Cornucopia

by John Kinsella

  To the acclamations of the guests, Sergei Tarasov acquired the bust for an eye watering one hundred thousand dollars. Pat, present with a dozen other convives at the Russian’s table, jokingly remarked to his neighbour, Steve Howard: “He could give it to Putin as a birthday present.”

  Howard laughed.

  “Seriously, it would’ve been better to donate the whole fuckin cost of the evening to some worthy cause, it’s a bit of a bloody farce with all this arse licking.”

  “No Pat, it’s electioneering. Politics.”

  “It’s beyond me.”

  Tarasov was intelligent enough not to keep the bronze, diplomatically offering the object to the Carlton Club, the bastion of the Conservative party, where it was, they later learned, relegated to a quiet corner of the lower ground floor library, amongst dusty copies of parliamentary debates and the Hansard, pending the result of the spring general election.

  Sergei was rewarded by a very relieved Prime Minister with a warm manly hug to the enthusiastic cheers of the guests. The Russian banker, an experienced exponent on the importance of friends and relations in high places, had become a regular figure at such evenings.

  The fund raising event was part of the Conservative Party’s plan to top up its treasure chest for the election, less than a year away. For the rich and powerful businessmen present, many of whom were City bankers like Tarasov and Michael Fitzwilliams, the idea of a Labour win would spell disaster.

  On their arrival Prime Minister and his wife had been ushered into private cocktail offered by Ronald Gould, the property magnate, owner of the Gould Tower, which housed the headquarters of the INI Banking Corporation. Gathered together were Fitzwilliams, Tarasov and a handful of VIP guests who had paid for privilege of a moment of before dinner bonhomie with the Prime Minister.

  Lord Carneigham, a member of the Cabinet, an Old Etonian, an intimate of the Prime Minister and one of the Conservative Party’s leading fund raisers, was a long-time friend of Fitzwilliams, and had, following a hefty contribution, had ensured the Russian’s presence. Fitzwilliams had informed Carneigham the Prime Minister could count on Tarasov’s support in the on going discussions with Moscow relating to the cease fire between the Russian backed rebels and Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region.

  Tarasov reassured the Prime Minister, informing him of Vladimir Putin’s good intentions in the Ukrainian crisis, as intense behind the scenes negotiations continued. To his mind it was in the Russian’s best interest that the conflict be de-escalated as quickly as possible.

  On the Prime Minister’s side, was the fear of a larger conflict in the Ukraine, and worse the prospect a direct confrontation with Moscow in the Baltic if things really soured, which Britain could not afford economically or militarily. Cameron’s government, like that of Labour before him, had cut defence spending to the quick and a European skirmish would have disastrous consequences.

  LONDON

  The changes in London had been no less than phenomenal and few noticed it more than a returning expat, which James Blake was. He had lived in Miami for seven years, where he was responsible for the development of legal and financial services for Guthrie Plimpton’s Caribbean real estate division.

  His hurried return was provoked by the sudden decline of his father’s health. The old man had been hospitalised at St Georges Hospital in Tooting, South London, after a malaise while visiting his brother in Wimbledon.

  On arrival at his parent’s home in Camden, Blake was reassured with the news his father was out of danger. Relieved he grabbed a cab and was soon crossing the Thames heading south to Tooting. Arriving from the from the Sunshine State, London seemed damp and dismal with the late morning traffic in a stop-start, bumper to bumper snarl.

  Blake had always tried to avoid the ‘this is why I left’ feeling, though the challenge of finding the England he held in his mind’s eye had become confusing. Leaving England had opened his eyes and made him realize he had been fed and conditioned with a wrong image of the world ‘over there’.

  This time, however, he felt something had changed, as the taxi made its way across what was London’s heart: Westminster, the West End and the City, he discovered a certain dynamism. Then after crossing London Bridge and past the Shard, the traffic inched forward at a snail’s pace and urban landscape was not very different to that he remembered.

