on in the wards.
He hesitated. Even he, so used to having his own way, thought twice about ringing a children’s hospital at a quarter to nine on Guy Fawkes Night.
He must find out.
He dialled.
‘Hello. My name is Sir Gordon Coppinger.’
‘The Sir Gordon Coppinger?’
‘That’s right. I want to speak to a lady called Siobhan McEnery. Her baby son Ryan is seriously ill in the hospital.’
‘Is it important, Sir Gordon?’
‘It’s important or I wouldn’t be ringing at this time but no, it isn’t a matter of life and death and I will understand if she can’t speak to me or doesn’t feel able to.’
‘I’ll do my best, Sir Gordon.’
‘Thank you. I really appreciate that.’
He waited, waited, waited. His heart was racing.
‘Hello.’
Siobhan. He almost fainted.
‘Siobhan, it’s Sir Gordon here. I have to know. How’s Ryan? How’s the wee mite?’
‘Oh, Sir Gordon, thank you so much for asking. He’s very ill but he’s holding his own.’
‘Oh, thank you, Siobhan. Thank you. I’m so relieved. Get back to him, Siobhan.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
He put the phone down and walked slowly away. He caught sight of himself in a long mirror. He stared with astonishment at the sight of himself staring at himself with astonishment.
Not such a useless lump of a nun after all
He walked slowly down the stairs, out of silence into bedlam.
Almost without knowing that he was doing it, he took a plate and piled it with food. Almost without knowing how he had got there, he found himself back in the immense drawing room.
‘Dad! Over here.’
Almost without making a decision he obeyed Luke and made his way over to the corner of the room, where there was a spare seat. Nobody, it seemed, had been that eager to sit with Luke and Emma, who had created a little artistic enclave by sitting with Peregrine Thoresby and his partner David Emsley.
‘I love your Pissarros,’ said Peregrine Thoresby, who was at his most effete and wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of mint tea in this gathering.
Sir Gordon finished his mouthful of smoked duck before replying. He needed the time. He was having trouble getting back into the social whirl after his experience upstairs.
‘Well, I put on my walls only what I like,’ he said at length.
‘And that includes nothing by Luke?’ asked David Emsley, who was big and solid and had played in the scrum for Rosslyn Park before coming out of the closet.
‘Difficult one. I really don’t want to be offensive,’ said Sir Gordon. ‘I only put on my walls paintings that I both admire and believe will enhance my house. If you think that makes me philistine, I am. I can admire Francis Bacon. I don’t want him in my house. The same goes for Hieronymus Bosch and, I’m afraid, Luke Coppinger. It isn’t a question of merit. It’s a question of … domesticity. In choosing a picture I use some of the same criteria as I use in choosing a settee. Does it enhance the room? Fact of life, I’m afraid. You disapprove, Emma. I see it in your face.’
‘Emma disapproves of everything,’ said Luke proudly.
‘I do not,’ said Emma. ‘How ridiculous. I disapprove of this party, yes. I’m sorry, but I do. Such waste, when billions are dying of starvation, and when it’s just been announced that company directors voted themselves average increases of forty-nine per cent last year, and here you are wasting money on fireworks of all things, which are no use to anybody and frighten all the animals, and please don’t point out that I myself have been eating your food and drinking your drink because it’s all been laid out and will only be thrown away if I don’t.’
There was silence. Luke seemed abashed. Even Emma seemed abashed. Sir Gordon felt very tired, too weak to face a challenge.
‘You deny that you disapprove of everything, Emma,’ said Peregrine Thoresby. ‘So tell us. What do you approve of?’
‘I approve of disapproval,’ said Emma, ‘because the world deserves it. I approve of alcohol, because it makes me feel good. I approve of cricket, because it’s going to get Luke out of my hair for hours every weekend in summer if we’re still together. I approve of bees, because they’re clever and lovely and I like honey. I approve of rabbits, obviously.’ Her most recent painting was a massive canvas of rabbit droppings. She looked at Peregrine and David. ‘Oh, and I approve of homosexuality.’
‘Thank goodness for that, eh, David?’ said Peregrine.
‘She’s just saying it to be polite,’ said David, and at the word ‘polite’ Emma snorted.
‘Sir Gordon, you’re a bit of an enigma, you know,’ said Peregrine.
‘Oh, I do hope so,’ said Sir Gordon, but he said it without his usual conviction. He felt uneasy in this conversation.
‘You can be so forward-looking with the collection at times, but you’re regarded as a rather reactionary soul. We’ve never discussed this and I think we get on well, I hope we get on well. What’s your attitude to gays?’
Sir Gordon wanted to tell them of his happy relationship with Dennis Hargreaves in Dudley all those years ago, but he couldn’t think of a way of putting it that wouldn’t sound a bit like boasting in this context, as if he was telling them that he wasn’t narrow, he wasn’t prudish, he too was a man of the world, a man of broad tastes. So he didn’t. Instead he repeated something he had said at a seriously stuffy dinner party in Leatherhead.
‘I have no objection to male homosexuality,’ he said. ‘I get on very well with homosexuals actually, but I loathe lesbianism.’
Throughout the house the conversation was buzzing merrily, people were beginning to go for desserts, soon it would be fireworks time, but in this corner there was a stunned silence. Luke broke it at last.
‘That’s ridiculous, Dad.’
‘I don’t want to be rude,’ lied Emma, ‘but it’s ludicrous. How can you possibly justify it?’
‘Two male homosexuals are two rivals out of the way,’ said Sir Gordon. ‘Two lesbians mean two lost opportunities. Simple self-interest.’
There was another, only slightly less stunned silence.
‘Every decision in the world is made out of self-interest.’
‘Oh bollocks,’ said Emma, and she stormed off, to the extent to which it was possible to storm off in such a crowded room.
‘Oh, Dad,’ said Luke, and he set off after her.
‘They’re young,’ said David Emsley. ‘The truth still hurts them.’
The truth. Was it the truth? Sir Gordon wasn’t sure any more. It didn’t explain his phone call to Siobhan.
And then, shortly before ten o’clock, the guests trooped out into a night that wasn’t quite wet and wasn’t quite dry, that wasn’t quite cold and wasn’t quite mild, and they stood in their overcoats and their massed ranks right at the bottom of the garden.
Behind them, the house shone with light, a fantasy of gables and even a small turret, built in brick, rambling, almost mirroring a medieval house that had grown over the centuries, though this had grown in two days on the drawing board of