Death of a Unicorn

‘I want to talk about ways and means,’ he said. ‘I implied just now that I was able to keep my affairs out of the newspapers, but there are, of course, limits. We may have reached them. The combination of British prurience and British snobbery may prove too strong.’

‘I wouldn’t care.’

‘You would, when it happened. Furthermore there is your mother and Cheadle Trust.’

‘She can’t do anything except persuade the Trustees to cut off my allowance, and that’s a pittance. It’s all entailed and I inherit when I’m twenty-five.’

‘So I gather. But I hear your mother is a formidable woman, and in any case there is no point in creating problems where they can be avoided. I myself am not anxious for publicity. I am not a particularly rich man, though like your friend I intend to be. I operate by persuading richer men that they can trust me to use their money to their profit, and if they were to see my name all over the gossip-columns their confidence might be less. So what I propose is this: you will have to move out of Charles Street . . .’

‘I couldn’t possibly afford anywhere you could bear.’

‘Let me finish. I will of course pay the rent, but you will need to explain where the money is coming from. Todd tells me that these little pieces you’ve been doing are very popular with readers . . .’

‘All I know is people have started sending in grisly imitations.’

‘All successes have their drawbacks. But they appear to have caught on. I see no reason why you shouldn’t produce a little book on those lines. If you judge it right you might do very well. There is a certain type of essentially non-literary small volume which people give each other by the tens of thousands for Christmas. A sensible publisher, recognising the possibilities, might well offer you a fair-sized advance to complete the work in time for him to get it out for the Christmas market. In any case the general public is absurdly ignorant about publishing finances. I don’t think any of your family or friends would question the possibility that your advance enabled you to set yourself up in a small flat in the block where I happen to live. The need to have total peace so that you can write the book in a hurry would be your reason for leaving Charles Street.’

‘Is this real?’

‘You seem markedly more stimulated by the idea than by my previous proposal.’

I laughed and reached for his hand again. He shook his head. We had started to live our secret life, even if the other people in the room were only waiters, or stockbrokers out with their wives or floozies. Hard to tell which was which. There wasn’t going to be much doubt in my case. It was extraordinary, now, how much I needed to touch him, to show him I meant yes with something that wasn’t just words. To show myself, too, I suppose.

‘It’s the way I’ve grown up,’ I said. ‘Family. You don’t let on about feelings that really matter. Except with Jane, of course. She’s different.’

‘Your sister?’

‘I’ve got two others, but she’s my twin. We have unspeakable rows, but we mind about each other dreadfully too. Is it all right if I tell her?’

‘Is it necessary?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

Once more my hand reached towards his but I managed to stop it. Instead I smoothed with my fingers at the napkin. The mustard was gluing it to the table-cloth now, and the yellow lines were soaking faintly through. I looked straight at him.

‘Did you ever meet a girl called Veronica Bracken?’ I said.

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It sounds as if it mattered to you.’

‘It might have. Please forget I asked.’

‘If you wish.’

He turned to order coffee. I felt shivery and ill, not because of what I’d agreed to but because of the sudden notion that he might have been the man in Veronica’s story. My instinct was to go back, for safety, back to the first half of the evening.

‘You haven’t told me why you bought Night and Day,’ I said. ‘You were saying something about surfing and that got us on to Barbados and then this . . . other thing came up.’

He was lighting a cigar. (The time before, when we’d dined alone, after the opera, he’d asked my permission.) He answered between sucks and inspections of the glowing tip.

‘It’s the hollow before the wave that matters,’ he said. ‘If you let that go past you’ve missed the wave. Then you’ve got to work like blazes to get your board moving as the wave itself comes. And then you can get up and find your balance and ride the wave. In the sea, of course, you can look over your shoulder and see the wave coming and decide whether it’s worth waiting for a better one. But in the metaphor I’m using, where time itself is the wave, all that is hidden and you have only the feel of the hollow to go by. I met a fellow who wanted to sell some shares privately because he thought they were going down and down. I made some inquiries and decided this might be only the hollow before a wave. Now I have to get the board moving. The pun is not intentional.’

‘And if there isn’t a wave after all?’