by William Boyd
The evening wound down swiftly: the Pawsons left almost immediately, Lorimer warmly wishing them goodbye, even pecking Liza Pawson on the cheek, confident he would never see them again in his life. Irina said she was tired and Binnie sprang to her feet and fussily showed her to her room. Then Oliver and Potts went upstairs to bed, to much prurient speculation from Torquil. For a strange moment Lorimer and Torquil were alone in the room, Torquil sitting back in his armchair, legs splayed, puffing at the soggy butt of his cigar and swilling an inch of brandy around in his goblet.
“Great evening,” Lorimer said, feeling he had to break the gathering intimacy of the silence.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Torquil said. “Old friends. Good food and drink. Bit of a chat. Bit of fun. That’s what’s life’s, you know, makes it go round.”
“I think I’ll shoot off,” Lorimer said, trying to ignore the dull headache that was tightening above his eyes.
“Kick that Potts out of your bed if she tries to crawl in,” Torquil said, with an unpleasant smile. “Cat on a hot tin roof, that one. Real goer.”
“So she and Oliver aren’t—”
“Oh yes. They’re getting married in a month.”
“Ah.”
Binnie returned. “You’re not going to bed, are you, Lorimer? Good lord, it’s ten to two. We are late.”
“Super evening, Binnie,” Lorimer said. “Thank you so much. Delicious meal. Very much enjoyed meeting everyone.”
“Potts is a scream, isn’t she? And the Pawsons are so nice. Do you think Irina enjoyed herself?”
“I’m sure she did.”
“She’s a quiet one, isn’t she?”
“Thought we’d go for a walk on the common tomorrow,” Torquil interrupted. “Before lunch. Fresh air. Late breakfast, come down when you like.”
“Do you know Peter and Kika Millbrook?” Binnie asked.
“No,” Lorimer said.
“Friends from Northamptonshire, coming for lunch. With their little boy Alisdair. Company for Sholto.”
“Is he the dyslexic one?” Torquil asked. “Alisdair?”
“Yes,” Binnie said. “It’s very bad, awful shame.”
“A dyslexic and a bedwetter. Bloody marvellous. They’ll make great chums.”
“That’s cruel, Torquil,” Binnie said, her voice hard, suddenly, emotion making it quaver. “That’s a horrid thing to say.”
“I’m off,” Lorimer said. “Night everyone.”
From his window Lorimer could see the beaded stream of headlights on the Great North Road. Why so many cars, he thought, leaving the city on a Saturday night, heading for the north? What journeys were being started here ? What new beginnings ? He had a sudden ache of longing to be with them, driving through the dark, putting as many miles as possible between him and Priddion’s Farm in Monken Hadley.
221. Driving late at night through the city, you were searching the airwaves, looking for a radio station that was not playing popular music of the late twentieth century. As you fiddled with the dial you heard a melody and a wise husky voice that made you break your rule for a moment and listen. It was Nat ‘King’ Cole who was singing and the simple lyric lodged effortlessly in your head. “The greatest thing I You’ll ever learn I Is just to love I And be loved in turn.” Why did this make you so unutterably sad? Was it simply the effortless melancholy in Mat’s dry, lung-cancery voice? Or did it touch you in another way, search out that small abiding hidden pocket of need we all carry. Then you turned the dial and found some sensuous, delicate Fame which distracted you. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn.
—The Book of Transfiguration
An insistent hand on his shoulder shook Lorimer awake. Slowly he realized that his mouth was rank, his body was poisoned with alcohol and his head was gonging with a pure and unreasonable pain. Leaning over him in the darkness, wearing only a dressing gown, was Torquil. From somewhere there was coming a keening half-scream, half-wail, like the ululations from some primitive mourning ritual. For a moment Lorimer wondered if this was the noise of his abused brain, protesting, but then he registered swiftly enough that it emanated from deep in the house: it was another person’s problem, not his.
“Lorimer,” Torquil said, “you’ve got to go. Now. Please.”
