Embedded Files
38
My phone rings at about two in the morning. That's okay, because I have it on the pillow next to me in case Sarah can't sleep and she wants a chat - not that it has happened yet. I am half asleep when I moan the words 'hello gorgeous,' but hearing John Flanders’ voice on the other end soon cures that.
"Sorry to wake you young man, but I was woken by a loud bang -" I snap at the poor guy; woken-up, disappointed and embarrassed is not a good combination, least of all when my dream of Sarah has got her down to black lace underwear (and, bizarrely, a monocle).
"And?"
"There was a bang just up the hill about twenty minutes ago and a cream and brown Rolls Royce went by here five minutes later."
"That's the Mayor's."
"I know. The thing is it's -"
"So, why are you telling me?" Then I notice the man is getting irritated at the interruptions. It can't be often that John Flanders is driven to say ' shut up and listen', so that's just what I do.
"Sorry, but you must let me explain. I've been watching and it's now on the road to Burnleigh Hall, a road that goes to precious little else."
"Ah."
"Yes, 'ah'. And where are you?"
"At my mum's on the main road near the scrap yard."
"Get dressed, be by the gate and wave so I know which one it is."
"It's a house with lots of gnomes. You can't miss -"
"Oh, that one? See you in ten minutes."
And he does and I strap myself in the passenger seat of John's Volvo. My mind was racing as I got dressed... Is Sarah alright? Do I call the police? And tell them what? That I didn't personally see a car that was driving through a part of town I wasn't in?
"John, did you phone the police?"
"And tell them what?"
"Good point." I phone Sarah and tell her what John saw. Ten minutes later I get a call back and listen to a hoarse whisper announcing that she is dressed and standing at the open kitchen window with her shotgun.
"I'm not alone; Magenta's up too, and Troy. I'm dying for a ciggie but I don't want him to see the glow."
"A good time to stop, perhaps?" Sarah's smoking is, for me, the one fly in our brand-new tin of ointment but even I should know there is a time and place for suggesting something.
"Give up? Right this minute? Bugger off!" I hear cackles followed by a slow 'cli-ick' as Sarah cocks the gun. "Tell you what, that fucker comes near and my runt of a cousin gets this right up his coach-built, hand-finished, high-gloss arse."
"Okay, okay. Just be careful with that gun." Of course she'll be careful - she's been squeezing triggers and dropping birds out of the sky since she made half her class cry by taking in a brace of dead, blood-spattered pheasants for show-and-tell, ones she'd shot herself that weekend. No, it's the Mayor I'm worried for. In the midst of all my mental turmoil I ask John what he meant by 'Oh, that one'.
"Sorry, that was a bit rude. Your mother's garden is quite a landmark round here; we've often changed our route so we take it in on the way."
"For a bit of a laugh? To see what the cranky old dear has done now?" I am not at my best at half past two in the morning.
"Oh no, because it gives us a lift. If Valerie and I have been arguing, one of us only has to sit like a gnome with a fishing rod and happiness reigns once more in the Flanders hovel. We're not the only ones, either - your mum's quite a cult figure. We've a friend of a friend who has a photo of her garden on his fridge as a reminder that there is more to a fulfilled life than material success. Your mother must be a very joyous, centred woman."
"Um..." But I say nothing and think of the moody old bag who has, it seems, been unwittingly responsible for lifting the spirits of the local populace. I smile at the irony - I managed to create a stir for a few days by sticking a pile of junk in the town square, whereas my mother achieves, unwittingly, a perpetual notoriety as the local Messiah with a reputation that most artists and religious fanatics would die for.
We get to Burnleigh Hall and I ask John to stop the engine so we can hear. There is a grinding in the distance followed by a low rumble and the sound of crunching masonry and screaming.
Then there's a gunshot.
And another.
Even with two lights shot out, the Mayor is not going to give up; having tried to demolish a corner of the main building, he reverses the big yellow bulldozer so he can have a go at the coach house. The fact that John has parked between the bulldozer and the coach house means a setback of mere seconds and the machine crunches and flattens the lovingly polished automobile as if it were a deep-waxed meringue. Sarah throws away a cigarette end, raises her shotgun again and is thrown sideways by an almighty explosion.
When I get to her, she is dead still and her eyes are shut. Opening them, she pulls me on top of her and laughs.
