by Adam Foulds
“You should stop writing it, then. She is here, by the way, and you’ll be able to express your passionate support to her later.”
After breakfast, Henry felt unusually happy. That was the name he gave to the brightness of energy, the painless ease in his body that he hadn’t felt for a very long time. He went for a swim in the hotel pool. A flat heat pressed down from above as he made his way around an archipelago of linked areas and back again, beneath the feet of the few people on sun loungers. The sky above the hotel was a brilliant vacancy. The thrill of getting out of London and Britain was the change of light. Henry always noticed it. Away from the sluggish midtones, the whey-white skies, the road greys and brick browns. Out to some Mediterranean sparkle or sharp-shadowed North American winter sunlight or this geographical extreme, the bare furnace of the desert. He became aware of where he was, splashing about in this receptacle of water in this leisure facility improbably placed at the whim of improbable wealth where the planet only burns. He made another circuit and then stood up, sweeping his hair back from his forehead and leaning back with his elbows on the edge. He saw the director of A Paper Fortune, Tom, walking to a small table where Laura Harris sat. Henry, his shoulders already instantly dry, submerged again with a shiver and swam towards them. He bounced out of the pool, surging up onto his fingertips, a vertical rush as impressive as he could make it. He picked up the towel from the nearest lounger and cloaked his shoulders. The paving was hot now, though, so he had to return to his own chair with jerky steps to collect his flip-flops. While he was there, he put on his sunglasses and shaped his hair. He went back, carrying his t-shirt in one hand.
“Ay, ay,” Henry said.
“Oh, look,” Tom said. “It’s your co-star. And he has a six-pack, no, an eight-pack.”
“Just jealous.” Henry pulled on his t-shirt, his display over. “Hi, Laura. How are you?”
Some faces are composed by cameras, aligned and heightened into a beauty that is hard to see in the flesh, but the beauty of some faces is never fully caught on screen. Laura Harris was obviously unusually attractive. Everybody knew that who had seen her image and her work, but the reality of her breathing presence was something else. Henry was used to being among the beautiful. It was in the nature of his profession. Actors were hired in part because they were sexually attractive to the audience. Even if their roles weren’t specifically erotic, the audience speculated about having sex with them and discussed their relative attractiveness. Henry was so used to it, in fact, that once or twice out among civilians in London he’d been shocked to see what groups of people looked like when they hadn’t been filtered by their appearance, the lumpiness, the dinginess and disarray. The physical beauty of actors was often at odds with their dim or tiresome personalities, but Laura Harris delivered on the promise of her looks.She wasn’t thin or tiny. She had a womanly gravity that planted her firmly on the ground. She had shape. She had blond hair and blue eyes and looked like the happiest summer of your life. She had been cast several times for hapless male characters to fall in love with in dramas set in the 1930s and 1950s. One of them, Henry remembered, had several scenes of her riding a bicycle in a translucent summer dress—a cheap decision of the director, one for the dads, as they used to say in light entertainment, but the images were fixed in Henry’s mind. And in real life she was intelligent and moral and warm.
“Hey, Henry. You are looking a bit thin there,” she said.
“I’ve had to lose weight for a part.”
“Welcome to being an actress.”
“Oh, yes,” Tom said. “I heard about your good news. Congratulations.”
“What’s this?”
“Henry’s in the new Miguel García project, aren’t you?”
“I am. At least I will be when it finally starts filming.”
“Did you get to meet him?”
“I did, of course.”
“And what’s he like?”
“There’s a lot of myth around him, I know. In person he’s perfectly nice. Scarily clever, obviously. We looked at paintings together in the National Gallery.”
“Wow. What was that about?”
“I’m going to have to leave you two to this discussion,” Tom said. “I’ve got a Skype meeting to attend. Trying to get this Somerset Maugham adaptation finally off the ground. I’ll see you later for our scheduled boat ride. We’re getting all the tourist treats.”
“Oh, sure. See you then.”
Tom had clearly heard enough about another director’s brilliance. He padded away and back into the hotel. Small and freckled and vulnerable under the drenching sun, he wore a straw trilby for protection.
“It was pretty great,” Henry said. “We looked at a Velázquez, I can never say that word, painting and talked about suffering and art and religion. All these things are in the film on some level.”
“Fantastic.”
“So that’s my big news. What about you? I’ve been following your various campaigns. Signed a few petitions that came round. I don’t do Twitter myself but I’ve seen what you’ve be doing, fighting the good fight.”
Laura leaned forward to scratch her shin. “You’re better off out of it with Twitter. It ranges from okay to dispiriting to out and out vile. Being on there in possession of a vagina can get pretty scary, I can tell you.”
“A vagina. I’ve heard of those. You’re in possession of one?”
“Yep, and lots of guys on the internet have lots of plans for it, it turns out. Quite a few want to make use of it before or after they kill me.”
“Jesus. It is horrendous. This conversation has taken a dark turn here.”
“That’s what it’s like online. Instant escalation. Zero to rape threats in three seconds.”
“Well, I do really admire you for doing it. I mean that.”
