Armadillo

Chapter 8

‘Hello?’
‘Could I speak to Flavia Malinverno?’
‘You are?’
‘Hello. This is Lorimer Black. We met —’
‘Who?’
‘Lorimer Black. We –’
‘Do I know you?’
‘We met very briefly the other day. In the Alcazar. I was the one who was so taken with your performance. In the Fortress Sure advertisement.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Pause. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘I told you – I work for Fortress Sure. All that information is on file.’ He was floundering a bit. ‘From the company who made the film. You know, call sheets, ah, transportation records…’
‘Really?’
‘They’re very keen on files. They’re an insurance company, remember. Everything filed away somewhere.’
‘Oh. You don’t say.’
‘Yes.’ In for a penny. ‘I was wondering if we could meet? Drink, buy you lunch or something?’
‘Why?’
‘Because… Because, I’d like to, is the honest answer.’
Silence. Lorimer swallowed. No saliva in his arid mouth.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m free Sunday evening. Where do you live?’
‘Pimlico. In Lupus Crescent,’ he added, as if that made him sound more alluring and upscale.
‘That’s no good. I’ll meet you at the Café Greco in Old Compton Street. 6.30.’
‘6.30, Café Greco, Old Compton Street. I’ll be there.’
‘See you then, Lorimer Black.’
I75. Sinbad’s Folly. Sinbad Fingleton had unruly mid-brown hair, frequently unwashed, that formed itself into thick corkscrews, like planed shavings off a plank of wood, and that hung forward over his narrow brow to just below eye-level. He had a chronic sinus problem which meant he sniffed a great deal and was obliged to breathe through his mouth. Consequently his mouth was open most of his waking day, and indeed his sleeping night. He enjoyed simple physical exertion – chopping, mowing, clipping, digging, carrying – which was why his despairing father (phoning a crony on the town council) had managed to swing him a menial job in the Parks Department. His other pleasure was marijuana and its derivatives and from the tales he recounted it sounded that his colleagues shared similar tastes, passing their working hours tending to the lawns and borders, shrubs and saplings of Inverness in an agreeable drug haze. Sinbad was happy to experiment with other drugs and when a friend sold him some tabs of LSD he had driven off in a Parks Department Land Rover and tripped out in the craggy isolation of Glen Affric for thirty-six hours (necessitating a further round of mollifying phone calls from his father, more markers being called in). It had been, Sinbad told the household, the most, you know, amazing experience of his life and he would like to offer – free of charge – some LSD to any fellow tenants who wished to sample the intensity of perceptual change the stuff provoked. Lachlan and Murdo accepted, saying they would take it back to Mull to try. The rest of us indifferently, but politely, declined (Joyce doing so on Shona’s behalf – Shona was keen).
Sinbad was disappointed by this reticence and so one evening, as Joyce was preparing our communal meal – a large shepherd’s pie – Sinbad dropped three tabs of acid into the simmering mincemeat to ensure that we did not miss out on the mindbending experience he felt sure, really, that in our heart of hearts we wanted. It was one of the evenings when I happened to be staying over.
The Book of Transfiguration
Ivan Algomir looked at Binnie Helvoir-Jayne’s scrawled note, her huge, looping handwriting giving instructions about the dinner party.
‘Black tie?’ he said. ‘That’s a bit naff, isn’t it?’ He sniffed. ‘I suppose it’s just allowable these days, there must be someone grand coming.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘If it’s just a bunch of friends then it’s unforgivable. Where the hell is Monken Hadley?’
‘It’s in the borough of Barnet,’ Lorimer said, ‘believe it or not.’
‘Priddion’s Farm, Monken Hadley? You could be in darkest Gloucestershire.’
‘It’s about a mile from the beginning of the A1.’
‘Sounds very dodgy to me. Well, if you’ve got to go black tie, remember: no wing collar; a proper bow tie that you tie, a black one too, absolutely no colours; no silly velvet slippers; no cummerbund; no frilly shirts; no black socks; no handkerchief in the pocket. Velvet coat’s all right. I know,’ he said, smiling suddenly and showing his big ruined teeth, ‘you can go in a kilt. Perfect. Black Watch tartan. Ideal, Lorimer.’
‘Can I wear a dirk?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘What’s wrong with black socks?’
‘Only butlers and chauffeurs wear black socks.’
‘You’re a genius, Ivan. What do you think about fobs? I rather fancy one.’
‘No gentleman wears a fob, ghastly affectation. If you don’t want physically to wear a wristwatch then just carry it in your pocket. Far more the thing to do, believe me.’
