скачать книгу бесплатно
Uncle Zhu’s head was bobbing effusively.
‘Also for thanks. Minister Goodfellowe,’ Jya-Yu chirped.
‘This is … so unexpected. Most kind,’ Goodfellowe responded, his tired judgement juggling with the implications. He was growing accustomed to the mercantile Chinese mind. ‘But how much will this cost?’
‘No cost. For thanks. To replace old one.’
The bike was surprisingly lightweight, he could hold it in one hand. ‘It would be very useful,’ he conceded, ‘but I can’t accept something so valuable. It could get me into trouble.’
He tried to offer back the bike, but Uncle Zhu refused and began an animated exchange with his niece.
‘Uncle Zhu says he get bike in payment from poor customer. Uncle Zhu not ride bike. You take it, no problem.’
‘I think I would like such a bike,’ Goodfellowe responded, turning the neatly folded package over in appreciation, ‘but I couldn’t accept it as a gift.’ He took a deep breath. ‘How much does your uncle think it’s worth.’ He dug into his pocket and came out clutching a solitary twenty-pound note.
Uncle Zhu’s brow darkened. Goodfellowe realized he had committed a mortal offence by offering him money. ‘You must understand,’ he stammered, ‘a politician can get into great trouble for accepting gifts. People have such suspicious minds. Dammit, they’ll even do away with Christmas next.’ He looked wistfully at the machine. It would be – would have been – the perfect answer, yet it seemed he must lose the wheels just as he had caused Uncle Zhu to lose face.
Suddenly Jya-Yu brightened. ‘Better way,’ she exclaimed. ‘You not take the bike, Minister Goodfellowe. You borrow it instead. Long term. And if Uncle Zhu ever need it, he take it back.’ Her face lit in mischief. ‘But you understand, his legs very short. I don’t think he can reach pedals. So you take care of it until Uncle Zhu’s legs grow.’
They both laughed, while the Chinaman stood immobile and uncomprehending. Goodfellowe, his objections overwhelmed by her advice and perhaps just a hint of avarice, gave what he hoped was a dignified bow and accepted the bicycle and the plate. Zhu smiled in relief and immediately turned away, Jya-Yu scurrying after him.
‘Just as long as it didn’t fall off the back of a lorry,’ Goodfellowe admonished as they retreated.
‘Oh, no, Minister Goodfellowe. It not even touch the ground. Look, no dents.’
And they were gone, leaving Goodfellowe clutching six sticky buns and a collapsible bike.
‘You look like a train-spotter.’ Mickey Ross, Goodfellowe’s secretary at the House of Commons, was nothing if not direct. She was also mid-twenties, vivacious, Jewish, formidably competent and possessor of a biting wit delivered with a lingering trace of Estuary English which marked her out as being not quite like the rest.
On this occasion no one could argue that she was being less than objective. She had walked in to find Goodfellowe standing in his parliamentary office, his trousers still confined within bicycle clips, his shoes hurled to the far side of the room and a raw toe poking through a new hole in his sock.
‘New shoes. A waste of money,’ he muttered.
‘The old ones were practically walking on their own,’ she scolded.
‘Anyway,’ he riposted, ‘aren’t you wearing the same clothes as yesterday? Didn’t you get home last night?’
‘I got waylaid,’ she mumbled, losing herself within the pile of morning post she was carrying.
‘With Justin?’
‘No. Not with Justin,’ she replied, sounding as if her fiancé’s name had suddenly become a complicated foreign language.
‘Mickey,’ he lectured, ‘I thought you said you have principles.’
It was a mistake, he should have known better. She only knew one means of defence, which was onslaught.
‘I do have my principles and I had my principles last night, too. It’s just that I lost them.’
‘Where?’
She pouted. ‘In the hotel lift on the way up to his room. I left them in a bag. A very small bag. Don’t worry. I found them again this morning on the way down.’ And with that she dumped the mountain of morning mail on his desk. It overflowed like an exploding volcano onto the floor, and he bent down to retrieve it with a groan. ‘And Beryl has just called,’ she added, with bite. ‘The reception on Friday week starts at seven prompt and I’m to remind you once more that it’s one of the biggest fund-raising bashes of the year.’
His groans grew more passionate. Beryl Hailstone was the chairmonster of his local party in Marsh wood. A woman of similar age to Goodfellowe, she had once made a pass at him, had been rejected in instinctive and unthinking horror, and had never forgiven.
It seemed unlikely that this was to be Goodfellowe’s day, for on top of the pile of correspondence he had retrieved from the floor was a letter from his bank manager. The letters from his bank were getting shorter and more peremptory in the months since the old manager had been forced to make way for a new, younger model. The personal touch and understanding had gone, and in its place Goodfellowe had found only codes of financial conduct set by computer and implemented by automatons who sounded on the telephone as though they should be selling fruit from a barrow in Brewer Street.
