‘Such as?’
‘You see that shy couple over by the door?’ Horatio looked over. He despised shyness, rating it alongside frugality and modesty.
‘Remember them from university?’ asked Riley.
‘The Longmans? Yes. Wadham, weren’t they?’
‘Yup. He’s a sound technician or something now, works in the music business. Makes quite a lot apparently. Anyhow, they cornered me just now and insisted on showing me their holiday vid on his pager.’
‘How awful,’ said Hibbert. ‘Where had they been?’
‘Aachen!’ Mike and Horatio laughed out loud. ‘This is of me in Treatystrasse, Sally outside the hotel, both of us by the Blair statue, that sort of thing.’
‘Quel cauchemar! It’s the old story,’ said Mike. ‘At Oxford Jim Longman was a great conversationalist, wasn’t he, but since marrying her he’s tended to lie doggo. Same rather goes for her in a way. She’s Spanish. They got engaged suspiciously soon after the Inter-Regional Marriage Subsidy came into effect.’ Bitchier and bitchier, thought Horatio, beginning to enjoy himself. It was Riley’s turn:
‘But neither of them can touch those two City boys over by the window.’ Mike and Horatio glanced surreptitiously across and looked back. ‘Both very well off. Must each be paid near the Maximum Wage. After the inevitable boring speculation about whether Frankfurt will be sticking up interest rates again next week, they started complaining about having to work there for their hundred thousand or whatever it is a year. They’re getting all nostalgic for the Square Mile! I can’t tell you how dull it was. All about how wonderful it must have been in the old days when London was a major financial capital, blah blah blah. Made me quite angry, actually. Nostalgia’s a form of sedition you know.’
Said in such a pompous, blimpish way, it rather irritated Horatio, especially when Hibbert added: ‘It ought to be made an anti-Union activity.’
‘Oh, come on Mike!’ expostulated Horatio, ‘you can’t mean that.’
‘I do rather. All that sentimental guff about how wonderful it was in the past and how much better off we all were before Aachen. It’s just a subtle way of propagating anti-Union sedition.’
This was too much for Horatio. ‘But what if it’s true? I’m a historian, I have to say whether it’s true or not.’
‘Why? Why do you have to shove it down everyone’s throats?’
‘Shove what?’
‘You know. That we’re all worse off, that we made a mistake, that we should have stayed independent. Voted no to Aachen. Why do you have to taunt the people with that knowledge?’ Riley and Horatio looked at each another in astonishment. Hibbert worked for P.I.D. after all.
After an infinitesimal pause Mike added emphatically. Too emphatically: ‘Not that I believe that myself of course. I mean I really don’t!’ He quickly looked around and behind him. ‘I mean for God’s sake don’t go around ascribing those sorts of views to me. I love the U.S.E. I’m just saying that you lot, you hacks and commentators, cause everyone else a lot of heartache and trouble by making people feel conned and unhappy.’
‘I thought you said you liked the articles I’d written.’
‘Yes, well maybe in retrospect they were a tad too revisionist for my taste.’
‘Well, you’re definitely working in the right place if you think that.’ Hibbert took it as personally as it was intended. The conversation was degenerating fast.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Do you really think that it’s quite OK to tamper with historical truth in order to conform to the political mores of the day?’
‘Come on, Lestoq, every age has done that. That’s why history continues to be written. Don’t be so naive.’
‘It isn’t written just to fit in with the propaganda demands of the Political Intelligence Department! Not good history anyway, and certainly not the sort I want to write. I must say, you’re making out a good case for just the sort of censorship and pilgering you used to despise at Oxford. Working at P.I.D. obviously changes a person.’ This stung Hibbert.
‘And you’re so much better are you? What about quality? You write tripe for the papers. You still haven’t published a book, and if you carry on in this anti-Union vein you’ll never find a publisher anyhow.’
‘It’s not anti-Union! Are you threatening me?’
‘It is and you know it. It’s only popular because you titillate your readers with sedition. You probably think you’re carrying some sort of flame for your old man. Or for that girl of yours. And although you haven’t written anything serious yourself, except some thesis about Logic which no one’s interested in and which couldn’t find a publisher’ – it was all coming out – ‘God knows you sneer enough at other people’s work.’
