‘Don’t look so shocked, Nikita,’ Gery said. ‘I am not a complete stranger to the business myself. When powerful men stop buying sex, powerful women will stop selling it. I have never been sure precisely, but I think she met Tom on an assignment too. What is the exact difference between selling your body and marrying for money? Anyway, she had one rule: that her clients must be foreign, not Russian. She hardly wanted some crusty old friend of her dad turning up. One night, someone made a mistake. She was called to a hotel room expecting an Israeli businessman celebrating an arms deal. The concierge had already sent a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon to the room. When the door opened, she saw Gorsky.’
I took a deep breath to say something and stayed like that.
‘What did he do?’ Gery supplied the question. ‘He said absolutely nothing, asked no questions. And she? She did her job. She left his room with ten thousand dollars, in love, and convinced that he would never want to see her again.’
‘You must be joking,’ I finally reacted. ‘You must be bloody joking. I can’t believe a single word you are saying. You are the last person I’d have expected to fall for such sentimental rubbish, Gergana. Men who make that much money are brutal, they don’t fall in love like that. Women who work as escorts and marry people like Tom Summerscale don’t pine in secret for some long-lost Prince Charming.’
‘You know nothing,’ Gery said. ‘Money has nothing to do with anything. You make very little money, you feel very little, you are fine. You are a bolter, Nikola, aren’t you? And you fancy Natalia because it’s a form of running away: like being infatuated with a Hollywood star, pinning her pictures on the wall. But you should do this for Roman Gorsky. He pays your rent.’
I wondered how to engineer an invitation to Natalia Summerscale. I knew something about her husband that Gorsky would no doubt love to hear, but I did not want to be part of any sordid revenge plot. My walk home was at an end and my head was buzzing with this new spin on the world I had inadvertently entered and was – I thought – just beginning to understand. I wondered if Gorsky had planned it all, exactly as it was unfolding, long before I met him, long before he entered Fynch’s that first time.
I stood between The Laurels and the Barracks, one beautifully lit, the other still a builder’s take on Passchendaele, with a dome suspended in mid-air. As I now knew, it was a Taj Mahal for the living, a monument to human folly if there ever was one, but one already emerging in its promised ethereal beauty.
6
Я помню чудное мгновенье:
Передо мно явилась Тьı,
Кaк мимолетное виденье,
Кaк гений чистой красотьı.
A magic moment I remember:
I raised my eyes and you were there,
A fleeting vision, the quintessence
Of all that’s beautiful and rare
—A. S. Pushkin
The following day Christopher Fynch received a call from one of the most fashionable interior designers in London. The man expressed a burning desire to put aside his work on a major restaurant opening in Covent Garden and drop by, to organise, absolutely free of charge, a few ‘makeover touches’ to our shop. Fynch did not believe a word of it: who would? He persisted in thinking it was an elaborate scam, even when the man offered to send over his two assistants to take some photographs that same afternoon. Only when a couple of black-clad, sharp-suited women stepped out of a taxi and started measuring and taking pictures did Fynch begin to panic. He looked at the untidy piles that perched precariously everywhere, at the messy yards of shelving upon which lay books that had never been returned to their proper place once a careless reader took them to another section or dropped them on another pile. There were pleasant little nooks with chairs that should have been reupholstered decades ago, there were many places where shelves were held in place by books rather than the other way round, there were notices for concerts by long-dead musicians, charity auctions for abandoned causes, flyers advertising out-of-print titles.
Fynch did not want anything changed. More to the point, he couldn’t afford to change anything. The women assured him that he wasn’t expected to pay a penny. A benefactor had given their famous boss a blank cheque. His only condition was to be able to hold a private event, a book launch or a vernissage, perhaps, for a small, very select audience. He was ready to pay any reasonable sum Fynch would care to ask for to have the sole use of the bookshop for a couple of hours.
I turned up for my shift while they were explaining the brief. I had a pretty good idea of the identity of the anonymous patron. I was not surprised to hear that Gorsky had been setting things in motion even before I had consented to the plan that Gery had described. No sooner had I mentioned Gorsky than Fynch changed his tune: of course the shop was beautiful and unique and precious exactly as it was, but if someone would – could – rewire and re-plumb, and sort out some new shelving, a few new leather armchairs, and a new desk with perhaps a functioning computer terminal so that we could know what we have in stock and where … and a better security system, cameras perhaps, and, yes, some mirrors … Oh, and a final small thing, but not an unimportant one, a new loo downstairs, just in case the guests at the launch … But how could it all be done – he wrung his hands with anxiety – in such a short time and without major loss of trade?
Even at the highest possible estimate, the amount of trade lost for each of the five days that the bookshop remained closed was such that Gorsky must have found the sum laughable. Fynch laughed too, all the way to Northumberland, where he spent the week with long-lost friends while I volunteered to keep an eye on the business of redecoration. It was impossible to believe that the bookshop would be dismantled completely and then put back together – just as it was, only better, they promised – in five days, but this is precisely what Mr Famous Interior Decorator had guaranteed. This was as much time as he could spare from his commission in Covent Garden without endangering progress there. This was as long as Gorsky could afford to wait: for someone who had waited more than ten years he was now getting rather impatient. I couldn’t follow his logic – what exactly was the problem with the old Fynch’s? The love of his life grew up in Stalingrad, she must have seen places much worse than our temple to genteel shabbiness.
