‘I didn’t know you played squash.’ An idea was forming in Donna’s mind. She made conversation while the details became clear.
‘I don’t really,’ he was admitting. ‘But with Flora away, I thought I’d better keep myself off the streets.’
‘Can you put that Web page up again?’ she asked him. ‘I’m doing a brief for the reinsurance actuary, I need to make sure I’ve got the details.’
‘No problem,’ he said cheerily, sitting down again and switching on his terminal.
She watched his keyboard as he tapped in his password. His fingers moved too fast for her to follow. The page appeared in all its nauseating charm. ‘Show me the links,’ she asked, grabbing a memo pad on which to squiggle notes. ‘And can I access this from my terminal?’
‘I haven’t posted it in the system yet. But if you use my password …’
‘What’s your password?’
At least he had the grace to blush when he told her. ‘Flora. And three xs.’
Pathetic. Predictable. To be sure, she said, ‘That’s so sweet. Space before the xs?’
‘Yes. Flora space xxx. That’s it.’ He blushed again. ‘Flora suggested it. She said hackers always started with obvious stuff like your birthday.’
‘Good point,’ Donna commented. ‘Thanks for that. I’ll shut down here. You get off to your game, eh?’
So Dillon left, swinging his sports bag with the enthusiasm of a man who has had such a good day that he has temporarily forgotten that for him to pick up a racquet is to invite total humiliation. Once he was out of sight Donna shook her head sadly and returned to his screen.
She closed the Marmeduke Whiskers page and opened up the Web connection.
She searched on the word ‘sex’.
The search engine found 4,988,210 Web pages for her. She sat in Dillon’s chair and browsed the first twenty of them, looking for plausible options – nasty enough to be offensive, but not so exotic as to be unbelievable. She registered Dillon with something called Klara’s TeenSex Chat Club, clicking on the special interest menu for Wet Chicks, Hot Haystacks and Three in a Bed. In his full name, she posted a few comments on the torrid topics in debate. From her own files, she then extracted a standard notification programme, pasted in the signature picture of a site called Barely Legal Bare-Assed Babes, and installed it in Dillon’s desktop. Then she signed off and closed his terminal down before being tempted to any more creativity.
When Donna left the office, she too stepped out with the ebullience of someone who has had a good day.
‘And has your son been excluded from school?’
‘Yes, Doctor. The boy’s home more often than he’s there. I say home, but he doesn’t stay in. He goes out getting into trouble. We’ve been having the police round since he was seven. Taking cars. Getting into people’s houses. Throwing things on railway lines. Going into shops. Annoying the neighbours. His sister would help me, but she left home because of him. Couldn’t stand it no more. He’s too young to go to prison, you see. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘A problem for you,’ Felix corrected the mother. She was a large, vigorous woman with tightly curled hair. The crumpled green fabric of her cheap suit flapped around bare legs speckled with broken veins. ‘There is a problem for Wayne in any case, isn’t there? But no criminal record as such, then?’
‘No, he’s too young, I told you,’ she repeated defensively. ‘Does that mean we can’t come to this clinic?’
‘Not at all,’ Felix assured her. He turned over another page of the file to find the referral letter, which was from a doctor in a former mining town two hundred miles away. ‘You’ve been sent to us by your GP?’
‘That’s right. He said Wayne needed a specialist. He said he’d been on the Prozac too long already and he didn’t want to prescribe any more.’
‘And he’s better on the Prozac?’
‘No, not really. The boy smiles more, that’s all. He gets into the same amount of trouble but don’t get so depressed about it.’
She spoke furtively because her son sat at the far end of the humid little room, completing psychometric tests under the supervision of the intern. He was a scrawny grey-faced boy, whose age was given as eleven although most people would have estimated him about four years younger. As he toiled through the paper he kicked the table-leg with thin feet, which were loose in his overlarge trainers.
‘Good shoes,’ Felix smiled at her. It was about the only positive thing he could find to say about the child.
‘Yeah, well,’ the mother said. ‘I don’t know nothing about them. You don’t ask, do you?’
