Armadillo (9 page)

Flavia Malinverno walked in.

Flavia Malinverno walked in and there was a rushing in his ears as of surf foaming and fizzing on a sandy beach. Curious portions of his body – his nostril flanges, the little webs of skin between his fingers – seemed to grow unnaturally hot. For an instant he felt – stupidly – that he should avert his face, before remembering in a second instant that she would not know him, would not know him from Adam. So, covertly, innocently, shifting slightly on his bar stool, he watched her over the top of his newspaper. Watched her have a brief word with the ice maidens at their lectern and watched her take a seat in a far corner of the bar area and order something to drink. Meeting somebody? Obviously. Early like me, over–punctual, good sign. He shook out his newspaper ostentatiously, turning and flattening a flapping page. Extraordinary coincidence. To think that. In the flesh. At more leisure he took her in, drank her in, imprinted her permanently on his memory.

She was tall – right, good – slim, wearing different shades and textures of black. A black leather jacket, sweater, black shawl-scarf thing. Her face? Round, almost blandly even-featured. She seemed neat and clean. Her hair parted, straight, shortish, cut sharp to just below the jawline, glossy dark brown hair, chestnut shot with a purplish-red – some sort of henna? In front of her on the table a fat leather notebook diary, a packet of cigarettes, dull silver block of a lighter. Her drink comes, big glass of yellow wine. She drinks but does not smoke, interesting. Something faintly tomboyish about her. Flat black cowboy boots, small raked Cuban heels. Black jeans. She was looking round the room and he felt her gaze wash over him like the beam of light from a lighthouse and keep on going.

He loosened his tie, very slightly, and with his fingertips mussed his hair, untidying it. Then, to his astonishment, he found he was crossing the room towards her, a voice in his ear– the inner man – shouting,
YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND
, as he heard his own voice saying to her, quite reasonably:

‘Excuse me, are you by any chance Flavia Malin-verno?’

‘No.’

‘I’m so sorry, I thought –’

‘I’m
Flavia
Malinverno.’

Ah. Flahvia, not Flayvia. Idiot. Fool.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he proceeded, ‘but I saw you on television the other night and —’

‘In
Playboy of the Western World?

What the hell –? Quickly now.

‘Ah, no. An advertisement. A Fortress Sure advertisement. That, ah, advertisement you did.’

‘Oh, that.’ She frowned. He liked her frown immediately, enormously. A serious, unequivocal buckling of the forehead, an inward coming-together of her eyebrow ends registering huge doubt. And suspicion.

‘How do you know my name, then?’ she said. ‘I don’t think they run credits on ads, do they?’

Jesus Christ. ‘I, ah, I work for Fortress Sure, you see. P R department, marketing. There was a screening, a presentation. Um, these things stick in my mind, names, dates. I saw it on cable the other night and I thought how good it –’

‘Have you got the time on you?’

‘Five past one.’ He saw her eyes were brown like unmilked tea, her skin was pale, untanned forever and her nails were bitten short. She looked a little worn out, a little tired, but, then again, didn’t everybody? We all look a bit tired, these days, some more than others.

‘Hmm,’ she said, ‘I’m meant to be meeting someone here at half twelve.’ It seemed to signal a change of tone, this change of subject, a partial admission of him into her own day’s routines.

‘I just wanted to say you were great, I thought, in that ad.’

‘You’re most kind.’ She looked at him flatly, sceptically, mildly curious. Her accent was neutral, unplaceable, the city’s demotic middle-class voice. ‘I must have been on screen for a whole five seconds.’

‘Exactly. But some presences can –’

‘Lorimer.’

He turned to see Stella waving at him from the lectern. Barbuda stood beside her, looking at the ceiling.

‘Nice meeting you,’ he said, weakly, hopelessly. ‘Just thought, I’d, you know –’ He spread his palms, smiled goodbye, turned away and crossed the bar area to join Stella and Barbuda, feeling her eyes on his back and hearing in his head an inarticulate, strangely joyous jabber of accusation and exhilaration, of shame and pleasure and regret – regret that the moment was past, was gone forever. Happy – amazed – at his audacity, though. Furious, seething, that he had forgotten to look at her breasts.

