But tonight she was grateful for all of it: let them bicker and play their bloody music to their hearts’ content, let them give her all the normality they’ve got, because, oh mother, did she need normality. Just get her out of surgery and into the recovery room. Just tell her the nightmare’s over, Gail dear, there are no more softly spoken Scottish blue-stockings or undersized espiocrats with Etonian accents, no more orphaned children, drop-dead-gorgeous Natashas, gun-slinging uncles, Dimas and Tamaras, and Perry Makepiece my Heaven-sent lover and purblind innocent is not about to wrap himself in the sacrificial flag for his Orwellian love of lost England, his admirable quest for Connection with a capital C – connection with what? for Christ’s sake – or his homebrewed brand of inverted, puritanical vanity.
Climbing the stairs, her knees began trembling.
At the first poky half-landing they trembled more.
At the second they trembled so wildly she had to prop herself against the wall till they steadied down.
And when she reached the last flight, she had to haul herself up by the handrail to get to the front door before the time-switch cut.
Standing in the tiny hall with her back to the closed door, she listened, sniffing the air for booze, body odour or stale cigarette smoke, or all three, which was how a couple of months back she knew she’d been burgled before she ever walked up the spiral staircase to find her bed pissed on and the pillows slashed and foul lipstick messages smeared across her mirror.
Only when she had relived that moment to the full did she open the kitchen door, hang up her coat, check the bathroom, pee, pour herself a king-sized tumbler of Rioja, swig a mouthful, replenish the tumbler to the brim and carry it precariously to the living room.
*
Standing, not sitting. She’d done enough passive sitting for a lifetime, thank you.
Standing in front of the non-functioning all-pine, do-it-yourself reproduction Georgian fireplace installed by a previous owner, and staring at the same long sash window where Perry had stood six hours ago: Perry on the slant, birdlike and eight foot tall, peering down into the street, waiting for an ordinary black cab with its ‘For Hire’ light out, last numbers on its licence plate 73, and your driver’s name will be Ollie.
No curtains to our sash windows. Shutters only. Perry who likes sheer but will pay his half for curtains if she really wants them. Perry who disapproves of central heating but worries that she’s not warm enough. Perry who one minute says we can only have one child for fear of world overpopulation, then wants six by return of post. Perry who, the moment they touch down in England after the fucked-up holiday of a lifetime, hightails it to Oxford, buries himself in his digs, and for fifty-six hours communicates in cryptic text messages from the front:
document nearly complete … have made contact with necessary people … arriving London midday-ish … please leave key under doormat …
‘He said they’re a team apart, not run-of-the-mill,’ he tells her, as he watches the wrong taxis go by.
‘He?’
‘Adam.’
‘The man who called you back. That Adam?’
‘Yes.’
‘Surname or Christian name?’
‘I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell me. He says they’ve got their own set-up for cases like this. A special house. He wouldn’t say where over the telephone. The cab driver would know.’
‘Ollie.’
‘Yes.’
‘Cases like what, actually?’
‘Ours. That’s all I know.’
A black cab goes past but it has its light on. Not a spy cab then. A normal cab. Driven by a man who isn’t Ollie. Disappointed again, Perry rounds on her:
‘Look. What else do you expect me to do? If you’ve got a better suggestion, let’s hear it. You’ve done nothing but snipe since we got back to England.’
‘And you’ve done nothing but keep me at arm’s length. Oh, and treat me like a child. Of the weaker sex. I forgot that bit.’
He has gone back to looking out of the window.
‘Is Adam the only person to have read your letter-document-report-cum-witness statement?’ she asks.
‘I can’t imagine so. I wouldn’t bank on his name being Adam either. He just said Adam like a password.’
‘Really? I wonder how he did that.’
She tries saying Adam as a password in several different ways, but Perry is not drawn.
‘You’re sure Adam’s a man, are you? Not just a woman with a deep voice?’
No answer. None expected.
Yet another taxi passes. Still not ours. Whatever does one wear for spies, darling? as her mother would have said. Cursing herself for even wondering, she has changed out of her office clothes into a skirt and high-necked blouse. And sensible shoes, nothing to stir the juices – well, except Luke’s, but how could she have known?
‘Perhaps he’s stuck in traffic,’ she suggests, and again gets no answer, which serves her right. ‘Anyway, to resume. You gave the letter to an Adam. And an Adam received it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have rung you, presumably.’ She’s being irritating and knows it. So does he. ‘How many pages? Of our secret document? Yours.’
‘Twenty-eight,’ he replies.
‘Handwritten or typed?’
‘Handwritten.’
‘Why not typed?’
‘I decided handwritten was safer.’
‘Really? On whose advice?’
‘I hadn’t had advice by then. Dima and Tamara were convinced they were bugged at every turn, so I decided to respect their anxieties and not do anything – electronic. Interceptible.’
‘Wasn’t that rather paranoid?’
‘I’m sure it was. We’re both paranoid. So are Dima and Tamara. We’re all paranoid.’
‘Then let’s admit it. Let’s be paranoid together.’
No answer. Silly little Gail tries yet another tack:
‘Do you want to tell me how you got on to Mr Adam in the first place?’
