The Company of Fellows (24 page)

Not to worry,
he told himself. Having pizza with Rosie was hardly a risk. People
make new friends all the time. People have pizza all the
time.

“
Hey, Tommy.”
Rosie kissed him on the cheek and left a dark crimson lipstick
mark. She led him through the pots and canes to the narrow stairs.
Tommy was pleased by the comforting smell of oregano that filled
the living room.

“
Sorry about
the state of the place,” she said. 2With you being a designer, I
feel like a nutter at a party with a shrink. I expect you get that
all the time.”

“
It looks, and
smells, wonderful,” Tommy said, looking around him. “So, are you
going to tell me about your friend?”

“
Sorry?”

“
Well, he may
be a chameleon, but no matter how hard he tries, a tank that size
is always going to be a giveaway.”

Rosie laughed,
a natural, unrehearsed laugh that flowed from the top of her head
in an elegant wave right through her body. “That’s
Chris.”

“
As in
Patten?”

For a moment
she looked taken aback but then she gave him a knowing nod. Tommy
wondered if Emily had told her he was the juju man who could see
into your soul. Hardly the last thing you’d guess, though, for
someone who’d followed the erstwhile Tory grandee from Hong Kong to
Oxford. People seemed to have lost the art of the educated guess,
Tommy thought. It always amazed him how easily people were
impressed by what he had always thought of as the art of starting
with the obvious and taking it from there.

“
You don’t go
back to Hong Kong much, do you?”

“
How do you
figure that out?” She looked unnerved, or maybe just
uncomfortable.

“
Well, I doubt
you have many friends on the force who’d have time to look after an
exotic pet for you.” Tommy stated the obvious again, and made the
obvious extrapolation, “I’d guess he’s what you have to remind you
of home. Instead of home, maybe.”

“
I don’t think
much of your small talk, Tommy West.”

“
I don’t
really have any small talk.”

“
It’s OK. I
like Oxford,” she said unconvincingly.

Tommy was
surprised to find that he had left his problems somewhere on the
staircase. She had made a great home here. He looked straight at
her and smiled, “Yeah, I’m beginning to think it isn’t all
bad.”

He handed her
the wine, “I would have stolen some flowers from downstairs but I
didn’t want to get you into trouble.”

“
1997,” she
said, checking the label. “Very nice. A better year for Chianti
than Hong Kong. Do you want to open it?” She handed him a corkscrew
and a pair of glasses.

“
Why did you
let me come round?” he asked. He wasn’tsure he had any idea what
thought process had led to him calling her. Now, quarter of an hour
later, he was opening wine at her flat. “I can’t begin to imagine
what Em’s told you about me, or what she’ll say if she finds out
I’m here.”

“
Well, Tommy,
I let you come because of what Emily told me. I want to know all
the gossip. Sorry, I should probably try to prise it out of you,
but why waste the time?”

Tommy laughed
and handed her a glass of tawny coloured wine. “Let’s drink to not
wasting time.”

“
To not
wasting time!”

Tommy stood in
the kitchen doorway as Rosie served up. The pizza was shop bought
junk with a few extra herbs sprinkled on and added butterfly king
prawns that had been dipped in something that looked radioactive,
but he marvelled at the way she cut and plated it with little more
than a flick. It was like the way she decorated, and the way she
dressed. She clearly had exquisite taste but she kept it entirely
for her own amusement. She didn’t seem to care in the slightest
what anyone thought of her, except her. When she bought cheap crap
she knew she was buying cheap crap and did it partly because she
didn’t have the money not to, and partly because she wasn’t greedy
with the good stuff. Either way she didn’t give a fig what anyone
else thought her motives were.

“
Go and sit
down,” she said, squeezing past him. “Chris and I don’t do standing
on ceremony.” He followed her to the sitting room where she sat on
the sofa with her legs folded in a zed under her. He moved the
plate she had put next to her and sat down.

“
So, Tommy
West. Tell me about you and my boss.”

“
There’s
nothing to tell that you don’t already know,” he said. It was
funny. A few days ago he’d have imagined she would have told the
world what a bastard he was; but since he’d started to get to know
her again, since he’d started to get the measure of just how good a
person she was, he somehow got the impression she’d been have been
more than discreet. He wasn’t sure it made him feel better.
“Everything bad she’s told you is true. Everything good is probably
a nostalgic lie”

“
Well that
gives me plenty to conjure with.” Rosie smiled, a huge,
orthodontically perfect smile framed in dark red lipstick. She was
wearing her hair up, held in place casually with a pen.

“
I bet it
does.” He’d told himself after they’d split up that he’d done the
noble thing, that he’d invented the lie about his insatiable need
to sleep with her so that she would know he was bad and move on. He
was right, of course, that there were so many reasons that had
nothing to do with sex why they would never have stayed together
or, worse still, why they would have stayed together in determined
misery. But whether, looking back now as if staring into the
reflective black of Rosie’s eyes he was gazing into a part of his
soul that had died years ago, any of those reasons had formed part
of his decision he had no idea. All he saw looking back at him was
his own puzzled expression, and a vague feeling of
revulsion.

“
Why are you
here, Tommy?” she asked, moving her head as if to look for him
behind his gaze.

Tommy smiled,
relieved that the bright room with the reassuring student feel in
which he found himself had nothing to do with his past, delighted
to see that it was Rosie and not Emily who was looking back at him.
“That’s two questions,” he said. Her eyes weren’t moving. There was
nothing closed that he could see about them. No detecting, no
gossip, just a question. “I called you because I had your number.
But I’m still here because I like you.”

