by Jo Bannister
When he saw it the blood drained from Will’s face. ‘I’m not going in that!’
But Richard was enchanted. ‘It’s beautiful!’
The heart of the building was an atrium arising through twenty storeys. Though the soaring space was as yet unfurnished, the structure was advanced enough to imagine how it would look when the ground-floor mall was open for business, the galleries were filled with bars and restaurants, the spidery escalators arching over the void were carrying people to and from the offices in the mid-section, and the great crystal fountain rising like a stalagmite through the vault was playing, adding the music of falling water to the bustle of people and the cheery babble of money being made.
And the little gilt and glass elevators were rising, and falling in their perspex tubes. That was what worried Will. He could cope, just, with a lift whose doors shut on one level and opened on another. But the idea of sailing through this great space in something as insubstantial as a Victorian birdcage turned him cold.
A glance told Richard the man was genuinely afraid. To Mrs Venables, who already had the door open, he said quietly, ‘Is there another way up?’
She frowned, perplexed. ‘I don’t think so. At least, there must be a staircase but, man dear, it’s forty storeys! Why, what—?’ Then she saw Will’s ashy pallor and her tone softened. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, I’ve been up and down a dozen times.’
Richard had too many hags of his own to ridicule anyone else’s. ‘I’m sure she’s right – lifts have to be pretty foolproof to get approved. On the other hand, this isn’t something you have to do. You could go home.’
‘I have a ground-floor flat,’ said Will. The strain was audible as a creak in his voice.
Richard nodded. ‘I’m sure that’s wise.’
‘My office is in a basement. I don’t even travel upstairs on buses.’ He shut his eyes. ‘I knew it was going to be high up. But it’s a big solid building. I thought I could keep my back to the window and ignore all that sky outside. I never guessed they’d want to get us up there in a bucket!’
Richard was inspecting the little glass gondola. ‘No problem. Just face me and don’t look away. I blot out quite a bit of scenery.’
There was something engaging about Richard Speke. He looked like an overgrown schoolboy: tall, gangly and freckled with wiry ginger hair. Apart from the one suit which he dug out when absolutely necessary, he wore jeans on all occasions. Early in his career editors tried to do something about his appearance. They gave up in despair when they found that, however good the clothes they forced him into, by the time Richard had worn them half an hour they looked as lived-in as his own. After that it was decided that battered jeans were his trademark; like Kate Adie’s earrings.
The other thing that made people warm to him was the fact that he was plainly a decent, trustworthy man. Will trusted him now. He might have joined someone else in what all his instincts told him was a death-trap, but he’d have agonized over it a lot longer first.
But nothing could make him enjoy the ride. His first thought was to fix his eyes on the floor and keep them there until the lift either arrived or crashed in a litter of broken glass and broken bones. But to his horror the floor too was transparent. Looking down was worse than looking out.
So he fixed his gaze on Richard’s chest, on a broken button on his shirt. He was conscious of the movement as the gondola started up, of the passage of the galleries through his peripheral vision, but he kept his mind on Richard’s button. He wondered where he’d broken it. He wondered how. He wondered if he’d no one to sew him a new one on or if he couldn’t find one that matched. He wondered whether, if he broke another button, Richard would then consider the shirt done; and if not, how many broken buttons he would tolerate.
Then the gondola left the open space of the atrium and plunged into the mid-section, a bright bullet fired into darkness. That troubled Will less than space around him: Richard heard him breathe out for the first time.
There was one more bad moment when the black tube through the thorax of the building yielded momentarily to a clear tube through the gap below the penthouse. ‘It must be a viewing deck. It’ll be glazed in when they’ve finished, probably for a restaurant. On a clear day you’ll be able to see halfway to Birmingham.’ Then Richard remembered this wasn’t the sort of information Will wanted.
Even as the building closed once more around it, the gondola was slowing to a halt, solid external doors sliding into slots to let the clear curved doors of the gondola swing open. From across the corridor came the hum of voices.
‘We’re here,’ said Richard. ‘Are you OK?’
