“Sorry, mate,” I said, “I don’t fink I can cope with this level of detail. Can you be a bit more vague?” I was doing the barrow-boy bit then, which was why I said “fink.”
Barney struggled. “Just, I don’t know…”
“Tramps? Kings?” I suggested, annoyed that we still weren’t getting anywhere.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Barney said. “People. I can’t say. People like me, people like you. Well, maybe not like you, but people.” He sounded frustrated and glanced at the door to the Gents. It was only about fifteen minutes since his last toot but I sensed he was getting ready for more.
“People,” I said.
“People,” Barney agreed. He patted the pocket where his wrap of gear was and nodded emphatically.
Barney never was very good on specifics. It was one of the things that made him not very good as a trader. That and the over-fondness for the coke.
“This weekend?” I asked.
“This weekend.”
“Sure there’ll be room?”
He snorted. “Course there’ll be fucking room.”
There was lots of room cos it was a fucking mansion, wasn’t it? Spetley Hall’s in Suffolk, near Bury St Edmunds. One of those places where you pass a nice but deserted-looking gatehouse like something out of a fairy story and start off down the drive and begin to wonder if it’s all a giant wind-up cos the gentle rolling parkland and distant vistas of follies and herds of deer just seem to go on for ever with no actual dwelling in sight.
Then this cliff of stonework dotted with statues and urns and tall windows with ornate surrounds and looking like a barely miniaturised version of Buckingham Palace heaves into view over the horizon and you suspect you’re finally nearing the gaff. Still didn’t get greeted by no butler or footmen or anything, though. Had to park me own car, didn’t I? Though actually there was a servant of some description who did help me with my bags once I’d tramped up the steps to the front doors. He even apologised for not being there to greet me, just taken some other guests to their room.
It was all the wife’s, Mrs Noyce’s, really. She was something double-barrelled and a proper Lady with a capital L and had married Mr N and they’d inherited the place. There were at least twenty guests that weekend. I’m still not sure I saw all of them all together in the one place at any one time. Mrs N was a lovely old grey-haired girl, not stuck-up but seriously posh and she tried to get everybody to dinner and breakfast at the same time but what with one couple needing to stay the Friday night in London, somebody having a cold, a couple of children to be got ready for bed early and all that sort of stuff, I don’t think we were ever totally quorate, know what I mean?
Plus I wasn’t even that far off with the meant-to-be-facetious question to Barney about there being kings there, as one minor royal and his lady friend were present.
I’d left my own current main girl back at the flat. She was lovely, a dancer called Lysanne and all legs and gorgeous long real blonde hair but she had a Scouse accent you could have etched steel with. Plus she’d have been a distraction, frankly. And also Lysanne was one of those girls who never really managed to hide the fact she was always on the lookout to trade up. I was definitely a catch compared to her earlier boyfriend, another dealer a level or two down the chain of demand, but I never fooled myself that she thought I was the best she could do. Bringing her somewhere like Spetley Hall when it was full of our richers and betters would be too tempting for her, no matter what she might tell me about how much she really loved me and how she was mine for ever. She’d have made a nuisance of herself. Probably a fool of herself too, and me, and ended up getting hurt.
Worst of all, of course, she just might have succeeded, skipping off with some doolally trustafarian and leaving me ditched, looking like a wanker. Couldn’t have that either, could I?
It was through touching on this sort of stuff over a game of billiards late on the Saturday night that I got to know Mr Noyce. It was just us two by this time. Everybody else had gone off to bed. All done without chemical aid on my part, too. Billiards is what the toffs play instead of snooker.
“You really see it so coldly, do you, Adrian?” he asked, sketching the tip of his cue with green chalk. He blew the excess off and smiled at me. Mr N was a biggish, twinkly sort of guy, light on his feet for a portly gent. He had greying straw-coloured hair and bushy black eyebrows. He wore the big-framed glasses that were still just about fashionable at the time. Give him a cigar and he’d have looked like Groucho Marx. We’d both hung our proper dinner jackets over chairs. He’d loosened his bow tie. I’d unclipped mine. I’d made a mental note to buy a proper bow tie. Even if I couldn’t be bothered going through the whole rigmarole of tying it up at the start of the evening I could keep it in my pocket, wear the clip-on and just replace the fake one with the untied real one at the end of the evening, leave it hanging. Looked much classier. Like Mrs N, Barney’s dad had that way of looking perfectly relaxed in the sort of ultra-formal gear most of us feel dead awkward in.
