Mabbut looked at Silla. Her dark but well-cut hair framed a sturdy, strong-boned face. A face that was both lively and inscrutable. The face of a survivor. He knew that face and he knew that look. She wasn’t going to back down. Well, neither was he. Not yet.
‘I’m sorry, Silla.’
Behind her, the kettle surged, climaxed, and faded.
EIGHT
It was nearly two o’clock that afternoon when Mabbut turned off the Edgware Road and, checking his daughter’s message one final time, searched for the name Harveh in a row of cafés and shops brimming with sweets and pastries. Outside some were tables where shorthaired, broad-shouldered men sat playing draughts and smoking narghiles. He spotted the slim incongruous figure of his daughter, waving to him, almost silhouetted by the bright lights of a cafés’ interior.
Harveh was small and very busy and it was a moment or two before he picked out a young man dressed in Western clothes looking anxiously in their direction. Jay raised her hand towards him and Mabbut was aware of her attention slipping away from him to this awkward, diffident boy – yes, he was a boy – who rose to meet her.
‘Dad, this is Shiraj.’
The boy’s dark eyes met his. They showed little animation. Jay rested a hand on his shoulder. He smiled at her and, for some reason, shook his head.
‘Shiraj. This is my dad.’
Mabbut reached out and they shook hands. It was no more than a touch of hands really, hardly a shake.
‘Sorry I couldn’t make it last night,’ said Mabbut.
They all squeezed around the table and a waiter brought tea. Shiraj looked so young and so vulnerable; his daughter’s awareness of this and her response to it was something that touched Mabbut. She’d always been open and generous with her feelings – he’d regarded this as both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness – and Mabbut felt a tug of envy at the artlessness of her affection.
They ate sherbet and drank pomegranate juice. Shiraj had sharp, birdlike features and jet-black eyes that were constantly on the move. He had been studying English at college in Tehran but had come under suspicion for spending time with Kurdish groups. He had been arrested, asked for names he couldn’t give, and then beaten up pretty badly and warned not to return to the university.
‘Were you any threat to the government?’
Shiraj smiled thinly.
‘If you are a Kurd in Iran then you are always a threat. Guilty until proved innocent.’
‘You’re a Kurd?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then why get involved with them?’
‘Dad, if you knew how these people were treated you’d . . .’
Quietly but firmly, Shiraj laid a restraining hand on Jay’s arm. It was an oddly grown-up gesture and Mabbut felt bad for misreading him as a boy.
‘They happened to be my friends, sir, and they needed my help.’ He looked Mabbut in the eye. ‘I was not a martyr. I wasn’t a Kurdish nationalist. They were my friends and they were in trouble.’
‘They stubbed cigarettes out on their arms, for God’s sake!’
Shiraj looked around in some alarm as Jay’s voice rose.
‘And they’ll do the same to Shiraj if our stupid fucking government sends him back! He needs help, Dad.’
‘Please, sir, I’m fine. There are people who can help me.’
‘Dad’s a journalist. He has contacts.’
Mabbut suddenly felt protective towards his daughter. With her innocent, untested idealism. Her frank and generous support for this man she’d only just met. And her loyal and totally unjustified belief in her father.
‘I would like to be a journalist,’ Shiraj said quite decisively. ‘All my friends want to be journalists.’
Mabbut looked around the room. At every table were men deep in conversation. Eyes staring into eyes, arms constantly rising and falling, hands in perpetual motion, fluttering and turning with sharp and delicate gestures. Everyone seemingly engaged in the most important argument of their lives. It wasn’t quite the same in the Dog and Feathers. Was it the lack of muddling alcohol, or was it just that these people had more to discuss? Or that the customers in a place like Harveh were in someone else’s country, and there was so much that mattered.
‘Do you write for a newspaper, sir?’
‘Me? No.’
Mabbut didn’t quite know where to go from here. A History of Sullom Voe Oil Terminal wouldn’t cut much ice, but this eager young man needed something.
‘I write books mostly.’
