The Condor's Head

by Ferdinand Mount

  ‘She works for a bank, but she’s really a gambler.’

  ‘I like gamblers.’

  Jane had inherited her mother’s mathematical brain but not her sense of duty. She worked in asset management because it was the only part of the City that still kept civilised hours and left her plenty of time to sharpen her skills at bridge, blackjack and backgammon, from which she reckoned to double her salary in a good year. How could I have bred such a child, her mother wailed. Polly was coming up to retirement but still worked ten hours a day as chief exec of a health authority in south London.

  ‘Hope she wins enough to pay for the wedding. It’s a great place to get married, Gilligan.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, though I was beginning to have doubts. She was marrying Jonty, a tall quiet boy who worked in Systems. Apparently he didn’t like gambling much, but he thought he might be able to fit in some birdwatching, further up the valley in the high sierra.

  But it was not on Jonty’s account that a little dread was leaking into my thoughts. It was the prospect of seeing them all again and being cooped up together in the hotel. Wizz and I wrote to each other, these days e-mailed, once or twice a year. But Franco I had not run into for ten, no, nearer twenty, years and as for Polly we met now and then, but only briefly at weddings and funerals, more often funerals.

  ‘Isn’t it odd,’ she had said at the last one, ‘when we were young, we thought we’d got away from all this.’

  ‘All what?’ I could not quite interpret the discreet spread of her fingers as if she was shaking a fan at the mourners now trooping towards the graveside under their umbrellas. I remembered that gesture and the little flip of the wrist that came with it and it touched my heart, as did any jolt from the past now. That was all part of getting on, the way your hold on the present weakened while the tug of the old days tightened, like one of those dog leads that reels itself in.

  ‘Occasions like this, rites of passage. Now they’re the highlights.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said, groping for the old familiarity.

  ‘I always do,’ she said. ‘Nobody else is going to.’

  Partly what I was dreading was Jane and Jonty watching us the whole time, imagining that we were still each other’s best friends.

  ‘Over there right by the mountains there was a Hopi village once but they moved back to north-eastern Arizona with the rest of the tribe. I saw them do their snake dance once but now they don’t let the public in, frightened we might get the wrong idea.’ The big man chuckled. ‘Still,’ he added, ‘I expect our tribal rituals must seem peculiar to them.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking.’

  The golden light had gone behind the mountains and the desert floor was a dull dead colour, and the only thing to look at was the ribbon of oncoming headlights curling away to the horizon.

  ‘Only ten minutes to Gilligan now,’ the big man said. ‘The Greyhound coming through used to be a pretty big deal. The old man would come out to welcome us in his cowboy get-up and he’d fire his forty-five in the air as we parked.’

  ‘The old man?’

  ‘George G. Gilligan. When he came out here, it was nothing but a couple of shacks at the river crossing, but that old riverboat gambler had the genius to see that some folks would be so eager to get rid of their money that they’d tumble out of their vehicles as soon as they crossed the state line – and the rest is history. There, you can see the lights.’

  Far in the distance the ribbon exploded in a blaze in the darkness. Quite soon I could make out GILLIGAN’S in flaming lights. The gradient steepened down into the valley and I could see the sullen sheen of the river snaking through the rocks. As we came off the highway into the hotel driveway, the desert wind was swooshing through the line of palm trees. We got out and felt the heat of the night. There were sprinklers playing on the grass and the wind carried the spray on to my face. Beyond the hotel there was another hotel and then nothing but the mountains.

  ‘Welcome to Gilligan City,’ the big man said, ‘and bonne chance.’

  Under the vast hotel awning, there was Wizz eternally neat in a lightweight suit somewhere between magnolia and mayonnaise in colour. Self-contained and assured as ever, he might have been the hotel greeter. My heart skipped. It was marvellous to see him in such trim. But when I came closer and we embraced, I felt how thin he was around the ribs and saw how worn-looking his face was, all the more so because he still had that boyish look.

