April 17
WINDSURFERS, SEAGULLS, AND SUN, a salt-’n’-vinegar breeze, a glossy sea, and an early walk along the pier with Aoife. Aoife’s never been on a pier before and she loves it. She does a row of froggy jumps, enjoying the flicker of the LED bulbs in the heels of her trainers. We’d have killed for shoes like that when I was a kid, but Holly says it’s hard to find shoes that don’t light up these days. Aoife has a Dora the Explorer helium balloon tied to her wrist. I just paid a fiver for it to a charming Pole. I look behind us, trying to work out which window of the Grand Maritime Hotel is our room. I invited Holly out on the walk but she said she had to help Sharon get ready for a hairdresser who isn’t due until nine-thirty. It’s not yet eight-thirty. It’s her way of letting me know she hasn’t shifted her position from last night.
“Daddy? Daddy? Did you hear me?”
“Sorry, poppet,” I tell Aoife. “I was miles away.”
“No, you weren’t. You’re right here.”
“I was miles away metaphorically.”
“What’s meta … frickilly?”
“The opposite of literally.”
“What’s litter-lily?”
“The opposite of metaphorically.”
Aoife pouts. “Be serious, Daddy.”
“I’m always serious. What were you asking, poppet?”
“If you were any animal, what would you be? I’d be a white Pegasus with a black star on its forehead, and my name’d be Diamond Swiftwing. Then Mummy and me could fly to Bad Dad and see you. And Pegasuses don’t hurt the planet like airplanes—they only poo. Grandpa Dave says when he was small his daddy used to hang apples on very tall poles over his allotment, so all the Pegasuses’d hover there, eat, and poo. Pegasus poo is so magic the pumpkins’d grow really really big, bigger than me, even, so just one would feed a family for a week.”
“Sounds like Grandpa Dave. Who’s the Bad Dad?”
Aoife frowns at me. “The place where you live, silly.”
“Baghdad. ‘Bagh-dad.’ But I don’t live there.” God, it’s lucky Holly didn’t hear that. “It’s just where I work.” I imagine a Pegasus over the Green Zone, and see a bullet-riddled corpse plummeting to earth and getting barbecued by Young Republicans. “But I won’t be there forever.”
“Mummy wants to be a dolphin,” says Aoife, “because they swim, talk a lot, smile, and they’re loyal. Uncle Brendan wants to be a Komodo dragon, ’cause there’re people on Gravesend Council he’d like to bite and shake to pieces, which is how Komodo dragons make their food smaller. Aunty Sharon wants to be an owl because owls are wise, and Aunt Ruth wants to be a sea otter so she can spend all day floating on her back in California and meet David Attenborough.” We reach a section of the pier where it widens out around an amusement arcade. Big letters spelling BRIGHTON PIER stand erect between two limp Union flags. The arcade’s not open yet, so we follow the walkway around the outside of the arcade. “What animal would you be, Daddy?”
Mum used to call me a gannet; and as a journalist I’ve been called a vulture, a dung beetle, a shit snake; a girl I once knew called me her dog, but not in a social context. “A mole.”
“Why?”
“They’re good at burrowing into dark places.”
“Why d’you want to burrow into dark places?”
“To discover things. But moles are good at something else, too.” My hand rises like a possessed claw. “Tickling.”
But Aoife tilts her head to one side like a scale model of Holly. “If you tickle me I’ll wet myself and then you’ll have to wash my pants.”
“Okay.” I act contrite. “Moles don’t tickle.”
“I should think so too.” How she says that makes me afraid Aoife’s childhood’s a book I’m flicking through instead of reading properly.
Behind the arcade, seagulls are squabbling over chips spilling from a ripped-open bag. Big bastards, these birds. A row of stalls, booths, and shops runs down the middle of the pier. I can’t help but notice the woman walking towards us, because everything around her shifts out of focus. She’s around my age, give or take, and tall for a woman though not stand-outishly so. Her hair is white-gold in the sun, her velvet suit is the dark green of moss on graves, and her bottle-blue sunglasses will be fashionable some decades from now. I put on my own sunglasses. She compels attention. She compels. She’s way out of my class, she’s way out of anybody’s class, and I feel grubby and disloyal to Holly, but look at her, Jesus Christ, look at her—graceful, lithe, knowing, and light bends around her. “Edmund Brubeck,” say her wine-red lips. “As I live and breathe, it’s you, isn’t it?”