Will said thinly, ‘A lot of laundries will replace shirt buttons, you know.’
Chapter Three
‘I’m Miriam Graves. I’m glad you could come.’
The psychologist was a substantial woman, both tall and broad, big boned and well covered. Aged about fifty, her large frame was upholstered in tweed suiting and her pepper-and-salt hair styled by reference to a pudding basin. She might have been making the point that she was strong enough to do without props – the diet, the couture, the cosmetics, the expensive hair-do – but Richard suspected that she hadn’t realized she needed them. He found that rather endearing.
‘Wouldn’t have missed it for worlds, Doctor,’ murmured Will Furney.
She shook the pudding-basin crisply. ‘Miriam. The Doctor isn’t an affectation – I was a GP before I got interested in this – but it’s of more use on the stationery than in this context. I’m not here to diagnose or to treat. My role is that of a moderator: I’ll guide, I’ll prompt, I’ll give you the odd nudge in directions you’d probably sooner not go, but this isn’t a patient-doctor thing. Also, first names cut through a lot of mental gymnastics. So call me Miriam, at least for now. Later you’ll call me other things.’ The unfettered grin transformed her plain round face. ‘Come and meet the others. Sheelagh, let me introduce Richard and Will.’
Sheelagh Cody made little effort to hide her feelings. It wasn’t anxiety barbing her voice so much as exasperation. ‘Welcome to the madhouse.’
Miriam’s apple-cheeks dimpled. ‘Sheelagh is not one of our more enthusiastic participants.’
‘Sheelagh has better things she could be doing this weekend,’ the younger woman retorted acidly.
Richard had heard of power dressing but didn’t often see it close up. Women reporters prefer a kind of practical chic, as in parka and pearls. The last time he’d seen something this sharp it was in the hands of an Afghan tribesman and he’d run for his life.
Inside the designer suit – lime-green shoulder-padded jacket, short narrow black skirt – Sheelagh was small but strongly made, well proportioned. Jogger, Richard decided. No, rower: sculls up the Thames from Lime-house every morning to avoid the traffic. Not yet thirty but runs the sort of women’s magazine that would sue if you called it a women’s magazine. Long black gypsy hair with a powerful curl fell down her back and her eyes were a hard dark blue.
‘Then why are you here?’ It was the sort of obvious question only a reporter would have been brazen enough to ask. Richard’s freckled face was amiable but he waited for a reply.
Sheelagh had arrived in a bad mood and nothing that had happened since had improved it. She resented his curiosity. Whether she refused to answer, answered honestly or offered some polite dissimulation instead, he’d win on points. As a businesswoman she hated being outmanoeuvred.
‘Well now,’ she said, pursing carmine lips. She wore a lot of make-up for a young woman, used it combatively like warpaint. ‘In the advertising world there are clients, Clients and CLIENTS.’ She made the distinction with vocal and facial modulations that had Miriam making ticks on a mental check-list. ‘When a CLIENT tells you about the wonderful weekend he’s had learning how all his problems stem from being pushed off his rocking-horse by his sister at the age of three, you don’t say what you’re thinking, which is that anyone who’d believe that should get the wor
d PRAT tattooed on his forehead. You smile and nod, and steer the conversation back to how you’re going to shift a million pounds’worth of his useless bloody product.
‘And when a week later he gives you an idiot grin and an envelope, and explains that since you were so interested he’s treating you to a Personal Discovery weekend of your very own, you don’t say that the only thing you need less is herpes and can you have the money instead? You thank him, and say it’ll be most revealing, and add the cost of your time to his bill. And you come. But you don’t feel obliged to pretend it’s anything more than an excuse for a bunch of losers to blame someone else for their own inadequacies. That’s why I’m here, Richard. You want to tell us why you are?’
‘Sure,’ he said, without missing a beat. ‘I’m a loser looking for someone to blame for my inadequacies.’
Others had gathered round. A powerfully built Asian sidled up to Sheelagh with a consciously handsome smile. ‘You’re in advertising? We should compare notes. I’m in promotions. Tariq.’ He stuck out a large hand.
