I Am Gold (11 page)

In fact, it was
because
Naomi didn't know the chief sort of dealing he earned from, and the kind of enemies he might have, that he felt so much responsibility for her. She seemed willing to accept him as he was, and Manse believed she deserved gratitude and protection for this. Manse always thought of himself and his firm as here today, gone tomorrow, or even gone later today: no genuine solidity. He was bound to feel thankful to anyone who seemed to regard him as more than this – as more worthwhile than this. Perhaps it was a type of protection when he spoke to Geoff in that way. He hoped they didn't see the sod now with rolled-up posters under his arm, like their-selves. Plainly, this would weaken the special, even unique, understanding Manse hoped existed between Naomi and him. Geoff would look like he was a part of it, too, although with that fucking leather waistcoat on.

If Naomi ever did come to his home, the one-time St James's rectory, it was sure to be well on in their relationship, involving travel from London and a stop-over. By then, he thought he'd be able to make a kind of joke about not hanging the posters. She'd understand, anyway, when seeing the many originals there, in the rooms and large hallway. He thought he might tell her the situation before she actually came to the property, sort of prepare her for the surprise of finding not posters on his walls but actual paintings. He wouldn't do that now, though, because it would seem arrogant and pushy.

Arrogance and pushiness Manse despised. Lately, he'd come across a word that described spot-on how he felt about arrogance and pushiness. ‘Averse.' He was averse to arrogance and pushiness, no question, and to crude boasts of wealth. Besides, she might have more than he did – even though she bought prints – and would find it ridiculous if he started big-mouthing about his boodle and possessions. Her clothes and shoes looked pretty good to Manse. She knew fashion and could afford it. He thought she seemed the sort who would have regular manicures as well as the good grammar. He didn't see any rings.

Manse had no objection to tallness in a woman. He could cope with that. It was summer. She wore a nicely cut, long-sleeved burgundy-coloured silk dress, and half-heel burgundy shoes. Quite a few of the women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings had on burgundy dresses but in flimsier material than silk. Mainly the dresses were blue. The Pre-Raphaelites went for blue.

A small café stood next to the poster shop. They didn't
have
to go in there. They could of left together from the main exit. Or they could of said goodbye to each other in the shop and then gone out separately, the meeting very enjoyable, but over. That wouldn't have been odd. But they sort of turned towards the café together automatically. It wasn't necessary for Manse to say, ‘Would you like a cup of tea and a bit of a rest, Naomi, after quite a long afternoon on your feet, though pleasant?' To sit together at one of the pub-style metal and wood tables seemed to occur naturally – unplanned yet like destiny, in Manse's opinion. He believed off-and-on in destiny. Manse considered the way they made for the café another aspect of that pairing.

He thought to just buy tea and toast for both of them didn't mean he was rushing her. He saw it as being civil and, surely, all should try for that in this very troubled world, providing where possible a little relief. They put the rolled posters in their cardboard sleeves on the table.

In front of the Prentis, she had spoken first, so he felt it would be all right, or even compulsory, for him to begin the talk now. He'd worked out in his mind a way of dealing with the matter of his occupation – the main one. Or of
not
dealing with it, at this point. It would be an obvious thing for her to ask what he did. He could say haulage or haulage and scrap and she might believe it, suppose she didn't have much knowledge of what ‘haulage and scrap' sometimes meant. What it meant was a front to fool the Revenue and make it easier for Iles to blind-eye Manse's chief career in the various commodities. He decided that the best thing to do was speak very frankly, not about his career, though, but the relationship scene. This might keep the questions away from his business and should also lead Naomi to tell him how she was placed as to personal details.

‘Exploring a gallery can be a little exhausting, but I find art does offer a kind of comfort during periods of tension, such as, speaking for myself, the preliminaries to a divorce,' he said. Hit her with it straight out. Manse thought she'd prefer he did it like that. She'd been very up-front about exchanging names. It was how she was.

‘Indeed, yes,' she said.

‘Have you gone through a divorce, then, Naomi?'

‘Not a divorce, just splitting from a partner.'

