by William Boyd
“Says who ?”
“Says Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, constantly. You spent the weekend at his house, didn’t you ? He must have had wind of it. No one’s that insensitive.”
“I swear he never gave a sign.”
Ashgable was clearly sceptical. “Well, as he left he kept asking for you.”
“Maybe I should see Hogg…”
“We want a full report, Lorimer.”
Upstairs there was a cardboard box in the hallway containing bits and pieces from Torquil’s rapidly cleared desk. Lorimer caught a glimpse of a studio portrait of a smiling, pearl-collared Binnie and the three scrubbed, plump children.
Janice raised her eyebrows helplessly, and gave a short piping whistle as if that were the only way to illustrate her incredulity. She beckoned Lorimer over and whispered, “It was brutal and sudden, Lorimer, and the language was unseemly on both sides.” She glanced towards Hogg’s closed door. “I know he wants to see you, he keeps asking if you’ve left the building.”
“Come,” Hogg barked when Lorimer knocked. Lorimer stepped in and Hogg pointed wordlessly at the chair already placed before his empty desk.
“He had no idea what hit him, not a clue,” Hogg said, manifest pride colouring his voice. “Most satisfying. That look of total disbelief on someone’s face. Moments to cherish, Lorimer, moments to recall in your dotage.”
“I told no one,” Lorimer said.
“I know. Because you’re clever, Lorimer, because you’re not thick. But what intrigues me, though, is just how clever you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you think you’re so clever you can outsmart us all?”
Lorimer was beginning to feel offended and hurt by Hogg’s recondite innuendoes: Hogg’s paranoia was registering off the dial. Lorimer also sensed his own ignorance once more, a feeling that he was in possession of only a few of the facts, and those not the most crucial.
“I’m just doing my job, Mr Hogg, that’s all, as I always have.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” Hogg paused, then added breezily, “How was your weekend with the Helvoir-Jaynes?”
“Ah, fine. It was purely social, purely.”
Hogg clasped his hands behind his head, a faint sense of amusement causing his eyes to crinkle at the edges and his thin lips to twitch, as if there was a laugh behind them trying to bubble forth. What had Ashgable said? Like a man pissing on ice.
Lorimer rose from his chair. “I’d better get on,” he said. “I’m working on the David Watts adjust.”
“Excellent, Lorimer, tip-top. Oh and take Helvoir-Jayne’s odds and sods with you when you go, will you? I’m sure you’ll be seeing him again sooner than I will.”
210. Shepherd’s Pie. We had nearly finished the shepherd’s pie, I remember, because I was contemplating putting in an early claim for seconds, when the room went yellow, full of yellows—lemon, corn, sunflower, primrose—and refulgent whites, as in a partial printing process or silk-screening, waiting for the other primary colours to be overlaid. Some sort of aural dysfunction kicked in too: voices became indistinct and tinny, as if badly recorded some decades before. Turning my head extremely slowly, I registered that Sinbad was telling some rambling and inarticulate story, flinging his big hands about the place, and that Shona had started to cry softly. Lachlan (Murdo was away) seemed to lurch back from his plate as if he’d discovered something disgusting on it but then started to poke fascinatedly around the mince and potatoes with a fork as if he might unearth something valuable like a gemstone or a golden ring.
I took deep breaths as the room and its contents leached to white, all the yellows gone, and then shimmered and stirred into shades of electric, bilious green.
“Oh my God,” Joyce said quietly. “Oh oh oh.”
“It’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Sinbad said.
I could hear the blood draining from my head, a bubbly death rattle, like water whirlpooling down a too-small plughole. Joyce reached trembling fingers across the table to me and squeezed my hand. Junko had risen to her feet and was swaying about, as if on the pitching deck of one of her fishing boats. Then Shona seemed to pour, as if molten or boneless, off her chair and reformed in a tight foetal ball, weeping loudly now in dear distress.
“Brilliant,” Sinbad opined. “Wicked.”
For my part the green had given way to deep interstellar blues and blacks and I was becoming aware of some kind of shaggy fungoid growth forming on the walls and ceiling of the kitchen.
“I’ve got to get out of here before I die,” I said, reasonably, sensibly, to Joyce. “I’m going back to the hall.”
