Barking (3 page)

‘Luke?'

He could hear the smile; and two uninsulated wires in the back of his mind brushed together, and he thought, Ferris and something. Luke
Ferris
—

A big smile, full of teeth and good humour; he could picture it now. He could picture himself, all spots and elbows, trying to punch it through the back of its proprietor's neck, and always missing. ‘I thought it must be you,' the voice said, and fifteen years crumpled up like the front end of a Volvo. ‘I saw your name on this sheet of letterhead - down at the bottom of the cast list, I couldn't help noticing, in with the lighting assistants and the location caterers - and I thought, could that possibly be my old mate Duncan Hughes, who fell off the edge of the world fifteen years ago and was never heard of again? So,' the voice added, ‘how are you?'

Duncan thought long and hard before answering. ‘Oh, fine,' he said. ‘And you?'

‘A bit like the
Mary Rose
,' the voice replied. ‘In remarkably good shape, all things considered. Look, is it true what it says on your firm's notepaper?'

Duncan frowned. ‘Depends,' he said.

‘You're at 32 Fortescue Place, EC2?'

No harm in admitting that. ‘Basically, yes.'

‘Upper storey? Facing the street?'

‘If I could see through walls.'

‘Ah. Well, if you were to climb up on the roof and look sort of east, you'd see a big black glass thing a couple of blocks over, sort of like a minimalist Borg cube. 97 Mortmain Street. That's us.'

Us, Duncan repeated to himself; Ferris and somebody, note the word order. ‘Small world,' he heard himself say.

‘Fucking tiny,' the voice replied. ‘And talking of geography, doesn't it strike you as significant that the Bunch of Grapes in Voulge Street is exactly halfway between your place and mine?'

‘Well, not—'

‘See you there, then. One-fifteen?'

‘No,' Duncan started to say, but the disconnected-line buzz drowned him out. Which proved, if there was any residual doubt about it, that he'd just been talking to the authentic Luke Ferris, who never took no for an answer, or gave a shit about anybody else's—

Hang on, he thought.

To test out a theory, he asked himself a question: define Luke Ferris in no more than five words. Easy:
my best friend at school
. The fact that he'd never been able to stand him for more than ten minutes without wanting to hit him had, somehow, never been incompatible with that definition. A more precise and informative version would've been
not an easy person to get on with
, but that was eight words, not five. All right, then; how about
a complete pain in the—
Nope, six.

So he glanced at his diary: one-fifteen. Of course, he had mountains of work to be getting on with, and although slipping out of the office for a bit at lunchtime wasn't exactly forbidden, it was more frowned-on than the foot of Mount Rushmore. On the other hand: my best friend at school. What harm could it possibly do?

 

You go through life thinking of yourself as a tall person - brushing snow out of your hair in summer and ducking in the late afternoon to avoid nutting yourself on the setting sun - and then you come across someone who makes you realise you're merely a slightly elongated hobbit.

‘You've grown,' Duncan said.

Luke raised an eyebrow. ‘You sound just like my aunt,' he said. ‘What're you having?'

‘You
have
grown.' Duncan wasn't quite sure why he needed an admission at this point, but he knew somehow that it was important. ‘I mean, at school you were a tall bastard and a hazard to aviation, but -' He shrugged. Luke was looking through him; the way Jenny Sidmouth had done, like
management
. ‘Coke, please,' he said.

A slight frown; then Luke turned to the barman (who'd materialised out of nowhere like a Romulan battlecruiser) and said, ‘Two pints of Guinness.' No
please
; just the peremptory order. The barman nodded quickly and flipped the tap. ‘And yes, I have,' he said. ‘I put on a late spurt while I was at college. I put it down to beer, healthy exercise and clean living.'

‘Right,' Duncan said doubtfully. ‘Clean living.'

‘Mphm.'

Duncan wasn't quite sure about that. True, Luke looked almost grotesquely fit in an Arnie's-big-brother sort of a way; he also looked
terrible
. As far as Duncan could remember, Luke was older than him by no more than a month or so, but his hair (augmented by a shaggy beard and bushy, three-dimensional moustache) was nearly all grey, with only a few untidy-looking splodges of its original black, like paint splashes on a dust sheet; and what little was visible of his face under all that fur was lined and worn, almost as if it had been sandpapered, with craters under his eyes like meteorite strikes. His suit was expensive and immaculate, but his hands were scarred and the nails bitten and torn. He looked like all sorts of things - a Viking, a sixty-year-old rock star, Dorian Gray's passport photo, a tramp in a millionaire's suit.

