by David Nobbs
Impatience creeping in.
‘I lost a wedding ring at a hotel. My wedding ring. They found it and sent it on to my address. But I’d given the wrong address … in their guest book, because …’
He hesitated. He didn’t know this man, the man didn’t know him, they would never meet, why on earth was he hesitating?
‘… because, to be honest, I was meeting a married woman and I … I know her husband pretty well … and just to be on the safe side I gave a false name and address, and so this ring, which has some fantastic diamonds in it and was a gift from my beloved wife so it is extremely valuable both financially and sentimentally, as you can imagine, has gone off to a man who doesn’t exist, living in a house that doesn’t exist, in a street that doesn’t exist, in Poole, which does exist, which is why I am ringing you.’
‘I see. What was the address, sir?’
‘Does it matter, since it doesn’t exist?’
‘Well, it might be similar to an address that does exist, and the postman might have used his initiative.’
‘I see. Yes. All right. It was addressed to Mr J. Rivers, that’s me, or rather it isn’t, of Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole.’
‘I see, sir.’
Not a flicker of amusement, making the joke address seem even more childish than ever.
‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m just checking in the book, sir.’ A distinct note of rebuke. ‘Yes, sir, there is no Pond Street in Poole.’
‘So what will happen to it?’
‘It will be sent, maybe has already been sent, to Belfast.’
‘Belfast?’
‘We have an office in Belfast, sir, to which all letters and packages with untraceable addresses are sent.’
‘Why Belfast, of all places?’
‘I have no idea, sir. It was not my idea.’
‘No, I realise that. Pretty silly idea, though. It’ll probably get blown up.’
‘I understand that there is no great security crisis in Belfast as of this moment in time, sir.’
‘No, I was only being … I’m just irritated. Maybe the Post Office has an agreement with an airline so that everybody has to fly to Belfast to get their letters back.’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment on that, sir.’
‘Anyway, the bottom line is, to get this ring back, I’ll have to go to Belfast.’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Precisely, sir.’
At 11.30 in the Small Conference Room of the Head Offices of Globpack UK, in a dark place hidden from yet another sunny summer morning by the Hammersmith Flyover, with double glazing so efficient that the perpetual roar of traffic on the flyover was but a distant faint rumble, James Hollinghurst, just five days after the death of his wife, looked surprisingly happy. He looked like a man on top of his game. Lindsay Gibb, Lindsey Wellingborough, Duncan Bailey, Tim Campagnetto, Boris Eckhart and Jean Forrester looked at him with barely hidden amazement. Was he a man of stone, with no feelings? Yes, for an hour and a half. That was why he was so surprisingly happy. Cocooned in the conference room, he was safe from all emotion. And he realised that Dwight Schenkman the Third had handed him not a poisoned chalice but a great opportunity. There was something almost magnificent about James that morning. Duncan Bailey and Tim Campagnetto often went for a quick pint after work, and very occasionally James would join them. This evening he would not, so one cannot know what Duncan said to Tim, but it could well have been something on the lines of ‘Who did he think he was? Winston Churchill?’ Yes, absurd though it might seem in the context of packaging, on the subject of saving two factories on industrial estates, this was James’s ‘We shall fight them on the beaches’ moment.
He explained the facts briskly and pithily. Bridgend and Kilmarnock would go to Taiwan, unless huge savings could be made at Bridgend and Kilmarnock.
‘Anyone fancy a coffee?’ he asked.
Five of the six fancied a coffee.
‘Well, we can’t afford any. HQ is not immune. None of us are immune. We will all be pulling together, to save our manufacturing base. Think coffee, drink water, save.’
Much of the meeting was taken up with the minutiae of organisation. It took quite a while to decide which three of the six would take specific responsibility for Bridgend (Tim Campagnetto, Jean Forrester and Lindsay Gibb, as it happened), and which three would take on Kilmarnock (no need to tell you, unless you’re not following this closely, that it was Boris Eckhart, Lindsey Wellingborough and Duncan Bailey).
