“My father made no travel arrangements that you remember? He didn’t send for Gasson?”
“No sir. He was not rational. Rationality, if it was to return, occurred later, I would say.”
Oliver preserved his harsh tone for one more beat.
“Pay attention, Gupta. Mr. Tiger’s fortunes depend on the recovery of certain lost papers. I have engaged a team of professional investigators to assist me. You’re to remain in your quarters until they leave the building. Do you understand?”
Gupta gathered up his hammock and scuttled down the stairs. Oliver waited until he heard the basement door slam shut. From Tiger’s desk he telephoned the watchers across the road and blurted the fatuous code word Brock had given him for this moment. He stormed down the stairs and pulled open the front door. First came Brock, followed by crew in dark tracksuits and backpacks for their wretched cameras, tripods, lights and whatever other junk they carried.
“Gupta’s gone down to his basement,” Oliver hissed at Brock. “Some bloody idiot didn’t notice he’s taken to sleeping upstairs. I’m getting out.”
Brock murmured into his jacket collar. Derek handed his backpack to his neighbor and stepped to Oliver’s side. Oliver stumbled down the front steps, escorted by Derek and followed by Aggie, who grabbed his free arm in a companionable embrace while Derek held the other. A cab pulled alongside, Tanby at the wheel. Derek and Aggie whisked Oliver aboard and sat him between them on the backseat. Aggie laid a hand on his arm but he shook himself free. As they entered Park Lane he had a waking dream that he had propped his bicycle against a stationary train in India and climbed aboard, but the train refused to budge because of bodies on the line. At the safe house Aggie rang the bell while Derek handed Oliver onto the pavement and Tanby waited to catch him as he touched down. Oliver had no consciousness of going up the stairs, only of lying on his bed in his underclothes and wishing he had Aggie beside him. He woke to see morning light behind the threadbare curtains of the dormer window and Brock, not Aggie, sitting in the chair, holding a sheet of paper to him. Oliver raised himself on one elbow, rubbed his neck, accepted a photocopied letter. Printed colophon of two chain-mail gauntlets intertwined in greeting, or is it combat? The words TRANS-FINANZ VIENNA curved over the gauntlets. Electronic type with an indefinable foreign accent:
To T. Single, Esq., PERSONAL, by courier.
Dear Mr. Single,
Subsequent to our negotiations with a representative of your distinguished firm, we have pleasure to advise you formally of our claim upon House of Single in sum of £200,000,000 (two hundred million pounds sterling), such being fair and reasonable compensation for lost earnings and betrayal of confidences entrusted to you under client privilege. Payment within thirty days to the account of Trans-Finanz Istanbul Offshore, details known to you, marked attention Dr. Mirsky, failing this further action will follow. Collateral is forwarded to you under separate cover to your private residence. Thanking you for your early attention.
Signed Y. I. Orlov in an ailing, elderly hand, and countersigned by Tiger’s prim initials confirming that the contents had been read and duly noted.
“Remember Mirsky?” Brock inquired. “Used to be Mirski with an i till he went to the States for two years and learned wisdom.”
“Of course I do. Polish lawyer. Some kind of trading partner of Yevgeny’s. You told me to look out for him.”
“Trading partner my foot.” Brock was riding him, determined to move him forward. “Mirsky’s a crook. He was a Communist crook and now he’s a capitalist crook. What’s he doing playing banker to Yevgeny’s two hundred million quid?”
“Why the fuck should I know?” Oliver shoved the letter back at him.
“Get up.”
Oliver sullenly heaved himself fully upright and moved his legs round till he sat on the edge of the bed.
“Are you listening?”
“Not much.”
“I’m sorry about Gupta. We’re not perfect, we never will be. You managed him a treat. That was sheer genius, unscrambling the strong room combination. Nobody but you could have done that. You’re the best operator I’ve got. That’s not the only letter we found, by any means. Our friend Bernard is buried in there with his free villa, so are half a dozen other Bernards. Are you listening?” Oliver went to the bathroom, turned on the basin tap and sluiced water in his face. “We found Tiger’s passport too,” Brock called after him through the open doorway. “Either he’s using someone else’s or he hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Oliver heard this news as if it were just another death among so many. “I need to ring Sammy,” he said, coming back to the bedroom.
