A Bouquet of Barbed Wire Read Free

would be something for them to be getting on with, that’s all. I’ve got all the time in the world till three.’ Had he ruined everything?
    ‘I’ll have smoked salmon, and the lamb to follow with peas and celery, no spuds.’ She closed the menu. ‘There. Will that do?’
    ‘That’s fine, if that’s what you really want.’ He gave the order to the waiter who had magically appeared at that precise moment. ‘And the wine list.’
    Her eyes were troubled. ‘I’ve done something, haven’t I? Or said something.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘What is it? Tell me.’
    ‘You haven’t, Prue.’
    ‘Yes, I have. You’re cross. You were all right before so it must be me. I ought to know but I don’t so you must tell me. That’s only fair.’
    How direct she was. Much too direct and logical. Coming right out with it. Like that other time. (‘Daddy, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m going to have a baby.’) ‘Gevrey Chambertin,’ he said to the waiter. Prue did not care for rosé. Always an extremist, my daughter, he thought.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m ashamed to admit it, but it hurts me when you mention the flat as home. There now. My secret is out, and I know it’s quite indefensible, that’s why I didn’t tell you. Because you are quite in the right, the flat is your home and I am being absurd and sentimental and I know it.’
    She was staring at him, both hands clasped over her mouth. She looked shocked. He thought, This gets worse and worse. Now I’ve disgusted her as well. Finally she moved her hands and said, ‘Oh God, I said it. It slipped out. I’ve been so careful—I knew you’d feel like that, you and Mummy. I’ve really made an effort not to use the word at all. Oh, I
am
sorry.’
    His eyes stung. ‘Prue,’ he said, ‘you’re an idiot.’
    ‘Am I?’
    ‘And I love you.’ How seldom this was said after childhood: what curtain of restraint descended?
    ‘I love you too.’
    They clinked glasses.
    ‘Strong stuff, this tomato juice,’ said Prue.

3
    R UPERT LOUNGED back in Manson’s chair, tipping it so that it rested on two legs instead of four and made deeper dents in the carpet. He was wearing a check jacket in two shades of mustard, pale and dark, and a shirt in the pale shade with pants in the dark shade. He wore suede mustard shoes and no tie and was smoking a cigar, giving it occasional quite unnecessary taps on the ashtray in front of him, and in between these dropping ash in generous amounts on Manson’s carpet. It made Manson laugh just to look at him: not at him but simply out of sheer exhilaration that characters like Rupert existed outside fiction, that he could be there and all of a piece, perfectly assembled with a sense of design and symmetry rarely found beyond the bounds of art. It was refreshing, if you spent much of your time dealing in fiction, to find that your editor was a man who might well have stepped out of it: it reaffirmed your faith in the validity of what you were doing. I choose my staff well, he thought.
    ‘So,’ Rupert said, ‘you’re even later back from lunch than I am. That takes some doing.”
    ‘I had a very special date,’ said Manson, just for the hell of it, and watched Rupert’s eyebrows lift. Even these seemed mustard-coloured today: could it be that he dyed them to match each ensemble? Surely that would be too much, even for Rupert. ‘Prue,’ he added, to let Rupert down.
    Rupert smiled, as if to show that he had not for a moment thought otherwise. I am well-known, Manson reflected, fornot being That Kind of Man. And Rupert—what kind is he? All kinds to all men. And women, come to that. ‘Ah yes,’ Rupert said. ‘Dear Prue. How is she? Gently burgeoning?’
    Despite his affection for Rupert, Manson felt himself bristle. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Give the girl a chance.’
    Rupert took the rebuke with good humour. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘I suppose it’s early days yet. I hope she still regards me as a secular godfather.’
    ‘I