A Bright Moon for Fools (3 page)

“They don’t.”

“Well I hardly think that merits police action.”

“We’re not talking about the pool.”

“Yes, you were.”

“We’re just saying, you know, I mean no one feels safe, do they?”

“From police frogmen?”

“From the bombs.”

“I’m sorry,” said Christmas, pulling a face, “‘bombs’?”

“The bombs. Exactly.”

“There are bombs being planted in school swimming pools?”

“No, but I mean, where
is
it all heading?”

“Where the devil is
what
all heading?’ said Christmas, down-right confused.

“I mean there’s got to be a limit, hasn’t there?” agreed the woman.

“Look here,” said Christmas with a huff, “I didn’t like swimming much when I was a child – verrucae and so forth – drowning – so I rather take umbrage
at your suggestion that one should be forced to do it because of one’s religion.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. And as for bombs – well ...” Christmas forgot what he was talking about for a moment. Then he had an idea. “A lead box. That’s the thing. With you in
it. And besides that, a lead box for
Monsieur
here, and beside that, rows and rows of lead boxes with us all in them, feeding tubes up our backsides, and they’d say ‘yes but
you’re all safe, that’s the main thing’, that’s what they’d have to do to make life safe, and who, madam, wants a safe life? Are we chickens? No, madam, we are not, we
are the fox, and if we have to fight some dogs then we’ll fight some bloody dogs!” Christmas accepted the deafening applause of an imaginary rally.
I stand before you all as a man
who has just survived nothing less than an assassination attempt and
—

“You’re not one of those hunting lot, are you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not one of those toffs on a horse, are you? Because, I’m sorry, that is just plain sick.”

“No madam, I am not on a horse.”

“Mm ...” she replied, disqualifying Christmas because he was obviously posh. Then she saw a family coming up the escalator all wearing the same football shirts. She let out a small
‘hmph’ noise and immediately lost interest in the conversation. Christmas saw the self-satisfied look on her face, followed her line of sight, saw the family and immediately fingered
her as the type of middle class person who, while celebrating their gritty roots, is an exacting snob when it came to modern members of the working class. As he ground his teeth through this
judgement, Christmas noticed her husband settle an empty look upon him.

“You know I think the point is ...” the husband started, “I mean we were saying just the other day –”

Christmas made a firm decision to attack. He didn’t sit down with these galoots, damn it, they sat down with him, and it was they who would be standing up again. He gave the husband a
broad, cheerful smile.

“– well, these friends of ours were saying, and I do see their point, if you know what I mean, that there’s nowhere to be English any more. The North’s out and so’s
the Midlands and the Southeast. There’s Devon and Cornwall and bits of Kent – basically that’s what’s left and it costs a fortune to live down there.”

“So,” Christmas nodded enthusiastically, “scandalized by immigration, you’ve emigrated.”

“We—”

“And of course, Devon and Cornwall, they’re full of yokels.”

“Ha, ha. Well, I—”

“Big-breasted, scrumpy-swilling, hay-chewing yokels that prowl about in the woods planting maypoles and smearing each other with cream.” The woman returned her attention.
“There’s packs of them,” Christmas continued, “stuffed either side of the bridle paths, waiting for retirees on tandems that they can kidnap at Cornetto-point and subject to
Cornish grammar seminars by the light of the horrible moon.” The couple exchanged looks. Christmas leant forward, “and they’ll force you, yes, force you, madam, and you, sir,
force to your knees, your
kneeeeees
, naked! Facing holy Exeter, shrieking God of Barley, God of Corn, take these supplicants that they might reject the false idols, the lord of frozen cakes,
of industrialized fishing, of tarty news readers that sit on the edge of their desks because evidently genocide requires a casual delivery!” He slammed his glass down on the table, closed his
eyes and began to breathe heavily. When he opened them again the couple had left. Christmas burped with satisfaction and picked up his book.

F
light EZ116 to Paris. Christmas leant his head against the glass. The sun slipped down onto the horizon and the clouds became one territory,
endless bodies lying side by side. Jolting and shaking the aircraft lowered into this battlefield until finally the sky cleared and he was able to see the tiling of the earth.

Christmas closed his eyes, imagining himself twenty years younger. He wasn’t running away to Caracas. He was flying to Paris for a trade show. At the trade show he was going to meet Emily.
She was here, next to him. Christmas opened his eyes, but there was only a child’s face rising above the seat in front. Higher and higher he went, with a widening smile until his upper body
bent over into what was incontrovertibly Christmas’ zone. Christmas searched his drink for a last drop and crunched on an ice cube. The boy burst into a grin. Christmas looked out of the
window.

Parisians respect rudeness. This normally gave an advantage to a man like Christmas. When shopping in Paris his technique for commanding their guarded attention was to approach their most
expensive item and ask for it ‘in crocodile’. Once they had to admit that it didn’t actually come in crocodile, a certain superiority of extravagance was conferred on Christmas
and they would start to kowtow accordingly. Powered by scotch, and with two hours to wait in Charles De Gaulle airport, Christmas summoned a variant of this approach in order to gain access to the
business class lounge.

“Now look here,” he broadcast to the receptionists, swinging his frame through the doors, “one of your colleagues promised to fetch the manager and I am still
waiting!”

