‘It means I also deliver. No one else is involved. Not as such. It’s you and me and no direct involvement of third parties. I’ve talked and talked to them but they won’t budge. It’s deal through me or there’s no deal. That’s their firm policy, complain how we may.’
They met in Coco’s Bar at the El Panama. Pendel had to yell above the band.
‘It’s her morality, Andy, like I said. She’s adamant. She respects you, she likes you. But you’re where she draws the line. Honour and obey her husband is one thing, spy on her employers for a British diplomat when she’s American is another, never mind her employer is betraying a sacred trust. Call it hypocrisy, call it women. “Never mention Mr Osnard again,” she says, and it’s a breakpoint. “Don’t bring him here, don’t let him talk to my children, he’ll pollute them. Never tell him I’ve agreed to do the awful thing you ask of me, or that I’ve joined the Silent Opposition.” I’m giving it you straight, Andy, painful though it may be. When Louisa digs her toes in, it takes a Stealth bomber to shift her.’
Osnard helped himself to a fistful of cashews, put back his head, yawned and poured them into his mouth.
‘London isn’t going to like it.’
‘Then they’ll have to lump it, Andy, won’t they?’
Osnard pondered this while he masticated. ‘Yes. They will,’ he agreed.
‘And she’s not going to be giving anything in writing either,’ Pendel added as an afterthought. ‘Nor’s Mickie.’
‘Wise girl,’ said Osnard, still munching. ‘We’ll back-date her salary till the beginning of the month. And make sure you put in for her expenses. Car, heat, light, electricity, the date. Want another o’ these or how about a short one?’
Louisa was recruited.
Next morning Harry Pendel rose with a sense of his own diversity stronger than any he had experienced in all his years of striving and imagining. He had never been so many people. Some were strangers to him, others warders and old lags known to him from previous convictions. But all were at his side, marching with him in the same direction, sharers of his grand vision. ‘Heavy week coming up by the look of it, Lou,’ he called to his wife through the shower curtain, firing the first shot of his new campaign. ‘Lot of house calls, new orders in the pipeline.’ She was washing her hair. She had taken to washing it a lot, sometimes twice a day. And cleaning her teeth five times at least. ‘Playing squash tonight, dear?’ he enquired with immense casualness.
She turned off the shower.
‘Squash, dear. Are you playing tonight?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘It’s Thursday. Club night at the shop. I thought you always played squash on Thursdays. Standing date with Jo-Ann.’
‘Do you wish me to play squash with Jo-Ann?’
‘I was only asking, Lou. Not wishing. Asking. You like to keep fit, we know that. It shows, too.’
Count to five. Twice.
‘Yes, Harry, tonight I intend to play squash with Jo-Ann.’
‘Right. Great.’
‘I shall come home from work. I shall change. I shall drive to the Club and play squash with Jo-Ann. We have a court booked from seven to eight.’
‘Well, give her my love. She’s a nice woman.’
‘Jo-Ann likes two consecutive half-hour periods. One period to practise her backhand, one to practise her fore-hand. For her partner that routine is naturally reversed. Unless the partner is left-handed, which I am not.’
‘Got you. Understood.’
‘And the children will be visiting with the Oakleys,’ she added in extension of her previous bulletin. ‘They will eat fattening crisps, drink tooth-corroding cola, absorb violent television and camp on the Oakleys’ insanitary floor in the interests of reconciliation between our two families.’
‘Okay, then. Thanks.’
‘Not at all.’
The shower started again and she went back to soaping her hair. The shower stopped.
‘And after squash, it being Thursday, I shall devote myself to my work, planning and synthesising Señor Delgado’s engagements for the forthcoming week.’
‘So you said. And a very full schedule, I hear. I’m impressed.’
Rip aside the curtain. Promise her to be completely real from now on. But reality was no longer Pendel’s subject, if it ever had been. On the way to school he sang the whole of ‘My object all sublime’ and the children thought he was joyously mad. Entering his shop he became an enchanted stranger. The new blue rugs and smart furnishings amazed him, so did the sight of the Sportsman’s Corner in Marta’s glass box and the shiny new frame round Braithwaite’s portrait. Who on earth did that? I did. He was delighted by the aroma of Marta’s coffee issuing from the clubroom upstairs and the sight of a fresh bulletin on student protest in the drawer of his work table. By ten o’clock the doorbell had already started ringing with promises of inspiration.