The Convenience of Lies Read Free Page B

been borderline. Only his shmoozer’s charm at interview – and some Wrenn family string pulling – won him a place. Barely into his second term and McCall knows the end is nigh.
    A man and woman hold hands outside the television shop. Side-on, the man seems in his early thirties, studious and intense and wearing a Gannex overcoat like the Prime Minister.
    McCall cannot see the female’s face yet but she appears younger with hair the shade of ripened wheat and cut to the shoulder. She has a dancer’s legs in stockings with a Beatles motif and is very svelte, even in a sack-like duffle coat. Mcall is less than three yards away. For no apparent reason, she turns her head. She looks directly at him. It is as if he has been expected but is late.
    She gives him the slightest hint of a smile and appears almost relieved -she need worry no longer. He has arrived. Her eyes say it all - and more - in that primitive, wordless way only those who are to be lovers understand.
    For McCall, it is exactly the same. He has known this stranger all his nineteen years. He goes to her, stands by her side. Neither notices anyone else. He could kiss her – and she him. It would be the most natural response either could make.
    ‘Look, I’m going for breakfast,’ McCall says. ‘Please, you must both come with me.’
    It feels weirder than a rag week stunt, a command based on an assumption. Yet the couple grin at each other and agree. Something strange has just happened, something uniquely particular to them and within their subconscious selves, each recognises the significance of the moment.
    The girl suggests they go to The Welcome, a café near the Arts Theatre where she works. McCall’s depression has already swung into a mood of elation. His hangover is a memory. He is volubly at ease - politically radical about growing US imperialism in Vietnam or lampooning the drunken cabinet minister in Harold Wilson’s government he’d interviewed for Varsity.
    The girl laughs and is captivated. The man laughs but not as much for he has eyes to see. Then it’s lunchtime and she and he have to be somewhere else. McCall sits where they leave him; suddenly aware he’s no idea of their names – or they of his.
    He runs into the street but it’s empty so he chases down to the Arts Theatre stage door in St Edward’s Passage. The theatre is deserted except for a man sticking up posters for next week’s production of Loot. McCall feels breathless with anxiety. Something of his has just been taken from him and he must get it back.
    *
    Perceptive, protective Hester didn’t need telling Lexie and McCall had history. Yet even she would struggle to understand its complexity, how torn the curtain between love and loathing had become, if only for McCall.
    He tried not to appear too fazed by Lexie’s unscripted arrival and introduced the two women. They exchanged notional smiles. Hester admired her dress, bud-green silk, plain and minimal yet sensual.
    ‘It’s a Dries van Noten. He’s getting quite well known.’
    ‘Is that a fact? Well, I guess I should look out for his stuff.’
    ‘Do that darling, but I’m not so sure he goes up to your size.’
    Very little rattled Hester yet she knew it wiser to retreat. She got up and walked back across the yard to the embrasured safety of the kitchen.
    A wheelbarrow full of onions needed plaiting to dry with the herbs she’d already gathered. The long farmhouse table by the Aga was already heaped with pears for bottling and courgettes and runner beans to cut and freeze for winter soup.
    She always understood why a sixth century holy man thought gardening virtuous and godly. The rhythm of life at Garth gave Hester a sense of contentment and well-being, brought her closer to the scheme and order of things which she’d sought in the collectives of California but failed to find.
    Yet Lexie’s arrival had put Hester strangely at odds with herself in this most gentle of seasons. Her karma was upset, maybe even