“Who’s Sammy?”
“I need to ring his mother, Elsie, tell her I’m all right.” Brock brought him a telephone and stood over him while he used it. “Elsie—it’s me, Oliver. How’s Sammy? Good—oh right, well—see you soon”—all in one dull tone before he rang off, took a breath and, without a glance at Brock, dialed Heather’s number in Northampton. “It’s me. Yes. Oliver, that me. How’s Carmen? . . . No, I can’t . . . What? Well, get the doctor . . . Look, go private, I’ll pay . . . Soon . . .” He lifted his head and saw Brock nodding to him. “They’ll come and talk to you soon . . . like tomorrow or the next day . . .” More nods from Brock. “And there’ve been no more funny people coming round? . . . No shiny cars or spooky phone calls? No more roses? . . . Good.” He rang off. “Carmen’s cut her knee,” he complained, as if it were all Brock’s fault. “Might need stitching.”
11
Aggie drove. Oliver sprawled beside her, now attacking the top of his head with sweeps of his hand, now hoisting up his long legs and with a great puff releasing them to buffet against the floor, now wondering what would happen if he took a dive at her, like putting his hand on hers while she changed gear, or running his fingers round the gap between her collar and her neck. She’d stop the car and flatten me, he decided. The olive hills of Salisbury Plain flowed to either side of them. Sheep grazed on their slopes. A low sun gilded farmhouses and churches. The car was an anonymous Ford with a toy glider on the rear ledge and a second radio secreted beneath the dashboard. Ahead of them a pickup truck rode point, Tanby at the wheel, Derek at his side. A red streamer was tied to its aerial. Aggie doesn’t like Derek, so I don’t either. Two leather-clad motorcyclists rode tail, their helmets blazoned with red arrows. Sometimes the car radio crackled and a chill female voice spoke a code word. Sometimes Aggie responded with another. Sometimes she tried to cheer him up.
“I mean, have you ever been to Glasgow, Oliver?” she asked. “It’s really humming.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I mean, you could do worse than try it when this is over, if you get my meaning.”
“Good thought. I might at that.”
She tried again. “Do you remember Walter at all?”
“Yeah, sure, course, Walter. One of Tanby’s bruisers. What about him?”
“Oh Walter, well, he just slunk off to one of these two-bit security firms up north. Thirty-five thousand a year and a fur-lined Rover, it makes you sick. Where’s loyalty? Where’s service?”
“Where indeed?” Oliver agreed, and smiled at fur-lined.
“I mean, wasn’t that awful for you? Discovering your own dad was a crook and all? And you fresh from law school, believing that law was about protecting people and keeping society on a straight course? I mean, how does a person deal with that, Oliver? And you’re talking to someone who read philosophy for her sins.” Oliver wasn’t talking to anyone, whatever they had read, but Aggie plunged on. “I mean, how do you ever know, in a situation like that, whether you just hate the bastard or love justice? Asking yourself day and night, Am I being a hypocrite, all the time pretending I’m high and mighty and virtuous on my white horse, when actually I’m getting my own back on my father? Is that how it went with you, or is it just me being vicarious?”
“Yeah. Well.”
“I mean, you’re a real star for us, do you
know that? The lonely decider. The idealist. The walk-in of all time. There’s blokes in the Service would kill to get your autograph.” Long delay in which even the doughty Aggie might have wished she had not been quite so doughty.
“There’s no white horse,” Oliver mumbled. “More a sort of merry-go-round.”
