Blood Is Dirt (23 page)

‘Catch you later, Bruce,' he said, patting my shoulder.

Marcella giggled. I could tell from the back of Graydon's head that he'd heard.

The party rolled on. People edged towards the table, which was being loaded with food—lobster, crab, salmon, prawns, quivering mounds of mayonnaise on ice, a fantastic quantity of antipasti—but there was a large gap in the middle. Everybody seemed to know what was going in there except me. They all had little spoons and plates at the ready.

There was a rush of excitement and Ali came in with a silver tray two inches thick with crushed ice and a slag heap of caviare on top that must have snipped $5000 off the bottom of Graydon's pocket money. The company fell on it. Extremely polite knock-down-drag-out fights developed. Women appeared with their shoulder straps askew and an earring missing, but with a molehill of Beluga that could have got them two nights in the George V.

The tray was down to water by the time I got in there so I had the swordfish carpaccio and ciabatta with a half lobster. Selina appeared on my elbow and kissed me on the ear.

‘We're in,' she whispered.

By the late afternoon, when the houseboys had started putting out the smoking mosquito coils, there was only the hard core left. The chief was on his third bottle of Krug, and Ben Agu and Bof Nwanu were getting on down with the willowy ‘companions' who'd hijacked the sound system and were giving the Afrobeat a belt. The chief's wife was sitting in the corner of his swing sofa sleeping soundly. Franconelli was inhaling some prewar Armagnac. Gryf was still on the beer, his lack of neck curiously friendly now. The Moët-fuelled Marcella had gone for more cigarettes and Gale had taken Selina off to ‘freshen up'.

I, obviously, looked fresh enough. I'd stopped drinking when I saw what the champagne had done to Marcella's mouth, so I didn't have a craggy canyon migraine. I'd even refused whisky and had opted for the Perrier with a hint of lark song. The virtue was pouring off me as I'm sure Graydon could have pulled out some golden elixir, hand-distilled by ancient crofters from water drawn at the highest point of the river Livet.

Selina and I had been offered a job. Well, the chief had given us space in his office on one of the four floors he occupied in Elephant House on Lagos Island. Ben Agu and Franconelli had independently talked things through with the chief and the chief had come to the momentous decision that although they were doing their best to sell commodities there wasn't anybody in his organization with the first idea about them. Ben Agu had told me on the quiet that this, their only foreign-currency earner, was actually losing them money. The other businesses generated niara, which was crashing through the floors and gaining momentum.

Bof and Ben were flowerpot men. They knew how to run a business but they didn't know a lot about international trade, and they were low on top-level European contacts. Napier must have fitted in like a dream. Selina and I had turned up gift-wrapped for the party. Not only did we have the London office and the African know-how, we were new faces, and not ugly ones. There's nothing an expatriate community craves more than fresh blood. They're like an isolated desert tribe who need their blood-lines strengthened with new genes.

Night fell. The wall lights came on in the garden. Franconelli and the chief talked football. The chief was still enraged at the Nigerian team being pulled by the military from the Africa Nations Cup after they got petulant over South African flak on the environmental activists' executions. Graydon stifled yawns. Gryf and I stood out of the great man's aura and talked inland waterways of Great Britain, a special interest of Gryf's.

Abruptly, the chief decided to leave. His wife, who'd been out for three hours, was instantly awake and delighted. We all shook hands and did some mock pleading. Graydon was looking dangerously bored. He eyed Gryf, and I saw some mischief flit behind his glassy pupils. He put an arm round him and they walked the chief back up to the house.

Franconelli and I were alone in the garden apart from his man who, now sitting behind the swing sofa, wore trousers that didn't ride over his lumpy ankle. This was no country for jackets so it was the only way to pack.

Franconelli twitched his eyebrows. I went over but didn't feel chummy enough to join him on the swing. I sat on a stool opposite him. He flung a hand over the back of the sofa and rubbed his stomach with the other and ruminated.

‘You don't drink,' he said in a slight American accent. ‘It's good. Stay sharp, right?'

I didn't want to ruin my chances of having a drink in his company again so I came clean.

‘I'm off it. Malaria and alcohol don't mix.'