‘Right,’ Lorimer said. ‘Now, about this helmet.’ He spread out three polaroids of his helmet collection and handed Ivan the list of their provenances. Ivan glanced at them and pushed them away.
‘Not interested in the burgonet or the barbute, but this fellow looks good. I’ll give you five thou for him. Oh, all right, seven thousand for all three.’
‘Done.’ Lorimer was making a profit but it was irrelevant – he never bought his helmets to make a profit. ‘I’ve got them in the car.’
‘Write me a cheque for ￡ 13,000 and he’s yours,’ Ivan said, reaching over to a table where the Greek helmet stood on its stand and setting it in front of Lorimer. ‘I’m barely covering my costs on this.’
Lorimer thought. ‘I can write you a cheque,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to hold on to it until I say. I’ve got a rather nice bonus coming in but it’s not through yet.’
Ivan smiled fondly at him. Lorimer knew the affection was genuine, and not just because he was a regular customer. Ivan enjoyed his role as consigliere and general fount of all wisdom about matters sartorial and social. Like many Englishmen he cared little for what he ate or drank – a gin and tonic and banana sandwich would suit at any hour of the day – but in matters of decorum Lorimer treated him as positively oracular, and Ivan was amused and rather flattered to be consulted. It also helped that Lorimer never challenged a single opinion Ivan expressed or statement he made.
‘I’ll pack it up and you can take it away with you,’ he said, turning and shouting up the stairs. ‘Petronella? Champagne, darling, we’ve made a sale. Bring down the Krug.’
32. George Hogg’s Philosophy of Insurance. What does insurance do, really do ? Hogg would ask us. And we would say, diligently echoing the textbooks, that insurance’s primary function is to substitute certainty for uncertainty as regards the economic consequences of disastrous events. It gives a sense of security in an insecure world. It makes you feel safe, then? Hogg would follow up. Yes, we would reply: something tragic, catastrophic, troublesome or irritating may have occurred but there is recompense in the form of a preordained sum of money. All is not entirely lost. We are covered, after a fashion, protected to a degree against the risk – the bad luck – of a heart attack, a car smash, a disability, a fire, a theft, a loss, things that can, and will, affect us all at some or many times in our lives.
That attitude, Hogg would say, is fundamentally immoral. Immoral, dishonest and misleading. Such an understanding promotes and bolsters the fond notion that we will all grow up, be happy, healthy, find a job, fall in love, start a family, earn a living, retire, enjoy a ripe old age and die peacefully in our sleep. This is a seductive dream, Hogg would snarl, the most dangerous fantasy. All of us know that, in reality, life never works out like this. So what did we do? We invented insurance – which makes us feel we have half a chance, a shot at achieving it, so that even if something goes wrong – mildly wrong or hideously wrong – we have provided some buffer against random disaster.
But, Hogg would say, why should a system that we have invented not possess the same properties as the life we lead? Why should insurance be solid and secure? What right do we have to think that the laws of uncertainty which govern the human condition, all human endeavour, all human life, do not apply to this artificial construct, this sop that affects to soften the blows of filthy chance and evil luck?
Hogg would look at us, contempt and pity shining from his eyes. We have no right, he would say solemnly. Such an attitude, such beliefs were deeply, fundamentally unphilosophical. And this was where we – the loss adjusters – came in. We had a vital role to play: we were the people who reminded all the others that nothing in this world is truly certain, we were the rogue element, the unstable factor in the ostensibly stable world of insurance. ‘I am insured – so at least I am safe,’ we like to think. Not so, Hogg would say, shaking a pale finger, uh-uh, no way. We have a philosophical duty to perform when we adjust loss, he told us. When we do our adjustments of loss we frustrate and negate all the bland promises of insurance. We act out in our small way one of the great unbending principles of life: nothing is sure, nothing is certain, nothing is risk-free, nothing is fully covered, nothing is forever. It is a noble calling, he would say, go out into the world and do your duty.
The Book of Transfiguration
Priddion’s Farm, Monken Hadley, turned out to be a sizeable 1920s stockbroker’s villa, brick and pebble-dashed, complete with decorative half-timbering and steepling mock-Elizabethan chimneys. It was set in a large garden of several terraced lawns with a view of a golf course, the Great North Road, and the distant rooftops of High Barnet. Even though Monken Hadley was still a part of the huge city, perched on its very northern fringe, it looked and felt to Lorimer like a toy village, with a village green, a flinty ashlar church – St Mary the Virgin – and a venerable manor house.
