Part 14 (1/2)

It's back to Blighty at last! We're three thousand feet above sea-level and there's a street fest in every cage and why not? We're ourselves again, the same band of brothers that set out from Luton in the same no-name aeroplane twenty-four hours earlier, coming home with our tails up and a contract in our pocket, everything to play for and the Cup within our grasp! Philip is not among us. Where he has gone, I neither know nor care. Perhaps to the Devil, and let's hope so. First down the plane's aisle minces Spider in an improvised chef's hat, pa.s.sing out plastic plates, beakers, knives and forks. After him trots Anton with a hand-towel for an ap.r.o.n around his midriff, bearing our no-name donor's hamper from Messrs Fortnum & Mason of Piccadilly. Hot on his heels ambles big Benny our gentle giant with a magnum of nearly cold champagne. Not even the great lawyer Jasper, cloistered in the end cage that he occupied on the outward journey, can resist the festive spirit. True, at first he makes a show of refusing everything, but after a sharp word from Benny and a glance at the label on the bottle, he tucks in with a will, as I do, because a top interpreter who has played his part to the full must never be a killjoy. My imitation leather night-bag nestles above me in the overhead webbing.

”What did you make of 'em, old boy?” Maxie asks, doing his T. E. Lawrence act of dropping down beside me, beaker in hand. And it's really nice to see our skipper having a proper drink for a change, not just Malvern water. It's nice to see him so flushed and pumped up with success.

”The delegates, Skipper?” I ask judiciously. ”What did I make of them?”

”Think they'll come through? Haj wobbled a bit, I thought. The other two seemed pretty solid. But will they deliver two weeks from now?”

I put aside the question of Haj's wobbling and draw upon my father's repertoire of aphorisms. ”Skipper, I'll tell you frankly. The important thing with your Congolese is to know how much you don't know. I couldn't say that before, but now I will.”

”You haven't answered my question.”

”Skipper, it is my firm belief that two weeks from now, they will be at your side as promised,” I reply, unable to equivocate in my need to be of service to him.

”Chaps!” Maxie is yelling down the aisle. ”I want to hear it for Sinclair. We ran him ragged and he didn't blink.”

A cheer goes up, gla.s.ses are raised. I am lifted on a wave of emotion combining guilt, pride, solidarity and grat.i.tude. When my eyes clear, Maxie is proffering a white envelope similar to the one that was peeking out of Haj's buff folder.

”Five grand US, old boy. That what Anderson told you?”

It was, I admitted.

”I got 'em up to seven. Not enough in my view, but best I could do.”

I start to thank him but my head is down, so I'm not sure he hears me. The bulletproof hand thumps my shoulder for the last time, and when I look up Maxie is at the other end of the plane and Benny is shouting at us to watch our a.r.s.es for landing. Obediently, I reach for my night-bag and prepare to watch my a.r.s.e, but it was too late, we had landed.

I never saw them go. Perhaps I didn't want to. What more was there to say? I have an apocryphal image of them with their kit bags slung over their shoulders, whistling Colonel Bogey while they march out of the rear doors of the green shed, and up a small incline to a no-name bus.

A woman security guard escorts me down airport corridors. The night-bag is tapping at my hip. I am standing before a fat man who sits behind a desk. The night-bag is on the floor beside me. On the desk, a sports bag of red nylon.

”You're to check contents and identify your possessions,” says the fat man, not looking at me.

I unzip the sports bag and identify my possessions: one dinner jacket, dark red with matching trousers, one dress s.h.i.+rt, white, one c.u.mmerbund, silk, and the whole lot rolled into a tight ball round my patent leather shoes. One padded envelope containing pa.s.sport, wallet, diary, miscellaneous personal effects. My black silk dress socks are wedged into my left patent leather dress shoe. I pull them out and reveal my cellphone.

I am in the rear of a black or midnight blue Volvo Estate on my way to gaol. My driver is the same woman security guard. She wears a peaked cap. I see her snub nose in the driving mirror. The night-bag is squashed between my knees. The nylon sports bag is on the seat beside me. My cellphone is against my heart.