"Fooled ya!"
"Sarah, that's not funny!"
"You mean you care about me?"
"You bitch, you know I do!" Sarah kisses me; there is another explosion and she pulls me tight to her as I cradle her head in my arms. It is not until she is sure all the debris has fallen that she speaks again.
"Young man, the earth just moved - kissing in a real explosion sure beats a snog in the cinema." Sarah looks at the flaming pool of fuel where she threw her cigarette butt. "Okay, I admit it, smoking is bad for your health." I look up and I can hear the music of Charlotte's sculpture.
"Sarah, have you been in Charlotte's exhibition?" She nods, uncharacteristically bashful. "Did you turn the power off?"
"You know me... Er... Probably not."
"There's something - or someone - in there."
We don't have to wait long. The Mayor staggers out of the stable block and slumps against the wall, his head bleeding yet his expression peaceful and the rage of the last few minutes gone. He faces us all with a look of resignation and smiles at Magenta, Troy, John, Sarah and me, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem and destruction he has just wrought.
As if on cue to disrupt this strangely calm moment, the Mayor's phone rings and, even from where we are standing, we all recognise the tinny tirade that is Hettie. The Mayor lifts his arm slowly like a puppet and casts the phone into the burning pool around the bulldozer. Grinning, he throws his head back and stares at the orange flecks of embers that escape the earth and float towards the black emptiness of the woods.
Grinning, that is, until Charlotte’s music stops. We follow him into the stable block and watch as he sways unsteadily through the red trigger beam. The music starts again and he wanders between Charlotte’s white panels as the lights change and shift against them. Turning to smile at us, the Mayor waits until the music stops again and collapses on the floor.
39
"How are you doing?" We are at the hospital and Sarah is holding her cousin's hand and looking into his face. The smile was disconcerting at first because it was so uncharacteristic and Sarah was convinced that it was probably a fixed grimace but, no, the eyes say otherwise. Catching the doctor's attention, Sarah smiles back at the Mayor and pats his arm reassuringly before getting up and grabbing my hand so I join her.
"Well, doctor, is this permanent or will he get back to his old cantankerous self?"
"I'm afraid this might be a glimpse into the future. He's had a nasty knock on the head, but I'm not sure that was the whole cause. My guess is that he experienced something that tipped him over the edge psychologically, emotionally." Sarah looks at me as if she has to ask my permission before she speaks.
"Doctor, is he okay to go home?" A nod. "He's coming with me... I mean, with us... Oh hell... Excuse us, please." She drags me to one side. "Look, petal, any decision I make sort of involves you too, doesn't it?"
"Are we that far down the line?" Sarah shrugs.
"What I would like would be this once-obnoxious git of a cousin lying on the bed with the creepy smile coming back to Burnleigh Hall because once he is out of here he is going to need people - people who are not fazed by having someone strange around." She looks first at him and then at me. "He's family. And, yes, that's the last time I bring up the past - he's only 'Robert' from now on. He needs somewhere, someone and this is partly my fault, after all." But I'm still thinking about her 'we'.
" Someone strange around? Well, we've both had a lot of practice since we met. So, this 'we' - are you saying that he and I might be family one day?" Sarah blushes and looks away before changing the subject.
"Look, can we get out of here?" Sarah looks at the bustling staff behind the ward desk. "Amazing though these people are, I've been here so often recently I even look to see if anyone's bagged my parking space."
The drive back to the Hall is uneventful until we pass one of the estate cottages near the house. The Mayor - Robert - presses his nose against the window and taps the glass. Sarah asks Magenta to stop. From my seat I see Sarah and the Mayor go in. They don't emerge for about ten minutes, Sarah grinning as much as he is.
"It was deserted when we were little and we used to hide there if one of us had been naughty. It's empty at the moment so I guess that clinches it, then - Robert's new home." Reaching the house, Magenta edges the Daimler round the burnt-out bulldozer on the drive and, on stopping, opens the rear door of the car. Helping her previous employer out of the car with a smile, she puts his arm through hers and leads him up the steps and into the house.
Later, Sarah takes Robert by the hand and sits him on a stone bench overlooking the parkland and the wood beyond, the wood he sent thugs to control, the wood that he and Sarah had fought over, the wood that was the cause of a fatal shooting and a suicide.