The pickup ahead of them signaled left. They followed it down a slip road into country lanes. The motorbike came after them. Young foliage closed above them, cutting out the sky. Sunlight danced between the tree trunks, the radio squawked static. The pickup pulled into a lay-by, the motorbike behind them peeled into a side turning. The car nose-dived down a steep hill and crossed a water splash. They reached a hilltop. A yellow barrage balloon with HARRIS painted on it was suspended over a filling station. She’s been here before, he thought, watching her out of the corner of his eye. They all have. She took the left turn, they skirted the village and saw the church on the skyline and the tithe barn next to it and the pantiled bungalows that Tiger had fought tooth-and-nail to prevent. They entered Autumn Lane, where fallen leaves lay dying all year round. They passed a cul-de-sac called Nightingales End and saw a parked electricity van with its ladder up and a man doing something to the wires. In the cab a woman was talking into a telephone. Aggie drove another hundred yards and pulled up beside a bus stop.
“You have liftoff,” she announced.
He got out. The sky behind the trees looked like day but in the hedgerows dusk was gathering fast. On a grass island stood a brick war memorial inscribed with the names of the Glorious Fallen. Four Harvey boys, he remembered. All from one family, all dead by the age of twenty, and their mother lived till ninety. He started walking and heard Aggie drive away. The immense gateposts rose before him. On their summits, carved tigers clutched the Single coat of arms. The tigers had come from a sculpture park in Putney and cost a fortune. The coat of arms was the work of a pedantic heraldry consultant named Potts who spent a weekend questioning Tiger about his antecedents, not realizing they varied with the seasons. The results were a Hanseatic ship representing our ancient Lübeck trading connections, hitherto unknown to Oliver, a tiger rampant and two turtledoves from our Saxon side, though what doves had to do with Saxony was a riddle known only to Mr. Potts.
The drive flowed like a black river over the twilit meadows. This is the grave I was born in, he thought. This is where I lived in the time before I became a child. He passed the pepper-pot gatehouse where Gasson the chauffeur went to ground when Tiger decided to stay the night. No lights burned in the windows, the upper curtains were drawn. A loose-box stood in the yard, its tow bar resting on a pile of bricks. Oliver is seven years old. It is his first pony class and he is wearing the stiff bowler and tweed jacket that Tiger from his distant place of power has decreed. Nobody else in his class is wearing a bowler, so Oliver has tried to hide it, together with the silver-handled riding crop that Tiger has sent by courier for his birthday because by now Tiger’s visits are rare state occasions.
“Chest out, Oliver! Don’t slouch! You’re nodding, Oliver! Try and look like Jeffrey more! He didn’t nod, did he? Straight as a soldier, Jeffrey was.”
Jeffrey my elder brother by five years. Jeffrey who did everything right that I do wrong. Jeffrey who was perfect in all things and died of leukemia before he had time to run the world. Oliver was passing the sandstone icehouse. It had arrived by magic in three green vans, gone up in a week and become his instant place of punishment—a hundred and seventy running paces to the icehouse, touch it, a hundred and seventy back, one lap for every unlearned irregular Latin verb, and more laps for not being as good as Jeffrey was, whether at Latin or running. Mr. Ravilious, Oliver’s tutor, is a numerist. So is Tiger. Over the long-distance telephone they deal in points, marks, distances, hours spent and punishments deserved, and what percentages are required to get him into somewhere called the Dragon School, where Jeffrey got his cricket colors and his scholarship to somewhere still more terrible called Eton. Oliver hates dragons but admires Mr. Ravilious for his velvet jackets and black cigarettes. When Mr. Ravilious elopes with the Spanish maid, Oliver cheers for him amid the general outrage.
Preferring the long route beside the walled garden, he skirted a flattened hillock that was neither a burial mound nor a golf tee but a helipad for guests too elevated for terrestrial travel. Guests like Yevgeny and Mikhail Orlov with their plastic bags of Russian lacquerware, bottles of lemon vodka and smoked Mingrelian sausages wrapped in greaseproof paper. Guests with bodyguards. Guests with collapsible billiards cues in black carrying cases because they didn’t trust Tiger’s. But only Oliver knew that the helipad was a secret altar. Inspired by the story of an Indonesian tribe that laid out decoy wooden aeroplanes to attract rich tourists flying overhead, he had put out offerings of Jeffrey’s favorite foods in the hope of luring him down from heaven to complete his childhood. But the food in heaven was evidently better, because Jeffrey never returned. And Jeffrey was not the only absentee. In the rolling mist stood jumping hurdles that were kept radiant white, and the polo field that was marked and mown all year, and the stables where every saddle and bridle and snaffle and stirrup was burnished against the never-never day when Tiger, after twenty years of being on a business trip, would roll up the drive with Gasson at the wheel and resume the hardearned feudal English life.
