My convoy stays together, however aggressive they have to be towards other road users, because the team in the Range Rovers won’t allow us to be separated. When we’re close to Glyndebourne, we cut up a guy in a DB9 wearing a dinner suit and driving a glamorous, dark-haired woman with a very low cut dress, whom I recall as a Brazilian hooker from one of the top agencies – definitely not a cheap date.
He blasts his horn but we ignore him and drive on.
When we get to the car park, he’s following us, and pulls up next to one of the Range-Rovers. They have blacked-out glass, otherwise he might not have been so rash. He probably thinks he’ll find a fat retired banker and his fatter wife inside. He might even have it in mind to cause a scene and intimidate them. Anyway, he throws open his car door and leaps out, a ginger-haired guy in his late twenties, all high testosterone and executive aggression, and I wonder if one day his dick will grow to normal size and he’ll buy a proper car and start to act like a grown-up. Looking at him, I remember him as a hedge fund manager, a finance rock star who talks the talk and just possibly might believe he can walk the walk.
At least until the doors of the Range-Rover open – all four doors at once – and he finds himself facing four men who might have been picked straight out of the front row of the England rugby team, if only the England rugby team weren’t such wusses. They ignore him, and the words die on his lips. But then he catches sight of Two Livers and me getting out of the Merc.
‘Hey, you – Dave Hart.’
He must have seen my picture somewhere. I don’t like talking to strangers, at least not unless they are female and very exotic. I think of myself as a quiet, shy, retiring sort of guy. So I ignore him too.
‘Oi, didn’t you hear me?’
He comes striding round the front of the Range-Rover, towards the Merc, ignoring the fact that all four heavies are moving in on him, while on the other side of the Merc four more from the second Range-Rover have clocked him too. Tom has spotted him and gets out of the Merc, positioning himself between Mister Angry and us.
He’s wearing a bright red bow tie that marks him out as one of a self-styled elite drinking club called the Flaming Fiascos. These guys think they are really hot, and have a reputation for trashing expensive restaurants and spoiling other people’s evenings, all of which they put right by waving their magic cheque books around. I condemn such vulgar, over-the-top behaviour unreservedly, particularly since they never invited me to join. Meanwhile the street-smart Brazilian spots the danger her man is in and she’s tottering after him as fast as her high heels will allow, calling out to him to ‘cool it’.
‘I know who you are, you wanker.’
I turn and smile, and pat Tom on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear that? He called you a wanker.’
Two Livers agrees. ‘I did. I definitely heard him call you a wanker, Tom.’
Tom is blocking his way, and all around him the Meat Factory are forming up.
‘Not you – him.’ The guy is pointing at me. His voice has risen and he’s looking a little less angry now. ‘He’s a wanker.’ He sees Tom’s jaw clench, and takes a step backwards, eyes widening as he realises he’s about to discover the difference between executive aggression in the dealing room and the real thing.
Tom pats him on the shoulder. ‘I think it’s your birthday…’
There are those who say that standards of behaviour have dropped at Glyndebourne in recent years, probably because of all those boisterous City types with more money than sense. But it really is too much for some of the old traditionalists when what is obviously a rugby club outing gets carried away.
I can almost hear them tutting as a group of prop forwards carry one of their smaller team mates, probably the scrum half, struggling and protesting, shoulder high, while they laugh and sing ‘Happy Birthday’, and throw him in the lake.
Boys will be boys.
* * *
TWO LIVERS and I go through to the bar where Vlad the Impaler is waiting for us with his girlfriend of the moment, a stunning Oriental type with long dark hair and a classic hour glass figure, who apparently comes from one of the Central Asian republics. Vlad is married, but Mrs Kommisarov prefers to stay at home.