I approach but Sarah smiles and shakes her head - this is Burnleigh Business, family stuff and I am not family enough yet. I moved too soon and now she is looking guilty, as if she has to serve two conflicting causes but, as she comes over to me, I find myself mouthing 'sorry' at exactly the same moment she does. Kissing her, I nod towards Robert, turn her round to face him and pat her to send her back over to him.
"Excuse me." The voice is Magenta's but there is no accompanying 'sir'. Unlike myself, Magenta is socially mature. She knows when boundaries are to be kept, when they are to be trampled and - an even more tricky manoeuvre - when they are to be opened demurely for minute and then shut again. She slips her arm through mine and looks me directly in the eyes.
"You've got it."
"Pardon?"
"You and her Ladyship, you've got it." She pats my arm. "Just like me and Troy have got it." She squeezes my arm to gain fresh attention and looks comically quizzical. "'Ere, if you and her Ladyship get married, does that mean I call you 'your Lordship'?"
"But of course, and if you don't I will have you put in the dungeons and clapped in irons." As usual, I am worried that I have been inappropriate and that it sounds too similar to when I handcuffed her to the filing cabinet in the Mayor's office. Interaction with people is bad enough without them moving the goalposts and becoming someone completely different like a chauffeur. It's okay though, because Magenta pats my arm again and gives me a cheeky little grin before turning her head towards the drive.
"Look at that, sir, very unprofessional - the poor little thing sitting there all on its own and abandoned!" Withdrawing her arm from mine she walks over to the Daimler, shuts the doors and backs it into its kennel. Closing the door from the inside, she is now retiring to the flat above the garage and will soon start to cook a meal for her Troy in their new love-nest, in a world that is sacred, a land that is foreign even to Sarah's eyes. That is the last I will see of the wise Mrs. Son-Of-The-Shearer-Of-Black-Sheep until she next calls me 'sir', unselfconsciously opens a door for me and ferries me to who knows where.
It's at least an hour before I summon the courage to tap on Robert's door. He is in the other wing and will stay there until a) his cottage is deemed to be ready and b) he is deemed to be ready. There is a pause before he opens the door and goes back to sitting on a chair at the window. Pointing to another chair, he indicates the floor next to him and I obediently put the chair there and join him in looking out at the view.
After we have stared out of the window for what seems like an eternity, I get up and glance surreptitiously at my watch only to discover that it is merely a couple of minutes since I sat down next to him.
"Hey, you guys okay?" It is Sarah, whispering. Then there is a knock at Robert's door and I wait for him to answer it but that doesn't happen so I go and open it a crack to more hoarse whispering. "He needs to go to his flat and pick up some clothes." I let Sarah in and raise my hand to the figure still staring out of the window.
"See you, Robert." But now he looks troubled, patting the chair next to him and pointing out of the window. I in turn point to the door but he is pretty adamant that nothing should happen except sitting and staring out of the window, this only changing when I say "Robert, you need to get some stuff. Shall we all go with you?" He grins, gets off his chair and grabs my elbow.
"You guys want to watch out - I'm not good when I’m jealous!" Sarah rubs my arm and manages an expression that is at once grateful and apologetic. Leading us to the garages, she enters a security code, opens one of the four doors and picks out a Mercedes Estate. We get in and, as we pass 'Robert's' cottage, he points out of the window. I point too and smile back at him. The ride to town is punctuated by little noises of exclamation as various landmarks are indicated and cooed over; these are beautiful moments, as if in the presence of an alien who has just landed and is seeing the world for the first time. It is as if the silver haired, wide-eyed man next to me is experiencing it all as a curious, innocent child.
We aren't in town for long when Sarah pulls up outside a white-painted building not far from my flat - it is the ex-Mayor’s hidden bolt-hole away from the world. We all go in and, if Robert isn't knocked out by the smell, then we certainly are. There is a turd inside (unfortunately ground into the mat by the bottom of the door when we open it, thus releasing even more of its aromas) and a note. I examine the scrawled, block capitals on the opened-out cigarette packet and turn to Robert.
"It looks like you never paid off your heavies." I catch my breath and show the amount to Sarah.