Their voices were raised. People were turning round to stare. Horatio had never guessed how much Mike must secretly hate him. Why?
‘Such as, Mister Discerning General Reader?’ Horatio looked around theatrically, as though D.H. Lawrence might have gatecrashed the party with Yeats in tow.
‘Such as any number of people.’ Hibbert looked around too. ‘Well, such as that Yank over there for a start.’ Hibbert pointed at a tall blonde in a red dress who fortunately had her back to them and was far enough away not to be able to hear. Horatio dropped his voice.
‘Who’s she then?’
‘Gemma Reegan. She wrote The Secret Family of George V.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake Mike – or Hibbert, as you seem to prefer to be on surname terms – that book was complete rot!’ Horatio hadn’t read it, but he remembered some of the reviews. It had been about the supposed offspring of a secret marriage between George V and May Culme-Seymour in Malta in 1890. ‘The whole thing was gone into very thoroughly when the King sued, successfully by the way, in 1911. It all turned out to be balls.’
‘Well, they would have said that about the Royal Family in those days, wouldn’t they? And that’s not my point. At least she’s written a book, several in this case, rather than just criticised other people’s.’ Just at that moment the American turned around. She was striking, thought Horatio, beautiful even, and much better looking in the flesh than on the dust jacket of her risible bestseller. Unusual that.
‘This conversation’s going nowhere,’ said Horatio to Hibbert.
Without waiting for an answer he walked off towards the yank.
‘Excuse me. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you Gemma Reegan?’
‘Yes, Ah am.’ The voice was Deep South. She smiled a wide smile. There was something rather stately about her in her ankle-length toga-dress. Then he saw it. Give her a haircut, sandals, torch and horizon-gaze and she’d be a dead ringer for the Statue of Liberty.
‘I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed The Secret Family of George V.’
‘Why, thank you!’ Had her accent been any more Southern it would have dropped into the Gulf of Mexico. Everything else looked Southern too. The Texan smile, the shoulder pads, the long blonde tresses, best of all the plunging décolletage, the most fascinating part of which lay roughly at his nose level. That at least wasn’t like the Statue of Liberty. ‘I imagine you had to spend some time researching in Malta?’
‘Ah sure did, and boy did Ah have a great time there. It’s a great little place.’
‘How did you get the visa? I thought the trade war had extended to tourism.’
‘Ah got it through my university. They can make some exceptions for academics.’
‘Which one is that? Only, I work at a university myself.’
‘Do you now?’ He found the long, unhurried drawl strangely soothing. On closer inspection her hair looked natural and her eyes were that very light blue he’d only ever seen before in bright, cloudless East-Anglian skies in winter. He also took in the full, voluptuous contours. The female form had filled about forty per cent of Horatio’s waking thoughts ever since his thirteenth birthday, when puberty had hit him with all the force of an intercity shuttle.
‘Ah’
m from the University of Texas at Austin. Ah majored in English history. Unlike over here,’ she smiled a perfect array of bright white teeth, the product, doubtless, of rivet-braces applied during her teens, ‘we still think of British history as a worthwhile subject.’ He nodded at the criticism, fully concurring with it. During his time at Brasenose the History Department had been closed in order to direct resources to Victim, Complaint and Grievance Studies. ‘And which college are you from in Ox-ford?’ she asked. The gap between the ‘Ox’ and ‘ford’ was nearly too much, almost like an actress auditioning for the part of Scarlett O’Hara. For further authenticity, he thought, there ought to have been an antebellum Mississippi paddle-steamer called Southern Belle tooting ‘Dixie’ on its horn in the background.
‘All Souls.’
‘The graduate one?’
‘Yes.’
‘How ex-citing. Say, you’ll probably know a professor there who goes by the name of Dr Le Stock?’ How excruciatingly flattering. He thought quickly.
‘Yes, I do know him. Vaguely. At least we dine together in college every so often. It’s pronounced ‘Lestock’, by the way, as in Leicester. Why?’
