Cornucopia

by John Kinsella

  Fleetingly Francis thought of an evening at the opera, but noting a nearby poster that announced Nolwenn Leroi, a popular French variety star it seemed, would be in concert there that same evening; not exactly in the same register, he dismissed the idea.

  Francis was head over heels in love. It was crazy, he told himself, how could such a thing happen to a man of his age. When he was younger he had had plenty of amorous adventures, but for longer than he had cared to think he had led the life of an unattached academic, getting on in life and dedicated to his work.

  They had arrived that same morning from Paris, where they had spent a romantic week, well that’s what it was, he thought, wondering if he was too old fashioned in his ideas. He had promised to show Ekaterina the Midi and Riviera. Then what? That is to say would he marry her, live with her? Well he hadn’t spent much time thinking that one out. She was much younger than him and in his Trinity College ivory tower tongues would certainly wag.

  Of course Francis was a free man. He was a bachelor, a writer and well-known contributor to a number of newspapers and magazines on subjects as diverse as serious economics, the evolution of modern society, and political and corporate finance. Beside these ancillary talents, Francis was above all other considerations an academic, a reputed historian and professor at Dublin’s Trinity College, where he lectured on economic history and development of civilizations.

  He was an independent man and comfortably wealthy. He had earned a lot of money advising Michael Fitzwilliam and of course he still held his chair at Trinity College. As a scholarly intellectual he was not experienced in romantic affairs, which he knew often ended in disappointment. However, he was familiar with such situations: in university life relationships between professors, that is to say older men, and female students or younger women, had always been a subject of scandal and broadly treated in literature, past and present.

  Ekaterina’s student years were well behind her, but there was still a difference of age between them of more than twenty years. It was perhaps all right for Hollywood stars and oligarchs to have much younger wives or mistresses, but how would a professor’s relationship with a young Russian single mother go down in Ireland’s most venerable and respected seat of learning?

  But what did she think? She was talkative, open minded, but seemed to avoid the future. He too for that matter. Was it his fault? Did she like the status quo? And he?

  He pushed the thoughts away as she took his hand, it was as if she could read his mind. The dined in a small restaurant on rue Place Saint-Pierre, where they watched the passers-by from their pavement table, the diner and the ambience was what the guide books called authentic. They bathed in the romanticism of Provence, surrounded by the architecture of the old town and the fourteenth century basilique. Francis would have liked to capture the moment, savour it at some future time, or times, again and again. Sadly he realised it was a rare moment and there were so few moments in life when one felt really happy, when life’s problems seemed so far away, and this was one of them; he was overwhelmed by a surge emotion and gratitude to the fates for allowing him to have lived it.

  Ekaterina’s feelings were the same and she took his hand in an instant of deep affinity.

  Would they make their home in London or Dublin; London would be more anonymous. He hadn’t even asked her and she hadn’t pushed him. Whatever happened he was not going to live in Moscow.

  Avignon was nice, but unreal, where visitors could wonder at the marvels of the past, like so many other cities across Europe and the world, a lived-in theme park. Each day brought its flock of tourists. They were delivered to the main gate of the walled city by train or bus. Twenty four hours normally did it. Hello, goodbye. Les jours se resemblés. Some visitors stayed a little longer, those interested by a more in depth experience, most hurried on to their next destination; perhaps a holiday on the Côte d’Azur, or Provincial towns, to live out another dream.

  The real citizens of Avignon had disappeared, at least they did not live in the walled town. The homes had been transformed into hotels, restaurants, bars, ice cream parlours, souvenir shops and fashion boutiques. Then there were the attractions: churches, museums, galleries, antique shops and so on, the list was long.

  The workers, many from North Africa, lived outside the walls of the ancient town. A large number were second generation and even third immigrant families; their parents had arrived in the seventies and eighties when work was plentiful. For the most part they lived in housing developments the French called cités. The sons and daughters of these families aspired to something better than that their parents had known: they were born French citizens, in France, had a French education and quite naturally spoke French with the regional accent. However, their origin, their religion and family upbringing, like it or not, barred them from enjoying the same privileges as their grass root fellow citizens. The result was a failed generation, if they were lucky they had jobs in the tourist industry, less well paid than their better educated compatriots, with little hope of advancement. The risk of unemployment was high and the only alternative for some was a life of petty crime and dealing.

  He remembered a visit many years before and a Picasso exhibition in the Palais des Papes. He had been a young man, it was his first visit to the city. Francis recalled how he had been seduced by the splendour of the Palace, its architecture, though the paintings left him in some doubt, a doubt that remained over the years. Francis Bacon, an Irishman like himself, was his preferred artist in the field of modern art, he had often visited the museum dedicated to the artist in Dublin where he had admire his technical perfection.

  T

  he Château des Papes – Avignon – France

  Sunday morning, the weather was fine, not the crushing summer heat that would arrive a little more than a month later. Church bells sounded calling the faithful to mass as they had done for centuries, the question was: who replied to their call? There were few Christians who practised their ancestral religion as to the Muslims on the periphery of the town they were uninterested by the religion of their hosts.