“Jesus.” Lorimer wanted more than anything else to clean his teeth, then eat something salty, spicy and savoury and then clean his teeth again. “What time is it?”
“Half-five.”
“Good God. What’s happening? What’s that din?”
“You’ve got to go,” Torquil repeated, stepping back from the bed as Lorimer rolled out on to his knees, from which position he levered himself upright after a little while and dressed as quickly as he could.
“You’ve got to take Irina with you,” Torquil said. “She’s ready.”
“What’s happened?”
“Well…” Torquil expelled his breath, tiredly. “I went to Irina’s room and we—”
“You and Irina?”
“Yes. I snuck in there about three—why the hell do you think I got her here?—and, you know, we, we had it off. We ‘made love’. And then I fucking fell asleep and so did she.” He looked at his watch as Lorimer swept his kilt and sporran into his grip. “Then about half an hour ago Sholto came into our bedroom—Binnie’s and mine. The little bastard had wet his bed.”
“I see.”
“He never wets his bed here. Never,” Torquil said with genuine fury. “I can’t think what brought it on.”
Lorimer carefully zipped up his overnight bag, not wanting to say anything, not wanting to interject a plea of clemency on Sholto’s behalf.
“So Sholto says, “Where’s Daddy?” Binnie gets worried. Binnie looks around. Binnie gets thinking. The next thing I know I wake up bollock-naked beside Irina and Binnie’s standing there at the end of the bed with the duvet in her hands screaming. She hasn’t stopped.”
“Christ. Where is she?”
“I’ve locked her in our bedroom. You have to get that girl out of here.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“What about Oliver and Potts?”
“I need them. Potts is in there with her. She’s Binnie’s oldest friend.”
“Really? Is she? Right, I’m ready.”
Irina was crying softly in the hall, dressed, her face strangely bland, free of her paint and powder. She said nothing, allowing Torquil and Lorimer to usher her gently outside to Lorimer’s car. Outside it was icy cold, with a frost so heavy that even the gravel beneath their feet did not crunch, it was set so hard. Their breath condensed rather beautifully about them in evanescent lingering clouds.
“Good luck,” Lorimer said, wondering why he wished it. “I mean, I hope you—”
“She’ll calm down,” Torquil said, shivering, pulling his dressing gown tight around him. “She always has before. Mind you, it’s never been quite so…graphic, if you know what I mean.”
“You’d better go in,” Lorimer said, “or you’ll catch your death.”
“Fucking freezing.” Torquil peered in at Irina, his expression bland and disinterested as if he were searching an open fridge for a snack. She did not meet his gaze. “Tell her I’ll, you know, be in touch or something.” He reached into the car through the gap in the window and patted Lorimer’s shoulder. “Thanks, Lorimer,” he said with feeling. “You’re a humanitarian and a gentleman.”
This was the last compliment Lorimer wanted to hear from Torquil Helvoir-Jayne.
Lorimer drove carefully along deserted streets, white and deadened by the grip of the frost. It had taken several goes to establish where Irina lived, so intense was her solipsistic sense of misery, so unreal was her grasp of a world beyond her small circle of shame. Eventually she looked up at him, blinked and said croakily, “Stoke Newington.” So he drove from Monken Hadley to Stoke Newington—through Barnet, Whetstone and Finchley, following signs to the City, then round Archway, past Finsbury Park and on to Stoke
Newington. Crossing the North Circular, he suddenly realized that he had only slept a matter of three hours or so and thus, technically, in terms of alcoholic units consumed and not fully absorbed by the body, he was probably classifiable as totally drunk, though he had never felt so uncomfortably, palpably aware of his sobriety. By Seven Sisters Road he remembered that it was Sunday morning and that he had a rendezvous with Flavia Malinverno just twelve hours hence. His joy was mitigated by the sorriness of his physical state. He had to be ready for this meeting, of all the important meetings in his life—he really had to establish some control over the way he was living.
