*
The sun burned morbid and pale over the Kent landscape until gathering rain clouds blotted it out. Donny continued to walk. Seeing the police bundle the man into the back of their van had angered him and gave an extra pace to his walking. By ten o’clock he was on the A20 near Charing. To his right cars hissed by on the road. He reached the top of a hill. In that setting, with the view laid out in front of him, it was possible to believe that the land might roll back revealing the old animals and the old way of life. Clouds closed overhead. The air darkened around him. A long low clap of thunder sounded like a train rumbling through the sky. Donny stopped to undo his bag and take out a dark green waterproof cape. This he put on. Lightning blinked and the wind made a mad tree on the horizon dance as if it were being electrocuted. He watched it for a minute and then put his head down and continued through the storm.
*
Some kind of icy feeling spread through Ella’s sinews and ligaments and tendons as she watched Hector’s death reported on local television. She stared at the screen in disbelief. There was no-one whom she could tell. With a shock she realised that it would not even be possible for her to attend his funeral. She flinched away from thinking about the way he had died. Dawn had been discovered sitting with him by a couple walking their dog.
For a long time Ella stood looking out of the window. The rainstorm had subsided into misty drizzle. Two horses remained motionless in the field opposite. She remembered something Marijke had once told her when a similar soft rain fell in Surinam:
‘It’s the sort of rain that falls when a good man dies.’
The floorboards creaked underfoot as she wandered around the cottage. For a while she lay down on the bed. Her whole body felt thin and unnecessarily angular, like a heap of collapsed triangles. She got up and went to the kitchen to make tea. The rain had stopped and the sky cleared. It was dusk. Fiery crimson and pink snapdragons blazed under the wall forming disorderly blurred rivers of colour. Everything made her think that Hector was the man with whom she could have been happy. Donny was a constant in her life but too distant and unreliable – even if he was a fount of excitement. Hector was steady, affectionate and courageous. Or had been.
That night she lay in bed unable to sleep. She thought of Juliana Gabo still in jail in Peru. Then she wondered what Marijke was doing and recalled the crowd of near phantom Amerindians who had gathered on the bank of the creek. It was shocking that someone should die after being attacked by a wild animal in England; in Kent with its cosy patchwork of fields and hedgerows and its tamed woodland. The thought made her sit bolt upright in bed. After a few minutes she forced herself to lie down again and tried to sleep.
It was dawn before she drifted into a doze and dreamed that she was standing outside her mother’s cottage when a vast swarm of angry white bees, like locusts or flakes of snow, swirled past her blotting out the view of the horses and surrounding fields. She could hear the noise growing louder as the blizzard of bees wheeled around and flew back to settle all over her until her limbs and her face looked as if they were made of tiny white blossoms seething with movement. Then, bizarrely, her first dance teacher appeared saying: ‘You are very heroic to carry on. Very professional. That’s what I was always taught to do if anything went amiss. Just keep going. I trained under Biddy Pinchard you know.’
In the morning Ella drove to the Folkestone studio hoping that the workout would ground her and stop her thoughts from flying all over the place. Although her body responded to the old habit of disciplined movements she felt that something in her had been displaced or was out of kilter and her balance was less secure than it might have been. It’s my age, she thought, as she lay on her back on the floor and worked her legs. She lay still for a while and was surrounded by the aloe-smell of her own sex. After a while she gave a big stretch and her whole body yawned. She just lay there. Her eyes felt dry with exhaustion.
Donny rang, out of the blue, and told her he would definitely come to the benefit gala at Drury Lane. She was surprised and pleased.
‘When is it again?’ he asked.
‘Two weeks’ time. I gave you a ticket. The date’s on the ticket,’ she said. ‘That’s great. I’ll look forward to that.’
The sound of his voice cheered her.
Two days later Ella answered the phone to Johnny Caspers who was speaking from his office at the HCB bank in London.
‘Hello my dear. I just want to reassure you that your costume has been shipped over from Brazil. I had it couriered to me personally at home. It’s arrived safely. Will you be in London at all before the performance?’
‘I hadn’t planned to but I could.’
‘We’d like you to have a look at the set of Così Fan Tutte which is the set that will be on stage at the Royal Opera House when we do the gala. It’s a matter of knowing whether you can perform on it or whether we need to take some of the scenery down and make some alterations. The set will be up from Tuesday.’
‘Yes. I’ll certainly come and check it out. I can come on Tuesday if you like.’
‘That would be perfect. I’ll make arrangements. If I can’t bring the costume myself I’ll see if my son Felix is free. He’s a pilot and I think he is off work this week. We are so thrilled that you’re doing this benefit gala. It’s sold out. That means we’ve already raised over two hundred thousand pounds.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
Michael Feynite’s doorbell rang at four in the morning. He went downstairs bleary-eyed to answer it. Felix Caspers stood there, his legs tightly encased in blue jeans. He had discarded the respectable groomed look of an airline pilot for the dissolute look of an omega male who went in for petty thievery and rent-boy work. He wore pale red lipstick. Feynite yawned:
‘You look as if you’ve just come from a Berlin nightclub.’
