Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘I know, I can’t help it. What we want is war, isn’t it Sil? War is great. People sing. Peacetime is boring. In wartime everyone is saying, “Let’s go down the tube and play the accordion.”’

  Manuela winked and kissed Ella goodbye as she left with her daughter:

  ‘See you on Ladies Night at Mambo Racine’s.’

  The elderly writer and his actor friend said their goodbyes and could be heard talking as they made their way along the corridor to the stage door.

  ‘What a ghastly man. Must be from the Highlands. Got all their touchiness. They can sniff out an offence anywhere, even if it’s well concealed.’

  ‘Yes. Wonderful projection though,’ said the actor who sounded regretful, as if he had recognised in Donny some divine release from the constrictions of normal civilisation. ‘Wish I could have a voice like that next week when I open at the Alhambra.’

  When everyone except Donny and Sil had left the dressing room, Ella gave a yell of laughter and danced around the room before throwing herself down on the floor flat on her back with her arms above her head:

  ‘You never change. Pandemonium. Pure pandemonium. I love it. I’m middle-aged and I still love it.’

  *

  As soon as Felix left the theatre he headed towards Piccadilly looking for a taxi to the airport. He intended to stay at the airport hotel before the next morning’s flight. The encounter with Donny had infuriated him. He had wanted to stay and chat with Ella after everyone had gone. He was curious about the Ladies Night at Mambo’s which he heard Manuela mention. A progression of clouds raced towards him over Eros and the roofs of Piccadilly. They seemed to be moving very fast, the fastest he had ever seen clouds move. Wisps of the edge of the turbulent darkness were forming and re-forming around the main body of cloud. He stopped and stared. He thought he saw a face in the clouds, eyebrows pinned together in a frown. The face loomed over him. A giant fear took hold of him and he turned to make his way back to Leicester Square, rushing in headlong flight towards the underground station where he took a train to Heathrow.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The emergency meeting of the Schifting took place at the HCB bank’s London headquarters overlooking Berkeley Square. The Schifting is a group peculiar to the Dutch banking system. Dutch banking rules are different from most of the rest of Europe and allow for such a group to exist. It consists of influential controlling tycoons who operate through contacts as friends of the supervisory board.

  Eddie Sursok stood by the window. His brooding presence affected everyone in the room. The eleven other men were already seated around one end of an enormous oval polished table. The chairman spoke first:

  ‘I think we should try and avoid the involvement of the Financial Services Authority just now. They are smarting from their very public failures as regulators and are trying to exercise tighter controls on everything.’

  All those sitting agreed it would affect the bank’s shares if the affair was made public.

  ‘I don’t agree. In fact, I’m certain of the opposite.’ Eddie Sursok was staring moodily out of the mullion window. ‘Unless we involved the police immediately it will look as if we have been covering something up. Bankers are attracting enough odium as it is.’

  The other men all looked up in surprise. Sursok was well-known for a pathological preference for secrecy at all times. It was an obsession with him.

  ‘Someone must be held to account.’ Sursok turned around to face them and continued: ‘The sums of money are enormous. The losses could affect the whole banking system. Caspers bears responsibility for that. It’s going to become public anyway. If the press gets to it before we do it makes the bank look bad. We should control the agenda. It would be better to contact the Fraud Squad immediately.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we support Caspers – at least give him a chance to explain?’

  ‘It’s too late,’ said Sursok.

  ‘What about Stephen Butterfield?’

  Sursok mulled over the question of Butterfield:

  ‘He’s certainly been negligent. At the moment he’s in Amsterdam. He must take part responsibility for this mess. But I hold Caspers ultimately responsible.’

  Sursok had the sort of gravitational pull that seemed to suck his colleagues into the black hole of his will. The chairman turned on his swivel chair to check that everyone was in agreement. There was a heated discussion. At the end there was a vote and the chairman announced:

  ‘I shall undertake to inform the Financial Services Authority with the full understanding that they will inform the police, gentlemen. We will try and ride out the bad press and placate the shareholders.’

