Some conventional techniques of the traditional private eye were denied to him: he could not, for example, sit at a bar drinking whiskey. But he did have certain advantages all his own. He could blend into any crowd, particularly one of schoolchildren. No one would suspect him of a dangerous agenda. But he could not drive a car. And he still needed permission to stay out past supper-time.
Edgar liked airports. He liked airports and flying and pretty much everything connected with flight except birds, which brought out his squeamish side in some primitive way. He liked airplanes and he even liked the word ‘airplane’, with its airplaney shape, the a of the cockpit, the p and l of transverse wings. Mon didn’t mind airports in themselves, just what they represented. They contained shops and Mon liked shops, but these ones were signs of imminent flight and Mon did not like airplanes or flight. She was, as she told the weirdly cosmeticized woman at the check-in desk, a nervous flyer.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs …’ at which point the cosmeticized woman sneaked a look at the passports.
‘Ms,’ corrected Mon.
‘Excuse me. You’re in very capable hands. Would the young man like a window seat?’
The young man in question was blushing because he could see down the shirt-front of the check-in woman, her cleavage, the rise of her breasts, freckled and tanned, and his immediate response—or, even, quicker than immediate; as if the response might have preceded the stimulus, might, in some magical way, have induced it—was a stiffening of his penis followed by a necessary cupping of hands over his groin to hide the tell-tale bulge. Pressing himself against the desk was no good, because, in these difficult times, he had discovered that any contact, even for purposes of concealment, and with a material as uninflected with erotic value as veneered chipboard, would only exacerbate his aroused state.
‘The young man takes what he gets,’ said Mon, severely but playfully, as if she was enjoying the possibility of being a different kind of mother. ‘We’d like to sit next to an exit door.’
‘I’ll see what I can find,’ said the check-in woman, whose search could only fail because she had already, Edgar noticed, printed out their boarding passes. Her search ended, predictably, in briskly acted disappointment and Edgar, who did indeed want a window seat, was allocated one.
Waiting to board, they played their favourite game.
‘You know, I’ve been thinking about the hall,’ Edgar said, quietly drumming with pen and pencil on holiday puzzle book.
Mon shook her head. There was probably a Valium inside her to take the edge off her fear, slow it down to a sluggish thing, but still enormous and impossible to evade.
‘You know, the fireplace?’ Edgar asked.
She tapped her chin lightly with a lipstick case, smiled bravely, and was ready to join in.
‘What colour are Dutch tiles? Blue, or blue and white?’
‘Blue and white,’ she said. ‘But we don’t have to have them.’
She had failed to interest him in tiles before, which was why he had brought them up now.
‘No it’s fine,’ he grandly said.
The departure lounge was full. There were families here and couples, and babies that screamed, and a boy with a computer game whom Mon had tried to get Edgar to introduce himself to.
‘Inlaid into the floor and around the fireplace itself. They’re very expensive, though, so we might have to leave that kind of thing to last. I’d like to get the library in order first. What’s the matter?’
She had caught him frowning. Edgar was not sure about the library. He had alternative plans, a snooker room, where he and his father, in matching black waistcoats, should solemnly apply chalk to the tips of their cues and with all the emphatic restraint of beloved comrades congratulate each other on their shots.
‘I thought we might have a snooker room.’
‘We’ve got a games room already.’
‘Yes but it needs to be separate. You can’t have pinball machines and noise and things in a snooker room. It’s not, you know …’
‘Appropriate?’
‘Yes.’
Even if she was laughing at him he didn’t care. He had lifted her mind away from their flight and he enjoyed this sort of conversation hardly less than she did, their When-We-Move-To-A-Big-House game.
‘I’ve decided to wood-panel my bedroom,’ she said. ‘You can have your bedroom panelled if you like.’
‘No thank you.’
‘Too proud?’
It has never been discussed where his father might sleep—start him off discreetly perhaps in one of the guest rooms, let things develop from there. Edgar’s father could watch his sports through the night on the Sensurround TV set. He was, no doubt, not above playing computer games. He could make his telephone calls, to Nice and Los Angeles and New York and Las Vegas and Accra and Nairobi and Casablanca. Swim by moonlight in the pool. Edgar had wanted to telephone his father before they left the flat but the understanding was that he waited for his father to call. If Edgar ever did try to telephone his father, it was to numbers that no longer existed, or else a woman answered, who would call Edgar by the wrong name and tell him that his father was on the road.
‘The pool.’
‘What about the pool?’
‘Can it be P-shaped?’
She smiled with indulgence and permitted it to be so. He wanted to be able to see it from the sky, the initial of his surname, a blue suburban monogram.
‘I need a proper garden,’ she said.
‘I know.’
‘A walled garden, with places to sit, stone benches, maybe a fountain, and a vegetable garden and a herb garden, and you’ll need somewhere to play football.’
This was one of Mon’s fantasies that sometimes he benevolently allowed her, that Edgar was a typical boy who enjoyed the usual pleasures. He pictured the garden, its straggly long grass that would be his responsibility to cut, where he would go and lounge with his friends, if he had any. Edgar wondered when he would take up smoking. Soon, perhaps. That was the sort of activity that takes place in long grass. He sometimes saw Jeffrey smoking, standing on a chair, blowing smoke out of the top frame of Mon’s bedroom window.
He had to learn how to hide his thoughts better. He must have been wearing a Jeffrey face, because Mon was inspecting him and saying, ‘You’re going to have to let Jeffrey in.’
‘In? Where? I thought he had a key.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Do I?’
‘You know how much he likes you.’
She often said this, as if it were both true and argument enough. He did not believe it to be true. Even if Jeffrey was on record as saying this (which Edgar doubted) it would only have been to curry favour with Mon.
‘He always says such nice things about you, he really likes you, he does, it’s like a brotherly thing, but while we’re on the subject it might be just as well if.’
She looked away, squinted nervously at a suavely tanned, gold-braided pilot pulling his hand-luggage through the departure hall on shiny wheels. Edgar was fascinated. There was no coyness or played intrigue in Mon’s manner. She was actually finding it difficult to finish her sentence and Edgar was curious to know where it would resolve.
‘Might be just as well if what?’