“Please let me come with you,” she begged. “Please don’t leave me, my darling one.”
We left them—Shona, Junko, Lachlan and Sinbad—Sinbad laughing now, his eyes shut and his wet lips pouting, his hands fumbling at his fly.
Outside it was better: the cold, the streetlamps’ harsh glare helped, seemed to calm things down. Arms around each other, we waited ten minutes for a bus, not saying much, holding tight to each other like lovers about to be parted. I felt disembodied, muffled; the colour changes modified, shifted, faded and brightened but I could cope. Joyce seemed to be retreating into herself making small mewing kittenish noises. As the bus arrived all sound appeared to cut out and I could hear nothing: no Joyce, no bus engine, no hiss of compressed air as the door opened, no wind noise in the trees. The world became hushed and absolutely silent.
—The Book of Transfiguration
There was something grubbily attractive about the sullen girl who opened the door to him at DW Management Ltd in Charlotte Street, Lorimer had to admit. Perhaps it was just her extreme youth—eighteen or nineteen—perhaps it was the deliberately botched peroxide job on her short hair, or the tightness of the leopardskin print T-shirt she was wearing, or the three brass rings piercing her left eyebrow, or the fact that she was simultaneously smoking and chewing gum? Whatever it was, she exuded a cut-price, transient allure that briefly stirred him, along with a combination of latent aggression and a massive weariness. There were many minor skirmishes ahead, he sensed, only counter-aggression would work here; politesse and civility were a waste of time.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Enrico Murphy.” He added a hint of urban twang to his voice.
“Not here.”
“This is DW Management, yeah?”
“Ceased trading. I’m packing up.”
Lorimer looked around, concealing his surprise: he had assumed the office was simply a mess but he began to see traces of order amongst the mess, some documents piled, some pot plants in a cardboard box.
“Well, well,” Lorimer said, looking her in the eye. “Turn up for the books.”
“Yeah, brilliant.” She wandered back to the reception desk. “David fired him, Sat’day.”
Everybody getting the bum’s rush, Lorimer thought. “Where is Enrico, anyway?”
“Hawaii.” She dropped her cigarette in a styrofoam cup containing an inch of cold tea.
“All right for some, eh?”
She twiddled with a fine gold chain at her neck. “He must’ve been in here at the weekend—took a lot of files, took the platinum discs.” She pointed at some darker rectangles marking the hessian walls. “Even the fucking phones’re dead.”
“Enrico do this?”
“No, David. Thought I’d nick ‘em, I suppose. Haven’t been paid yet this month, see.”
“Who’s the new manager, then?”
“He’s doing his own management now. From home.”
Lorimer thought: there were always other ways, of course, but this was probably quickest. He took out his wallet and counted out five twenty pound notes on to the desk in front of her, then picked up a pen and a sheet of notepaper and placed them on top of the notes.
“I just need his phone number, thanks very much.”
He looked down at the dark cutting her parting made in her white-blonde hair as she bent he
r head to scribble the figures on the sheet of paper. He wondered about this young girl’s life, what had brought her here, what path it would take now. He wondered what Flavia Malinverno was doing today.
8. Insurance. Insurance exists to substitute reasonable foresight and confidence in a world dominated by apprehension and blind chance. This has a supreme social value.
—The Book of Transfiguration
There were several messages on his answer machine when he returned home that evening. The first went: “Lorimer, it’s Torquil…hello? Are you there? Pick up if you’re there. It’s Torquil.” The second was a few moments of quiet hiss and then a click. The third was: “Lorimer, it’s Torquil, something ghastly’s happened. Can you call me?…No, I’ll call you.” The fourth was from Detective Sergeant Rappaport: “Mr Black, we have a date for the inquest.” Then followed the date and time in question and various instructions relating to his attendance at Hornsey coroner’s court. The fifth was to the point: “It’s not over, it’s not over yet, Black.” Rintoul. Damn, Lorimer thought, perhaps the situation did require cod-liver oil after all. The sixth made him stop breathing for its duration: “Lorimer Black. I want you to take me to lunch. Sole di Napoli, Chalk Farm. I’ve booked a table, Wednesday.”
