by William Boyd
“Somebody once referred to this problem as ‘indigestion of the soul’,” Lorimer said.
“That’s not scientific,” Alan said. “Sorry.”
“But, Alan, how will all this help me?”
“I haven’t got all the data I need yet. When that’s collected, collated and analysed, then I can tell you.”
“And that’ll make me sleep better?”
“Knowledge is power, Lorimer. It will be up to you.”
He wandered away to make some coffee and Lorimer looked at what he had written. Alan was right, knowledge was power, of a sort, and partial knowledge bestowed limited power, true—but it was still up to him to exercise it or not.
He had typed out on one of the Institute’s word processors a short history and interpretation of the Fedora Palace Affair, as he now mentally referred to it, and he thought he had caught its essence succinctly enough over the three pages he had compiled.
As far as he could determine there was an initial phase: a simple conspiracy to over-insure the hotel, and this was where Torquil came in as innocent dupe figure. The fool’s errand, the fool proving more useful than a wise man. This was done—according to Bram Wiles’s dates—prior to Gale-Harlequin’s flotation on the stock market, to what end he was not entirely clear, but doubtless it looked impressive—a huge, new, very expensive luxury hotel—and made the company’s assets seem healthier in the short term. He assumed that the building would be re-insured later for a figure that reflected its true worth. If, of course, the building was ever meant to be finished. It made a kind of sense: over-insuring was not a crime but there might have been an element of fraud in the desire to make Gale-Harlequin stock appear more desirable than was really the case. The floating and subsequent buyout of Gale-Harlequin was at the heart of all these manoeuvres. It merely had to look like the genuine article for a year or so—the time it took to almost build a new hotel. However, this clever but relatively straightforward plan went seriously awry through an event that no one could have predicted or pre-empted. All anticipations were seriously disturbed when a firm of sub-contractors, Edmund, Rintoul, started a small fire on an upper floor in order to escape penalty clause payments that were about to fall due. The small fire spread, became a large one, caused much damage, an insurance claim had to be filed and the anomalous nature of Gale-Harlequin’s insurance policy with Fortress Sure was accidentally revealed.
The processes of claim assessment and loss adjustment automatically moved into action. An adjustment of the loss was proposed and instantly accepted in order to have the incident blow over as quickly as possible, because the large cash-for-share takeover bid was in the offing from a firm called Racine Securities. And who benefited from the Racine Securities buyout? Why, the shareholders of Gale-Harlequin, all bona fide investors, it seemed, according to Bram Wiles, all except for one mysterious offshore entity called Ray Von TL.
Lorimer would bet good money that the figures behind Ray Von TL would include, amongst others, Francis Home, Dirk van Meer and, quite probably, Sir Simon Sherriffrnuir.
Further, Dirk van Meer’s Boomslang Properties bought the fire-damaged, partially demolished hotel at, Lorimer would guess, a very reasonable price.
Dirk van Meer, Lorimer would further wager, probably had a stake in Racine Securities. In other words, to untangle the knot somewhat, one part of his empire had simply bought a smaller part—money appeared to be changing hands, and large profits ensued for key participants.
Contemplating the outline of what went on, and who bought what, adding some smart guesswork to known fact, Lorimer concluded that this just about sketched out the outlines of the Fedora Palace Affair. Doubtless there were other ramifications he would never discover but some construction of this order began to shed a dim but revealing light on the mysterious events in which he had been peripherally involved.
What was more, he couldn’t even swear that any of this was illegal, but the fact that he had been kicked out of GGH, had been set up vis a vis Rintoul, and was clearly functioning as scapegoat in waiting, made him almost sure that there were secrets here that important people wished to remain secret. It followed certain classic structures—notably the sending in of a fool Torquil - confident that the fool would be true to his nature. Torquil was meant to foul up the insurance of the Fedora Palace and, with a little indirect nudging and pointing by Sir Simon, duly had.
