Blenheim Orchard

by Tim Pears

  ‘Good God,’ said Simon.

  ‘At the earliest.’

  Presently a message was broadcast on the train. ‘This is your buffet car attendant speaking. We have unfortunately run out of change. Will anyone please come to the buffet car, at the front end of the train, with the correct change.’

  ‘Does he mean,’ Simon asked, ‘that those intending to come to the buffet car should only come if they have loose change?’

  ‘How do we know if it’s the correct amount?’ Hector asked.

  ‘Or is he imploring anyone on the train with change to bring it to him?’ asked Ezra. ‘Perhaps buy something they don’t necessarily want. I’m not hungry or thirsty, are you?’ Ezra leaned into the aisle so that he could scrabble in his jeans pocket.

  ‘I could do with a drink,’ Simon suggested, hauling himself to his feet. ‘One of those mini wine bottles. How about you, boys? Coke or something?’

  Staying to guard the computer treasure, Ezra watched the others stagger along the rolling aisle. He wondered whether they’d get caught in a stampede of helpful passengers, rushing to assist the buffet car attendant, with his lack of change and his outrageously priced goods – about which Simon would surely come back complaining. Every item was twice the price it was in the shops. Ezra was too mean and too organised, usually, to buy food or drink aboard a train – even now that he could easily afford to, he would still rather prepare sandwiches and a flask for a long journey. The caterers needed more than half as many customers as would have bought if items had been sold at half the price. Accountants must have carried out cost analysis and consumer surveys, made calculations, and reckoned exorbitant prices promised optimum profit.

  It mystified Ezra, this sort of financial process, if he were honest. An understanding of the basic mechanisms at work eluded him, despite the fact that he had this week taken part in meetings to brainstorm the Middle East water-bottle project. In addition to himself and Carl Buchannan, and the accountant Alan Blozenfeld, Thomas Kohler had joined them from Germany. ‘My can-do man,’ Klaus Kuuzik called him. A freelance advertising executive, Sarah Carney, had been hired on a two-year contract. And Professor Hisham Abu Ghassan, at St Antony’s, was being employed as a consultant. Klaus Kuuzik had assembled his primary team.

  ‘Suppose, for the sake of simplicity,’ Klaus had addressed them at their first gathering in the boardroom at 10 a.m. that Tuesday morning. ‘Suppose we say it costs us ten pence to produce a bottle of water. In the UK and elsewhere in Europe our customers pay one pound a bottle. In the Middle East the average child might be able to afford one pence. Now, suppose we assume for the moment that we can subsidise this sale – of course with the plant built in Turkey our unit costs will be lower than here – what is the best way to penetrate the market, without Isis Water being seen as nothing more than the cheapest rubbish on offer?’

  All day they discussed a campaign. It was agreed they needed to make the product hip, desirable, emblematic. The best way to do that, Ezra said, was when cultural icons were seen to drink it. Who were they? Singers, of course. Athletes. Footballers.

  The leaders of Hamas, said Professor Abu Ghassan. The martyrs of the Al-Aksa Brigade. The exiles of Hezbollah.

  Arafat? Sarah Carney asked.

  Bin Laden, Abu Ghassan said, frowning.

  If such figures could be photographed with bottles of Isis Water, the product would be identified with the liberation struggle. They discussed the difficulties of providing free water to chosen groups; the hazards of faking such photographs, digitally planting bottles into preexisting images and using these in a brazen poster campaign. Would Palestinians, Klaus wondered, possess sufficient irony to see through the superficial deceit?

  ‘Of course,’ said Abu Ghassan. ‘Irony was invented by Arabs.’

  They went on to speculate as to whether or not bottles should be sold not in the whole of Israel but only in the West Bank and Gaza, then the refugee camps of Lebanon, before spreading out to Jordan, Syria, Egypt and beyond.

  The value of a massive teaser campaign was agreed upon, making the brand as visible as possible before a single bottle appeared for sale, except for ‘pirated’ supplies manifesting in critical locations.

  ‘If my demeanour is becoming gloomy,’ Alan Blozenfeld said, ‘it’s because the more successful this venture is, the worse off we’ll be. If we lose five pence per unit, the more units we sell the more money we lose.’

