The Tax Exile by Guy Bellamy

Author:Guy Bellamy [Bellamy, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Some habits had not survived Fred’s journey south, an indiscriminate reliance on television to fill the empty hours being one of them. Others had endured as if he had never moved: one morning a week was devoted to shopping. With a little planning it was possible to make this exercise last three or four hours; he was learning how to fill his days.

On a Saturday in late July he left the apartment soon after nine and set off for the port, where he had a coffee at one of the open-air cafés at the water’s edge. Tourists wandered aimlessly around him looking at the boats. As the English papers hadn’t arrived, he bought the International Herald Tribune and Le Canard Enchaîné. This last purchase was a somewhat ambitious gesture for someone with his language problems, but he had hoped that the cartoons might leap the barrier. He was disappointed in this hope and turned to the other paper. There were fleeing Kurds in Turkey, epidemics in Bangladesh and looting in Rangoon, but it was news of England that he needed today. How were Sebastian Coe’s preparations coming along for the Olympic games? Was it still raining? Which popular television star had most recently been exposed in the Sunday papers as a dope-taking pederast? What fresh strokes was Margaret Hilda Thatcher planning behind the sinister black bricks of 10 Downing Street? And was there beans on toast still for tea?

He finished the coffee and strolled away from the port up the rue Princesse Caroline looking at the shops. He came to the English bookshop, Scruples, and went in. Almost immediately he spotted a paperback by Philip Hunt called The Man Who Forgot to Breathe. He bought it without a second glance.

In the Codec supermarket in the subway by the harbour he moved along the shelves with his list like an experienced housewife. The list was in two languages and drawn from a much longer list in the apartment that he had compiled soon after he arrived and had found himself trying to do the washing-up with a bottle of bleach.

Lunchtime drinking, one of the great pleasures at home, was another habit that had not survived the move. The temptation was too great and with this much leisure he could see himself spending most of his time either drinking or recovering from it. But on Saturdays he made an exception and ended up in the King’s Head or the Bar Tabac chatting to strangers.

Today, as it was on his route home, he dropped into Flashman’s for a few pints of Holsten. It took only two to push his thoughts in the direction of Kate Seymour.

She behaved like a girl who had never heard of sex. There was no hint in her behaviour that she had ever considered going to bed with a man and, according to Lena Ryan, she had not gone to bed with Jeremy Tyrrell. Fred found this unnatural and alarming. Perhaps she was the last 23-year-old virgin in Britain.

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