I’ve stopped in my tracks. You don’t forget beauty like this. How on earth does she know me, and why don’t I remember? I take off my sunglasses now and say, “Hi!,” hoping that I sound confident, hoping to buy time for clues to emerge. Not a native English accent. European. French? Bendier than German, but not Italian. No journalist looks this semidivine. An actress or model I interviewed, years ago? Someone’s trophy wife from a more recent party? A friend of Sharon’s in Brighton for the wedding? God, this is embarrassing.
She’s still smiling. “I have you at a disadvantage, don’t I?”
Am I blushing? “You have to forgive me, I—I’m …”
“I’m Immaculée Constantin, a friend of Holly’s.”
“Oh,” I bluster, “Immaculée—yes, of course!” Do I half-know that name from somewhere? I shake her hand and perform an awkward cheek-to-cheek kiss. Her skin’s as smooth as marble but cooler than sun-warmed skin. “Forgive me, I … I just got back from Iraq yesterday and my brain’s frazzled.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” says Immaculée Constantin, whoever the hell she is. “So many faces, so many faces. One must lose a few old ones to make space for the new. I knew Holly as a girl in Gravesend, although I left town when she was eight years old. It’s curious how the two of us keep bumping into each other, every now and then. As if the universe long ago decided we’re connected. And this young lady,” she gets down on one knee to look eye-to-eye at my daughter, “must be Aoife. Am I correct?”
Wide-eyed Aoife nods. Dora the Explorer sways and turns.
“And how old are you now, Aoife Brubeck? Seven? Eight?”
“I’m six,” says Aoife. “My birthday’s on December the first.”
“How grown up you look! December the first? My, my.” Immaculée Constantin recites in a secretive, musical voice: “ ‘A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey, and such a journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.’ ”
Holidaymakers pass us by like they’re ghosts, or we are.
Aoife says, “There’s not a cloud in the sky today.”
Immaculée Constantin stares at her. “How right you are, Aoife Brubeck. Tell me. Do you take after your mummy most, do you think, or your daddy?”
Aoife sucks in her lip and looks up at me.
Waves slap and echo below us and a Dire Straits song snakes over from the arcade. “Tunnel of Love” it’s called; I loved it when I was a kid. “Well, I like purple best,” says Aoife, “and Mummy likes purple. But Daddy reads magazines all the time, whenever he’s home, and I read a lot too. Specially I Love Animals. If you could be any animal, what would you be?”
“A phoenix,” murmurs Immaculée Constantin. “Or the phoenix, in truth. How about an invisible eye, Aoife Brubeck? Do you have one of those? Would you let me check?”
“Mummy has blue eyes,” says Aoife, “but Daddy’s are chestnut brown and mine are chestnut brown, too.”
“Oh, not those eyes”—now the woman removes her strange blue sunglasses. “I mean your special, invisible eye, just … here.” She rests her fingers on Aoife’s right temple and strokes her forehead with her thumb, and deep in my liver or somewhere I know something’s weird, something’s wrong, but it’s drowned out when Immaculée Constantin smiles up at me with her heart-walloping beauty. She studies a space above my eyes, then turns back to Aoife’s, and frowns. “No,” she says, and purses her painterly lips. “A pity. Your uncle’s invisible eye was magnificent, and your mother’s was enchanting, too, before it was sealed shut by a wicked magician.”
“What’s an invisible eye?” asks Aoife.
“Oh, that hardly matters.” She stands up.
I ask, “Are you here for Sharon’s wedding?”
She replaces her sunglasses. “I’m finished here.”
“But … You’re a friend of Holly’s, right? Aren’t you even going to …” But as I look at her, I forget whatever it was I meant to ask.
“Have a heavenly day.” She walks towards the arcade.
Aoife and I watch her shrink as she moves further away.
My daughter asks, “Who was that lady, Daddy?”
SO I ASK my daughter, “Who was what lady, darling?”
Aoife blinks up at me. “What lady, Daddy?”
We look at each other, and I’ve forgotten something.
Wallet, phone; Aoife; Sharon’s wedding; Brighton Pier.
Nope. I haven’t forgotten anything. We walk on.
A boy and girl are snogging, like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. “That’s gross!” declares Aoife, and they hear, and glance down, before resuming their tonsil-tickling. Yeah, I tell the boy telepathically, enjoy the cherries and cream because twenty years on from now nothing tastes as good. He ignores me. Up ahead, a picture spray-painted on a rolled-down metal shutter captures Aoife’s attention: a Merlinesque face with a white beard and spiral eyes in a halo of Tarot cards, crystals, and stardust. Aoife reads the name: “D-wiggert?”
“Dwight.”
“ ‘Dwight … Silverwind. For-tune … Teller.’ What’s that?”
“Someone who claims to be able to read the future.”
