The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  Barty never had a business card; he never needed a job description. He was strictly word of mouth. The rich and needy soon found him. ‘Think of me as part Svengali, part Henry Higgins with a dash of Cedric Montdore,’ he would tell people, though few got the references.

  ‘Let’s put on “Hound Dog” and get properly into the mood,’ Barty said, slipping on the crepe-soled shoes. ‘Chop, chop, Em, crank up Spotify.’

  Emeline ran over to the sound system and within seconds, Elvis’s voice ricocheted around the room. Barty took Emeline’s hand and they started to rock and roll. While they danced, various assistants came in to ask questions.

  ‘Barty, Mitch wants to change tailors and go to Huntsman – someone told him they were the oldest.’ Milly was one of seven girls who helped Barty manage individual clients.

  ‘Savile Row is so last century. If he wants to look like a Chow Pei that’s his decision.’

  ‘Is Chow Pei a Chinese dish?’

  ‘It’s a dog – don’t they teach you anything at St Mary’s Ascot?’

  Amelia, who looked after the South Americans, was next in line: ‘Carlos Braganza’s cousin has been arrested at Northolt for bringing cocaine in on his private aeroplane and wants to know if you can help?’

  ‘Call that sweet man at the FO whom I met at Highgrove.’

  Diandra, who covered the Russians, was flustered. ‘Dmitri Voldakov wants to know if you can organise a chalet in Gstaad that sleeps thirty?’

  ‘Tell him, of course – even if I have to build it with my bare hands.’

  ‘Pilar has sacked her decorator – can you recommend another?’ Dambesi asked.

  ‘That is her third in a month! I will have to think and get back to her later. Did any of you see M. Box Power at the Mojos last night? God he’s sexy.’

  ‘I thought you were at the Swindons’ last night?’

  ‘It was a bit dull so I went on to the Mojos. Do you think the quiff is too big?’

  ‘No, it’s perfect.’

  ‘My eyeliner’s running.’ Barty, puffing slightly, sat down again on the pink sofa.

  Frances reappeared and turned down the music.

  ‘What will the Russian think?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you think you should tone the look down before meeting this new client?’

  ‘What Russian?’

  ‘Vladimir Antipovsky. You are meeting him in twenty-five minutes at his new house in Berkeley Square.’

  ‘I completely forgot. I want to go to Tim’s opening before the Opera.’

  Frances read from her notebook. ‘Vlad Antipovsky, forty-one years old from Smlinsk, a small town on the borders of Siberia. Controls 43 per cent of the world’s tin. Estimated to be worth $8 billion and rising. No wife or known dependants. No acknowledged interests. He was another of the regime’s sudden ejects.’

  Barty turned round to face Frances, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘Imagine how abject he must be feeling, and with no wife or dependants. One does love a blank canvas. Think of the potential. The transformation. It must be how Michelangelo felt when he found the perfect piece of Carrara marble: most saw a hunk of stone, he saw David. How much money did you say he has?’

  ‘Eight billion,’ Frances replied.

  ‘Pounds or dollars?’ Emeline asked.

  ‘Darling you can be so vulgar.’ Barty chided.

  New employees assumed that Barty’s love of the newly rich was motivated by the thought of a commission; they were wrong. Barty adored his job. Each time he rescued a new client from social obscurity and cultural oblivion, Barty relived his own escape from Keddlesmere. The real thrill was not financially quantifiable as long as he made enough to keep the White House open. He often said that his business card, if he had had one, would say ‘Alchemist’; ‘I take money and ignorance and weave them into an earthly paradise.’

  Bennie tried to make one final adjustment to the wig but Barty was already up and heading for the door. ‘Take me to my Russian. Chop, chop. Hurry, hurry. Not a moment to lose.’