Dusk is falling. We pa.s.s through a subtopia of hangars, machine workshops, brick offices. Floodlit iron gates festooned in razor wire spring at us. Bulked-out armed police in jockey hats loiter. My driver points the bonnet of the car straight at the closed gates and accelerates. They part. We cross a lake of tarmac and pull up beside a traffic island covered in red and yellow flowers.

The doors of the Volvo unlock themselves. I'm free after all. The time by the Arrivals hall clock is twenty past nine of a hot Sat.u.r.day evening. I'm back in the England I never left, and I need to change some dollars.

”Have a great weekend,” I urge the driver, which, being interpreted, means thank you for helping me smuggle my tapes and notepads out of Luton airport.

The speed-coach to Victoria station stands empty and pitch dark. Drivers smoke and chat beside it. The escaped prisoner selects a corner at the back, places the night-bag between his feet and slings the red sports bag onto the rack above his head. He presses the power b.u.t.ton on his cellphone. It lights up, then begins to tremble. He dials 121 and presses green. A severe woman warns him that he has five new messages.

Penelope, Friday, 1915: Salvo. You mad b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Where the f.u.c.k are you? We've looked everywhere. You show up late and are seen by several witnesses sneaking out of a side door halfway through the party. Why? Fergus has tried the loos and the bars downstairs and sent people running up and down the road shouting for you {m.u.f.fled 'yes, darling, I know') - we're in the limo, Salvo, and we're on our way to Sir Matthew's house for dinner. Fergus has the address in case you've lost it. G.o.d, Salvo!

Thorne the Horn, Friday, 1920: (Scots brogue, London-weighted) Salvo, listen, we're h.e.l.lish worried for you, old man. If you've not signified that you're in the land of the living within the hour, I'm proposing to have my people drag the rivers. Now do you have a pencil handy at all? And a piece of paper? What? - (garbled, roar of coa.r.s.e laughter) Penelope says you write things on your arm! What else do you write them on, man? (A Belgravia address follows. End of message) Penelope, Friday, 2030: I am in Sir Matthew's hall, Salvo. It's a very beautiful hall. I have received your message, thank you. I don't give a f.u.c.k who your oldest and best corporate client is, you have no right to humiliate me like this. In one minute, Fergus. You may not know this, Salvo, but Sir Matthew happens to be extremely superst.i.tious. Thanks to you, we are thirteen at table on a Friday. So what is happening even as I speak is that Fergus is desperately phoning around for ah, he's found one! and whom have you found, Fergus? -(a hand descends over the phone) he's found Jellicoe. Jelly will step into the breach. He possesses no dinner jacket but Fergus has ordered him to sober himself up and come as he is. So don't turn up here, whatever else you do, Salvo. Just go on doing whatever the f.u.c.k you're doing. Sir Matthew's table does not take fifteen and I have suffered enough f.u.c.king embarra.s.sment for one night!

Penelope, Sat.u.r.day, 0950: It's me, darling. Sorry if I was catty last night. I was just so terribly worried for you. I can't say I'm not still furious, but when you tell me all about it, I'll probably understand. The dinner party was actually rather fun, as pompous parties go. Jelly was feeling no pain, but Fergus made sure he didn't disgrace himself. You'll laugh when I tell you what else happened, though. I couldn't get inside our flat. I'd switched handbags at the office and left my keys behind, rather a.s.suming my ever loving would be on hand to take me home and give me a good seeing to. Paula was out gallivanting, which meant I couldn't use her key, so I was reduced to staying at Brown's Hotel for the night I hope at the paper's expense! And today which is a total ch.o.r.e, but I thought I'd better do it, seeing as how you've gone A.W.O.L. on me I've agreed to be a good scout and go and hear Fergus address a flock of high-flying advertisers at a posh country house in Suss.e.x. There's a knees-up afterwards apparently, with some big names in the industry, so I thought it might do me a bit of good. To meet them in an informal setting, I mean. Sir Matt is coming, so I'll be properly chaperoned. Anyway I'm on my way to the office now. To pick up my stuff. And do another quick-change act. So see you soon, darling. Tomorrow if not tonight. I'm still in a total rage with you, naturally. So you'll have to make the most marvelous amends. And please don't blame yourself about last night: I do understand really. Even if I pretend not to. Tschiiss. Oh, and I'll be off the air while I'm there no mobiles, apparently. So if there's a crisis, ring Paula. Bye-ee.

