by Brian Martin
I first went to the Journal and finalised my draft and filed the copy. Then I phoned the Connaught. Sure enough Roxanne was still booked in, although she was out. The desk told me that she had left a message. The receptionist asked, ‘May I ask who is calling?’
I replied, ‘It’s Mr Pelham Rigby.’
‘Mrs Gimenez has left a message for you. She has been expecting you to call for the past two days. She says that this afternoon she is shopping. She’s going to Harvey Nichols and then to Harrods. She expects to be back here around five o’clock.’
‘Thank you. Tell her I’ll telephone about six.’ For a moment when I heard the name Mrs Gimenez, I wondered who she was, so rarely did I hear Raoul’s surname. So far as I was concerned, Roxanne was Roxanne: like Arne, she should have no other name. The reality was different. She was Mrs Gimenez, Raoul’s wife, and the Connaught would not allow me to forget it. I imagined her in those two chic shops. She would be in the cosmetics halls, sampling Laura Mercier make-up, trying out Jo Malone eye shadows, spending ages choosing Clinique moisturisers, and spraying herself with Chanel Number 5. Roxanne took care of herself. Raoul was careless of expense. Anything that enhanced her in his and the world’s eyes was advantageous investment. As I stood in the drab, workaday offices of the Journal, I thought how much I would have liked to be with her then. My mind visualised her snuggling against my arm, whispering that we should make a visit to the lingerie department. She would allow me to choose some sensational underwear for her, some particularly sexy bras and pants. We would have done just that. After which, she would have taken me back to the hotel so that I could enjoy seeing her in them. Then, of course, we would have spent the next hour or two in bed.
Anyway, that was my daydream against the background of those shabby offices surrounded by harassed hack journalists, frenziedly tapping away at computer keyboards, answering telephones, slopping paper cups of bad coffee on to desks and floors. With any luck Raoul would be out of the way for a few days and something similar to my imaginings could take place. In the meantime, stark reality was in the office, and furthermore it lay in the house in St James’s Square. I knew I had better call in on Willy and bring him up to date on Myrex in Estonia.
There was no fresh news from Tallinn, but that did not surprise me. After all, Mark and I were the major sources. We were the two who had been, so far as it were, the agents on the ground there. Any other information they might have picked up would have come from other friendly intelligence services or occasional local sources. For the time being, all was quiet. Naturally, Willy told me that I should do everything possible to cultivate Arne, and conceded that Myrex would know, by now, that I connected in some way, tenuous or otherwise, to the security service. I should be on my guard.
When I came out of the house, it was just after five o’clock. I went down into Pall Mall past the Army and Navy Club and walked the short distance to my club in Waterloo Place. There, in the bar, not yet serving drinks, I browsed again through the current Economist. An article written by the financial editor of the Financial Times discussed the huge potential for high tech industries in the Baltic states, and Hungary. It described the pool of untapped talent available at comparatively cheap rates and the way in which mainly British and American entrepreneurs were investing in small companies in those countries. One caution was made. Some big conglomerates with dubious connections to dirty money were becoming involved, not yet in a dominant way, but by taking control of small local companies and technical laboratories. He mentioned that in Estonia those interests were providing vehicles for easy access into Russia and a means of money laundering through the manipulated accounts of the small businesses. So, I thought, the heat is beginning to be turned up. Myrex would not like the publicity in spite of its protestations to legitimacy. The British and other European governments would not like the muddying of economic waters either. It was in the interests of the democratic governments that the rule of law was paramount in those countries ambitious for entry into the European Union. Myrex was going to have to play its cards carefully and was going to be even more assiduous in defending its investments in Estonia than hitherto. I anticipated difficult days ahead for all parties and a power struggle for dominance in those developing markets.
As the clock above the grand staircase struck six and the barman opened the bar, I went out of the double swing doors of the club and stood on its steps under the canopy supported by its imposing classical pillars. There in the open air I rang Roxanne.
While waiting, reading the Economist, I had experienced that old familiar nervous feeling that somehow, when I got through to her and spoke, things would have changed between us, our feelings would have cooled. She would have reassessed her position, Raoul would have decided that I was no longer to be tolerated, she had decided to go along with him completely and to cut me off, or she had just grown tired of me. It was thus in a state of nervous tension that I rang her, wondering whether I should leave the call for a quarter of an hour to put off the excruciating discovery that she had finished with me. There is no doubt that I suffered a form of exquisite, irrational torture both mental and physical. The moment I heard Roxanne’s voice, my anxieties vanished. I could tell immediately that she could not wait to see me. I forgot my fears. They belonged to the world of bad dreams and dissolved as she spoke.
Raoul had just told her that they were to leave the next day. They were going to Deauville. Raoul was meeting some business associates there and intended to play the gaming tables at one of the casinos. She was not particularly looking forward to it but there was no alternative for her, she had to go. That evening, Raoul was out to dinner. Someone had invited him to White’s. She would be on her own after 7.15. She suggested dinner and an evening together. Raoul would return around 10.30. I told her I would pick her up at the Connaught: she should think of where she would like to dine. I then rang Mark, explained that it had turned out to be Roxanne’s last night in London, and what I was doing. He suggested I called in at his house between 10.30 and 11, which I thought a good idea.