Except, the other classic rule also applied: if you can think of a hundred things that can go wrong, and factor them into your plan, you will be struck down by the hundred and first. No one had calculated on the humdrum duplicity of a small firm of Peckham builders. But there had proved enough swift resourcefulness, enough strength in depth and power and influence to provide efficient damage-limitation: a culpable party was set up (Lorimer) and George Hogg bought off and brought in. An extra snout at the trough was a small price to pay. Gale, Home, van Meer and Sir Simon had all cleared at least ten million, so Lorimer had roughly calculated, probably more. God alone knew what Dirk van Meer was making out of the deals.
Lorimer printed ten copies of his ‘Report into Certain Malpractices to do with the Insurance of the Fedora Palace Hotel’ and placed them in envelopes he had already addressed to the Serious Fraud Office and the financial editors of the daily and Sunday editions of the broadsheet newspapers. Alan, as promised, produced a sheet of first-class stamps and Lorimer set about licking and pasting them down.
“Will you post these for me?” he asked. “In the morning?”
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Of course I will.”
Lorimer had said only he was revealing a suspected fraud he added in further explanation, “Everyone’s assuming I’ll say nothing and I just hate being taken for granted.”
“You’ll be cast out from paradise.”
“It doesn’t seem quite so paradisaical these days. Anyway, I got what I wanted.”
Alan took the pile of envelopes from him and put them in his out-tray.
“I was sorry to hear about old Lady H.,” Alan said. “But I think she was always a bit suspicious of me.”
“Never. Why do you think that?”
“Because…” Alan wiggled a spread palm. “Once an old colonial always an old colonial.”
“Because you’re black? Ridiculous.”
“There was always some reserve.”
“Nonsense. She liked you. She was proud to have a Doctor of Philosophy in the building.” Lorimer stood up. “Where can I get hold of a mini-cab at this time of night?”
399. Irrationality. I do not mind contradictions, paradoxes, puzzles and ambiguities. What is the point of ‘minding’ something as inevitable and entrenched in our nature as our digestive system is in our body? Of course we can be rational and sensible but often so much of what defines us is the opposite—irrational and nonsensical. I am defined by the fact that I consider Jill to be beautiful and Jane to be unattractive, by the fact that I prefer blue-coloured things to green, by my taste for tomato juice and disdain for tomato sauce, and that sometimes rain falling will make me sad and at other times make me happy. I can’t explain these choices but they and their kind contribute to the person I am as much as anything more reasoned and considered. I am as much myself ‘irrational’ as I am ‘rational’. If this is true for me then it must be true for Flavia. Perhaps we are all equally irrational as we blunder onwards. Perhaps, in the end, this is what really distinguishes us from complex, powerful and all-capable machines, from the robots and computers that run our lives for us. This is what makes us human.
—The Book of Transfiguration
The downstairs lights were on in his Silvertown house, he was excited to see and, unlocking the front door quietly, he smelt spices, cooked tomatoes, cigarette smoke. There was a bunch of freesias in a jar in the kitchen and a dirty plate in the sink. He put his bag down and crept upstairs, his heart struggling in its cavity as if despera
te to break out. Pushing open his bedroom door a few inches he saw Flavia sleeping in his bed. She was naked and one breast was exposed, the nipple small, perfectly round and darkly pigmented.
Downstairs, he switched on the television and banged about in the kitchen making tea. In five minutes or so Flavia appeared, in a dressing gown, hair mussed, sleepy. Her hair was the colour of raven’s wings, with a shimmer of inky blue and bottle green, making her skin seem so pale it was almost a bloodless white, the natural pink of her lips lurid and rose-red beside it. She accepted a mug of tea from him and sat there for a while, not saying much, letting consciousness reclaim her.
“How long have you been here ?” he said.
“Since late last night. It’s not exactly homey, is it?”
“No.”
“So, how was your day, darling?”
“Terrible.”
“I’m going to Vienna in the morning,” she said. “I’ve got a job.”
“What?”
“A British Council touring production of Othello.”
“Are you Desdemona?”
“Of course.”
“Sounds nice. Shakespeare in Vienna.”
“Better than life at home, I can tell you.”
“He didn’t hit you or anything, did he ?”
“Not quite. He’s just vile. Impossible.” She frowned, as if the notion had just struck her. “I’m not going back.”