He slid Angziertie into his CD player and removed it after approximately ninety seconds. David Watts had a reedily monotonous, albeit tuneful voice with no character and the rank pretension of the lyrics was rebarbative. The fatal gloss and polish of the most expensive recording studios in the world stripped the music of all authenticity. He realized this reaction placed him in a tiny minority, was almost freakishly perverse, but there was little he could do about it: it was as if one of his senses had gone, smell or taste or touch, but he simply was unable to tolerate any contemporary British, American or European rock music of recent decades. It seemed fatally bogus, without soul or passion, a conspiracy of manipulated tastes, faddery and expert marketing. He replaced David Watts with Emperor Bola Osanjo and his Viva Africa Ensemble and sat back, brain in neutral, trying to cope with the preposterous sense of elation that was building inside him. He thought of Flavia Malinverno’s beautiful face, the way she looked at you, the way she seemed always to be half-challenging you, provoking you…There was no question, without doubt she—
The doorbell buzzed and he lifted the speakerphone off its cradle, suddenly worried that it might be Rintoul.
“Yes?”
“Thank Christ. It’s Torquil.”
Torquil put his suitcase down and looked about Lorimer’s flat in frank admiration.
“Nice gaff,” he said. “It’s incredibly neat and sort of solid, if you know what I mean. Is this real?”
“It’s Greek,” Lorimer said, gently taking the helmet out of Torquil’s big hands. “About three thousand years old.”
“Have you got any booze?” Torquil asked. “I’m gagging for a drink. What a fucking awful day. Have you any idea how much a taxi costs from Monken Hadley down here ? Forty-seven pounds. It’s outrageous. Scotch, please.”
Lorimer poured Torquil a generous Scotch and himself a slightly less generous vodka. When he turned, glasses in hand, Torquil had lit a cigarette and was sprawled on his sofa, thighs splayed, two inches of shin showing above his left sock.
“What the hell is this crap you’re playing?”
Lorimer switched off the music. “I heard about what happened today,” he said, consolingly. “Rotten luck.”
Some of Torquil’s swagger left him and he looked suddenly deflated and shocked for a moment. He rubbed his face with his hand and took a long pull at his drink.
“It was pretty fucking scary, I can tell you. He’s a vicious bastard, that Hogg. He took the car keys off me too, there and then. By the time I got back home after lunch it had been repossessed. Bloody embarrassing.” He exhaled. “Out. Just like that. I put a call into Simon but I’ve heard nothing.” He looked plaintively at Lorimer. “Have you any idea what it’s all about?”
“I think,” Lorimer began, wondering whether it were wise to confide in Torquil, “I think it’s something to do with the Fedora Palace.”
“I thought you’d sorted that all out.”
“So did I. But there’s something else going on. I can’t figure it out.”
Torquil looked aggrieved. “O K, so I cocked up—and I admit it—and was duly shunted out of Fortress Sure. Now I’m shunted out of GGH. It’s not fair. There should be some sort of statute of limitations. I made a wrong calculation, that’s all, I can’t keep on being punished for the rest of my life.”
“It’s more complicated, I think. I just can’t put all the pieces together. It’s got Hogg worried, though, for some reason. What did he say to you?”
“He came in and said: “You’re sacked, get out, now.” I asked why and he said: “I don’t trust you,” and that was it. Well, we called each other a few choice names.” Torquil frowned and winced, as though the act of recollection were causing him physical pain. “Bastard,” he said, and tapped ash absent-mindedly on the carpet. Lorimer fetched him an ashtray and a refill.
“How did things go,” Lorimer asked, innocently enough but genuinely curious, “after Saturday night?” He felt, simultaneously, a vague alarm: here they were, he and Torquil, nattering about problems at work, problems at home. They even had a shared history, now, just like two old friends.
Torquil looked glum and threw his head back to stare at the ceiling. “It got really bad,” he said. “Nightmare. She became very quiet, Binns, after she calmed down, icy cold, not like herself at all, sort of drawn in on herself. I apologized, of course, but she refused to speak to me.” He paused. “This morning she went to a lawyer—while I was getting the sack. Then she chucked me out. Said I could go and live with Irina. She wants a divorce.”
“Hence the suitcase.”