I decided to walk up through Mayfair to the Connaught, and on the way I passed a big Boots chemist shop. Inspiration took hold. I went in, found the men’s fragrance counters, and decided to make myself more agreeable for Roxanne. Since she would almost certainly be wearing Chanel, I looked for the Chanel Pour Monsieur tester, and sprayed myself pretty lavishly. There are few concoctions of that sort I like. There are two from the Chanel selection, and Arne’s choice, Givenchy. I knew that by the time I had made the rest of my way to Roxanne, my Chanel fragrance would have faded in the fresh air and it would not fatally dominate her perfume. Still, I would have a residual Chanel scent about me that I knew she found attractive.
When I arrived, she was waiting in the hall. She rose from her armchair and stood ready for me to embrace her. I kissed her on both cheeks and then on the lips. She sighed and ran her hand down my back. She touched my cheek with the fingers of her other hand, stroked my neck, and pretended to adjust my tie. It was difficult for either of us to hold back physically. I just wanted to continue stroking her face, running my fingers through her hair: I wished she were naked so that I could touch the familiar shape of her breasts. I whispered what I desired into her ear, but she restrained me.
‘Where shall we go? Have you a good idea?’ she asked.
‘Excuse me, madam.’ The doorman approached us. ‘Your car is here.’
She had organised one of Raoul’s drivers to ferry us that evening. It was not the discreet Hamilton but a good-looking young Italian who ought to have been chauffeuring someone like Al Pacino.
‘Let’s go to Firehouse. It’s in the Cromwell Road. A young friend of Mark’s has recently opened it. The chef is superb, trying very hard to make his name. It was written up the other day in the Illustrated London News. It’s membership only, but the Journal’s taken out a subscription.’
And that was where we went. It was sufficiently early for the restaurant not to be crowded. We
had good service and listened to the conversations of the young clientele. One table close to ours was made up of polo enthusiasts. On our other side, the daughter of some great, ancient aristocratic family – I could not make out which one, maybe the Westminsters or the Wemyses – held court: a bright, lively medley of well-spoken twenty-year-olds chattered away, laughed and joked with each other. It was just the right place for us. You could not be downcast or miserable: the young in that restaurant that evening would not allow it. Later that night we were to part yet again. I could not help thinking how unsatisfactory our relationship was. Yet in another respect, I knew that it was the succession of partings that made us long for each other and while we were with each other it made the time more precious.
At one point the young owner came round to the tables and wanted to know if everything was all right. We complimented and flattered him. I mentioned that I was a close friend of Mark: he asked me my name.
‘Pelham Rigby,’ I said.
‘Oh, Mark thinks the world of you. I’m so pleased to meet you. Whenever I meet him, he will always mention you. You are obviously very dear to him.’
‘As he is to me,’ I commented. ‘We must come here one evening soon.’
The young owner said, ‘I told Mark to stay away until we are well launched. We have only been open ten days.’
‘I’ll give you another week,’ I said, ‘but if this evening’s anything to go by, nobody has anything to worry about. Anyway, thanks, you’ve made our evening.’ I looked at Roxanne. She smiled in agreement.
The Italian driver took us swiftly back to the Connaught. We wasted no time. We knew we were constrained by Raoul’s imminent return. Roxanne quickly undressed and then began to undress me. We realised that it was to be our last moments of intimacy for some time. It made us both sad, Roxanne tearful. I had only seen her cry passionately once before and that was when she told me that her mother had died. She unsettled me deeply when she cried. I felt myself losing control of my emotions. My stability began to erode. A depression hovered over me. I did not like it. Yet there was nothing to be done. We were destined to leave each other. The occasion was sad. Why should we not make the tenderest love and be sad? That was dictated by the nature of our existences. So that was what we did.
I had left the Connaught by ten twenty and was at Mark’s by a quarter to eleven.
‘You smell like a parfumerie,’ he said.
He was right: it was a blend of various Chanels and Raoul’s eau de cologne that I found in Roxanne’s bathroom. I explained where we had been. He was envious of my dalliance in the Connaught and delighted about the Firehouse. For an hour and a half we sat and talked, our conversation ranging from the problems of establishing a reputation as restaurateur to poetry, and it was on poetry that we spent most time. Mark told me that he hoped to read some of his poems at the forthcoming Cheltenham Literary Festival. It would be a valuable opportunity to establish his voice in the literary community at large, and make it easier for him to find magazines for the publication of his poetry. He said he was in a state of expectation and would hear one way or the other that following week. We discussed love and friendship, two of the themes he liked most to write about. At the end, when we both felt tired and viewed with resignation the long day ahead, I said goodbye. We hugged each other and as I turned to go he kept me in the embrace and kissed my cheek, the sign of his deep friendship. As I walked away, his last gesture brought tears to my eyes. Clearly, what he felt was unspoken, entirely contained in his physical touch.
