Part 27 (2/2)

”Why don't they do their own crawling?” I said, peering curiously at the career synopsis on page 1 ”I thought that was what they were paid for.”

”They tried. They sent a junior Minister, cap in hand. Sir Anthony is crawl proof. He also knows too much. He can name names and point fingers. Sir Anthony Bradshaw” - Burr announced, raising his voice in a North Country salvo of indignation - ”Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw,” he corrected himself, ”is one of England's natural s.h.i.+ts, who in the course of affecting to be of service to his country has picked up more knowledge of the disreputable activities of Her Majesty's Government than HMG ever picked up from Sir Anthony in regard to her adversaries. He accordingly has HMG by the b.a.l.l.s. Your brief is to invite him, very courteously, to relax his grip. Your weapons for this task are your grey locks and your palpable good nature, which I have observed that you are not above putting to perfidious use. He's expecting you at five this evening and he likes punctuality. Kitty's cleared a desk for you in the anteroom.”

It was not long before Burr's outrage was explained to me. There are few things more riling in our trade than having to cope with the unappetising leftovers of one's predecessors, and Sir Anthony Joyston Bradshaw, self-styled merchant venturer and City magnate, was a gruesome example of the type. Alleline had befriended him-at his club, where else? Alleline had recruited him. Alleline had sponsored him through a string of shady transactions of dubious value to anybody but Sir Anthony, and there were uncomfortable suggestions that Alleline might have taken a cut. Where scandal had threatened, Alleline had sheltered Sir Anthony under the Circus's compendious umbrella. Worse still, many of the doors that Alleline had opened for Bradshaw appeared to have stayed open, for the reason that n.o.body had thought to close them. And it was through one of these that Bradshaw had now walked, to the shrill outrage of the Foreign Office and half of Whitehall.

I drew an Ordnance Survey map from Library and a Ford Granada from the car pool. At half past two, with the file pretty much in my head, I set off. Sometimes you forget how beautiful England is. I pa.s.sed through Newbury and climbed a winding hill lined with beech trees whose long shadows were cut like trenches into the golden stubble. A smell of cricket fields filled the car. I mounted a crest, castles of white cloud waited to receive me. I must have been thinking of my childhood, I suppose, for I had a sudden urge to drive straight into them, a thing I had often dreamed of as a boy. The car dipped again and fell free, and suddenly a whole valley opened below me, strewn with hamlets, churches, folding fields and forests.

I pa.s.sed a pub, and soon a great pair of closed and gilded gates appeared between stone gateposts capped by carved lions. Beside them stood a neat white gatehouse newly thatched. A fit young man lowered his face to my open window and studied me with sniper's eyes.

”To see Sir Anthony,” I said.

”Name, sir?”

”Carlisle,” I replied, using an alias for the last time.

The boy disappeared into the lodge; the gates opened, then closed as soon as I was through them. The park was bordered by a high brick wall-there must have been a couple of miles of it. Fallow deer lay in the shade of chestnut trees. The drive lifted and the house appeared before me. It was golden and immaculate and very large. The centre section was William and Mary. The wings looked later, but not much. A lake lay before it, vegetable gardens and greenhouses behind. The old stables had been converted to offices, with clever outside staircases and glazed external corridors. A gardener was watering the orangerie.

The drive skirted the lake and brought me to the front sweep. Two Arab mares and a llama eyed me over the fence of a lunging ring. A young butler came down the steps, dressed in black trousers and a linen jacket.

”Shall I park your car round the back, Mr. Carlisle, once you've been introduced?” he asked. ”Sir Anthony does like a clear facade, when he can get one, sir.”

I gave him the keys and followed him up the wide steps. There were nine, though I can't imagine why I counted, except that it was something we had taught on the Sarratt awareness course, and in recent weeks my life seemed to have become less a continuation than a mosaic of past ages and experiences. If Ben had come striding up to me and grasped my hand, I don't think I would have been particularly surprised. If Monica or Sally had appeared to accuse me, I would have had my answers ready.

I entered a huge hall. A splendid double staircase rose to an open landing. Portraits of n.o.ble ancestors, all men, stared down at me, but somehow I didn't believe they were of one family, or could have lived here long without their women. I pa.s.sed through a billiards room and noticed that the table and cues were new. I suppose I saw everything so clearly because I was treating each experience as my last. I followed the butler through a stately drawing room and traversed a second room that was got up as a hall of mirrors, and a third that was supposed to be informal, with a television set the size of one of those old ice-cream tricycles that used to call at my preparatory school on sunny evenings just like this. I arrived at a pair of majestic doors and waited while the butler knocked. Then waited again for a response. If Bradshaw were an Arab, he would keep me standing here for hours, I thought, remembering Beirut.

Finally I heard a male voice drawl ”Come,” and the butler took a pace into the room and announced, ”A Mr. Carlisle, Sir Anthony, from London.”

I had not told him I had come from London.

The butler stepped aside and gave me a first view of my host, though it took a little longer before my host had his first view of Mr. Carlisle.

He was sitting at a twelve-foot desk with bra.s.s inlay and cabriole legs. Modern oil paintings of spoilt children hung behind him. His correspondence was stacked in trays of thick st.i.tched hide. He was a big, well-nourished man, and clearly a big worker also, for he had stripped to his s.h.i.+rt, which was blue with a midwife's white collar, and he was working in his braces, which were red. Also he was too busy to acknowledge me. First he read, using a gold pen to guide his eye. Then he signed, using the gold pen to write. Then he meditated, still in a downward direction, using the tip of the gold pen as a focus for his great thoughts. His gold cufflinks were as big as old pennies. Then at last he laid the pen down and, with a wounded even accusatory air, he raised his head, first to discover me, then to measure me by standards I had yet to ascertain.