‘Sorry,’ Mickey offered, her concern genuine. She was always the first to know. She was the one who sorted out the rental for the fax machine and computer, booked his train tickets, picked up his dry cleaning, took care of so many corners of his private life and knew often before he did when the autumn of his accounting had turned to harshest winter. Like now.
He shivered. ‘Do you find you can never sleep?’
‘Sadly not. Men simply don’t have the stamina.’ She paused, noticing the shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes. ‘But something’s troubling you, Tom.’
‘I had another set-to with Sammy.’ His tone was quiet, stripped of all pretension.
‘What was it this time?’
‘The usual. She wanted money for some charitable fashion show she’s putting on at school. I said something … well, she caught me at the wrong moment, I suppose. So she stormed off without any money, I was left without any invitation and I don’t even know when I’m going to see her again. My own daughter. Added to that I got a bollocking last night from the Chief Whip for missing several votes. He was particularly foul. I think I’ve decided I hate the entire bloody world. Or is it simply that they hate me?’
With a sense of bitter purpose he drew back his desk drawer. Reaching within, his fingers closed around a feather-flighted dart. He measured the weight in his hand, smoothing its feathers, stroking it as though like a weapon of mercy it might relieve him of all his cares. Then he hurled it in the direction of a notice board on the opposite wall on which was hung a collage of images already peppered with holes. A photograph of Beryl Hailstone. And one of the Chief Whip. The letter of introduction from his new bank manager. His Liberal opponent’s manifesto from the last election. A photocopy of an uncomplimentary piece by a Guardian sketchwriter. And other pieces. The bill for his final car service just before he sold it. A final demand. The label from a bad bottle of Australian Shiraz which had promised undertones of blackcurrant but instead had suggested beetles. Items from his life brought together by only one strand of logic, the fact that he loathed them.
The dart missed completely and stuck fast in the panelling above. He’d failed again.
‘Bugger it. I can’t even be miserable any more.’
Mickey began to laugh, playing with his self-pity, challenging him to turn his frustration on her, to find an outlet and let it pass. Clouds of anger flooded across his eyes, warning of the approaching storm.
‘You’re a witch.’
‘You’re right. And I shall probably burn. But in the meantime,’ she said, sitting primly on the chair in front of his desk and taking out her notepad, ‘let’s see if we can’t cast a spell on a few others. Like the bank manager,’ she announced, ticking him off a list. ‘He’s young, bound to be pathetically impressionable. Invite him to lunch on the Terrace. For the price of a plate of subsidized sausage and a half-decent bottle of wine you’ll be able to tie up your overdraft for months. You can invite me too. I’ll be sweet to him, and you know I’m irresistible.’
‘You are incorrigible.’ He meant it as an ill-tempered accusation. ‘How do you have the nerve to slink out of hotels looking guilty?’
‘I don’t. What’s the point in slinking out looking guilty when you can stride out and let everyone know you’ve had a good time?’ Ignoring his scowl, she returned to her list. ‘Darling Beryl will be quite content if you’re on time and wearing trousers and are nice to the right guests. I’ll type you out a list.’
‘If God is merciful I shall die first.’
‘So long as you’re wearing trousers, that’s fine.’ She put the notepad aside. ‘Then there’s Sam.’
He sucked in a lungful of air and released it, his body shaking, as if he were trying to expel all the twisted emotion within and start afresh. ‘I’m a father, a replacement mother, a social worker to seventy thousand constituents and common bankrupt, all at the same time. No wonder I make such a mess of everything.’
‘You’re not bankrupt yet.’ She was determined not to give his self-pity office space. ‘And none of it is Sam’s fault.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘Of course you do. But does she?’
‘I take the point. I hadn’t realized you threw in your services as an agony aunt, too.’
‘I’m Jewish and I’m still breathing. What do you expect?’
‘I long ago learned to stop expecting anything,’ he said, meaning it.
‘Look, you’re supposed to be the grown-up one. So you haven’t got an invitation to the fashion show. You think she’s going to issue one in gold-block lettering and send a chauffeur-driven car? Go. Surprise her. If you can’t find the right words, at least show her that she’s more important than your bank manager or bloody Beryl or any number of your complaining constituents. Just be there for her.’
A chink of light appeared through the storm clouds. ‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘Put it in the diary, will you.’
‘I already have.’
‘For pity’s sake, won’t you let me win one round?’
‘For your sake, not if I can help it.’
He stood up abruptly. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough. I’m going to leave you to handle all the post today on your own. I’m going off to broaden my mind.’
‘Where, in case Downing Street or the Vatican should ask?’
