Armadillo

Rintoul strode purposefully across the street. He was wearing a thin leather coat that did not look warm enough for this chilly, frosty morning, and in the low-angled sunlight his face had a pinched, pale look to it. Lorimer said nothing – he assumed Rintoul had something to tell him.

  ‘I wanted you to be the first to know, Black,’ Rintoul said, sounding slightly out of breath, facing him, shifting to and fro, his feet making restless little shuffling movements. ‘We’re being sued for negligence and criminal damage by Gale-Harlequin.’

  ‘Their decision, Mr Rintoul, not ours.’

  ‘It gets better. They’re withholding all monies owed. Not paying us for past work. So our company’s going into receivership.’

  Lorimer shrugged. ‘It’s something between Gale-Harlequin and you.’

  ‘Yeah, but you fucking told them.’

  ‘We made a report.’

  ‘How much did Gale-Harlequin settle for?’

  ‘Confidential, Mr Rintoul.’

  ‘We’re broke. We’re going bust. Do you know what that means, Black? The human cost? Deano’s a family man. Four young kids.’

  ‘This is what happens when you set fire to expensive buildings, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We never meant it to go so –’ Rintoul stopped, realizing it was too late, that in these circumstances half a confession is as good as a whole one. He licked his lips and looked at Lorimer with unequivocal hatred, then glanced up and down the street, as if searching for an escape route. Or a weapon, Lorimer thought, something to bludgeon me with. His wandering eyes finally settled on Jupiter sitting ever-patiently at Lorimer’s feet.

  ‘This your dog?’ Rintoul asked.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a more clapped-out, pathetic-looking animal in my life. Why don’t you get yourself a proper dog?’

  ‘He’s called Jupiter.’

  ‘You’re going to fucking pay for this, Black. One way or another you – you, mate – are going to suffer for what you’ve done to us. I’m going to –’

  One more threat, one more violent word and we will prosecute you in the courts,’ Lorimer said, deliberately raising his voice for any passer-by to hear, before launching into the standard G G H response to any public verbal menace, always to be couched in the first person plural. ‘You cannot threaten us in this way. We know everything about you, Mr Rintoul, and have you any idea how many lawyers we have working for us? If you so much as lay a finger on us, so much as threaten us once more, we will set them to work on you. You’ll be truly finished then, truly washed up. The law will get you, Mr Rintoul, not me, the law. Our law’

  Lorimer saw tears in Rintoul’s eyes, tears of frustration and impotence, or perhaps just a response to the icy keenness of the wind that had started to blow. It had to be a finely judged process, this counter-threat-sometimes it had the opposite effect to the one desired, it pushed people too far, to uncontrollable extremes instead of pinioning them, freezing them on the edge of retaliation. But now Rintoul was immobilized, Lorimer saw, his revenge motor stalled, inert between these two competing forces – his own rage, his own urge to strike out, versus the perceived might of Lorimer’s awesome reply.

  Rintoul turned and walked away, one shoulder oddly hunched, as if he had a cricked neck. Lorimer experienced a form of qualified sorrow for him – the petty thief landed with some real villain’s murder rap; the apprentice mugger who jumps the world kick-boxing champion. Lorimer felt oddly besmirched himself – he had rarely used the legal-counter-threat response, his modus operandi usually made it unnecessary – but he had crossed through Rintoul’s world for a moment, the world of dog eat dog or, rather, of big dog eating smaller dog, and had shared in his terms of reference, spoken a language of unfairness and injustice that Rintoul understood all too well.

  But he could not relax, this did not mean he was safe. One dark night Rintoul might have violence visited on him anonymously – after all, Lorimer Black was the only objective correlative he had, the living, breathing symbol of all his woes… Lorimer wondered if he should tell Hogg – it was time for an ‘oiling’, in GGH parlance, another resource available to troubled or worried employees caught in the line of fire. Some ‘cod-liver oil’ was a pre-emptive frightener, a scarer-away, the details of which he knew very little, as it was something controlled exclusively by Hogg. ‘So you need a dose of cod-liver oil,’ Hogg would smile, ‘to keep the colds and flu away. Leave it to Uncle George.’ Lorimer watched Rintoul’s hunched, shrinking figure disappear down the street and thought perhaps it might not be necessary after all. At least he knew who had put the sand on his car, now.

