Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

‘What happened?’ Ella asked again.

  ‘There was a dictator here. They say investors with the Dutch HCB bank funded him. We never knew the whole story. One day his soldiers came and shot up the whole village. People said they did it to get rid of their spare bullets and equipment rather than carry it all back to the camp. Others said that villagers had got wind of his drug-dealings and gun-runnings. Whatever the reason, the soldiers came and burnt out the houses and slaughtered the villagers. A few survivors ran off into the bush. They run away from everyone.’

  ‘We can’t live here,’ said Ella.

  ‘Of course we can.’ Marijke was looking around the ex-president’s house. ‘This is still in good condition. I can make it nice. One or two people have come back to settle. There are other people living nearby. More will come back eventually. But we must arm ourselves this time.’ She lowered her voice even though there was no-one else there but the two of them. ‘There is a consignment of arms coming in to Paramaribo.’

  Back in Paramaribo Ella agreed to do interviews for the local papers. She was now well-known in Surinam and recognised in public. The weather was humid and muggy when a group of journalists and photographers took her to the Waterkant for a photo-shoot. To everyone’s surprise there was a huge police presence there just where the ferries leave to cross the pink-brown river to Meerzorg. Marijke pulled at Ella’s sleeve:

  ‘The police are searching the boats for illegal weapons. Look.’ She pointed to a boat. On the deck was one wooden container marked ‘Wieni’. ‘Those would be for us.’

  Ella turned quickly to the photographer with an engaging smile:

  ‘Why don’t you take photos of me sitting on the boat?’

  She climbed on board and sat firmly on the chest containing the guns. The police, deferring to the power of celebrity, stopped searching the containers around her. Some even asked for her autograph. The cameras clicked. She sat looking relaxed with her legs dangling over the edge of the container and her long feet tapping against the side of the box.

  ‘Do you mind if I stay sitting here for a while,’ she said, taking in a deep breath of the warm air. ‘I haven’t been on the Surinam River for a long time.’.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  When I returned to London Ma Brigitte attacked me for not paying the rent and before I could pick up the threads of my novel she strong-armed me into caressing the ivories again at Mambo Racine’s.

  I should explain the layout there. On the ground floor are the casino’s gaming-tables where the atmosphere of quiet concentration is ideal for those who have chosen to hand responsibility over to chance. The croupiers move smoothly around in dark green waistcoats, crisp white shirts and spotted bow ties.

  On the second floor there is a private club for corporate entertaining which caters for any rich odd-ball who drops by. The girls who work there are known as the Gaslight Angels. They mainly come from Surinam, Guyana and the Caribbean. Kickster Rose is my favourite. She’s harsh and thin as a wire coat-hanger. At work she wears a tight short black dress. Bollinger champagne costs up to five hundred pounds a glass. House champagne is one hundred pounds a glass. The glasses are like huge bowls. I first spotted Rose throwing hers away under the table. The girls pay ten pounds a night to work there. They’re fined if they turn up late and once they’ve arrived their bags are taken and they cannot leave again until 2 AM. The tips are huge.

  On the third floor is the dance venue with its blue underfloor lighting where the DJs work the turntables all week and there is a chill-out room for the drug casualties. The barmen, seemingly trained at the Academy of Derision, wear their hair greased and tufted in the latest fashion and treat the clientele with a slight sneer. On Tuesdays it is Gay Night and on Thursdays it’s Tranny Tropicana when the place is overrun with stunning transvestites who have spent the whole day getting ready.

  The bar with my upright piano is at the very top in a room designed in the eighties with black and white chequered flooring and chrome railings dividing the space into drinking booths, each of which holds a square aluminium-topped table and four metal chairs. There are clusters of lights shaped like chemical laboratory pipettes full of toxic-looking pink fluid at various points on the walls.

  Who should come in on my first night back but Michael Feynite the retired Situationist architect? He was drunk.

