Capital

involved being proved repeatedly right, time after time. That had an effect on people who for the most part had not been shy or unconfident in the first place. They tended to think, genuinely and sincerely, that they were the next-best thing to God. Given that, it was interesting the way people with new money copied the people with old money; interesting that Eric, instead of thinking of things he might like to do for himself, or nicer versions of the things he had used to do before he had money, now did all the things other people with money did, like go shooting and own yachts. He even sponsored charities, not out of charitable feeling – Roger was well placed to know that he had not an atom of charitable feeling of any kind, not for anybody – but because it was what you did if you were that rich. It was as if there was a rule book. Still, Roger didn’t care. It was nice to get out of London and before long Eric would tire of boasting at him and go off to boast at somebody else.
    People said that Norfolk was flat, but it didn’t seem at all flat to Roger. The hills were not high, but there were quite a few of them and he had felt distinctly carsick on the drive here. They had walked across a ploughed field and were now walking up the other side towards a copse of trees at the top. It was about ten minutes’ brisk walk on soft ground that sucked at the footsteps and Roger, he was embarrassed to notice, was slightly out of breath. Not as badly as Eric, mind you. He was actually panting; he was pale and fleshy and wobbly.
    ‘. . . didn’t even . . . want to . . . shag her . . . that much . . . to be honest . . .’ Eric was saying, ‘. . . but . . . no choice . . . held to . . . ransom . . . by my . . . own cock.’
    Roger realised half a second too late that he was supposed to laugh. So he made a sort of half-gasping noise on an indrawn breath that was designed to indicate he would be convulsed with merriment if it weren’t for all this manly exertion. It was hard to tell if that placated Eric. He had stopped to catch his breath, with his arms on his hips. With the baseball cap and shooting jacket, his shotgun over the crook of one arm, puffing heavily in mud-caked trainers, he looked like someone who had set out to impersonate a country squire but then about halfway through putting on his costume had suddenly stopped caring.
    ‘. . . don’t wait for me . . . go on up . . . I’ll have a word with the others,’ said Eric. The other Pinker Lloyd men were straggling across the field towards them, with Lothar in the lead. He was wearing advanced-looking outdoor clothes, as if he were going orienteering or the like. His outer garments were brightly coloured Gore-Tex and carried the suggestion that if he felt like it he might jog back to London when they’d finished for the afternoon. They all seemed pretty jolly. Shooting was very much in fashion in the City and this weekend brought bragging rights.
    The beaters, who had gone out in advance, were waiting in the next field. The idea was to stand around near the copse and kill the pheasants which the beaters would drive up into the air. The pheasants were tame for the most part, and it was some work getting them to take off in order for them to be shot; so many of them would then be killed that there was no market for their meat. The majority of the pheasants were simply buried. A tractor would come and plough them under the earth. Roger felt it was hard to feel that that was anything other than a slightly revolting sign of excess, of waste. But the shooting itself was good fun.
    The four Pinker Lloyd men had now caught up with Eric and the group was standing around talking animatedly about something. Eric was waving his arms about, telling a story. The bankers were either enjoying it or doing a good job of pretending to. Roger used the moment to stand and look around, the first time all day he had been entirely on his own. It wasn’t windy where he stood but the winds higher up must be strong, as the clouds were both big and quick-moving, and now they were white: no more rain. In the distance he could see a pattern of light and shade moving across the field, which had been set aside from agricultural use and was knee-deep in grass. The copse, which looked from a distance like a single big tree, was a tight clump of ten oaks and beeches, denuded by the winter. The atmosphere beneath the trees was dark and still. A rabbit stood sniffing at the exposed roots