They went up to the bedroom and Feynite climbed back into bed. Felix perched on the edge of the bed and started to gabble:
‘I was at Sprite’s.’
‘What was it like?’
‘All right. I danced till I passed out. Came round in the chill-out room. Feet like ice. Frankly, the only time I feel happy is when I’m in women’s clothes. It’s then that I feel I can do anything. I know I can pass. On Saturday I went to a gig and nobody knew I wasn’t a woman. I can swear to it. My friend Larry finally told his mother he’s a tranny and she was so freaked out she slipped and broke her arm.’
Felix could not keep still. It was either rouge or there was a hectic flush on his cheeks. He sat on the edge of Feynite’s bed and fidgeted with the edge of the thin cherry satin coverlet. Feynite yawned and enquired:
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Can you take a look at these marks?’ In the dim light from the bedside lamp Felix rolled up his sleeve and pointed to a purple raised welt with a lump under the skin on his forearm. Then he proffered his cheekbone. There was a similar lesion there but smaller and less pronounced. A look of tension and fear passed across his face.
‘Do you recognise them?’
Feynite examined the marks. He paused before saying:
‘Are you asking me if it’s Kaposi’s sarcoma?’
Felix nodded and bit his lips, spreading the lipstick around his mouth. The lights from a passing car swirled around the walls of the room. To Feynite he suddenly looked like a pretty thirties flapper.
‘You must have seen it often enough in the eighties.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Felix. I don’t know. You must go to a doctor.’
‘But what do you think?’
‘It looks like it, yes. It could be.’
Felix’s cheeks blazed red. He put his head in his hands.
‘Thirty years of gay liberation and I can’t even tell my parents I’m gay. I don’t know why but I can’t. Do you think I could tell them I’ve got the virus as well? You don’t know what a Jewish family is like.’
‘You can’t be sure. Go to the doctor. The medication is good now. It’s survivable.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘Ten months.’
‘You idiot. You need treatment. Go to a hospital. Tell your GP.’
‘I can’t. He’s a friend of my parents. He’ll tell them. I know he will. And I’m worried about my annual pilot’s medical in two months’ time. I’m working for El Al now. At least that’s something that pleases my father.’
Feynite wanted to go to sleep. He switched the light off. Felix was lying with his head buried in the duvet:
‘I’m going to cut my wrists.’
‘Well, that’s one way of annoying your mother. Ruin the carpet and get out of paying the bill.’
‘Have you ever felt like suicide?’ Felix asked.
‘Suicide no. Murder yes.’
Felix giggled and kicked his shoes off. The two men lay in the dark:
‘Who did you want to murder?’
‘Sursok the banker,’ Feynite replied without hesitation. ‘When I was a young architect Sursok asked me to renovate his house. I spent months on the draft sketches. He took one look at them, swept them off the table onto the floor and said: “Boring. Think outside the frame. Try being original.” I was sick as a pig. I got my revenge though. Do you remember me telling you I was locked up once on remand in Brixton prison? Without revealing the source of my inspiration I gutted and renovated Sursok’s house so that the interior was more or less a replica of F Wing. Sursok liked my new plans. He was impressed. He’d never seen anything like it. I knocked out all the flooring of the four-storey house and reproduced the painted brick and stone walls, the high arched window at one end, the wire-netted galleries and metal stairways of the prison. To connect with other parts of the building I constructed iron gantries and walkways which made all the echoes and clanging sounds you get in nick. I had everything painted in the standard issue institutional cream and dark green you get in Victorian prisons. All in all, his house is a dwelling fit to house a corpse. Every time he pads around the house he is following the footsteps of a thousand felons without realising it. What makes me laugh is that the elite of London society flock there to admire the unusual design. He paid me a fortune. That’s why I don’t work. I live off the rent from tenants. Idleness is my new rebellion.’
Felix gave an excited shout of admiration:
‘I must tell my father. He works with Eddie Sursok at the HCB bank. What a riot. By the way my father has organised tickets for his gala at Covent Garden. Do you fancy coming? I could do with some support. I’m falling apart.’
Feynite’s eyes were shutting:
‘Well, I’m falling asleep here. Yes. Tell me the date.’
‘Can I stay here tonight? I have a short-haul flight to Brussels early in the morning.’
Feynite reluctantly rolled over and made room in the bed. After ten minutes Felix asked:
‘Do you know anyone with a gun?’
But Feynite was already asleep.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Victor Skynnard had been reluctant to attend Eddie Sursok’s party. It had been his father-in-law’s idea. He skulked in the background hoping that nobody would notice him and accuse him of selling-out. Now that his play was being produced he felt that it was unnecessary to ingratiate himself with Sursok. But his father-in-law had insisted and arranged to introduce them so that Victor might have something to fall back on should his play not succeed.
Sursok’s parties were no longer ostentatious. Even he had understood that the conspicuous consumption of bankers was not tolerated during this period of economic collapse. He now held his parties at home. His guests included cabinet ministers and fine arts experts as well as business magnates.
