Connections

by Hilary Bailey

  “Don’t ask,” said Dominic. “Just don’t ask.” This seemed to explain enough to Patrick.

  Fleur and Dominic sat down. “Contrary to what you might be thinking,” Dominic said, “I don’t deal in what Vanessa had. I never have. A bit of blow, all right, when I needed to – never smack, or anything. Van got that stuff on her own.”

  Fleur wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. A silence fell.

  “I’d better go and ring the hospital,” he said.

  “They won’t know anything yet, probably.”

  “Make me feel better,” he told her. He went to the phone, Jason following. Fleur sat there gloomily, planning to leave as soon as he got back.

  “She’s OK. They’re waiting for the doctor,” Dominic reported when he returned.

  “They know what to do without a doctor,” she said. “Look – I’d better go.”

  But he was speaking, quickly: “She was getting off it. The local doctor’s very good – she was in a programme. She was down to a bit of methadone a day. Then this. Joe and me were out working. She must have got down and lonely and went out and scored somewhere. Probably on the Yarborough. If we’d been around it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

  “She made her own choices,” said Fleur.

  Dominic looked at her disbelievingly. “That’s what people like you say, isn’t it? ‘She made her own choices.’ You don’t know anything about Van, do you? You don’t know what choices she ever had to make. You don’t know a thing. You just come out with your little clichés so you don’t have to worry. It’s all somebody else’s fault.”

  Fleur got annoyed. “Come on, Dominic. No one held Vanessa down and stuck a needle in her arm.”

  “Do you know what?” he said. “You don’t know anything. I hope you never have to find out, the hard way.”

  “You know everything, of course.”

  “A little bit more than you do, that’s for sure.”

  “What the hell,” she said, standing up. “I’m going.”

  “Sit down,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just worried, that’s all. It’d be a help if you stayed,” he admitted.

  Fleur sat down. “Has Vanessa got any family?” she asked.

  “Her mum, Ellen, lives on the Yarborough Estate, but she and Van don’t get on too well – because of something that happened in the past. Vanessa’s mum’s all right but there’s stuff they can’t put behind them. Basically it’s me and Joe. We’ve usually looked out for her – as much as we could.” He groaned. “It’s so frustrating – when everything was going all right. She could have been straight in six months.”

  “She still can.”

  “She’ll lose confidence,” he said. “I’ve seen her do it before. You know – self-esteem. She’s never been loaded with that, Vanessa.”

  Fleur said, “I’m starving. Do you want some fish and chips?”

  They ate from the paper sitting on the grass behind Adelaide House, facing the lighted tower blocks five hundred yards away. The sky above was city dark, the sound of traffic muffled. It was chilly.

  “You’ll have had more glamorous dates,” Dominic remarked. “Do you want the rest of those chips?” She handed them over. “May balls,” he continued dreamily. “The Groucho Club. Tea at the Ritz. Long lunches in expensive Italian places with men in cream suits. Little blobs of spinach on the plate – fifty quid a head. Funny how they lean on spinach in those places.”

  “You seem well up on it.”

  “I used to be homeless around the West End,” he said. “You see a lot.”

  “What? You were living on the street?” she asked.

  “Yeah – me, Joe and Vanessa. Not always in the street of course. Only when things went bad. Still, I’m no stranger to the doorway, church porch and alley.”

  “My God,” Fleur said. She was appalled to think she was sitting here with one of the people she had thought so alien – wasted figures sitting on the pavement with handwritten notices, men and women wrapped up in sleeping bags in doorways, faceless, anonymous as the dead in body bags.

  “It was a life,” he said. “It had its compensations, along with the rest. But basically it’s punishing and it has the habit of killing you in the end. So – what happened to you to get you here enjoying this picnic?”

  She told him the story of the company, the documentaries, the accounts, her absconding partner.

  “So you and the guy were close?” Dominic asked.

  “That’s right. Part of me still doesn’t believe he won’t turn up with an answer, several answers, and make it all right.”