‘Similar, I expect.' He wasn't keen on ‘partner'. You couldn't tell the sex. He'd been going to say, ‘Similar, I expect, if the relationship had lasted quite a time.' But he cut the last bit because the ‘if' made it sound as though the relationship might
not
of lasted quite a time, which could signify she was flighty. He said: ‘I don't suppose an artist was thinking like that when he did his painting. He wouldn't be wondering whether his work might help settle a man's or a woman's nerves owing to broken relationships many a year into the future.'

‘Perhaps not, though some had very problematical relationships themselves.'

‘Who?'

‘The Pre-Raphaelites. Holman Hunt was banging one of his models, who might have started as a tart. Rossetti spread himself. A man of great physical beauty, of course.'

These last words worried Manse. She sounded as though she might have been interested in Rossetti herself if she'd been around then. Manse never thought of himself as of great physical beauty, and possibly others didn't, either. ‘Maybe it's wrong of us to take their paintings over in that way – turn them into something not theirs but ours, like a Prozac prescription from the doc. A kind of stealing.'

‘Once it's out there, art belongs to us,' Naomi said. ‘It's made to be looked at. Who are the ones who look? Us. What we make of it is our business.'

She had things so clear in her mind, and would talk with real punch and certainty. He loved that. He couldn't always manage it himself. ‘My wife's in North Wales,' he replied. ‘We're separated. We'll be divorced soon. She never had any interest in galleries. That wasn't what drove us apart, but she hadn't.'

‘Not all do.'

‘Instead of saying Pre-
Raph
aelites she'd refer to them as the Pre-Raph
ael
ites, like “fail”. Maybe she was getting at them. I'm not certain. Or just being clumsy to annoy. Was your partner interested in galleries?'

‘I didn't ask him. He never came with me.'

Manse was delighted to hear that ‘him' and ‘he'. He would never object in general to same-sex arrangements, which there were many of these days, doing no harm. But, obviously, he would prefer Naomi wanted a man. ‘I'm wondering how it was when you discussed an exhibition. You'd say, “I think I'll go to a gallery today.” And he'd reply, would he, “Right, till later then, Naomi”? I have the children. Sybil sees them now and again, of course. There's a definite fondness there, both ways, her to them, them to her. Often she'll buy them presents, not just at Christmas and birthdays. Have you got children?'

‘He didn't want them.'

‘Did
you?
Is that why you broke up?'

She swallowed most of her tea. ‘Who really knows why couples break up – even themselves?'

He considered that very deep. ‘True,' Manse said. ‘Luckily, my sister will look after the children when I come to London. I can almost always get away for a short while.'

‘Is she fixed up with someone else?' Naomi asked.

‘Who?'

‘Sybil.'

‘I think she's got a roofer, or something like that. Most likely he's doing all right. There's a lot of rain in North Wales and big winds off the mountains and the sea, plus plenty of slate. I don't know if he's insured. They go for metal ladders these days, not wood. How about your ex-partner?'

‘I don't keep in touch.'

‘Is that because you –'

‘No, I don't keep in touch.'

‘Are you afraid that if there's contact you might want things to restart?'

‘When it's finished it's finished.'

In some ways Manse liked this. It was another part of her clear and straight outlook. And it should mean this ex-partner would not come nosing about, as long as he understood that when it was finished it was finished. But her words also reached him as blunt and worrying. They meant that if he lost her she'd be gone for keeps. Yes, he needed to be very careful with Naomi. On the other hand, he had to take some risks going after her or she'd never be his to lose.

Chapter Fifteen

2009

Of course, Harpur knew a solo intervention at the charity shop could be regarded as mad – and would be by Rockmain and, probably, Iles: culpably mad. In fact, if Iles had attempted that kind of thing himself, Harpur would have done all he could to stop him, including any necessary brutality. Most probably, though, Iles would not try it. He'd longed to be assured by Rockmain that risk was not required – and had been assured.