He kissed Stella and half waved at Barbuda, as he suspected strongly she did not like being kissed, by him or any male over twenty.

‘Hello, Barbuda, half-term, is it?–

85. The Seven Gods of Luck.
At the end of one term in Inverness Junko gave me a present She gave all the household gifts (she was returning home to Japan for the holiday), gifts of food or articles of clothing that were markedly personal, the result, one assumed, of Junko’s particular assessment of the character of the recipient Shona received a single earring, for example, Joyce a full set of thermal underwear including a thermal bra, while Sinbad was given two bananas. ‘Why two?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose with a baffled smile, flicking back the corkscrew tendrils of hair that he liked to have fall in front of his eyes. ‘One for each hand,’ Junko said with a polite smile, which silenced him.

She gave me a postcard, bought in Japan, stiff and shiny, a bright picture of seven symbolic figures aboard a junk in an extravagantly stylized choppy sea.

‘Who are they?’ I asked.

‘The
Shichifukujin.
The seven gods of luck,’ she said. ‘What you must do, Milo, is put this picture under your pillow on the night of January first and in this way your first dream of the year will be lucky.’

‘This will bring me luck?’

‘Of course. I think you are a person who has much need of luck, Milo.’

‘Haven’t we all?’

‘But for you, Milo, I wish you special luck.’

She told me who the seven gods were and I wrote down their names: Fukuro kujo and jurojin, the gods of long life; Benzaiten, the only female, goddess of love; Bishamonten, warlike, armoured, god of war and good fortune; Daikokuten, god of wealth; Hotei, god of happiness with his bulging belly; and finally Ebisu, the god of self-effacement, carrying a fish, the deity of one’s job or career.

Junko said, ‘Ebisu is my favourite.’

That New Tear I did as she suggested and slipped the card under my pillow and tried to dream a lucky dream, endeavoured to force good luck into my life with the help of the seven gods. I dreamt of my father – was that good luck or bad luck? The year turned out to be a bad one for him and a momentously bad, life-changing one for me. The seven gods of luck. Not the seven gods of good luck. Luck, you must remember, like many things in life, is two-faced – good and bad
–
something I think the seven gods implicitly recognized, adrift in their little boat on their stormy sea. I left my card from Junko behind during my harassed and rushed departure from Inverness. For a while that loss perturbed me more than it ought to have done.

The Book of Transfiguration

He sensed her leave just as their first courses arrived, he glanced over and saw in the corner of his eye a fleeting dark figure for an instant at the stairs’ beginning. He looked around but she was gone.

Stella was talking: she seemed upbeat, cheery today. ‘Isn’t this nice?’ she kept saying. ‘The three of us.’ At one stage she reached under the table and surreptitiously ran her hand up his thigh until it touched his cock.

‘Barbuda’s going to her first proper party –’

‘Mum, I’ve been to tons of –’

‘And I think there’s going to be a certain young man present. Mmm? So we have to find something very ultra mega glamorous, don’t we?’

‘Mum, for God’s sake.’

Lorimer refused to join in. He remembered this mortifying adult banter all too well from his own hellish adolescence. It was only the impending purchase of expensive clothes, he knew, that explained Barbuda’s sullen tolerance of this leering speculation at all. In his own case he recalled similar hours of prurient inquiry from Slobodan about his non-existent sex life, but with no promise of reward to sweeten the pill: ‘Who
do
you fancy then? Got to be someone. What’s her name, then? She got specs? It’s Sandra Deedes, isn’t it. Doggy Deedes. He fancies Doggy Deedes. Disgusting.’ And so, endlessly, on.

He smiled over at Barbuda in what he hoped was an understanding, non-patronizing, non-avuncular way. She was an ungainly girl, made more lumpy by pubescence, with dark hair and a sly, pointy face. Her small, sharp breasts caused her huge embarrassment and she was always swathed in the baggiest of jumpers, layers of shirts and jackets. She was wearing make-up today, he noticed: a smear of grey above the eyes and a violet lipstick that made her small mouth smaller. She looked a darker, bitterer version of her mother, whose strong features spoke instead of confidence and will-power. Perhaps it was the mysterious Mr Bull’s genetic contribution that brought this out in her – hints of low self–esteem, a mean spirit, destined to find life a disappointment.

