Armadillo

by William Boyd

  The Book of Transfiguration

  Chapter 7

  His mother passed him a small circular tray of piled white bread sandwiches.

  ‘Here, Milo, take this down to Lobby, darling, will you?’

  He thought there were probably twenty or thirty sandwiches, cut into triangles, with various fillings of meat and all neatly laid out in concentric circles as if to be handed round at an office party or working lunch.

  ‘They’re not all for him, surely?’

  ‘He’s a growing young boy,’ his grandmother said.

  ‘He’s nearly forty years old, Gran, for heaven’s sake.’

  His grandmother spoke to his mother in their language, saying something that made them both chuckle.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lorimer asked.

  ‘She say: if a man eat too much fish he don’t got enough meat.’

  ‘Go on, go on, Milo. Lobby don’t like to wait for his lunch.’

  From the hall he could see his father being walked gently along the angled walls of the living room by Komelia, her hands carefully supporting an elbow. His father was wearing a blue blazer with a badge on the breast pocket and a pair of pale blue slacks. His white beard had been recently trimmed, its edges razored sharp against his pink skin.

  ‘Look, Dad, there’s Milo,’ Komelia said, as the circuit brought him round to face the open doorway to the hall. His father’s creased bright eyes twinkled, the permanent smile never faltered.

  ‘Give him a wave, Milo.’

  Lorimer raised his hand for a second or two and let it fall. It was all too fucking sad, he thought, desperately. Komelia led him off again, his father’s feet moving busily in short shuffling steps.

  ‘Isn’t he doing well? Hello, Dad. Look, Milo’s here.’ Monika had appeared silently from somewhere in the house to stand beside him. She helped herself to one of Slobodan’s sandwiches. ‘Tongue?’ she exclaimed, chewing. ‘Since when does he get tongue?’

  ‘He seems fine,’ Lorimer said, inclining his head in his father’s direction. ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s sixty-five years old, Milo, and he’s not as regular as he should be.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Doctor’s coming. We think he needs a wee enema.’

  Lorimer carried Slobodan’s tray downstairs and along the street to the B and B office. There was a gusty cold wind blowing with a misty fine rain mixed up in it and Lorimer held his spread palm an inch above the sandwich rings in case one of them might be flipped away by the stiff breeze. In the office Drava sat in front of a VDU making up the accounts; beyond her on two shiny, bum-worn sofas lounged half a dozen drivers, reading the papers and smoking. There were mutters of welcome.

  ‘Milo.’

  ‘Cheers, Milo.’

  ‘Hi, Milo.’

  ‘Dave, Mohammed, Terry. Hi, Trev, Winston. How you doing?’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Smashing.’

  ‘You off to a wedding, Milo?’

  ‘This is Mushtaq. He’s new.’

  ‘Hi, Mushtaq.’

  ‘He’s Lobby’s little bro.’

  ‘He’s the brains in the family, ha.’

  ‘Give us one of Lobby’s sarnies, then,’ Drava said, taking off her specs and pinching the bridge of her nose, hard. ‘How are you, Milo? Look a bit done in. They working you too hard? Very smart, I must say.’

  ‘It’s the weight of that wallet what he has to carry around, ha,’ Dave said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lorimer said. ‘Got a meeting in town. I heard Dad was poorly, said I’d drop by.’

  ‘He’s got awful constipation. Rock solid. Won’t budge. Hang about, that’s tongue.’

  ‘Get your mucky paws off of my lunch,’ Slobodan said, wandering out of his control room. ‘Trev, take over, will you? Mohammed? Parcel at Tel-Track. How are you, Milo? Looks a bit tired, don’t he, Drava?’

  Slobodan relieved him of the tray, winked at him and started eating a sandwich. ‘Tongue,’ he said appreciatively, ‘nice one,’ and stuck his own out at Drava. ‘Back in half a mo. Anything you want me to tell Phil?’

  ‘Nothing printable.’

  ‘I’ll tell him that and he won’t be well pleased, Drava. Come on, Milo. Have a word in my office.’

