He had me there. CRAPP’s whole funding model relied heavily on people who were the exact right combination of environmentally conscious and charmingly eccentric.
“Excitement,” I tried, very much aware it was a desperation gambit, “isn’tstrictlyrequired to patronise a charity.”
Saint nodded again. It was a slow, deliberate nod that saidI hear youbut was lying about it. “I’ve got a profile,” he said. “A platform and property. I know I could be a real advocate for the right movement, but right now, there’s a whole lot tied up in”—he made that dismissive, encompassing gesture again—“this.”
For the first time since Saint had walked through the door, Alex found a space of sympathy with him. “Oh now, when you put it like that, itisa bit of a sticky wicket, isn’t it? Fellow can’t have all of a fellow’s cash tied up in one investment. Why, only the other day I was saying to Miffy, ‘Miffy,’ I was saying, ‘do we really needtwohouses in the Maldives? What if something comes up and we wind up short on readies?’”
“See,” said Saint, whose antiestablishment credentials were only slightly dented by his taking Alex’s spare-villa probs as completely normal, “he gets it. And you’re all going to have to get it because at the end of the day, it’s my decision.”
“Of course,” I said and was honestly thankful that Saint cut me off before I could get to abutwith no follow-up.
“I’m a fair man,” Saint concluded, demonstrating that fairest of all fair instincts, a strong desire to tell people how fair he was. “I’ll give you a year to wrap things up, find new jobs, all the rest of it. It’s a tough economy, and I wouldn’t want to be an arsehole.”
“Jolly considerate of you.” That was Alex, who had apparently forgiven Saint for his oikishness now he was demonstrating an appropriate level of entitlement and arrogance. “Still, bit rough on the old man’s legacy, don’tcha think? I mean, Hilary did love his beetles.”
“Fuck his legacy. You know what he told me when I said I was dropping out of Oxford to take my band on the road?”
“What?” I asked with instincts honed over several years of being professionally required to pay attention to rich people’s bullshit.
“He said, ‘That’s not the sort of thing de Lancys do.’” Saint frowned into the past with the intensity of a man who’d been carrying a grudge for forty years. “Financed it myself in the end. Had to sell my Bentley.”
Alex looked horrified. “Oh, Isay.”
I was ninety-nine percent sure this was fucked no matter what happened, but my job was all about living in the one percent. “That was really wrong of him,” I tried, “but if you’re doing this just to get back at your dead father, then—I don’t know, is that the kind of person you want to be?”
Saint got up from the table with a slow forcefulness that you really had to be a sixty-something-year-old independently wealthy anarchist to pull off. “Yeah,” he said. And walked out.
We stared at the remaining Jaffa Cakes for, I don’t know, a while.
“Well,” said Rhys Jones Bowen at last, “that could have gone better.”
Chapter 11
On Saturday, I schlumped downstairs in my schlumping boxers, only to discover that Oliver was up, dressed and ready, with Spud wriggling in his harness.
“Shit,” I said. “Is it Big Walk Day already?”
Oliver glanced up with a playful smirk. “No, I’m just introducing our puppy to the leather scene.”
“Hey. Spud is far too young for that, even in dog years.”
“Ruff,” said Spud. Oliver, being Oliver, had been getting Spud used to the harness for the best part of a week, which unfortunately meant he was so comfortable that he thought nothing of zooming around the study, knocking over the wastepaper basket as he went.
“Sorry.” I ran a hand through my even-more-chaotic-than-usual hair. “I just…with everything…I forgot.”
“Lucien, it’s fine.” Oliver gazed at me with that horrible, endlessly understanding sincerity that I knew I’d never take for granted because that would involve believing I deserved it. “If you’re not feeling up to it, we can go another time.”
“What?” I cried. “No. He’s worked super hard for this. He’s communicating his poo needs, he’s started sleeping downstairs, he’s had all his injections, and he was a really good boy during the injections…”
“He was a better boy than you were.”
“I was concerned. Those were big needles. He’s a small dog.”
Oliver gently extricated Spud from the wastepaper basket. “As intelligent as he may be, I don’t think Spud is especially motivated by long-term incentives.”
“But you’ve put his harness on. We’ve spent all week teaching him that means something good, and now you’re going to dash his little canine hopes.”
“True,” Oliver conceded. “I’d rather Spud’s hopes remained undashed, at least while he’s at such a tender age. I can take him by myself if that’s easier.”
