Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

  He was not, however, ready to leave Marina. There was too much unresolved. He e-mailed Giles apologetically, jettisoning the dinner date, and sent another e-mail to the Dorset client saying he had unexpectedly been summoned to a project in Prague and would contact him the moment he was back in England. The Prague story was a complete lie, but by the time he clicked on ‘Send’ he almost believed it. He said to Marina, ‘I have three or four more clear days. Home now? Or shall we go somewhere else?’

  ‘We’ll do it your way this time’, she said, stroking him. ‘We’ll go “somewhere else”.’

  ‘Without a destination?’

  ‘Yes.’ Still stroking.

  ‘Marina, I love you so much.’

  ‘Yes.’

  * * *

  Two days later, on a clear day in the Dolomites, they saw a golden eagle soaring against the dramatic craggy peaks, and stopped the car to wonder at it.

  ‘They can live for a hundred years,’ said Martagon,

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s what my mother told me. She loved these mountains. Maybe she was wrong about the eagle. But looking at that great creature, I could believe anything anyone told me about it.’

  And then, after a pause: ‘It’s exactly six months ago that my mother died.’

  He thought, for the eagle the idea of ‘six months ago’ has no meaning, even if it is hundred years old. Every minute of the hundred years has equal value and actuality. It lives in the eternal moment. It doesn’t know past and future. Some people see the past as the only determining reality – the Jews and the Irish because of their history; and psychoanalysts and their clients. The present for them is a shadow of the past.

  I bet Giles never thinks about the past. He lives in the present, and projects his plans and dreams into the future. Lin, too. I think Lin’s a bit of a fantasist, and his greatest fantasy is himself.

  Marina, for me, makes sense of past, present and future all at once. Maybe that’s why, when we are closest, we seem to be in the eternal moment. Like the golden eagle.

  ‘You are my golden eagle,’ he said to her.

  ‘Your mother,’ she said, ‘are you missing her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s as if I’m only just getting to know her, I think I have only begun to understand her since she died.’

  He tried to explain to her how in his mother’s lifetime he had never related to her in an adult way. He had remained a resentful boy, withholding himself from her loving clutch, struggling for independence – because, before Marina, he had never had another focus for his emotions. ‘So if I appreciate her more now, it’s because of you. Everything is because of you.’

  * * *

  The next day the weather changed. They found themselves at midday in low cloud and driving rain, the Alfa sprayed with water and mud from the wheels of juggernaut trucks. Visibility was appalling. Martagon was driving.

  ‘What does Notweg mean in German?’ asked Marina. ‘I keep seeing these turns off to the right every so often saying Notweg. Why so many turns to the same place?’

  ‘It’s not a place. A Notweg is an emergency escape route. If our brakes failed, say, on one of these steep mountain roads, I could veer off into a Notweg and avoid disaster. It’s a very sensible safety measure. A Notweg could save your life, and other people’s lives … Do you know what we are coming to now?’

  ‘We could be anywhere, in this filthy weather. But we must be going over the Brenner Pass. I saw the signs.’

  ‘Yes. The Brenner Pass. It always seems to me extraordinary. The junction of Europe. Italy and Switzerland behind us now. Austria and Germany ahead, with Austria stretching away into all of Eastern Europe. And to the north and west, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.’

  ‘And Britain?’

  ‘Oh, Britain – Britain is, well, Britain is that disconnected space-station somewhere far away to the north-west.’

  As he talked to Marina and the juggernauts thundered past, crisscrossing Europe from corner to corner, Martagon for the first time saw Britain, and especially England, for what he thought it was.

  England, so self-important. Yet England has absolutely nothing at all to do with this landmass of interlinked peoples and cultures, with its informal frontiers, its languages smudged and merging along national borders. Why should they bother about England, or even think about England, unless in connection with rock groups, or royal scandals, or Manchester United, or BSE, or – for the very old and those interested in history – the two world wars? The only useful bit of the off-shore space-station is the City of London, into which the world beams its money-shuffling transactions.

  ‘But everyone in Europe has to speak English,’ Marina objected. ‘English is the language of commerce, science, the Internet.’

  ‘That’s because of the US, not because of us. Why should Europe give a toss whether Britain belongs properly to the EU, whether we join the monetary union or not? All our blustering and posturing in Brussels looks just pathetic, from here. The Europeans must witness it with bored amusement. We think we are important, we think we matter to this continent. Well, we don’t. If it matters to the Brits to join the euro, if that’s the consensus, then fine, but we should be modest and businesslike about it and present ourselves acceptably. We used to be respected for justice and what was called fair play. Morally, now, England just spells football hooligans.’

  ‘It’s not pretty to talk about your own country like this. I could never speak about France with so little respect. Though if it means you will live in France, then of course I’m glad you feel this way.’

  ‘Well, what do you think? About England, I mean.’

  ‘What I think is that geo-politics is not your field, Marteau. There must be more to it all than what you say. When I go to dinner-parties in Paris and sit next to ministers or people of the corps diplomatique, they never talk about England like you do.’

  ‘How do they talk about England?’

  ‘They are interested, intrigued – maybe they think they do not quite understand.’