  ‘You’re allowed one stare,’ he said. ‘But you mustn’t ask, it’s so boring. Most of the time I feel OK. Let’s go see Franco, he’s in the library.’

  ‘Library?’ I queried, waving goodbye to the big man who had got his suitcase out of the Greyhound and was wheeling it back up the driveway towards the mobile homes that stretched along the opposite hillside, pale blobs in the gathering dark.

  Beyond the foyer, double doors with gilt swirls all over them led into a huge room lined with gleaming bookshelves. Sunk in a leather armchair by a fire as big as a bonfire, desperately shrunk-looking in this oversized salon, was Franco. He sprang out of the chair with all his old monkey energy and came towards us, waving the book he had been reading in his prehensile paw, his finger still marking his place.

  ‘Amazing, it’s a first edition of Lucasta Mynors. Even Bodley hasn’t got one.’

  Wizz used to accuse Franco of sitting in a chair curled up like a chimp protecting his banana. Now he didn’t uncurl even when he was upright, which made his arms hang down by his sides even more than they used to.

  ‘See, now we’re both bent,’ Wizz said.

  ‘Godawful poet, Lucasta, easily the least talented of the Hesperides, apparently a fantastic lay, though,’ said Franco, paying no attention to Wizz – at least that had not changed.

  ‘Polly’s still freshening up, I think,’ said Wizz, paying no attention to Franco.

  But she wasn’t, because at that moment in she came. She was wearing a sky-blue silk shirt and the stylish sort of jeans that all the women in the foyer had been wearing. To us she looked wonderful. If you had never known her, I suppose you would have seen a tall, rather severe elderly woman with a pale lemony skin and a daunting expression on her face.

  ‘Oh, it is a library, how funny,’ she said. ‘I didn’t believe it when they said that was where you were.’ She smiled at the thought of not believing it. I could see that Franco was instantly captivated, partly, I suppose, because I was captivated too. They embraced, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, not awkwardly but carefully, as if one of them might have a lesion or fracture that had not yet been identified by a qualified practitioner.

  It must have been a difficult life bringing up Jane on her own. There had been other lovers. She kept Wizz up to date on them and he would pass on news of the latest to me, explaining what was going wrong. Sometimes he would sound exasperated with her and complain that she seemed to be deliberately avoiding any long-term commitment, though what business was it of his? Perhaps the life suited her. She liked to do things her own way. Difficulty interested her, and why shouldn’t it? Most of the time she was worrying about Jane. In her letter telling me about the engagement, she said how she adored Jonty almost as much as Jane did.

  ‘They’ve gone to talk to the minister at the Little Chapel in the Moonlight. Apparently the best time to have the wedding is at twilight when you get this fantastic effect through the windows because you’re so high up.’

  ‘What, is it up in the mountains?’

  ‘No, it’s on the thirty-eighth floor. You go out on this amazing terrace afterwards and have your champagne or whatever looking at the sunset.’

  ‘When do we get to eat?’ Franco pestered. ‘I’m ravening.’

  ‘You mean ravenous.’

  ‘Ravening’s better, dear, especially if the service is slow, reminds them of wolves.’

  ‘I think it’s through there, I saw a sign.’

  ‘What about Jane and Jonty?’

  ‘I told them to fo
llow us in if they were held up. The restaurant’s called the Condor’s Nest.’

  Wizz and I exchanged glances. ‘My, this must be meant,’ he said.

  I had sent him the typescript months earlier and was surprised – in fact, hurt – to receive back nothing more than a note saying that the package had arrived and that he was looking forward to reading it. The research, after all, had taken up more years of my life than I could spare and Wizz was my prime audience – indeed, the only begetter of the project. If it had not been for him I would never have heard of any of them – the Condor, the little Duchess, William Short himself. I wanted desperately to know what he thought of the whole thing and could only assume – with a dreadful sinking feeling – that he did not think much.

  The four of us walked out of the gloomy splendour of the library into a broad carpeted mall that seemed endless. It was lined with clusters of slot machines, whirring, clicking and jingling. The slots sounded cheerful and animated compared with their silent, rapt acolytes.