“Class! Let’s go inside and see him, Daddy.”
“Why would you want to see a fortune-teller?”
“To know if I’ll open my animal-rescue center.”
“What happened to being a dancer like Angelina Ballerina?”
“That was ages ago, Daddy, when I was little.”
“Oh. Well, no. We won’t be visiting Mr. Silverwind.”
One, two, three—and here’s the Sykes scowl: “Why not?”
“First, he’s closed. Second, I’m sorry to say that fortune-tellers can’t really tell the future. They just fib about it. They—”
The shutter is rattled up by a less flattering version of the Merlin on the shutter. This Merlin looks shat out by a hippo, and is dressed up in prog-rock chic: a lilac shirt, red jeans, and a waistcoat encrusted with gems as fake as its wearer.
Aoife, however, is awestruck. “Mr. Silverwind?”
He frowns and looks around before looking down. “I am he. And you are who, young lady?”
A Yank. Of bloody course. “Aoife Brubeck,” says Aoife.
“Aoife Brubeck. You’re up and about very early.”
“It’s my aunty Sharon’s wedding today. I’m a bridesmaid.”
“May you have an altogether sublime day. And this gentleman would be your father, I presume?”
“Yes,” says Aoife. “He’s a reporter in Bad Dad.”
“I’m sure Daddy tries to be good, Aoife Brubeck.”
“She means Baghdad,” I tell the joker.
“Then Daddy must be very … brave.” He looks at me. I stare back. I don’t like his way of talking and I don’t like him.
Aoife asks, “Can you really see the future, Mr. Silverwind?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a fortune-teller if I couldn’t.”
“Can you tell my future? Please?”
Enough of this. “Mr. Silverwind is busy, Aoife.”
“No, he isn’t, Daddy. He hasn’t got one customer even!”
“I usually ask for a donation of ten pounds for a reading,” says the old fraud, “but, off-peak, to special young ladies, five would suffice. Or”—Dwight Silverwind reaches to a shelf behind him and produces a pair of books—“Daddy could purchase one of my books, either The Infinite Tether or Today Will Happen Only Once for the special rate of fifteen pounds each, or twenty pounds for both, and receive a complimentary reading.”
Daddy would like to kick Mr. Silverwind in his crystal balls. “We’ll pass on your generosity,” I tell him. “Thanks.”
“I’m open until sunset, if you change your mind.”
I tug at my daughter’s hand to tell her we’re moving on, but she flares up: “It’s not fair, Daddy! I want to know my future!”
Just bloody great. If I take back a tearful Aoife, Holly’ll be insufferable. “Come on—Aunty Sharon’s hairdresser will be waiting.”
“Oh dear.” Silverwind retreats into his booth. “I foresee trouble.” He shuts a door marked THE SANCTUM behind him.
“Nobody knows the future, Aoife. These”—I aim this at the Sanctum—“liars tell you whatever they think you want to hear.”
Aoife turns darker, redder, and shakier. “No!”
My own temper now wakes up. “No what?”
“No no no no no no no no no no.”
“Aoife! Nobody knows the future. That’s why it’s the future!”
My daughter turns red, shaky, and screeches: “Kurde!”
I’m about to flame her for bad language—but did my daughter just call me a Kurd? “What?”
“Aggie says it when she’s cross but Aggie’s a million times nicer than you and at least she’s there! You’re never even home!” She storms off back down the pier on her own. Okay, a mild Polish swearword, a mature dollop of emotional blackmail, picked up perhaps from Holly. I follow. “Aoife! Come back!”
Aoife turns, tugs the balloon string off and threatens to let it go.
“Go ahead.” I know how to handle Aoife. “But be warned, if you let go, I’ll never buy you a balloon again.”
Aoife twists her face up into a goblin’s and—to my surprise, and hurt—lets the balloon go. Off it flies, silver against blue, while Aoife dissolves into cascading sobs. “I hate you—I hate Dora the Explorer—I wish you were back—back in Bad Dad—forever and ever! I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate your guts!”
Then Aoife’s eyes shut tight and her six-year-old lungs fill up.
Half of Sussex hears her shaken, sobbing scream.
Get me out of here. Anywhere.
Anywhere’s fine.
NASSER DROPPED ME near the Assassin’s Gate, but not too near; you never know who’s watching who’s giving lifts to foreigners, and the guards at the gate have the jumpiest trigger fingers, the poor bastards. “I’ll call you after the press conference,” I told Nasser, “or if the network’s down, just meet me here at eleven-thirty.”
