by Tim Pears
The light that Ezra had kept sensing through the night was there all the time now: it made what he saw shine with more light than there was. A party, Ezra decided, is illumination. That’s what it is. Of what? Of nothing. Nothing else. A light that illuminates itself.
The lighting in the room, meanwhile, was dimmed, and then turned off. It was entirely dark, except for bulbs at the DJS’ consoles, and the music darkened, sinister and compulsive, lifting the partygoers out of time’s reach and into some other dimension.
Outside, though, the day was breaking. Dawn lightened the dance floor with an uncanny, gradual tact. What had been an occult, nocturnal conglomeration of individual experience altered with the lambent light into a communal responsibility to lift this party to the highest level it could reach and carry it to a conclusion. From being lost in the discovery of her body’s response to music, Minty found herself gradually joining the crowd around her; a newcomer coming in.
DJs built a great ladder of music, and the dancers climbed on to a shimmering, silent plateau. Ezra and Minty were lost in an exhausted cacophony of whistles, shrieks, handclaps and howls. They embraced each other in the middle of the crowd.
‘I’m so happy, Ezra,’ Minty told him. ‘I never imagined I could have this.’
‘It’s phenomenal, isn’t it?’ he replied.
‘I love you so much, darling,’ she said.
They cadged a lift off a couple who drove south-west and dropped them outside Southam, at a petrol station that was open. A young Asian man stood behind the counter.
‘Can we get a taxi round here?’ Ezra asked him, while Minty coaxed coffees from the cheap machine, and chose chocolate bars.
‘At this time on a Sunday morning?’ the man replied.
‘Well, do you know anyone who’d like to earn fifty quid by driving us to Oxford?’
The young man stared at Ezra.
‘Maybe a friend, or there’s someone you know?’
‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Plus the cost of the petrol, yeh? I’ll call my uncle to take over here.’
‘I feel like someone’s washed my brain,’ Minty said in the back of the Honda ferrying them home. ‘Debugged it. Got rid of cookies and worms.’ She closed her eyes. ‘My hard drive’s clean.’
Ezra murmured agreement. ‘Scooped out,’ he said. He sat back comfortably, glad of the leg room. Their driver had put on Pakistani pop music as they drove through the countryside towards Banbury. Minty leaned against Ezra. He had his arm around her, she rested a hand against his chest.
After a while, Minty asked, ‘What are you thinking about, darling?’
‘Blaise,’ Ezra answered without hesitation. A single word, one harmless syllable. It burrowed into Minty’s mind. All these years he’d thought of Sheena. Now he was thinking of her clone daughter. Even if Minty were to abide, what next? Would Blaise conceive with her callow boyfriend, give birth to a troublesome daughter just to land her poor father with another angry woman to kowtow to; to steer his destiny around?
‘I was thinking,’ Ezra said, ‘about the loss of ideals. It just struck me, maybe Blaise is my conscience.’
‘You? Are you crazy? Sheena’s the one she’s –’
‘I’m glad if she is.’
‘Oh, Ezra,’ Minty said, leaning closer against him. ‘You fool.’
‘What were you thinking about?’ he asked.
‘You. Me. Us. The others.’
‘Sure,’ Ezra said. ‘There’s that.’
They cruised towards home, past the green hedgerows and the yellow fields. To Ezra’s relief the driver was content to drive at a relaxed pace.
‘There’s all that,’ Ezra agreed. ‘But you know? This question of culpability? I mean, children look at the world and they demand of their parents, “What did you do?” We say, “Well, we did this and we did that. We marched now and then. We gave what we could. We’ve given you what we thought you needed.” But is it enough? Suppose it never can be?’
The car glided past Upper Heyford, Steeple Aston, where the road widened and opened up. Ezra sat back and gazed at green fields under the blue sky. The truth of what had happened began to seep into his consciousness. He’d had sex with his and Sheena’s friend Minty. What on earth was he going to do? He must be out of his mind. Minty clung to him. He closed his eyes. The car’s wheels spun and glided across the surface of the earth, and with a little luck they wouldn’t be home yet for at least another fifteen, even twenty minutes.