‘Oh Ah just admire his writing, that’s all. Plus Ah’m told he’s an interesting person to meet. Plus Ah’m hoping for a job on The Times and as he writes for it he might be able to give me some advice.’
Horatio whipped off an imaginary cavalier’s plumed hat and effected a low bow: ‘Horatio Lestoq. At your service.’
‘Why you horn-swagglin’ little liar!’ She looked around. ‘Why are all these people staring at us?’
‘They’re staring at you because you are a very attractive woman, and at me because my extravagant gesture just now probably contravenes some section of our Sexism legislation.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because opening doors for women, standing up for them when they enter a room, proposing to them on one knee – let alone bowing to them at parties – is thought to imply male domination and is thus discouraged. That’s when it’s not actually illegal.’
‘Well, where Ah come from it’s called chivalry and Ah like it.’
‘Thank you.’
‘What Ah don’t like is being lied to by you!’ He could tell she was teasing.
‘A very gentle ruse to find out anything nasty you might have heard about me.’
‘Are there nasty things?’ Was she flirting with him? He hoped so, but having had so little experience of women he couldn’t really tell.
‘Plenty, but I doubt the Longmans would know them. How dull for you to be stuck talking to them.’
‘Not really. Ah’m hoping to cover the King’s visit for your newspaper, as well as my own syndicated column back home. Mr Longman is possibly one of the people who’ll be organising the sound systems for some of the events. He was real interesting.’
‘Until he brought his holiday vid out.’
She laughed and dropped her voice. ‘Yessir. Until then! So what will you be doing after your last Referendum article, Dr Lestoq?’ she asked, with eyes that seemed genuinely interested in the answer.
‘No idea. That’s part of the fun of being freelance. I’ve no plans.’ It was actually part of the terror of being freelance, but he wanted to look debonair. ‘And please call me Horatio.’
‘Thank you, Ah will. An’ you call me Gemma, by the way. You know, perhaps we could work together on some project sometime? Ah’d just love to do something at Ox-ford. You see, Ah live over here full time now.’ Horatio was happy to hear it. ‘And Ah want to write something on how misunderstood my country is over here.’
‘Yes, yes of course.’ Horatio had never been particularly pro-A.F.T.A, although he enjoyed their movies and coffee. But he liked the look of Gemma, so this would call for some fancy political footwork. His most firmly held beliefs always went into flux when faced with even a passably pretty girl. And Gemma was a beautiful woman. He crossed his fingers in his pocket:
‘You know we really ought – I’m sorry if this sounds like a corny pick-up line but I assure you it’s not – we really ought to get together sometime to discuss it. I managed to sell those fairly revisionist pieces to The Times. I can’t see why you can’t get them to run a mildly pro-A.F.T.A. article there too. I’ll put you in touch with their deputy editor Roderick Weaning if you like.’
‘Actually Ah’ve already got an appointment to see Mr Weaning tomorrow morning.’ Damn. He should have kicked off with a more impressive namedrop. The Editor at least.
‘May Day morning. That is keen. All right, how about getting together for tea some afternoon?’ That sounded nicely non-threatening and it could always progress.
‘Well now, there you go and mention the only time in the day that Ah can’t see you. Ah have to pick Oliver up from school at sixteen-thirty.’
Alarm bells went off in Horatio’s mind. Submarine klaxons. Air-raid sirens.
‘Oliver?’
‘My seven-year-old.’
Damn, damn, DAMN! Why no wedding ring? That’s the sort of thing that should be stamped out by Europol, thought Horatio, not nostalgia. There had to be a catch. Time at least for one last extravagant compliment though. He chose one which had the added advantage of being true:
‘You really don’t look as though you could have a child at all, let alone one aged seven.’
She blushed pleasingly: ‘Why, thank you!’
Horatio then spent the requisite number of minutes showing an altogether bogus interest in the brat while mentally planning his escape. He felt like David Fraser must halfway through a promising talk with a floating voter when he suddenly learns that in fact they’re a card-carrying Liberal Democrat. Immediate escape looked difficult though, especially after all that stuff about working on projects together.