Priddion’s Farm was partially screened from the road and its neighbours by dense clumps of laurel and rhododendron and there was an assortment of mature trees – cedar, chestnut, maple, monkey puzzle and weeping ash – strategically scattered about the lawns, doubtless planted as saplings by the wealthy man who had paid for the house to be built.
Lorimer drew his car up beside three others on the gravelled sweep before the front porch and tried to square this bourgeois palace with the Torquil Helvoir-Jayne he thought he knew. He heard laughter and voices and wandered round the side of the house to find a croquet lawn upon which Torquil and another man in pink corduroy trousers were playing a boisterous, profane game of croquet. A thin young woman in jeans, smoking, looked on, laughing nasally from time to time, giving a whoop of encouragement as Torquil first lined up and then powerfully hammered his opponent’s ball away across the lawn and through a border out of sight where it could be heard thumping dully along the paving stones of a lower terrace.
‘You f*cking bastard,’ the man in pink trousers bellowed at Torquil, trotting off to find his ball.
‘You owe me thirty quid, you anus,’ Torquil yelled back, lining up his own next shot.
‘Pay up, pay up,’ the young woman shouted, heartily. ‘And make sure you get it in cash, Torquie.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Lorimer said to the young woman, who turned to look at him incuriously.
‘Potts, say hello to Lorimer,’ Torquil encouraged, ‘there’s a good girl.’
Lorimer unreflectingly offered his hand which, after a surprised pause, was feebly shaken.
‘Lorimer Black,’ he said. ‘Hi.’
‘I’m Potts,’ she said. ‘Don’t you love croquet? Oliver’s useless, such a bad sport.’
‘And this shambling cretin’s Oliver Rollo,’ Torquil said as the young man in pink trousers returned, strolling back with his ball. ‘Lorimer Black. Lorimer was at Glen-almond with Hugh Aberdeen.’
‘How is old Hughie?’ Oliver Rollo said. He was tall, long-armed and quite overweight, twin pink spots on his cheeks, flushed from his short walk back up from the lower terrace. He had a big, loose jaw, thick, dark, hard-to-comb hair and the flies of his pink corduroys gaped undone.
‘I haven’t the faintest,’ Lorimer said. ‘Torquil won’t let go of this idea that I know him.’
‘Right, cuntface, you’ve had it,’ Oliver said, Lorimer quickly realizing he was talking to Torquil. He dropped his ball on the grass and seized his mallet.
‘If you’re going to take a piss in my garden do you mind not f*cking exposing yourself,’ Torquil said, pointing at Oliver’s fly ‘Bloody pervert. How do you stand it, Potts?’
‘’Cozc ‘e’s a larverly boy,’ Potts said in the voice of a cockney crone.
‘Because I’ve got a ten-inch dick,’ Oliver Rollo said.
‘Dream on, darling,’ Potts said, acidly, and a cold glance flew between them.
A cheerful-looking, matronly young woman bounced out of the French windows that gave on to the croquet lawn. She had a big, shapeless bosom beneath a baggy, bright jumper covered in blue stars and dry blonde hair held off her face with an Alice band. Her cheeks were flaky with what looked like mild eczema and she had a waning cold sore at the side of her mouth. But her smile was warm and genuine.
‘Lorimer Black, I presume,’ she said, shaking his hand in orthodox manner. ‘I’m Jennifer – Binnie.’
There was a full-throated roar of disappointment from behind as Torquil missed a sitter. ‘F*ckf*ck F*ck!’
‘Boys,’ Jennifer-Binnie called. ‘Neighbours, remember? And language, please.’ She turned back to Lorimer. ‘Your girlfriend’s just called from the station. Do you want me to collect her?’
‘Sorry? Who?’
Before Lorimer could ask further, Torquil was by his side, a hand squeezing his shoulder.
‘We’ll pick her up,’ he said. ‘Come along, Lorimer.’
As they drove to High Barnet in Torquil’s car Torquil apologized. He seemed excited, Lorimer thought, coiled and tense with a kind of manic energy.
‘I should have checked first, I suppose,’ he said, uncon-vincingly. ‘I had no time to clear things with you. Thought we’d be able to busk it. I told Binnie you’d only just started going out.’ He grinned, salaciously. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be sleeping together.’
‘And just who is my girlfriend this weekend?’
‘Irina. The Russian bint. You remember?’
‘The sad one.’ Lorimer frowned.