He has another guest, an Icelander called Ras Rasmussen, early thirties, very tall with long fair hair tied in a pony-tail and an athletic physique. This man could be an Australian lifeguard, if he wasn’t the billionaire owner of SmegBank, a new and very aggressive entrant to the Square Mile that has come from nowhere and now seems to be buying up great British brand name companies at the rate of about one a month. He’s very cool, very handsome, and as soon as he sees Two Livers his mouth drops open, his tongue hangs out, and he ignores his cute blonde Icelandic wife.
She looks about six months pregnant – their second child – and my guess is that he’s reached the coyote stage of pregnancy, so starved of sex that he’s howling for it. To make matters worse, instead of joining us all in a glass of champagne, he’s clutching a beer bottle in his hand – a Zero, the new low-calorie, alcohol-free beer for fags. Clearly, we’re not going to get on.
It gets worse. It turns out Ras is a toy collector. Not children’s toys, but adult ones. He has six homes, in all the usual places, a small fleet of classic cars, a super-yacht that spends the winter in the Caribbean and the summer in the Med, and a private jet.
‘Just the one?’
He looks irritated by my question. At Grossbank, Two Livers and I have the run of the entire air force, but it’s not the same – we don’t have to worry about servicing the planes or paying the crew, because everything’s free.
I used to be an aspiring toy collector myself, running on the treadmill to assemble the most impressive collection I could before I died – he who dies with the most toys wins – but now it just seems empty. Partly it’s because it’s an unwinnable contest – there’s always a Russian oligarch or Indian steel magnate with more than you – and partly it’s because it gives me a sense of accumulating baggage. I’d rather rent someone else’s headache. But what do I do instead? All I seem to do is focus on momentary pleasures and let the money pile up in my bank account. What’s it all for? I start to feel a blackie coming on, so I hit the champagne even harder.
Over a couple of magnums of champagne we cover all the usual tedium that we have to talk about when someone brings their wife to what would otherwise be an enjoyable and lively event. Ras’s wife has only lived in London for a couple of months, and wants to ask all kinds of dumb questions.
‘Our son is three years old. His name is Sven.’ I groan. Any second now she’ll open her handbag and get out the photos. ‘Do you have children, Mister Hart?’
‘Call me Dave. Only one that I know of.’
‘One child?’ She smiles sweetly at her husband, who is staring at the outline of Two Livers’ nipples through her dress. ‘The same as us.’ She rubs her tummy and does look kind of cute – her eyes are shining and she has that special look that pregnant women sometimes get. ‘But soon we will have two.’ Oh really, I hadn’t noticed. She looks as if she thinks I’m going to ask if she knows the sex of her second child, but instead I pour myself another glass of champagne, so she carries on relentlessly. ‘Do you have a girl or a boy?’
‘Girl… I think. Yeah, a girl. Called Samantha, four years old, lives with her mother, Wendy. We’re divorced.’ I know I’m being a wanker, but I’m seething as I stare belligerently at her husband, who is captivated by Two Livers, and seems to be making the mistake of trying to keep up with her as she works her way through the fizz. He should have stuck to Zeros.
‘Where does she go to school? I’m very worried about Sven. It’s so difficult to get your children into good schools in London.’
‘No, it’s not.’ I rub my thumb and forefinger together. I nod in her husband’s direction. ‘He can fix it. If he doesn’t know his way around, just tell him that when he does a school visit, he should put a brown envelope on the headmaster’s desk. Be very open about it. It
’s expected these days. A grand usually does it.’ I tap the side of my nose. ‘Cash.’
‘Really?’ She seems shocked.
‘Sure. You must have heard stories about the black economy, the difference between official and real GDP, the unexplained purchasing power and lifestyles of certain professions in this country?’
She shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘Let’s call it oiling the wheels. But you have to be careful how you do it. People over here don’t like being handed wedges of cash. You have to be discreet. Always use an envelope, especially if it’s anyone official.’
‘Official?’
‘Sure – the police, for example, if they stop you for speeding. Or the local council, if you want to build an extension on the house, or the magistrates’ court, if you get snapped by a speed camera and might lose your licence.’
‘I had no idea.’