  Lorimer followed his brother out into the street and round the corner to his small terraced house. He noticed that Slobodan had plaited his ponytail and as he walked it bumped unpliantly from shoulder to shoulder as if it were stiffened with wire. The house was a product of Slobodan’s brief (six months) marriage some eight or nine years ago. Lorimer had only met his sister-in-law, Teresa, once – at the wedding, in fact – and could dimly bring to mind a feisty, lisping brunette. The next time he returned home the marriage was over and Teresa had left. But the purchase of the nuptial home had at least ensured Slobodan’s quitting of the Blocj household and he had lived in impoverished but seemingly contented bachelorhood around the corner ever since. He was always keen to volunteer confidences about his sex-life and occasional partners (‘Can’t do without it, Milo, it’s not natural’) but Lorimer did not encourage such revelations.

  Slobodan, to give him credit, Lorimer thought, kept the place tidy. He had gravelled the thin strip of front garden and had trailed a clematis over the front door. He paused now at the gate, munching, and gestured with his tray of sandwiches at his shiny car, an ancient, much-loved burgundy Cortina.

  ‘Looking good, eh?’

  ‘Very shiny’

  ‘Waxed her yesterday. Come up lovely’

  There were no pictures on the walls in Slobodan’s immaculate house and only the absolute minimum of furniture sparsely occupied the rooms. A persistent smell of air freshener lingered about the place as if someone regularly wandered upstairs and down with a can of aerosol scooshing wafts of ‘Forest Glade’ or ‘Lavender Meadow’ into the corners. Above the fireplace in the living room was the house’s sole ornament, a large crucifix with a quarter-life-size, writhing, blood-drizzled Christ. The television was on and watching the lunchtime news was Phil Beazley, a can of beer in hand, Drava’s ex-husband and Slobodan’s partner in B and B Mini-cabs and International Couriers.

  ‘Hey, Milo,’ Phil said, ‘my main man.’

  ‘Hi, Phil.’

  ‘What you drinking, Milo?’ Slobodan stood by his crammed drinks trolley – over fifty beverages on offer, was his proud boast. Lorimer passed; Phil had his beer replaced and Slobodan fixed himself a Campari and soda. Phil knelt forward and turned down the volume on the television. He was a small, thin man – dangerously thin, Lorimer thought – with sunken cheeks and jutting narrow hips. He dyed his fine hair blond and wore an earring. His blue eyes were slightly astigmatic and he cultivated a jolly, laddish demeanour that seemed entirely false. One’s first and lasting impression of Phil Beazley was one of suspicion. For example, Lorimer suspected strongly that Beazley had only married Drava – a hunch that was reinforced by the christening of Mercedes – for the euphonious motoring associations of her name.

  ‘Good to see you, Milo,’ Phil Beazley said, regaining his seat. ‘Been a while. Looking terrific, isn’t he, Lobby?’

  ‘Smart as a new pin, Phil.’

  ‘You handsome bastard. I can see life’s treating you well, no worries,’ Beazley said.

  Lorimer felt a weariness descend on him and simultaneously a concomitant, metaphorical weightening of his cheque book in his breast pocket, as if its leaves had turned to lead.

  It duly turned out that B and B’s cash-flow problem was insignificant and temporary, so Slobodan and Phil warmly informed him. A valued account customer had gone bankrupt, leaving four months’ unpaid bills. This valued account customer had turned out to be a fucking bastard evil cunt because even though he knew he was going to go belly-up he was still ordering cars like ‘they was going out of fashion’. Cars here, cars there, cars to take packages to Bristol and Birmingham, cars for wait-and-returns clocking up idle hours outside pubs and nightclubs. Phil said he w
anted to sledgehammer the valued account customer’s kneecaps or do a ‘chesterfield’ on his back with an industrial stapler but Lobby here had dissuaded him. They were taking on more drivers to make up the shortfall but in the interim, temporarily, through no fault of their own, they were in need of an injection of capital.

  Above board, Milo, no favours, here’s what I propose. I, me, am going to sell you the Cortina.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three K.’

  ‘I have a car,’ Lorimer said. ‘What do I want with your Cortina? You need it.’

  ‘I’ve got a new motor, a Citroen. The Cortina is a classic car, Milo. Look on it as an investment.’

  On the television set were mute images of a burning village in Africa. Boy soldiers brandished Kalashnikovs at the camera.