  ‘You didn’t like it,’ I said.

  ‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘It’s the best thing you’ve done.’

  ‘You didn’t like it.’

  ‘No, honestly, it’s utterly fantastic. It’s just that—’

  ‘You see, I knew.’

  We had to pause to let a party all decked out in ten-gallon hats and leather chaps cross our path. Either side of us stretched two more malls, equally broad but these ones filled with green baize tables and busty girl croupiers in glittering tuxedos. Above us soared a blue dome pierced with stars. It was like standing at the crossing in a great cathedral.

  ‘No, no, I really mean it,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I wasn’t quite sure how to express my reactions on paper without giving you the wrong impression, which is exactly what I’m doing now.’

  ‘You didn’t like the way I approached the subject, the narrative was perhaps too—’

  ‘No, no, it’s the story, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘The story?’

  ‘I thought the story was going to be so beautiful and it’s, well, so sad.’

  ‘It could be beautiful and sad at the same time,’ I said tetchily.

  ‘It could have been, but in fact it’s just sad. The thing is I was finishing up selling my little business to Hellman Drax while I was reading it and I was expecting to be so happy. There I was, getting out in a blaze of dollars after thirty years of boutique broking and I was looking forward to reading the great American love story. But reading your stuff just got me down. As I say, it’s not your fault. It makes you think that nothing really lasts, least of all love.’

  ‘Well, that’s the truth of how it all ended,’ I said. ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘I did, I suppose. But I thought it wouldn’t matter, that it would be enough for it to have lasted as long as it did. But it isn’t. Franco was right. Love was just a passing phase in history. It ought to have dates after it like the Industrial Revolution or the Hundred Years War.’

  We trudged on down the mall. The carpet seemed to be getting thicker. I couldn’t think of anything more to say.

  Jane and Jonty were sitting beside each other at the big round blackjack table in the corner. When she caught sight of us she waved a thick wodge of purple chips in the air and scampered over.

  ‘Oh darling, shouldn’t you cash those in before you lose them?’

  ‘We’re going back in after dinner and playing until we’ve got enough for the deposit on our flat,’ Jane said gaily. She looked like Franco, with a merry monkey face, and she could not keep still for a minute.

  ‘Poor Jonty,’ said Polly.

  ‘Rich Jonty. We’re on a roll, Mum, and we don’t need any lectures from Gamblers Anonymous. Anyway, Jonty’s loving it, aren’t you?’

  Her fiancé gave a shy smile. He looked the sort of person who smiles shyly a lot of the time and leads a largely interior life. I had read somewhere that moles only come above ground when they need to mate. That might well be the case with Jonty too.

  Jane insisted on ordering Dom Pérignon with one of her purple fish, which turned out to be legal tender in the Condor’s Nest. Her parents blossomed. They behaved like a long-married couple who had been briefly separated and were overjoyed to be back together round the same table. They seemed to be sharing a run of private family jokes with Jane, or perhaps it was the same joke that bubbled up again every time someone thought of a fresh angle. Wizz joined in too, but he still seemed depleted. It was clear that he was put out by our conversation, though surely I had more reason to be. After all it wasn’t my fault the story ended the way it did. Or perhaps his annoyance was not just to do with what I had written. Did it date back to when his friend Glen had died? Had my condolences hit the wrong note? One way or another, I got the feeling I had failed him.

  ‘… hire a jeep.’ I came round from my perplexed reverie to discover that Jonty who was next to me had just volunteered something.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t quite …’

  ‘I was just saying, if you don’t fancy sitting at the tables all day, I’m hiring a 4x4 tomorrow and going up-country to look at some birds, and if you felt like coming with me …’ Contrary to what I expected, his voice was decisive, rather clear and attractive as though he was accustomed to explaining things to strangers and winning them over.

  ‘That would be great,’ I said.

  ‘Wizz, would you like to come along?’