Sheelagh eyed the big man, his pony-tail and his out-thrust hand with blanket disfavour. ‘Aren’t Indians usually rather small?’
Seeing it wasn’t about to be taken, Tariq Straker took his hand back. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to. ‘My mother’s from Pakistan. My dad’s from a long line of Canning Town dockers.’ His accent was ambivalent; he’d erased all the clues to his origins that weren’t indelibly branded on his skin.
Richard ambled to the window. ‘You could give them a wave from up here.’
All London and half the Home Counties stretched below. The Thames was a grey ribbon dropped in loops across a pointillist cityscape. There were other high buildings but none was close: Richard was looking down mostly on roofs. Though he knew the city well it took him time to get his bearings, to recognize the threads that were main thoroughfares and the matchboxes that were important buildings. The boats on the river looked like cracker novelties. A movement caught his eye: a helicopter following the line of the river. He was looking down on the helicopter too.
Tariq grinned, the slight – if that’s what it was already forgotten. Insults had the same lasting effect on him as allegations of misconduct on a politician or water on a duck. He ran his life as he ran his business: adding up the profits, writing off the losses. ‘Hardly. I bought them a retirement cottage in the Peaks.’
‘Excellent choice,’ said the last man heartily, sticking out a hand. He’d been waiting patiently to be introduced, finally decided to do the job himself. He was older than the rest of them, a big bluff man with a Midlands accent. ‘Joe Lockhead. I‘m from Derbyshire. Lovely county. Nothing to beat it in all England, I always say.’
‘I bet you do,’ said Sheelagh waspishly.
‘For pity’s sake,’ groaned Richard. ‘You’re not going to start on him now, are you? What happened – miss your breakfast?’
Short of calling her sweetheart he could hardly have put himself at greater risk of physical assault. Sheelagh Cody had carved a place for herself in a competitive field by hacking through the tangle of custom and practice with a determination as sharp-edged as a machete. She was used to fighting – for acceptance, for respect, for success. She always reacted to a slight; quite often she reacted first to pre-empt any slight which might have been coming. She didn’t mind her reputation for aggressiveness. She did sometimes worry, in the privacy of her own head, that aggression had become a way of life, that she was addicted to the stench of battle, that fighting was no longer a means to an end but an end in itself. She would not have admitted this even to close friends and colleagues, but it remained a gall on her psyche that quite casual comments could irritate.
If she’d sketched a brief apology, explained that the situation had got her a bit twitchy, it would have been readily accepted by people who were themselves on edge and glad she’d made a spectacle of herself before they could. Half of her wanted to do just that. But the other half had the casting vote and she squared up to the long-limbed man like a bantam threatening a heron. ‘So what are you – his minder?’
‘If you two will stop squabbling for a moment I’ve a little announcement to make.’ Completing the group was a tall rangy woman in her early forties with fox-red shoulder-length hair and a dusting of freckles across her nose. Light hazel eyes travelled between the protagonists with good-humoured self-confidence, amused at their antics. She was dressed simply but expensively in fawn slacks, a linen jacket and lace-up shoes that could have been handmade.
When she had their attention she went on. ‘Miriam knows already but I’d better warn the rest of you: I’ll be writing about this. Don’t panic: no real names and it’s not for general release. I’m a doctor – Tessa McNaught. A medical journal I do some work for wants an assessment of this kind of course. It won’t make you famous but don’t be concerned if you see some reference to what went on here. You may recognize yourselves but no one else will.’
Sheelagh turned her back on Richard with a sniff. Her saving grace was that her mercurial temper passed as quickly as it blossomed: she could shed a quarrel as quickly as get into it. Unless Richard chose to prolong it this one would be forgotten within minutes. ‘As long as you don’t use these bloody photographs. Have you seen mine?’ She showed it round. ‘I must be about fifteen. I look like something out of the Wizard of Oz – a cross between the Wicked Witch and a Munchkin.’
‘If you’re using aliases,’ said Tariq with a sly smile, ‘can we pick our own? If Sheelagh’s going to be the Wicked Witch I’ll be the Tin Man – a poor lost soul searching for a heart.’