  ‘Come on, old boy’ he said to Jupiter, still patiently sitting, ‘let’s go home.’

  211. You sometimes feel your job dirties you, you’re unhappy at the levels of duplicity and manipulation the work demands. You feel corrupt and at that moment the world seems a sink where only the powerful and the ruthless flourish and ideas of justice and fair play, of honour and decency, of bravery and kindness are like childish fantasies.

  What did you do the last time you felt like that? You went to see Hogg.

  ‘So you want consoling?’ Hogg said, with exaggerated, wholly false pity. ‘You think the world’s a place where only evil-doing and graft get you where you want to be?’

  ‘Sometimes it seems like that,’ you admitted.

  Hogg said: ‘It depends on where you stand. Let me tell you something: there have always been many more decent folk in the world than bastards. Many more. The bastards have always been outnumbered. So what happens is that bastards congregate in certain places, in certain professions. Bastards prefer the company of bastards, they like doing business with other bastards, everything’s understood then. The problem for people like you – and people like me – occurs when you find yourself, a decent person, having to live and work in the world of bastards. That can be difficult. Everywhere you look, the world seems a sink, and there seem to be only two options for survival – become a bastard yourself, or surrender to despair. But that’s only because you’re in your small bastard world. Outside in the wider world, the real world, there are plenty of decent folk and it’s run along lines that decent folk can understand, by and large. We’ve got plenty of bastards in this square mile and that’s why you’re finding it tough; but move away, change your point of view and you’ll see it’s not all dark. You’ll see the good in the world. It helps.’

  You’ll see the good in the world. It does work, it worked for you, for a while, until you wondered if Hogg believed a word of what he said.

  The Book of Transfiguration

  The Café Greco was a small, shadowy place, a thin, dark rectangle wedged between a betting shop and an off-licence, with a counter and the Gaggia machine at one end and some chest-high shelves running along the walls where patrons were meant to stand, drink their coffee quickly and go. There were three stools, all currently occupied when Lorimer arrived at 6.15.

  He ordered an espresso and considered what this choice of venue told him. The Café Greco would never merit selection for his collection of ‘Classic British Caffs’ because of its recycled Europeanism and its strained-for modishness, however tired: black walls, over-familiar reproductions of famous black and white photos, bare floorboards, Latin American salsa on the sound system. Only variations of coffee were served, or soft drinks in cans; there were some pastries under a plastic bell jar and a half-hearted stab at a selection of panini. No, the décor and its pretensions told him nothing, he realized with weary worldliness, it was the configuration of the café itself that was important. This was intended to be a brief encounter. Couples who met at a place where standing was the norm did not intend to linger. Still, smart thinking on Flavia’s behalf, he had to concede; in her shoes he would have done the same.

  He had thought carefully about his clothes. The signet ring was off and a thin silver bracelet was on. Under an old black leather jacket he wore a green trainer top with a hood that hung over the jack
et collar like an empty pouch, and under that a white T-shirt with the hem of the neckband unpicked to create an inch-long frayed slit. He had on well-washed black jeans that had turned an uneven grey and sensible, unpolished black shoes with a heavy rubber sole. His hair was deliberately mussed and he had deliberately not shaved. The ambiguities and counter-signals were nicely balanced, he calculated – style, and the deliberate avoidance of style; cost present but impossible to evaluate – he could have been anyone – could work in a bookshop or a bar, could be a video-tape editor, an off-duty postman, a pub-theatre actor, the floor manager of a recording studio. Perfectly democratic, he thought, nothing that would surprise Flavia, no unwitting clues.

  At 6.35 the doubts began to crowd in. Telling himself that there was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for her late arrival, he ordered another coffee and read his way diligently, page by page, through an abandoned Standard. At 7 o’clock he borrowed a pen from behind the bar and began to do the crossword puzzle.

  ‘Lorimer Black?’

  She was standing there in front of him, right there, wearing a big quilted jacket and with a loosely woven oatmeal scarf wound round and round her neck. Her hair was different, darker than the last time, almost aubergine, the darkest ox-blood. She was carrying what looked like a typewritten script. He slid off his stool, a stupid smile breaking on his face.

