them rising up to wash the Island clean of all the impurities that so irritated him.
A vast storm, a second Flood: that was what was needed. One that would carry off the bankers, the lawyers, the accountants and all the others who looked down on him from their vertiginous social position, with their sports cars, their boats and their skiing holidays. It was his wife’s sensitivity to his low altitude, and his resentment that he should be made to care about it, that had brought him here tonight.
‘Rob and Sally have invited us to Chamonix for New Year.’
‘I don’t know if we can afford it. We’re stretched enough with the mortgage, and we’ve got to get your car through a service in February.’
‘Sally says they’ll pay.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? She’s my best friend and she can afford it.’
‘You mean he can afford it.’
‘Don’t be jealous.’
‘I’m not jealous.’
‘You’ve such a problem with money, you’re really not suited to this Island at all.’
‘That’s not true. You can’t just throw that in. Hey, come on, look at me.’
‘I’d rather not. I don’t like your face when you know you’re wrong.’
Colin wasn’t being disingenuous: he didn’t have a problem with money. He just preferred it to be earned rather than inherited, but he could live with this inequality on the grounds that people inherit plenty of things that give them an unfair advantage in life – a disarming smile, a propensity for kicking a ball, or precocious numeracy. His problem with Rob de la Haye was Rob de la Haye. He didn’t like the way the man laughed at his car.
‘Renault 5! Don’t drive it too long, you’ll grow tits!’ Rob had a Porsche 911, which, on an island that had a maximum speed limit of 40 m.p.h., on only two sections of road, Colin saw as a needless display of conspicuous wealth.
Neither did he like his attitude to the local itinerant Portuguese workers.
‘Did you hear about the Porko who took a bath?’
‘No.’
‘Nor did I!’
Or his relentless stereotyping of the Scots, Irish, Mancunians and Liverpudlians who made up the remaining seasonal workforce of receptionists, waitresses and car-hire representatives.
‘Check your change – Scouser on the till.’
In fact, he didn’t like much about his world view.
‘Take away unemployment benefit, they’ll soon find jobs.’
It irked him that Rob’s horizons were witlessly free of storm clouds. ‘Keep going like this and in five years I can buy a parish,’ he joked, after another run of luck on the markets, at which Colin smiled while inwardly praying for a crash.
He shifted on his granite perch, unsettled by the idea that maybe his wife was right, that underneath the layers of antipathy he was just jealous. His own father had died when Colin was seven. Rob’s had kept on living and acquiring hotels, one of which, the Bretagne, he’d given to his son on his twenty-first birthday.
The thing that Colin really had a problem with, and which had hit him like a telegraph pole to the chest, was that his wife had dated Rob when they were teenagers. It had come out as a response to his diatribe over Rob and Sally’s plans to build a swimming-pool in the grounds of the old farmhouse they were having renovated at a level of expense that Colin found simply incomprehensible. Sally was flying back and forth to London, sourcing furniture and wallpaper, because she was determined that guests shouldn’t recognise any element of her house from visits to the few local department stores. Colin was aware that he had to tread carefully because Sally was Emma’s oldest friend but, like many such friendships, his wife seemed to spend more time talking about the qualities she didn’t like in Sally than those she did. Hence Colin felt on firm ground when it came to expressing his heartfelt but puritanical disdain at the de la Hayes’ need for a swimming-pool when surrounded by such beautiful beaches.
‘But they won’t be living near any beaches in St Lawrence. It’s bang in the centre,’ Emma had pointed out.
‘It’s an island. You’re never that far from a beach.’
‘It’s nice to have your own pool, though. Beaches are full of kids and tourists. And the sea’s only warm enough to swim in about one month a year.’
‘It’s refreshing.’
‘It’s bloody freezing.’
This confused and annoyed Colin. He was sure that, early on in their relationship, Emma had shared his feelings on public space and the beauty of nature. Hadn’t she swooned at his ability to quote huge chunks of Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’?
‘I thought you preferred the wildness and purity of the ocean to the sterility and isolation of the pool.’
‘No, that’s you. I like swimming-pools. Maybe if I was still with Rob, I’d have one.’
‘What do you mean “still with Rob”?’
‘I said “if I was with Rob”. I didn’t mean it. Forget it.’
‘“If I was with Rob” would have been hurtful enough. But you said “still with Rob”.’
Then it had come out, made ominous by its earlier omission. Colin and Emma had both talked freely of previous lovers, and Colin had no problem with Dave Le Gresley, the man he had unwittingly usurped when he’d first started dating Emma. In fact, he rather liked him, and would have kindled a friendship if he hadn’t worried that Emma would find it odd. Rob, on the other hand, had never been mentioned. It now turned out that she had dated him when they were in parallel sixth forms. He wasn’t sure for how long – Emma seemed to change it from weeks to months depending on whether she was trying to hurt or protect Colin, which shifted as their argument rose and fell.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about him before?’
‘Because it’s obvious you don’t like him, and I wanted to avoid exactly this sort of conversation.’
‘Maybe you never mentioned it because you still like him.’
‘You’re being childish.’
‘Does he still like you – is that why he’s always so bloody rude to me?’
‘So what if he does? I wouldn’t be alone in having admirers outside of this marriage.’
‘That’s not … true or fair.’
‘It’s so pathetic, this whole competition you have with Rob.’
‘You’re making me compete! You said if you were still with him you’d have a swimming-pool. Well, I’m sorry, I’m never going to be able to give you that.’
‘Don’t be so bloody smug and virtuous. Earning money is not a crime.’
‘Precisely. He doesn’t earn it. To earn it you have to do something, to contribute.’
‘Well, your contribution means we’ll be stuck in this flat for New Year, while my friends are drinking champagne on top of a fucking mountain!’
‘Maybe you should have married a Bond villain.’
‘You are so immature.’
‘I was joking, but if I’m honest, that’s not a lifestyle I—’
‘Here we go, Colin the fucking martyr. Could have gone into the City but chose to be a teacher. How bloody noble. And fuck anyone who actually wants to have some fun in their life!’
He’d stormed out after that and driven as far away as he could from