  In the eighties and nineties Feynite used to drink regularly at Mambo’s, spending hours by my piano weeping and maudlin telling me about his wild crush on Felix Caspers. The crush faded but they remained good friends. I hadn’t seen him for a while. His flat, classically Grecian face was a little puffier now and it was difficult to tell in the pink light whether his hair was blond or grey. He stood swaying, his shoulders drooping in a despairing slouch:

  ‘What are we to do? Spectacle is king. We are in the age of celebrity. The idea of revolt has been abandoned. The curse has fallen on the sleeping beauty. England is in a coma and the dream of reason brings forth monsters.’

  I continued playing an old Motown medley. He shuffled towards the bar and ordered a double Baileys – a habit from the time when he hung around with cheap south London gangsters in a pub near the Elephant and Castle. Then he returned and sat next to me.

  Feynite’s prime obsession as an architect had been to design cities. He thought that architecture should be a summons to revolution. But gradually he lost hope and in his disillusion he took to designing enormous cities that were already in ruins.

  ‘I’ve cut out the middle stage where buildings and monuments are fine upstanding examples of a particular civilisation,’ he explained. ‘I’ve cut straight to the downfall.’

  His drafts, drawn up in great detail, showed cities that had already been reduced to catastrophic wreckage: magnificent towered buildings tottering sideways; bomb sites; destroyed offices; adventure playgrounds of chaos where streets of stone had escaped from the architects’ restrictions into a free-form poetry of their own; anarchy’s Disney World; a Legoland for grown-ups where all the metal twisted unexpectedly into new forms of installation art and all the glass had exploded joyously to form its own crystallography.

  He had come across some old newspaper clippings from the seventies which had prompted a fit of melancholy nostalgia. He pulled them out to show me:

  ‘Look at these.’

  In the first photograph Feynite himself had long blond hair that hung in a Veronica Lake curve obscuring half his face. His arms folded and wearing a cravat, he stood at the back of the group. Hector Rossi was holding a frying-pan and pointing to it with a disarming grin. Mark Scobie sat in a chair looking serious and Byronic in front of two girls in long skirts and cotton blouses whose hands were covered in ink from an old Gestetner machine. They all appeared to be young, intense and glowing with a sort of ardour. The yellowing newsprint made it seem as if those previous lives had been preserved in the supernatural light before a storm. The newspaper headlines screamed: ‘Utopian criminals! Barbarians at the gates! British terrorist captured in Italy! Libertarian monsters.’

  ‘And look at this one when I was even prettier.’ Feynite waved a second clipping at me.

  The second photo had been taken when he was the boy lover of a famous ballet critic. It showed him with the critic and Picasso in a restaurant in Antibes when they were all on holiday together.

  ‘Picasso did a line sketch of me in that restaurant but I sold it to raise money for the cause. Hey ho.’

  Feynite put the clippings back into a bulky folder of notes. His speech was slightly slurred:

  ‘Felix was going to drop in for a drink and say hello but I just had a text saying his flight was delayed. He’s flying out of Gatwick this week.’

  Then in the way that drunks can be cautious about what really matters to them he placed his folder of notes, designs and clippings on top of my piano and told me to hang on to them:

  ‘Keep these safe for me. I’m pissed and I might lose them. They’re my prophetic designs. I’m going downstairs to check out the
dance floor,’ he explained, before making his way unsteadily towards the exit.

  *

  One week later there was another surprise visitor at Mambo’s. My heart gave a jump when Ella de Vries poked her head around the door. She was wearing a Cossack fur hat and had just arrived back from Surinam. She surveyed the room with mischievous curiosity.

  ‘Your grandmother was clearing out and asked me to bring you some of Papa Bones’s stuff. I brought it straight away as I’m leaving tomorrow for Kent to look after my mother.’

  I nodded towards her and continued playing:

  ‘Unpack them for me please and let me see. I’m not supposed to stop playing while there are customers still here.’ (There was only one other person there but I wanted to impress her with my professionalism.)

  The first object she unpacked was a black silk opera hat, the sort where the crown can be flattened down and will spring up to its full height when you need it. Underneath the hat was a box of cigarillos, a pair of dark glasses and a bottle of Black Cat rum. Then she pulled out a shabby black tuxedo that smelled of mothballs and a long fold-up ebony cane carved in the shape of a rifle. On closer examination I discovered that it was, in fact, a real Hechler & Koch sniper’s rifle which I taped to the inside of my piano lid.