‘There's a lot of it about this time of year,' he said, giving me a pained look which I didn't understand. ‘You known Graydon long?'

Now he'd taken the tortoiseshell sun bins off, his face had lost a lot of its glamour. Around his eyes was charcoal black as if the man hadn't slept all the way through in years. There was some shrewdness there too which he probably liked to keep out of mixed company on a sunny day and there was sadness as if he felt sorry for all those wives whose husbands had gone for short walks and never returned. That was Franconelli's mix, a strange one—power and pity.

‘Met him today for the first time,' I said.

‘Oh, right,' he said, and gave his fingers a gimme twitch. The help put a baton in his hand and Franconelli unscrewed a Havana cigar. ‘Don't smoke?' he asked, and rammed a hand down his pocket for a clipper. He took a divot out of the end.

‘I'm not a health freak, Mr Franconelli.'

He grunted and lit up and blew out plumes of smoke that smelled like an expensive saddle shop.

‘You're different,' he said. ‘You're not like these other assholes. You don't fight for the caviare, you don't do champagne, you don't chase the black tail on offer. You're not a fruit, are you?' I didn't pick up all of the last question. Was he admiring my restraint on the desserts? I thought I'd hold on the smartass reply. He shrugged away the silence. ‘No, ‘course you're not,' he said. ‘You came with Selina. Nice-looking girl. This the first time you met Graydon... so how come you're here?'

‘I know Gale. We were in London the same time, years ago.'

‘You know Marcella too. I saw you...'

‘Never met her before in my life.'

‘She's a whore,' he said brutally. ‘Big trouble. She likes black guys. Gryf should keep her in line. So you looked up Gale and she invited you?'

That's it.'

Female laughter hopped over the wall. Franconelli leaned over to an ashtray and rested his cigar. I needed rescuing. I didn't like playing whelk to Franconelli's winkling.

‘Selina's a great girl,' he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘How long you and her been together?'

‘How do you mean, Mr Franconelli?' I stalled.

‘You work with her, right?'

‘I didn't know if you were asking a personal question.'

He picked up his cigar again and took a huge drag and I suddenly had a feeling about what he was asking.

‘You and Selina...'

‘We work together,' I teased.

‘That don't...'

‘I've never been big on office love, Mr Franconelli. Bad for the concentration.'

‘Right.'

The guy fancied her. Double her age and the guy wanted her. His man over the back of the swing was shaking his head as if he couldn't believe his boss was saying these things. Franconelli's head turned. Selina and Gale stumbled into the garden, arm in arm, giggling.

‘Graydon said you guys were out here not dancing,' said Gale.

Franconelli sat back and set his swing going. There was a grunt from his man as he knocked him off his perch. The boss smiled. I smiled back.

‘I haven't been able to dance since Louis Prima,' said Franconelli.

‘Oh come on, Roberto! Highlife, juju, fuji, Afrobeat, King Sunny Ade,' she said, and gave us a pirouette, slow and full of rhythm with her arms stretched above her head.

‘You got it, Gale,' he said. ‘Me? I was born with lead in my feet. Can't move like these Africans can.'

‘Come on, Bruce,' she said, grabbing my hand. ‘Talk to him in his lingo, Selina, get him moving.'

We left the walled garden and rounded the shrubbery to the pool glowing blue in the black of the lawn. All the downstairs lights were on and the windows were shaking with sound.

‘Your neighbours must love you.'

‘They're inside,' she said, and pushed me in the bushes.

‘Come off it, Gale.'

‘Trouble,' she said. ‘Look.'

Out of the French windows came Gryf holding Marcella by the hair. He threw her down the steps to the pool. She ended up on all fours, a tear in her gold sheath, screaming.

‘This is too much, Gale...'

‘Shut up, Bruce,' she said. ‘It's a domestic. You wanna go play knight to the damsel, you'll wake up next Christmas with an ice bag for a brain.'

Gryf skipped down the steps and hauled Marcella up by the back of her dress, which split in two and came off. She was naked underneath. Graydon appeared at the French windows with his hands in his pockets.