  As they waited for their rented car, Francis witnessed a strange dispute between two women seated on a bench, who from their conversation it seemed were cousins. The argument had started à propos the remarks one of them had made about a Muslim woman who passed by pushing a pram, she wore the costume prescribed by her religion: a long robe, a coat, a veil that covered her hair and a large part of her face. One of the two women, a Jehovah’s Witness, at least her mother was, was slim and stylishly dressed. Francis couldn’t help remarking her low cut jeans revealed underwear of the same clothe as the brightly patterned shirt she was wearing. The other was more ordinary, somewhat overweight, without style, and a nominal Muslim. They were the daughters of Algerian families, second generation.

  The Muslim protested she was French and had nothing to do with the devil’s religion, which it appeared was how her brother described Saudi Arabia. The other rejected Islam whilst protesting it was her mother the Jehovah’s Witness, not her.

  The argument became heated and insults started flying back and forth. It reminded Francis of Northern Ireland and the arguments between of Papists and Orange men. He listened for fifteen minutes fearing they would come to blows, as the nominal Muslim declared she was French, not Algerian and not interested in religion.

  He had witnessed the difficulties facing second generation immigrants and how attitudes towards religion created conflict. Spiritual traditions were abandoned by some as the new generation responded to the attitudes of a very different world to that in which their parents had grown up.

  *

  The next morning Francis picked up a copy of The Times in the breakfast room. The lead story told of the strange lord’s rant about Milliband’s defeat. He told the press, how they, Labour’s supporters, had been sent out to say they hated the rich. A discourse that would have done The Daily Worker proud in the 1950s.

  At least the lord did not default on his vision o
f seeing nothing wrong with being filthy rich. It seemed they had forgotten the ‘people who shop at John Lewis’. Milliband had abandoned the middle ground, preferring Labour to wave its fists angrily at the privileged Tories, totally ignoring the vast numbers of Britons that lay between the rich and the poor.

  He defended Labour’s overspending during the Blair years, saying it was not that which had caused the banking crisis, which was true, though in the view of observers like Francis, Blair, as a responsible leader, should not have thrown economic caution to the wind.

  Labour’s ties to the trade union’s was equally a throw back to the former half of the twentieth century. It of course provided the party with access to easy funding. The were, however, strings attached and politicians danced like marionettes when the unions pulled the strings.

  Francis quickly forgot British politics as they set off in their rented car, stopping wherever it pleased them, in the picturesque towns and villages of Provence. Few things had changed over the last centuries, except the omnipresence presence of North Africans, who had admittedly been present in the days of his youth. What had changed were the numbers.

  The previous evening returning from a highly recommended restaurant, Francis noticed old Arabs in gellabahs. It was as in the UK, certain towns and town districts were being colonised. It was not a criticism, but a constatation. A reality. There mere mention of which brought a storm of accusations from the lackeys of French media.

  France was tired, uncaring. In a generation or two the Midi would resemble Algeria or Tunisia.

  Ekaterina had dozed off as Francis concentrated on the road. Passing by Carpentras, he recalled memories of the small city he had briefly visited a dozen or so years earlier. It had been for the funeral of an old uncle, a distant member of the family who had lived in France for most of his life. There, in the city’s ancient cathedral, Francis had contemplated life and death; now he was nearer death, the ultimate journey, and here he was heading for the Mediterranean next a young woman, not even halfway through her life, with whom he was in love.

  Did it matter? Did what happened to Fitzwilliams’ bank matter? He was an historian, not a philosopher. What history had taught him was the futility of it all. Shortly the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo would be celebrated. Were Napoleon’s victories or defeats of any matter now? They had shaped modern Europe. It was perhaps why London dominated financial markets, why Vladimir Putin was celebrating his country’s victory over Nazi Germany seventy years before, why France was a Republic and why the United States of America was what it was.

  Most individual lives were insignificant, some were less so, a few played supporting roles and even fewer lead roles, and those who marked history were counted on the fingers of one hand.

  He recalled listening to the eulogy to his uncle in the Cathedral of Carpentras, where the layers of history had been visible all around him, exposed like a geological cross-section, on a human scale, but nevertheless fossilised. On the cathedral’s flank was a Roman arch, built in 16BC, during the reign of Augustus, at the time of the Meminiens, a Gaulish tribe: two chained prisoners were depicted on one side of the arch, the sculptures barely visible in the worn stone. Conquest, occupation and defeat, whatever the order, had been part of an ageless cycle. A couple of small blocks away from the cathedral was evidence of what had been a large eighteenth century Jewish ghetto.

  In 2015, the Meminiens were forgotten by all but a few erudite historians; the Romans who had marked the region for centuries by their presence and with their monuments were gone and forgotten; the Jews too were gone; soon the French would be gone, replaced by a new wave of colonisers, the North Africans, the result of complacency or resignation on the part of the French, who no longer aspired to live in the cramped conditions their forbearers had, in the sweltering summer heat of Carpentras, a densely packed town. A generation of grassroot French that preferred architect designed homes with built-in air-conditioning, swimming pools, beyond city limits, at least those who could afford it. The less well off French, mostly old or young made do with an unlikely cohabitation. Two worlds apart, side by side, making the best they could of a changing world.