“Perfect, Ed,” replied my fixer. “I get Aziz. Tell Klimt, all Iraqis love him. Seriously. We build big statue with big fat cock pointing to Washington.” I slapped the roof and Nasser drove off. Then I walked the fifty meters to the gate, past the lumps of concrete placed in a slalom arrangement, past the crater from January’s bomb, still visible; half a ton of plastic explosives, topped with a smattering of artillery shells, killing twenty and maiming sixty. Olive used five of Aziz’s photos, and the Washington Post paid him a reprint fee.
The queue for the Assassin’s Gate wasn’t too bad last Saturday; about fifty Iraqi staffers, ancillary workers, and preinvasion residents of the Green Zone were ahead of me, lining up to one side of the garish arch, topped by a large sandstone breast with an aroused nipple. An East Asian guy was ahead of me, so I struck up a conversation. Mr. Li, thirty-eight, was running one of the Chinese restaurants inside the zone—no Iraqi is allowed near the kitchens for fear of a mass poisoning. Li was returning from a meeting with a rice wholesaler, but when he found out my trade his English mysteriously worsened and my hopes for a “From Kowloon to Baghdad” story evaporated. So I turned my thoughts to the logistics of the day ahead until it was my turn to be ushered into the tunnel of dusty canvas and razor wire. “Blast Zone” security has been neo-liberalized, and the affable ex-Gurkhas who used to man Checkpoint One have been undercut by an agency recruiting Peruvian ex-cops, who are willing to risk their lives for four hundred dollars a month. I showed my press ID and British passport, got patted down, and had my two Dictaphones inspected by a captain with an epidermal complaint who left flakes of his skin on them.
Repeat the above three times at Checkpoints Two through Four and you find yourself inside the Emerald City—as the Green Zone has inevitably come to be known, a ten-square-kilometer fortress maintained by the U.S. Army and its contractors to keep out the reality of postinvasion Iraq and preserve the illusion of a kind of Tampa, Florida, in the Middle East. Barring the odd mortar round, the illusion is maintained, albeit it at a galactic cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Black GM Suburbans cruise at the thirty-five miles per hour speed limit on the smooth roads; electricity and gasoline flow 24/7; ice-cold Bud is served by bartenders from Mumbai who rename themselves Sam, Scooter, and Moe for the benefit of their clientele; the Filipino-run supermarket sells Mountain Dew, Skittles, and Cheetos.
The spotless hop-on, hop-off circuit bus was waiting at the Assassin’s Gate stop. I hopped on, relishing the air-conned air, and the bus pulled off at the very second the timetable promised. The smooth ride down Haifa Street passes much of the best real estate in the nation and the Ziggurat celebrating Iraq’s bloody stalemate against Iran—one of the ugliest memorials on Earth—and several large areas of white Halliburton trailers. Most of the CPA’s staff live in these trailer parks, eat in the chow halls, shit in portable cubicles, never set foot outside the Green Zone, and count the days until they can go home and put down a deposit on a real house in a nice neighborhood.
When I got off the bus at the Republican Palace, about twenty joggers came pounding down the sidewalk, all wearing wraparound sunglasses, holsters, and sweat-blotted T-shirts. Some of the T-shirts were emblazoned with the quip WHO’S YOUR BAGHDADDY NOW?; the remainder declared, BUSH-CHENEY 2004. To avoid a collision I had to jump out of their way. They sure as hell weren’t going to get out of mine.
? ? ?
I STEP ASIDE for a stream of flouncy-frocked girls who run giggling down the aisle of All Saints’ Church in Hove, Brighton’s genteel twin. “Half the florists in Brighton’ll be jetting off to the Seychelles on the back of this,” remarks Brendan. “Kew bloody Gardens, or what?”
“A lot of work’s gone into it, for sure.” I gaze at the barricade of lilies, orchids, and sprays of purples and pinks.
“A lot of dosh has gone into it, our Ed. I asked Dad how much all this set him back, but he says it’s all …” he nods across the aisle to the Webbers’ side of the church and mouths taken care of. Brendan checks his phone. “He can wait. Speaking of dosh, I meant to ask before you fly back to your war zone about your intentions regarding the elder of my sisters.”
Did I hear that right? “You what?”
Brendan grins. “Don’t worry, it’s a bit late to make an honorable woman out of our Hol now. Property, I’m talking. Her pad up in Stoke Newington’s cozy, like a cupboard under the stairs is cozy. You’ll have your sights set a bit higher up the property ladder, I trust?”
As of right now, Holly’s sights are set on kicking me out on my arse. “Eventually, yes.”