‘How did you get here today?’ he asked her. The parameters of patient compliance with the programme were becoming depressingly clear.
‘His sister brought us in her car.’ She seemed unwilling to admit any relationship with either of her children.
‘We’ll be running this trial for two years and during that period I’d need to see you every month. Would that be a problem?’
‘What, you mean I’d have the fares to pay? Every month?’
‘The treatment your son received here would be free, of course. The prescriptions, the assessment, any tests we did. The fares would have to be paid. You’d have to get here somehow. Tell me, is there a social worker involved with your son?’
‘I suppose so.’ She was defensive again. ‘He’s seen social workers sometimes. Not one in particular that I remember.’
‘If you can get me some names, I’ll have a word and see what we can do. Sometimes we can find a budget for travel expenses. Now, if I could ask you and Wayne to step over to our nurse, she’ll finish the assessment.’
The nurse was housed in the next-door Portakabin. As Felix shut the door the thin wall shuddered. The atmosphere in these temporary rooms was sticky. It was a warm day, and already the windows were half-misted with condensation. Since most of the glazed panels in the wall were not capable of being opened, it seemed grandiose to classify them as windows at all. The ones that did open slid jerkily apart like windows on a toy car; the room was so small that the breeze they let in blew all his papers about. So they stayed shut, Felix perspired in his shirtsleeves, the beauty of his intern was blemished by the sweatmarks under her arms and the acrid smell of his patients lingered long after the admission clinic closed for the day.
He retired to his chair and finished opening the morning’s mail. ‘I am enclosing a copy of a paper to be published in our next issue,’ the editor of the Neurological Digest had written. ‘Given your interest in Lightoller’s Syndrome, you may wish to respond to the points made by Professor Knudson and Professor Kjell.’
Knudson and Kjell, in Felix’s opinion, were charlatans. Kjell wasn’t even medically qualified; he was just a teacher. From their research centre in Gothenburg, they broadcast the heresy that Lightoller’s Syndrome did not exist. They advocated crude behavioural modification to ‘treat’hyperactivity and AD D. They gave children praise, biscuits and play sessions when they behaved ‘well’. They showed the kids old Western films so Alan Ladd and Randolph Scott could supply the template of socialised manliness which their fathers had not provided. They copped out by citing the inherent sexism of Western educational methods. They were reporting from a state-funded trial, which used two thousand children. Felix had estimated that his budget would allow him to treat about fifty. He hated Knudson and Kjell.
Felix saw a medical conference, a big one, perhaps in a hotel in Las Vegas. He saw himself giving his paper on Lightoller’s Syndrome. He saw five thousand delegates listening intently to his penetrating arguments. He saw his graphs, he saw his statistics. He saw the applause, the approval, the handshaking, the backslapping and the headhunting. He saw himself condescending to address a studio audience of worried mothers on daytime television.
There at his old hospital he would have his parking space right there in the senior consultants’car park by the entrance, with his name on the tarmac in fresh white paint. Each morni
ng – when he was not lecturing around the country – his new BMW would glide home in that beautiful receptive space and he would cross the entrance hall as a living god, followed by the worshipping eyes of his colleagues. Perhaps even some of the patients would recognise him. His clinic, his famous clinic, would be on the ninth floor. He could feel the thick carpet, the refreshing air conditioning, and the swish of the potted palms as his trim assistant swayed by them on her elegant high heels. Waiting humbly would be a couple of middle-class madonnas, classy blond mothers with gold earrings and modest clean limbed boys. They would shake his hand and thank him for saving their lives.
A disrespectful wind gusted through the car park and rocked the Portakabin on its shaky foundations. Felix’s reverie hit the buffers. He breathed the stale air, brushed a dead spider from the scratched desktop. The distance from reality to dream was long but it could be covered. The journey of a thousand miles began with a single step. He had taken that step. It was time to take more, to stride out for his goal. On the desktop his hand formed itself into a resolute fist and thumped the surface. That woman from Pforza Pharmaceuticals. Damn her, why didn’t she call?
