the places brings it all home, as well. I mean, it’s all right obviously for someone to be a dull bloke with thick specs and two watches on the same wrist who used to be a structural engineer, just so long as he’s not with you on the great plain of Giza looking at the Sphinx being boring, or tracing the walls of the ancient site of Troy being boring. Pat doesn’t mind. My sister doesn’t take the interest in the ancient world that I do. Say the name Homer to Pat and she goes, [
impersonates Homer Simpson
] “Doh!” Although I have to say she brought a CD last week of the Bangles singing “Walk Like an Egyptian”, which is a lot more than she usually does by way of research. But the thing is, Pat comes on these things mainly just to dazzle the plebs. I feel awful saying it, but it’s true. She’ll be wearing the gold outfit this evening. She’ll have used that glittery stuff on her eyes. And once she shows them her medal, they’ll be putty in her hands. “Nineteen seventy-six?” they go. “Munich? Moscow?” “Montreal,” goes Pat. “Got your medal, Tina?” She loves being a celebrity. It doesn’t bother her she’s a celebrity who isn’t rich or even very famous. Watching it dawn on people that they
OUGHT
to know who she is – that they faintly, faintly remember who she is – makes it somehow even better.

[
Lights cigarette, and smokes during next bit
] At least Pat’s
glamour gives them something different to talk about. Otherwise it’s all a bit drastic. Comparing notes on other cruises; [
hifalutin voice
] “You didn’t see Petra? Oh, but you must see Petra!” And then there’s the ones who spend half their lives going on things called “In the Wake of the Conquistadors” and “Jewels of the Baltic” just so they can say afterwards they don’t think much of them. You hear the same things over and over, an’ all. “You are the weakest link, goodbye.” Guarantees a laugh every time. “You are the weakest link, goodbye.” [
Exhales
] Oh, and they always tell you they’re squandering the kids’ inheritance – even if you get in first with, “I bet these good people are taking their kids’ inheritance, Pat, and squandering it,” they still say it! They don’t get the hint! “You guessed!” they go. “That’s what we say to the kids, we’re squandering your inheritance!” [
Groan
] It shows you where the money is. The missing millions. There’s the pink pound and the grey pound, and then there’s this unbelievably tedious kids’-inheritance-squandering pound you don’t hear half enough about.

[
Finishes fag
] I’ll shut up about it. Pat will be chomping next door. All dolled up. She’s got her eye on the courier as usual. Hisham. “I wouldn’t push him out of bed,” she goes, quite loudly, when we’re on the bus from Aswan Airport at midnight, each clutching a wilting single rose, and all sweaty and exhausted and horrified by the way the natives snatched our bags from the carousel and then demanded stinky Egyptian money we didn’t have yet. I just hope I don’t have to sit next to Kevin again from last night. That was so out of order. “Janice!” he goes to his wife. “You’ll never guess. These girls from Rainham paid almost double what we did, because they booked direct.” I don’t say anything but I give Janice a little wave, as if to
say, “Your bloke’s a right berk, then?” I got my own back later, anyway. Waiting at the buffet behind Kevin, I go, “I suppose you’ve heard it’s all crap about only drinking the bottled water? See that woman over there—?” I pointed to one of the Spanish group we don’t mix with. “She told me, straight up, she saw them pulling water out of the lake and putting it in these bottles.” With any luck the tap water should lay him up for several days, if not actually kill him. Boring people often die on cruises; it’s what you might call an added bonus. [
Laughs
] Which one was it when that bloke Geoff died? ‘Passport to Cephalonia’? ‘Voucher to Constantinople’? One of those. We had a little party. And what about when the courier died, in Pat’s cabin, on that Iceland trip ‘From Geyser to Glacier’! The look on Pat’s face! [
Hysterical
] I said they should rename the tour in his memory, ‘From Geezer to Corpse’. [
Pause
] I’m sure she’ll see the funny side of it one day.

Scene Two: Egyptian music, convivial sounds. Tina is in shock, doesn’t know whether she’s pleased or not; very agitated

Well, it didn’t take long for Pat to tell the Olympics story, did it? Good old Pat. Broke her own record, I should think. Someone must have asked if I was her maiden aunt, as usual, coz she suddenly goes, quite loud, “No, no, Tina and me are twins! Aren’t we, Tina? Surely you remember the Conway twins? Pat and Tina Conway. The Blonde Torpedoes. We were on
Jeux Sans Frontières
and everything.” I could see everyone racking their brains, trying to remember. The best minds of Hendon, Gillingham, Harpenden and Halifax, addled by a day under the hot sun taking pictures of the exotic dark-skinned Nubians
guarding the imposing Temple of Wadi Something or Other, now strenuously applied to going back twenty-five years to an Olympic Games in Canada that they probably didn’t register much in the first place. In the end, this mousy woman Jill who has the vegetarian option and always says it’s ever so much more tasty than our carnivorous one, she said, “Oh I remember. Did one of you fail a drugs test?” and we both said, “No!” “Tina and me won three swimming medals between us at the Olympics in 1976. Got your bronze, Tina?” I smiled and showed my empty hands. I gave my medal straight to Dad, Pat knows that. And Dad took it down the Fox in Billericay one night in 1977 and we never saw it again. I don’t care. When you’re a true Olympian you don’t need to prove it. That’s how it is with really big things. If you say you’ve got a first whatever it is degree in cleverness from Cambridge University, people don’t ask to see the certificate, you know. People assume you wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. Like I always say, there’s no mystery how Jeffrey Archer got away with it for so long.