Hannah, Sat.u.r.day, 1014: salvo? Salvo? (power loss already evident) Why haven't you .. . (power fading fast as she s.h.i.+fts from English into desperate Swahili) .. . you promised, Salvo! ... oh G.o.d ... oh no! (power gone) If I were in the Chat Room or back in the boiler room I would say that either the mike was malfunctioning or that Subject was deliberately keeping her voice below the radar. But the line stays open. There's background noise, a bit of garble, OOT.

pa.s.sing footsteps, colliding voices in the corridor outside her room, but no foreground. I therefore conclude that Hannah has let the hand that is holding her cellphone flop to her side while she goes on sobbing her heart out for a further fifty-three seconds until she remembers to switch off. I dial her number and get her voice mail I dial the hospital. An unfamiliar voice informs me that hospital staff are not permitted to take personal calls during night s.h.i.+ft. The bus is filling up. Two women hikers look at me, then at the red nylon sports bag above me in the rack. They decide to sit up front where it's safer.

14.

Out of consideration for my slumbering neighbours I ascended the communal staircase quietly, carrying the red nylon sports bag baby-style across my chest in order not to glance it against the bannisters in error. Midsummer Sat.u.r.days in Prince of Wales Drive, you never know. Some nights it's high-jinks till all hours, with Penelope, if she's in, bawling out the police on the telephone and threatening to run a story in her paper about too few coppers on the beat. Other nights, what with the schools on holiday and the bomb scares and everyone having second homes these days, all you hear as you approach the entrance to Norfolk Mansions is your own footfall on the pavement, plus the Apache-like hoot of owls in Battersea Park. For the moment, however, there was only the one sound that was of any concern to me, which was Hannah's heartbroken voice choking out its accusations.

As usual the front door lock rejected me, which I tonight considered symbolic. As usual I had to pull the key back, fidget it and try again. Once inside the hall, I felt like my own ghost. Nothing had changed since I died. The lights were on, well, they would be. I had left them on when I dropped by to fling on my dinner jacket, and Penelope hadn't been back since. Pulling off the hated shoes, I was drawn to a blotched engraving of Tintagel Castle that for five years had hung unremarked in the gloomiest recess. Penelope's sister had given it to us for a wedding present. The sisters hated each other. Neither had any connection with Tintagel. They had never been there, didn't want to go. Some gifts say it all.

In the marital bedroom as was, I threw off my prisoner's garb and with sensations of distaste and liberation consigned it to the laundry basket. For good measure I tossed my rolled-up dinner jacket after it. Perhaps Thome the Horn would think it worth going on a diet for. Fetching my shaving kit from the bathroom, I confirmed with perverse satisfaction that the blue sponge-bag with the teddy-bear in which Penelope kept what she archly called her Press Kit was still missing from its shelf: just what every girl needs for a weekend with a flock of high-flying advertisers in Suss.e.x.

Back in the bedroom I emptied my stolen goods onto the bed, by which I mean the tapes and notepads and, obsessively tidy as I am, worried how best to dispose of Mr. Anderson's plastic night-bag until I remembered the waste bing in the kitchen. I was about to chuck Brian Sinclair's visiting cards after it, but decided for no reason I remember to keep them for what Aunt Imelda called a rainy day. I then put on the clothes of a free man: jeans, trainers, and a pre-Penelope leather jacket I had bought for myself on my first graduation. As a crowning glory, I added my navy-blue, woollen bobble hat which she had banned as too Afro.