‘I couldn’t ask her on her own, could I? What would Binnie think?’ He patted Lorimer’s knee. ‘Don’t worry, I only got the idea yesterday. I didn’t have you lined up as chaperon all along.’
‘Fine.’ Lorimer wasn’t so sure about this. But it explained Torquil’s unnatural glee.
‘She seemed a bit lonely, you know. Friendless. I thought this would cheer her up. But obviously I had to come up with something more persuasive for the Binns.’
‘Obviously’
‘Oh, and I should apologize that the dinner’s black tie. One of Binnie’s little fads.’
‘No problem.’
‘And I apologize for the house too, while I’m in contrite mood.’
‘Why?’
‘You see, it was left to Binnie by an uncle of hers, a distant uncle.’ He stopped talking and looked at Lorimer with an expression close to shock. ‘You don’t seriously think I’d choose to live in Barnet, do you? As soon as the market recovers I’m flogging it.’
He pulled up outside High Barnet tube station and they saw Irina waiting alone at the bus stop, wearing a duffle coat and carrying a red nylon backpack. Lorimer sat and watched Torquil go to greet her, kiss her on each cheek and talk urgently for a few minutes, Irina nodding wordlessly at his instructions, before he led her back to the car.
‘You remember Lorimer, don’t you?’ Torquil said, smiling benignly as Irina climbed into the back seat.
‘I think you were in restaurant,’ she said, anxiously.
‘Yes,’ Lorimer said. ‘That’s me. Good to see you again.’
Lorimer buckled on the sporran and checked its positioning over his groin in the full-length mirror. He was pleased to be wearing a kilt again after so many years and surprised, as he always was, by the transformation it wrought on him – he almost didn’t recognize himself. He squared his shoulders, contemplating his reflection: the short black jacket with its silver buttons, the dark green of the tartan (Hunting Stewart, there was no Black Watch at the dress-hire agency), the knee-length white socks and their gartering of laces, criss-crossed above his ankles. This was, to his mind, as close to the Platonic ‘Lorimer Black’ as he had ever desired, as complete a metamorphosis as he could ever have wished for. His pleasure in his appearance momentarily dispelled the depression that was gathering within him at the prospect of the evening ahead.
He was sleeping in a room at the end of a long L-shaped corridor on the house’s second floor, under the eaves, a big atticy room with two dormer windows and with clearly unnecessary beam work supporting the ceiling but designed to foster an impression of antiquity. Torquil had apologized for the beams and for the half-timbering outside, for the brass sconces in the passageways and for the plum-coloured bathroom suite and the bidet when he had shown Lorimer his room. He continued to blame everything on the execrable taste of Binnie’s distant uncle (‘Nouveau riche, lived in Rhodesia half his life’), taking no responsibility at all for the appearance of his own home. Lorimer paced back from the mirror and turned sharply on his heel, admiring the perfect way the pleats of his kilt fanned out and swirled as he swung his hips.
He stepped out into the corridor and saw that Torquil was at the far end, minus his dinner jacket, holding the hand of a small, fair-haired boy in pyjamas who looked about seven years old.
‘This is Lorimer,’ Torquil said. ‘Say hello to Lorimer, he’s sleeping next door to you.’
The little boy’s eyes were wide at Lorimer’s Caledonian resplendency.
‘Hello,’ Lorimer said. ‘I know who you are, you’re Sholto.’
‘Sholto, the famous bedwetter,’ said his father, whereupon Sholto started to cry.
‘It’s not fair, Daddy,’ Lorimer heard him wail as Torquil bustled his son into his bedroom. ‘I can’t help it, Daddy.’
‘Don’t be such a sissy. Take a joke, can’t you? Jesus Christ.’
Downstairs in the drawing room curtains were closed, candles were lit and there was a fire going, a real fire, Lorimer noticed, and gathered in front of it were Binnie, Potts, Oliver and another couple, introduced as Neil and Liza Pawson, the headmaster of a local school and his wife. Everyone was smoking except for Neil Pawson.
‘I do love a man in a kilt,’ Liza Pawson said, with forced bravura as he came in. She was a lean, bespectacled woman with a long, stretched neck, whose massive tension was clearly visible, a cursive blue vein throbbing in her temple. Her dress was daintily floral, spruced up with a homemade hint of evening lace added at neck and wrists.
‘You’ve got to have the right arse for a kilt,’ said Oliver Rollo, throwing his cigarette end into the fire. ‘That’s essential.’
Lorimer could have sworn, inwardly, that at the mention of the word ‘arse’ a sudden coolness seemed to spread across his buttocks.