‘Mum, tell Lorimer, will you?’

Stella sighed theatrically. ‘Load of nonsense,’ she said. ‘Still, listen to this. Barbuda doesn’t want to be called Barbuda any more. She wants to be called – wait for it – Angelica.’

‘It’s my middle name.’

‘Your middle name is Angela, not Angelica. Barbuda Angela Jane Bull. What’s wrong with Jane, eh, Lorimer? I ask you.’

Jane Bull, Lorimer thought, bad idea.

‘The girls at school all call me Angelica. I hate being called Barbuda.’

‘Rubbish. It’s a beautiful name, isn’t it, Lorimer?’

‘It’s the name of an island not a person,’ Barbuda/Angelica said with passionate loathing.

‘I’ve been calling you Barbuda for fifteen years, I can’t suddenly change to Angelica.’

‘Why not? More people call me Angelica than Barbuda.’

‘Well, you’ll always be Barbuda to me, young lady’ She turned to Lorimer for support. ‘Tell her she’s being silly and stupid, Lorimer.’

‘Well, actually’ Lorimer said, carefully. ‘You know, I sort of understand where she’s coming from. Excuse me, I must make a phone call.’

As he rose from the table he caught Barbuda/Angelica’s stare of candid astonishment. If only you knew, girl, he thought.

At the payphone by the stairs he punched out Alan’s number at the university.

‘Alan, it’s Lorimer… yeah. I need a favour. Do you know anyone at the BBC?’

‘I know them all, darling.’

‘I need to find out the telephone number of an actress who was in
Playboy of the Western World
the other night. BBC2, I think.’

‘It was Channel Four, actually. Fear not, I have my sources. An actress, eh? Who’s she sleeping with?’

Lorimer was inspired. ‘It’s the girl in the dream. From the ad. Turns out she was in this play. I think I may be on to something, Alan, dreamwise. If I could see her, meet her, talk to her, even. I think I could lucid dream all night.’

And I thought you were going to say you’d fallen in love.’

They both laughed at this.

‘I just have a hunch. She’s called Flavia Malinverno.’

‘I shall “procure” her for you. In a jiffy’

Lorimer hung up the phone suffused by a strange feeling of confidence, confident that if there were one motive force likely to galvanize Alan Kenbarry it was the prospect of a spouting silver fountain of lucid dreams.

381. Market Forces.
This evening Marlobe said to me, pointing the wet stem of his pipe at my chest, ‘It
’
s dog eat fucking dog, my friend. Market forces. You cannot buck the market. I mean, face it, we are all, like it or not, capitalists. And the amount I pay in fucking taxes justifies me, personally, in saying to those whingeing fucking scroungers – PISS OFF. And you, matey, fuck right off to your own sad fucking stinking country, wherever it is.
’
Two old women waiting for a bus moved huffily away, saying loudly they were going to a nicer bus stop. Marlobe appeared not to hear this. ‘You understand these matters,
’
he said. ‘You in your business, just like me in mine. We got no choice. Market fucking forces rules. If you go to the wall, you go to the wall.
’
So I decided to ask him what he felt about the recently installed flower stand in the ShoppaSava. ‘Load of fucking rubbish,
’
he said, although his grin looked a little sick. ‘Who wants to buy a flower from a checkout girl? You want personal service. Someone who knows flora, the fluctuations of the seasons, the proper nurture and attention of the flower. I
’
ll give it a month. They
’
ll lose a fortune.
’
I made a worried face and said, I thought, bravely, ‘Well… Market forces?… He laughed and showed me his surprisingly strong
–
looking white teeth (are they false?). ‘I’ll give them market forces,’ he said. ‘You wait.

The Book of Transfiguration

Chapter 7

His mother passed him a small circular tray of piled white bread sandwiches.

‘Here, Milo, take this down to Lobby, darling, will you?’

He thought there were probably twenty or thirty sandwiches, cut into triangles, with various fillings of meat and all neatly laid out in concentric circles as if to be handed round at an office party or working lunch.

‘They’re not all for him, surely?’

‘He’s a growing young boy,’ his grandmother said.

‘He’s nearly forty years old, Gran, for heaven’s sake.’

His grandmother spoke to his mother in their language, saying something that made them both chuckle.

