Canarino. Katherine Bucknell

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СКАЧАТЬ was a goad in David’s voice, as if he was jealous of what Leon so lightly passed up.

      ‘Oh, come on, Dave! Get real. It’s no different than when we left college! Hockey’s brutal! We were both out of that years ago. I’m one of the luckiest college ice hockey players ever. I have all my teeth; I never broke my nose; I got a great education basically for free. I have a life no one at home could have dreamed of. Why would I want to coach professional ice hockey? I never even wanted to play professionally. You could have played—why didn’t you play?’ Leon’s voice resounded with some admonition: why are you giving me such a hard time? He was calling David’s bluff.

      ‘I wasn’t as good as you, Leon.’ It came out quietly; even now, David found it hard to admit.

      But Leon took no pity on him. ‘You were plenty good enough! Don’t bullshit me. You would never have dreamed of playing professional hockey! A country-club boy from suburban Connecticut—and wind up in a house like that, with Elizabeth? Give me a break! Why would I want to do it any more than you, David? I may have a rough background, but I left it behind when I was eighteen.’

      Now David wanted to change the subject; somehow they had gotten into an ancient rut. They were grating on each other, right down to the bone, and it made him feel tired.

      ‘So London? What brought you to London?’

      ‘Well, after Boston I went back to New York and started up a hedge fund two or three years ago. Made a ton of money, bought a new place uptown, on the Park. Then I came over here to find some more clients, basically. Share the wealth. I’m lecturing at LSE a few times a year. Eyeing that new business school in Oxford.’

      David resisted making a joke about the new ice hockey rink in Oxford.

      Leon went on, ‘And I am seriously planning to pick your investment banking brain for my own benefit and the benefit of my clients, Dave. What are you going to do with all your smarts in Virginia, anyway? How’d she persuade you?’

      This elicited a monumental sigh. David wasn’t sure he knew the answer, and the topic seemed endless.

      ‘She was never happy here. At least that’s what she says. After September Eleventh, this whole American thing got to be such a big deal. She never stopped telling me that the rest of the world doesn’t understand what it means to be American. She got desperate about the children’s education; they had to go back right away. She bills herself as a country girl at heart; just wants to be back in the US of A, riding, walking, whatever. Elizabeth never took to the English countryside, the village life, the county thing. Can’t stand all the competitive socializing. It gives her claustrophobia.’ He shrugged with his eyebrows, half-closing his eyes, giving in. ‘She has a point; it is relentless, the jockeying for position. And the reward for success is having to go on doing it forever. It’d be one thing if you could make money out of it, but it’s all about getting the next invitation.’

      Now he gave a sour chuckle, sighed again, smaller, and drained his glass, then fingered the salt still stuck to the rim, tasting it from his fingertip. ‘So she’s found this big place. I guess it’s beautiful—in the sticks, somewhere outside Washington. Well, not in the sticks for her. For her it’s right in the middle of her map of places that matter. She’s got that all figured out—I can tell by the price tag. It’s in Culpeper County, out beyond Middleburg, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, near some little town I’ve never heard of, Rixeyville. Secluded, discreet, private—whatever the real estate agents say. Nobody will be able to see her in the middle of her thousand acres, not unless she drives to town or lets them foxhunt across her land.’

      ‘But what are you going to do there, Dave?’ Leon looked comically horrified.

      ‘Well. She put a lot of pressure on me. I let her, I guess, for various reasons. I got what I came to London for; I came for the money. I’ve got so much money I don’t even count it anymore. I’m literally giving it away now. I mean Elizabeth gives it away. So maybe I’ll help her do that—run this foundation she started. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe eventually local politics.’

      Now Leon grinned and threw both arms in the air. ‘Or national politics!’ Then he put his hand on his heart and said with tipsy grandeur, ‘I have a dream…’

      Politics had been David’s adolescent obsession—his heroes the Kennedys, Martin Luther King; his music Joan Baez, Bob Dylan; his hair down to his shoulders.

      ‘Now I see the strategy,’ Leon taunted.

      ‘It’s not that focused, buddy,’ said David. Again, he felt embarrassed by how well Leon knew him, by Leon’s reminding him of ambitions he had hidden even from himself for the last twenty-five years.

      ‘Somebody needs to come along and save the world. Just do it, man!’ Leon flagged the waiter again and ordered their fourth round of drinks. He had cleaned his plate; David was still playing with his steak.

      ‘Aren’t you scared you’ll be bored otherwise?’ Leon asked.

      ‘Petrified.’ David felt as though his whole life was being exposed as a sham. What he had done up until now was not what he had once, in his youth, idealistically intended to do. And what he was getting ready to do next seemed entirely unclear, half-submerged in shallow, domestic anxiety. If he had ever had a sense of what his life was for, he seemed, now, to have lost it.

      ‘So why are you doing this? You’re going to hate living on a horse farm.’

      Leon was leaning across the table now, his face only a few inches from David’s; his eyes were glinting with a mixture of curiosity, sympathy, and something like a promise that he could help fix things. He was intensely soliciting a confidence. David felt as though Leon was saying out loud,You can trust me; we used to be so close. We are still so close.

      The two of them just looked at each other for a long time. The waiter hovered, rigid with expectation; they ignored him. He went off in a huff.

      At last Leon said, ‘Is everything all right?’

      David said, ‘Everything is fine.’

      Leon nodded.

      Then David said, ‘We’ve been married a long time. Ten years. Stuff happens, as everyone knows. I was never home enough. She put the screws on me, and we have a deal. I think it’ll work. For now, I’m sure Elizabeth is right—because of the children.’

      Leon was solemn. ‘So what happened? What stuff?’

      This was followed by another long silence. Then the tortured start of a smile on David’s face. His lips trembled, their corners twitched backwards and forwards. He looked at Leon and then felt his face getting hot. Suddenly, the pair of them broke out in shouts of laughter, drunken, relieved, vomiting up tension in convulsions of half-crazy joy.

      The waiter turned and stared at them, hands on hips. Leon raised his eyebrows. ‘Get her!’ he said.

      David turned to look at the waiter. Then he turned back to Leon.

      ‘Let’s have one more drink and split,’ he said.

      So Leon stuck his arm in the air, two hot-dog-size fingers extended. ‘Two more?’ He said it nicely, politely, and the cross little figure of the waiter melted into action.

      ‘I feel like we must have already had this whole conversation before I married her, СКАЧАТЬ