‘Och aye, he’s a true Scot,’ Potts said, standing behind him, the pleated hem of his kilt held high in her hands, ‘he’s no wearing knickers.’
Somehow Lorimer’s smile stayed pasted to his face, his scorching embarrassment was covered by the explosion of nervous laughter that followed and the loudly genial chiding of the irrepressible Potts and her famously naughty pranks. Lorimer’s hand was still shaking slightly as he poured himself a huge vodka at the drinks table, tucked slightly out of sight behind a baby grand covered in framed photographs.
‘I understand your friend is from Russia,’ Neil Pawson said, padding over for a refill. He seemed a blurry, indistinct, fair man, freckled, with dense blond eyebrows and a boyish lick of pepper and salt hair swept across his forehead.
‘Who?’
‘Your, ah, girlfriend. Binnie tells me she never wants to go back to Russia.’
‘Probably. I mean, probably not.’
Neil Pawson smiled at him, amiably. ‘Binnie says she’s over here studying music. What’s her instrument? I’m a bit of an amateur musician myself. What does she play?’
Lorimer quickly ran through an entire orchestra of instruments before settling on the saxophone, for some reason.
‘The saxophone.’
‘Unusual choice. I’m a clarinet.’
He had to get away from this man. ‘She plays many instruments,’ Lorimer said, recklessly. ‘Almost all of them: violin, timpani, bassoon. Strings, generally, ah, and oboe. The flute,’ he said with relief, remembering. ‘The flute is her instrument.’
‘Not the saxophone, then?’
‘No. Yes. Sometimes. Ah, there she is.’
Lorimer went enthusiastically to greet her, but saw Torquil was right behind, solicitous palm at the small of her back, saying, ‘Now who hasn’t met Lorimer’s young lady, Irina?’ She was wearing a silvery satin blouse that made her skin appear even more blanched and bloodless, despite the lurid gash of her lipstick and the heavy blue shadow on her lids. In the subsequent shiftings and displacements that took place with these new arrivals being admitted to the circle, Lorimer found himself in a corner beside Binnie, glowing warmly pink, larger and more substantial somehow, in a voluminous dress made of quilted maroon velvet fitted with a bizarre short cape-effect around the shoulders, heavily embroidered. It made him feel hot just looking at her and he spread his legs slightly beneath his kilt, feeling his balls hang free, cooling. Marvellous garment.
‘– So pleased you could come, Lorimer,’ Binnie was saying, tiny pearls of sweat trapped in the downy hair of her upper lip. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever met from Torquil’s work. He says you’re his only friend in the office.’
‘I am? He does?’
‘He says no one else has anything in common with him.’
He glanced over at Torquil who was handing round a bowl of quail’s eggs, leering at Potts, who had removed the shimmering, chiffony scarf that had been draped around her shoulders earlier, to reveal her modest cleavage.
‘I say, tits out, Potts,’ Lorimer heard Torquil observe, genially. ‘Oliver’s in luck tonight, eh?’
‘Have a good look,’ she said and with a finger hooked forward the front of her dress. Torquil took full advantage.
‘Damn, you’re wearing a bra.’
‘Isn’t Potts a scream,’ Binnie said to Lorimer, beneath the ensuing laughter. ‘Such a sweet girl.’
‘Why does everyone call her Potts? Because she’s potty?’
‘It’s her name – Annabelle Potts. How long have you and Irina been going out?’
‘Who? Oooh, not long.’
‘Torquil says he can hear the distant chiming of wedding bells.’ Binnie looked sideways at him, mischievously.
‘Does he? Bit premature, I would say.’
‘Such a pretty girl. I do love that Russian look.’
At dinner Lorimer was placed between Binnie and Potts; Torquil was flanked by Irina and Liza Pawson. An absurdly tall girl called Philippa was introduced to the company as the cook and she also served and cleared plates, with help from Binnie. They started with a tasteless, still partially frozen vegetable terrine and progressed to over-cooked salmon and new potatoes. There were eight open bottles of wine, four white and four red, placed randomly about the table and Lorimer found he was drinking almost uncontrollably, taking every opportunity to top up Binnie and Potts before refilling his own empty glass. Gradually, the desired anaesthetizing of the senses began to creep over him and an attendant mood of indifference replaced his earlier social terror. He was not relaxed but he ceased to care any more, ceased to worry.