The rich love dressing up, I’d realised that weekend. It has to be within a strict sort of framework, though. They have specialist clothes for morning, afternoon, eating dinner, riding, hunting (actually different sets of clothes for different sorts of hunting, not to mention fishing), boating, general tramping around the country, popping into the local town and for going up to London. They always went up to London, even if they’d started far north of it. Something to do with trains, apparently. Seen in this light, even their casual clothes became like Casual Clothes rather than just stuff you liked knocking about in or that made you feel comfortable.
“What, relationships, Mr N?”
“Please, call me Edward. Yes, relationships.” He had a soft, deep voice. Posh but not fruity. “That’s a terribly unromantic outlook, don’t you think?”
I grinned at him, cued up, whacked a white ball around a bit. I’d picked up the rules of billiards easily enough, though it still seemed a pretty pointless game to me. “Well, they say everything’s a market, don’t they, Edward?”
“Hmm. Some people do.”
“Didn’t think you’d disagree, in your position,” I told him. Mr N was senior partner in one of the City’s best-known stockbroking firms and allegedly worth a mint.
“I treat the market like a market,” he agreed. He took a shot, stood admiring it for a moment. “Perverse to do otherwise.” He smiled at me. “Probably expensive as well, I imagine.”
“Yeah, but life’s like that too, isn’t it?” I said. “Don’t you think? I mean, people tell themselves all these fairy stories about true love and stuff, but when it comes right down to it, people have a pretty good idea of their own value on the marriage market or relationship market or whatever you want to call it, know what I mean? Ugly people know better than to go up to beautiful ones and expect anything else but a knock-back. Beautiful people can grade themselves and other people, spot the pecking order. Like a squash ladder.” I grinned. “You know where you are and you can challenge somebody a bit above you or be challenged by somebody a bit below, but it’s going to end in embarrassment if you outreach yourself. Bit like that.”
“A squash ladder,” Mr N said. He sighed, took his shot.
“Point is,” I said, “people start from whatever social level they get born into but they can trade up with looks, can’t they? Or a bit of looks and a lot of face, a lot of self-confidence. Or some sort of talent. Footballers do that. Film stars. Rock stars. Superstar DJs, whatever. Gets you money and fame. But the point is that looks are liquid, know what I mean? Specially for girls. Looks can take you anywhere. But only if you use them. A girl like my Lysanne, she’s very aware of her looks. She knows how to use them, and she does use them, bless her. She thinks she can do better than me. Better than where I am at the moment, anyway. So she’ll take any chance she can to trade up, do a bit better for herself. Well, fair play to her. Though there are risks, obviously. It’s a bit like mountaineering. The trick for somebody lik
e her is checking out the next hold’s firm before you leave the security of the one you’ve been depending on until now.”
“That is a lot of face, indeed.”
I grinned, to show I’d got the joke, obscure though it might have been. “Can’t blame her for it, though, can I? I mean, if I found somebody better-looking or as good-looking but better educated, a bit more sophisticated than Lysanne, I suppose I’d ditch her for them.” I shrugged, gave him my cheeky-chappie grin. “Fair’s fair.”
“And ‘up’ always means up to more money, I take it?”
“Course, Edward. Money’s what it’s all about in the end, isn’t it? Life’s a game and whoever dies with the most toys wins. Don’t ask me who said that, but it’s true, don’t you think?”
“Well,” Mr N said, drawing the word out. “You have to be careful. One of the wisest things anybody ever said to me was that if all you ever care about is money, money is all that will ever care for you.” He looked at me. I smiled back. He sighed as he surveyed the table. “Meaning, I suppose, that if you care nothing for people, then, when you’re old and fading, only hired carers, and maybe what we used to call gold-diggers, will still be around to look after you.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll worry about that when it happens, Edward.”