  The driver reluctantly informed him it would take three quarters of an hour or more to reach the hospital and James, not familiar with South London, resigned himself to the wait. There was nothing to do but relax and watch Londoners going about their daily business.

  Since he had left seven years earlier nothing much had changed. He was used to the ethnic mix of inner London districts. He shut his eyes as the taxi picked up a little speed and seemed to make better headway.

  Fifteen or twenty minutes later he woke-up with a start, glanced at his watch, then outside. The traffic had come to a halt somewhere in South London where the roads seemed cramped and ancient compared to the wide streets of Miami and more complicated than ever: a labyrinth of bus lanes, cycle paths, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and filled with buses, cars, delivery vans, trams; the list of obstacles and reasons to stop seemed endless.

  His eyes slowly settled on the crowded pavement. At first he was not surprised by their sartorial preferences, but after some minutes he realised there were almost no grass root Brits at all, he was surprised and his surprise soon transformed into astonishment.

  Had he been so isolated, detached, cut-off from what was evidently a mind-boggling transformation? It was not as if he didn’t return to London relatively frequently. Where had the burqas, hijabs, saris, lehenga, salwar kameez, waistcoat and Punjabi suits and all the rest suddenly come from? The shops vaunted halal food, spices, curries and kebabs. Amongst the restaurant names were Lahore Kebab House, Jay Kishna, Star of Bombay, Thousand and One Nights, Tamarind, West Indian Bakery, and Spice Village.

  Each time James Blake returned to London from Miami or some Caribbean country, he was confronted by the contradictions that the global city offered. The first was Heathrow Airport, which compared to Miami, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai or even Madrid, was an astonishing example of British piecemeal planning, a never-to-be-finished hodgepodge of buildings, an encyclopedia of seventy years of architectural experimentation, an incarnation that symbolized the meandering of three generations of civil aviation planners, all of whom had been evidently influenced by the powers that be, all of whom wanted to put their individual mark on each new edifice with a political message, which would not necessarily be lasting in style and utility over the structure’s life, falling into functional tawdriness and material fatigue as the years past.

  The City, the West End and Central London, along with Westminster, Chelsea, Kensington, Knightsbridge, were dynamic and modern. But once beyond these stylish global city districts, the capital was changing at an alarming rate, and beyond all recognition. In districts such as the Harrow Road area or Tooting, the change was extraordinary, to the point that arriving in Swiss Cottage or Cheam, it was almost a shock to discovery upper middle class suburbia had after all survived, but for how long, Blake asked himself.

  The black-cab taxi driver informed Blake he was a Londoner, but had moved out to Letchworth, thirty five miles from the city centre. He had done what more than half a million Londoners had done over the previous decade, escaping what he called creeping colonisation, to live in a world that he recognised as English. The vacuum left by the migration of grass root Brits from whole swathes of Inner London was immediately filled by a never ending flow of newly arrived immigrants.

  Blake remembered a trip to the British Museum with his father the previous spring, a visit to an exhibition: The Treasures of Pompeii, where he bought a pocket book entitled Pompeii, written by Mary Beard, a Cambridge classicist. On his flight back to Miami, he learned that more than two thousand years before, Pompeii and Southern Italy had been subject to successive waves of immigration, when
new populations were absorbed by the old, or replaced the old.

  When the Roman Sulla took control of the city in 89BC, he peopled it with his legionnaires, a move that did not entirely suit Pompeii’s Oscan speaking inhabitants. Many decades passed before the city became entirely Romanized. London’s parallel with Pompeii was striking, it was going through the same process. Blake, who did not necessarily agree with the changes, remembered the words of Strabo: ‘Oscans used to occupy Pompeii, then Etruscans and Pelasgians … after that it was the Samnites. But they too were ejected.’

  WARNINGS

  “Did you see O’Reilly has been declared insolvent?” exclaimed Kennedy.