  ‘Oh look. How lovely.’ She showed me a silver chain with a tiny silver spade hanging from it.

  She placed everything carefully on the piano top. I was inhaling that intoxicating scent of fresh lemons that always seemed to surround her.

  ‘I will come and see you properly when I am back in London again,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Please. Come and have a dance with us. A different sort of dance.’ I winked my thanks at her and she made her way to the lift leaving me short of breath and in need of a heart defibrillator.

  Luckily Kickster Rose came up shortly afterwards. She flashed the grin of an attractive rodent at me and flung herself down in one of the chairs. The last drinker had left the bar. I opened the bottle of Black Cat rum.

  ‘Oh my god, I’ve got Whore’s Elbow,’ shrieked Rose, examining the carpet burns on her elbows and knees.

  I lit a cigarillo and opened up my new top hat with a flourish. I put it on at a rakish angle. My voice often drops an octave at the thought of sex:

  ‘Show me how you get those carpet stains again,’ I said.

  It was dawn before I left Mambo’s with a crucifying hangover. I hurried to the Head in the Sand café to continue work on this novel.

  I sat there fingering my new silver chain and the little silver spade. As a narrator I have a responsibility to my story and my characters. I must push on. If I don’t dig the grave, they don’t die.

  Part Three

  Once admit that life can be guided by reason and all possibility of life is annihilated.

  Tolstoy

  Chapter Forty-Five

  When Ella stepped off the plane at Heathrow she came back to an England she barely recognised. Like a phoenix London had regenerated itself. On her second evening Ella walked from her hotel to Blackfriars Bridge where, as a young girl, she had thrown the sticks of gelignite into the black waters of the river. She looked downriver towards Tower Bridge, Canary Wharf and the tall twinkling buildings all along the riverbank; a glittering, postmodern, global space, which contained a million offices geared to the production of wealth; the ultimate pleasure dome where there were no great ideals left to fight for. London displayed herself like a spangled pantomime dame.

  She was pleased to leave it all behind and return to the unchanging quiet of the Kent countryside. The sight of Hector Rossi approaching her some weeks later on the cliff-top with that enquiring expression on his face and the unexpected development of an affair intrigued her. It seemed to signify the past re-enacting itself in a different form, rewriting itself as it might have been. She did not know whereabouts in the world Donny was. He had said he would come when her mother died. The bond between herself and Donny was of another order. It disobeyed the laws of time and space and belonged to a different dimension altogether. Hector was very present. She felt earthed by him.

  *

  Hector was standing by the curtained window before undressing. Ella sensed a degree of wistfulness as if he wished he could tell her whatever was on his mind. Sometimes there was a floating feeling about him as though he might be capable of taking enormous decisions easily and in a sort of dream. She wanted to put a protective arm around his shoulders but thought he might resist. He always reacted with a determined buoyancy and airiness. Like a light ball bouncing on water, nothing ever seemed to pull him under. She was naked and towelling her shoulder-length black hair dry after a shower when he asked suddenly:

  ‘Did you say that Donny was coming back soon?’

  ‘Yes. He knows my mother is dying. He will turn up in his own time. There’s no knowing where he is.’ She sounded evasive.

  Hector came over and helped rub her shoulders with the towel:

  ‘By the way, I’ve seen Mark Scobie recently. Do you remember him?’ Hector was frowning a little as if his vision was out of focus.

  Ella hugged the towel around her:

  ‘Yes. Of course I remember him. Vera Scobie’s son. Don’t have anything to do with him. I never liked him. Donny hated him. He’s a cold fish. Stay away from him.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry. Everything will be all right. I can handle it.’

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘It’s nice that I don’t have to rush back for once. Barbara has taken Dawn to Bluewater. There’s a weekend dolls’ house convention at a hotel there. I’ll get back by nine so that I can say goodnight to Dawn on the phone. They’ll expect me to be on the landline.’