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Johnny Caspers had barely finished organising the gala before it was necessary to make the final arrangements for another occasion – the alfresco meal at his Wiltshire country house to celebrate his friend Arnold Thorpe’s Nobel laureate. He always worried about the mix of guests. The unknown quantity this time was Butterfield’s new partner. Nothing he could do about that. He would just have to wait and see. The caterers were booked. He looked up the weather forecast on his laptop. The weather should be fine.

  *

  The long buffet table stood next to the wall and the guests helped themselves from big dishes of potato and apple salad, fried aubergine slices, chicken drumsticks, cheeses, avocado salads, a joint of rare beef and a salmon in white sauce. Silver ice buckets containing the white wine were placed at intervals along the table.

  Felix arrived straight from a flight still wearing his captain’s uniform. He came over to say hello to Feynite who was already seated at the table.

  ‘Where are you just back from?’ enquired Feynite.

  ‘New York.’

  ‘Lucky you with all those lovely stewards.’

  Felix flushed and laughed:

  ‘I have to keep at least one eye on the instrument panel.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’ Feynite asked in a low voice but Felix flashed him a furious look and turned away.

  Other guests started to arrive. Uniformed maids served the wine. Lady Barm, a thin-faced old lady who wore glasses with one huge fish-eye lens, hobbled towards them across the grass clutching a book. Her brother, a small elderly man, author of several books on the English butterfly, followed close behind with his wife. They were the Caspers’ nearest neighbours in Wiltshire.

  ‘I hear revolutions are forbidden in the new Europe.’ The speaker was an irascible man in his forties with a face as red as if he’d recently been scalded and fine grey corkscrew curls on either side of a balding pate. His lower lip glistened with indignation.

  ‘Revolutions are always forbidden, Jumbo,’ said Lillian Caspers soothingly. ‘Where did you see that, anyway?’

  ‘Here. I read it right here.’ He took a copy of the Independent from under his arm and jabbed one of the columns with his forefinger. ‘Listen. “The interior ministers of Europe have agreed on a definition of terrorism. It includes people who hope to alter the political, economic or social structure of the European Union.”’ He slapped the paper down on the table. ‘Me, for example.’

  ‘But Jumbo you hate revolutionaries. You’re a Conservative MP. You belong to the Tory Party, the party of the buzzing loins.’ She glanced towards the house and called to her husband:

  ‘Darling, here’s Arnold.’ Lillian rose from her seat with pleasure at the sight of the approaching guest.

  Across the lawn came the poet. He was in his seventies and walked with two sticks. Johnny went over to greet him and took his arm. He regarded Johnny from rheumy eyes. There were patches of dry scurfy skin on his face:

  ‘My feet are not what they were.’

  Lillian clapped her hands:

  ‘Arnold is here. Lunch everybody.’ She helped Arnold sit down and instructed one of the waitresses to bring him a plate of food.

  ‘How did you come to be a poet?’ asked Jumbo with the gruff politeness of someone not in the least interested.

 
‘I come from Whitley Bay. I wanted to be a tugboat captain,’ Arnold looked around for a knife and fork, ‘but unfortunately fate made me into a poet.’

  ‘I’ve often thought I might turn my hand to writing when my political career is over,’ said the politician.

  The poet tucked into his food:

  ‘Why don’t you politicians stick to murder and leave art to us.’

  Every now and then when the poet spoke it was like the flash of colour in a kingfisher’s wing as it flies along the riverbank.

  ‘I take it you have never thought of using your gift for words in the realm of politics,’ continued the politician, unabashed.

  ‘I have a puritan streak. It comes from my nonconformist background. I was brought up at school to believe that plain direct English was the best. Milton, Blake, Wordsworth. The truth-givers. That makes a political career out of the question. Besides I have lost interest in all forms of government. I distrust both the whims of kings and the passions of crowds. Words are my sails. I have to set them right to catch the wind.’