  ‘Surely you are joking, Alan,’ said Thomas Kohler. ‘We shall be increasing returns to scale. The more we give away, the more dominant our position in the larger network, and the more we stand to make from the pennies we take from each transaction.’

  They agreed to virtually give away the product as a loss-leader. It was a standard branding technique: Isis Water bottles would establish and uphold the image of the DeutscheWasser brand – whose other, more profitable lines, in municipal supply and in the vast market that technology promised in the haulage of water from region to region, would benefit from the association.

  Buy Isis Water: support justice in the Middle East. Support justice in the Middle East: buy Isis Water. They were going to use the means of capitalism to achieve its opposite, they were not making profit but spending profit from here over there. Thomas Kohler was a fixer. Of course he wasn’t in on the real reasons behind the project. Maybe none of the others were, either. Only Carl Buchannan and himself. If Ezra found himself musing on the future provision of water and waste-water contracts in the region, and whether they weren’t the smokescreen disguising a philanthropic vision but might really be the reason for the project, then he dismissed such speculation as the product of a mind raddled with exactly the kind of cynicism that Klaus and Carl and Ezra himself were attempting to overcome.

  Simon drank two glasses of wine for each of Ezra’s small bottles of beer. Ezra observed a gradual loose swelling beneath Simon’s skin, the wine seeping into the red flesh.

  The boys played some game together on Jack’s hand-held console, smirking and squeaking and nudging each other like two companionable robots.

  ‘Jack’s bloody glad you’ve put off this Brazil thing,’ Simon said. ‘As we all are, naturally.’

  The last time the Carlyles came over for supper, two weeks earlier, Ezra had asked Blaise if she wanted to join them.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I mean, say if Ed came, too.’

  ‘Ed? You don’t have any idea how boring he is, Daddy.’

  ‘You used to get on so well.’

  ‘He’s a musician,’ she said. ‘He’s obsessive. Worse than ever.’

  ‘Simon,’ Ezra asked now. ‘Tell me. Do you worry about Ed’s future ever?’

  ‘Ed? Not really. We’re kind of assuming already he’ll be an organ scholar somewhere. King’s, maybe. Oxford, even. It’s what he seems to want, consistently. Until he finds some damn fool to support him so he can compose, that is.’ This last thought seemed to amuse Simon, and his swollen face chuckled to itself as if he’d made a rather witty remark.

  The guard strode, his back straight, along the carriage. Ezra wondered whether the man walked with a sailor’s roll on dry land. He gazed out of the window, at the cooling towers of Didcot power station and the bland brick commuter estates of the satellite town, which seemed to have spawned more of themselves since he and his group had passed by this morning. He wondered how long it would be, how many more generations of his progeny, before they covered the surface of England.

  When you’re a mother walking into Summertown with a three-year-old child, Sheena admitted, you didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know when to let your hand fall loose at your side, so that little fingers would reach and find it there, and grasp your fingers tight. At the Co-op Louie took the pound coin she gave him and liberated one of the daisy chain of shopping trolleys. She lifted him inside: he’d never liked those folding shelves in the front of big trolleys that provide a baby seat. Louie preferred to sit inside the trolley itself, to have Sheena pass goods to hi
m and let him stack them up around his body.

  By the time they reached the checkout the trolley was so full the boy looked part of the bounty, a cut-price orphan for sale, but it was now that he came into his own. With great self-importance Louie lifted each item from trolley to counter’s black rolling belt.

  ‘Training him young, aren’t you?’ remarked the woman behind Sheena.

  ‘There’s a job going here bagging up, love,’ said the checkout assistant. Sheena nodded modestly. She took no credit: Louie’s behaviour tickled her as much as it did them and she watched too as the tiny boy heaved tins of beans and tomatoes, and bags of vegetables, on to the counter.

  At much the same moment during that hot afternoon, Blaise was lying on her front on a rug on the lawn. She had on her gold bikini thong. She thought she’d dozed off, and was dreaming the tired wasp droning around her. Whenever it stopped buzzing, she knew that meant the wasp was on or inside the can of Red Bull that stood within reach of her right arm. By now it was too warm to drink anyway. Blaise realised she probably wasn’t asleep when she heard, through the open windows of the house, the front doorbell ring. Unless, of course, the sound of it had woken her. Still, she had no desire to move. Her cheeks felt slack and itchy on the woollen tartan, and her limbs felt heavy on the earth, as if the earth had got so hot it was slowly rising through the universe, and lifting her with it.