  C

  arpentras – France

  Francis at least did not want to end up in a crematorium on the edge of some dismal industrial estate. Suddenly, looking at Ekaterina’s beautiful face, he snapped out of his morbid reminiscences. He felt a tardive, but urgent need to procreate: not a child, but a work that would survive his own ephemeral existence.

  In the mean time they visited Vaison la Romaine, the largest Roman archaeological site in France, where they enjoyed a light lunch. Then, as the temperature rose, nearing thirty degrees, they jumped into the air-conditioned comfort of their car and headed east to Sisteron before turning south for a picturesque drive down to the Côte d’Azur, then on to Nice and the ancient village of Éze where Francis had booked a room at the fabulous Chèvre d’Or overlooking Mediterranean.

  BATTERSEA

  The Battersea Power Station developments, Prospect Place & The Skyline, were designed by Frank Gehry and Norman Foster. The former famed for works such as the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the latter a renowned British architect who had designed, amongst other well know edifices, 30 Saint Mary Axe, which had been INI’s headquarters until it moved to the Gould Tower.

  The 1920s brick power station was at the centre of the plan surrounded by the two residential complexes with over one thousand three hundred apartments the prices of which ranged from six hundred thousand to three million pounds.

  P

  rospect Place & The Skyline

  According to the promoters blurb, the 1920s power station would be adjoined by five apartment blocks part of a subtle theme inspired by London’s famous John Nash Regency terraces, something that Jack Regan had difficulty in accepting as there was nothing subtle about the power station and the artists impressions of the new structures were in no way reminders of Nash’s elegant architecture.

  Maybe he was getting old or perhaps the hype that surrounding the project, like the power station itself, was greatly exaggerated, the idea that the vast power station could be aesthetically pleasing seemed to him improbable. The New Tate had been successful, but it was a much smaller building, more harmoniously married with the surrounding urban landscape. Only time would tell. His objective was investment and it would be another three or more years before the keys were handed over. His engagement was limited to a couple of flats, which seemed promising given the fact that another buyer had already flipped a studio making half a million pounds profit in a few weeks with little or no risk.

  In the spring of 2014, properties in the first phase of the overall development had been put on the market at a lavish bash on the site of Gilbert Scott’s power station. A spectacular show organised in a marquee where Elton John’s crooning had charmed the cash from the pockets of buyers, many of whom who would have done anything to get into the act. Reagan was amongst the off-plan buyers, many of whom had snapped up the properties in the extraordinary frenzy.

  Not surprisingly Jack Reagan rediscovered London as the capital of the world: rich, cosmopolitan, daring and avant garde. But what did that do for ordinary Londoners, apart from giving them something to blow their trumpets about? Of course there were the jobs that followed and perhaps a feeling of economic security. That only concerned a certain class of people: City workers, professionals, entrepreneurs and the like. The others, the vast unwashed crowds of the recently or newly arrived, would continue their struggle to make ends meet, as did what remained of the capital’s grassroot working classes.

  The newly renovated districts, such as Nine Elms, would house the growing well-heeled classes and wealthy foreigners. The lesser well-off would have to fend for themselves as best they could, looking on whilst the others enjoyed the feast.

  Signs of London’s international success in selling itself as an open global capital were visible everywhere, starting with the skyline: new
towers had sprung out of the ground like mushrooms and if construction cranes were anything to go by many more were on the way.

  It was estimated between thirty and forty percent of London’s population was born outside of the UK. Indians, Pakistanis, Bangledeshis, Africans, West Indians, Chinese and more recently Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and others from a hotchpotch of former East Block European countries had flooded into the capital at an alarming rate.

  London’s rivals in Europe stagnated; France was mired down in its version of retro-Socialism, burdened by crushing taxes and the discouragement of enterprise. Rome had never recovered from the Great Recession and Madrid suffered oppressive levels of unemployment, as once prosperous cities like Athens and Lisbon were purely and simply blighted.

  Jack Regan was in town to meet with his accountants for the quarterly review of his property business. Over the previous three years he had made phenomenal gains. The central London market had literally exploded with rents doubling and even tripling.

  There were no words to describe the gains he had made on properties in and around Pimlico, certain of which he had picked up for a song, homes formerly owned by the Westminster City Council housing department, selling at five times the price he had paid for them. He had bought the flats as a side bet, a speculative punt and suddenly, almost miraculously, they were worth a fortune. The former occupants gone, died or moved on, those he remembered as a kid growing up in the neighbourhood, the parents of his classmates at Westminster Cathedral School on Horseferry Road.

  His mother had told him of Petula Clark’s1 blue MG Midget parked on a corner of Strutton Ground - another epoch, another life. Petula Clark had rented a flat there when she was starting out on her career as a pop star. That was another a flash in the pan of the small market street’s fame. Opposite had been a hall, where his parents had danced to Charley Mac’s band, a regular weekend evening that had attracted young Irish men and women who lived in and around Pimlico.