"Give me that!" Sarah tells us to get in the car and a few minutes later we are stopping at a filling station in front of a cash machine. Looking round the busy forecourt with no small measure of panic, she shoves a whole deck of bank cards into a pocket, pushes down the bulky wad of notes in another, dashes back to the safety of her car and drives us round to the billiard hall. The three of us go up the narrow, dingy stairs between dark walls painted a maroon gloss and enter a large gloomy chamber filled with green baize and stale air. A couple of thick-set men playing snooker look up and pretend to quake as a rather random trio approaches them. I prod Sarah from behind.
"That's them."
"You sure?" I breathe a 'yes'. Sarah slams the bundle of cash on their table.
"There, that's closure. You stay away from him, from him and me. Geddit?" Stunned, one of the men picks up the wad and counts the notes. Regaining his composure, he tries 'threatening' but he takes one look at Sarah and already knows he is going to lose this battle.
"O-okay darling, be a good little girl and shut the door on the way out. Any fall-out from this and-" But he never finishes the sentence, the stinging across his face grabbing all of his attention.
"Fuck, that hurts!" Sarah is still nursing her hand when she gets back behind the wheel of the Mercedes. "Now Robert, let's go back to your place and get some of those things." Arriving back at the flat again, Sarah picks up the shit-laden doormat and props it up against the wall, clean side out. Turning to her cousin, she asks if the place is rented and Robert shakes his head. Does he own it? Her cousin nods. “Fully paid for?” Another nod. "Are we going to spend the rest of our lives asking 'yes-no' questions?" Sarah apologises. "Look, how about we do it up and you rent it out? Then you'll at least have some semblance of a private income." A further nod.
Going up the stairs, we encounter what is basically a bachelor's sleezy love-nest. There are floor cushions, oriental carpets, a large circular waterbed with black satin sheets and a video camera at one end plugged into a computer whose screen is facing the large airbrushed nude photograph at the other. "Is this where you used to bring -" Sarah looks at him in disgust. "Bloody hell, I don't even want to think about what went on up here, let alone with whom." Shrieking, Sarah recoils when she sees a blonde mane crowning a woman-shaped approximation under the top sheet. I lift up the other end of the bedding and reveal a half-deflated vinyl foot, Sarah not sure whether that is preferable to discovering a real corpse, or far worse.
Turning to her cousin, she lifts a finger and is about to wag it at him but realises that it is hardly her place to admonish someone for weirdness or to be judgmental…
… Particularly as there is only one wine glass by the bed, not two, and merely pictures of this lonely man, with no trace of anyone else in them apart from a small framed photo of this former Mayor standing next to Bruce Forsyth, both in tuxedos and in front of a banner proudly boasting that it is the town Rotarians' fiftieth annual dinner dance.
The large oil painting of him in his mayoral regalia which I saw in his office all those months ago is propped up against a wall next to the document boxes we saw on his desk when we went to the Town Hall to give him what for. It is obvious that none of them have been touched, the tape still securing the tops, and Sarah’s disapproving frown makes way for a look of pity. She watches Robert wander slowly round the room to remember his possessions, each memento either making him chuckle or fall silent in puzzlement, every object reinforcing his status as a lonely and largely unloved man.
"Robert, grab a couple of bags and take whatever you like back to the Hall. I'll send a van over for the rest." He turns to her and smiles fondly at the only person on the planet who seems to want to help him.
Going through an arch in a wall, we search the pristine, empty cupboards of the expensive - yet hardly used - kitchen and find a solitary roll of black plastic bags, the only other items remotely approaching a domestic presence being the plethora of pizza boxes and take-away cartons that litter the top of the marble counter. Sarah slaps the roll in my open hand and winces at the thought of what might lie in the bedroom.
"You take him in there - I don't even want to know what's in that chest of drawers. Meanwhile, I'll go and find a letting agency and a cleaner." Taking out her phone Sarah turns, marches down the stairs and out of the front door.
40
Getting the gigantic painting of Robert in at Burnleigh Hall is a darned sight less problematic than getting it down the narrow stairs of his flat. The huge house is used to swallowing such insignificant morsels, whereas the flat probably never usually saw anything larger than a framed print of Constable's 'Haywain'. I help Robert up the stairs with his bin bags of clothes, place them under the portrait (already in the process of being hung on the wall by Colin and Borrington) and return a little later with a cup of tea.