“Thanks. It’s not all bad, don’t worry. There are also a lot of men who want to buy me specific kinds of underwear and/or marry me.”
“Now that I can understand. I had a destined-to-marry-me one the other day—even without social media they find a way. My agent is supposed to stop them getting to me but somehow this one slipped through.”
“Maybe it’s because she—it is a she, yes?—is destined to marry you?”
“That’s a good point. I might need to think about this a bit more.”
A pause in the conversation. Henry did indeed think about the woman who had written the letter, out there someplace unknown, thinking of him. The slap of water in the pool. The drone of an aircraft. A waiter carried drinks misted with condensation to another table then tucked his tray under his arm and turned to them.
“Can I bring you anything?” He leaned towards them and his posture froze, waiting for a response. He was bald, his head bright in the sun. He squinted.
“I don’t want anything,” Henry said. “Do you?”
“Not right now.”
“Nothing for us,” Henry said and the waiter returned to his station. “This is kind of a weird place to be, isn’t it? A bit sort of sinister, in a way.”
“I suppose.”
“You think I’m being racist?”
“Scared of Arabs?”
Henry looked around at the water. “I guess I am a bit. We are in quite a lively neighbourhood. News from this part of the world doesn’t tend to be the most reassuring.”
“I’m not going to disagree, in a way. I’m not sure I’d be here if it weren’t in the contract. Workers live in labour camps over here. Did you see them, Bangladeshis and Nepalis, out on the building sites on the way from the airport? They die all the time in accidents. They have to work in this insane heat.”
“Just terrible.”
Laura laughed. “You sound really concerned. That’s nice.”
“That’s not fair. I think it’s terrible.”
“But you hadn’t thought about it before. I
bet you hadn’t even noticed the brown people out there doing the dangerous work. You were talking about them darn terrorists.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“No one’s going to behead you here. But sure as shit Qatari money is going into the conflicts. They’re all over the region in different ways. They fund Al Jazeera, too, you know? It’s based here.”
“I did know that, as it happens.”
“But to answer your underlying question, you’re safe. The waiter just wanted to bring you a pomegranate juice.”
“Oh, good. I thought he was asking if we wanted to star in a beheading video.”
“Only you would think of ‘starring’ in a beheading movie. I think he’s safe. You’re not frightened of these people, are you?” She pointed discreetly, a quick dart of her finger across her chest. Henry looked around at a family group that had assembled on loungers by the pool, a father sitting next to his son, both wearing swimming trunks. The mother, swathed in cloth, sat upright on a chair. Something about the boy slowed Henry’s attention, something different. Oh, that was it, the boy had Down’s syndrome—the smoothness and roundness of his face, the soft, entirely unselfconscious body. He was adjusting the strap of a diving mask while his father smeared sun cream on his back. The father had a curly wreath of hair around a bald patch, hair on his chest and the slope of his belly. The mother was talking to them both. Henry marvelled at them. He had the strange sensation that Laura had magicked them into being, or at least allowed him to see them. Laura’s essential bias, despite all she went through with her campaigning, was to like and trust people and the result seemed to be that good, warm, human people came into view around her. She made Henry feel like a better person.
“I’m not very frightened,” Henry said. “Depends what he’s planning to do when he’s got that mask on.”
Laura, her expression soft as she gazed at them, said, “Cute.”
Henry looked at Laura looking. He said, “This is nice. I’ve been shut up on my own for a while. It’s nice to make contact again.”
Laura said, “Sure it is.”
She looked like a life, a calm and decent way to be.
*
Henry returned to the hotel buffet for lunch with an eager appetite. He took rice pilaf with slices of toasted almonds and bright gems of pomegranate seeds that burst in his mouth with sharp, lush flavour. He ate chicken that was charred at the edges from the grill, pulling the flesh from the bones with his fork. He swept rags of flatbread through the sumptuous gloop of hummus and baba ghanoush. He ate some mysterious cream for dessert that was flavoured with cardamom and had a savoury green grit of crushed pistachios sprinkled on top.
He ate until he was full. Henry felt pleasure back inside his body, the enlivening effects of sugar and sunlight. He felt strong enough for his glorious future.
*
The skyscrapers needed cooling and the gardens all had to be watered, the new stadiums, all that acreage of grass and mass of air conditioning: the need for water was tremendous. The desalination plants were being enlarged. Already the water in the Gulf was thickening, its salt content killing some of the fish. Faisal was on the boat with them explaining all of this. Henry looked at a dhow floating in front of them, at a fisherman walking sure-footed along its length. A lyrical, Arabian sight. He responded to what Faisal was telling him with small sounds of deprecation. This was being a tourist in the modern world, enjoying the view while knowing the water was poisoned, the sea overfished and the sea level rising. Among educated people this might be the topic of conversation, too, at least for a while, a little geopolitical mournfulness between forgetful pleasures. Faisal turned their attention to the Museum of Islamic Art, built on a specially constructed island at the request of its famous architect. Henry hadn’t heard of him but Faisal explained it was the man responsible for the glass pyramid at the Louvre which everyone knew.The museum was plain and elegantly geometric. It rose impressively above the water. To Henry it looked like something from the distant past as much as from the far future. That was clever. It was a religious building, after all, expressing a permanent authority.