Harpur found Rockmain's jubilant decoding of the phone talk off track and dangerously optimistic. But, Rockmain was the trained and experienced psychologist. The Home Office routinely sent for him to do his mind readings at this kind of crisis. That must mean his record showed he generally got things right. Hadn't he described how the Home Office came to beg his intervention, and how he'd agreed with gush and conscientiousness? Who was Harpur to disagree with him – and, incidentally, with Iles? Harpur did ask himself the question, and asked it often. He got harsh and deflating answers. This didn't stop him listing in his head the points where he thought Rockmain had things haywire this time.

1. ‘I want you to fuck off,' John had replied to the negotiator's call for ‘closeness' between them. ‘I don't want closeness. I want you to fuck off.' Rockmain believed the way John picked up and stuck to the negotiator's words revealed a crucial weakness. The word was ‘closeness' here; elsewhere, ‘natural', ‘precaution', ‘circumstances', ‘as a matter of fact', and so on. In Rockmain's guru view, this copy-cat dependence proved John realized he did not control things and must always let the negotiator direct their discussion, and, ultimately, John's actions. He was boxed in by the negotiator's words, as much as by the siege force backing him. Rockmain thought John knew it and knew, also, that his next step had to be out of the building with his hands up, followed by the unharmed hostages.

To Harpur, though, these chat extracts said John wanted to take the negotiator on and defeat him – defeat him in the most flagrant and humiliating style by fixing on his own words and shredding their sense. He turned them into a joke. The negotiator says the armed police outside are ‘only a precaution, believe me.' John seems to agree. ‘Yes, I believe you.' But what he believes is enormously different from what the negotiator wants him to believe. ‘Yes, I believe you. They're only a precaution in case you want to shoot my head off.'

And, on the matter of closeness, John's reply meant something like this. ‘Closeness? Not exactly: I want your distance, your absence.' John was saying: ‘Stuff closeness. If you're after closeness you'll have to come in and get me. And there'll be big collateral damage to those in here with me when you do. We're what you could call
very
close.' Obviously, he knew the huge, surrounding battalion was not going to fuck off until they'd got him, one way or the other. He could watch it grow and savour its fixedness. He was meant to watch it grow and savour its fixedness. He couldn't hope. But he might choose to go out blazing away.

2. ‘Unfavourably.' This Rockmain regarded as the most significant word of the lot. ‘A resolution is possible, John. We mustn't allow things to turn out unfavourably,' says the negotiator. And John replies: ‘What does unfavourably mean? Unfavourably means me dead, and maybe others, doesn't it, Olly?' Rockmain seemed to think this response showed John was ready to see reality. He couldn't be put off by soft, vague words like ‘unfavourably'. But it also might have indicated he had become more formidable, more combative, more of a menace. Then, though, in Rockmain's opinion, he abruptly ceased to be formidable at all. He hinted that the hostages might be already dead. Rockmain decided this was a ‘tease' and a stupid, panicky one, because the hostages, alive, provided his only real strength. Rockmain deduced John was ‘coming apart, is already a near wreck'. He seemed intelligent enough to recognize this and would soon cave in. He did not want things to end ‘unfavourably', in the hard and bloody sense of that diplomatic word.

Harpur agreed with part of this analysis – the part saying that John could see exactly and realistically how things were, and wouldn't be lulled by the lingo of fudge. His ‘tease', as Rockmain called it, was, yes, a retaliation against the bleakness of his prospects clearly, unflinchingly faced. Perhaps the ‘tease'
was
foolish and unconvincing. There had been no sound of shots to suggest any hostage had been killed. Rockmain forecast that John would see the absurdity of his resistance and capitulate. Harpur feared John saw the absurdity of his resistance and might be pushed into the actions of crazed despair, an attempt to turn the absurdity into doomed valour – going down with the ship, falling on his sword, swallowing the cyanide, and other brave and noble terms.

3. ‘A fugue-like progress,' Rockmain said. Harpur had an idea what a fugue was: a starting melody in a piece of music would be picked up later in the work and get interwoven with a new melody. Perhaps this could reasonably be applied to the John–negotiator exchanges. Yes, perhaps. It was the word ‘progress' that Harpur couldn't swallow, though.