  ‘And what about you? You still haven’t said.’

  ‘The two dearest and most honourable men I have ever known have been Englishmen.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘One is you, of course, I’ll tell you about the other sometime. It was a long time ago, when I was young and living in London. I don’t want to live in London, but I like going to London, like that millennium time. All French people love going to London. Everything is there, on what you call your off-shore space-station. And English people are tolerant, much more than French people. Lin told me that if he were a black American, he would much rather live in London than in Paris or anywhere in the US. In London, no one disapproves of you if you are different or deviant. Or if they do, they don’t show it.’

  Martagon suppressed an impulse to cross-question her about the other Englishman. It was never any good pressing Marina to tell him something when she didn’t want to. He’d find out another time. He suppressed, too, his irritation at her constant references to Lin. When did Marina have these conversations with Lin? Chez Nancy Mulhouse presumably. Forget it. He thought about English tolerance.

  ‘Tolerance isn’t the right word. Tolerance implies that there is something which must be tolerated, and a prejudice which has been consciously overcome. It’s not quite that, in England. It’s more that nobody really cares what other people are like, or what they do. English people don’t give a damn, unless there’s some threat. English tolerance is more like indifference.’

  ‘The effect is the same. An acceptance. It’s even better, because there are no noble overtones. No self-congratulation. Another thing, Marteau – I think perhaps you really do not know your own country very well.’

  ‘That’s true. Perhaps I should do something about it.’

  ‘You were in Asia when you were a little boy, and when you did go to England you were shut up in a boarding-school. Now you are grown-up, you are always somewhere else.’
r />   ‘Not any more. I am going to be with you.’

  ‘Well, that’s somewhere else too. Not England, again. We will have to plan for this, Marteau. You will have to prepare – sell your little house, I don’t know what else…’

  ‘I can do all that.’

  ‘Are you sure?

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘Sure like a contract?’

  ‘Sure like a contract. We have a contract between us.’

  ‘No running off into a Notweg?’

  ‘I’ll take it step by step,’ said Martagon, ‘and stick to the critical path. I’m not going to screw up my chances of life with you. No, darling, no Notweg at all.’

  * * *

  His first day back in London, he checked his messages on his home phone and found one from Lin Perry’s office asking him to call.

  He was put through to Lin straight away. Lin was not ignoring him now. Lin had an exciting proposition to put to him about Aviaplus.

  Aviaplus is a consortium of architects and consulting engineers based in Copenhagen, which specializes in the design and building of airports from inception to completion. They provide a multi-disciplinary package, from design to site-management, including avionics, construction, finishes, landscaping, noise-management, everything.

  Lin didn’t have to explain much about Aviaplus to Martagon. He had been tracking their success, having noted with professional and personal interest that this idea of multi-disciplinary practices, providing a neat one-stop-shopping solution for clients, was the way the industry seemed to be moving. It suited his own ideas and his own way of working very well.

  Aviaplus, Lin said, were expanding, and had approached him – through his friend in the firm, one of the partners – with a view to his joining them for work on special projects. ‘It’s something that would be right for me, and now I’m coming to the point,’ said Lin. ‘I think it would be right for you too. Sven says they want me to bring a small team of my own people with me, and I’m hoping you might be interested. I like working with you, we make a good team.’

  Martagon’s first reaction was one of pleasure, and relief that his dereliction of duty over the Bonplaisir specification had not discredited him with Lin. It struck him that perhaps Lin didn’t know all the details. Giles was loyal, a good professional and a good friend, and not a blame-thrower. Thank God for Giles.

  ‘Well, thank you very much for thinking of me. It’s certainly an attractive idea.’

  ‘It needn’t be full-time if you didn’t want, but it would be regular work and a good base-line of regular income. You’d be able to take or leave other projects that come up for you with some sense of security. It would mean basing ourselves in Copenhagen for a while, but that wouldn’t hurt. We’d probably open our own studio there.’

  ‘The thing is, Lin, that unfortunately I don’t think I can do that.’

  ‘Obviously you can’t say yes straight off. You’ll want to think about it.’

  ‘I can’t even think about it. I have another contract.’

  ‘Oh, yes? May I ask…?’

  ‘It’s under wraps at the moment, I’m sorry to be so difficult.’

  ‘Give it some thought anyway, and come back to me. It’s so obviously a terrific opportunity, it could be a turning-point for both of us. With the experience I’ll get there, I might think of a launching a “package” practice of my own in a few years, and then the sky’s the limit. Literally, since we are talking airports. I’m convinced that the multi-hub mega-monsters like Chicago, getting bigger and bigger, will soon be a thing of the past. Dinosaurs … Are you listening to me, Martagon?’

  ‘Course I am. I’m thinking. You may be right, but what about these bigger and bigger planes? Like the Airbus triple-decker superjumbo?’

  ‘The Concorde story all over again. It’s an eleven-billion-dollar gamble, and it won’t even get off the ground if the Pacific Rim goes into recession. They won’t get the traffic. Boeing are going the other way, into smaller planes, smaller than the 747. The mega-airports are already becoming unmanageable. Everyone’s rebelling against airport hassle. It’ll be back to small is beautiful. I just know it.’