‘You can tell them I’m going for a therapeutic Chinese massage. With one of Jya-Yu’s prolific tribe of cousins, Dr Lin. She’s set me up with some free sessions.’
‘This isn’t something menopausal, is it?’
‘If it is,’ he said, searching for his shoes, ‘I intend to enjoy it.’
He was halfway through the door when he turned with an after-thought. ‘Tell me, what would you do if you discovered that Justin had – how can I put it delicately? – spent the night in a hotel room?’
She stretched out a leg, casually examining her tights, as though deeply unconcerned. ‘I’d have him for sausage stuffing, little bits and all.’
‘Do I detect the odious whiff of double standards?’
‘Not a bit. A man doesn’t get filleted for what he’s done, but for getting caught. I’d remember that, if I were you, while you’re having your Chinese massage.’
Corsa’s relationship with women benefited from two principal advantages – three, if one remembered his ability as a press proprietor to keep the dogs at bay. The first was his sense of physical control – the green-black eyes, the hand movements, the careful tailoring, even the deliberate way he walked, not hurrying as some shorter men might. Others waited for him. His second advantage was a wife who had known even before they had married that she would have to share him, and not solely with the Granite. But besides the Granite, she comforted herself, there could be no other mistress of importance. And there never had been. Sex for Corsa was simply another aspect of power, to be exercised and indulged over as broad a landscape as possible, particularly with wives of important men, the sort of St James’s club men who could neither hide their disdain nor satisfy their brides. An empire of English cuckolds, as outdated as the ugly oil paintings that hung in their drawing rooms. The saving grace in Corsa as far as most women were concerned was that they knew exactly what they were going to get – a physical intensity which he would lavish on them in the most elegant of surroundings, for a while, so long as business did not intervene. ‘A hand on my chest and an eye on his watch,’ as one of his lady acquaintances had remarked, but not in complaint. The eyes hovered restlessly, trembling, like the tip of a hawk’s wing, but the smile at the corner of his mouth was constant and unwavering. So was the passion. Irresistible, for some. Then, with an insouciant wave of farewell, it would be over.
Diane Burston, however, was a different matter. Since he had met her at Downing Street his mind had been tossing on an ocean. Every wave lifted his spirits, allowing him a tantalizing glimpse of what might be the way ahead, a way to survive. Then he would be cast down, the vision dashed, and he would be surrounded by hideous, violent seas that threatened to overwhelm him and smash him on the rocks. The bankers had been more difficult than he’d expected, solicitous as ever but posing more questions and requesting more paper, which on this occasion it seemed they were intent on reading. They had begun to feel the pressure, too, and like all bankers were keen on passing that burden onwards. He’d found himself struggling, even at one stage leaning in argument on their long relationship and friendship. That’s when he knew he was in deep water, for friendship didn’t travel far down Lombard Street.
And he had found his thoughts straying all the more frequently to the oil executive. Not to her body, as delightfully preserved and presented as it was, but to who she was, and what she was. As the seas grew steadily rougher they threw him higher still and for fleeting moments he was finding a clearer sight of salvation, and such was Corsa’s natural self-confidence that only rarely did he allow himself to think that he might not reach it, however distant and difficult the goal might seem. Yet he knew it would not be possible without Diane Burston, and others like her.
He’d arranged supper at Le Caprice, and Mayfair at that time of night was choked. He was driving himself – the chauffeur already knew more than enough without needing to know where Corsa might be spending the night – and he’d been cruising for ten minutes. He’d found not a single free parking space around the streets and already two clamping teams were patrolling, falling like flies upon a feast. The NCP right next to the restaurant had space but parting with money was tantamount to admitting defeat. Parking in London was war, and Corsa refused simply to quit the battlefield. Maybe it was meanness, perhaps it was the growing tension or the meeting with the bankers that reminded him that every penny might yet count – he put it down to his Neapolitan instinct, which abhorred being told what he could or could not do, and drove round one last time.
He’d passed the ancient mini-Honda three times already. A bright yellow anti-nuclear sticker shone out from the back window, and there was a sign warning of babies on board. It was also so outrageously parked that it took up space which could have accommodated two large saloons. Selfish bitch. And it was getting late. Time to put up or push off. Fa fan culo. This time he did not pass by, but eased his car up against the rear bumper of the Honda until he felt the gentlest of rocking motions to indicate they were in contact. Several tons touching tin. Then he gave it a little more gas, scarcely more than a kiss of encouragement. He was surprised how easily the Honda shifted, almost four feet. It bounced along the kerb, scraping the wheel trim, but a woman driver would scarcely notice the difference. And space had been created, he was in. A minor victory. And an omen, he hoped.