Whatever the problem with the old bookshop might have been, the new one looked the same but a million times better – a Hollywood take on shabby gentility, a bookshop that could have featured George Clooney and Anthony Hopkins as me and Christopher Fynch. Our books were in perfect order on shelves that practically shone with high polish. The precious wood reflected my face from every corner; antique mirrors caught it and multiplied it in mellow amber light. In hidden nooks, deep armchairs smelled of expensive leather. Even our old signs – fiction, biography, travel, poetry – were remade in tarnished gold plate, copying Fynch’s own handwriting. Most unbelievable of all, deep in the bowels of the shop, was the new art history section.
It now housed the entire conceptualist collection that I had gradually amassed to attract the custom of Natalia Summerscale. Where the rest of the bookshop was fitted in mahogany and morocco leather against an eau de Nil wallpaper, here everything was honeyed. The walls between the rosewood shelves were covered with backlit amber panels. An armchair and a sofa facing it were upholstered in golden velvet. On small side tables, three golden bowls held bonsai mimosa trees in full bloom. Their discreet powdery smell brought to mind late February in the Adriatic, the coming of spring, a promise of renewal, not a miserable afternoon in London, in a year in which most days seemed to belong to some never-ending late November. Was this even possible? I asked myself stupidly, again and again.
I was as nervous as a teenage bridegroom when Gery rang to confirm that Natalia was happy to come to tea at Fynch’s to view my new art department. We had to finish by six. She was going to see Daisy in a school play and she wouldn’t miss that for the world.
I may have been nervous
, but I was not half as nervous as Gorsky seemed to be when he appeared, almost an hour ahead of the appointed time, to ensure that everything was as he wanted it and that the shop was closed to all other customers. There had been, by our standards, surprising numbers ever since the word of our flash-redecoration spread to the rich, riparian hinterland of our customer-base, stretching westwards along the lush banks of the Thames from Chelsea to Chiswick and Richmond and Kew. Gorsky paced about half-listening, shooting restless glances here and there. At one point, to draw his attention, I started a sentence with ‘Mr Gorsky’. He turned abruptly yet it was evident that something in him had already melted:
‘Nikolai, please, enough with formality. Roman, please …’
He grabbed my arms with both hands as if to steady himself. We walked up to the sales desk where he personally tested the functioning of our new security system as though he was worried that Natalia might try to assassinate him. I had to show him how to train the camera in the arts section several times.
‘Are you sure that it is recording?’ he asked. I paused and rewound a bit of film which showed the empty set, the dwarf mimosa trees, the glow of amber panels. He seemed pleased with what he saw. He stared into the screen, looking into the emptiness of the room as though he was trying to look into his own future. He was dressed as impeccably as ever in a charcoal suit and a white shirt, with a silk tie in a rich lilac grey. He seemed at once much older and much younger than usual. I raised a hand to remove a white speck of paper from his sleeve and he flinched as though I was about to hit him.
Finally, he went downstairs. I watched him through the eye of the security camera. Every sign of restlessness slowly drained away. He straightened his jacket, took an armchair, crossed his right leg over his left and waited.
She was half an hour late. She took me aback by coming on foot, breathless and apologetic, her coat over her arm, wearing a shirt of golden silk over a pair of green velvet trousers, as though she had had some advance idea of the colour scheme of the space that had been so carefully prepared for her. Under a coiffed chignon, several locks of golden hair were escaping studiedly towards the vertebrae of her long neck. She looked around herself in wonderment.
‘You have had a refit? This is lovely. Absolutely lovely.’
‘And wait till you see the art section,’ I said, suddenly scared as I guided her towards the back of the shop. When we were about to turn into the amber room, I seized her by the elbow, wanting to forewarn her, but I had no idea whether to tell her to run inside or away.
I saw Gorsky stand up from his armchair and take a step towards her. She looked back at me for less than a split second, startled, then gave a little animal squeal. I followed her in, but she turned towards me and dismissed me with a single flick of her hand.
It started raining. For the next half an hour I stared at the security screen under the desk while trying not to look. Whereas before we hardly cared if someone tried to steal a book, we now had the most discreet and sophisticated CCTV system in existence. For all Fynch and I knew, the shop was bugged to the gills too: all for this one meeting. It was difficult to guess the mood of the conversation. If his face was expressionless, hers was even more so. Finally Gorsky stood up and then she did, and they walked towards each other and he held her for several long moments. Then they walked out of the room.
When they reached the till where I was sitting, pretending to enter some data into the swish new computer system, Natalia looked happier than I had ever seen her before. It might be more correct to say that she looked happy for the first time. Gorsky was speaking into his mobile phone.