Mr N went to the side table where our drinks were and sipped from his whisky. “Well, I suppose as long as you both know where you stand.” He tipped his head to one side. “Do you both know where you stand? Is this something you’ve talked about, together?”
I grimaced. “It’s… tacit.”
“Tacit?” Mr N smiled.
I nodded. “It’s understood.”
“And is there no room for love in this terribly transactional view of human relationships, Adrian?”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” I said breezily. “When it comes along. Kind of thing there’s no allowing for. Another level. Boss level. Who knows?”
He just smiled, took his shot.
“Thing is,” I said. “With all due respect, Edward, you can afford to think the way you think and feel the way you feel because you’ve kind of got it all, know what I mean?” I smiled broadly to show there was no edge here, no jealousy involved. Just an observation. “Lovely wife, family, important job, country estate, flat in London, skiing in Klosters, sailing in the Med, everything you could ask for. You have the luxury of observing the rest of us from your Olympian heights, haven’t you? Me, I’m still scrabbling up the foothills. Knee-deep in scree down here, me.” He laughed at that. “Most of us are. We need to be clear-sighted, we need to see things the way they really are to us.” I shrugged. “Looking after number one. It’s all we’re doing.”
“And how are things for you, Adrian?”
“They’re fine, thanks.” I took my shot. Lots of aimless clacking and movement.
“Good. I’m glad for you. Barney talks very highly of you. What is it you do again?”
“Web design. Got my own company.” Which was nothing but the truth without being remotely like the whole of it.
“Well, I hope you do well, but you ought to know that no amount of success frees you of all problems.” He stooped, evaluating.
“Well, we all have our crosses to bear, Edward, no doubt about that.”
He took his shot, stood up slowly. “What do you think of Barney?” He watched the balls click and clack across the baize, not looking at me. He rechalked his cue, brows furrowed.
Ah-ha, I thought. I didn’t reply too quickly. Took a shot in the meantime. “He’s a great guy,” I said. “Brilliant company.” I put on a slightly pained expression. When Edward looked at me I took a breath and said, “He could choose some of his friends better.” I laughed lightly. “Present company excluded, obviously.”
Mr N didn’t smile. He bent to size up another shot. “I worry that he’s enjoying himself a bit too much. I’ve talked to the people at Bairns Faplish.” This was the broking company Barney worked for, Mr N having thought it would look bad to bring the boy straight into his own firm after graduation. Barney had told me himself that he’d needed intensive tutoring to blag his way from Eton into Oxford and had barely scraped a 2.2. Whatever that is. I thought it was an airgun pellet. “They’re a little concerned,” Mr N continued. “He’s not bringing in what he might. They can’t let that situation go on for ever. It’s not like the old days. Once, any idiot could be a stockbroker, and a lot were. Not good enough these days.” He flashed me a mouth-only smile, no eyes involved at all. “There’s a family name at stake, after all.”
“We’re all a bit wild when we’re young, aren’t we?” I suggested. Edward looked unconvinced. “He’ll pull straight in time,” I told him, looking serious. I could say this sort of shit fairly convincingly on account of being a bit older than Barney. I put my cue down on the table, folded my arms. “Look, Mr N, Edward, it’s always more pressure on a guy when he’s got a successful father, know what I mean? He looks up to you, he does. I know that. But you’re, you know. You’re a lot to live up to. It’s bound to be intimidating, being in your shadow. You might not see it, but that’s you being up in your Olympian heights again, isn’t it?”
He smiled. A little sadly, perhaps.
“Well, as you say, he could do with some better friends,” he said, leaning on his cue and surveying the table. “I don’t want to sound like some Victorian paterfamilias, but a little more of the straight and narrow would do him no harm.”
“You’re probably right, Edward.” I picked up my cue. “My theory is that he’s too nice.”
“Too nice?”
“Had it all too easy, thinks the world’s a nicer place than it really is. Expects everybody else to be as relaxed and good-natured as he is.” I shook my head. I bent to my shot. “Dangerous.”