Potts was rummaging for another cigarette in her handbag so Lorimer reached over for a candle. To his astonishment he saw Torquil place another four open bottles – two white, two red – on the table as Philippa cleared the remains of the salmon. There were now so many bottles on the table that he could only see the heads of the people opposite. Potts waved her cigarette negatively at the cheese, so Binnie set it down in front of him.
‘– Couldn’t stand Verbier any more, too many grockles,’ Potts was saying, ‘so I said to Ollie, what about Val d’Isère? But he can’t stand the French schoolkids barging the queues. I said give me French schoolkids to German schoolkids – or do I mean Swiss? Anyway, I said, what about the States? And he practically had a fit. So we’re going to Andorra – anyway, peace at last.’
‘Yeah. Thank God we both like Italy,’ Oliver Rollo said.
Potts turned deliberately to Lorimer. ‘Where do you go?’
‘To do what?’
‘Ski.’
‘I don’t. Not any more – I broke my leg very badly. Doctor’s orders.’
‘Shame. Thanks.’ She finally lit her cigarette from his proffered candle. ‘I must say, you’ve got a lovely, hairy bum, Lorimer.’
‘I heard that,’ Oliver boomed from across the table. ‘You leave his bum out of it. What’s wrong with my bum?’
‘It’s fat and pimply.’
Liza Pawson forced her face into a smile. Neither of her partners, Torquil nor Oliver Rollo, had spoken to her for at least twenty minutes, Lorimer had noticed, but now Oliver’s interjection had freed up Binnie, who went in search of more bread.
‘What exactly do you do?’ Lorimer heard Liza Pawson ask Oliver. No, he thought, don’t ask them about their jobs, they hate it, it makes them depressed. ‘Are you in the same line as Torquil?’ she persisted.
‘I sell houses,’ Oliver said brusquely through a soft mouthful of cheese, turning away immediately. ‘Bung down the red, Torq, will you?’
‘Do you miss Scotland, Lorimer?’ Binnie asked, returning to sit beside him once again.
‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ Lorimer said, relieved for once not to have to lie but not keen, all the same, to encourage this line of questioning. He brought Potts into the conversation. ‘Have you ever skied at Aviemore?’
‘I love Scotland,’ Binnie said, fondly nostalgic. ‘We used to shoot every year in Perthshire. Do you know Perthshire?’
‘We’re further north,’ Lorimer said, as vaguely as possible.
‘Aviemore,’ Potts said. ‘Is that the Grampians?’
‘Cairngorms.’
‘Do you shoot?’
‘Not any more, I ruptured an ear-drum, doctor’s orders.’
‘You are unlucky with your sports, Lorimer,’ Potts said, slyly. ‘What about bridge?’
‘Whereabouts north, exactly?’ Binnie persisted. ‘Any more cheese anyone?’
‘What’s for pud?’ Torquil cried.
‘Um, Inverness, sort of area, place called Loch –’ he urged his dulling brain to work – ‘Loch Kenbarry.’
‘That’s in Ireland, isn’t it?’ Potts said.
‘I understand you play in an orchestra,’ Liza Pawson said to him, leaning across the table desperate for conversation, candle flames dancing in the lenses of her spectacles.
‘No, not exactly.’
‘I heard you and my husband talking about musical instruments. A group of us have formed a small chamber orchestra. I thought he might be trying to recruit you.’
‘No, I don’t play, it’s –’ he gestured across the table at his supposed girlfriend, his prospective fiancée, and realized he had completely forgotten her name. ‘It’s her, she, ah, she’s the musician. I work in insurance.’
‘No shop!’ Torquil yelled at him. ‘Fine that man. Who’s for some brandy?’
Lorimer’s untouched crème br?lée was whisked from his place by a looming Philippa.
‘Now you’re talking, Helvoir-Jayne,’ Oliver Rollo said, punching the air.
‘Loch Kenbarry,’ Binnie frowned, still trying to place it. ‘Is that near Fort Augustus?’
‘Nearish.’
Potts offered him one of her cigarettes for the seventh or eighth time that evening. He declined again and fetched her a candle. She leaned forward to the flame and lowered her voice, holding her cigarette poised, and said, hardly moving her lips.
‘I must say I’ve found it very exciting with you sitting beside me, Lorimer, naked under your kilt.’
‘Binnie,’ Torquil said impatiently.
‘Sorry, darling.’ Binnie stood up. ‘Shall we, ladies?’
Lorimer could imagine Ivan Algomir’s snorting bray of derision. The women left the room? Potts shot to her feet and was away, Liza Pawson moved more uncertainly. Only the Russian girl did not budge.
‘Irina?’ Binnie said, gesturing towards the door. Irina. That was her name.