James actually spoke … oh, perhaps you should be told, in case it becomes a worry to any of you, that it was actually Lindsey Wellingborough who hadn’t wanted the coffee that none of them had … James actually spoke, without embarrassment, about responsibility. ‘Not a fashionable word, but I have chosen the six of you because I believe you have a sense of responsibility. At the end of the day we may have to decide that there is no alternative to relocating to Taiwan, but it’s our responsibility to explore every possibility of maintaining production in Bridgend and Kilmarnock, and of keeping as many of the workforce there in work as is humanly possible. We must try to remember at all times that every compulsory redundancy could be a family torn apart.’
James’s concentration faltered for the first time. An image had crept uninvited into his head, an image not of sex, but of a river, the Ouse, a body being dragged out, Ed, dead, dripping with water. Strange that he had been talking about the Ouse with Mike. Strange that … he shook his head, tossing the image away. Where was he? He was lost. They were looking at him with sympathy, with understanding. It almost amused him to think how little understanding they could have about what he was thinking.
‘Where was I?’
For a nasty moment he thought that none of them would remember either.
‘Compulsory redundancy,’ said Boris Eckhart.
‘Families torn apart,’ said Jean Forrester.
‘Ah. Yes. I’ve also chosen the six of you because I believe that you will be able to work well with the good people of Bridgend and Kilmarnock. We must take the local people with us on this. If we can’t inspire them to play their part, we can’t save them. I think there’s a chance that in the years to come rising transport costs, rising wages in the Third World and quality issues can begin to create a revival in British manufacturing. Slow and not very glamorous, perhaps, but I hope that we can all get satisfaction from doing our bit in this long battle.’
If they did go to the pub that evening, and if Duncan Bailey did say, ‘Who did he think he was? Winston Churchill?’ let’s hope that Tim Campagnetto replied, ‘It’s easy to mock, but I thought he was rather magnificent.’
After a lot of discussion of dates and meetings and programmes of visits to Bridgend and Kilmarnock and lists of people in those places who would need to be consulted, James explained to them that he was taking a week off, although he would fulfil his engagement to speak at the fiftieth anniversary lunch in the Mauretania Room of the Park View Hotel on Wednesday. He would return to the office tomorrow week, and they would have a further meeting then. He hoped to see them at the lunch, and also at the funeral the following day.
The funeral. The world outside packaging beckoned. After he’d shaken hands with all six of them, and accepted their sympathy, he gathered his papers up slowly, took a long drink of water, and walked out of the cool oasis of the beige conference room into the sweltering desert of his blood-red heart.
He heard the pub before he saw it. The roar of two hundred conversations, the laughter at the latest jokes about Irishmen and Muslims and sex and Cameron and Clegg. It was elbow to elbow on the wide pavement outside the pub. It was a fight to get to the bar in the vast, marbled, mirrored interior. When you got to the bar, it was a fight to get served. When you had been served, it was a fight to get away from the bar. In a corner, unheard, unwatched, two men, both six foot six tall, served tennis balls at each other like bullets. It was London in summertime.<
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Four men who had once punted with girls along the calm, exquisite waters of the Cam, stood on the pavement with their pints, huddled and squashed together in the steaming crowd like four umbrellas in a stand. Roger Dodds, about whom little was known. Derek Hammond, about whom everything was known and in much too great detail. Seb Meikle, whom James hardly knew. And James himself, whose afternoon had been an anticlimax. He had phoned Dwight Schenkman the Third, to report on the progress of the morning’s committee meeting, and had been told, ‘Your devotion to your duties, your acceptance of your responsibilities, your energy and stamina and discipline in the face of a personal trauma that would have destroyed a lesser mortal are awesome, James. You know what you are? You’re the role model that the world of packaging needs.’
God forbid. That had done it. He hadn’t done a stroke of work for the company during the rest of the afternoon. He had found himself unable to concentrate on work. He had given his all at the meeting. He had spent himself.