The drive sank between copper beeches. Ahead lay a pair of brick-and-flint staff cottages. Passing them he dawdled, hoping to catch sight of Craft, the butler, and his wife seated over tea. He had loved the Crafts and used them as his window on the world beyond the walls of Nightingales. But Mrs. Craft had died fifteen years ago and Mr. Craft had returned home to Hull, where his roots were, taking with him a Fabergé box and a set of eighteenth-century miniatures of Tiger’s elusive ancestors, this time Pennsylvania Dutch. Oliver descended the hill and Nightingales appeared below him, first the chimney pots, then the whole gray-stoned heap, set in weedless gravel that made his feet crunch like cracking ice as he advanced on the front porch. The bellpull was a brass hand with its thumb and fingers stuck together. Seizing it in a monkey grip, he tugged downward while his heart thumped with a son’s inescapable longing. He was about to give a second pull when he heard a shuffle from the other side of the door, and in a panic wondered what to call her because she hated Mother, and Mummy even more. He realized he had forgotten her first name. He had forgotten his own too. He was seven years old sitting in a police station six miles away, and he couldn’t even remember the name of the house he had run away from. The door opened and a darkness came out at him. He was grinning and mumbling. His ears had blocked. He felt the fuzz of a mohair cardigan against his grin as her arms came round his neck. He folded her into his protection. He closed his eyes and tried to become a child, but it didn’t work. She kissed his left cheek and he smelt peppermint and putrid breath. She kissed his other cheek and he remembered how tall she was, taller than any other woman he had kissed. He remembered her trembling and her smell of soapy lavender. He wondered whether she trembled all the time or just for him. She pulled back from him. Her eyes, like his, were flooded with tears.
“Ollie, darling.” You got it right, he thought, because sometimes she called him Jeffrey. “Why ever didn’t you warn me, Ollie? My poor heart. Whatever have you done now?”
Nadia, he remembered: Don’t call me Mother, Ollie darling. Call me Nadia, you make me feel so old.
The kitchen was low and vast. Bruised copper saucepans, bought at auction by a vanished interior designer, hung from ancient beams added during one of numberless refurbishments. The table was long enough for twenty servants. A bombé Dutch oven, never connected to the flue, filled the dark end.
“You must be ravenous,” she told him analytically, as if eating were something other people did.
“I’m really not, honestly.”
They peered into the fridge for something to satisfy him. A bottle of milk? A packet of pumpernickel bread? A tin of anchovies, perhaps? Her trembling hand was resting on h
is shoulder. In a minute I’ll be trembling too.
“Oh dear, it’s Mrs. Henderson’s day off,” she said. “I bant at weekends. I always did. You’ve forgotten.” Their eyes met and he saw that she was scared of him. He wondered whether she was drunk or only on the way. Sometimes she’d hardly started and already spoke girlish slur. Other times she’d have a couple of bottles inside her and be seemingly composed. “You don’t look very well, Ollie darling. Have you been overdoing it? You go so hard at things.”
“I’m fine. You look fine too. Incredible.”
It wasn’t incredible at all. Each year before Christmas she went on what she called her little holiday and returned without a wrinkle in her face.
“Did you walk from the station, darling? I didn’t hear a car arrive, nor did Jacko.” Jacko the Siamese cat. “I’d have picked you up if you’d rung.”
You haven’t driven a car for years, he thought. Not since you crashed through the barn wall in the Land Rover on New Year’s Eve and Tiger burned your driving license. “I love the walk, honestly,” he said. “You know I do. Even when it’s raining I don’t mind.” In a minute neither of us will know what to say.
“The trains don’t seem to run on Sundays as a rule. Mrs. Henderson has to change at Swindon if she wants to see her brother,” she complained.
Single & Single Page 20