‘I’d like you at the site as soon as possible, please,’ he was saying, although his please sounded as though it left no room for manoeuvre. ‘I am sure that the trustees will understand that you can’t always present the bid in person. This is more important.’
I could not hear what was important because Natalia was speaking to me.
‘Dearest Nicholas, I am so glad to have come here today. Would you be able to accompany us? Roman tells me it’s by your house anyway. I had no idea you lived so close. Roman wants to show me the exhibition space he is creating. It will take forty-five minutes at most. I have to be at Daisy’s school at six. I need to have your company, please …’
I grabbed my coat and prepared to lock up the shop.
By the time we reached the Barracks, Gorsky’s architect was there and waiting. You couldn’t fail to recognise the woman. There are few architects who regularly appear on the covers of glossy fashion magazines and whose image is as well known as their work. She was like some small bird, tiny and dressed head to toe in black clothes that were themselves architectural rather than tailored. Her hair was black too, and startlingly shiny, but for a single thick white strand tucked behind her left ear. Her lips were covered in brightest red lipstick, and her forced smile made them look like a gash. Her English had an East Coast American twang.
‘Xiulan Xi,’ she introduced herself needlessly and shook Natalia’s hand, then mine.
‘Delighted to meet you,’ Natalia responded without giving her own name.
‘Nikola Kimović,’ I said, feeling more than slightly stupid. I might have said ‘Horton the Elephant’ for all the attention she paid.
‘I am sorry to have taken you away from your work at such short notice,’ Gorsky said to the woman. ‘However, I am sure that the trustees of the V&A can reach their decision on the basis of your drawings, not your presence.’
Only her red lips smiled. She took the three of us straight to the dome. Even at ground level, the vantage point provided amazing views south across the Thames, and north towards The Laurels and the rest of Chelsea. By the time the cantilevered viewing platform, hidden inside the dome, was completed, the owner would have the whole of London – from Crystal Palace to Harrow – on the palm of their hand. Alternatively, if they preferred to stay inside, they would be able to view some of the finest European baroque fresco painting from as close as it was last seen by the painter himself.
If Natalia looked happy when she left Fynch’s she now seemed transported. Her face was half hidden by the hood of her coat, lined with some amber fur. Gorsky looked neither at the architect nor at the astonishing project she was describing, and he certainly did not look at me. He stared at Natalia’s face as though bewitched. If I hadn’t been jealous, I might have found it almost funny. And I was indescribably, immeasurably jealous. Not of the idea, which now seemed certain, that he might soon have this woman for ever, not of the building nor of the money he possessed, but of his capacity to feel.
The stereotypical compensatory story would run along these lines: I may be earning a little more than the minimum wage but at least I have friends and family and real feelings, real love. I wish. I may not have been one of Camus’ sociopathic anti-heroes, but years ago I had somehow cut myself from the kind of feeling I was now witnessing. I had assumed that my entire generation was like that. We refused the war – we refused the world – by disengaging. We got stoned or fucked or drank ourselves to oblivion. This man was breaking the cardinal rule. He was in love.
I lost the thread of Xiulan Xi’s presentation as I followed the three of them through what had been the grand dining room with its newly installed modern loggias made of billowing glass and steel, like silk falling out of gashes in the sleeves of renaissance costumes. It was clearly the work of a genius who respected the old but wasn’t frightened of taking risks with it. I could see why Gorsky selected her when he could have had Gehry, Hadid, Piano or Calatrava. She had a lot in common with all of them but there was also something about her design that made her work – almost – Russian.
The architect was now explaining the many ways in which she had responded to her client’s brief: to create one of the largest and grandest exhibition spaces in London. The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern might be larger, she conceded, but it displays much less and it is nowhere near as impressive as what you would see here – and what you will see
more clearly when the space is finished. All it needs is an art collection to showcase: be it an installation or an old-fashioned sculpture, this space will display art at its best through flattery rather than rivalry.
When she rushed ahead to show us how the loggias could be adjusted to different specifications, Gorsky glanced at me for the first time.
‘Do you possess a large art collection?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘only a couple of small Chagalls. But I am about to start acquiring more. I will soon have a curator to help me.’
At that, Natalia beamed.
When Xiulan Xi finished her guided tour, it was Natalia who invited Gorsky and me to the play.
‘You boys might never get another chance to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe performed by a bunch of English school kids,’ she said.
Gorsky accepted instantly and enthusiastically. Hearing him being called a boy was only marginally less strange than the idea of seeing him in the audience at a pre-prep school. When Natalia suggested that we would be less conspicuous if we took a black cab, he immediately offered his car and driver to Xiulan Xi, and stepped into the street to summon a taxi with a loud whistle.
Something about the way he perched on its seat suggested that he was less familiar with London taxis than even I was. He studied the interior with curiosity and observed in Russian that it reminded him of his student days. This was probably his idea of roughing it for her sake. I sat on a fold-out seat facing them and feeling vaguely ridiculous, like a Victorian chaperone, while he furtively held her hand throughout the short journey. I observed his bodyguards catching up on motorcycles, then following the taxi in a discreet, impromptu cavalcade.
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