17
Urban Rain
Tuesday 19 August
Tuesday of that week had been designated Bring Your Daughter to Work Day at Isis Water. Employees struggled to overcome their children’s reluctance and their own embarrassment at this transatlantic innovation; they found it hard to square with their aloofly charismatic German boss, until they saw three athletic-looking girls striding beside him under a thick grey sky towards the company building, each one as tall as their father. The youthful Amazons, dressed in short summer skirts and tops in muted greys and blues, ambled, loose-limbed, across the sandstone plaza, and everything became clear. Any man would want to show them off.
Up close, as seventeen-year-old Erika, fifteen-year-old Petra and fourteen-year-old Marianne introduced themselves in faultless Canadian-accented English to other daughters dragged in for the morning, as they ferried documents, took messages, stood in the photocopying queue, it was evident that the girls were scentless, spotlessly pretty consumers of healthy food, plunderers of exercise and guiltless denizens of sleep.
Ezra Pepin had prevaricated over inviting his daughter to participate. He didn’t imagine that Blaise would want to come to his office. In the end he’d only raised it the evening before, asking Blaise in an offhand way whether if she didn’t have anything better to do she’d like to come into work with him the next morning.
‘You want me to get a holiday job?’ Blaise frowned.
‘Maybe,’ Ezra said. ‘But that’s not what this is about, honey.’
He started explaining it – with the rest of the family, seated around the supper table, listening in – and then he admitted that actually he had no idea what it was about himself, at which they all laughed, and Blaise said, ‘Sure, Daddy. Could be fun.’
And now here she was, running errands for Chrissie Barwell, whom Ezra had co-opted to help him co-ordinate the setting up of a huge bottling plant with the Izmit office. Shortly before 11 a.m. Petra Kuuzik buzzed each of the members of her father’s Special Operations Team, and invited them, plus any daughters in attendance, to coffee and cake in the CEO’s office.
Erika and Marianne brandished trays of French patisseries. Mousse cassis. Lunette framboise. ‘We just collected them from Maison Blanc,’ they explained. Marianne bent down to Carl Buchannan’s four-year-old twins: they concentrated on the éclairs au chocolat and the tartes chocolat morello before them as if the choice they had now to make were the most important of their lives.
‘There’s no need to feel guilty,’ Klaus Kuuzik addressed the group. ‘There are cakes like these being handed out right the way through the company.’ In an aside to the nearest person to him, Thomas Kohler, he stage whispered, ‘Not as good as these ones, of course.’
Klaus introduced his tall daughters to Ezra, Ezra introduced his daughter to his boss. Blaise was wearing a faded, flowery summer dress of Sheena’s that fitted her perfectly. He noticed that she was blushing slightly. It made her look even prettier.
So her guess had been correct, Blaise thought: the runner she’d given water to, this man, was indeed her dad’s boss. She’d been sure he wasn’t one of her father’s colleagues, or a junior member of what he called his team: the man had power, a natural authority. Blaise had sensed that about him, and she was right. It looked like Mr Kuuzik wasn’t going to refer to their previous meeting. She wasn’t sure why not, really, but she was relieved that he didn’t. No, she was more than relieved. It made her feel they shared a secret. She wondered whether it was the same one.
‘You must be very proud of your father,’ Klaus said.
‘Um, yes,’ Blaise managed dutifully, staring at the carpet. Almost heroically, Ezra thought, considering the novelty of the concept. She frowned, and glanced up briefly. ‘Why?’ she asked.
Klaus looked at Ezra, smiling, and back to Blaise. ‘Has he not told you of our project, and his part in it?’
Blaise turned to her father, with a quizzical look that turned into one of suspicion, to defend herself against whatever riddle Kuuzik was offering.
‘He is clearly too modest, even in his own home,’ Klaus said, laughing and shaking his head. ‘Come with me, my dear,’ he said, ‘let me show you.’ He took Blaise’s bare arm and ushered her towards a screen on the wall on the other side of the room. Ezra stayed where he was, but the Kuuzik girls followed in a little herd: they put Ezra in mind of some presidential female bodyguard, wary of this other girl inveigling herself into their leader’s confidence. Young chaperones. Ezra was as impressed as everyone else by the German girls. In comparison with his own daughter’s pulchritude, however, he thought their gymnastic build made them appear maladroit in the confines of normal life, blown beyond the optimum scale, so that as they shuffled across the room after Klaus and Blaise he found he felt almost sorry for them.