Chapter 9
Driving with pedantic care and attention back from Stoke Newington in the grey dawn, Lorimer had stopped at a petrol station and bought some Sunday papers and a two-litre bottle of Coca-Cola (regular), from which he swigged periodically as he made his way slowly but easily across town through empty miles of streets, arriving in Pimlico with his belly full of sweet gas and his teeth veloured with a rime of sugar. Once home in his flat he took four aspirin, cleaned his teeth and soaked in a hot bath for half an hour. Then he dressed and cleaned his teeth again, grabbed a newspaper and headed out for breakfast.
Lady Haigh was waiting for him downstairs, her pale blue eyes peering at him through the crack in her door.
“Morning, Lady Haigh.”
“How was your weekend? Were they nice people?”
“It was most interesting.”
“I thought you might like to take Jupiter for a walk.”
“I’m just going out for a bite of breakfast.”
“That’s all right. He won’t mind as long as you give him a bit of bacon or sausage. I thought you two should get to know each other better.”
“Good idea.”
“He will be yours one day soon, after all.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. There really was no suitable answer to Lady Haigh’s bland prognostications about her own death.
“By the way,” she said. “That man was round again yesterday, looking for you.”
“What man?”
“He didn’t leave his name. Quite well-spoken said he was a friend of yours.”
“Was it the detective? Rappaport?”
“Not that one. He was courteous, though, just like a policeman.” She opened the door fully and led Jupiter out. He was wearing an odd woollen checked coat that covered his body, belted under his belly and across his chest. Jupiter’s rheumy eyes contemplated Lorimer with an impressive lack of curiosity.
“He’s done his business,” Lady Haigh assured him, lowering her voice confidentially, “so there should be no problem on the street.”
Lorimer set off up the road with Jupiter plodding steadily beside him: he walked with visible effort, like an old man with hardening arteries, but maintained a regular pace. Unlike other dogs he did not stop and sniff every kerb and car tyre, scrap of litter and turd, nor did he feel the need to cock his leg at each gate or lamp-post they passed; it was as if the effort of getting from A to B absorbed all his attention and he had no time for other canine frivolities. In this way they made good progress through the cold, bright morning to the Cafe Matisse, where Lorimer tied Jupiter’s lead to a parking meter and went inside to order the most calorifically intense break the establishment could concoct. The place was quiet, a few regulars secure behind the rustling screens of their newspapers, and Lorimer found a seat at the front where he could keep an eye on Jupiter. The Spanish duenna waitress impassively took his order for bacon, sausage, two fried eggs on fried bread, grilled tomatoes, grilled mushrooms, baked beans and chips with an extra helping of chips on the side. When it arrived he slathered the brimming plateful with generous rivulets of ketchup and tucked in. Jupiter sat patiently by the parking meter, looking like an old dosser in his tatty checked coat, licking his chops from time to time. Lorimer, guilty, took him out a sausage but he merely sniffed at it and looked disdainfully away. Lorimer placed it on the ground by his front paws but it was still there, untouched and cold, when he emerged twenty minutes later, swollen gut straining at his belt, feeling grotesquely full but with his hangover subdued, a definite fifty per cent better.
He saw Rintoul following him, or rather paralleling him across the street. Rintoul was walking abreast of him, wanting to be seen, and when their eyes met he made an aggressive jabbing, taxi-hailing salutation in his direction. Lorimer stopped, uneasy, reasoning that this was what the gesture demanded and looked about him: the street was quiet, a few early risers hurrying homeward with their newspapers and pints of milk, but surely Rintoul could do nothing violent or untoward here ? It would be the height of recklessness—or desperation—and in any event he always had Jupiter to scare him off.
Rintoul strode purposefully across the street. He was wearing a thin leather coat that did not look warm enough for this chilly, frosty morning, and in the low-angled sunlight his face had a pinched, pale look to it. Lorimer said nothing—he assumed Rintoul had something to tell him.
“I wanted you to be the first to know, Black,” Rintoul said, sounding slightly out of breath, facing him, shifting to and fro, his feet making restless little shuffling movements. “We’re being sued for negligence and criminal damage by Gale-Harlequin.”
“Their decision, Mr Rintoul, not ours.”