Possibly he was searching for something; conceivably it was the organ mentioned; but on mature reflection Richard decided that he’d never met anyone less like a poor lost soul. Whatever neuroses the others entertained, whatever anxieties lurked behind their eyes, Tariq’s outlook was cheerfully uncomplicated. He’d come here as last weekend he might have attended a conference and the weekend before a party at some country house: for whatever he could get out of it in terms of contacts, gossip and entertainment. He would talk a lot, listen attentively, show off shamelessly and flirt with any woman under sixty; and on Sunday evening he would bore whoever he went home to with an enthusiastic appraisal of the encounter even though he had brought to it no problems and left with no insight. Ruefully, even a little jealously, Richard thought the big man needed three days with a psychologist like Abraham Lincoln needed a season ticket to the theatre. He murmured, ‘In that case, I‘ll be the Cowardly Lion.’
‘What’s left?’ asked the man from Derbyshire. ‘The Wizard, I suppose. I can’t sing soprano so that rules out Dorothy.’
It was a good reason but not the only one. If Judy Garland had sprained her ankle during her first dance routine, Joe Lockhead was the last person in the world the director would have called. He’d have tried Mother Teresa of Calcutta first; he’d have made discreet enquiries as to what Winston Churchill and Noel Coward were doing, but Joe’s career as a printer would have been safe.
He was in his mid-fifties but he hadn’t changed that much since entering Cartwright’s of Derby as a fifteen-year-old apprentice. The curly hair was dark then instead of silvered, the jowls less heavy, the movements less ponderous. But that solid framework was the result of genetics more than time. He’d been a solid child and a substantial young man, and the idea of him tap-dancing his way up the Yellow Brick Road would have been hardly less ludicrous forty years ago.
‘Printers served a six-year apprenticeship then,’ he said. ‘By the time a lad was twenty-one he was a journeyman. We hadn’t the education they have today – the degrees, the diplomas. At least, I don’t think we had them in Derby. I never heard of anyone taking a year off to ride a bicycle to Nepal. We were too busy making families and the means to support them. I met my wife when we were fourteen. We were engaged at sixteen, married at eighteen and still best friends when she died last year. How many of today’s youngsters will be able to say the same w
hen they’re my age?’ He raised a bushy, interrogatory eyebrow.
No one answered; but no one mocked either.
Miriam was doing mental arithmetic. ‘Is that everyone now?’ Her eyes travelled round the room, coming to rest on Joe.
Another thing they apparently didn’t have in Derby was rhetoric. He looked concerned. ‘I don’t know.’
She smiled. ‘Of course you don’t. I’ll check the list again, but I thought—’
She was interrupted by the sound of the gondola in its tube. It delivered Mrs Venables and a man in a navy-and-white tracksuit.
‘You must be Larry.’
Everything about him said athlete: the muscular body stripped of fat, the lithe purposeful movements, the determined jaw, the piercing light blue eyes. Fair hair flecked with grey was clipped ruthlessly short, as if he’d no use for anything that didn’t lend him speed. He might have been forty. He was not a handsome man but he was impressive. ‘Yes.’
Richard didn’t have to invent a background for him. He remembered when Larry Ford was the home crowd’s best hope of a Wimbledon men’s singles title. He never fulfilled that promise: there were bad draws, bad luck, injuries. Three years running he was among that small handful of Brits to survive the opening round. A week later he was the only survivor and the debate switched to how much further he could get: if this could be the year the host nation had a semi-finalist – a finalist – a champion? Then he bowed out at the quarter-final stage and told the Press the best man had won but did anyone know a good treatment for hamstring?
Larry Ford’s tragedy was that he was never quite good enough to be a national hero nor bad enough to be an institution. For one week each year people were rooting for him, but when he suffered the inevitable defeat attention shifted elsewhere. There was never the affection that sustained other players, including poorer ones. For a few years after he dropped out of the singles line-up he was in the doubles; then that too came to an end. Richard hadn’t heard his name in ten years.