  Standing alone in his newly-purchased seventeen bedroom house in Berkeley Square, Vlad Antipovsky was immersed in a deep slough of misery. It had been exactly fifty-four days since eight men in black suits had walked into his office in Moscow with a one-way ticket to London. He was given thirty minutes to clear his desk or risk losing his homes, businesses and freedom. A floor at the Connaught had been rented in his name until he found a house and offices. Providing Vlad did the odd favour for a nameless person, kept his nose clean and refrained from becoming involved in any political activities or comment, he would be allowed to hang on to 65 per cent of his fortune and live without fear of assassination or imprisonment. If he behaved, he could visit Courcheval for winter sports, St Barts for winter sun and Cap d’Antibes for the month of August.

  Vlad did not question their authority or intent; he did not need to. Only the day before, Anatoli Aknatova, formerly a wealthy and powerful oligarch, had been paraded on national television, emaciated and shackled, held in a tiny metal cage for the fifth consecutive year. There were other examples of men who had become too wealthy or had been heard expressing an opinion hostile to the regime. Most were not publicly imprisoned; they just disappeared. A plane crash or a heart attack served as a reminder to all about who held real power and how quickly and effectively that power could be used.

  Vlad had gone straight to the airport. He had no family to take with him, no real friends to say goodbye to, but his heart and soul were rooted in Russian soil. Without his beloved motherland, her vast landscapes, her poverty and grandeur, Vlad’s life lost its meaning. He had visited London a few times before and found its small scale depressing. As for European women, they were like pit ponies – all stubby-legged and grubby morals.

  Arriving at the Connaught in late August, he found an envelope with his new bank account details and stock options. To his surprise, withdrawals could be made with prior warning, with the agreement of a faceless co-signatory; however, these assets could be removed at any moment and were conditional on Vlad staying out of Russia and growing his business by 6 per cent per annum. The new (unnamed) co-shareholders had the right to withdraw capital without notice. Vlad knew exactly who this shareholder was; there was no higher authority.

  For the first twenty days, Vlad had hardly left his suite, pacing around the floor while considering his options, which were extremely limited. The only course of action was to sit it out in England and wait for a regime change. He harboured silent dreams of helping stimulate a political coup d’état. There must be enough Russian exiles to form a formidable alliance. But Vlad was too frightened to articulate his dream even privately; he suspected the others were too.

  He tried to assuage his loneliness with abandoned consumption, ordering girls and cars and champagne via room service. A week later he signed the lease on a new office and bought a town house on Berkeley Square. Two more weeks passed and he had slept with more girls since arriving in England than he had in his entire life. He now owned seventeen cars and employed four secretaries, a butler, two valets, a driver, three bodyguards and eleven Filipinos. But in spite of all this activity, Vlad was seriously, desperately bored. When two friends, Natalia and Stanislav, the only happy Muscovites he knew living in London, suggested he meet Barty St George, Vlad agreed even though he had little idea what or whom to expect.

  When the diminutive ageing Teddy boy arrived at his empty house, Vlad assumed it was an elaborate joke.

  ‘They never warned me you’d be so handsome! And big. So big. Hmmmm.’ Barty exclaimed, rushing towards him with outstretched hands. ‘My dear, you are as delicious as gentleman’s relish on toast.’ Barty smacked his lips together. ‘And so muscly. And tall. What are you? Six foot eight in your socks?’ He walked around Vlad making appreciative noises. ‘Did you know I first came to this house in 1964 when it was lived in by Earl Honey. I could tell you a few stories about that evening but you are far too heterosexual to appreciate them. Bunny Honey, as we called him, hopped t
hrough his whole fortune in seven years. Must admit I helped him a little bit. The parties we used to have. Such fun.’

  Vlad wondered how to respond to Natalia and Stanislav’s tease. Perhaps he would deliver a carload of monkeys to their country estate.

  ‘Shall we sit down?’ Barty looked around the empty room. ‘I see you have no furniture. We can sort that out. No curtains. Are you sleeping here?’

  ‘Connaught.’ Vlad said, wondering how quickly he could escape back to the relative anonymity of his hotel suite.

  ‘The Connaught is so ghastly – how do you bear it? Never mind, let’s have a look around.’

  Barty rushed around the house appraising its condition and eyeing up its potential. Vlad followed him, watching in awe as the Teddy boy scribbled notes into a small leather notebook.