It arrived in the most welcome, unexpected and frankly glorious shape of someone even taller, fitter and better-looking than Gemma.
‘I do hope I’m not disturbing you?’ She was about one metre ninety, jet black hair, greeny-blue eyes and physically pneumatic. Pure ‘Girl from Ipanema’, he thought. Tall and tanned and lovely and the rest of it. A few years younger than Gemma, too, Horatio guessed. She looked as though she worked out in the gym while Gemma was picking her son up from school.
Horatio experienced that familiar panic-pang which came whenever he met a truly attractive, ultramodel-type woman. They made him lose his conversational thread, which in turn led him to say stupid things, which, considering his intelligence was his sole selling point, made him angry with himself, which made the burbling worse. Then, just as he grappled his way back and was doing all right, some H.R.G. would come in and whisk her off.
He noticed Riley and Hibbert, who were still talking together in the corner, staring at the two women with unfeigned admiration. He felt a definite frisson of pride and pleasure that Gemma and the other girl were both taking such a strong interest in him. Horatio noticed Marty, Fraser and Bittersich all glancing over. Tallboys, too, later on, with a particularly vicious expression on his face. Only James Longman failed to take any notice of Cleo at all, probably because Olivia was watching him so closely.
She introduced herself as Cleo something, he didn’t hear the surname in the hubbub. No wedding ring, he noted. She was wearing a white silk dress roughly the same size as his breast pocket handkerchief. It left just enough to the imagination to have most heterosexuals in the room – even those talking to their fiancées – exhibiting severe Tennis Spectator Neck Syndrome.
And she knew it.
‘I’m so sorry for interrupting,’ she said, ‘but are you Horatio Lestoq, the writer?’ It was for moments like this he had left Oxford. You didn’t get this sort of attention in Brasenose senior common room.
‘Writer sounds rather grand, doesn’t it?’ He’d attempt modesty, however bad he was at it: ‘I’m more of a hack really. Unlike Gemma Reegan here, who’s a proper author. I think that sounds best of all.’ Cleo shook Gemma’s hand in a perfunctory, dismissive way, with
an unmistakeable now-why-don’t-you-toddle-off-little-girl smile. Horatio caught it and yelped inwardly. In his limited experience, women who didn’t like other women tended to like men. A lot.
Then all the lights went out.
It was happening more and more, as the Union tried to conserve post-North Sea energy. The cuts were usually well announced and only lasted a few seconds and nowadays people rarely bothered to mention them. It was almost considered unpatriotic to notice, let alone complain. In those particular few seconds, however, something happened. One of the women landed a silent kiss straight onto Horatio’s lips. Either could have done it from where she was standing, merely by leaning forward.
The lights came back on.
‘Well that’s something we don’t get States-side,’ said Gemma.
‘What?’
‘Blackouts. If we ever get round to writing that article, we must mention them.’
‘We’ll be sure to.’ Neither woman betrayed the minutest indication of having done it. Close examination of their lipstick didn’t betray a smudge.
On the stroke of midnight, Marty put on a disc of ‘Workers of Europe’ and, holding hands, everyone sang the four traditional May Day verses lustily.
Across the next room Riley was being pushed quite aggressively by Hibbert. Marty and Brian Watchorn quickly waded over to break it up, Brian being famous for his moderating skills.
‘That’s strange,’ said Horatio, perplexed. ‘Peter Riley is the gentlest of souls. Mike Hibbert almost picked a fight with me earlier, too. I wonder what’s up?’
Gemma, her journalist’s instincts or natural nosiness, aroused, went over to find out. She had been on the receiving end of quite enough glacial glances from Cleo. Once she’d left, Horatio nearly asked Cleo if she’d kissed him, but realised immediately how stupid that would have been if it had been Gemma.
Cleo was clearly fascinated by him and he wanted to savour the experience. He was also savouring some of the contraband Kentucky bourbon that was being passed around quite openly. Cleo pointed to a sofa in Marty’s cable room next door. Taking Horatio firmly by the hand she said, ‘Come over here. We can talk properly now that Yankswank’s gone.’
The Aachen Memorandum Page 7