‘What is? Where are we –’ For the first time that evening she looked to Lorimer for help.
‘It’s a custom,’ he explained. ‘A British custom. The women leave the men at the end of the meal?’
‘For why?’
‘Because we tell disgusting jokes,’ Oliver Rollo said. ‘You got any port in this pub, Torquil?’
Lorimer was pleased with himself. When the ladies had left the room, and as Torquil and Oliver fussed pedantically over the lighting of their cigars, he asked Neil Pawson about his chamber orchestra and the man talked happily about his passion for music, of the difficulties and rewards of running an amateur orchestra and, moreover, spoke at a pedagogic, headmasterly pitch of conversation that brooked no interruption for a full ten minutes. It was only Oliver Rollo’s insistent throat-clearings that alerted Torquil to the fact that terminal boredom was setting in and he suggested they withdrew and joined the ladies for coffee in front of the fire.
The evening wound down swiftly: the Pawsons left almost immediately, Lorimer warmly wishing them goodbye, even pecking Liza Pawson on the cheek, confident he would never see them again in his life. Irina said she was tired and Binnie sprang to her feet and fussily showed her to her room. Then Oliver and Potts went upstairs to bed, to much prurient speculation from Torquil. For a strange moment Lorimer and Torquil were alone in the room, Torquil sitting back in his armchair, legs splayed, puffing at the soggy butt of his cigar and swilling an inch of brandy around in his goblet.
‘Great evening,’ Lorimer said, feeling he had to break the gathering intimacy of the silence.
‘That’s what it’s all about,’ Torquil said. ‘Old friends. Good food and drink. Bit of a chat. Bit of fun. That’s what’s life’s, you know, makes it go round.’
‘I think I’ll shoot off,’ Lorimer said, trying to ignore the dull headache that was tightening above his eyes.
‘Kick that Potts out of your bed if she tries to crawl in,’ Torquil said, with an unpleasant smile. ‘Cat on a hot tin roof, that one. Real goer.’
‘So she and Oliver aren’t –’
‘Oh yes. They’re getting married in a month.’
‘Ah.’
Binnie returned. ‘You’re not going to bed, are you, Lorimer? Good lord, it’s ten to two. We are late.’
‘Super evening, Binnie,’ Lorimer said. ‘Thank you so much. Delicious meal. Very much enjoyed meeting everyone.’
‘Potts is a scream, isn’t she? And the Pawsons are so nice. Do you think Irina enjoyed herself?’
‘I’m sure she did.’
‘She’s a quiet one, isn’t she?’
‘Thought we’d go for a walk on the common tomorrow,’ Torquil interrupted. ‘Before lunch. Fresh air. Late breakfast, come down when you like.’
‘Do you know Peter and Kika Millbrook?’ Binnie asked.
‘No,’ Lorimer said.
‘Friends from Northamptonshire, coming for lunch. With their little boy Alisdair. Company for Sholto.’
‘Is he the dyslexic one?’ Torquil asked. ‘Alisdair?’
‘Yes,’ Binnie said. ‘It’s very bad, awful shame.’
‘A dyslexic and a bedwetter. Bloody marvellous. They’ll make great chums.’
‘That’s cruel, Torquil,’ Binnie said, her voice hard, suddenly, emotion making it quaver. ‘That’s a horrid thing to say.’
‘I’m off,’ Lorimer said. ‘Night everyone.’
From his window Lorimer could see the beaded stream of headlights on the Great North Road. Why so many cars, he thought, leaving the city on a Saturday night, heading for the north? What journeys were being started here? What new beginnings? He had a sudden ache of longing to be with them, driving through the dark, putting as many miles as possible between him and Priddion’s Farm in Monken Hadley.
221. Driving late at night through the city, you were searching the airwaves, looking for a radio station that was not playing popular music of the late twentieth century. As you fiddled with the dial you heard a melody and a wise husky voice that made you break your rule for a moment and listen. It was Mat ‘King’ Cole who was singing and the simple lyric lodged effortlessly in your head. ‘The greatest thing / You’ll ever learn / Is just to love / And be loved in turn.’ Why did this make you so unutterably sad? Was it simply the effortless melancholy in Nat’s dry, lung-cancery voice? Or did it touch you in another way, search out that small abiding hidden pocket of need we all carry. Then you turned the dial and found some sensuous, delicate Fauré which distracted you. The greatest thing you’ll ever learn.