At the same moment, by a happy chance of nature, a shaft of low sunlight from the French windows landed on his face, and I was able to measure him in return: the self-sadness of his pouchy eyes, as if he should be pitied for his wealth, the straight small mouth set tense and crooked in the puckered chins, the air of resolution formed of weakness, of boyhood suspicions in a grown-up world. At fortyfive, this fattened child was unappeased, blaming some absent parent for his comforts.

Suddenly, Bradshaw was walking towards me. Stalking? Wading? There is an English walk these days peculiar to men of power, and it is a confection of several things at once. Self-confidence is one, lazy sportiveness another. But there is also menace in it, and impatience, and a leisured arrogance, which comes with the crablike splaying of elbows that give way to n.o.body, and the boxer's slouch of the shoulders, and the playful springiness in the knees. You knew long before you shook his hand that he had no truck with a whole category of life that ranged from art to public transport. You were silently forewarned to keep your distance if you were that kind of fool.

”You're one of Percy's boys,” he told me, in case I didn't know, while he sampled my hand, and was duly disappointed. ”Well, well. Long time no see. Must be ten years. More. Have a drink. Have champagne. Have what you like.”

An order: ”Summers. Get us a bottle of shampoo, bucket of ice, two gla.s.ses, then b.u.g.g.e.r off. And nuts!” he shouted after him. ”Cashews. Brazils. Ma.s.ses of f.u.c.king nuts - like nuts?” he enquired of me, with a sudden and disarming intimacy.

I said I did.

”Good. Me too. Love 'em. You've come to read me the riot act. Right? Go on. Not made of gla.s.s.”

He was flinging open the French windows so that I could have a better view of what he owned. He had chosen a different walk for this manoeuvre, more march, more swinging of the arms to the rhythm of unheard martial music. When he had opened the doors, he gave me his back to look at, and kept his arms up, palms propped against the door posts, like a martyr waiting for the arrow. And the City haircut, I thought: thick at the collar and little horns above the ears. In golds and browns and greens, the valley faded softly into eternity. A nanny and a small child were walking among the deer. She wore a brown hat with the brim up all the way round and a brown uniform like a Girl Guide's. The lawn was set for croquet.

”We're just appealing to you, that's all, Sir Anthony,” I said. ”Asking you another favour, like the ones you did for Percy. After all, it was Percy who got you your knighthood, wasn't it?”

”f.u.c.k Percy. Dead, isn't he? n.o.body gives me anything, thank you. Help myself to it. What do you want? Spit it out, will you? I've had one sermon already. Portly Savoury from the Foreign Office. Used to flog him when he was my f.a.g at school. Wimp then, wimp now.”

The arms stayed up there, the back was braced and aggressive. I might have spoken, but I felt strangely off key. Three days before my retirement, I was beginning to feel I hardly knew the real world at all. Summers brought champagne, uncorked it and filled two gla.s.ses, which he handed to us on a silver tray. Bradshaw s.n.a.t.c.hed one and strode into the garden. I trailed after him to the centre of a, gra.s.s alley. Azaleas and rhododendrons grew high to either side of us. At the farther end, a fountain played in a stone pond.

”Did you get a lords.h.i.+p of the manor when you bought this house?” I asked, thinking a little small talk might give me time to collect myself.

”Suppose I did?” Bradshaw retorted, and I realised he did not wish to be reminded that he had bought his house rather than inherited it.

”Sir Anthony,” I said.

”Well?”

”It's concerning your relations.h.i.+p with a Belgian company called Astrasteel.”

”Never heard of 'em.”

”But you are a.s.sociated with them, aren't you?”

I said, with a smile.

”Aren't now, never was. Told Savoury the same.”

”But you have holdings in Astrasteel, Sir Anthony,” I protested patiently.

”Zilch. Absolutely b.u.g.g.e.rall. Different bloke, wrong address. Told him.”

”But you do have a one hundred percent holding in a company called Allmetal of Birmingham Limited, Sir Anthony. And Allmetal of Birmingham does own a company called Eurotech Funding Imports Limited of Bermuda, doesn't it? And Eurotech of Bermuda does own Astrasteel of Belgium, Sir Anthony. So we may take it that a certain loose a.s.sociation might be said to exist between yourself on the one hand, and the company that is owned by the company you own on the other.”

I was still smiling, still reasoning with him, joking him along.

”No holdings, no dividends, no influence over Astrasteel's affairs. Arm's length, whole thing. Told Savoury, tell the same to you.”

”Nevertheless, when you were invited by Alleline - back in the old days, I know, but not so long ago, was it? - to make deliveries of certain commodities to certain countries not strictly on the official shopping list for those commodities, Astrasteel was the company you used. And Astrasteel did what you told them to do. Because if they hadn't done, Percy would not have come to youwould he? You'd have been no use to him.”

My smile felt stiff on my face. ”We're not policemen, Sir Anthony, we're not the taxman. I'm merely indicating to you certain relations.h.i.+ps that stand-as you insist-beyond the law's reach, and were indeed designed with Percy's active help - to do just that.”

My speech sounded so ill composed to me, so unpointed, that I a.s.sumed at first that Bradshaw did not propose to bother with it at all.

And in a way I was right, for he merely shrugged and said, ”f.u.c.k's that got to do with anything?”

”Well quite a lot actually.”

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