“My worldly goods. It gets worse. I had to speak to this lawyer. He says I’ve got to start giving Binnie money, regularly, some sort of maintenance while the divorce goes through. I told this lawyer chappie that I’d just got the sack so they could whistle for it. Apparently he and Binnie went over the bank statements, credit cards, building society passbooks, the works. Turns out I’m £54,000 in the red. Thank Christ I don’t have a mortgage.”
“How does that line go ? When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions.”
“Sorry?”
“Shakespeare.”
“Oh. Right. Thing is, Lorimer, as it turns out, you’re the only friend I have.”
“Me? What about Oliver Rollo?”
“Can’t stand him. Mindless idiot.”
“What about your family?”
“They’ve all rather sided with Binnie, say I’m a disgrace. I’m a bit of a pariah, to tell the truth. Shunned all round.”
“I side with Binnie, too.”
“Yeah, but you understand, you were sort of involved.”
“Involved? What’re you talking about? You climbed into bed with Irina, not me.”
“But you’d met Irina. And she was meant to be your girlfriend.”
“The key word is ‘meant’. I’d only spoken to her for two minutes.”
“I don’t think, Lorimer. That’s my trouble in life, I don’t think ahead.”
Lorimer knew what was coming next, that premonitory heaviness weighing on him again.
“I was wondering,” Torquil said with a weak smile, “if I could kip down here for a night or two, until it all blows over.”
“Blows over? What do you mean?”
“Binnie’ll take me back, once she’s calmed down.”
“You sure?”
“Course. She’s a forgiving person, old Binns.”
“Well, all right, but just for a night or two,” Lorimer said, telling himself with scant confidence that Torquil knew his wife better than he did. “I’ll get you the duvet.”
211. The Television Set. You felt cold because you were naked and you pushed yourself up against Joyce’s pale, freckly
body, your eyes tight shut to keep the colours out. Joyce said, you’re wet, you’re greasy, keep away from me, don’t touch me. When you opened your eyes the colour changes had calmed down but your small boxy room pulsed like a beating heart in its socket, contracting and expanding as if the walls were pliable rubber. Noise was a problem now, and you yearned for the perfect silence of the bus ride. All you could hear was the ear-battering yammer of a television set from the floor below and boorish, loutish cheers and shouts. You looked at your watch but your eyes wouldn’t focus. Joyce turned into you now, her long breasts falling and squashing into your side and you felt, dully, absurdly, alarmingly, a distinct sexual thrill—although you knew enough to realize that sex under these circumstances could have life-altering side effects. Still, maybe—
Why are they shouting and screaming, Milo? Joyce said, and you could feel the wiry prickle of her pubic hair pressed against your thigh. Make them stop, Milo, make them stop, my darling.
Joyce had never used endearments before, never articulated affection, you thought, and you liked it, filled with love for her, and an intense desire that fuelled your rage against the television set and its ill-mannered booming voice. You were out of bed, snatching up your shirt and clawing it on.
THIS IS MAKING ME FUCKING ANGRY !you shouted, I ‘M IN A FURY, I’M FUCKING ENRAGED!
Make them stop, Milo, sweetheart, make them stop, Joyce said, sitting up in bed, tears streaming.
Furious, you opened the door of your boxy little room and strode off down the corridor, your shirt tails flying in the air behind you, heading furiously for the source of the din, the roaring noise, furiously determined to silence the television set for ever.
—The Book of Transfiguration
He found it impossible to sleep with another person in the flat, the space shared, another source of unfamiliar noise. He would doze off from time to time but every time Torquil coughed or grunted or shifted on the sofa he was roused instantly, adrenalin-charged, brain working, eyes wide, alarmed—until he remembered his guest’s presence in the sitting room.
Torquil slept on, dead to the world, as Lorimer, with deliberate clatter and door-bang, noisily prepared his frugal breakfast in the kitchen. He peered into the dark sitting room and saw Torquil’s wide, bare back pale in the gloom, heard the troubled snort and rasp of his breathing, and the unwelcome thought struck him that Torquil might be naked under the spare duvet—but surely no one slept naked on a sofa ? Slept naked on someone else’s sofa in someone else’s house?…