  ‘You are wondering why I am here and what on earth I can do for you.’ Barty looked at Vlad in a kindly, avuncular way. He understood that for all his height and strength, despite the millions salted away in a local bank, the man standing beside him was scared and lonely. He was not the first exiled Russian whom Barty had helped.

  ‘Plis spik slowly – English not good,’ Vlad said. He had to admit that there was something sympathetic about the strange man; he was like the doctor at the mine whose bedside manner had been honed by years of dealing with natural disasters.

  ‘You see, old boy, there’s no point having money if you don’t have fun or do anything with it, is there? If you are clever about it, money can give you a life and more money!’ Barty clapped his hands together as if to emphasise his point. ‘The way I see it is that you have a choice. You can spend the rest of your life living in that frightful hotel, going to Sketch and other nightclubs, and hanging out with brassy birds in jacuzzis. Take holidays in Courcheval and St Barts. Get a bigger plane, maybe a boat or two. Your money will buy you a seat at the top table with the odd minor royal. Or you can follow my suggestions and soon presidents, prime ministers, even the odd king or queen will be asking to sit with you.’

  ‘King, queen?’ Vlad was nonplussed.

  Barty could see that this great thug of a Russian did not get the reference points, was not suitably impressed. Maybe Barty had found someone he could not transform, perhaps this man would never make the journey from sow’s ear to silk purse, from chrysalis to butterfly. Barty felt a deep sense of ennui. Perhaps he had had enough. He was almost seventy. Retirement? Time maybe to put one’s feet up, grow roses or take a young boy to the South of France for the season. The thought was tempting, but not as delicious as the challenge before him.

  ‘Do you know my lovely clients Carbaritch and Vassonliswilli?’

  Vlad’s ears pricked up. Of course he knew of them. The Ukrainian miner and the Georgian smelter were legends in the Caucasus. Two men who had made a fortune in coal and steel, who had been exiled from their countries only to resurface as principal players in the world stock markets. Carbaritch was now so wealthy that he could afford to buy a film studio and a record company, the ultimate going-nowhere rich-boy stock. More importantly, Carbaritch and Vassonliswilli looked happy.

  Barty saw that he had hit his target. The Russian did understand. Leaning forward he said in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘All my work. They were miserable no ones when they got off the plane. I made them.’

  ‘How you make them?’ Vlad sounded sceptical.

  ‘Darling, I showed them how to live. Carbaritch (I call him the black Cabbie – he is so naughty) came to London with a dowdy little wife and twenty billion. Now he has a wing at the Tate named in his honour and a top seat at Davos. We got the wife remodelled by the best surgeon in Hollywood, put her on the Dukan diet, new teeth, new jewels, and now she’s lunching with Dasha.’

  ‘Vassonliswilli?’

  ‘Ten years ago the only horse he had ever seen was a pit pony. Last year his horse won The King George VI Chase. Next year he’s odds on for the Breeders’ Cup. I am told that Her Majesty will ask him to join her in the Royal Box at Ascot. Not bad for a murdering gangster.’

  Vlad automatically checked over his shoulder. Vassonliswilli, famously, was trigger-happy, particularly with his critics.

  ‘Rome was not built in a day; it took me a year or two.’

  Vlad stared out of the window at the London cityscape. A light rain was falling and all he could see was grey. Grey sky, grey lead-lined roofs, grey pigeons sheltering under grey piping. Suddenly he longed for the dramatic landscape of Siberia with its huge empty horizon and deafening winds. How could he ever make his home, his future, somewhere so small, so parochial?

  ‘Have I upset you?’ Barty asked anxiously. The big Russian looked suddenly so sad and vulnerable, shrunken inside his enormous leather jacket.

  ‘No, thinking,’ Vlad said.

  ‘Of home?’ Barty asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Vlad was surprised.

  ‘I have yet to meet a Russian émigré who is not haunted by his or her mother country. When he was at the height of his fame, I used to hold a sobbing Rudolf Nureyev in my arms while he cried for Mama Russia.’

  Vlad looked across the room at this small eccentric Elvis impersonator; he was dressed like a joker but was far from a fool.