“Good.”
She reached out and took his hand. “But I don’t want to sleep with you tonight. Not tonight. I don’t think it would be wise.”
“Of course.” Lorimer nodded many times, hoping his disappoint wouldn’t show. “I’ll be in the spare room.”
She stood up and moved slowly to where he was sitting and put her arms around his head, folded her arms round his head and pulled his face to her belly. He closed his eyes and drew her warm bed-smell into his lungs, like a sleeping draught.
“Milo,” she said, and chuckled. He could hear her laugh revert rough her body, vibrations on his face. She bent her neck and kissed his forehead.
“Will you call me when you get back from Vienna?” he said.
“Maybe. Maybe I’ll stay out there for a while, let Gilbert stew.”
“I think we could be very happy.”
She pulled back his head so she could look at him better, her fingers gripping the hair behind his ears. She clicked her teeth together a few times and stared at him deeply.
“I think…I think you might be right. It was fate that brought us together, wasn’t it ?”
“I’m not quite so sure where I stand on fate these days. I would have tracked you down, one way or another.”
“But I might not have liked you.”
“Well, it’s a point, I suppose.”
“Lucky for you I do, Milo, lucky for you.” She bent her head and kissed him again, gently, on the lips.
Lorimer unwrapped a new blanket and spread it on the spare bed in the little room upstairs under the roof. He took off his clothes and slid between the mattress and the prickly wool. He heard her in the corridor and for a brief moment fantasized that she might knock on his door—but after a few moments there was the sound of the toilet flushing.
He slept the night through, uninterrupted and completely dreamless. He woke at eight o’clock, parched and hungry, pulled on his trousers and stumbled downstairs where he found her note in her large and acutely slanting hand.
You can come with me to Vienna if you like. Air Austria, Heathrow, terminal 2, 11.45. But I can’t promise you anything. I can’t promise anything will last. You must know that—if you decide to come.
F.
What was it with her, he thought, smiling, always these tests, these challenges? But he knew at once what he would do: this seemed far and away the best deal life had ever offered him and he accepted it unreflectingly and instantly. Unequivocally. He would go to Vienna and be with Flavia Malinverno—this would make him happy.
As he dressed he thought: I will be with her but she will not commit, she would not promise how long it would last. Well, neither could he. Neither could anyone, really. How long will anything last? How many miles can a pony gallop, as his grandmother would say. This shaky formula for his future happiness was as solid as anything else in this world, after all. There was no arguing with that.
400. Integumentary Systems. The arming of a man began at the feet and as far as possible each piece subsequently put on overlapped that beneath it. The arming of a man, therefore, was carried out in the following order: solkrets or sabatons, jambs, knee-cops, cuisses, skirt of mail, gorget, breast and back plates, brassards, pauldrons, gauntlets and, finally, the helmet.
Every living organism is separated from its environment by a covering, or integument, that delimits its body. It seems to me that the process of adding an extra integument is unique to our species and easily understandable—we all want extra protection for our soft and vulnerable bodies. But is it unique to our species? What other creature exhibits this same sense of precaution and seeks out this kind of protective armour? Molluscs, barnacles, mussels, oysters, tortoises, hedgehogs, armadillos, porcupines, rhinos all grow their own. Only the hermit crab, as far as I can recall, searches for empty shells, of whelks or periwinkles, or indeed any other hollow object and crawls inside, to serve as shelter and protection of the body. Homo sapiens and Eupagarus bernhardus—perhaps we are more closely related than we think. The hermit crab finds its suit of armour and keeps it on, but, as the crab grows, it periodically is obliged to leave its shell and travel the sandy undulations of the ocean floor, unprotected for a while, soft and vulnerable, until it finds a larger shell and crawls inside again.
—The Book of Transfiguration
He called for a black cab and while he was waiting he took his ruined Greek helmet from his bag and placed it on the mantelpiece above the gas log-fire. From the front it looked perfect, no one could see the triangular slice dividing the back. He would put Lupus Crescent on the market, call Alan from Vienna, ask him to organize things, and pay Ivan back—and that would be the end of his helmet-collecting days.