I shrug. ‘Like I said, it’s discreet. Just be prepared. Some people keep ready made up envelopes with them all the time.’
‘Really? Even in Notting Hill?’
‘Notting Hill? Is that where you live?’
‘Yes. Ras bought a house there when he first came over. Before I joined him.’
I look pointedly at her husband, who is ignoring us and staring with increasingly lecherous eyes at Two Livers. ‘A lot of hookers in Notting Hill.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Hookers. Your husband will explain.’ In fact there are a lot of hookers everywhere in London, but I like to say this when people start boring me about property prices and how amazingly well they’ve done by buying when they did.
‘Why did you divorce, Mister Hart?’
‘Dave. We’re all friends here.’ It’s a very direct question, but the Scandies can be like that. I wonder how to reply. Should I explain that I’m a selfish, shallow, sex mad, untrustworthy, unreliable son of a bitch? Nah. I put on my wistful look, full of sadness and regret. ‘There was something missing from our marriage.’
‘What was that?’
I could say trust, honesty and openness, but I’ve been hitting the champagne pretty hard, and can feel myself just sliding over the edge. ‘Blow jobs.’
‘Blow jobs?!’ She half shouts the words, so that we all look at her and the other people in the bar turn to see what’s happening. There’s a brief silence, close to exquisite, which I break by half slurring, ‘Blow jobs. The secret of a happy marriage is to give your husband at least one blow job every week. Unless you’d rather someone else did.’
* * *
IT’S HALF-TIME, and Ras Rasmussen is so pissed he can hardly stand. Vlad has got us a table for dinner in the restaurant, so that we avoid the riff-raff picnicking on the lawn, and we’re slurping a fine vintage Chablis to accompany our smoked salmon, swaying and slurring and close to the point where we’ll either swear undying love or try to kill each other.
Ras lurches forward across the table towards Two Livers, who still seems alarmingly sober, other than a mild sheen of perspiration across the top of her chest, which beautifully sets off her diamond necklace. Some of the stones are subtly coloured, and I’ve decided they have to be Leviev.
‘So I climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro. The view as the sun rose was spectacular. We set off before dawn and when we reached the summit, we felt so proud.’ Ras seems to think this is going to impress Two Livers.
‘Is that right?’
He nods, assuming she’s going to say how brave and strong and manly he must be, truly a worthy successor to the Vikings who rowed across the North Sea in open boats to burn our villages and screw our women.
‘But you haven’t tried Everest?’
‘Everest?’
‘The big one – it’s more of a climb than a walk. Or K2?’
He shakes his head.
‘Mount McKinley?’
He shakes his head again.
‘Or how about some of the little European peaks – the Eiger, the Matterhorn, maybe Mont Blanc?’
Same response. She leans towards me and slips her arm into mine in a semi-proprietorial way. I like it when she does this.
‘Dave has.’
‘Really?’ He looks at me, astonished. I say nothing and sip my wine.
‘He does free-fall too.’
‘Free-fall?’
‘He did a jump over the North Pole.’
‘The North Pole?’
She nods and I carry on sipping as if she’s talking about someone else. A true hero has no use for self-aggrandisement. ‘And he goes heli-skiing in Canada. And he’s been diving under the ice in the Antarctic. White water rafting in the Amazon. And filming big game in Africa.’
He’s looking at me as if I’m some kind of freak.
‘Oh, and one other thing…’
‘What’s that?’
Just as the bell goes to warn us before summoning us back in for the second half, she grins at him. ‘He’s captain of the British extreme ironing team as well – they get to iron shirts in the most amazing places…’
Pissed as we are, we crack up, while Ras seethes and Vlad tries to keep a straight face.
Christ, she’s good.
* * *
I’M AT home – alone once more – in my apartment in Whitehall Court, lying on my bed and reflecting. Like most men, most of the time I spend reflecting is devoted to sex.