Standing before the vast screen, Klaus called up a Peters projection map of the world, rotated so that Israel was at its centre: he was obviously outlining the project to Blaise, bending towards her and then back towards the map, pointing now at England, now across to the Red Sea. Presumably he was giving her, Ezra regretted, the line about increased trade making the world a better place, and not the truth about using company profit to do good. Ezra feared that Blaise’s motionless posture, her forbidding hunch, meant that she resented Kuuzik’s presumption, his pedagogical zeal. But then she laid a hand on his arm, and then she herself pointed up towards Turkey, and Klaus nodded and spoke. Then Blaise opened wide her arms, and shook her head worriedly, and Klaus laughed and said something more.
At the end of elevenses, as they were all leaving, Ezra felt Klaus tug his sleeve and heard him whisper, ‘We take lunch today, you and me, yes? At Al-Salam. It’s time we discussed your salary.’
And so an hour later the two men watched from the third floor mezzanine their own girls and several others walk away across the great vestibule below them.
‘Your daughter, she is a beautiful girl,’ Klaus said.
‘You think so?’ Ezra said. ‘It’s nice of you to say so, Klaus. Yours, too, I must say. All of them.’
The two men soon followed the girls from the building, and crossed the grey square to Park End Street. There was no blue in any part of the sky.
‘They say an Atlantic depression is encroaching,’ Klaus said. ‘Still, if anybody needs rain, we do. If God doesn’t give us water, we have nothing to sell.’
They ordered food. A green Perrier bottle of sparkling mineral water was delivered to their table.
‘Isn’t it odd?’ Kuuzik said as he poured, bubbles effervescing in the tall glasses. ‘They import this stuff across the Channel, when we’re practically over the road.’
‘It’s curious,’ Ezra agreed.
‘Everything will change with your new bottles. We shall be very unpopular with the rest of the industry.’ Klaus laughed, raised his glass and saluted Ezra. ‘We should be prepared for this. Bottoms up.’
‘Chin-chin.’
‘Ezra,’ Klaus said. ‘First we discuss money. Blozenfeld told me what your salary is. It is an insult. Don’t you agree?’
Ezra paused. He wasn’t sure how to answer this question. ‘Can I ask you something, Klaus? Why aren’t we discussing this in the office?’
‘I don’t concern myself with salaries,’ Kuuzik replied. ‘For the rest of the workforce I gladly leave it to Alan and Personnel. But for our special project, I thought I should handle the issue. Let it be clear, between each one of you and me.’
The two men nibbled on the raw vegetables that were offered as appetisers: red pepper, green chillies, olives, tomato, cucumber.
Ezra gave a tense shrug. ‘Let’s negotiate,’ he said.
‘I propose to increase your salary times four,’ Kuuzik said.’
The bubbles in the fizzy water ballooned in Ezra’s mouth. ‘I accept,’ he said.
Klaus stared at him. ‘Where did you learn to negotiate?’ he asked.
‘Okay. Let me think. I accept, as long as this won’t affect my supply of free water.’
‘Ha!’ Klaus exclaimed. ‘That bizarre and corrupt English practice is something I should already have put a stop to.’
Their starters arrived: moutabale, grilled aubergine with sesame seed oil, lemon juice and garlic, for Kuuzik. Ezra bit into his Lebanese cream cheese. It melted in his mouth.
‘What we should really discuss is the launch of the project, of course,’ Klaus said. ‘Did you have a chance to consider it further?’
‘I did, Klaus, and I don’t think this first launch should be anywhere near the Middle East, whatever Hisham says. It would be contentious from both the Arabs’ and the financiers’ points of view. I mean, who’s the launch for? The money people, right?’
‘Exactly. Closer to home, then. Oxford?’
‘Paris or London. But make the launch an exotic party. With all the magic of Arabia. A kitsch extravaganza. Great music, the best belly dancing, but also snake charmers, fire eaters, fireworks. Give the shareholders, your people from Berlin, the journalists, a fantastic carnival. Convey to them that we’re investing in an exciting part of the world, not one of the most intractably depressed.’