  ‘You are kind,’ said Wizz. ‘But I think I’d better rest up for the wedding. I run out of puff so quickly these days.’

  Well, I thought, I have been too harsh. He was just not well.

  Jonty was waiting for me outside, standing by the hire vehicle, a rugged workhorse the colour of wet sand.

  ‘Isn’t the air wonderful?’ he said. ‘Like champagne they always say, except I don’t like the taste of champagne, couldn’t stick that stuff we had last night.’ He looked pale, almost ethereal in the bright morning light. I noted again that he had definite views about things.

  ‘Jane’s fast asleep, she didn’t come up to our room till half past four,’ he said proudly.

  ‘How did she do?’

  ‘She’s up eighteen thousand dollars. I said, isn’t it time to cash in, but she told me not to be so wimpish. I expect she’ll lose the lot today.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘People must do what they want to do, don’t you think? She told me she had just bumped into Franco coming out of Polly’s room. At four in the morning. He’s amazing, isn’t he? Now I see where Jane gets her energy from.’

  We had left the highway and were zigzagging up a stony track, so my head was in danger of hitting the roof anyway.

  ‘He said they had so much to catch up on that they lost track of the time talking. And Jane said, only talking, how sad. And he said, well, a bit more than talking, so she hugged him and said he mustn’t feel he had to go back to his own room on her account, and he said, no, it wasn’t that, he always preferred to sleep alone. Amazing, isn’t it, after all that time.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think my parents have ever spent a night apart except when he was on night duty. He’s a cardiologist. In Sandwich. Look, there’s a tanager, it must be the western, the others are red all over.’

  The brilliant scarlet bird darted into the aspens by the creek, then flitted off into the rocks the far side. The rocks themselves were almost blood-red, shading into pink where the sun caught them. Now that Jonty had turned off the engine we could hear the water running over the stones.

  ‘The guide says that if we follow the track up to the trailhead we might see a golden eagle.’

  ‘Or a condor?’

  ‘Very unlikely, there are only half a dozen in the whole state. The rest are in southern California.’

  The track came to an end in a grassy clearing sprinkled with bright orange flowers like tasselled marigolds. I asked Jonty what they were, but he didn’t know, he wasn’t i
nterested in flowers. He had his glasses fixed on a little brown bird in the brushwood, which I could hardly see. I wandered off and stared up at the mountains above us, great fractured spires of rock all jumbled together like that cathedral in Barcelona which had taken the whole century to build and was not finished yet. Jonty had not noticed that I had gone.

  Probably everyone needs an obsession, or at least a focus. You can’t shamble through life gazing idly on whatever catches your eye. And you don’t really need anyone to share your obsession. At this moment Franco would be telling Polly about Lucasta Mynors’s sonnets or whatever it was she wrote and Polly would not be listening, not really, just as he would not be listening to her explain how frustrated she was that she couldn’t get two of her hospitals to share a path lab. But that had not stopped them getting together again.

  Far above us a huge bird with black-and-white wings was soaring in a lazy orbit.

  ‘Could that be a condor?’

  ‘No,’ he said without even putting up his glasses. ‘It’s a turkey vulture, they’re pretty common everywhere though they go south in the winter. I said, you won’t see a condor today.’

  I wondered if Jane had taken in what Jonty was really like. Perhaps she had and this definiteness was what she particularly liked about him. As the day wore on, he seemed to become less conscious of my presence. He was like someone you were sharing an office with but who didn’t think of it as a relationship.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be getting back?’ I said. ‘I mean, you’ve got to change and so on.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no hurry,’ he said. It might have been me getting married rather than him.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you can say you saw a what was it on your wedding day.’

  ‘A green-tailed towhee. Actually I saw one yesterday too, just above the caravan park.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘He’s dying, isn’t he, Wizz?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s a lot iller than I expected.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind going like that, dying of something dramatic.’

  ‘Would you really?’

  ‘People will always remember how he died. I mean, I know it’s a horrible death but—’