‘Table free over there,' Luke said, nodding at a far corner. The two pint glasses stood on the upturned palm of his hand, as steady as though they were on a tray. ‘So,' he went on, ‘how are you keeping?'

They sat down; Luke arranged his enormous legs under the table like someone stacking luggage in the corridor of a train. ‘Oh, not so bad,' Duncan replied. ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn't it, both of us ending up in the lawyering racket. I thought you were going into the family business.'

A faint, sad look. ‘I did,' Luke replied, ‘for about six months, until it went bust. We got run out of town by the Spanish. Cheap imports,' he explained. ‘It broke dad's heart, but I didn't mind so much. I never quite managed to regard the glove trade with the same crusading zeal as he did. The law biz is much more my style.'

‘It must be,' Duncan said, trying not to let the sourness leak through. ‘Your name on the stationery, and an office in Mortmain Street. I get the impression you're doing well.'

‘It keeps the wolf from the door,' Luke said, and for a moment his face split around an enormous, humourless grin. ‘Don't ask me for the secret of my success, because there isn't one. I mean, we must be doing something right, because people keep bringing us work to do, like a cat brings you dead mice. Beats me what it is, though. The best explanation I've been able to come up with is, we don't
try
. I mean, we don't chase after people saying how wonderful we are, we just get on and do our best, and when we haven't got a fucking clue, we say so. I think people respect that. It's either that or there's another firm called Ferris and Loop, and people come to us thinking we're them.' He lifted his glass and swallowed its contents in five enormous gulps. ‘Either way I'm not bothered. How about you? Getting on all right?'

Duncan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Given his vocation he could lie, just as Michelangelo could paint a bit. For some reason, however, he felt a powerful urge to tell Luke the truth.

‘No,' he said. ‘I'm stuck in a boring job with a rotten firm, bugger-all chance of promotion and a boss who models her management style on Lord Voldemort. Apart from that, it's all peaches and cream.'

‘Good heavens.' Luke was staring thoughtfully at him, as though he was Fermat's last theorem. ‘You surprise me. I'd have thought you'd have done all right for yourself. You were always the clever bastard.'

‘Was I?' Duncan raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure?'

‘I always thought so. Well, not as far as maths was concerned, I grant you. Not in the fifteen-A-stars-at-GCSE sense so much: more a happy blend of intellectual muscle and low cunning. What went wrong?'

Duncan shrugged. ‘No idea,' he said. ‘After I left school I did law at uni, got a decent degree, applied for what looked like a good job, made the fatal mistake of getting it. And here I still am, like Robinson Crusoe.'

Luke smiled. ‘Ah,' he said, ‘I see. Brains but no drive.'

Duncan suddenly wished he was somewhere else. ‘Absolutely,' he said. ‘That's what my boss thinks, too. According to her, I lack thrust, hunger and the killer instinct.'

‘I'm sure she's right,' Luke said mildly. ‘It'd explain why you aren't in prison. All right, if it's such a dump, why don't you leave?'

‘I'm trying. Have been for the last six months.'

Luke looked puzzled. ‘Picky? Spoilt for choice?'

‘No.'

‘Oh.' Luke considered him for a moment, as though he was a crossword clue with a misprint in it; then he glanced down at Duncan's unmolested beer glass. ‘Same again?'

‘Actually, I don't drink at—'

Luke had gone; and a path opened up before him across the crowded bar. It was like watching slowed-down film of the shock wave that precedes a high-velocity bullet. The barman was waiting for him, practically at attention. Duncan - one of those people who have trouble getting served in pubs without the aid of a time machine - couldn't help feeling slightly jealous.

‘So,' he said, as Luke did the leg-stacking thing again, ‘are you in touch with any of the old crowd? I haven't seen Micky Halloran since—'

‘Actually, he's my partner. One of them,' Luke added. ‘Micky and Kevin and Clive all came in with me when I set up the firm; Pete joined up about six months after that. More or less the whole of the gang,' he added, ‘apart from you.'