Sex is a commodity. You can buy it by the yard, just go on-line to an escort agency website, look at the photos, choose your girl, choose the services you want and make the call. So why is sex with Two Livers different?
Partly it’s because she’s damned good in bed, knows all the moves and loves it. She really is a natural. But the same is true of a lot of other women. Partly it’s because we always have a laugh, but if I’ve had enough to drink and done a couple of lines of coke, I’ll be laughing anyway. I’m starting to wonder if it’s something else. Is it possible that it’s because she sees me as I am, and despite that we still click together? This thought troubles me. If she can see the real Dave Hart – whoever that is – why should she care? And why should I care if she cares? But I clearly do. This troubles me even more.
Have you ever wondered to what extent we live our lives through others’ perception of us? Labels are meant to describe us, but the fact of having had a label applied can actually define you, changing you from what you really were to what people think you are. Have a medal, now you’re officially brave, and what happens – you start to act brave.
I’m a villain. That’s my label, I chose it myself and I like it just fine. At times people think I’m controversial, but who cares? Who wants to be uncontroversial? There are enough of those already. Between respecting people’s human fucking rights, health and fucking safety, and political fucking correctness, we’re turning this country into Bland Land. Somebody has to be Doctor Evil, so why not me? Besides, the villains always get the best parts.
I just wish I didn’t keep thinking about Two Livers…
* * *
TODAY IS a disaster. I have to be in Madrid for an important presentation to the Development Ministry on New Start for Africa – we’re going round all the EU nations, but the Spanish are the most important, because they currently hold the EU Presidency – and the unions representing airline ground staff have decided to go slow.
‘Going slow’ is an interesting concept for people who never seem to go fast. People who work in the City may not always be the best examples of moral virtue, but they are bright, sharp and work damned hard – otherwise they don’t work in the City for very long, if they ever get there in the first place. The problem with working in the City is that it spoils you for the rest of the world outside the Square Mile, where many people are slow, stupid and lazy.
As a result of the industrial action there’s mounting chaos in the skies over Britain, and all the small airports are closed, including Biggin Hill, where the Grossbank jets are based. There are no vacant slots available at other airports, so I have no choice but to fly commercial, t
aking my chances with the great unwashed on public transport.
Naturally I asked Maria to book an entire aircraft for myself and Rory, who is accompanying me to carry my bags. But with hundreds of flights cancelled and thousands of irate passengers desperate not to miss their vacations, democracy prevails and I have to line up with everyone else, which is appalling.
They say the secret of happiness is low expectations. At least that’s what Rory always used to say to us at Bartons just before bonus time. But at British airports expectations have to be below rock bottom, and even that is probably way too high.
The first trauma I have to suffer is the indignity of airport security. I’m convinced airport security is a job creation scheme for the terminally stupid and surly. Great lines of us stand around waiting to be processed, while one half of the airline security staff watch the other half watching us line up waiting to be processed. At any moment you sense that someone might do some work, but no, these people are highly trained, and are probably psychologically profiling us to determine which of us will be first to go stark raving mad with frustration.
When it’s eventually my turn, I take my shoes and belt off and place my bag on the conveyor belt to be screened. I can’t help thinking the Al Qaeda terrorists must be rolling around the floors of their caves in Afghanistan laughing at the sight of thousands of us meekly lining up like this. Airport security must cost more and cause more delay to the economy than any number of terrorist attacks.
But it does at least keep bad people off the streets, like the obese lesbian working the x-ray machine, who spots my nail-clippers in my wash bag and triumphantly takes me aside.
She unpacks everything from my overnight bag and lays it out for the masses to gawp at. Luckily I’m prepared, and stand proudly beside my change of Calvin Klein underwear, custom-made bespoke shirt from Dege and Skinner of Savile Row, wash bag and grooming kit from Penhaligons, and family-size box of Durex, while the Lumpenproletariat file past, the Ugly Brothers and the Scary Sisters, all making the most of the chance to see what underpants I wear.
The Ego Has Landed (Dave Hart 3) Page 12