  Notwithstanding his claim to a streak of puritanism, Arnold Thorpe golloped his food sloppily with the eagerness of a glutton. He tore at the baguette with his hands as he spoke and a shower of crumbs fell from his hands and mouth onto the table. He belatedly tried to catch them. Johnny chose that moment to intervene:

  ‘I was wondering if you ever take commissions, Arnold. We at the HCB bank would pay you a fortune to have a piece written specially for us. We have a wall of Carrara marble in Holland. It could be inscribed there.’

  ‘Never,’ said the poet, looking around for the mustard.

  ‘Do you have to suffer to be an artist?’ Felix asked, toying with his wine glass. ‘I mean to have an unhappy life.’

  The poet spoke with his mouth full:

  ‘I know we writers are supposed to thrive on tragedy and I’ve looked for storms and upheavals in my private life but actually I’ve had a disgustingly happy marriage and I’ve had a disgustingly happy life.’ He shrugged at the hopelessness of his case. ‘I’m still married to the same woman I fell in love with at the age of nineteen.’ He picked at his teeth. ‘I’m the artistic victim of married bliss.’

  Bottles of chilled wine were passed up and down the table.

  ‘Where’s Butterfield?’ Caspers asked Lillian. ‘I’ve just noticed he isn’t here. Did he contact you?’ Lillian shrugged and shook her head.

  Margot, the butterfly man’s wife, excused herself and whispered to the woman next to her:

  ‘I have a weak bladder. I must find the toilet.’

  In the middle of everything, Lady Barm suddenly pushed back her chair, started to wave her arms about and lift her knees up and down as though marching on the spot. Her book lay open next to her plate:

  ‘I usually do my exercises every day but today I forgot so I shall do them now.’ She cocked her head sideways continuing to stare at her book through her enormous magnifying eye-glass while lifting her legs up and down: ‘My sister Lucia taught me these exercises before she went loopy. She was always a bit odd. Tried to hang herself on her wedding day with her bridal belt of flowers. Her daughter has a vegan Rasta boyfriend which means she has to gobble her lamb chops secretly at the end of the garden.’

  Suddenly, the poet spat out an exclamation of annoyance. He had accidentally taken a bite of sliced cold potato mistaking it somehow or other for a biscuit.

  ‘It’s the Americans I don’t like,’ said the butterfly man. ‘Did you know that Shirley Temple was, in reality, a middle-aged dwarf? The Americans can fingerprint us, photograph us and make records of our eyeballs from outer space. The Americans are everywhere.’ He leaned forward and growled. ‘We must shake them out of the trees.’

  A waitress poured out more wine for Johnny Caspers who was regarding his guests with affection.

  ‘Would you recite something for us?’ asked a young musician who had been trying all through the meal to pluck up enough courage to address the poet.

  ‘No.’ The poet pointed at his full mouth.

  Arnold Thorpe kept to a strict routine. He liked to write from nine o’clock until midday and then eat lunch before having a nap in the afternoon.

  ‘Is there anywhere I can lie down for my nap, Lillian?’ His forehead puckered slightly with concern for his own well-being.

  ‘Where’s Margot?’ said the butterfly man noticing that his wife was missing. ‘She’s been gone for ages.’

  Margot returned looking flustered. Looking for the toilet she had made her way through a lumber room of old statues wrapped in sheets and white plaster death-heads staring down at her from the top of cupboards. Finally, she had found the lavatory:

  ‘I locked the door and when I tried to leave the handle came off and I was locked in. I’ve been stuck there for ages.’

  ‘Only common people lock the lavatory door,’ said Lady Barm. ‘Who are these people?’

  It was assumed that Lady Barm was referring to the other guests until people realised that she was looking at three men in mackintoshes walking purposefully down the slope from the house towards those seated at the table. The mackintosh of the one ahead of the others flapped slightly as he walked. The Caspers’ housekeeper was running in front of them. She came straight up to Johnny:

  ‘Mr Caspers.’ She was breathless. ‘It’s the police.’

  Caspers wiped his mouth with a linen napkin and rose to his feet.

  ‘Mr Caspers?’ The dark-eyed, reserved officer from the Serious Crime Division addressed Johnny. The table had gone silent.