“It gets better. They’re withholding all monies owed. Not paying us for past work. So our company’s going into receivership.”
Lorimer shrugged. “It’s something between Gale-Harlequin and you.”
“Yeah, but you fucking told them.”
“We made a report.”
“How much did Gale-Harlequin settle for?”
“Confidential, Mr Rintoul.”
“We’re broke. We’re going bust. Do you know what that means, Black? The human cost? Deano’s a family man. Four young kids.”
“This is what happens when you set fire to expensive buildings, I’m afraid.”
“We never meant it to go so—” Rintoul stopped, realizing it was too late, that in these circumstances half a confession is as good as a whole one. He licked his lips and looked at Lorimer with unequivocal hatred, then glanced up and down the street, as if searching for an escape route. Or a weapon, Lorimer thought, something to bludgeon me with. His wandering eyes finally settled on Jupiter sitting ever-patiently at Lorimer’s feet.
“This your dog?” Rintoul asked.
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“I’ve never seen a more clapped-out, pathetic-looking animal in my life. Why don’t you get yourself a proper dog?”
“He’s called Jupiter.”
“You’re going to fucking pay for this, Black. One way or another you—you, mate—are going to suffer for what you’ve done to us. I’m going to—”
“One more threat, one more violent word and we will prosecute you in the courts,” Lorimer said, deliberately raising his voice for any passer-by to hear, before launching into the standard GGH response to any public verbal menace, always to be couched in the first person plural. “You cannot threaten us in this way. We know everything about you, Mr Rintoul, and have you any idea how many lawyers we have working for us ? If you so much as lay a finger on us, so much as threaten us once more, we will set them to work on you. You’ll be truly finished then, truly washed up. The law will get you, Mr Rintoul, not me, the law. Our law.”
Lorimer saw tears in Rintoul’s eyes, tears of frustration and impotence, or perhaps just a response to the icy keenness of the wind that had started to blow. It had to be a finely judged process, this counter-threat—sometimes it had the opposite effect to the one desired, it pushed people too far, to uncontrollable extremes instead of pinioning them, freezing them on the edge of retaliation. But now Rintoul was immobilized, Lorimer saw, his revenge motor stalled, inert between these two competing forces—his own rage, his own urge to strike out, versus the perceived might of Lorimer’s awesome reply.
Rintoul turned and walked away, one shoulder oddly hunched, a
s if he had a cricked neck. Lorimer experienced a form of qualified sorrow for him—the petty thief landed with some real villain’s murder rap; the apprentice mugger who jumps the world kick-boxing champion. Lorimer felt oddly besmirched himself—he had rarely used the legal-counter-threat response, his modus operandi usually made it unnecessary—but he had crossed through Rintoul’s world for a moment, the world of dog eat dog or, rather, of big dog eating smaller dog, and had shared in his terms of reference, spoken a language of unfairness and injustice that Rintoul understood all too well.
But he could not relax, this did not mean he was safe. One dark night Rintoul might have violence visited on him anonymously—after all, Lorimer Black was the only objective correlative he had, the living, breathing symbol of all his woes…Lorimer wondered if he should tell Hogg—it was time for an’ oiling’, in GGH parlance, another resource available to troubled or worried employees caught in the line of fire. Some ‘cod-liver oil’ was a pre-emptive frightener, a scarer-away, the details of which he knew very little, as it was something controlled exclusively by Hogg. “So you need a dose of cod-liver oil,” Hogg would smile, “to keep the colds and flu away. Leave it to Uncle George.” Lorimer watched Rintoul’s hunched, shrinking figure disappear down the street and thought perhaps it might not be necessary after all. At least he knew who had put the sand on his car, now.
“Come on, old boy,” he said to Jupiter, still patiently sitting, “let’s go home.”
211. You sometimes feel your job dirties you, you’re unhappy at the levels of duplicity and manipulation the work demands. You feel corrupt and at that moment the world seems a sink where only the powerful and the ruthless flourish and ideas of justice and fair play, of honour and decency, of bravery and kindness are like childish fantasies.