Maybe the Horse Will Talk

by Elliot Perlman

  ‘Come on Featherby, you bastard. I’m doing you a professional courtesy. Open the door so I can quickly get back to feeling better about myself,’ he said under his breath. But still, nothing. Maserov walked back to the car, leaned down on the front passenger side and knocked on the window with two frozen fingers. Betga opened the car door.

  ‘When is she going to call me “Daddy”? I mean, how long? She points at me and smiles.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ said Maserov distractedly before looking behind him back up at the house.

  ‘Yeah but then she says, “Betga!”’

  ‘Listen,’ said Maserov, changing the subject, ‘he’s not home. No one’s home.’

  ‘No? Maybe he’s gone to get another job or he’s fled to Argentina. Oh wait! You hear that?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘In the garage, there’s a car starting up in the garage. Go and stand by the door. He must be on his way out somewhere. Go stand by the garage door and stop him. And don’t let him run you over. But I’ll be your witness if he does.’

  Maserov, hearing the engine running in the garage, walked briskly to the garage door and knocked on it but there was no response. He figured that Featherby or whoever the driver was probably couldn’t hear him so he waited at the door for it to open. He rehearsed his opening lines, ‘Featherby, it’s me, Stephen Maserov, from work. Sorry to bother you on your day off. Do you mind if we have a quick word? Well, yes, I’m afraid it is kind of urgent.’ He thought it important that he stay diplomatic and polite as long as possible.

  The car was still running but the garage door hadn’t opened. Maserov tried knocking again but this still didn’t achieve anything. Maybe he had gone back inside the house for something he’d forgotten, Maserov mused. But, if anything, the engine seemed to be revving up. Maybe whoever was in there was having car trouble. Maserov tried to peek in through a tiny gap between the garage door and the wall. He wasn’t sure if he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing.

  From the car, Betga looked over in the direction of the garage and was shocked to see Maserov banging wildly on the door like someone having some kind of violent psychotic episode. He got out of the car, locked it leaving Marietta alone inside, and ran towards the garage, shouting at Maserov.

  ‘Maserov, what the hell are you doing? You’ll break the door down.’

  When he reached the garage door Maserov was panting. ‘Look through there.’ Betga went to look through the now enlarged gap between the door and the wall and his response confirmed Maserov’s assessment of the situation. There was a hose leading from the car’s exhaust pipe into the interior of the car through the driver’s window. It appeared the car’s vents had been sealed.

  ‘Fuck, he’s trying to kill himself!’

  ‘Have you got a jack in the car?’

  Betga ran to his car, opened the boot and brought back a jack and, between the two of them, Betga with the jack and Maserov with his hands, they were able to get into the garage where the driver of a black Range Rover SUV was trying to asphyxiate himself. It was Featherby. At the steering wheel, still in his pyjamas, he had left the doors unlocked and they were able to drag him out of the car through the gap they had made in the garage door and onto the moist grassy verge between the garage and Featherby’s house. The three of them coughing, Marietta looking on through the window of Betga’s locked car, Featherby looked up at the two men who, in turn, looked at each other.

  Within a couple of minutes they had him inside his house. There was no one else home. Maserov stayed with Featherby while Betga went out to the street to bring in Marietta. Featherby didn’t pretend that they had come upon him doing anything other than what it looked like he was doing. The lawyer, lying on his back, face up towards the ceiling, had his head in Maserov’s lap. He was wheezing but finally no longer coughing when Betga returned with Marietta in his arms. He looked up at Maserov with bloodshot eyes, perplexed, breathless, and asked him if he was dead.

  ‘No, you’re in Hawthorn,’ said Betga.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Betga, A.A. Betga. This is my daughter, Marietta.’

  ‘What are you doing here? I know that name. Do I know you?’

  ‘You’ve been calling me practically every day. I’m here from the Freely Savage Survivors, although if your colleague here, Maserov, hadn’t been determined to talk to you ASAP, you wouldn’t have survived long enough to join.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Featherby, bewildered, now looking up at Maserov. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Well, I came here to talk to you about work, about a file. They told me, at work, they told me you were home, sick, so . . .’