‘Anyone can do it. It’s not a problem these days. You can do it on the Web.’
‘Did you do it on the Web?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t trust the Web?’
‘No.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘I hear the most amazing confidences every day of my life. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you don’t exactly hear me regaling our friends at dinner parties with my clients’ secrets, do you?’
‘No.’
Reload:
‘You also know that as a young barrister who is self-employed without a paddle and terrified of where the next job is or is not coming from, I am professionally disposed against mystery briefs that offer no prospect of prestige or reward.’
‘Nobody’s offering you a brief, Gail. Nobody’s asking you to do anything except talk.’
‘Which is what I call a brief.’
Another wrong taxi. Another silence, a bad one.
‘Well, at least Mr Adam invited both of us,’ she says, going for cheerful. ‘I thought you’d airbrushed me out of your document completely.’
Which is when Perry becomes Perry again, and the dagger in her hand turns against herself as he gazes at her with so much hurt love that she is more alarmed for Perry than for herself.
‘I tried to airbrush you out, Gail. I did my absolute damnedest to airbrush you out. I believed I could protect you from being involved. It didn’t work. They’ve got to have us both. Initially anyway. He was – well – adamant.’ Lame laugh. ‘The way you would be about witnesses. “If the two of you were present, then two of you must obviously come.” I’m really sorry.’
And he was. She knew he was. The day Perry learned to fake his feelings would be the day he wasn’t Perry any more.
And she was as sorry as he was. Sorrie
r. She was in his arms telling him this when a black taxi with its flag down appeared in the street outside, last two numbers 73, and a nearly cockney male voice informed them over the house entryphone that he was Ollie and he had two passengers to pick up for Adam.
*
And now she was excluded again. Debarred, debriefed, discarded.
The obedient little woman, waiting for her man to come home, and having another man-sized glass of Rioja to help her do it.
All right, it was in the whole ridiculous contract from the start. She should never have let him get away with it. But that didn’t mean she had to sit and twiddle her thumbs, and she hadn’t.
That very morning, although he didn’t know it, while Perry had been sitting here waiting obediently for the Voice of Adam, she had been busy in her Chambers tapping away at her computer, and not, for once, on the matter of Samson v. Samson.
That she had waited until she got to her office rather than use her own laptop from home – that she had waited at all – was still a puzzle to her, if not a cause for outright self-reproach. Put it down to the Perry-generated prevailing atmosphere of conspiracy.
That she still possessed Dima’s deckle-edged business card was a hanging offence since Perry had told her to destroy it.
That she had gone electronic – and therefore interceptible – was as it now turned out also a hanging offence. But since he had not informed her in advance of this particular branch of his paranoia, he could hardly complain.
The Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus, its website informed her in bad, blotchy English, was a consulting company specializing in providing help for active traders. Its head office was in Moscow. It had representatives in Toronto, Rome, Berne, Karachi, Frankfurt, Budapest, Prague, Tel Aviv and Nicosia. None, however, in Antigua. And no brass-plate bank. Or none mentioned.
‘Arena Multi Global prides itself on confidentiality and entreprenurial [with an ‘e’ missing] flare [misspelled] at all levels. It offers top-class oportunities [with one ‘p’] and private banking facilities’ [spelled correctly]. Note: this web page is currently under reconstruction. Further information available on application to Moscow office.’
Ted was an American bachelor who sold futures for Morgan Stanley. From her desk in Chambers she rang Ted:
‘Gail, sweetheart.’
‘An outfit calling itself the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate. Can you dig up the dirt on them for me?’
Dirt? Ted could dig dirt like nobody else. Ten minutes later he was back.
‘Those Russki friends of yours.’
‘Russki?’
‘They’re like me. Hot as hell and rich as figgy pudding.’
‘How rich is rich?’
‘Anybody’s guess, but looks mega. Fifty-something subsidiaries, all with great trading records. You into money-laundering, Gail?’
‘How did you know?’
‘These Russki mothers pass the money around between them so fast nobody knows who owns it for how long. That’s all I got for you but I paid blood. Will you love me for ever?’
‘I’ll think about it, Ted.’
Her next step was Ernie, the Chambers’ resourceful, sixty-something clerk. She waited till lunchtime when the coast was clearest.
‘Ernie. A favour. Rumour has it that there’s a disgraceful chat site you visit when you want to check out the companies of our highly reputable clients. I’m deeply shocked and I need you to consult it for me.’
Thirty minutes on, and Ernie had presented her with an edited printout of disgraceful exchanges on the subject of the Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate.
Any asshole got an idea who runs this junk shop? The guys change MDs like socks. P. BROSNAN
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the wise words of Maynard Keynes: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Asshole yourself. R. CROW
What the f***’s happened to MG’s website. It’s curdled. B. PITT
MG’s website is down but not out. B-s rises to the surface. Assholes all beware. M. MUNROE
But I’m really really curious. These guys come on at me like they have the hots, then they leave me panting and unfulfilled. P.B.
Hey guys, listen to this! I just heard MGTC opened an office in Toronto. R.C.