I recount these actions in linear detail because as I performed them I was conscious of ceremony. Each movement I made was another step towards Hannah in the rash hope that she would have me, which I considered open to doubt. Each item hand-selected from my chest of drawers was part of the going-away wardrobe that would accompany me into my new life. From the hall I fetched my Antler Tronic Medium Roller-Case with integrated combination lock and adjustable towing handle, once a treasured possession to adorn a meaningless existence. First into it went the tapes and notepads which I wrapped in an old s.h.i.+rt before stowing them in an interior compartment. Moving methodically round the flat, and cutting off at source all nostalgic tugs, I swept up my laptop and attachments, but no printer on account of s.p.a.ce, my two tape recorders, the one pocket-sized, the other desk-sized, both in robust carrying cases, plus two sets of earphones and my little transistor radio. To these I added my father's life-stained missal, Brother Michael's hortatory letters from his deathbed, a gold locket containing a spray of Aunt Imelda's un tameable mop of white hair, a folder of personal correspondence including Lord Brinkley's letter to me and his Christmas cards, and the st.u.r.dy cloth shoulder-bag that had carried home the ingredients for my coq au vin.

From the desk in the bay window I extracted a wax-sealed envelope marked bruno's copy containing the pre-nuptial agreement drafted by Penelope's far-sighted father to cover precisely this moment. I had always recognised that he had a more realistic view of our marriage than I did. As solemnly as if I was laying a wreath at the Cenotaph, I set the twice-signed agreement on Penelope's pillow, removed the wedding ring from the third finger of my left hand and positioned it plumb centre. With this ring I thee unwed. If I felt anything, it was neither bitterness nor anger but completion. An awakening that had begun long before the little gentleman's outburst in the trattoria had reached its only possible conclusion. I had married Penelope for the person she didn't want to be: a fearless champion of our great British press, my faithful and enduring lover forsaking all others, my lifestyle instructor and the mother of my future children and, in my lowest moments, my own white mother-subst.i.tute. Penelope for her part had married the exotic in me, only to discover the conformist, which must have been a major disappointment to her. In that regard she had my heartfelt sympathy. I left no note.

Snapping my Roller-Case shut and refusing to take a last look round, I set course down the pa.s.sage towards the front door and freedom. As I did so I heard the lock turning without its usual impediment, and a pair of lightweight feet enter the hall. My immediate reaction was fear. Not of Penelope personally, because that was over. Fear of having to put into words what I had already put into action. Fear of delay, of loss of impetus, of precious time wasted in argument. Fear that Penelope's fling with Thorne had come to grief and she would be returning home in search of consolation, instead of which she was going to suffer another humiliating rejection, and from a quarter she regarded as incapable of credible resistance: me. I was therefore relieved to encounter not Penelope standing in front of me with her hand on her hip but our neighbour and psychological consultant Paula, wearing a raincoat and, as far as I could determine, nothing else.

”Hannibal heard yon, Salvo,” she said.

Paula's voice is mid-Atlantic monotone, a kind of permanent mope. Hannibal is her rescue greyhound.

”When pretty boys go sneaking around trying to be quiet, Hannibal hears them,” she continued gloomily. ”Where are you going, for f.u.c.k's sake? You look wild.”

”Work,” I said. ”Late call. It's urgent. Sorry, Paula. Got to go.”

”In those clothes? Tell me another. You need a drink. Got a bottle?”

”Well, not on me, if you know what I mean' joke ”Maybe I have for once. Got a bed too, if that's what you're looking for. You never thought I f.u.c.ked, did you? You thought I warmed my a.s.s at your fires. Penelope doesn't live here any more, Salvo. The person who lives here is token Penelope.”

”Paula, please. I've got to go.”

”The real Penelope is an insecure, overcompensating b.i.t.c.h who does action for doubt. She's also psychopathic and delusional and my dearest friend. Why don't you attend my Inner Body Experience group? We talk a lot about women like Penelope. You could aspire to a higher level of thought. What's the job?”

”Hospital.”

”With that suitcase? Where's the hospital Hong Kong?”

”Paula, please. I'm in a hurry.”

”How about f.u.c.k first, then go to hospital?”

”No. Sorry.”