17
When I reached the Journal offices next morning, the editor asked me to sit in on an editorial conference. Two of the permanent leader writers were there and the purpose was to discuss what should be written about European Community enlargement. I had to contribute my views on the admission of the Baltic states. I liked these meetings. They were similar to postgraduate seminars in a university. One of the leader writers was a seven-year fellow of All Souls College and inevitably brought a considerable degree of gravitas to the proceedings. He was highly intelligent and articulate. I told my usual story of vibrantly alive, rapidly developing political economies run by young, enthusiastic, ambitious politicos, mostly trained in business schools with Ph.Ds from the best Scandinavian, European and American universities. Europe had to deal with a thrusting generation of Harvard, INSEAD, Stockholm, LSE graduates, who really intended to go places. Many of them had a year or two of experience working in big multinational corporations or with institutions such as the World Bank or IMF.
The All Souls man asked me about nationalist sentiment in the Baltic countries. I told him, from my experience, people’s nationalism was limited, parochial. Their countries had never really been independent, always under the tutelage of Sweden, Germany, Russia, and consequently their concerns were for the region, and those new politicians saw the bigger picture. They wanted a keen sense of national identity, but also the security of membership of a large, powerful European body that would guarantee their cultural independence. They were advocates of what was called subsidiarity. I explained to the editorial group that the economies were beginning to thrive but that there was a threat to stability from unscrupulous organised crime in the form of some international corporations. I explained that at that time I was trying to do some investigative journalism into one particular concern called Myrex, but Myrex was just one of a number of business firms whose dealings and methods of doing business were more than a little dubious.
I stressed that my long-term predictions were favourable for the Baltic states. The peoples were, on the whole, cultivated, civilised, westward looking, mostly fluent in English, the international language of business, well organised and clearly focused. They could only be of benefit to the rest of the European Community. I explained that there was active interest from venture capitalists in small companies starting up in the Baltic, many of the companies high-tech that exploited leftover expertise after Soviet disintegration. So long as the economies were not undermined by large-scale international crime, they looked sure-footed and likely to make giant strides forward in the short-term future. I found myself speaking the kind of language that was used in writing the leaders. The editor looked extremely pleased and I wondered if I might be invited shortly to become one of the permanent leader writers. It was certainly a job I coveted. It was a cerebral job that required a great deal of thinking, and concise, terse writing in vivid terms. I knew I could do the job.
The editor asked me to stay on after we had finished with the Baltic. The government’s stance against the trade unions was to be discussed and he thought I might have something intelligent to contribute. I had to think hard and quickly. My contribution was that I thought the government was neglecting its traditional well of support. It was too obviously setting itself against its working-class majority, and although it had only gained power by seducing the white-collar workers of the middle class, they were the minority and it was unwise to consider their interests to the exclusion and detriment of the union power base. One or two ministers lacked political subtlety and I named them. The political editor who was present agreed with my nominations and suggested we identified them particularly in our leader analysis. So, that went well and I left the meeting pleased that I had not put a foot wrong.
When I arrived back at my desk, I discovered I had two messages on my voicemail. The first was from Roxanne saying goodbye and stressing that we must meet again soon. I thought of a line from the old song, ‘Don’t know where, don’t know when.’ She said she had relished our last night together at the Connaught while Raoul was busy. She made a kissing sound into the receiver: it conjured images of what we had done that night before. But the other message was a complete shock. It was from Arne. His precisely accented voice bade me good morning – he had left his message at 6.30 – and invited me to a business conference that was to take place in a week’s time in Bologna. One of the topics to be discussed at the forum was inward investment and developing trade in the Bal
tic states. Another was entitled The Mighty Dollar – the Means of US Imperialism: he chuckled after he had told me that, and I could not quite gauge why he did so. Myrex, he told me, would be happy to host me there as an observer, but he thought I might find it useful. There were people he knew I would like to meet who would be there. He left a Swiss telephone number that I was to ring him back on.
I sat there fairly dumbfounded. Arne seemed to be adopting me, and I realised that he would not be inviting me just for my personal benefit. There had to be something that fitted in with the interests of Myrex, or even of himself. It even crossed my mind that he might be homosexual and that he wished to explore the possibilities of a relationship. I could see that it was possible but from what I observed of the man, I concluded that he would never allow his private life to interfere with his professional one. On the other hand, sex was all-powerful; but then, so too was money. Joint hegemony was there, sex and money. He, or Myrex, wanted something from me. The Bologna conference was an opportunity to make overtures to see if they could get it. I knew that I had to discuss the proposition immediately with my editor who, I reckoned, would be well disposed, especially after our meeting that morning.
As I anticipated, the editor approved my going. I rang Willy and informed him of what was happening. He was most enthusiastic. Cynically, I thought that he was pleased because once again the Service could have me there doing useful work but not having to pay my expenses. Someone else was paying, in that particular case Myrex and the London Journal. On the other hand, the nation benefited, the Journal included. So far as national security went, we were all one large cooperative; that seemed to be the attitude. Lorel booked my flight. She had difficulty finding a direct one to Bologna, but she managed to route me to Milan and then by train to Bologna. I never complained about Italian railway journeys: the trains ran on time, were clean, comfortable and relaxing. It was easier to write on the train than in an aircraft.