“Perhaps you’d care to instruct him in life according to you. Oh, good shot.”
“Thanks. I could,” I agreed. “I mean I have, already, but I could make more of a point of it. If you liked. Don’t know that he’ll listen to me, but I could try.”
“I’d be very grateful.” Mr N smiled.
“It’d be my pleasure, Edward.”
“Hmm.” He looked thoughtful. “We’re off to Scotland next month, shooting. Barney and Dulcima have said they’ll be there for the first week, though I expect he’ll find an excuse not to come at the last minute again. I think he finds us boring. Do you shoot, Adrian?”
(Great, I think. I can make Barney come along by promising him the whole week’s my treat coke-wise and then I’ll be right in with Mr N!) “Never tried, Edward.”
“You should. Would you like to come along?”
Madame d’Ortolan
Mr Kleist thought the lady took the news remarkably well, considering. He had done something he’d never thought to do in the several years he had been employed by her, and disturbed her while she was at her toilet. She had called him in and had continued to apply her make-up while she sat at her dressing table with him standing behind her. They looked at each other via the table’s mirror. Madame d’Ortolan had donned a peignoir before receiving him; however, he found that if he let his eyes stray downwards he could see rather a large portion of both her breasts. He took a half-step backwards to save both their blushes. There had never been anything of that nature between them. Nevertheless, when the cat called M. Pamplemousse unentwined itself from beneath the stool its mistress sat upon and gazed up at him, it was with what looked like an accusation.
Madame d’Ortolan sighed. “Harmyle?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am.”
“Dead?”
“Quite entirely.”
“Our boy has jumped the rails, then.”
“Indeed, ma’am, he might be said to be on the opposite track, heading in precisely the wrong direction, and at some speed.”
Madame d’Ortolan regarded Mr Kleist with a look of desiccated withering that most men would have flinched at. Mr Kleist was not the flinching sort. “He’s still being tracked?”
; “Just. Two of the five report they managed to hang on by their fingernails, metaphorically. However, his next transition ought to be much easier to follow, apparently.”
“Bring him in,” she told him. “Hurt but unharmed.” Mr Kleist nodded, understanding. “And address all the correct targets individually and concurrently.” He nodded. “Immediately,” she told him, taking up her hairbrush.
“Of course, ma’am.”
Mr Kleist did his best to kick M. Pamplemousse accidentally on purpose as he turned away, but the creature easily avoided his foot and mewed with what sounded like self-satisfaction.
The Transitionary
I sniff, blow my nose, look round. I am in another version of the building which housed the Perineum Club, back where Lord Harmyle is – at this very moment, I should think – lying on the floor, kicking and gurgling his way to a rather bloody death.
In this reality, the Vermyn Street building contains a parfumerie. The dark wood panels are mostly hidden by exquisite wall rugs and creamy, gently glowing light panels illuminating a smattering of tear-shaped perfume bottles arrayed on glass shelves. The air is laced with enchanting female scents and no one looks in the least surprised that I have just sneezed. The well-heeled clientele is composed mostly of ladies. One or two are with gentlemen, and there are a couple of other unescorted men besides myself. It is the men I find myself looking at. The shop assistants are mostly very good-looking young men. One especially chiselled specimen, tall and dark, smiles at me. I smile back, a little thrill running through me.
Ah well. I never fully appreciate being gay, but at least I haven’t hit the ground counting the cracks in the parquet flooring. I seem to have left the OCD behind, for now at least. My languages are English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Cantonese, plus smatterings.
I quickly review my attire in a full-length mirror. I am dressed similarly to the way I was with Lord Harmyle (I wonder if he is the late Lord Harmyle yet). My hair is long and dark and ringleted in what would appear to be the fashion here, though it looks particularly good on me, I must say. No wonder the young assistant favoured me with a smile. I check my hands for any signs of blood. It would be unusual and alarming if there were any, but one always looks. Spotless. I have very pale hands, beautifully manicured and sporting two silver or white gold rings on each hand.