  “It’s possible,” he said, and crumpling up his fish and chip paper he lobbed it across the grass. Fleur got up and went to get it. As she came back he flashed out his foot and tripped her, then moved to catch her as she fell. Suddenly she was on the ground in the hard arms of this sweaty, fish-and-chip-smelling drop-out. And suddenly she felt happier than she had for months – if not longer.

  Dominic pulled her closer and put his soft mouth on hers. Moments later she said, “I can’t do this.”

  “You are,” he said and neatly turned her over so that he was lying on top of her. Five minutes later they were entwined, staggering up the stairs of Adelaide House. In the bedroom Dominic shared with Joe they fell on his narrow, neatly made bed. Then came the sound of his belt, her shoes, his shoes hitting the floor.

  I must get up, I must get out, was Fleur’s waking thought. It was still dark and she was very comfortable and easy curled against Dominic’s body, but she was worried – worried that she might stay, letting herself in for more of this madness. Then what? Fleur Stockley and this homeless hippie?

  Hippie? Petty crook, drug dealer – and yet he was so sweet, she thought; sweeter, calmer, more passionate than Ben, if she had to tell herself the truth. Ben’s attention was always – where? On the future, on the project, on Ben himself. Which, she told herself, was because Ben had a future, had a project, had a brain, had a presence in the world. Not that the result of all that had been so great in the end.

  Nevertheless – get up, Fleur, get up, she told herself. There’s nothing for you here. One minute you were walking along the pavement, clean and tidy and pulling yourself together, the next caught up in a tornado, swept up, whirled round and round and landed in a totally different landscape – surreal, like Oz. She’d never known anything like that before, hadn’t known it could happen.

  Her mind went back to the previous summer, her row with Jess, her later SOS call to her. They’d met for lunch in a quiet restaurant, far from the all-knowing, all-seeing streets around Soho, and Jess had told her what she knew of the Channel Four deal Ben had secretly made. Fleur was no longer in any mood to attack Jess for her betrayal with Ben. She felt weak and confused, as if she’d been in a traffic accident. She told Jess, “I’ve got two orders to appear in court for debt, from a company making film and a haulage firm. I’m looking very hard at the fact that my flat’s security for the company.”

  Jess put her head in her hands, groaned and then looked up, saying, “Get to Gerry Sullivan as soon as possible. Do everything – everything – he tells you to. He’s very good in situations like this.”

  “It’s over, isn’t it?” Fleur said.

  “Unless Ben turns up tomorrow in a red coat with a big white beard and a sack over his back, yes, I’d say it was over,” Jess said. She added, “I must say I’d never have thought Ben would do a thing like this.”

  “Well, you took the opportunity of studying him at close quarters,” Fleur said bitterly. Jess said nothing. “Didn’t you?” Fleur asked. “Go on, Jess – didn’t you? Don’t just sit there as if nothing had happened.”

  “Oh – whatever,” said Jess. “Yes – I did it. I said I did it. But why are you blaming me – just me? What about him?”

  Fleur considered this. There was no answer to it. A thought struck her. “How was it, anyway?” she said. “Where did you go?”

  “My place. Adrian
was away. It was OK.”

  “OK?” said Fleur.

  “Well, Fleur, you know,” Jess said, poking at some ratatouille on her plate. She looked up. “You know, Fleur – there’s sex – and then there’s sex.” She looked down again, then up. “Tastes differ, it’s one of those things – you know.”

  Fleur had uneasily agreed, but behind Jess’s words found something she didn’t care to analyse. It was as if Jess were a renowned gourmet, a person who had eaten at the best restaurants in the world, and Fleur had taken her out for a meal at a perfectly good, nothing-special local restaurant. As if she’d asked her, “How’s the food?” and Jess had replied politely, “Fine. Well – there’s food and food, you know.”

  Fleur had known then that Jess had a point, but she wasn’t precisely sure what it was. Now, lying peacefully beside Dominic Floyd, she thought she did know, but didn’t want to face it.