Victor made his way over to the long buffet table laid with silverware and crystal while his wife Mavis networked around the guests on behalf of one of her charities. Victor watched her gloomily. A slight curvature of the spine made her drift weightlessly across the room like a seahorse. Mavis’s apparent diffidence hid an iron resolve. Victor had always suspected that she did good deeds out of spite, to make others appear wanting. He blamed her sister for encouraging this charity work. Her sister had been deserted by an atheist husband and in an inspired act of revenge brought up her daughters to be devout Christians. The two sisters conspired together in the malicious commission of charitable acts. Mavis, however, supported him financially and so did her father. Caught thus between a cushion and a soft place, Victor was reluctant to change his circumstances.
Just then he caught a glimpse of the profile of the man on his left. After a fraction of a second he recognised with a frisson the familiar face of the minister of defence. Victor was just about to approach him and say something ironic and dissenting when the man turned away. His evening-jacketed back annoyed Victor, as did the single babyish curl of white hair that sat in the nape of the man’s neck. After his first feeling of involuntary awe at finding himself next to such a well-known and important person Victor became excited by the idea of how easy it would be to kill him. There were plenty of knives on the table – albeit rather blunt and folded with forks into linen napkins. While having no intention of actually doing it, Victor hugged the possibility of murder to himself as he helped himself to food. The politician had no idea that a potential assassin was standing next to him munching his way steadily through asparagus and Roquefort cheese wrapped in Parma ham.
‘I’ve received these extraordinary anonymous letters,’ said the minister.
Victor backed off a little way in case the letter had been one of his own. He went and stood on his own near the huge window at the end of the hall and remained concealed behind an iron pillar.
*
Upstairs Eddie Sursok stood next to a one-way window in a tiny room no bigger than a prison cell. He surveyed the scene below. Next to him stood a short fussy man with a pointed beard who frequently fell on his knees to fiddle with a muddle of cameras and sound equipment. The man was a sociometrist hired by Sursok to analyse the party. The little technician explained his work to Sursok:
‘What I’m doing is measuring all the social encounters that take place. I track the energy vectors of groups and undertake the mathematical mapping of social encounters. I’ve set up one camera with a fish-eye lens that covers most of the room. That one shoots every two minutes. The other two cameras close in and focus on the sociometric action. Over a thousand digital shots will be recorded during the evening. Then I analyse them. I study all the social contacts and networks – who spoke to whom, etcetera. And I report it all back to you.’
He pointed to one of the monitors. It showed guests giving furtive glances around the room trying to work out who to talk to, who was the most important person in the room and whom to avoid.
‘Ha. I’ve spotted the sociometric isolate,’ said the technician with glee. The camera focused on Victor Skynnard lurking behind a potted palm and taking the opportunity to pour his unwanted cocktail into the plant pot.
Sursok’s attention was caught by an attractive woman who had stopped to talk to a cabinet minister:
‘Can you zoom in on that group?’
Hetty Moran wore a low-cut black dress with the tiny straps pinched in a few inches down from her shoulders. The few lines on her face were as fine as cobwebs. She was the star of her own production, creating her own movie around her as she moved along. All milk-white arms and soft blonde curls she drifted around the room with an amiable smile on her eager-to-please face, exuding an aura of careless seduction. Over the years Hetty had mastered the insouciant shrug. Even on the monitor there was something shimmering and ungraspable about her. Quick-glancing and coquettish she moved from group to group:
‘Hi. I’m Hetty.’
It was possible to read her
lips.
‘The sound is recorded too but I don’t have the playback equipment working yet,’ said the technician.
Now the screen showed a fair, heavily-built man with an innocent face and small piggy-eyes who was following Hetty Moran’s movements with undisguised admiration. Sursok watched as Stephen Butterfield made his way over to her, kissed her hand and took her arm in a proprietorial way, leading her away to talk to her on his own.
*
Victor was bored. For once he was grateful when his father-in-law came over.
‘This all seems a bit of a waste of time.’ Lord Pankton looked around the room. ‘I wanted to introduce you to Sursok but he doesn’t appear to be here.’
‘That’s all right. I’m not much of a social climber,’ said Victor.
Lord Pankton nodded in agreement. In his opinion his son-in-law was more of a social descender:
‘We might as well go. I’ve called the car.’
As he did not want to pay his own and Mavis’s fare home Victor agreed to leave, which rather left his murder plans in the deep end of the swimming pool without their water-wings.
From upstairs Sursok watched Hetty Moran talking to Stephen Butterfield. Even on the monitor it was possible to imagine that she was putting up a bright parasol of lies and truth strangely entwined and twirling it in front of the bedazzled man. Behind the radiant appearance, the bright fake smile, the wide-eyed pretence of interest, there lay a dark cavernous hollow as empty and dangerous as an underground car park at night. Hetty was enjoying herself. The performance was not only for others. It was also put on for some hidden part of herself, that very secret audience which observes and approves in the darkness. Stephen Butterfield could not take his eyes off her.
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