In certain circulatory backwaters, Felix’s blood started tingling. He thumped the desktop again, a little harder, then picked up his pen and started drafting the rebuttal of Knudson and Kjell.
11. April 26–27
Flora had a word for it. She had the derivation wrong, she thought it was something to do with destiny or the universe or whatever she believed in, she didn’t understand that it came from the old name for Sri Lanka, but even she understood the principle: an amazing coincidence. Such a wonderful amazing coincidence that even Dillon was tempted to believe that God or somebody had organised it. He got the feeling that it was all meant to be. Normally he left sensations like that to Flora; perhaps she was right when she claimed she was educating him. Serendipity, no question.
Stretching his sore calves, he stood outside The Messenger Gallery entranced by the works of Merita Halili. They shone. They shimmered. They floated in front of his eyes. On their arcs of silver wire, the blue glass discs swayed like lazy fish in a slow river. The horsetail of aluminium threads swished. Solemnly, the aluminium doors rotated before their cascade of glass drops.
So clever! Such ingenious motors, such magically miniaturised gears and such marvellously deft levers! Discovered by accident, just because cramp had seized his legs after that fiasco of a squash game and he had considered it wise to pull his car over and walk about for a while. And there, enticing him like will-o’-the-wisps, were the works of Merita Halili.
The pain in his calves transferred to his neck. Dillon realised that he had put his head on one side to watch the way the silvery wires joined to their elegant little crank-shaft. He was, in fact, standing in the street in the light radiating from the gallery window contorted like Quasimodo. The man in the gallery was watching him, a massive figure with a beard standing hands-on-hips in the pose adopted by Henry VIII for his Holbein portrait. As Dillon restored himself to normality, the man in the gallery beckoned him with a wave of his huge hand.
‘Aren’t you shut?’ Dillon asked him, checking the time. There was music playing quietly throughout the gallery, something reedy with a voice singing in a language he assumed to be Albanian.
‘Technically we’re closed, yes. But I’m going to be here doing my blasted VAT for another hour at least. So look around, if you’d like to. They’re great, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Dillon agreed humbly and stepped forward into the world of art, a world he considered the real world, the only world, but a place that he, in his profit-oriented dullness and his leaden lack of talent, would never be fit to do more than visit. He wasn’t sure he even knew the proper way to say he liked something like a sculpture. And this was Merita Halili’s world. In his memory she acquired a golden halo of creative glamour. ‘My Homeland,’ he read on the catalogue cover. ‘Inspired by the artist’s flight from Albania.’
‘Take your time,’ Smiley-and-Beefy advised him. ‘There’re some beers back in the kitchen if you’d like one.’
Dillon found this suggestion welcome. Floundering around the stupid squash court had left him hideously thirsty and he had been too ashamed to join his partner in the pub afterwards. A bottle of something Belgian and highly agreeable went down easily. Smiley-and-Beefy encouraged him to have a second.
Upstairs, a discreet pile of price lists allowed him to discover that the smallest works in the show cost about as much as the bonus he expected for the Marmeduke Whiskers account. Another coincidence with the intoxicating smell of destiny about it.
Dillon was drawn back to the blue glass number. It was, clearly, the masterpiece of the whole show. Flora always said that shade of violet blue was very spritual. In fact, the whole thing made him think of Flora, It was delicate, scintillating, mysterious and fundamentally out of his reach. In fact, since a red spot had been applied to its label, indicating that it had been sold, it seemed out of his reach entirely.
Smiley-and-Beefy watched him with half an eye. ‘That has been very much admired.’ Dillon felt-flattered that his taste was shared. ‘The buyer is actually-an American collector. He was delighted to get it before all these pieces go off to New York next month for her debut show over there.’ Dillon felt positively proud of himself. ‘The artist won’t reproduce it, of course.’ Dillon shook his head. ‘But if you were interested in something like that, I could find out if she would be interested in a commission.’
‘Could you?’
‘Of course. She is very busy at the moment …’
Dillon’s mind jumped into the future and found only Flora. ‘I was thinking of giving it to my fiancée as a wedding present,’ he heard himself say. ‘It’s the sort of thing she’d love.’