  Ella could hear in his voice the affection for his wife and child. She threw the towel on a chair and slid into bed. She was smiling at him and turned to rest her head on her hand while holding up the covers for him to get into bed.

  ‘Are you having doubts about us? Getting cold feet?’

  ‘No. Not really. In fact, when I’m with you all my worries disappear.’

  How easily he warded off fears, she thought, and any approaching darkness.

  ‘Are you ever depressed by the way things have turned out? England, I mean? Politics?’

  ‘I am an optimist to the point of euphoria.’ He took hold of her warm hand under the bedclothes and squeezed it.

  *

  When Hector reached home later that night after seeing Ella all the lights were on in the house.

  ‘Where have you been? Dawn’s not well. I’ve been desperately trying to get hold of you.’ Barbara had that familiar look of stony fury on her face.

  ‘I didn’t think you were coming back till tomorrow. You said you were going for the whole weekend,’ Hector blustered.

  ‘There was an explosion in the Bluewater shopping centre. The police evacuated everyone from our hotel. Good thing really. That’s how I noticed Dawn was overheating. She had a fit. I had to take her to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.’

  Barbara’s voice was raised:

  ‘I tried to get you on your mobile but it was switched off. You shouldn’t do that.’

  ‘What happened to Dawn?’

  ‘The hotel central heating was too hot. It made her sick.’

  Hector was surprised to hear himself shouting:

  ‘You know that something’s wrong with Dawn’s internal thermostat. Why the hell did you let her overheat? You know it’s dangerous.’

  ‘She’s all right now. Go upstairs and check.’

  Hector switched on the light and looked at his sleeping daughter. Her face was flushed red in patches. When he examined her more closely he could see a rash with tiny white pimples under the skin. He felt her forehead. It was warm. A wound grated in his chest. He should have been with her when she fell ill. He felt under the duvet and found her hand. It was warm but not burning. He came back downstairs. Barbara was putting washing in the machine. She looked up at him with tired anxious eyes.

&nb
sp; ‘What explosion are you talking about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone tried to blow up the Bluewater shopping mall or something.’

  He went upstairs again to sit by Dawn’s bed. The blue light on his mobile was flashing. The text message read:

  ‘Need to know. Are you with us? Mark.’

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Victor Skynnard sat on the train to Kent with the finished manuscript of his play in a satchel over his shoulder. He settled back into his comfortable seat. Vera Scobie had paid for his first class ticket. Victor was pleased to be escaping from London, from his debts, final demand notices and threats from creditors. A theatrical success now would solve everything. It was a matter of persuading Vera to play the part of Kundrie in his new play.

  Something odd had happened to Victor the week before. He had paid a visit to the National Theatre and become unexpectedly tearful. Around him in the foyer, shiny-haired young girls wearing Alice bands behaved well; elderly white-haired women with soft features talked quietly to each other. One wizened old man with a Paisley cravat round his neck carried cups of coffee on a tray to his friends. Instead of scorn for their comfortable, middle-class life Victor felt an overwhelming affection for these people who loved theatre and the arts.

  But now, seated on the train and confronted with the day’s newspaper headlines, Victor fell back into his usual state of impotent rage. He put the paper down on the seat beside him and decided he must stop fuming out of consideration for his kidneys.

  Victor thought again about his play. He was anxious for it to be put on as soon as possible. He had been reading on the internet about right-wing conspiracy groups who were trying to co-opt the Holy Grail stories into their own political philosophy. One particular group troubled him: the Revolutionary Knights of the Temple of Set based in Muswell Hill. For a while he had been intrigued by their literature. They made a convincing argument that publishing and journalism were now the main cover for British secret agents. According to them all Britain’s top assassins were writers of international reputation. Victor studied one of their print-outs from Google: ‘The star system within literary fiction is carefully stage-managed and used to reward agents of the Knights of Set for their work.’ Victor began to think about the current stars of the literary firmament. Was it possible that Martin Amis, Tom Stoppard and Julian Barnes were all government spies and trained assassins? The cream of literary London? Why hadn’t he spotted it before? What chance did he, Victor Skynnard, have against that sort of opposition? No wonder my work is not well received, he thought bitterly.