Slowly, inevitably, Thursday had begun to loom. He’d found himself breaking off from his work to finalise arrangements. He’d rung the caterers to increase his estimate of the numbers who would come back to the house. He’d rung the undertakers to discuss the composition of the procession of cars to the crematorium. He’d finalised the arrangements for the arrival, the evening before, of the piano that Charles would play at the service. He’d rung Fliss to consider the delicate question of who should go in which car. He’d rung his mum to avoid being accused of not having rung her. He’d longed for … what? He hadn’t known what he had longed for. He had only known that he had longed for something.
And tomorrow evening he was seeing Helen. That, too, had begun to loom.
Why was he here? Because Roger Dodds had rung back, after he’d told him of Deborah’s death, and had suggested that they ‘show solidarity. Take you out of yourself.’ The only person, of course, who can take you out of yourself is yourself. James had almost managed to do this in the conference room. On the crowded pavement he had only been taken out of everything that was relevant to himself, but he had not been taken out of himself, so there he was, irrevocably himself, in a place which had no relevance to him and in which he didn’t want to be. Oh, why had he come?
Because they meant well. Because there might come a day when he wanted their friendship. Because he didn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t been there. Well, that was a good enough reason.
Seb Meikle, who was too tall and felt it, bent down slightly to talk of the great cricket matches they had played on Sundays against the villages around Cambridge, and the fine times they’d enjoyed afterwards in the village pubs before catching the last bus and rushing to the nearest Indian restaurant with empty stomachs and bursting bladders.
Derek Hammond, who was too fat and hated it, gave detailed updates on the progress of his three children, the latest developments in his battles against moles, his itinerary for his motoring holiday in Germany, and the saga of his septic tank, which an ignorant surveyor from the big city had spelt ‘sceptic tank’. Every summer he invited them all to a barbecue where excellent wine flowed with immense generosity so listening to all this was a small price to pay.
Roger Dodds, who was neither too tall nor too fat and knew it, smiled and laughed and commented on everything and revealed nothing. He was very amusing on the subject of sceptic tanks, and informed them that he was the proud owner of a very cynical lavatory. The other three shared a look which stated, That’s the only thing we’ll ever find out about where he lives.
The thought led on in James’s mind to Roger’s party, which he had not held in his secret home but, typically, in a private room above a public house. He found that he needed to take this opportunity to find out more about the party. He was hooked on Ed’s death.
‘You had a party last week, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes. Fiftieth.’
None of them had ever known what Roger had done between leaving school and going to Cambridge at the age of twenty. This, they had felt, had been taking the principle of a gap year too far before gap years were fashionable. But Roger was fun and you had to accept him for what he was and accept that you’d never find out what he was.
‘Mike was there, wasn’t he?’
‘Everybody was there, James.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘No. You weren’t. Right. My round.’
Roger struggled to the bar, and Seb went with him to help. While they were gone, while James was still wondering why Roger hadn’t invited him, Derek took the opportunity of imparting a little more information about his life.
‘Did I ever tell you about our honeymoon in Crete?’
‘Yes.’
‘About the farm we stayed at and the horse that got into the loft?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was amazing. We’d booked into this …’
James had to admire Derek’s masterly narrative powers. He made the tale last exactly the length of time that it took Roger and Seb to bring four more beers.
He tried to preserve his dignity and ignore the conversational itch that was assailing him, but in the end he had to scratch.
‘May I ask why I wasn’t invited?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, come on, Roger. Don’t piss about. We’re old friends. Why wasn’t I invited?’
‘Because three times you’ve accepted my invitations and not come.’
‘Ah. Fair enough.’
He had taken the invitations as opportunities to have some time with Helen. How egocentric he’d been. Well, more Helenocentric, really.
Now at last they got round to the extraordinary business of Ed’s murder, which none of them had wanted to be the first to mention for fear of being accused of having an interest in sensation that could not be described as cool.