Shiraj nodded. His serious dark eyes rested on Mabbut.
‘He’s writing a novel,’ said Jay, proudly.
Shiraj’s brow furrowed. ‘What is this novel?’
‘Yes, tell us, Dad. I haven’t a clue what it’s about.’
Mabbut wanted to give a fluent, enthusiastic answer, but the unfamiliar smells of herbs and rosewater and fresh-baked bread, combined with the intense chatter of people talking in a language he didn’t understand, made him feel a sudden wobbling of resolve.
‘It’s a story,’ he said to Shiraj.
‘Is it true?’
‘No, that’s the point. It’s a story . . . like The Arabian Nights.’
Shiraj’s brow furrowed. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Yes, well . . .’
‘You should write about what is happening today.’
Mabbut noticed Jay give Shiraj’s arm the lightest of touches.
‘With respect, sir, I could tell you some true stories you would not believe.’
Mabbut thought of Tess. How had she put it?
‘Sometimes you can tell the truth better through stories,’ he replied.
Shiraj leant towards him. His tone remained even, but he spoke a little faster.
‘Forgive me, sir. With respect. There are too many good people telling stories, when what we need is to tell the world the facts.’
Jay crooked her finger and scoured the last of the sherbet from the rim of her glass.
‘He’s right in a way, Dad.’
Youthful idealism had always irritated Mabbut, especially when it was fluently expressed. He’d been a martyr to it himself. Vietnam, Watergate. Civil rights. The world’s problems, which he and his friends were convinced could all be sorted out from the safety of Hull University. He felt Shiraj’s eyes flick back to him, and as the boy leaned in he caught the faintest scent of jasmine.
‘You were a journalist, sir?’
‘I was.’
Shiraj tapped the table, emphatically, as if this proved his point.
‘Then I must tell you the story of my people and you can write about it. In my country no one will write this. They will be arrested, like my father. He was a journalist, and my brothers were trying to find him, and they have been arrested.’
Mabbut nodded. More people squeezed on to the table. The café was busier than ever. He felt his own enthusiasm being appropriated by this eager young man. It was not only wearing him out, it was making him feel inadequate.
‘If you don’t mind I must go.’ He rose and shook the young man’s hand. ‘It’s been good to meet you, Shiraj. I’ll . . . I’ll do what I can.’
Jay caught up with him as he stepped into the street.
‘Sorry, Dad. I could see you were feeling hassled. It’s just that he’s been through stuff he could never talk about and now he’s in London everything matters to him. All at once.’
Mabbut turned back to the café. Through the windows Shiraj caught his glance, smiled uncertainly then looked away.
‘I guess he could use the spare room. And . . . well, we’ll take it from there,’ said Mabbut, giving Jay a kiss.
As he crossed the road, he saw her skipping back into the café.
By the time he got back to Reserton Road it was late afternoon. That dark hour for any writer. He checked the cricket. No play, rain. There was a message on the answerphone which he could listen to either straight away or after an hour’s writing. He listened to it straight away.
It was his soon-to-be-ex-wife. She and Rex would be dining at ‘a little bistro he knows’ in Chelsea. She pleaded with Mabbut to come and ‘just say hello’. In disgust, Mabbut switched off the message.
The phone rang again, almost immediately, but it wasn’t Krystyna.
‘OK, dear boy. This is what’s happening. I’ve told Urgent about your worries about deadlines and the novel and how much it means to you, and instead of just telling us to piss off, which they were entirely within their rights to do, they are prepared to discuss these concerns with you.’
‘Silla.’
‘Just hear me out. Ron Latham has agreed to meet up tonight at his office.’
‘Silla.’
‘Go through all your misgivings one by one and he will give you absolute reassurances on all the points that concern you. I’ll be there too and hopefully we can put your troubled mind at rest.’
Mabbut felt assailed and confused. After the oddly disquieting chat with young Shiraj he wanted time and space to think. The last thing he needed was a return to Urgent’s bleak and spiritless office and the hard sell from Latham and Silla.