  Barty sensed a change in the atmosphere.

  ‘This house is fine but it’s not really in the right place. Berkeley Square is passé. You want Chester Square. If God had existed he’d have made the place three times longer. Too mean that it’s so short.’

  ‘Name of road that Natalia lives?’ Vlad asked.

  ‘Kensington Park Gardens, one of those stately homes on the edge of Holland Park. Aditi Singh is having a do there on Thursday. We’ll go.’

  ‘Aditi?’

  ‘Singh. Industrialist, owns half of India. He paid for the Garden Bridge across the Thames and now the Singh Bridge is one of Europe’s greatest landmarks. Quite smart. We should think of something like that for you. Imagine a Vlad Antipovsky tower being for ever emblazoned on London’s cityscape.’

  ‘What ’bout hobby?’

  ‘You have three main choices. Horses, cars or art. Arabs love horses because, as you know, all racehorses can trace their lineage back to a couple of Arabian stallions. So Sheik this and that see it as a provenance kind of thing. Horses, however, are risky. Even if you get the best breeding, best trainer, best jockey, there is no guarantee of success. Damn animals are so temperamental. The ground has to be just right, they get chills, and they break things. Between you and me the social life is a bit limited. You get the occasional attractive hooray and the odd glimpse of the Queen but really it’s just cold mornings, wellies and tweed; lots of hanging around for not much action.’

  Vlad had never liked horses much. The mine had been full of forlorn-looking animals whose skin hung like curtains off their bones and who looked at the world through eyes of liquid sorrow.

  ‘Cars?’ He liked the sound of cars. They were masculine, exciting and required no intellectual investment. Anyone could talk about a gasket or a carburettor.

  ‘It would have to be Formula One, of course,’ Barty said. ‘You will need to buy into a team – McLaren, Fiat, you know. But if you think racing people are dreary, oh my God.’ Barty threw his hands up in air. ‘Silverstone is like Epsom but much noisier. My idea of total horror. No, it has to be art. Art is the answer!’ Barty said with great brio.

  Vlad felt instantly depressed. He didn’t know anything about art. Indeed, he only saw his first original image when he came to Moscow aged eighteen. It had been –24°C and to escape the cold he had wandered into the free municipal museum, a place that seemed only slightly warmer than the streets outside.

  ‘Don’t know art.’

  ‘No one does! Lots of people pretend to – make up all sorts of highfalutin rubbish about schools and movements and so forth but quite honestly it’s all tosh.’

  ‘Tosh?’

  ‘Bosh. Bunkum. Codswallop.’

  Vlad had never heard of any of these artists. Surely he could stick to things he did
know about such as Rolls, Lamborghini or Bentley? What was wrong with something practical?

  But Barty was on his feet and dancing around the room.

  ‘Walls!’ Barty exclaimed, waving his arms around. ‘Walls, walls, walls, lots of lovely empty walls. I see YBAs interspersed with a dash of serious abstract Impressionism.’

  Vlad also looked at the walls but he saw bricks and mortar, every single one was his, the fulfilment of a life’s dream. The walls in his childhood home were made of plaster and plywood. Those flimsy structures, measuring twenty by twenty feet, separated families by sight but never by sound; every breath, sniffle, fight, laugh, every mood, good or bad, reverberated around the apartments. Vlad never got used to the lack of physical privacy and living in minute personal sub-spaces in the tiny two-room apartment. For him, the encroaching noise was never manageable or predictable and there had been no way to block it out, let alone anticipate when the Yaltas would have a row or Leonard would stub his toe or the Smelty twins would put on a record.

  ‘Now, what shall we hang on them? I am feeling some contemporary art.’

  ‘No,’ Vlad said firmly.

  ‘No? So how about some just dead artists?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A little bit more than dead?’

  ‘Old art. Romantic.’

  ‘Oh no, darling. It doesn’t really matter what you buy, it’s about what goes with it. I am trying to give you a life. Modern art equals fun, light and colour. Old art is all warm wine and cheese, thick ankles and flat shoes. The modern art world is martinis and sushi, Azzedine and Louboutin.’