Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [195]
He recalled with distaste the conversation just past, the posturing and evasions of Templeton. He had nailed the fellow, though, in the end. What steps could have led him to such a man? He could almost believe he had come upon him by some unrepeatable chance, as one might come upon a creature in a labyrinth. But of course it was not by chance … He experienced a slight feeling of nausea at the openness of the sky, the flashes of the gulls’ wings over the pale water, the spaces beyond. London ended here, his London at least. It lay all to the back of him, the precincts of government, the banks and counting-houses; and with it lay all he had achieved in these twelve years: his partnership in Fletcher & Company, his holdings in his father-in-law’s bank, his house in St James’s, the power and position that had come with his money. He had laboured and denied himself and stopped at nothing, however unworthy. His promise, his father’s memory, had purged everything of wrong. In restoring his father’s name and credit, he had established and consolidated his own. Kemp was a name to be reckoned with again. And he was still some months away from his thirty-fifth birthday.
It was a triumph … He looked again at the solitary fishermen, dark in the distance. There would be pike in those deep ponds. Beyond them, he knew, there was the toll-gate and beyond that the road through the market gardens of Marylebone and the fields where the cowkeepers had their shacks … Something, some nostalgia or desire for completeness, came to him with the strength of a physical impulse, though without aim or direction. The music of the barrel-organ was nearer now. Kemp moved away across the square but after a moment returned to give the man a florin. For a moment he met the dark eyes, saw marks of hardship on the face, had a fleeting sense of the streets the man would drag through, grinding out the same tunes.
He went down the steps and cut across the park past the keeper’s lodge and came out on Piccadilly, turning off again when he drew opposite the reservoir. His house was on one corner of St James’s Square, overlooking the railed gardens.
He found his wife at home as he had expected, still in her bedroom. It was past midday now but she had just risen. He knew her movements well: she would spend two hours at least on her toilette, take her tea and leave the house in late afternoon on a round of visits. They would not meet again that day – perhaps not until this time tomorrow. He wanted to speak to her about her father, Sir Hugo, with whom he was now on rather bad terms because of recent business disagreements and because it was to her father that Margaret complained of him.
The elderly French maid was in the room, clearing away the remains of breakfast. He noted that as soon as he appeared she began to delay. Fritz, his wife’s poodle, yapped when he entered – there was an old enmity between them, unyielding on both sides. Margaret Kemp chided her dog and greeted her husband in more or less the same tones. Across the top of her head there lay a large round cushion covered with black crêpe, over which the hair was combed back and fastened with curlers. She was a martyr to fashion and the fashion now was for a high, piled-up style. Her face was completely covered with white cream.
‘Will you ask her to take away the things and leave us alone for a while?’ Kemp said, receiving in response a snap of black eyes from the maid – Marie shared the poodle’s feelings precisely.
‘Why? You know she does not gossip.’