‘That’s very good, Ezra. I like this direction.’
They spoke more of the launch until the main course arrived.
‘Tell me this, Ezra,’ Kuuzik said. ‘Why do the Americans want the British as their closest allies?’
Before Ezra could formulate his answer, Klaus added, ‘I mean, I know we’re all Americans now. Sure. Ich bin ein Angelino. But you know what I mean.’
‘The special relationship is based on our shared language.’ Ezra munched the minced meat and crushed wheat.
‘No, no,’ Klaus said, disappointed. ‘I mean underneath everything. Behind the façade. Afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘You’re meant to teach them, right? That’s what they expect.’
‘Teach them what?’ Ezra asked, his attention distracted by the taste of sesame sauce.
‘Well, how to relinquish Empire, I suppose. With grace. With dignity and humour. Even the creation of Empire pales beside the British achievement of letting it go.’ He passed Ezra the yoghurt. ‘And let me try some of those grilled vegetables.’
‘There may just be a few Indians, to begin with, who’d disagree with you, Klaus.’
‘Of course, sure,’ Kuuzik shrugged, as if to acknowledge that there are always people who disagree with the person who happens to be right. ‘But still, it was the most dignified, the least destructive relinquishing of Empire in history.’
‘You think the Chinese are ready to take over?’
‘Not in our working lifetime, maybe. Soon after, though, no?’
As they enjoyed their dessert, Kuuzik eating cream cheese pastries, Ezra licking honey off his fingers from a succulent baklava, Klaus observed the brown stain at the end of the index and middle fingers of Ezra’s left hand.
‘Surely you are not a smoker?’ he said. ‘I am so surprised.’
‘The occasional rollie,’ Ezra said, to which evasion the nicotine stains gave the immediate lie.
‘This is not personal, my friend,’ Klaus said. ‘But when I see someone smoking a cigarette, all I think is, This person is stupid. There is no justification I have heard that would alter my impression.’
‘I only smoke after meals now,’ Ezra said. ‘I’m down to twelve meals a day,’ he joked, but Klaus didn’t laugh, and back at his desk that afternoon Ezra gathered the small plastic pouch of tobacco, the Rizlas and the d
isposable lighter, and he dropped them in a bin, just moments before taking the second call of the day from Minty, the click of whose lighter he heard, followed by the exhalation of smoke away from the phone, before the sound of her voice.
‘Ezra, darling, please don’t make me do this,’ she beseeched him.
‘You have to let it go,’ he told her. ‘You know that.’
‘I can’t live without being with you, Ezra. If I can’t be with you, I have to see you. If I can’t even see you I have to hear your voice. Otherwise … I can’t be held accountable.’
‘Minty,’ he soothed. ‘Dear Minty. We can’t do it.’
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she stuttered. ‘I’m a fool. I can’t help it.’
The day before, Monday, he’d met her at lunchtime in the side bar of the Lamb and Flag. Minty came in off the cobbled lane and found him, and her eyes were shining. How much more attractive Sheena was, Ezra thought, how much more his kind of woman than their skinny friend with her smoky nervousness, her unpredictable intimacy, her lurching enthusiasm, as she sat down fast beside him.
Minty ordered a gin and tonic and lit a cigarette. ‘To hell with resolutions, sport,’ she grinned in a carefree way that told him all he didn’t want to know. ‘I’ll repent of all sin when I’m fifty. Sixty, maybe. Who cares but God?’ She moved to kiss him.
‘Not here,’ Ezra hissed. He wanted to add, And not anywhere else, either. But he might as well have let her, really, for she sat so close beside him, one hand clutching his, her perfume sickening him, that they could not have been mistaken for anything other than what they were: lovers. Middle-aged adulterers keeping a lunchtime rendezvous, no less tawdry now than at any time in any pub like this fifty, a hundred years ago.
Ezra’s distaste for the situation, and for the woman with whom he shared it, was increased by the fact that Minty’s unwelcome proximity, her perspiring grasp, her perfume lodging in his nasal membrane, her jostling breath, were arousing him. He could feel a furious hard-on fill and throb between his crossed legs, beneath the table, an erection entirely separate from his will and his intention; separate from himself.