The Book of Transfiguration
An insistent hand on his shoulder shook Lorimer awake. Slowly he realized that his mouth was rank, his body was poisoned with alcohol and his head was gonging with a pure and unreasonable pain. Leaning over him in the darkness, wearing only a dressing gown, was Torquil. From somewhere there was coming a keening half-scream, half-wail, like the ululations from some primitive mourning ritual. For a moment Lorimer wondered if this was the noise of his abused brain, protesting, but then he registered swiftly enough that it emanated from deep in the house: it was another person’s problem, not his.
‘Lorimer,’ Torquil said, ‘you’ve got to go. Now. Please.’
‘Jesus.’ Lorimer wanted more than anything else to clean his teeth, then eat something salty, spicy and savoury and then clean his teeth again. ‘What time is it?’
‘Half-five.’
‘Good God. What’s happening? What’s that din?’
‘You’ve got to go,’ Torquil repeated, stepping back from the bed as Lorimer rolled out on to his knees, from which position he levered himself upright after a little while and dressed as quickly as he could.
‘You’ve got to take Irina with you,’ Torquil said. ‘She’s ready.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Well…’ Torquil expelled his breath, tiredly. ‘I went to Irina’s room and we–’
You and Irina?’
‘Yes. I snuck in there about three – why the hell do you think I got her here? – and, you know, we, we had it off. We “made love”. And then I f*cking fell asleep and so did she.’ He looked at his watch as Lorimer swept his kilt and sporran into his grip. ‘Then about half an hour ago Sholto came into our bedroom – Binnie’s and mine. The little bastard had wet his bed.’
‘I see.’
‘He never wets his bed here. Never,’ Torquil said with genuine fury. ‘I can’t think what brought it on.’
Lorimer carefully zipped up his overnight bag, not wanting to say anything, not wanting to interject a plea of clemency on Sholto’s behalf.
‘So Sholto says, “Where’s Daddy?” Binnie gets worried. Binnie looks around. Binnie gets thinking. The next thing I know I wake up bollock-naked beside Irina and Binnie’s standing there at the end of the bed with the duvet in her hands screaming. She hasn’t stopped.’
‘Christ. Where is she?’
‘I’ve locked her in our bedroom. You have to get that girl out of here.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about Oliver and Potts?’
‘I need them. Potts is in there with her. She’s Binnie’s oldest friend.’
‘Really? Is she? Right, I’m ready.’
Irina was crying softly in the hall, dressed, her face strangely bland, free of her paint and powder. She said nothing, allowing Torquil and Lorimer to usher her gently outside to Lorimer’s car. Outside it was icy cold, with a frost so heavy that even the gravel beneath their feet did not crunch, it was set so hard. Their breath condensed rather beautifully about them in evanescent lingering clouds.
‘Good luck,’ Lorimer said, wondering why he wished it. ‘I mean, I hope you –’
‘She’ll calm down,’ Torquil said, shivering, pulling his dressing gown tight around him. ‘She always has before. Mind you, it’s never been quite so… graphic, if you know what I mean.’
‘You’d better go in,’ Lorimer said, ‘or you’ll catch your death.’
‘F*cking freezing’ Torquil peered in at Irina, his expression bland and disinterested as if he were searching an open fridge for a snack. She did not meet his gaze. ‘Tell her I’ll, you know, be in touch or something.’ He reached into the car through the gap in the window and patted Lorimer’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, Lorimer,’ he said with feeling. ‘You’re a humanitarian and a gentleman.’
This was the last compliment Lorimer wanted to hear from Torquil Helvoir-Jayne.
Lorimer drove carefully along deserted streets, white and deadened by the grip of the frost. It had taken several goes to establish where Irina lived, so intense was her solipsistic sense of misery, so unreal was her grasp of a world beyond her small circle of shame. Eventually she looked up at him, blinked and said croakily, ‘Stoke Newington.’ So he drove from Monken Hadley to Stoke Newington – through Barnet, Whetstone and Finchley, following signs to the City, then round Archway, past Finsbury Park and on to Stoke Newington. Crossing the North Circular, he suddenly realized that he had only slept a matter of three hours or so and thus, technically, in terms of alcoholic units consumed and not fully absorbed by the body, he was probably classifiable as totally drunk, though he had never felt so uncomfortably, palpably aware of his sobriety. By Seven Sisters Road he remembered that it was Sunday morning and that he had a rendezvous with Flavia Malinverno just twelve hours hence. His joy was mitigated by the sorriness of his physical state. He had to be ready for this meeting, of all the important meetings in his life – he really had to establish some control over the way he was living.