  The doorbell rang again. Go away, Blaise murmured, opening her eyes. Sheena and Louie were shopping; Ezra and Hector on a train. Akhmed was at a family gathering. Whoever it was, she was sure it wouldn’t be for her. She was staring at a group of flowers with bright-orange petals. White butterflies hovered around them. She wondered whether one of the students in the house next door, whose shadow she’d seen at the window, was still watching her. Blaise closed her eyes and with a droopy effort heaved herself up, clutching a small towel to her bare chest, and stumbled inside.

  As Blaise pulled on the T-shirt she’d left on the kitchen table, the bell rang a third time. ‘Can’t you see I’m coming?’ she snapped, marching through to the hall. She opened the door. A man she didn’t recognise was jogging on the spot. He wore a pair of shorts and nothing else, apart from socks and trainers.

  ‘Good afternoon. I am so,’ he said. He was breathing heavily. ‘Sorry to disturb you. Is your father in, by any chance?’

  Blaise shook her head. The man was younger than Daddy, she thought, maybe. A little. He was lean and muscular. She wondered how long he’d been running, to be so out of breath.

  ‘You are expecting?’ the man asked, gulping air. ‘Him back soon?’

  Blaise looked at her watch. Surely he and Hec should have been home by now? ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ the man said. ‘I thought I would drop in to ask Ezra something. While I was running.’

  Blaise nodded. The fact that he had said her father’s name relieved an unease she’d not been fully aware of feeling.

  ‘I have run all the way from,’ the man said. ‘Cumnor. Over.’ He turned and gestured towards the distance behind him. ‘Wytham Woods. Across the Meadow. And I must run back.’

  It struck Blaise as the man said the last word, pronouncing it beck, that it sounded like a clue, which her brain had fortuitously detected.

  ‘But I would appreciate a refill of my water bottle, if you don’t mind,’ he said.

  Blaise took the bottle from the man. She didn’t know whether she should leave him there. She didn’t want to. ‘Come in,’ she said, and led the way to the kitchen. The man followed. Blaise realised that she only had a bikini bottom on beneath her T-shirt, and she imagined the man was watching her legs. The thought pleased her. In the kitchen she fetched the filter-water jug from the fridge, and filled the man’s water bottle over the sink.

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ the man said, ‘I would like also a glass of water.’

  He stood close beside her. Blaise reached for a large glass that stood upside down at the far end of the draining rack. She had the odd feeling that the man stretched with her, so as to remain in close proximity, then returned as she did to their previous position. The sun poured through the windowpanes; the kitchen was hot as a greenhouse. She filled the glass, and handed it to him. He lifted it to his lips, and began to drink, greedily. His tanned body was covered in sweat, and she could see tiny beads of perspiration emerging on his skin: he was still sweating. The smell was strong and remarkably sweet. He finished half the glass and paused, even more breathless than before, and stood there beside her, gulping air. He had short brown hair cropped close to his head, and there were droplets of sweat sitting on top of it. Blaise curled her tongue inside her mouth. She wanted to reach up and run her hand, run both hands, over and through his hair. He raised the glass again and drank. She watched his throat pulsate, his Adam’s apple rise and fall. She imagined the water falling through his almost hairless chest, his hard stomach. As if in sympathy with him, Blaise realised that she too was breathless. She wondered if his sweat would taste as sweet as it smelled; she could sense her tongue’s desire for it.

  The man drained the glass, lowered it to the draining board. He took a deep breath, let out a long, slow exhalation. Blaise became aware all of a sudden of how much heat was emanating from him. That was why it was so hot in here. She wanted to edge closer to him; to be drawn inside his body heat. He didn’t move. She looked up at his face, to find him looking at her, with deep blue eyes that wondered, Is that really what you’re thinking?

  Blaise met his gaze long enough to feel a flush of shame that was warm and pleasant. She lowered her gaze.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ the man said. ‘I had better be on my way now.’ He strolled back through the house. Now Blaise followed him. She didn’t want him to go. But if he was going, then what she wanted, she thought, was to keep following close behind him.