The restaurant was crowded – tonight’s highlights were a celebrating playwright, the moment’s slickest fashion photographer, a leading libel lawyer whose hennaed hair was betrayed beneath the overhead lights. They all paused as Diane Burston walked in, men and women alike, wondering who she was meeting, where she bought her clothes, envying the maître d’ as she let her coat slip from her shoulders and into his hands. She bore that quality in a woman which goes beyond beauty and suggests control, a reversal of the primeval rule that men hunted and women waited helpless within the cave for the hunter’s return, the type of woman for whom a man’s first reaction is a buckling at the knees rather than any stirring of loins.
‘Good evening, Mr Corsa. Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’ Which she had, deliberately. He didn’t mind, not with the eyes of every man in the restaurant upon him.
They busied themselves with the functions of ordering. She cast her eyes over the menu for no more than a few seconds but knew precisely what she wanted. He had planned for champagne but everything about her suggested this was a woman of substance rather than froth; he ordered a vintage Montrachet.
‘I was intrigued by your invitation, Mr Corsa …’
‘Freddy. Please. And I wanted first and foremost to apologize. I’ve read again some of the coverage the Herald has given you. I didn’t care for it. I’m sorry.’
‘A letter of regret would have been sufficient.’
‘No it wouldn’t. I mean what I say. The Herald was wrong.’
‘That’s kind of you to say so. Sadly, of course, the damage has already been done.’
The waiter had finished laying out fresh cutlery, fish for her, côte de boeuf for him. Corsa picked up the steak knife, placing his thumb to the blade in the half-light as though checking its capacity to do damage.
‘I’ve got rid of the City Editor.’
‘Goodness,’ she replied, ‘what you men will do in pursuit of an advertising contract.’
‘Oh, no. Don’t misunderstand. This has nothing to do with your cancelled advertising. I’m in pursuit of something much bigger. And to avoid any confusion, as much as I appreciate your coming here this evening in a manner which is more than capable of starting a Cabinet crisis, I am not talking about trying to get into your bed.’
‘Then I have failed,’ she mocked. ‘When I talk business with men who don’t want to get into my bed I find I’ve lost half my advantage. Men are such little boys at heart. They seem incapable of concentrating on both coitus and contracts at the same time.’
‘I didn’t say I don’t want to get into your bed. But that’s not the point of this evening’s discussion. And I’m a very grown-up boy.’
They paused as the waiter arrived with sparkling water. The fresh ice cracked and spat in the glass.
‘You told me when we met at Downing Street that your corporate image is everything.’
‘True.’
‘Then why don’t you start taking it seriously?’
She refused to rise to his bait. ‘I spend tens of millions of pounds on it, as you know. Some I used to spend with you.’
‘On advertising, yes, but it’s an art form that has had its day. You’ve got to grow far more sophisticated. At least as sophisticated as your enemies.’
‘Enemies?’
‘You go into battle every day with eco-warriors who are trying to kill you. One oil spill, one rusting drilling platform being towed around the North Sea in search of a burial place, a baby seal which dies on a beach from unknown causes – any event like that, so long as it happens in front of a camera, and all the millions you spend on your image as a warm and caring oil company become about as effective as confetti in a Force Nine gale.’
‘Much the same can be said when newspapers like yours scurrilously and inaccurately accuse me of greed for getting a pay increase.’ She intended to wound but with Corsa it had no more effect than a soup spoon lobbed at a charging rhino.
‘Precisely! But have you ever asked yourself why you get such a hard time in the media? You’ve got to remember that even if journalists aren’t bone idle they’re all up against tight deadlines. We need news in a hurry. So the pressure groups lay a feast before us – videos, apocalyptic quotes, regular updates, even free propaganda T-shirts to wear in the garden at weekends. If we want a picture, they lay on one of their helicopters to get us the best shot.’ The bottom half of his face had grown animated, yet the eyes remained hard as coal. ‘D’you know the last thing they do before they chain themselves to trees or cut holes in the fence around a nuclear power station? They check to make sure that the batteries on their mobile phones are fully charged.’
‘But those bloody people make it up as they go along. They lie.’
Her lips had tightened, he was getting to her. He raised a patronizing eyebrow. It was his turn to mock.
‘They lie!’ she repeated. ‘Doesn’t that matter to the press?’ Her nostrils flared in protest, then slowly subsided. ‘Forgive me. I’m not usually naive.’
He leaned forward tenaciously, both hands gripping the table. ‘You told me yourself that it’s a war out there. And how do you fight it? Maybe you call a meeting of some planning committee, prepare a holding statement, discuss what, if anything, you dare to say. By which time it’s already too late. As far as the media are concerned you give us nothing but yesterday’s sardines wrapped in slices of stale bread.’
She paused, running her finger around the rim of her wine glass, listening to the mournful note.
