“You’re nice,” she said. “Hang on to that, Joe, it’s more im­portant than you think.” She half ran out of the room.

25

25

Frowning, Nick Halberton added up the bill. His face cleared as he scribbled something on it; the waiter backed away, bowing, appearing as pleased as if his hands had been stuffed with five-pound notes.

“Delightful,” he said. “We must do this more often, much more often.” He rose. “No, no, you finish your cognac.” He kissed Norah. “And don’t forget to phone me tomorrow, Joe.”

The waiter moved the table back for him. He walked over to the cloakroom, his head moving slowly from side to side; each time it moved he acknowledged the presence of someone he knew with a little wave.

There was a jerky stiffness about his walk, the effect, so he’d told me, of a bellyful of shrapnel at Anzio. But now, as he picked up his briefcase and was helped on with his dark blue overcoat, he made me think of the City Gent in the set of platform figures I’d bought Harry last Christmas; the coat was the same length and the rather flat face the same shade. And I thought, like Harry’s City Gent, he would probably have a transparent plastic base. He was being pushed. We were all being pushed: he had been pushed into this lunch because he’d gone to Leeds University at the same time as Norah, I’d been pushed into this lunch because Norah wanted me to stop drifting, to be tied down to London and to her: nothing had changed.

Except that my son wanted me, wanted me for the first time that I remembered, and I was not with him. The excuse for my not going to Warley yesterday had been that Norah had been given two tickets to the theatre, the excuse today was lunch with Nick Halberton; there would be another good reason why I shouldn’t go tomorrow. By the time I actually went to Warley, Harry’s need for me would have passed. He would not forget the be­trayal; it would be useless to tell him later that I couldn’t miss the chance to see My Fair Lady or that I was forced to lunch with Nick Halberton. He would only care for one thing: he had needed me and I had not been there.

Norah leaned across the table. “I think he likes you, Joe.”

“Who?”

“Nick, you idiot.”

“I don’t think that he really likes anybody,” I said.

“I can tell when he likes someone. Nick’s going very far very fast and he wants good men. He’s not such a fool that he’ll try to do it all himself. He wants good men and he’ll pay them top rates. He’s fair, he’s generous but if you fail him—”