  ‘So you came here to . . . my house?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Betga, ‘And lucky he did.’

  ‘And you?’ he asked Betga.

  ‘I was —’

  ‘He was in the neighbourhood. I told him I was coming to see you, he knows me, and he was in the neighbourhood too, so he said he’d join me.’

  ‘But you said you only see people who’ve left Freely Savage?’ Featherby queried Betga.

  ‘Well, talking to some of the other FSS board members, we thought we might make an exception for you.’

  ‘Get him a glass of water,’ Maserov suggested.

  Maserov propped Featherby up in a chair in the Featherby family kitchen while Betga, with Marietta under one arm, went to look for a glass.

  ‘Featherby, you need help, I mean professional help. What on earth were you thinking?’

  ‘Not those glasses!’ said Featherby. ‘That’s a Waterford Baccarat, my wife will kill me.’

  ‘Well, where are the everyday glasses?’ Betga called from the other end of the kitchen.

  ‘In the cupboard above the kettle.’

  ‘These ones?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ooh, they’re very nice too,’ said Betga, holding one up to the light.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Obviously more of an everyday glass though, isn’t it?’ said Betga, examining the glass more closely.

  ‘Featherby, what were you thinking? How could you even contemplate something like this?’

  ‘Maserov, I’m . . . I’m a mess. I’m not myself anymore.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘It’s work, it’s . . . Hamilton . . . I don’t know. He’s playing mind games with me and I don’t even know what I did wrong. I’ve given everything to that place. Years! So many hours, weekends, but . . . I’ve lost . . . He’s got me doubting everything I do. I’m constantly second-guessing myself. I hate going in there. I know they’re going to get rid of me. He’s going to get rid of me.’

  ‘Featherby, is that all it is, just Hamilton?’ Maserov asked.

  ‘What do you mean, “Is that all?” It’s my job.’

  ‘You can’t let Hamilton bully you into killing yourself.’

  ‘Featherby,’ Betga said, ‘one in every hundred people is a psychopath. It’s that common. But they’re not all mass murderers. A lot of them end up in boardrooms and in large commercial law firms. They’re what are known as corporate psychopaths. If you kill yourself, they win. You can’t let them win. Your job is to survive them, get beyond them. And then to screw them if you possibly can. You’ve got to outlast them. If you let them push you into suicide you’re letting everybody down.’

  ‘What do you mean, who am I letting down?’

  ‘The other ninety-nine. We win if we recognise who they are and tell as many people as possible, tell them the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. And that he’s a cunt,’ said Betga.

  ‘No, I know him. He’s a genius, an evil genius,’ said Featherby, granting his tormentor an almost religious reverence.

  ‘He’s not a genius,’ said Betga calmly. ‘He was born with somewhat above average intelligence but no higher than you or Maserov.’

  ‘What about you?’ Featherby asked Betga.

  ‘Oh, he’s nowhere near me. He has certain attributes that have
eased his way, I’ll grant you, the biggest being that he was born with zero capacity for empathy or shame. This coupled with a restlessness, an impulsivity, a fondness for dishonesty and an enjoyment of others’ distress, which of course all met with the good timing that only a true bastard can have.’

  ‘Good timing? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, even for a corporate psychopath he rose to partnership early, quickly, but this was just because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was at just the right age to benefit from deregulation and the rash of amalgamations and acquisitions that followed the rise of Reagan’s and Thatcher’s free-market economics throughout the developed world. Trust me, he’s no genius. And you can’t kill yourself on account of him.’

  ‘Featherby, think what you’d be doing to your family, your children,’ said Maserov.

  ‘What will I be doing to them if I lose my job?’

  ‘They won’t care about that.’

  ‘My wife will, her parents will. My parents will. Our friends will.’

  ‘So what if you lose your job! There are plenty of jobs out there,’ offered Maserov.