‘He’ll meet us at seven thirty. OK?’
Mabbut took a deep breath.
‘No, Silla. It’s not OK.’
‘What d’you mean? We let this whole thing drop? We watch while someone else gets the commission? This could be our last chance.’
Mabbut switched the phone to his other hand. His parents smiled at him from the sideboard. A perfect storm of options was swirling about him, and he had to take one of them. Fast.
‘Tell him I’ve got something more important to do.’
Silla’s voice rose. ‘More important? How’s that going to go down? “I’m sorry, Mr CEO of major publishing company, but the author of The Official History of Sullom Voe’s got something more important to do!”’
Mabbut cleared his throat.
‘It happens to be true. It’s a very important dinner.’
‘Dare I ask? Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama?’
‘With my wife, if you must ask.’
He put down the phone and after a long, deep breath, rewound the answerphone and wrote down an address.
NINE
It was certainly more than a bistro. So discreetly appointed was it that he’d walked past three times, thinking it some kind of electrical substation. There was no sign, but incised into a smoked-glass strip beside the hammered metal door were the almost indecipherable words ‘Atelier Gaston Quartz’. The door required two hands to prise it open. As it swung to, Mabbut found himself running a gauntlet of mirrored glass leading to yet another door. He was preparing himself to heave this open when it slid to one side with a hiss. He found himself in a carefully dimmed steel cave in which were set some twenty tables, black glass on silver chrome, only one of which was occupied. Krystyna was sitting with her back to him, so it was her companion whose eye he caught first. A tallish, disappointingly good-looking older man with a high colour. Flecks of white hair, streamlined at the temples, and a well-fed frame tucked neatly into a three-piece suit. It crossed Mabbut’s mind that this might have been what Krystyna’s father looked like.
Krystyna appeared strained, but seemed to be relieved to see him. Stiffly she embarked on the introductions. Her companion rose from the table, smiling amiably, and grasped Mabbut’s hand before lapsing back into his seat. He beckoned Mabbut to do the same, with a gesture of elegant largesse, as if he owned the place.
‘Rex owns the place,’ said Krystyna.
Rex gave a self-deprecating smile.
‘Actually it was opened by a Ukrainian. Frightful crook. Went belly up a year ago so we took it over. We came up with the name Gaston Quartz and it’s taken off. Chef’s from Inverness.’
Mabbut looked dubiously at the surrounding gloom.
‘It picks up. The high-rollers like to eat late. Glass of champagne?’
Before Mabbut could refuse, he became aware of activity, of dark figures emerging from the shadows, briefly catching the light, then disappearing again. Somewhere a door opened and closed with the merest sigh.
Krystyna looked tired. Oddly enough what little light there was around the table shone obliquely on her, accentuating the Madonna-like combination of oval face, long straight dark hair with touches of grey, high cheekbones and the wide, thin-lipped mouth he knew so well.
‘Rex and I are, hmm,’ she had to clear her throat before carrying on, ‘going to New York on Sunday.’
From nowhere a crisply hissing champagne flute appeared beside him, and there was a momentary lull as the other glasses were refilled around the table. Rex Naismith seemed quite unembarrassed by the situation. He beamed at Mabbut, thanked the waiter and raised his glass.
‘Cheers!’
Mabbut mumbled. Krystyna barely raised her glass.
Rex drank appreciatively, rolling the champagne round his mouth before setting down his glass.
‘Krystyna tells me you’re a writer. I admire anyone who can write. I come up with the odd speech or two but not the imaginative stuff.’
Like a chess player before a big game, Mabbut had rehearsed his moves on the way there, but the one thing he hadn’t prepared for was amiability. He nodded, intending to look blank, but it came out as surly.
‘What the fuck are you doing with my wife?’ is what he really wanted to say.
‘It’s never easy,’ is what he actually said.
‘I know quite a few chaps who are harbouring little masterpieces. And of course dear old Cloudesley Marshall actually had one published. It was a thriller, very James Bond. Lots of sex. Which is something one wouldn’t normally associate with Cloudesley. He used to run the Boy Scouts.’