‘He was there, at the party, was he?’ asked James. ‘Only I went out with Mike on Saturday – well, I do see him occasionally, I feel sorry for him – and he said he’d been at the party and I told him about Ed’s disappearance, which he knew nothing about, and he said it was a very crowded party and he hadn’t run into him.’
‘I hope he didn’t,’ said Roger. ‘I had my doubts about inviting them both, to be honest. But somehow, you know, whatever you thought about Ed, it wasn’t the same if you excluded him, and Mike, like you, sympathy, dreaded word.’
‘I’m not with you. Why should you worry about inviting them both?’
‘Well, when Ed went bankrupt that second time and opened up again in Jane’s name he owed Mike thousands, nearer six figures than five, I’d say, and Mike got about five per cent. It’s what really pushed Mike’s business over the edge. Five years ago, I’d say it was.’
Just when he’d started seeing Helen. Lost touch with what was going on. Taken himself out of the loop.
James had been aware, as they stood on that crowded, noisy pavement, of a growing and inexplicable tension. Now the tension began to be less inexplicable. A disturbing possibility had entered his mind, the possibility that Mike had murdered Ed. It was astonishing and disturbing and at the same time curiously exciting to think that a man you knew well might have killed another man you knew well. He hoped, almost desperately, that none of them would move on to speculate about Ed’s death. He wasn’t ready to confront this possibility.
He needn’t have worried. Derek said, ‘We sat on the same table as a bankruptcy expert on one of our cruises,’ and the conversation moved on to other topics, including the complete itinerary of the cruise on which Derek Hammond had sat at the same table as the bankruptcy expert. James had never felt so grateful for one of Derek’s excruciatingly boring stories.
Roger said he had to leave fairly soon after that, giving no reason. Seb went off to go to the theatre. Derek returned to his memories of the bankruptcy expert, listing every item of food that the unfortunate man had been unable to eat due to the delicate state of his intestines. It wasn’t riveting stuff, but it was better than sit
ting at home on his own, and James was quite sorry when Derek announced that he had to leave in order to catch the 8.44 to Coulsdon.
Tuesday
The first magical hint of rose was creeping over dewy Islington when James woke. The world was silent, sleeping. Only a hissing milk float, harbinger of the rumpus that would soon be London life, disturbed the uncanny calm. It was far too early to get up.
He turned over, to face the empty side of the bed. To think that he’d fantasised about Deborah’s death. How he missed her now.
He couldn’t bear to see the place where she wasn’t. He turned back onto his right side again. But there was no peace to be had there either. His worries crowded in on him, jostling for places in his brain.
Helen, his last, long love. He was seeing her tonight. He was dreading it. Why? Jane, his brief, first love. He was seeing her for lunch. Why? Oh, James, you idiot, why? Mike, his second oldest old friend, with whom he had enjoyed a curry on Saturday. If Mike really hated Ed…
No. He was imagining things. He was in a heightened state of tension. He wasn’t himself. Such things only happened in a parallel world, the world other people lived in. Or on television, in the land of blood and pathologists.
But pictures of Mike presented themselves to him unbidden. Horrid images that he hated. Mike plunging a knife into Ed’s stomach. Mike tipping Ed out of a forklift truck into the muddy water of a Fenland river. Ridiculous. Mike was his drinking buddy. Ed had done a dreadful thing, but, damn it, they had both been to Cambridge. Mike was bitter, twisted, but … a killer? Never.
But somebody had murdered Ed. That much was clear. And Ed had done Mike out of a huge amount of money and in essence ruined his life. And Mike had, not surprisingly, hated Ed, according to Roger Dodds. And they had both been at Roger’s party. And Mike said that he hadn’t seen Ed there, which seemed unlikely.
This was all terribly vague. Derek Hammond had been at Roger’s party. Seb Meikle had been at Roger’s party. Either one of them might have hated Ed. He was being ridiculous.