  ‘No there aren’t,’ said Featherby. ‘Are you crazy? That’s just the sort of shit they say to people to stop them from killing themselves.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s right, that’s true,’ said Betga. ‘And they say it to people before elections too. But your job isn’t you. You’re more than that.’

  ‘No . . . I’m not,’ said Featherby, staring blankly at the space in front of him, a space that was empty all the way until the pristine white kitchen wall met the downlight-lit bench where the gleaming Faema e61 Legend coffee maker sat boldly, spread out triumphantly, braggadocio-ready with a head full of steam, colonising the countertop like it was Abyssinia, just waiting to spring into action the moment Featherby made some friends.

  ‘Ah, now we’re actually making progress!’ said Betga. ‘There’s your problem. You can’t let your job be you.’

  ‘Featherby, do you have anyone professionally trained you can talk to, like a psychiatrist?’ Maserov asked in a quiet voice.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want me to call your wife?’

  ‘Fuck no! What made you come here? What file? Was it the Torrent Industries sexual harassment files?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maserov tried to assure him. ‘We can talk about work some other time.’

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Betga, you didn’t get him a glass of water!’

  ‘Oh shit, sorry! I got distracted by the Waterford. Baccarat, did you say?’

  Betga got up and poured a glass of water for Featherby and asked, as though just remembering, ‘Hey, Featherby, did you tell the head of HR at Torrent Industries to bury an account of the assault that was typed by one of the plaintiffs herself? The plaintiff’s name is Carla Monterosso.’

  ‘Betga! We don’t have to talk about that now!’ snapped Maserov.

  ‘No, of course not,’ shot back Featherby. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘’Cause she’s saying you did.’

  ‘Betga, shut the fuck up!’

  ‘The man deserves a chance to answer,’ Betga argued in self-defence.

  ‘Who’s she saying this to?’ Featherby asked, alarmed.

  ‘No one yet but sooner or later it’s going to be you or her.’

  ‘Betga, for fuck’s sake!’ said Maserov.

  ‘Look, we almost didn’t have the chance to ask him.’

  ‘I’m going to lose my job for this!’ Featherby realised.

  ‘Featherby, you said you didn’t do it,’ Betga said. ‘Do you mind if I put her down on the floor? She’s not housebroken yet but my arm’s starting to spasm.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if I did or not, Hamilton’s going to have me killed for simply letting Malcolm Torrent even consider fleetingly that it’s true. I mean, just to show Torrent he trusts Torrent people over his own. It’s not going to matter at all if it’s true.’

  ‘No, it will matter if it’s true. Maybe not to Hamilton but it will matter to the Supreme Court and to the Law Institute,’ said Betga.

  ‘Have you come over here to tell me you’re going to report me to the Law Institute?’

  ‘Will you drink your water and relax?’ said Betga. ‘I came over here to help you. I don’t really remember why Maserov’s here. But I should think you’d be glad he came exactly when he did.’

  ‘Not if I’m going to lose my job,’ said Featherby.

  ‘Featherby, did you just hear what you just said? You’d rather I got here too late to save you, if living means losing your job,’ Maserov told him, after which Featherby whispered something neither Maserov nor Betga could hear.

  ‘What did you say?’ Maserov asked.

  Marietta was on the floor. ‘Look, she’s holding your leg,’ Betga said. ‘She likes you! It’s okay, she doesn’t bite.’

  ‘He told me to,’ Featherby whispered.

  ‘What? Who told you to? Told you to what?’ Maserov asked.

  ‘Hamilton, he told me to bury it, told me to tell her to bury it.’

  They heard the sound of a car pulling up outside the street.

  ‘Fuck, that’s my wife!’

  ‘Why did he tell you to bury it?’

  ‘Do you think I asked him? Don’t say anything about this to my wife.’

  ‘About Hamilton telling you to bury evidence or about the car and the hose?’ Betga asked.

  ‘About anything!’ Featherby whispered in panic. ‘Don’t tell her anything about any of this!’