  Get up. Get out of here, she ordered herself and, reluctantly, eventually complied. You could stay, she told herself as she slid her feet to the floor. More sex in the morning – stagger up – nice walk to the park, feed the ducks – no harm in it. No, she told herself, creeping to the door, hastily gathered clothes under her arm – leave it. One night stand – good friends from now on …

  “You going, darling?” came Dominic’s sleepy voice.

  “Mm,” was all she trusted herself to say.

  “Not good enough for you then?” he mumbled.

  Did he mean him, himself, or his situation and the place? She knew the answers – yes, he was good enough, more than good enough – and no, his life wouldn’t do. She only said, “Own bed – get some sleep. See you soon.”

  He muttered something and went straight back to sleep. She let herself out into the grey day, with light just coming.

  Six

  Dear William,

  I hope you don’t mind me calling you William. Or would you rather I used the whole thing: Sir William Clegg, Chairman and Treasury Representative for the Bank of England Enquiry? I think we were at Downside together, though you must have been four years younger. You’ve done well, William. You always did, from what I heard, and here you are now, investigating me. Or anyway, you’ve issued an invitation for me to give evidence at the Bank’s Enquiry into the affairs of Strauss Jethro Smith.

  I seem to remember a chubby face and a pure soprano voice hitting the chapel rafters while – what was I doing? Thinking about girls, planning an escape route, working out the day’s punishment plan for whoever I was bullying at the time?

  You’ve done well, William – twenty-five years later here you are chairing the committee, while I’m sitting here looking out over the wintry sea from my small hotel on the coast. I’m watching an old man in a trilby walking his dog over the wet sand under a moving black and grey sky. It all seems quintessentially English – out-of-season, sea-surrounded, misty-aired English.

  This communication of mine will put you in a bit of a quandary, I imagine. It will come to you as a private letter, through your own front door. As such, technically, it will be your private property. You’ll be under no legal compulsion to disclose what I’m telling you, though you might think there’s a moral one. Not that I’m one to preach morality to my betters. William Clegg – the choice is yours.

  Background first – you need to know who it is you’re dealing with, who’s taking you down roads that you’ll wish, before it’s over, you’d never started walking on.

  Who am I? My name, your Honour, is Sam Hope, and I come from a respectable home; not poor, but honest servants of State and Empire over many generations. I’m ex-army and took a hike in the early eighties, after the Falklands war. I joined up with John Vansittart, who was ex-army himself and had a small private security company. I recruited my own small corps from the British Army, SAS and elsewhere. We’d stand on the airstrip, me and the lads, ready for Africa, the Balkans or wherever, and when I looked at them the words of the Duke of Wellington reviewing his own troops before Waterloo would ring in my ears – “I don’t know what they’ll do to the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.”

  By the later eighties Hope Vansittart Private Security was on covert missions, not abroad but over here, helping to persuade the doughty colliers of the Midlands to set up their own union in opposition to Scar gill’s NUM and up north helping the other pitmen to give up their obstinate ways. Previously we’d been guarding oil sheikhs and film stars, and dictators with good reason to fear their own dissident groups. Then there we were in GB, making life a misery for the miners.

  This was how Hope Vansittart Private Security – HVPS – came into what you might describe as politics. Funny, really: it was the Falklands that got me out of the army and the miners’ strike which put me on the path to the best part of my fortune. Ultimately, you might say, the Lady made me.

  Since then, William, I’ve been a non-attributable resource, buried deep in your firm’s books. Thus the private schools for my children, the big house in Twickenham with the Thames running sweetly at the end of my garden, the blonde-streaked wife with the discontented expression called, as you might guess, Fiona. I met her at Vansittart’s third wedding. After that one, unable to face any more alimony, he fled. He now lives elsewhere, drawing his dividends via the Turks and Caicos Islands. Even if you could find him he couldn’t give you any help. He’s been out of the business for ten years.