  Lorimer reached for his cheque book. ‘Three grand will cover it?’

  Phil and Slobodan looked at each other as if to say: shit, we should have asked for more.

  ‘You can’t do it cash, can you, Milo?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That going to be a problem, Phil?’

  ‘Ah. No. Could you make it out to my dad? Anthony Beazley. Great. Terrific, Milo, ace.’

  ‘Diamond,’ Slobodan agreed. ‘Diamond geezer.’

  Lorimer handed over the cheque, trying to keep the resignation out of his voice. ‘Pay me back when you can. Keep the car for the firm. Find another driver, use it, make it work for you.’

  ‘Nice idea, Milo. Good thinking, Phil, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s why he’s the City gent, Lobby, not like us daft cunts. Nice idea, Milo.’

  As he drove east – New King’s Road, Old Church Street, along the Embankment, along the sunken, torpid, mud-banked river, past the bridges – Albert, Chelsea, Vauxhall, Lambeth – on to Parliament Square and its honey-coloured, busily buttressed and fretted palace (focus of Marlobe’s unquenchable bile), an uncharitable thought edged its way into his mind: how had Slobodan known he was coming that day and so contrived to have Phil Beazley present? Answer: because when he, Lorimer, had called his mother she had said his father was unwell and he had immediately arranged a visit. But his father had seemed unchanged, or at least much as usual, despite all the loud diagnosis about the state of his bowels. And this business with the sandwiches – his mother and grandmother practically pushing him out of the kitchen… It was as if he had been set up, set up by his own family for a three grand sting to help Lobby Blocj out of a jam.

  214. Lorimer Black. If you want to change your name, the solicitor said, simply do so. If enough people call you by, or know you under, your new name then you have effectively, to all intents and purposes, changed your name. As an adult you are perfectly free to do this, as the case of many actors and artistes demonstrates.

  But this seemed too easy to you, too ephemeral. What about documents, you asked? What about driving licence, passport, insurance, pension plan? What if you wanted all the documentation of your life to bear your new name?

  Then that will require formalizing, the solicitor said. Either by deed poll or by what is called a statutory declaration, witnessed by a lawyer. You submit the statutory declaration as formal evidence of your change of name.

  This was what you wanted, you wanted your new name to be in all the record banks and computer mainframes, in the files and phone books, the voting registries, in your passport and on your credit cards. Only in this way could you truly possess your different identity. Tour old name is deleted, becomes an endangered species, then, eventually, extinct.

  This was what was dominating your thoughts when you returned so suddenly from Scotland. A clear and distinct schism had to be established. Milomre Blocj would not be rubbed out entirely but would live on quietly, known to a handful of people in a corner of Fulham. But to the rest of the world he would cease to exist: your statutory declaration would see to that, from now on you could and would become Lonmer Black.

  You came back suddenly from Scotland to change your name and life and found your father ill.

  He was lying in bed, his skin grey, his beard untrimmed, whiter and thicker than you remembered.

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ you asked. ‘Working too hard?’

  ‘I keep thinking I fainting,’ he said. ‘Everything going like misty. The noise too, I don’t hear the noise proper. I feel tired. Maybe I got virus.’

  ‘Take it easy, Dad.’

  ‘You come home, Milo. Everything all right?’

  ‘I need to get a job, Dad. I need your help.’

  ‘What you want to do? EastEx is not so good now. You could work with Slobodan on the cars.’

  ‘I need something different. Something safe. Something ordinary.’ You were thinking: nine to five, Monday to Friday, an office, steady, anonymous, routine, grey, calm. You were thinking: accounting, a bank, civil service, telephone sales, credit control, assistant manager, personnel…

  ‘You tell me, Milo, I got plenty friends. I can get y ou job. But be quick, OK? I don’t think I very well man. What job you want to do, Milo?’

  You said, quite spontaneously, ‘Insurance.’

