Some Here Among Us by Peter Walker Page A

round. She looked more than ever like the blackbird that hears a worm under a lawn. She was, in fact, puzzled. She had not been quite able to place Merle – she assumed at first she was from one of the Caribbean embassies – perhaps even ambassador – but then Merle had risen from her place and, along with Candy, come and gone from the kitchen with an air of familiarity. Heloise had to consider extraordinary possibilities. Could it be Merle was the help ? Was this a Thanksgiving Day custom? And who was this youth who arrived late without a word and sat down wearing a dark navy jumper which had – Heloise thought surely not – the black suede epaulettes of a security guard or a gas-pump attendant? Who knew the customs of this strange city?
    ‘ Hey !’ said Romulus. ‘There’s Egypt!’
    Candy’s cat, jet black but for one white forepaw, had come into the sitting-room and was advancing across the carpet towards Bernard, her tail up, the tip curling very slightly as she paced along.
    ‘Egypt!’ said Bernard. ‘ Darling! ’

4
    Chadwick arrived first. The car-park was empty. Chadwick, who didn’t drive, was dropped off by a cab. The sky was an innocent baby-blue but the air was icy. The commuter traffic on Jefferson Davis Drive was already in full spate. Wap , wap , wap went the air buffets. Chadwick, dancing on the spot, checked his watch and then checked it again, but then, just after seven, he saw Race’s old maroon Citroën – just the kind of car, Chadwick thought, that some mad marine biologist would drive – turning in the gate. Race parked the car, and father and son came across the car-park towards him.
    ‘You crazy young fucker ,’ said Chadwick as Toby came up.
    ‘Hey! What did I do?’ said Toby, laughing, protesting feebly, as Chadwick pretended to attack him and get him in a headlock.
    ‘All that stuff – to Chip Drake, of all people.’
    ‘What stuff?’ cried Toby.
    ‘All that stuff yesterday, about Israel and 9/11. No one says things like that in this town. Not in this entire country.’
    ‘I didn’t know,’ said Toby.
    ‘ “I didn’t know,” ’ said Chadwick.
    ‘I didn’t.’
    ‘Come on, England’s turned his brains,’ said Chadwick, pushing Toby away and dancing on the spot. Chadwick was wearing a navy ski hat and dark sweats – the costume of a cat burglar – but no one, Toby thought, not even the dumbest city cop, could mistake him for anything but a patrician, a member of the elite, here in the world’s marbled capital. They went through the gates into the Arlington Cemetery and began to jog up the hill, around Sherman Drive and under the trees on L’Enfant. Toby ran on ahead. The old guys, as he thought of them, were hardly running at all. They kept stopping to talk, their heads bent under the low-sweeping branches of the oaks on L’Enfant, some of which were still in leaf. He wondered what they were talking about. It must be weird, he thought – dull, detailed, useful – to have known the same person for thirty or forty years or whatever it was. He ran on. He didn’t mind being alone. ‘I’ll come!’ Jojo had said the night before when the morning run was first mooted, but when the dawn came and Race texted Toby to wake him and Toby heard the phone’s twang and looked over at Jojo asleep in the other narrow bed, he decided not to wake her. It could be adduced as an act of kindness. In fact, he didn’t want her to come with him. They had finally made love in that bed, his childhood bed, but there was still something cold between them, a distance. Even the friendly bear on the rug, he felt, childishly, knew that, when Toby’s bare feet touched the floor . . . He jogged on a few more hundred yards then turned back to meet the other two coming up under the avenue, and then they all walked up towards the great mansion on the crest of the hill.
    In the distance, in the bowl of the valley, there was already a knot of people amid the waist-high