  Anyway there was I, five years ago when this affair started, MD of HVPS, charming wife, two adorable blonde kiddies, nice house and, as far as family and neighbours were concerned, the model of respectability.

  I had a small factory near Preston which made the security equipment. It was a cover to disguise the other parts of my work, of course, and handy for filtering through unusual sums of money. It’s a major problem of our times, isn’t it, William? Not how to get hold of the money, but how to explain it afterwards.

  Where did it come from, this income of about forty times what your average bus driver will get every year for his nine, ten, eleven, twelve-hour day? Guarding people and property accounted for about a third. The remainder came from my little set-up’s work as an NGO – non-governmental organisation, working alongside governments or for them and receiving payment from them. Think of Oxfam or Save the Children. Then think of me, the evil, the unsanctified, the unadmitted NGO.

  Think of a place where the native people want to go on leading their simple lives, fishing in the river, hunting and eating the local wildlife, drawing water, cutting wood for the fires, planting crops. Simple, Arcadian, backed by the good NGOs. Then think of a government who wants to mine minerals, uranium, oil and so on, at the same time keeping in with the multinational who will most likely be involved, build some airports, buy some planes and some weapons and put something prudently aside in private accounts in Switzerland. This is where the lads and I come in – hired to make sure life’s not worthwhile for the simple indigenes standing in the way of international trade and the personal enrichment of interested parties. I turn up with my boys to go through a few villages at night killing and setting houses on fire, or assassinate the local leaders, or poison the water supply so that people have to roll up their blankets and move on. We do what the job demands.

  Or take a little island not far from a bigger one. This island is split into two bits, one small bit owing allegiance to the big island, the other autonomous. Only a lot of people in the small bit want to link up with the autonomous side. And what a mess the place has become. Awash with drugs, arms and money, crammed with

  spies, patriots, traitors, infiltrators, collaborators, double – triple – agents. Who do you call on to do some of the dirty work? Good old Sam, rogue-element, never-heard-of-him-before-in-my-life Hope, that’s who. I tell you, in the end I didn’t know whether I was working for MI5, MI6, the IRA, the Unionists or Che Guevara.

  Well, I’d always known it had to end, one way or another. That was why I left bundles of cash in different places. But I must say, although I knew something, sometime, w
ould give, I’m a bit surprised by what it turned out to be. I suppose you always are. To think that stupid little job years ago, done just to oblige and involving three hopeless down-and-outs, could lead to all this – your Enquiry, me having to disappear and all the other consequences. It’s a funny old world, and no mistake.

  So – now to our muttons, as the slaughterman said…

  Seven

  Fleur woke up next morning and suddenly remembered she was supposed to let in the man who was going to inspect the wine bar’s oven.

  There was no noise from the flat next door and as she hastily showered and combed her hair Fleur told herself the night with Dominic had been brought on by the shock of Vanessa’s near-death experience. Death and sex were closely linked in the human mind, she told herself, as were fear and sex, food and sex, chocolate and sex. It seemed the only things not connected with sex were Radio Four, matching sets of saucepans, income tax and National Insurance. So that was what it was, she told herself: Dominic’s desire for comfort because of Vanessa’s being in hospital, and both their horror at someone young being so close to death. That was it, Fleur said to herself. Definitely. She ran across the road to the wine bar.

  It was a bad day. A smell of old food, stale drink and tobacco hit her the moment she opened the door. The floor was tacky underfoot, the bar was littered with bottles and unwashed glasses and there was a heap of dirty dishes in the kitchen, too. Even Al hadn’t loaded the dishwasher the previous night, as he normally did.

  She started clearing up and half an hour later the engineer arrived and declared the gas stove out of action. He put a long warning sticker across it, declaring it unfit for use.

  She called Geoff to tell him but he didn’t answer so she left a message on his machine. She phoned Mr Housman and left another message, then found Al’s number under the bar and called that, too. The extremely posh and very brisk man who answered the phone told her he was Al’s brother and that Al was already on his way to the wine bar.