Capital

that there would be more presents when she got back – basically, as long as she made a really huge deal about presents – it would be all right. It would be fine. It was all about the presents.

15
     
     
    ‘. . . which is why it was so sodding fantastic,’ said Roger’s host. ‘They just got straight in there. Kit off in two seconds flat. I thought Tony was going to have a heart attack. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. No doubt they were sixteen or eighteen or whatever you have to be in Korea but anyway they looked about twelve, except with tits. It was mental.’
    Roger was walking a short distance across a field in Norfolk, carrying his Purdey shotgun with the barrel cracked open, with a bag of shells over his shoulder. He was wearing all the gear: a flat cap, Barbour jacket, Burberry corduroys, and green Hunter wellies. In his opinion he would have fit in very well at Balmoral. He’d been shooting a few times before, always on work freebies, and that was when he’d bought all this gear. Roger had the habit, one he wanted to grow out of but was well aware that he hadn’t, of buying lots of expensive gear when he thought of taking up a new hobby. This had happened with photography, when he’d bought an immensely, unusably advanced camera and set of lenses, then taken about ten pictures before getting bored with its complexity. He had taken up exercise and bought a bike, treadmill and home gym, and then a debenture to a London ‘country club’ which they hardly ever used because it was so laborious to get there. He’d taken up wine, and had a high-tech fridge-cum-cellar in the converted basement, full of expensive bottles that he’d bought on recommendation, but the trouble was you weren’t supposed to drink the bloody stuff for years. He’d bought a timeshare on a boat in Cowes, which they had used once. He had bought this hunting gear about twenty-four months ago, along with the Purdey which he had ordered when he got his first proper bonus fifteen years before, but by the time it came he’d more or less lost interest in shooting. It was a beautiful gun, though, the aged walnut stock thrillingly textured, and there was something almost pornographic about the thought that it had been made specifically for him, for his body, his eyesight, even the aiming of the gun weighted to allow for his personal shooting technique. Thirty thousand pounds well spent, was how it felt today.
    He was also glad about his footwear. His host, Eric – ‘Eric the barbarian’, as he tended to introduce himself – was wearing Gucci trainers, because wellies made his feet smell. Eric was worth several hundred million pounds and was one of Pinker Lloyd’s best clients. At the moment, with things in the City a little edgy and credit getting more expensive, Eric was particularly good news, because he seemed constitutionally incapable of being bearish. He was a born optimist and bull; a perma-bull. Pinker Lloyd loved him. Eric was lavished with corporate hospitality all year round, and once a year paid some of it back in the form of an invitation to his ‘shooting lodge’ in Norfolk. His motives in inviting them were less to do with generosity and more to do with showing off. The guests this year were Roger and Lothar and four of their colleagues. They had come to this field in three matching Range Rovers, which had then gone back to Eric’s place to collect their picnic lunch and the staff to serve it. Roger was betting that the ‘picnic’ would be pretty spectacular.
    The short winter day had begun wet, but it had stopped raining at about nine, and by now – ten o’clock – was starting to clear. Lothar had gone for a ten-kilometre run before breakfast and was making his usual fuss about how much he liked being out of doors in the fresh air. Eric had not, as far as Roger could tell, stopped boasting for a single moment, except when he was eating or drinking, and even then he would pause only long enough to clear his airways.
    ‘. . . and then he said afterwards, shaking my hand at the airport and bowing and doing all that shit they do – then he says, “What happens in Seoul stays in Seoul.” I almost shat myself laughing.’
    Eric was the most tremendous yob, no question. He had that absolute certainty of being right about everything which often came with having made a lot of money in the City. Because every trade involved a winner and a loser, making a great deal of money through trading