‘And when are you getting married?’
The man was taking notes, this was serious. ‘We thought in about six months. A winter wedding.’
‘How original. It would make a memorable gift.’
‘Yes, it would.’ Dillon suddenly felt himself being schmoozed. Did he not know this artist, now found to be on the threshold of global fame? Hadn’t she described him as very sexy? A pack of indignations beset him. He saw no reason for this amiable giant to be doing any contacting on his behalf. Besides, he would save the gallery commission on a direct sale. Flora liked him to save money. She would be twice as happy if he presented her with a gift which celebrated her unique femininity, symbolised his love for her and also represented a bargain. ‘Let me mull it over for a couple of days,’ he suggested, making for the door. ‘Thanks for the beer.’
‘No trouble.’ Smiley-and-Beefy put a brave face on defeat. ‘Come again.’
In his car, Dillon extracted the gallery card from his wallet and dialled Merita Halili’s number.
There was so much noise in the J Bar that Georgie hardly heard the phone when it first trilled for attention. The TV at the end of the room was relaying the early evening news. The lead story was the Fraud Squad raid on the offices of the National Bank of New Caledonia. A large, animated crowd had gathered around the screen.
When she heard her phone, Georgie decided to let it ring until the message service was activated. ‘It’ll be Felix,’ she explained around the table. ‘He thinks I’m in Brussels. I can’t let him hear this, it’s hardly chocolate-throwing or Euro-rolling or whatever the Belgians do for fun, is it?’ To make her point, the group by the TV broke up in cacophonous discussion as the news bulletin moved on to the less interesting topic of war crimes in Serbia.
‘What?’ Flora shouted at her.
Des dispensed what his grandmother called an old-fashioned look and seized the telephone on its final note.
‘Da?’ he enquired menacingly. ‘Ochin priatnik. Vskorie nagdia doshdi.’ He put his head on one side and listened to the answer. ‘Myuzit bylt. Myuzit.’ He listened again. Georgie tried to look sporting. Felix hated playing a part in any kind of joke. ‘Da,’ Des announced once
more, then, affecting a heavy accent he asked, ‘Vooman?’
The caller responded. ‘Da,’ Des nodded at them. ‘Byootiful vooman? Da!’
Georgie lost patience and tried to grab her phone, but Flora pulled her back.
‘Let me get it,’ Georgie hissed, suddenly anxious. ‘It’s not Felix.’
‘Dot ferry ferry byootful vooman? Name Mereeeta?’ Des was rolling his eyes. ‘Nyet. Nyet Mereeta. Pozhalista …’
‘Will you give it to me!’ demanded Georgie. She pushed Flora back into her own seat and felt her sweater snag on Flora’s bracelet. It was her favourite sweater, a silk one, laundered out to an extremely flattering old-rose pink. Georgie was unworthily annoyed.
A sense of the caller’s identity suddenly snapped Donna out of her apathy. She felt a rush. A hit of pure power made her pulse race and her blood sing. Yes! It was working. She was going to win. Her superior powers made her the master of everyone around her. Flora and Georgie, those two ridiculous men, they were all just creatures of their limbic systems, trying to hack it in the modern world with the mental equipment of lower mammals. They were her puppets, chess pieces on her personal board, snips of her own creation who could be altered and moved as she liked. This was how it must feel to be God. ‘Let her take the call, Des,’ she ruled.
He grimaced disappointment and gave Georgie the phone. Saying, ‘One minute please,’ she scrambled to her feet and took the apparatus outside the bar.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘A lot of people.’
‘Is that Merita Halili?’
‘Yes.’ What was she doing? Why had she said that, just when she’d put an end to this idiotic pretence?
‘I thought I’d got the wrong number.’ The sound of his voice induced in Georgie a frisson of what she assumed was embarrassment. ‘Listen, is this a bad time?’
‘No, no. Good time. Who is this?’ Without an effort, she had slipped back into character. She found herself purring into the microphone, leaning provocatively against the wall and running her fingers through her hair to make it messy again.
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