  “Yes, let it be a warning to you Pat. Sooner or later fate catches up with people, especially when their ambitions become too overreaching.”

  “I hope your not inferring any reference to me Fitz.”

  “I’d never do that Pat, though I’m keeping a sharp eye on what’s happening with your impulsive friend Putin.”

  “He’s not my friend,” Kennedy protested.

  “Oh, I thought he and you were thick together.”

  “He’s Sergei’s friend,” Kennedy muttered sulkily. “What’s more Sergei’s done well from it … and we too.”

  “I hope it stays that way, as for O’Reilly it’s a pity, a nice chap, he was our first billionaire.”

  It was a sad day for Ireland when Sir Anthony O’Reilly, the first Irishman to reach high executive power in the US business world, as CEO and chairman of the H.J.Heinz Company, was declared insolvent in a Bahamas court and ordered to sell his assets to repay creditors almost three hundred million dollars.

  “The feekin Allied Irish amongst them.”

  “Those lunatics should have never been entrusted with good peoples’ money.”

  “I met O’Reilly in the Caribbean, it’s a pity he backed the wrong horses.”

  “I remember the time when he was a role model,” said Kennedy as though he was nostalgic for the days when he was just another ambitious Irish lad back in Limerick City. A time when O’Reilly was Ireland’s super star.

  “A role model? Let’s hope you don’t end up like him.”

  “Well he was knighted, Sir Anthony O’Reilly,” replied Kennedy in a dig at Fitzwilliams’ own ambitions.

  “He made a big mistake betting on Waterford Crystal, he lost hundreds of millions. Not forgetting his run in with Denis O’Brien.”

  “He should have moved to Malta like O’Brien.”

  “Poor Anthony, he’s seventy-eight now, a pity to end up like that. He was a great rugby player, played for Ireland against England in in 1955, before my time, twenty nine caps to his credit.”

  “Did you see the Irish Times,” said Pat more cheerfully. “They quoted Enoch Powell who said: ‘all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that’s the nature of politics and of human affairs.’”

  “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us Pat.”

  Kennedy’s smile faded.

  “Sir Anthony’s a resident of Lyford Cay in the Bahamas and has probably still got a few euros stacked away, I wouldn’t worry too much about him.”

  Of course Pat thought.

  “It’s a warning though. Let’s stick to what we know, banking.”

  Pat concurred.

  “The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall,” quoted the CEO.

  “Was that the new Italian prime minister?” asked Pat.

  “No Marcus Tullius Cicero.”

  “Finance minister?”

  “Cicero the Younger.”

  “The younger? You mean Matteo Renzi?”

  “Forget it Pat.”

  *

  Fitzwilliams waved the Bank of England Financial Policy Committee statement in the air. He was rattled by the growing news of nervosity in Chinese financial markets, which came just as geopolitical risks rose a notch with the intensification of the Ukrainian crisis.

  “I don’t like this at all,” he said addressing Kennedy with a side glance towards Francis.

  “I can’t deny there are some problems out there Michael,” said Kennedy. The CEO was in a foul mood, which seemed to be becoming a frequent event. “It’s not as bad as it looks. The Chinese have one hundred trillion in bank deposits and their banks’ earnings are very solid, nearly three hundred billion last year … not bad by any standard1.”

  Fitzwilliams glowered “That’s a lot of trillions Pat.”

  Kennedy, about to open his mouth, then thought better of it.

  “Are they American dollars, Hong Kong dollars or Renminbi?”

  Fitzwilliams had changed, aggressive, unpredictable, making Kennedy wonder what had happened to the warm relationship they had always enjoyed.

  1. quartz.com

  *

  “Balance is what it all about Michael,” Pat had told Fitzwilliams in November. The CEO looked at him sourly as he fretted about Russia and the prospects of China’s economy being dragged under by its shadow banking system.