  The car outside had its door slammed and someone was walking towards the front door. Maserov sat with Featherby in his pyjamas at the kitchen table while Marietta played under the table at Featherby’s feet. They heard the front door open and Featherby’s wife walked into the kitchen in her tennis dress, shouting, ‘What the hell happened to the garage? You’re home sick one day!’ At which point Betga stood up and met her halfway between the kitchen entrance and the kitchen table.

  ‘You must be Mrs Featherby?’ he said, shaking her hand.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the angry, sporty, flexible Mrs Featherby.

  ‘Betga, A.A. Betga. Your husband called us about the insurance. You would have seen somebody’s damaged your garage.’

  ‘There’s a little girl under the table!’

  ‘Yes, that’s my daughter. We were just testing her new car seat when I got your husband’s call. We came immediately. It seems somebody tried to break in.’

  ‘Through the garage door?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve had a spate of reports of gangs targeting the area. They seem to be choosing houses with luxury homewares, Waterford crystal, Whitehill silver cutlery and suchlike. Do you have any Waterford crystal?’

  ‘Yes, actually, we do. But how would they know?’

  ‘Receipts, computer networks, online hacking, international crime syndicates. It’s very complicated, a really sophisticated operation right up until they get to the houses with the Waterford products. Then the pattern seems to be for them to smash their way in via the garage, which is not very sophisticated. Fortunately for you, your husband fought them off with some kind of hose, which I’m afraid we’ll need for our report, won’t we, Mr Maserov?’

  ‘Are they . . . ethnic, the gangs?’ Mrs Featherby asked.

  ‘Well, we’re not really meant to say but . . .’ Then Betga leaned in towards her as if to share a confidence. ‘You’ve no doubt heard that most crime is economic?’

  ‘Um, yes, I think I’ve heard that . . .’

  ‘Okay, you didn’t hear this from me but . . . they’re economists.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re economists.’

  ‘Economists?’

  ‘Yes. They work in packs. Go unnoticed by most of the community. Wreak havoc on people everywhere. Today, sadly, it was you.’

  ‘Economists . . . I’d never have guessed that.’

  ‘No, they get away with murd
er. Now, if Mr Maserov can mind my daughter, I’d like to take you out to the garage, to the scene of the crime, if I may, to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Betga led Featherby’s wife to her garage and when she had left the kitchen, Maserov, whose gaze had fallen for a moment on photos of Featherby’s children stuck to the door of the refrigerator, spoke to Featherby in a low voice to ensure his wife wouldn’t hear.

  ‘I’m going to get you the number of someone to call, a psychiatrist or a psychologist. If you call that person today and make an appointment to see them I won’t tell your wife about any of this. But if you don’t call the number I’m going to give you today, and I’m going to check, I will have to tell her what you tried to do. Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  Featherby bent down and lifted Marietta to his knee and, looking at the little girl’s face, his eyes began to well up.

  ‘Deal,’ he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand. The two men shook hands, Maserov receiving a not insubstantial fraction of Featherby’s tear on the thin skin on the top of his hand. He pulled out his phone but stopped just before pressing his intended number and looked hard into Featherby’s still moist eyes and asked Featherby, ‘Are you a religious man?’

  ‘No, we’re Anglican.’

  ‘Well,’ continued Maserov carefully, ‘none of us really know that much about death and even less about dying.’

  ‘Are you Anglican too?’

  ‘No, I meant none of us humans. How do you know you’re not destined after death to keep re-living, re-experiencing, the agonisingly painful, frightening moment of your asphyxiation over and over again into eternity, broken only by scenes of your wife and your children learning of your death anew, over and over again?’

  ‘You think?’ asked Featherby quietly.

  ‘Why risk it?’ Maserov asked rhetorically. ‘Listen to me, Featherby, you can’t ever kill yourself. With all our scientific and technological advances, the entire human species can’t even accurately predict the weather tomorrow. So how can any solitary person with a fear-clouded mind, seasoned with panic, stained by sadness, and burdened by the weight of their own history, how can one lone person know the spin of even one of our tomorrows? Things can change in a heartbeat, my friend. Your only real job is to nurture the heartbeat. It’s a job for life.’