Office? You’re shitting me! It’s a f***ing Russian nightclub, man. Pole dancers, Stolly and bortsch. M.M.
Hey, asshole, me again. Is the office they opened in Toronto the same one they closed in Equatorial Guinea? If so, run for cover man. Run now. R.C.
Arena Multi f***ing Global has absolutely zero hits on Google. I repeat zero. The whole outfit is so über-amateurish I get palpitations. P.B.
Do you by any chance believe in the afterlife? If not, start believing now. You are treading on the Biggest Bananaskinski in the laundering arena. Official. M.M.
They were just so enthusiastic about me. Now this. P.B.
Stay away. Stay far, far away. R.C.
*
She is in Antigua, wafted there by another tumbler of Rioja from the kitchen.
She’s listening to the pianist in the mauve bow tie crooning Simon and Garfunkel to an elderly American couple in ducks pirouetting all alone on the dance deck.
She’s fending off the glances of beautiful waiters who have nothing to do but undress her with their eyes. She is overhearing the seventy-year-old Texan widow-woman of a thousand facelifts telling Ambrose to bring her red wine as long as it isn’t French.
She’s standing on the tennis court, demurely shaking hands for the first time with a bald fighting bull who calls himself Dima. She’s remembering his reproachful brown eyes and rock jaw and the rigid, Erich von Stroheim backward lean of his upper body.
She’s in the Bloomsbury basement, one moment Perry’s life companion, the next his surplus baggage, not wanted on voyage. She’s sitting with three people who, thanks to our document and whatever else Perry has managed to bubble to them in the meantime, know a whole lot she doesn’t.
She’s sitting alone in the drawing room of her desirable residence in Primrose Hill at half past midnight with Samson v. Samson on her lap and an empty wineglass beside her.
Springing to her feet – whoops – she climbs the spiral staircase to her bedroom, makes the bed, follows the trail of Perry’s dirty clothes across the floor to the bathroom and stuffs them into the laundry basket. Five days since he made love to me. Will we establish a record?
She returns downstairs, one step at a time, one hand for the boat. She’s back at the window, staring into the street, praying for her man to come home in a black cab with the last two numbers 73. She’s riding buttock to buttock under the midnight stars with Perry in the bumpy people carrier with blackened windows as Baby Face, the short-haired blond bodyguard with the linked gold bracelet, drives them to their hotel at the end of the birthday revels at Three Chimneys.
‘You had good night, Gail?’
This is your driver speaking. Until now, Baby Face hasn’t let on that he speaks English. When Perry challenged him outside the tennis court, he didn’t speak a word of it. So why’s he letting on now? she wonders, alert as never in her life.
‘Fabulous night, thank you,’ she declares in her father’s voice, filling in for Perry, who appears to have gone deaf. ‘Simply wonderful. I’m so happy for those magnificent boys.’
‘My name is Niki, OK?’
‘OK. Great. Hello, Niki,’ says Gail. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Perm, Russia. Nice place. Perry, please? You had good night too?’
Gail is about to jab Perry with her elbow when he comes to life by himself. ‘Great, thanks, Niki. Fantastic food. Really nice people. Super. Best evening of our holiday so far.’
Not bad for a beginner, thinks Gail.
‘What time you arrive Three Chimneys?’ Niki asks.
‘We nearly didn??
?t arrive at all, Niki,’ Gail exclaims, giggling to cover for Perry’s hesitation. ‘Did we, Perry? We took the Nature Path and had to hack our way through the undergrowth! Where did you learn your wonderful English, Niki?’
‘Boston, Massachusetts. You got knife?’
‘Knife?’
‘To cut undergrowth, you got to have big knife.’
Those dead eyes in the mirror, what have they seen? What are they seeing now?
‘I wish we had, Niki,’ Gail cries, still in her father’s skin. ‘I’m afraid we English don’t carry knives.’ What gibberish am I talking? Never mind. Talk it. ‘Well, some of us do, to be truthful, but not people like us. We’re the wrong social class. You’ve heard about our class system? Well, in England you only carry a knife if you’re lower-middle or below!’ And more hoots of laughter to see them round the roundabout and into the drive to the front entrance.
Dazed, they pick their way like strangers between the lighted hibiscus to their cabin. Perry closes the door behind them, locks it, but doesn’t switch the light on. They stand facing each other across the bed in the darkness. For an age, there’s no soundtrack. Which should not imply that Perry hasn’t made up his mind what he’s about to say:
‘I need paper to write on. So do you.’ His I’m-in-charge-here voice, normally reserved, she assumes, for errant undergraduates who have failed to turn in their weekly essay.
He draws the blinds. He switches on the inadequate reading light on my side of the bed, leaving the rest of the room in darkness.
He yanks open the drawer of my bedside locker and fishes out a yellow legal pad: also mine. Emblazoned on it, my brilliant reflections on Samson v. Samson: my first case as a top silk’s junior, my quantum leap to instant fame and fortune.
Or not.
Ripping off the pages on which I have recorded my pearls of legal wisdom, he stuffs them back in the drawer, snaps what’s left of my yellow pad in two, and hands me my half.