‘You’ve had an idea, I think?’
‘No, sir.’
At that point the night shift arrived. Barnaby checked his desk over and made for the door, his mind already closing on the anticipatory pleasures of the kitchen. Herbs and mushrooms to be chopped, liver to be thinly sliced. A glass of the ’90 Crozes-Hermitage while he worked. What could be nicer?
As he passed the windows of the incident room on his way to the car park he noticed that Inspector Meredith was still there. Utterly engrossed, his fingers were tapping busily at a computer keyboard as his snaky head, quite still and urgently attentive, studied the screen.
Hector Pulls it Off
Brian pushed his muesli and grated apple sullenly around its homely dish. He had had a rotten night and was now looking at a rotten, filthy day. Rain beat in a rattling crescendo on the white-framed kitchen windows and, in the garden, trees and shrubs bent this way and that in the force of a driving wind.
Sluggardised by wakefulness and bad dreams Brian sat on the fake pine breakfast bench attached to the table. Actually he did not so much sit as lurch, semi-upright. A posture that, should anyone else in the family have adopted it, would have brought about an immediate lecture on slovenly behaviour.
Brian was going over, as he had done more or less constantly since hobbling away from Quarry Cottages, the complete turn of events that had taken place there. His imagination had already largely rewritten several crucial moments, but enough were left inviolate to make his memories of the occasion somewhat disagreeable.
But he tried not to dwell on those. And it wasn’t as if matters could not be put right. It had, after all, been the first time. A certain amount of awkwardness was only to be expected. But now that he knew what Edie wanted, what turned her on, things would be very different. Looking at the already brown fruit mincings in front of him Brian reassembled the apple in his mind’s eye. Immediately it transformed itself into a creamily perfect, pink-tipped breast.
Keenly fraught with lust, he shifted uneasily back and forth, staring sourly across the room at his earnest shambles of a wife. He wished her moon face far away. And her saggy, russet-aureoled boobs and big feet. Christ, how was it possible for a woman with legs like Olive Oyl to take size eights? He’d thrown himself away there all right, by God he had. Casting the pearls of his intellect and talent before such an unpractised simpleton.
There was little doubt in Brian’s mind where the main responsibility for last night’s shortcomings lay. Why, when finally holding the girl who had fired his red-hot imaginings for so long in his arms, he had reacted like a puritanical schoolboy.
A more sensitive partner, a more perceptive, caring partner, would have found ways to develop her husband’s sensuality. Made him wise in the paths of carnal knowledge, for were not the skills of the harem in every woman’s blood?
Oh! Why had he ever let his parents persuade him into ‘doing the right thing’? Why hadn’t he had the courage to just clear off and leave Sue and her infant to fend for themselves? Other men did. Tom Carter probably would have. Collar and Denzil, no question.
It wasn’t even as if his family appreciated the sacrifice. Sue took him totally for granted and spent money as if he had a printing press in the garden shed. Mand, quite sweet when she was little, now hardly spoke unless it was to moaningly compare him to someone called Trixie’s dad who apparently let his daughter stay out all hours, drove an open-topped Jaguar and looked like Jason Priestley.
Brian tucked a cushion beneath the vacuum in the seat of his trousers and tried to wriggle into a comfier position. He was fraught with anxiety at the thought of meeting Edie again. There was no rehearsal, and no English class either today so unless he sought her out, or unless, miracle of miracles, she sought him out, they would not see each other till after the weekend. He didn’t think he could bear that.
Brian wondered how it would be when they did meet. Perhaps she would be shy and unable to bring herself to talk about the matter. Or eager, like she was last night, already angling for another date? He’d take her somewhere really plush next time. Maybe a hotel on the river for a drink and a meal afterwards . . .
Already the negative aspects of their encounter (squalid environs, uncontrollable spillage of the Clapton seed, genitals that felt as if they were gift-wrapped in barbed wire) were fading fast. And Edie’s post-coital coldness, wounding at the time, was, on reflection, totally understandable. How she must have been looking forward to that first conjugation. Naturally, after his inadequate performance she had withdrawn, no doubt needing to protect herself from further hurt and humiliation.