He sat in the back of the cab, strangely serene as it left Albion Village, making his last long trajectory across the city. From Silver-town, to Silvertown Way, left at Canning Town flyover, through the Limehouse Link, past the Tower, Tower Hill, Lower Thames Street and on to the Embankment, under the Charing Cross railway bridge, on past Northumberland Avenue, left at Horseguards, right at Whitehall, on through Parliament Square, passing Vauxhall, Chelsea, Albert and Battersea Bridges as the cab motored along beside the restless brown river, then swinging round on to Finborough Road, cutting across Fulham and Old Brompton Road, on past Earls Court and into Talgarth Road, into the Great West Road then the A4 and climbing up on to the elevated section of the 514, the sprawling city spread below on either side, continuing west on the motorway until Junction 4 and then left into Heathrow Central Area and finally, Terminal Three. This was one of the longest sweeps ever, from furthest east to furthest west, and he thought of all the many journeys he had made throughout his working life, crisscrossing the gigantic city, north and south, all the points of the compass, miles and miles, hours and hours of time…
Vienna was smaller, he thought, easier to handle, everything within walking distance. He and Flavia would stroll hand in hand from Stephansplatz to Schonlaterngasse, go to the opera, look at the Klimts and the Schieles, they might take a boat trip on the Danube, admire the topiary in the Augarten. They might stay on or set off on their travels together, he mused, pleasantly. Anything was possible, once they were there, anything.
He thought of other trajectories starting that morning: his ten letters moving from post box to sorting office and then making their individual routes to their respective addressees. And what would happen then? Nothing? A little ripple of controversy? A minor scandal? Some discreet fixing, words in important ears and then all forgotten?…
He wasn’t entirely sure. If he did noth
ing, nothing would happen, Lorimer knew; and if and when he went back in a year, as they so warmly encouraged him, looking for his old job back, nothing would happen then. Sad smiles of regret, hands spread, shrugs of impotence. Times have changed, Lorimer, things have moved on, so sorry, restructurings, new priorities, that was then, this is now…
They had cut him loose and he was drifting away, just as they wished, but not so far for the moment that the finger of blame couldn’t be angrily pointed at him if an emergency arose. But then, as more time intervened and short memories grew shorter, the happier and more relaxed they would be. “Mud doesn’t stick in our world,” Sir Simon had complacently but astutely observed. Lorimer could drift over the horizon as far as they were concerned: out of sight, very definitely out of mind.
He knew also that any power he held over them was limited and very short-term. The measure of it was that he had managed to compel Hogg to phone Mrs Vernon and his own ‘punishment’ was merely a sacking. He had some leverage but it would swiftly become nugatory. So now was the time to strike: he had added up two and two and had arrived at his version of four, just as Dirk Van Meer had surmised. But they thought he was dealt with now, silenced by false promises, drifting away out of their lives, seduced by the chimerical prospect of a return to the select club one day. But he was not so guileless and not quite dealt with, not yet. Now was time to see if some mud would stick: perhaps he could still disturb all anticipations.
As the cab swept up the elevated section of the M4 his eye was caught and held by a new advertising poster—a large white field and printed across it in black, lower case child’s handwriting, ‘sheer achimota’. David Watts was not wasting any time alerting the world to the coming of Sheer Achimota. Sheer Achimota would happen, that’s what. Suddenly Sheer Achimota seemed finally to be working for him too, in his own life.
He bought his Air Austria ticket to Vienna and showed his passport at immigration. He looked for Flavia in the teeming shopping mall that was Terminal Three but he could see no sign of her. He waited five minutes outside the ladies’ toilet but she did not emerge and small tremors of worry began to affect him. There were many people in the place, that was true, hundreds, it was all too easy to miss one another. Then the thought came to him, unwelcome: this couldn’t be another of her crazy tricks, could it? Her unpredictable reversals? This whole Othello in Vienna number? Not another of her sly admonishments? No, surely not. Not Flavia. Not now. He thought of last night and it made him banish his doubts. He strode confidently to the information desk.