  ‘You waited,’ she said, unapologetically. ‘You were serious, then.’

  ‘Yes. What can I get you?’

  He fetched them both a cappuccino and stood by her stool as she searched her pockets and failed to find any cigarettes. His heart was punching violently in its socket behind his ribs and he said nothing, content to be beside her and have this opportunity for close-quarter observation.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ she asked. White, even teeth. What has she done to her hair?

  ‘I don’t smoke.’ A hint of an underbite gave a pugnacious edge to her beauty, a slight jut to the jaw. He offered to buy her some cigarettes but she declined.

  ‘It won’t kill me.’ Strong eyebrows, unplucked, dense. Those brown eyes.

  ‘So,’ she said, setting down her coffee cup. ‘Mr Lorimer Black.’

  He asked her, for politeness’s sake, and simply to start conversing, what she had been doing and she said she had just come from a read-through of a friend’s play.

  ‘Which is a load of crap, really. He has no talent at all.’

  Finally she removed her jacket and scarf and finally he was able to look, guardedly this time, at her breasts. From the pleasing convexities and concavities of her vermilion polo-neck he calculated they were of perfectly average size but flattish, rather than protruding, more grapefruit-halves than anything particularly conic. He was glad to have this atavistic, but essential, male curiosity satisfied and returned his full attention to the animated and luminous beauty of her face, still not quite able to believe his astonishing good fortune, as she continued to run down and generally demolish the aspirations and pretensions of her playwright friend’s efforts.

  ‘What’s this all about, Lorimer Black?’ she said suddenly, more sharply. ‘What exactly is going on here?’

  ‘I saw you one day in a taxi and I thought you looked beautiful,’ he told her, candidly. ‘Then a few days later I saw you in that commercial and thought, “This is Fate” —’

  ‘Fate,’ she said with an ironic laugh.

  ‘And when you came into the Alcazar that lunchtime I knew I had to do something about it. I had to meet you.’

  ‘You’re saying you fancy me, are you, Lorimer Black?’

  Why did she keep repeating his full name, as if it amused her in some way?

  ‘I suppose I am,’ he confessed. ‘But thank you, anyway, for coming.’

  ‘I’m a married woman, me,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got to bum a ciggie off someone.’

  The other five people currently drinking coffee in the Café Greco were all smoking, so she was spoilt for choice. A plump woman with spiky ginger hair and an earful of rings parted with one of her cigarettes and Flavia returned triumphant to resume her place on the stool. Lorimer was glad of the opportunity to stare at her figure again, noting her height, the length of her legs, the ranginess of her stride and her slim, almost hipless body. Pretty much ideal, he thought, no complaints here.

  ‘So, you’re out of luck, Lorimer Black,’ she said.

  ‘I notice you didn’t describe yourself as a “happily” married woman.’

  ‘Goes without saying, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘I would have thought so. You’re not married, I take it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In a “relationship”, then?’

  ‘Ah. Not any more.’

  ‘So what do you do at Fortress Sure? Sounds a deadly dull sort of life.’

  ‘I’m what they call a loss adjuster.’

  ‘Adjusting loss… Someone who “adjusts” loss…’ She thought about it. ‘That could be nice – or it could be fucking spooky.’ She looked shrewdly at him, narrowing her eyes. ‘Is your job meant to make people happy? People who’ve lost something, they call on you to adjust it, make the loss less hard to bear?’

  ‘Well, not exactly, I –’

  ‘As if their lives are broken in some way and they call on you to fix it.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said again, cautiously, unable to fix her tone – whether naïve or heavily ironic.

  ‘No. Sounds too good to be true, I think.’

  Ironic, then, Lorimer thought. Profoundly.

  He stared at her and she looked him back squarely in the eye. It was absurd, he thought, swiftly analysing his feelings, it was almost embarrassing, but true none the less: he could happily have sat there for hours simply staring at her face. He felt light, also, a thing of no substance, as if he were made of styrofoam or balsa wood, something she could cuff aside with the most casual of backhanders, toss him out of the Café Greco with the flick of a wrist.