‘Oh,' Duncan said. ‘So they all became lawyers, then?'

‘I suppose you could call us that, at a pinch.'

For a second or two, Duncan couldn't think of anything to say. Envy, of course; but mostly a curious and quite unexpected feeling of resentment at being left out. Irrational: he'd been the one who'd decided he wanted to break with the old crowd, the one who'd changed his address and phone number without telling anybody, made no effort to keep in touch. Even so; all of them except him. It surprised him to realise that the prickle at the back of his mind was anger, but he couldn't deny it.

‘I thought Pete was going off to be a teacher.'

Very quick grin. ‘So did he. For a little while.'

Duncan waited for Luke to expand on that, but he didn't. ‘Well,' he said. ‘Like you said, all of us except me. Must be like old—'

‘Yes.'

That bewildering, walking-into-a-plate-glass-door feeling, when you know you've said something wrong, but you don't know what it was. ‘Times,' he said quietly. ‘Who's Loop?'

‘What?' Luke must've been thinking about something else for a moment. ‘Oh, right. Wesley Loop. Came in with us to start with, left after eight months. Should've changed the name when he buggered off, only we'd just ordered a big lot of letterhead and it seemed silly to let it go to waste. And by the time we'd used it all up, people had sort of got used to the name. Corporate identity and all that garbage. Can't be bothered to change it now.'

One of those silences, the sort unique to the reunion of old friends who suddenly realise that they no longer have anything to talk about. He's lost interest in me, Duncan thought; any moment now he'll make an effort and ask—

‘So,' Luke said. ‘Work aside, how's things?'

Sometimes it's a pain when you're proved right. ‘Oh, I just sort of wander along,' Duncan said. ‘Nothing to say, really. I mean, if this was
Mastermind
, I wouldn't choose my personal life as my specialist subject.' He paused, took a breath, not too deep. ‘Got married; we met at law school, got hitched as soon as we both qualified, didn't last five minutes. No big deal. In fact, in my list of Bloody Stupid Things I've Done Over The Years, it's somewhere down around number seven hundred and fifty. Since then—' He shrugged. ‘I could never see the point, really.'

‘Mphm.' Luke nodded. ‘You lost the only woman you ever loved, and since then life's been an emotional black hole seething with despair and existential doubt. It's a right cow when that happens.'

‘No, it wasn't like that at all,' Duncan said, only realising as he said it that he wasn't really telling the truth. Occupational hazard. ‘Blessing in disguise, really. The way I see it, work's bad enough without relationships as well. Mostly I sit at home in the evenings watching the box and hoping that one day I'll evolve into plankton. Too tired and emotionally buggered to do anything else, really.'

Luke was frowning. ‘That doesn't sound much fun,' he said.

‘No. I think fun's a bit like Father Christmas. You believe in it passionately when you're young, but eventually you figure out it never really existed. What about you, then?' he said, seconds before embarrassment made them both die of hypothermia. ‘Married? Kids?'

A smile; superiority and compassion, mostly. ‘Not in any meaningful sense,' he said. ‘But you don't want to hear about that. What happened? You can't just say
didn't last five minutes
and leave it at that.'

None of your damn business, Duncan thought. ‘I don't really know what happened,' he said. ‘We got married straight out of law school, like I told you. She got a job with Crosswoods - you know, the family law specialists?'

Luke nodded. ‘Impressive,' he said.

‘Oh, she was the clever one, not me. Anyhow, as soon as she started there, she seemed to change. Funny little things, to start with. Like, she always used to love eating out at swanky French restaurants; then suddenly, if I ever suggested it she'd get all up-tight and bite my head off. Which is odd, when you come to think about it. I mean, when we were students we couldn't afford to go to places like that, but we did; then, when she's working at Crosswoods and money's not a problem—' He sighed. ‘Stuff like that, anyway. Cut a long story short, I came home one evening and found a letter on the mantelpiece. Both of us being in the trade, we got the divorce practically at cost.' Luke was looking at him , as if trying to diagnose where the fault lay. Time, Duncan decided, for a diversionary counter-attack. ‘I'm surprised at you, though. Weren't you and Hannah Schlager—?'