“
I guess I get
lonely a lot of the time too” Rosie said, seeming to understand
exactly what his first answer had meant. Tommy had sensed it as
soon as he came in. She’d built a wonderful home here; but
somewhere thousands of miles away she’d left another home. “Maybe
she makes people around her feel like that.”

“
No,” said
Tommy. “I was good at being lonely a long time before I met Em. Ask
her and she’ll tell you that’s a lot of my problem.”

“
She has.
Plenty of times.” Rosie laughed and the creases in her face made
her eyes look even bigger. “I’m only joking,” she said. “She
refuses to say much at all. Why do you think I was so keen for you
to come round?”

“
So I really
am just here for gossip,” he said, smiling.

“
That’s why I
wanted you to come,” she said. “It’s not why I want you to
stay.”

Tommy almost
balked at the warmth against him as he held her. Warmth. How long
had it been since he had felt human warmth on his skin? He didn’t
let her go even as the sun came creeping back to christen a new
week. He turned in the sheets and put his head on a new piece of
the pillow, but he could still feel her warmth.

MONDAY
SEPTEMBER 10, 2007

____

36

It was warm –
in a comforting way, not like the warmth of his sheets heated up by
a night of disturbed sleep.

“
Hey there,
Tommy.” He opened his eyes. Big, deep brown eyes looked back at him
with a huge smile.

“
Hey, Rosie.”
He really didn’t know what to say. He took stock of his feelings.
It didn’t feel like he’d made a mistake. It didn’t feel like he’d
done anything rash. He didn’t feel out of control. Almost certainly
he was wrong about all three. Either he was entering a manic phase
and he’d lost his ability to keep tabs on his condition, or he
really liked Rosie. There were so many reasons why he hoped it was
the latter.

“
Can I see you
again?” he asked.

“
What do you
think Emily would say about that?”

“
I don’t
care,” he said, and he believed that it was true, although he
didn’t know why.

“
Well, you can
see me now,” she said, pulling him so that every inch of her was
touching him. “Let’s take it from there.”

He closed his
eyes and everything was gone except the taste of her, and images of
numbers rolling and writhing beyond an imaginary horizon.
Numbers. A woman turning to make love to him.
Rosie turning to make love to him.

*

Back in his
flat, bathed and in fresh clothes, he put a dab of Number One on
his neck. Tommy felt vital and alive. Every sense was heightened.
He took in every nuance of the overture to Wagner’s Tristan and
Isolde that was playing in the background as he finished his
smoothie and picked up the phone.

“
Charteris,
good morning,” came the answer. Tommy remembered several years of
lunchtimes trying to make the line sound vaguely interested. He
knew he hadn’t done a much better job.

“
Good morning.
May I speak to Henry Wilde, please? It’s Tommy West, an old
colleague, calling about Professor Charles Shaw.” It was best to be
up front and head off any questions at the pass.

“
Let me see if
he’s in for you.” That was another line he’d used, one of the
delightful euphemisms of office life. You could hardly sit on the
reception desk of a small solicitors’ firm and not know who was in.
Still, it sounded better than
I’ll see if
he can be bothered to talk to you
or
I’ll see how close to the end of
his tether he is already
.

“
Tommy West.”
Tommy could picture Wilde’s mouth open to reveal his vast smile. He
closed his eyes and took in the deep, Teflon-smooth texture of
Henry Wilde’s voice.

“
I’m sorry
about John,” said Tommy. “I assume you know that he was on an
appointment to see me when he died?”

“
Yes I did
know that,” the lawyer said evenly. “From why Susan said you’ve
called I’m guessing it was Professor Shaw’s business he was on. I
can’t tell you much at the moment I’m afraid. We’re still trying to
tie up some loose ends with his estate, but I’ll tell you what I
can. I have half an hour free at ten. Do you want to meet
somewhere?”

“
Could I come
to the offices?”

“
That would be
good. Can you be here in 20 minutes?”

“
Of
course.”

Charteris was
one of the many small solicitors’ partnerships that nestled in the
area behind St Saviour’s. It was a rat-run of alleys and snickets,
doorways and garages, where with a little local knowledge you could
lose anyone in a chase.

The ground
floor reception was a small high-ceilinged regency room painted
white. The magazines scattered on the solid mahogany table were
splashed with pictures of yachts and Ferraris, a signal that this
was a conveyancing, divorce and probate practice, not a Legal Aid
criminal and employment law firm. Across the narrow duck-egg
corridor was a similar but much larger room, an open-plan office
that was called the typing pool not long before Tommy joined but
was now had the grander title of the paralegals’ room. It was still
upstairs/downstairs to the core, Tommy thought as he opened the
door, the receptionist peering uneasily from across the corridor to
work out what he was doing but soon losing interest.

Tommy guessed
the paralegals were still arranged in strict hierarchical
formation, juniors and secretaries to anyone on articles at the
front, assistants to the partners at the back. The one exception
had been Tina, Charteris’ secretary, who had an ante-chamber by his
top-floor room. Just like Shaw’s cellar, he thought, everything
building up to the oldest and best, who were kept furthest from the
variable climate of the real world. It wasn’t nearly as well-kept
as the cellar, though. There were still three or four faces he
recognised, and they all recognised him at once and smiled. None of
them seemed to have changed. A couple of them had moved closer to
the back of the room, following their solicitor’s progress rather
than their own ability, which experience told him was more than
they realised or his pay reflected.

“
Tommy,
wonderful to see you.” The voice seemed to ooze through the air
towards him and he turned around to see Henry Wilde, his
perfectly-sculpted fifty-something figure pushing ever so slightly
but not too much against the chest and shoulders of his Saville Row
suit. The smile shone out of his jet black face. “Christine, can
you get some tea for Dr West and bring it up, please? Jasmine, as I
remember?”