  ‘Well, me too,’ said Martagon. ‘For a start, the security is rubbish at the moment. The hassle can only get worse. Or something really bad will happen, sooner or later.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘How would I know? It’s just a feeling I have.’

  ‘All the more reason for you coming on board. We’ll be security mavens, if that’s what turns you on. Look, Bonplaisir’s been a good experience. We could be on the cutting edge of the new concept, the new twenty-first-century generation of airports.’

  ‘Lin, I can’t come in with you on this. I’d like nothing better than to work with you again. I’ve really got a lot out of it. But I’m … I’m committed elsewhere. Long-term.’

  ‘Nothing’s all that long-term, Martagon. Can’t be. Not in our business. But if you aren’t convinced, we can hedge our bets. We do Aviaplus-plus. We get involved with the mega-stuff as well, while it lasts. There’s a big development study coming up on Hong Kong International, they’ll be inviting consultants to tender later in the summer. Contract to be awarded in the autumn. Might be something for you and me there, working together. And then there’s all the new possibilities for off-shore airports. That may be the way to go, for any location that’s not landlocked, not only for East Asia.’

  ‘Are you thinking of Kansai International? Renzo Piano and Ove Arup. Stunning. But it’s sinking into the sea, apparently, now. BA have pulled out, haven’t they?’

  ‘Kansai was too big, too early for the technology, and they went for some cheap solutions. It’ll get put right in the end. I was really thinking about Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. A new floating airport built on massive steel platforms, they’re testing them now.’

  Martagon was engaging with Lin against his will. He could not help being interested. He would love spending time in the Far East again. He would love the challenge of creating floating glass palaces, heavy as hell but apparently weightless, poised between air and water. He could see his dream of a glass bridge becoming a reality. The problems and the solutions. His mind raced.

  He took a grip.

  ‘I’ll have to take a rain-check, Lin. Count me in for small projects, Europe-based. But I’m not in the market for the long haul.’

  ‘You undersell yourself. Chances like Aviaplus don’t come along often, not yet. It may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for us. Everything’s in flux in the profession right now, it’s a marvellous time to be working. We’re at our peak, you and me, you’re the leader in your field now, Martagon. The good time doesn’t last. There’s new people coming up all the time. You have to catch the tide. But I guess you must know what you are doing, my dear.’

  ‘Thank you again, Lin. I shan’t forget it.’

  * * *

  ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men…’

  How does that go on? Martagon, in his house, turned to his bookshelves and looked it up in the dictionary of quotations.

  There is a tide in the affairs of men,

  Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

  Omitted, all the voyage of their life

  Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

  Shallows and miseries. Bloody Shakespeare. Martagon shivered.

  He had committed himself to catching a different tide, towards a different shore. The primacy of private life. He had passed the first test. He had kept faith with the transforming love on which he was staking everything. He had kept faith with Marina.

  SEVEN

  If England, seen from the Brenner Pass, was not Europe, then what was it? One sunny Saturday in early May, Martagon drove down to Dorset for a last site visit at the house where he was doing the covered swimming-pool. His clients were successful, sociable types with a clutch of student-aged children. Gregory worked in advertising, Jane was a partner in a TV production company. Clump House,
on the seaward side of Beaminster in Dorset, was for their holidays and weekends. The rest of the time they lived in London. Martagon got on well with them; they had been ideal clients, receptive to his design ideas and willing to afford the best materials and finishes. He felt they were probably decent, worthwhile people, making the best of their lives.

  Driving west through Wiltshire and into the relaxing emptiness of Dorset, he felt an unfamiliar relief at being out of London.

  I am in England now. London is not England. London is an international trading-post. The romance of commerce. There is everything and everyone from everywhere in congested London, and at the same time there is nothing and no one. Or not for me.

  Off the A303 now, winding down lanes into stone-built villages intersected by streams, and up again on to ridges, framed by the arcs of the downs. Martagon responded to the architectural minimalism of the landscape and its three clean colours – the pale green of the bare hills, the light blue of the intermittently glimpsed ocean, and the creamy stone of the farms and cottages.

  If England has a native architectural genius it is – or was – for small-scale domestic building. And for gardens.

  There wasn’t much for Martagon to do in his professional capacity at Clump House – just signing-off the contractor’s work, checking the settings of the pump, and the air-seals and fixings of the glass, and general ‘snagging’. Jane did not much like the pool’s door furniture, Gregory was not absolutely happy with the blue-green of the exterior woodwork. Neither problem was really his responsibility, but he discussed alternatives at length and proposed suppliers with better ranges.

  Afterwards they sat in the garden with drinks. He had been asked to stay to lunch. It was a good garden, with white tulips in tubs where they sat, primroses clotted under the boundary hedges, and bluebells in the shade of chestnut trees at the far end of the lawn. The planting around the house was relaxed and opulent, the colours delicate. There was a pond, with flag-irises and lily-pads. The spring-flowering shrubs were not showy, but they bore comparison for beauty with the lotus and orchids he knew from the Far East, the jacarandas of Africa, even the lavender of Provence.