  ‘I have a good run in front of me,’ he said. He turned on the threshold, and Blaise met his gaze as he said, ‘You are so kind.’ He smiled, turned and jogged away. His bare back rippled. His feet were slightly pigeon-toed. He rose easily off the soft tarmac.

  ‘You never left a message,’ Blaise murmured, after his departing figure.

  16

  Party

  Saturday 16 August

  ‘What are these?’ Simon asked, of the yellow pills Ezra had passed back from the driver’s seat. ‘Ecstasy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Alarm in the syllable Simon uttered made Ezra waver. ‘But almost,’ he said. ‘Kind of. A chemical variant for sure. But smooth.’

  ‘Smooth?’

  ‘And mild. Much milder.’

  ‘You hear these stories.’

  ‘I know,’ Sheena, sitting beside Simon in the back, agreed. ‘That’s why I’m not taking any.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Minty, over her shoulder. ‘I thought it was because you’re going to be driving back.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ Sheena admitted. ‘And yes, I did say I might take a small amount of something later. If I feel like it.’

  The chances of which, Ezra reckoned, were about one in ten thousand. They were driving through the dark, across country. It was eleven o’clock at night and there was still, to their left, a long horizontal vestige of daylight along the far horizon.

  ‘It really doesn’t make sense, does it?’ Sheena, leaning forward, demanded of Minty, who had taken over in the passenger seat ten minutes earlier, Ezra pulling over to allow the two women to swap places.

  ‘When the tree and the barn and the big bird meet,’ Minty read by the light from the glove compartment. ‘There turn left. Of course, it might make sense in daylight.’

  ‘But everyone’s going to be driving at night,’ Ezra protested.

  ‘Could the organisers be, perhaps, a little dumb?’ Minty conjectured.

  Roger Slocock had forwarded Ezra an email attachment whose printout was confusing them on this, the night of Minty’s fortieth birthday. The directions were more like c
lues in a treasure hunt.

  ‘We have to think laterally,’ Ezra advised.

  ‘What’s actually in this?’ Simon wondered, in the back.

  ‘Let’s hope the clue’s in this town,’ said Sheena.

  ‘It doesn’t say anything about a town,’ said Minty.

  ‘We also have to be patient,’ Ezra added. ‘Distances appear further at night. Periods of time seem longer.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Minty. ‘Slow down. What’s that?’

  In the middle of the main street of the small town, in among the shops on the ground floors of old brick houses, was one with the iron profile of a predatory bird jutting out like a ship’s figurehead over the doorway.

  ‘Falcon Insurance Services,’ Minty read out. ‘And look across the street: The Antiques Barn.’

  ‘Why don’t the directions just say, The Antiques Barn?’ Sheena objected.

  ‘There’s a tree,’ Ezra confirmed.

  ‘Take a left,’ Minty ordered. ‘Just here.’

  ‘What’s it going to do to me?’ Simon asked.

  ‘In the valley of death, look for the sign of salvation. There turn right,’ Minty read.

  ‘A cemetery?’ Ezra proposed.

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking, sport,’ said Minty. ‘You know, this is rather fun.’

  ‘I guess the idea is,’ said Ezra, ‘that if you make it difficult to find, then only those who really want it will be there.’

  ‘I really want it,’ said Minty. ‘I hope you do, too.’

  ‘Oh, he does, don’t worry,’ Sheena said.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ Ezra concurred with a sigh. ‘Losing it on the dance floor.’

  Midnight found them three clues further on and driving in an undeniable circle in the deserted middle of nowhere, a three-mile loop, whose growing familiarity mocked them, until they found themselves behind a convoy of five or six other cars being driven with the hesitant irritation of people as lost as they were. But then, as if they were drops of water joining together and with surface tension flowing, the lead car took an abrupt right into the circle, through a gap in a fence beside chained metal gates, and the other cars followed, the stream of them spiralling down a lane into an old industrial estate. Within a minute they’d reached a wide quad of rusting, sagging, empty, single-storey warehouses around a car park already half-filled with cars. And one ancient four-storey concrete building, from whose many windows light of varied and altering hue pulsated.