‘What’s that?’ Lorimer asked.

‘She say: if a man eat too much fish he don’t got enough meat.’

‘Go on, go on, Milo. Lobby don’t like to wait for his lunch.’

From the hall he could see his father being walked gently along the angled walls of the living room by Komelia, her hands carefully supporting an elbow. His father was wearing a blue blazer with a badge on the breast pocket and a pair of pale blue slacks. His white beard had been recently trimmed, its edges razored sharp against his pink skin.

‘Look, Dad, there’s Milo,’ Komelia said, as the circuit brought him round to face the open doorway to the hall. His father’s creased bright eyes twinkled, the permanent smile never faltered.

‘Give him a wave, Milo.’

Lorimer raised his hand for a second or two and let it fall. It was all too fucking sad, he thought, desperately. Komelia led him off again, his father’s feet moving busily in short shuffling steps.

‘Isn’t he doing well? Hello, Dad. Look, Milo’s here.’ Monika had appeared silently from somewhere in the house to stand beside him. She helped herself to one of Slobodan’s sandwiches. ‘Tongue?’ she exclaimed, chewing. ‘Since when does he get tongue?’

‘He seems fine,’ Lorimer said, inclining his head in his father’s direction. ‘How’s he doing?’

‘He’s sixty-five years old, Milo, and he’s not as regular as he should be.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Doctor’s coming. We think he needs a wee enema.’

Lorimer carried Slobodan’s tray downstairs and along the street to the B and B office. There was a gusty cold wind blowing with a misty fine rain mixed up in it and Lorimer held his spread palm an inch above the sandwich rings in case one of them might be flipped away by the stiff breeze. In the office Drava sat in front of a VDU making up the accounts; beyond her on two shiny, bum-worn sofas lounged half a dozen drivers, reading the papers and smoking. There were mutters of welcome.

‘Milo.’

‘Cheers, Milo.’

‘Hi, Milo.’

‘Dave, Mohammed, Terry. Hi, Trev, Winston. How you doing?’

‘Brilliant.’

‘Smashing.’

‘You off to a wedding, Milo?’

‘This is Mushtaq. He’s new.’

‘Hi, Mushtaq.’

‘He’s Lobby’s little bro.’

‘He’s the brains in the family, ha.’

‘Give us one of Lobby’s sarnies, then,’ Drava said, taking off her specs and pinching the bridge of her nose, hard. ‘How are you, Milo? Look a bit done in. They working you too hard? Very smart, I must say.’

‘It’s the weight of that wallet what he has to carry around, ha,’ Dave said.

‘I’m fine,’ Lorimer said. ‘Got a meeting in town. I heard Dad was poorly, said I’d drop by.’

‘He’s got awful constipation. Rock solid. Won’t budge. Hang about, that’s tongue.’

‘Get your mucky paws off of my lunch,’ Slobodan said, wandering out of his control room. ‘Trev, take over, will you? Mohammed? Parcel at Tel-Track. How are you, Milo? Looks a bit tired, don’t he, Drava?’

Slobodan relieved him of the tray, winked at him and started eating a sandwich. ‘Tongue,’ he said appreciatively, ‘nice one,’ and stuck his own out at Drava. ‘Back in half a mo. Anything you want me to tell Phil?’

‘Nothing printable.’

‘I’ll tell him that and he won’t be well pleased, Drava. Come on, Milo. Have a word in my office.’

Lorimer followed his brother out into the street and round the corner to his small terraced house. He noticed that Slobodan had plaited his ponytail and as he walked it bumped unpliantly from shoulder to shoulder as if it were stiffened with wire. The house was a product of Slobodan’s brief (six months) marriage some eight or nine years ago. Lorimer had only met his sister-in-law, Teresa, once – at the wedding, in fact – and could dimly bring to mind a feisty, lisping brunette. The next time he returned home the marriage was over and Teresa had left. But the purchase of the nuptial home had at least ensured Slobodan’s quitting of the Blocj household and he had lived in impoverished but seemingly contented bachelorhood around the corner ever since. He was always keen to volunteer confidences about his sex-life and occasional partners (‘Can’t do without it, Milo, it’s not natural’) but Lorimer did not encourage such revelations.