"So, Robert, how are you going to occupy yourself?" There is, in fact, a good deal that Robert can occupy himself with, but as I seem to be his New Best Mate I ask him along to sample some metal working. "Do you fancy giving me a hand?" We take our cups of tea downstairs and stop to chat to Colin the gardener who has already gone down with his stepladder.
And Colin has been hovering round ever since Robert arrived.
Robert coming to Burnleigh Hall is quite an event, something that has been slow to occur to either Sarah or me. The gardener indeed seems more aware than anyone (even Sarah) that Robert is touched by the line of Aristocracy, that he is a local notable who, by coming here, has returned a fragment of Burnleigh to its proper setting in the precious jewel of the family dynasty. What Robert has - or has not done - with his life is an irrelevance, a mere mite as far as Colin is concerned when compared to what this remnant of the sacred Burnleigh bloodline now achieves by simply plonking his plastic bags full of clothes in one of the stately rooms above our heads.
I take Robert to an outhouse to see a precious pile of scrap and, once again, he encounters my sculpture – or, at least, what is left of it. This low brick building is to be my studio until a more permanent one is built and, although makeshift, it is plumbed in with electricity and tools and ready to go. I have already laid out some of the pieces I want to make Charlotte's shrine out of and, even though they have been carefully placed in position, I somehow manage to restrain myself as Robert picks up this piece and that, weighs it in his hands and puts it down again. Smiling at him, I pick a piece up and smell it, the rusty odour seeping into my lungs. I hear of gardeners getting a rush as they take in the smell of soil and, for a few seconds, I recognise that sensation. Copying me, Robert lets the grin go and he breathes deeply several times, the rich aroma filling his head as he stares through an open doorway at the ancestral hills beyond.
Is it a man thing? Is it to do with weapons? The tang of earth? Perhaps it was this vital assault on our senses that took us from fashioning spearheads to assembling intercontinental missiles, any concurrent hunger for food and power being merely a pretext for bashing lumps of fragrant metal into a) ploughshares and b) swords.
It isn't until our first meal together that I find out where one of the bolts from my workshop has gone. Turning to speak to Sarah, I see a hand move in the corner of my eye and it is Robert taking the small piece of debris from his pocket and sniffing it. Despite my reassurance he looks guilty and sorry, placing the reddish-brown fragment on the table and slowly pushing it towards me. I push it gently back and he smiles, pocketing it and whispering 'yes'. These is the first syllable he has uttered since the accident and Sarah and I stare at him like parents who have just witnessed their offspring's first ever utterance.
The next day, Robert and I walk to the mausoleum in the woods. When we get there we find Sarah talking to a stonemason who is constructing a plinth on the ground within the curve of the monument's wall.
"Hello, boys, what do you think?" Sarah must have kept the hasty scribble I did in her car on a scrap of paper and it is startling to see it treated as gospel, to wish the dashed, insubstantial lines transformed into such a heavy, permanent medium. "I hope you understand" says Sarah, cautiously. "Your drawing has such beautiful shapes and I thought it would be a shame to lose its spirit just for the sake of turning out some slick and unnecessarily 'finished' design. Studying my face, she is relieved to see a smile of pleasure at the carved, finished sandstone pieces being assembled before us.
"I mean, it's not as if it's set in stone yet. Well, it is, but it isn't... Oh, you know what I mean - you can change it if you want to."
"Sarah, relax. It's wonderful!" I stroke the pale stone. "And I'm flattered." Sarah strokes the surface too, the lifting of a worry allowing her to take pleasure in it again.
"My uncle had a band in the 'sixties and he always reckoned that, despite fluffs and the bum notes, the most musical stuff in a studio was usually the soundcheck. This is the same." Robert, who has been still up to this point, goes up to an urn in the wall and pats it.
"Great Grandpa." Then he pats three more and announces their relationship to him, something he manages to do while walking past them at a fair pace and also without looking at the inscriptions. Turning to stare at the plinth, he looks at Sarah as if challenging her and frowns. Having to ask his permission as well is something that hadn't occurred to her and she is relieved when the look of disapproval turns into a smile. When Robert turns away and starts patting the wall, Sarah whispers in my ear.