  The Book of Transfiguration

  Lorimer parked in the multi-storey off Drury Lane, where he sat in his car quietly for five minutes gathering his thoughts, calmly rehearsing the phrases he would use and the inflections he would give them. Then he changed his tie – silk, but very subdued – put the waistcoat on under his jacket and changed his tassled loafers for lace-up brogues. As a final touch he recombed his hair and placed the parting an inch further to the left. Most of these small signifiers would be undetected by ninety-nine per cent of the people he met; the remaining one per cent who almost unreflectingly registered them would regard them as a norm, and thus entirely unexceptional. And this was what he was after, really: the minute alterations in his appearance were designed primarily for himself, they were for his own peace of mind, encouraging confidence in the persona he had decided to wear. They functioned, in a way, as a form of almost invisible armour and, thus protected, he was ready to do battle.

  Jonathan L. Gale’s capacious corner office looked down Holborn towards St Paul’s cathedral and beyond to the tall scattered towers of the City. The day was fresher, the blue sky populated with a dense flotilla of clouds, spinnakering north. The wink of sunflash on high windows, as he turned his head.

  ‘If you can believe it,’ Gale was saying, sawing at the vista with the edge of his palm, ‘I’m actually going to spoil my own view. Our new development is going to block out about three-quarters of the dome of St Paul’s…’ He shrugged. ‘It is a rather super building, I must say’

  ‘I think Wren is the master, finally,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘What? Oh no, I mean our new development.’ He went on proudly to name a firm of architects he was employing of whom Lorimer had never heard.

  ‘You could always move office,’ Lorimer ventured.

  ‘Yeees. Can I get you some coffee, tea, acqua minerale?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Jonathan Gale sat down behind his desk, taking care not to crease his jacket. He was a slackly handsome man in his fifties with an even sunbed-bronzed look to him and thinning, oiled-back chestnut hair. Lorimer was relaxed, Gale was in the ninety-nine per cent, he had overcompensated. Gale was also a little too well-dressed, in Lorimer’s verdict. Savile Row suit, yes, but the cut was slightly too tightly waisted, the lapels a little wide, the rear vents a little too long. Also the vibrant cobalt blue shirt with the white collar and cuffs, the pillar-box red of the tie were distinctly lurid – all this and the unfamiliar knobbled leather (mamba? iguana? komodo dragon?) and pointed-ness of the shoes hinted at dandysme, the ultimate sin in Ivan Algomir’s book, the worst sort of pretension. The watch was ostentatious, heavy, gold, rising half an inch off the wrist with many dials and projecting winders. This chronometer was consulted and there ensued some speculation about the tardiness of Francis, whereupon he presently arrived, apologizing.

  Francis Home
was olive-skinned, wearing a dollar-green suit that only the French and Italians can get away with. He had dark, crinkly hair and a fine gold chain around his right wrist. He smelt of some faint coniferous, cedary aftershave or cologne. Cypriot? Lebanese? Spanish? Egyptian? Syrian? Greek? Like himself, Lorimer knew, there were many types of Englishmen.

  Lorimer shook the hand with the gold chain. ‘Mr Hume,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘how do you do? I’m Lorimer Black.’

  ‘Homey’ Home said with a slight gutteral rasp on the ‘h’. ‘The “e” is not silent.’

  Lorimer apologized, repeated his name correctly, coffee was ordered and fetched and they took up their positions.

  ‘We are simply devastated by the fire,’ Gale said. ‘Shocked. Aren’t we, Francis?’

  ‘It is a most serious matter for us. The knock-on effect to our operations is… is…’

  ‘Disastrous.’

  ‘Precisely’ Home agreed. He had a very slight accent, quasi-American, Lorimer thought. ‘The claim is in,’ Home went on. ‘I assume everything is in order,’ he added, knowing full well it wasn’t.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Lorimer confirmed, sadly. ‘It turns out that the fire in the Fedora Palace was a deliberate one. Arson.’

  Gale and Home looked sharply at each other, eyes beaming messages in unfeigned alarm, Lorimer thought.

  He continued: ‘It was started by one of your subcon tractors, Edmund, Rintoul, to avoid paying penalty charges. Of course they deny it, categorically.’

  Gale and Home’s surprise deepened. They wanted to speak, to curse, to exclaim, Lorimer guessed, but some profound level of caution silenced them. They glanced at each other again, as if waiting for a sleepy prompter: the mood in the room grew darkly serious, stakes increasing by the second.