  ‘Mmmm,’ she said, reflectively. ‘I suppose you’d like to kiss me.’

  ‘Yes. More than anything.’

  ‘You’ve got nice lips,’ she said, ‘and nice, tired eyes.’

  He wondered if he dared lean forward and press his lips to hers.

  ‘And I might have allowed you to kiss me,’ she said, ‘if you’d taken the trouble to shave before coming out to meet me.’

  ‘Sorry.’ A useless word, he thought, for the awful regret he felt.

  ‘Do you ever tell lies, Lorimer Black?’

  ‘Yes. Do you?’

  ‘Have you ever told me lies? In our short acquaintance?’

  ‘No. Yes, well, a white lie, but I had good –’

  ‘We’ve known each other for about five minutes and you’ve already lied to me?’

  ‘I could have lied about it.’

  She laughed at that.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, honeybun,’ a man’s voice said at his shoulder.

  Lorimer turned and saw a tall man standing there, dark like him, fashionably dishevelled, older by five years or so. Lorimer took in, quickly, patchy stubble, long curly hair, a lean, handsome, knowing face, not kind.

  ‘Better late than never,’ Flavia said. ‘Lucky my old chum Lorimer was here, stop me dying of boredom.’

  Lorimer smiled, sensing the man appraising him now, checking out the look, the presence, weighing him up, subtly.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve ever met Noon, have you, Lorimer?’

  Noon?

  ‘No. Hi, Noon,’ Lorimer said, keeping his face straight. It wasn’t hard, he felt all the mass returning to his body, all his specific gravity, his avoir dupois.

  ‘Noon Malinverno, number one husband.’

  Malinverno offered a lazy hello then turned back to Flavia. ‘We should go, sweetums,’ he said.

  Flavia stubbed out her cigarette, wound her long scarf about her neck and shrugged on her jacket.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Lorimer,’ she said. Malinverno
was already moving to the door, his eyes on them both. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget to give me Paul’s number.’

  ‘Sure,’ Lorimer said, suddenly proud of her guile, taking up his pen and writing his telephone number, and his address, on the margin of a page of the Standard, which he tore off and gave to her. ‘Paul said call any time. Twenty-four hours a day’

  ‘Ta, ever so,’ she said, deadpan. As they left the Café Greco Malinverno put his arm around her neck and Lorimer turned away. He didn’t want to see them together in the street, husband and wife. He was not bothered that she had arranged for Malinverno to meet her there too – her insurance, he supposed – he nursed instead the warm glow of their conspiracy, their complicity. He knew they would see each other again – there is no disguising that charge of mutual attraction as it flickers between two people – and he knew she would call, she liked his nice, tired eyes.

  104. Pavor Nocturnus. Gérard de Nerval said, ‘Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to pass through those ivory gates that lead to the invisible world without a shudder ‘I know what he means: like everything in life that is good, that nurtures, comforts and restores, there is a bad side, a disturbing, unsettling side, and sleep is no exception. Somnambulism, somniloquy, apnoea, enuresis, bruxism, incubus, pavor nocturnus. Sleepwalking, sleeptalking, snoring, bed-wetting, teeth-grinding, nightmare, night terror.

  The Book of Transfiguration

  He barely slept that night: he was not surprised, in fact he did not particularly want to sleep, his head was so busy with thoughts about the meeting with Flavia. He analysed its conflicting currents without much success, making little headway in interpreting its shifting moods and nuances – moments of hostility and compliance, tones of irony and affection, glances of curiosity and diffidence. What did it add up to? And that offer of a kiss, what did it imply? Was she serious or was it bravado, an act of seduction or a cruel form of taunting? He lay in his bed listening to the growing quiet of the night, always approaching silence but never quite achieving it, its progression halted by a lorry’s grinding gears, a siren or a car alarm, a taxi’s ticking diesel, until, in the small hours, the first jumbos began to cruise in from the Far East – from Singapore and Delhi, Tokyo and Bangkok – the bass roar of their engines like a slowly breaking wave high above, as they wheeled and banked in over the city on their final approach to Heathrow. Then he did fall asleep for a while, his head full of the odd conviction that his life had changed irrevocably in some way and that nothing from now on would ever be quite the same.