  “If Russia is looking weak,” continued Kennedy cheerfully, “the UK is well on the mend, Europe has stabilized and China is working on its problems.”

  “In a nutshell, so to speak Pat!”

  “Yesh, you can’t win on them all Michael. That’s our strength … our operations from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”

  “It depends on the direction, right now I feel a little better if it was westwards.”

  Pat looked nonplussed.

  “The US Pat!”

  “Well our branch in New York is doing well.”

  “Small cheese. We’ve not really paid enough attention to the American turnaround .... Anyway, what’s the news from Hong Kong and Shanghai? I heard things are not looking so good.”

  “Is that so Michael?”

  Fitzwilliams said nothing. He was wondering if China was about to go belly-up; the third phase of the economic crisis that had stalked the world for nearly six years.

  “Well the Brics are in a pretty shitty state,” snapped Fitzwilliams.

  It was Kennedy’s turn to hold his tongue.

  “Did you enjoy the New Year,” Fitzwilliams added drily.

  At times he wondered if Kennedy’s focus on China was the result his wife’s influence. He would have liked to see him more concentrated on Russia, though undeniably their Chinese operations were very profitable.

  “Yesh Michael, very much.”

  ’Well that’s good news!’

  “Are you packed for Sochi?”

  Kennedy said nothing.

  “I’ve told Sergei you’ll be standing in for me.”

  Pat absorbed the news silently before deciding it wasn’t such a bad thing. Michael was too conventional, besides he didn’t speak a word of Russian.

  “Well if that’s what you want Michael.”

  “I’ll be tied up in a treasury meeting and our Canadian friend, at the Bank of England, wants a briefing on our overseas activities.”

  “There’s a problem?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  “Good, at least we’re better off than the silly feekers in Dublin today.”

  “In Dublin,” said Fitzwilliams, obviously caught off balance.

  “The trial.”

  “Oh yes, Anglo Irish.’

  “Well at least we’re not in the box with them.”

  “Why should we?”

  “Well it was touch and go at that time.”

  Fitzwilliams said nothing. It was true. Anything could have happened in 2008 and it was Kennedy’s diversification into Europe that saved them.

  *

  That day, as Dublin was hit by yet another wave of extreme winter weather, the trial of three ex-bankers took place in a packed court. They were accused in what was described as the gravest financial misconduct case ever tried by an Irish court. It involved a series of fraudulent loans totalling nearly five hund
red million euros.

  The atmosphere was tense as the prosecution’s charges were read to the court, after which the former head of the defunct Anglo Irish Bank, Sean FitzPatrick, faced his judges and pleaded not guilty. On one side sat the accused, opposite were the jurors who would decide his fate.

  Kennedy, though he was not present, would have been familiar with the process: by a strange coincidence he had sat before the judges in the same court room almost a decade and a half earlier on charges of conspiracy to defraud the very same bank.

  A WRITER

  O’Connelly as a writer and journalist, was extremely pessimist when it came to Russia. Putin seemed to be going down a one-way street: his latest insult to the West was to have invited North Korea’s Kim Il-sung to Moscow for celebrations to mark the seventieth anniversary of the victory over the Nazis. It was so absurd as to be almost unbelievable; inviting the hereditary dictator of an outlaw state to celebrate the victory over a criminal state … by another tyrant, Joseph Stalin. It was an insult to the millions of Russians who sacrificed their lives in the Great Patriotic War. Even Khrushchev had denounced Stalin for the cult of personality he had engendered and the crimes he had perpetrated.

  It was bad enough when Kim Il-sung, a terrifying comic dictator whose benighted people believed their God-like leader neither urinated nor defecated, threatened his neighbours with nuclear destruction, but when Russia threatened to target Denmark with its atomic missiles the world had definitely gone crazy. Perhaps it was just posturing or bluster, a throwback to the Soviet Union, especially during its last desolate years when it was evident the Cold War had been lost and their empire was crumbling around them.