Slobodan, to give him credit, Lorimer thought, kept the place tidy. He had gravelled the thin strip of front garden and had trailed a clematis over the front door. He paused now at the gate, munching, and gestured with his tray of sandwiches at his shiny car, an ancient, much-loved burgundy Cortina.

‘Looking good, eh?’

‘Very shiny’

‘Waxed her yesterday. Come up lovely’

There were no pictures on the walls in Slobodan’s immaculate house and only the absolute minimum of furniture sparsely occupied the rooms. A persistent smell of air freshener lingered about the place as if someone regularly wandered upstairs and down with a can of aerosol scooshing wafts of ‘Forest Glade’ or ‘Lavender Meadow’ into the corners. Above the fireplace in the living room was the house’s sole ornament, a large crucifix with a quarter-life-size, writhing, blood-drizzled Christ. The television was on and watching the lunchtime news was Phil Beazley, a can of beer in hand, Drava’s ex-husband and Slobodan’s partner in B and B Mini-cabs and International Couriers.

‘Hey, Milo,’ Phil said, ‘my main man.’

‘Hi, Phil.’

‘What you drinking, Milo?’ Slobodan stood by his crammed drinks trolley – over fifty beverages on offer, was his proud boast. Lorimer passed; Phil had his beer replaced and Slobodan fixed himself a Campari and soda. Phil knelt forward and turned down the volume on the television. He was a small, thin man – dangerously thin, Lorimer thought – with sunken cheeks and jutting narrow hips. He dyed his fine hair blond and wore an earring. His blue eyes were slightly astigmatic and he cultivated a jolly, laddish demeanour that seemed entirely false. One’s first and lasting impression of Phil Beazley was one of suspicion. For example, Lorimer suspected strongly that Beazley had only married Drava – a hunch that was reinforced by the christening of Mercedes – for the euphonious motoring associations of her name.

‘Good to see you, Milo,’ Phil Beazley said, regaining his seat. ‘Been a while. Looking terrific, isn’t he, Lobby?’

‘Smart as a new pin, Phil.’

‘You handsome bastard. I can see life’s treating you well, no worries,’ Beazley said.

Lorimer felt a weariness descend on him and simultaneously a concomitant, metaphorical weightening of his cheque book in his breast pocket, as if its leaves had turned to lead.

It duly turned out that B and B’s cash-flow problem was insignificant and temporary, so Slobodan and Phil warmly informed him. A valued account customer had gone bankrupt, leaving four months’ unpaid bills. This valued account customer had turned out to be a fucking bastard evil cunt because even though he knew he was going to go belly-up he was still ordering cars like ‘they was going out of fashion’. Cars here, cars there, cars to take packages to Bristol and Birmingham, cars for wait-and-returns clocking up idle hours outside pubs and nightclubs. Phil said he wanted to sledgehammer the valued account customer’s kneecaps or do a ‘chesterfield’ on his back with an industrial stapler but Lobby here had dissuaded him. They were taking on more drivers to make up the shortfall but in the interim, temporarily, through no fault of their own, they were in need of an injection of capital.

Above board, Milo, no favours, here’s what I propose. I, me, am going to sell you the Cortina.’

‘How much?’

‘Three K.’

‘I have a car,’ Lorimer said. ‘What do I want with your Cortina? You need it.’

‘I’ve got a new motor, a Citroen. The Cortina is a classic car, Milo. Look on it as an investment.’

On the television set were mute images of a burning village in Africa. Boy soldiers brandished Kalashnikovs at the camera.

Lorimer reached for his cheque book. ‘Three grand will cover it?’

Phil and Slobodan looked at each other as if to say: shit, we should have asked for more.

‘You can’t do it cash, can you, Milo?’

‘No.’

‘That going to be a problem, Phil?’

‘Ah. No. Could you make it out to my dad? Anthony Beazley. Great. Terrific, Milo, ace.’

‘Diamond,’ Slobodan agreed. ‘Diamond geezer.’

Lorimer handed over the cheque, trying to keep the resignation out of his voice. ‘Pay me back when you can. Keep the car for the firm. Find another driver, use it, make it work for you.’

‘Nice idea, Milo. Good thinking, Phil, isn’t it?’

‘That’s why he’s the City gent, Lobby, not like us daft cunts. Nice idea, Milo.’