Mabbut felt like a rabbit caught in headlights. Bereft of a strategy to make them talk about what they should surely be talking about, he could only listen. Krystyna, Polish and practical, took refuge in arrangements.
‘We shall be in New York for some time. Then we go to Ottawa.’
Rex grimaced.
‘Frightful place. Bloody cold and all the buildings look like elephant turds. But we’re supposed to be nice to Canada these days. All sorts of things brewing. Know about the Athabasca tar sands?’
Mabbut nodded. Here was something he did know about. Once.
‘I was an energy correspondent.’
‘Well then, you probably know far better than me what’s going on there. Millions of dollars being spent buggering up the place, environmentalists up in arms, and quite rightly too, but they are passing an awful lot of business our way. We still have a lot of mining expertise and thankfully it’s appreciated out there. Anyway, I have to go and make sure we’re being nice to everybody and not letting Hamish Melville do the rain dance on them.’
Mabbut looked up sharply.
‘Hamish Melville? How does he come into it?’
‘Well, you know Hamish. Everyone knows Hamish. If there’s a pie, his finger will be in it somewhere.’
Krystyna frowned and asked, ‘Isn’t he some kind of unofficial ambassador? Goes where the government daren’t go?’
Rex raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh, Hamish is as Hamish is portrayed. A super chap, but he doesn’t always have the bigger picture in mind.’
‘How d’you mean?’ asked Mabbut.
‘Well, he has his own agenda. The tar sands aren’t absolutely unpopulated, and in the north-west, by the Yannahook river, there’s a group of bods called the Sahallas. Indians. First Nations, they call them now. Not that many of them and a lot seem quite happy to go and work in the casinos in Calgary. But there’s a hard core that money won’t shift. These people are like a magnet to Hamish and he’s been up there, well, how can I put it, “advising them of their rights”.’
This riled Mabbut. ‘That’s fair enough, isn’t it? If it’s their land.’
‘Well, in theory, yes.’
‘It’s their moral right.’
‘Forgive me, but I’ve had this argument with Hamish many times.
Yes, these people have rights. But there’s an awful lot of land and very few of them living on it. Our view is that they can still lead decent lives, uninterfered with, on part of the land, and let the rest be . . . er . . . developed. That way everyone benefits and they get a damned decent royalty for their people.’
Mabbut took another sip of what was, even in his limited experience, a very fine champagne.
‘You know Hamish Melville, then?’
‘Inasmuch as anyone knows Hamish, yes.’
Rex drank rather delicately, thought Mabbut, for a big man.
‘Long ago, in the mists of time, I had the privilege of representing the people of Bletchley and South Beds in Her Majesty’s Parliament. I’d travelled a bit and spoke a couple of languages so I found myself a comfortable little spot in the FCO – Foreign and Commonwealth Office as it then was . . .’
Mabbut was aware of Krystyna adjusting her position, looking quickly from one of them to the other, and he knew that she was willing the conversation on, as if this shared interest might help them avoid confrontation.
Rex smoothed a corner of the tablecloth.
‘At that time, we’re talking nearly twenty years ago now, Hamish was on the payroll. Roving brief sort of thing. He’d a background in the military and the City – not an unusual combination – and of course he had this wicked charm. So . . .’
At Rex’s almost subliminal nod more champagne appeared from the gloom.
‘He became most useful to us in a number of delicate situations. Hostage talks, raids on installations, that sort of thing. He was very successful, a sort of latter-day T. E. Lawrence. Major – John Major, that is – wanted to bring him into government, quite high up too, but Hamish wasn’t interested. He wasn’t political in any way. And quite possibly because of that he began to pull away from anything official. Rarely came back to the country and from what one could tell he began to use what he’d learnt in a more . . . well . . . international sphere. In ’97 I lost my seat, which was quite a relief to be honest. My wife died the same year, which was also quite a relief.’
His delivery was finely paced, assured. This was a man who was used to being listened to.
The Truth Page 6