  ‘Yes. What’s happened? Has there been an accident?’

  ‘Is there anywhere we could speak in private?’

  ‘If it’s nothing urgent, can’t it wait? As you can see I have guests.’ In his confusion Johnny sounded arrogant. ‘I certainly can’t speak to you right now.’

  The police officer looked around at the assembled guests:

  ‘We’re from the Serious Fraud Office. I am sorry sir but we do need to question you right away with regard to matters at the bank.’

  ‘Is this something to do with Butterfield?’ Johnny asked the officer.

  ‘It’s something to do with you, actually, sir.’

  The party watched as Johnny excused himself and walked away with the police, his napkin still in his hand. Lillian hurried behind. Felix snatched up his airline captain’s hat from the table and followed.

  Arnold Thorpe pulled a grim face:

  ‘That’s why you should always have lawyers. Lawyers – I’d like them around me all the time. Lawyers in my pocket, under my lapel, in my cuffs, hatband. Dripping with lawyers, that’s what I want to be. I often conduct my own defence in my head over the smallest misdemeanours as well as on counts of murder. Oh dear. Poor Johnny.’

  *

  Felix waited outside the room where his father was being questioned. After about twenty-five minutes Caspers came out. Felix watched his father’s face go grey as he was ushered into the back of the police car.

  ‘Phone Larry,’ said Johnny from the back seat of the car. Larry was the family lawyer.

  Felix nodded. He suddenly felt protective towards his father. The sense of estrangement between them over his decision to become a pilot waned. He was aware of his heart beating fast as he watched his father being driven away.

  ‘Fraud?’ Caspers was asking the police with concern.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Felix waited with his mother to collect Johnny from the police station after he had been bailed. The family solicitor was with Caspers when he came out. There was a blizzard of press flashlight bulbs. Caspers’ face was like a shattered windscreen before it falls. He tried to give Lillian and Felix a reassuring smile but when his mouth opened he exhaled a faint gasp and clung to his wife’s hand in the street. Felix looked at the diminished figure of his father. The solicitor advised them that there would now be a delay before committal proceedings to the Crown Court.

  The next day the arrest was all ove
r the newspapers. Overnight Caspers’ life capsized.

  For the next two weeks when he was not away working Felix watched his father spend hours conferring with lawyers. His father had been forbidden entry into the HCB bank. Felix saw his father’s humiliation as the calls to Sursok were not returned. Johnny’s familiar bearded face seemed to have contracted all over by half an inch. Lillian stood by Johnny’s side as he telephoned. Felix observed his father’s body crumple as time and time again Sursok refused to speak to him.

  ‘I can’t believe that Eddie Sursok would do this to me. Why would he do this? Why did he go straight to the FSA? Why didn’t he give me the chance to sort things out … the benefit of the doubt? It couldn’t be because I’m Jewish, could it? Where is Butterfield? He will back me up.’

  ‘We’ll go and find him,’ said Felix.

  *

  Three days later they traced him. On his return to England Butterfield had been able to find no sign of Hetty. He went back to Amsterdam only to discover that the locks on the Amsterdam flat had been changed and he could no longer gain entry. He was forced to book into a hotel near the bank. At night he sat in his hotel room either staring at the wall or with his head in his hands. In a state of confusion he went back to London.

  Two days after he returned to England to look for Hetty he had been found on the concourse of Euston station wearing extraordinary yellow Rupert Bear checked trousers, a bright blue jacket and bow tie. He was wandering about handing out eggs to people. Eventually, the station police approached to ask him what he was doing.

  ‘Have you heard what’s happened to Hetty?’ He looked up at the policeman, anxious and miserable. ‘She’s been abducted by her dog.’ Then he gave a quivering smile and waited obediently while the police called an ambulance.

  When Lillian and Felix found him he was in a private hospital off the Cromwell Road. They walked through the blue-carpeted corridors until they came to the ward. Butterfield was in his own room on a locked ward. Hunks of his hair had fallen out.