As he drove east – New King’s Road, Old Church Street, along the Embankment, along the sunken, torpid, mud-banked river, past the bridges – Albert, Chelsea, Vauxhall, Lambeth – on to Parliament Square and its honey-coloured, busily buttressed and fretted palace (focus of Marlobe’s unquenchable bile), an uncharitable thought edged its way into his mind: how had Slobodan known he was coming that day and so contrived to have Phil Beazley present? Answer: because when he, Lorimer, had called his mother she had said his father was unwell and he had immediately arranged a visit. But his father had seemed unchanged, or at least much as usual, despite all the loud diagnosis about the state of his bowels. And this business with the sandwiches – his mother and grandmother practically pushing him out of the kitchen… It was as if he had been set up, set up by his own family for a three grand sting to help Lobby Blocj out of a jam.

214. Lorimer Black.
If you want to change your name, the solicitor said, simply do so. If enough people call you by, or know you under, your new name then you have effectively, to all intents and purposes, changed your name. As an adult you are perfectly free to do this, as the case of many actors and artistes demonstrates.

But this seemed too easy to you, too ephemeral. What about documents, you asked? What about driving licence, passport, insurance, pension plan? What if you wanted all the documentation of your life to bear your new name?

Then that will require formalizing, the solicitor said. Either by deed poll or by what is called a statutory declaration, witnessed by a lawyer. You submit the statutory declaration as formal evidence of your change of name.

This was what you wanted, you wanted your new name to be in all the record banks and computer mainframes, in the files and phone books, the voting registries, in your passport and on your credit cards. Only in this way could you truly possess your different identity. Tour old name is deleted, becomes an endangered species, then, eventually, extinct.

This was what was dominating your thoughts when you returned so suddenly from Scotland. A clear and distinct schism had to be established. Milomre Blocj would not be rubbed out entirely but would live on quietly, known to a handful of people in a corner of Fulham. But to the rest of the world he would cease to exist: your statutory declaration would see to that, from now on you could and would become Lonmer Black.

You came back suddenly from Scotland to change your name and life and found your father ill.

He was lying in bed, his skin grey, his beard untrimmed, whiter and thicker than you remembered.

‘What’s wrong, Dad?
’
you asked. ‘Working too hard?
’

‘I keep thinking I fainting,
’
he said. ‘Everything going like misty. The noise too, I don’t hear the noise proper. I feel tired. Maybe I got virus.’

‘Take it easy, Dad.’

‘You come home, Milo. Everything all right?
’

‘I need to get a job, Dad. I need your help.
’

‘What you want to do? EastEx is not so good now. You could work with Slobodan on the cars.
’

‘I need something different. Something safe. Something ordinary.
’
You were thinking: nine to five, Monday to Friday, an office, steady, anonymous, routine, grey, calm. You were thinking: accounting, a bank, civil service, telephone sales, credit control, assistant manager, personnel…

‘You tell me, Milo, I got plenty friends. I can get y ou job. But be quick, OK? I don’t think I very well man. What job you want to do, Milo?
’

You said, quite spontaneously, ‘Insurance.’

The Book of Transfiguration

Lorimer parked in the multi-storey off Drury Lane, where he sat in his car quietly for five minutes gathering his thoughts, calmly rehearsing the phrases he would use and the inflections he would give them. Then he changed his tie – silk, but very subdued – put the waistcoat on under his jacket and changed his tassled loafers for lace-up brogues. As a final touch he recombed his hair and placed the parting an inch further to the left. Most of these small signifiers would be undetected by ninety-nine per cent of the people he met; the remaining one per cent who almost unreflectingly registered them would regard them as a norm, and thus entirely unexceptional. And this was what he was after, really: the minute alterations in his appearance were designed primarily for himself, they were for his own peace of mind, encouraging confidence in the persona he had decided to wear. They functioned, in a way, as a form of almost invisible armour and, thus protected, he was ready to do battle.

Jonathan L. Gale’s capacious corner office looked down Holborn towards St Paul’s cathedral and beyond to the tall scattered towers of the City. The day was fresher, the blue sky populated with a dense flotilla of clouds, spinnakering north. The wink of sunflash on high windows, as he turned his head.