‘It's time to stop this shit,' I said, and barged past Gale to the pool.

‘Asshole,' she whispered after me.

Gryf slapped Marcella across the buttocks. She crashed forward through the tables and chairs which slowed him down so she could get to her feet. He hit her with a back-hander across the face and she fell through more furniture.

‘Gryf!' I roared, but he was hurling chairs into the pool. Marcella made it to the grass and ran down the garden. Gryf yelled at the furniture. I spun him round by his shoulder. He was sweating and smiling. There was light foam at the corners of his mouth.

‘Come on, Gryf,' I said.

He took a swing at me. I ducked and he ended up facing the pool. I jammed my hands into his kidneys, ran him forward and sent him sprinting into the water. There was a tremendous crash as the water parted and then caved in over Gryf. Tables and chairs were knocked over by the quantity of water that exited from the pool and Gryf, after some moments, burst on to the surface like a harpooned whale.

Gale was up the steps now and talking to Graydon who was shaking his head in amazement. I picked up Marcella's dress and handed it to Gale and told her she'd need some safety pins. Graydon was humming with blow.

‘Christ,' he said, ‘Gryf damn near emptied the goddamn pool.'

He turned, walked off down the hall and took a right, going the other way to his study to avoid the dancing in the living room.

‘Gryf saw one of Graydon's videos?' I asked Gale.

‘Ben and Marcella last weekend,' she said. ‘You learn something if you hang around long enough. We're all silk and diamonds on the surface and blood and dirt underneath.'

‘Maybe it's time to go home.'

‘Sure, but you're back here tomorrow for lunch. It's all arranged with Selina. Just the four of us this time. I can't take any more of this shit. Where'd Marcella go?'

‘She's off down the garden hiding from Air Piggy.'

I went back to the walled garden to pick up Selina. Gryf was out of the pool, staggering around the lawn with several kilos of water soaked into his underpants. He was calling for Marcella, saying he was sorry, telling her it was OK for her to come out now.

Franconelli's bodyguard was standing outside the garden smoking a cigarette. I went to go past him and he put a hand in my chest.

‘I like it,' he said, and slapped me on the back.

Franconelli offered us a lift. I turned it down. He insisted, said Carlo would take us. He had some business with Graydon. He called Carlo in and talked to him in a dialect that sounded like Portuguese rather than Italian. We shook hands. Selina kissed him on both cheeks.

We didn't talk on the way back to Y-Kays and went straight up to our rooms. Carlo's car didn't leave immediately so I took a squint in reception. He was dashing the girl some niara bills.

An hour later I was halfway through my second solitary whisky when I got the knock. Selina was dressed for bed—I mean sleeping, not the other. I pointed her over to the whisky and she ignored it.

‘That was pretty wild,' she said.

‘If you like that kind of thing.'

‘How many times have I heard that us Generation Xers just don't know how to have a good time?'

‘It takes a lot of experience, Selina. It might look easy, all that stuff, but there's years gone into it.'

‘A generation.'

‘How'd it go your side?'

‘I spent some time with Franconelli, or Roberto as he likes to be called.'

‘I noticed.'

‘Meaning?'

‘He's operating on some ancient code of chivalry... he asked me if it was OK to pursue you.'

‘What the hell have you got...?'

‘He thought we were an item. Didn't want to tread on my sensitive parts. I was relieved. I thought he wanted to know how long we'd been working together. We never covered all that stuff. How long is it?'

‘Don't ask me.'

‘He also sent Carlo with us to check out we were in separate rooms. I've just seen him dashing the girl downstairs.'

‘Jesus. These people,' she said. ‘That's what it was like with my ex. You don't marry the man, you marry the whole family and everyone's got an opinion. The women twitter in back rooms about underwear and sauces while the guys sit in the front room and talk about whacking people out.'

‘Even fashion designers?'

‘They're the worst. They don't car-bomb you. They just terminate careers, pull out the plug on companies. Fuck people over. That's why that anti-corruption purge, Operation Clean Hands, was so successful. They were falling over themselves to rat on each other.'

‘OK, calm down. Have a drink, for God's sake. Tell me how you worked it with Franconelli.'