"It's like he's young again, become the beautiful, innocent person I once knew. I was wondering if becoming 'well' again would mean 'normal' normal or his default 'cantankerous old git' normal - I certainly hadn't bargained on this one. Perhaps, though, this is the default option… Perhaps it's most people's default if you cut away all the crap." We watch as Robert leans back and squints up through the trees at the sunny sky beyond this quiet hallowed spot that has suddenly taken on the air of a large family tent. "But what is it costing him?"
Robert hears the snap of a branch and turns to face it, serious again. Following his gaze, Sarah and I see the deer. She has emerged from a still, dark part of the wood and he looks at her, she at him, neither of them moving. This carries on for so long that even the stone mason stands still, the tools in his hands interrupted on their journey to the depths of a rough, dusty bag.
41
Robert doesn't have Brendan's fire but that isn't to say he is not absorbed in what he is doing. He shares my natural affinity for the rusty metal and, like me, is hooked on the ferric tang that is released when he scrubs it clean. Like Brendan, Robert is a slow burner and his creativity is buried under a whole heap of Life's detritus - it's deeper down than Brendan's and there's a lot of crap in the way but I’d like to think that a good rummage will, in the end, reward his search.
Robert and I go into town on the pretext of buying more supplies for the workshop but it's really so we can sample the universe outside the hall for a while, get him back into the swing of facing the world at large. This is something we could both do with practice at and it does, as it turns out, go fairly well; as with most things though, there is the odd hiccough and we hit one a couple of weeks into our new routine.
We are having a great time and, having already been to the hardware store, hit Maisie's where Robert, like me, seems to have found an emotional safe house for his particular brand of being. Most of the customers never knew him when he was Mayor and those that did think the new Robert is a vast improvement - even Maisie sits down and chats with him occasionally, generally managing to put to the back of her mind the small detail of him making regular threats to close the cafe down because 'it lowers the tone of our town in its new bid to be a centre of sophisticated cosmopolitan living'. Quite how getting rid of a cafe would make the town more cosmopolitan baffled Maisie at the time but, yes, she could see that it maybe didn't fit everyone's idea of 'sophisticated'.
Coming out of the door we bump into a young man, a young man who is not best pleased at having a can knocked out of his hand and spilt down the skimpy top of the girl he is with.
That is understandable, but when it's an accident - and done by your own dad - you surely cut him a little slack? The trip back is in silence, Robert spending the whole half hour crouched over the walnut paneling of the door and trying to find solace in stroking the shiny chrome trim. I have texted ahead and Sarah is waiting for us. Forcing an air of jollity, she greets Robert back but it is more with an air of hope than expectation.
"Did you chaps have a nice-" Robert releases his arm from her hand and trudges towards the workshop. We watch the slumped shoulders disappear through the door and it is only seconds before we hear the slow, rhythmic sighing of a wire brush on metal. Sarah looks at me, almost pleading as she searches my face for an explanation, almost in tears as she tries to comprehend the young man's behavior towards his father.
"BUT IT WAS HIS OWN DAD!" Sarah's own shoulders droop as she listens to the awful silence in between brushings as one piece of metal is put down and another picked up.
"I know, Sarah, I know. And we'll never understand it because that little shit is the only one with a dad."
It is about two in the afternoon when Sarah rings and summons me to her office. She is staring at a scattering of spreadsheets and documents across her desk and it is only when I kiss her cheek that she stirs, wraps her arms around my neck and moans 'Hi'. Clinging onto me, Sarah buries her face into my shoulder.
"Sorry to burden you with this one - it's a biggy." Releasing me, she suggests I sit down. Even without the paper everywhere it would be obvious this is no ordinary chat.
"I'm selling up."
"If it's money, I've been thinking I ought to get a proper job, anyway. We can live in my flat until-"
"Oh, you dear, dear man! No, there's a few hundred million to eat and drink our way through before that has to happen." Sarah looks awkward, embarrassed. "Not that your flat isn't lovely and everything - I'm sure we would be very happy there.”
“Sorry, can you just rewind a sec? Did you say a few…
Hundred…
Million?” Sarah looks worried now.
“Sit down, dear boy.” She searches my face. Quite what she is looking for, I don’t know – and neither does she. “You must have realised I’ve got a few spare bob?”
“I’ve just never quantified it before… Not that I have ever, of course, been in a position to.” I stare at the ornate moulding of the cream and gold ceiling. “Or even had the right to.”