Henry said to Laura, “Nice to have a change of scene now and again.”
“Hmm,” she replied.
Being on a boat made pauses in the conversation natural and meditative. They looked out across the expanse of water.
“Nice to be ferried around,” he said.
“Do you ever get the feeling,” she said, “that we’re just a little ornament of the capitalist system?”
“Sure.”
“It’s corporate money that’s ferrying us around because we entertain.”
“Kind of. We’re jesters. Sure. I know that. We’re culture.”
“Unlike the Bangladeshis.”
“But you can change things. You do charity stuff and campaign and make people think.”
“I try.”
“Is this how you flirt, by the way, heavy political conversation?”
“No,” Laura said. “Just occurred to me.”
“I see.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment. Henry said, “How do you flirt?”
Laura laughed. “I saw your ex the other day. Hayley.”
“Oh, did you?” What was this? Was she pushing him away, telling him that she knew the case against him, or was she testing him? He asked, “And how is she?”
“She’s well.”
“That’s good to hear. I still miss her.”
“Do you?”
“I do. But what can you do? Maybe you need these things to happen, you know, to grow. I think it’s helped me grow as a person, I really do.”
“I see,” Laura said. “Well, that’s something.”
*
After their excursion on the boat, they had been returned to the hotel to prepare for the official opening of the festival. Henry had brought with him a narrow black tie rather than a bow tie to go with his sharply cut dinner suit. After a shower, he dressed slowly and carefully like he was building something, fitting the parts together. The knotting of his tie was the final act of assembly. He tightened his cheeks slightly and angled his head. The mirror showed him the perfect image of a man, like looking at a page in a magazine. He hoped that the film would move him up into the category of star that is used to sell watches and aftershave and cars. How’s that for a jester for capitalism, he thought and made the single-finger gun gesture at himself in the mirror. Think of Kate Winslet and George Clooney wearing wristwatches and staring into the distance, earning millions for an afternoon’s work. And what was it Beyoncé sold in those black and white photos with her heavy, erotic, sphinx’s stare? Pepsi, wasn’t it? Nothing wrong with it. Someone’s going to be asked and who in their right mind would refuse? If you want to spend the money on good causes then go for it.
Simplified inside the diagram of his suit, eager and alert, his face feeling smart with the after-effects of the sun, Henry met the others in the lobby and got into the transport to the venue.
There were fewer photographers than there would have been in London and these ones were polite, used to serving the obedient press of a rich, non-democratic country. The guests passed in front of the festival branding and stood in the spasming light, looking into each lens in turn. Laura wore a blue silk shoulderless dress, a spiral of fabric from which she seemed to be rising, naked. Her hair hung in heavy lacquered shapes. Henry stood beside her and angled his head for the photographs. Behind them Philip pursed his lips and lifted his chin.
The carpet then led them onto a terrace where other people stood in soft lighting, laughing and talking. Above them the desert sky was darkening. Waiters circulated with drinks. Henry took one. A delicate flavour of mint and rose, Islamically innocent of alcohol. At one edge of the terrace a string quartet played, their intricate music floating away, ignored. The air was warm. Every point of contact wi
th the world was soft and expensive, designed for enjoyment. Henry didn’t recognize many people here and the hierarchies were obscure, to be discerned from the attitudes and distribution of the people. There was much alert and willing laughter around an Indian actor wearing a collarless shirt of ochre silk and a large silver watch. He looked almost familiar. Qatari aristocrats wore their brilliant white shirts under black, gold-edged cloaks. Together, Henry, Laura, Philip and Tom circulated around the space, observing, commenting, talking to each other for company, at least until Tom was called away by a loud and friendly voice. Beyond the edge of the terrace, the sea was dim but for one area where it reflected the lights of the skyscrapers.
A small, white-suited man appeared at Henry’s side and said in a clear English voice, “You don’t know me but I know you. My wife is a big fan of The Grange. How are you liking Doha?” He held a glass in one hand and gripped his elbow with the other, a tightly folded, interrogative posture. He had an artistic, tousled quiff and stylish glasses. He smiled up at Henry.
“Amazing place,” Henry said. “It’s all been very comfortable. How do you like it?”
“Oh, you know. After a while it gets a little dull. There isn’t that much to do until exciting people like you come to town. I’m here for work.”
The man, whose name was Peter something, was an architect and ran a firm that was responsible for an extensive new area in Doha, restaurants and retail, intended to meet the demand of the influx of people for the World Cup. He was interesting enough. Henry spoke to him with friendliness and animation. This was the way with these events: they threw people your way and you enjoyed them as far as you could before they were gone. Peter something moved on saying, “I really shouldn’t monopolize you. There will be loads of people wanting to talk to you.” The terrace was now filled with people. The talk and the music were a noise that enveloped them. The photographers had finished at the red carpet and moved among them, shooting.
Laura appeared by Henry and said, “Come and see this pretty pond.”
“Pretty pond?”
“That’s what I said.”