“Then see me first. London property’s dog-eat-dog right now, and two nasty words of the near future are ‘negative’ and ‘equity.’ ”
“Will do, Brendan,” I tell him. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s an order, not a favor.” Brendan winks, annoyingly. We shuffle along to a table where Pete-the-groom’s mother, Pauline Webber, gold and coiffured like Margaret Thatcher, is handing out carnations for the men’s buttonholes. “Brendan! Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after last night’s ‘entertainments,’ are we?”
“Nothing a pint of espresso and a blood transfusion couldn’t fix,” says Brendan. “Pete’s not the worse for wear, I hope?”
Pauline Webber’s smile is a nose-wrinkle. “I gather there was an afterparty party in a ‘club.’ ”
“I heard rumors of that, yes. Some of Sharon’s and my Corkonian cousins were introducing Pete to the subtleties of Irish whisky. That’s a work of art you’re wearing, Mrs. Webber.”
To me Pauline Webber’s hat looks like a crash-landed crow with turquoise blood, but she accepts the tribute. “I swear by a hatter in Bath. He’s won awards. And call me Pauline, Brendan—you sound like a tax inspector with bad news. Now, a buttonhole—white for the bride’s side, red for the groom’s.”
“Very War of the Roses,” I offer.
“No, no,” she frowns at me, “these are carnations. Roses would be too thorny. And you’d be?”
“This is Ed,” says Ruth. “Ed Brubeck. Holly’s partner.”
“Oh, the intrepid reporter! Delighted. Pauline Webber.” Her handshake is gloved and crushing. “I’ve heard so much about you from Sharon and Peter. Let me introduce you to Austin, who—” She turns to her missing husband. “Well, Austin’s dying to meet you too. We’re glad you got here in time. Delayed flights and bovva?”
“Yes. Iraq’s not the easiest of places to depart from.”
“No doubt. Sharon was saying you’ve been in that place, Fa—Faloofah? Falafel? Where they strung up the people on the bridge.”
“Fallujah.”
“Knew it began with ‘Fa.’ Appalling. Why are we meddling in these places?” She makes a face like she’s smelling possibly gone-off ham. “Beyond the ken of us mere mortals. Anyway.” She hands me a white carnation. “I met Holly and your daughter, yesterday—Aoife, isn’t it? I could eat her with a spoon! What—a—sweetie.”
I think of the sulky goblin on the pier. “She has her moments.”
“Pippa! Felix! There’s a live baby in that pushchair!” Mrs. Webber dashes off and we proceed up the aisle. Brendan has a lot of hello-ing, handshaking, and cheek-kissing to do—there’s a big contingent of Holly’s Irish relatives in attendance, including the legendary Great-aunt Eilísh, who cycled from Cork to Kathmandu in the late 1960s. I drift up to the front. By the vestry door, I spot Holly in a white dress, laughing at a red-carnation young male’s joke. Once upon a time I could make her laugh like that. The guy’s admiring her, and I want to snap his neck, but how can I blame him? She looks stunning. I stroll up. My new shirt is rubbing my neck, and my old suit is pinching the temporary bulge around my middle, which I’ll dispose of soon with a rigid regime of diet and exercise. “Hi,” I say. Holly basically ignores me.
“Hi,” says the guy. “I’m Duncan. Duncan Priest. My aunt’s buttonholed you onto Sharon’s side, I see.”
I shake his hand. “So you’re, um, Pauline’s nephew?”
“Yep. Peter’s cousin. Have you met Holly, here?”
“We bump into each other at weddings and funerals,” Holly says, deadpan. “These irksome family events that get in the way of one’s meteoric career.”
“I’m Aoife’s father,” I tell Duncan Priest, who’s looking baffled.
“The Ed? Ed Brubeck? Your”—he points to Holly—“other half? Such a pity you missed Pete’s stag do last night, though.”
“I’ll learn to cope with the disappointment.”
Duncan Priest senses my pissed-offness and makes an o-kay face. “Rightio. Well, I’ll go and check up on, um, stuff.”
“You have to forgive Ed, Duncan,” says Holly. “His life is so full of adventure and purpose that he’s allowed to be rude to the rest of us lemmings, wage slaves, and sad office clones. By rights we ought to be grateful when he even notices we exist.”
Duncan Priest smiles at her, like a fellow adult in the presence of a misbehaving child. “Well, nice meeting you, Holly. Enjoy the wedding, maybe see you at the banquet.” Off he walks. Tosser.
I refuse to listen to the onboard traitor who says I’m the one being the tosser. “Well, that was nice,” I tell Holly. “Loyal too.”
“I can’t hear you, Brubeck,” she says witheringly. “You’re not here. You’re in Baghdad.”