“Is it a problem? I can give some of it away. I’m sure we’d survive quite happily on a lot less.” Now Sarah is contemplating the plaster cherubs too, the fat little babies not helping one jot as they smile and taunt us from a safe distance high above the millionairess’ ormolu-encrusted bureau. “Who needs eight hundred million, for goodness’ sake?” Now Sarah is staring at the random scattering of paper on her desk. “I’m sure we’d rub along quite happily on fifty.”
“Fifty quid?” I watch her eyes rise to gain inspiration from the frolicking children who would find our conversation amusing, as they seem to need nothing in life except a strategically placed curl of cloth and a handy cloud to mess around in. I don’t think Sarah reckons I’m very good at this kind of thing and neither, come to that, do I. “Ah, right… Fifty million.” I am doing my best to look intelligent but am aware that I’m failing miserably. “You’re the boss.”
“And that’s another thing - I won’t be one for much longer. No, I'm selling the company, pulling out."
“Selling up? No, I meant –“
“Oh, I know exactly what you meant and you can get that notion right out of your head as well, as it’s going to be you and me equal, you and me against the world, matey.” Sarah stares at the Big Bad Town beyond the fields beyond the parkland beyond the terrace beyond the window. “Yes, you and me and perhaps…”
Shaking her head, she wakes from her reverie, picks up a sample of scarlet fabric stapled to a piece of card and looks at the club logo on the fragment of football shirt with total bewilderment. "It was the heritage fabrics I used to love, especially the Georgian and Victorian themed stuff. Twee, I know, but I understood where it was coming from. Now it's this crap that makes the world tick and I just don't get it." Tossing the lurid red square onto the desk, she picks up an equally brash chemical green with a shamrock embroidered on it but she finds no solace in that either. "And, if several thousand workers aren’t going to lose their jobs, it wants someone who does get it."
Getting up from the ornate satinwood and ormolu desk, Sarah needs the comfort of home ground and, standing by the large window, runs her fingers through the fringes of silk tassels that edge the curtains. Sarah's dove grey Nehru jacket is suitably solemn for the occasion of this her announcement but no-one has told the vibrant red, gold and blue brocade of the heavy drapes that now is not the time for loud opulence and they start to irritate her.
"I need some fresh air." I ask if that is fresh air as in a Sobrani. "No, Mr. Clean And Wholesome, it isn't - I've given up. It's 'fresh air' as in air that is fresh." Sarah opens her handbag and proudly displays the absence of her gold and cloisonné enamel cigarette case, the one thing that could always be guaranteed to be with her. "I've kept the lighter, though - it's rather dinky and I'd miss having it to play with." Sarah has a rummage and takes out her little gold and black Art Deco pet. Holding the football strip samples, she sparks a flame and, out of curiosity, passes it under the plastic fabric. Squealing with surprise, she drops the miniature inferno into the metal bin by her desk.
"Fuck! So that's how we rid the world of footballers - just stand them next to a naked flame." Throwing open the window to rid the room of fumes, we decide that, yes, the need for fresh air is pretty imminent. Walking down the stairs, Sarah quizzes me. " How is poor dear Robert getting on?"
"Need you ask? He's a boy like me - I gave him a hammer and he’s feeling much better now he's smacked the shit out of a pair of old vicarage gates. Don't give us chaps therapy, just let us play with a chainsaw, a naked flame and a paintball gun and we're right and dandy. Personally, I think the Arnold Schwarzenegger Centre for Emotional and Spiritual Healing is a concept that's been all too slow getting off the ground." Sarah stops to listen to the clanging in the distance.
"Is he safe to leave on his own?"
"He isn't –on his own, I mean. I gave Brendan a bell and he's come over to give us a hand."
Out in the open air, Sarah is a different woman, as if a yoke has been lifted from her finely-tailored shoulders. Spinning round, she whoops at the sky and grabs me by the hands. "NO MORE BLOODY COMPANY! FUCKING BRILLIANT!" I stroke a strand of hair that has blown over her face and kiss her while looking into her eyes, eyes that have a wicked glint in them. "Come on, lovely boy, I think we ought to do a certain something... It's way overdue." Punching the code into the lock, she pulls at a garage door, opens the Daimler and drags me in.
"Where are we going?"
"Nowhere in particular."
Google Sites
Report abuse