“I’m sorry,
Monsieur
, if I could just—”

“Waiting, I said!” interrupted Christmas as a party of business travellers entered behind him, “I’ll be waiting in here.” And off he walked, unchallenged, into the
exclusivity of free coffee and marginally larger seating. There were two glamorous couples laughing and talking about Milan, otherwise it was full of the usual harried men and women unable to
figure out their BlackBerrys and reading the
Financial Times
at incredible speed. Christmas went to the buffet, filled a bowl full of chocolate croissants and sat down with a triple
espresso.

“So I bought a book for the journey,” a businessman opposite was saying to his colleague, “called ‘How To Improve Your Memory’, and guess what?”
You forgot
it
, thought Christmas. “I forgot it!” said the man. Christmas frowned. He had, of late, become concerned about his own memory. He used to be rather proud of it, but now he found
himself forgetting names, which lies he had told to whom and historical facts and personages that had once been at his fingertips. These days if he didn’t write the thing down, it vanished
from his mind just as completely as those infuriating objects left for only a moment vanished from sight.

Christmas spied the manager picking his way through the tables. “
Monsieur
, you—”

“Why haven’t you got the
Asian Daily News
?”

“Excuse me?”

“The
Asian Daily News
– why don’t you have it, man? Or at least the
Hong Kong Gazette
. Many of your guests I see here are undoubtedly destined for the East, and
yet I notice a woeful lack of provision in your newspaper range. Messrs ADN and HKG are, in particular, noticeable by their absence.” The manager relaxed. There was no earwig in the milk.
There was no stolen bag, no mouse, no insult from a staff member. There was no crisis. He took out a pad of paper and slowly pretended to write down the newspapers’ names. In fact he was
writing the French for ‘fat English cunt’.

“Mmm ...” he said, “We do get these in from time to time, but I am afraid that in the past they haven’t proved very popular. However, I will take this up at our next
meeting, and hope to rectify the situation before your next visit. Would that be OK,
Monsieur
?”

“That would be adequate.”

“Now if you will excu—”

“Too bloody right,” said Christmas, biting into a croissant. The manager departed. Munching and wiping his hands, Christmas walked over to the internet consoles and typed ‘best
hotel in Caracas’ into Google. He made a note of Gran Melía’s phone number. He took his mobile out of his pocket and switched it on for the first time in two days. There were
thirty-eight voicemail messages. He called the hotel, booked a room for a week with a secured credit card – the last type of card he was allowed – and then tossed the phone into the
bin.

T
he Paris–Madrid leg of his journey was notable only for the peanut that refused to be scooped out of his scotch and the struggle over the
armrest that his elbow conducted with his neighbour’s. Both travellers submitted to the unwritten lore of this ancient combat: combatants do not acknowledge the combat; combatants do not
acknowledge each other. In the end, Christmas settled for his arm lying over the front of the armrest while his neighbour’s elbow was squashed against the seat, both suffering the kind of
pressurised proximity that pride alone could deem acceptable. Only Christmas, however, could deem it enjoyable.

Once in Madrid there were yet more security checks. Everyone sighed and tutted. If the few were to die for the increased convenience of the many, then surely that was a price worth paying? It
was certainly paid in other contexts, but Christmas suspected that the multiplication of such procedures – this taking off and on of one’s belt, shoes and coat, the delving for coins
and keys – had nothing to do with ‘the war on terror’. It was plain humiliation, a public stripping to cow you into accepting the delays and the food and the modern scandal of
in-flight alcohol rationing. Shaken and observed, they wanted you to stare into the plastic tray of your life, examine its pittance, and then be grateful for seven per cent off five hundred
fags.

Christmas walked onto a travelator and stood with everything crossed until it delivered him to a bar. Here he consumed a slice of tortilla, a glass of beer and two large Dewar’s –
the only available alternative to that well-known whisky for children, Jack Daniel’s.

“So where you headed?” asked the barman.

“My wife’s grandmother is Venezuelan,” he munched. “We’re going to track down where the old woman grew up. Guiria – heard of it?”

“No.”

“Any more of that tortilla left?”

“So you’ve left your wife with the bags?”

“She’s reading. Always bloody reading.” The barman cut him another slice. “Beautiful woman, my wife,” added Christmas. “Doesn’t take any shit. Have you
ever met a woman from Stoke-on-Trent?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, you’d know it if you had.”

The Dewar’s was disgusting and with every sip he vowed never to touch the stuff again, taking this time to concentrate on his drinking strategy for the next nine hours. The trick with
drinking on planes was to pick the right stewardess early on and make her laugh. Then start with single orders, nothing too shocking, engaging her in an anecdote about one’s fear of flying.
Getting her to laugh at the expense of some other passenger was always profitable, making the two of you part of an ill-defined gang. Without such groundwork one could attempt to order from
different hostesses and hope they were unaware of the overall tally, but that was risky. One could be refused.

As in all aspects of life The Rot had corrupted the natural order of things. Christmas let out a fond sigh, remembering the era when you could smoke on planes and everyone drank like hell
because they weren’t used to flying and no one gave a damn about how many you’d had and people were swapping seats and having fun. Back then you could get a stewardess to sit down with
you and share a gin. These days they were more like nurses condescending the aisles of some outpatient day trip;
could you turn that off, please? Could you turn that on, please
? Who has the
right to tell a grown man he’s had one too many miniatures? Not some used-looking ex-dancer with an orange face, that’s for sure.

Christmas felt drunk and spiteful. He attempted to walk to his gate but fell in behind a woman who was leading a suitcase on wheels. He stumbled over it, regained his footing and booted it
sideways. The woman spun round.

“Did you just kick my bag?” she cried out in Spanish.

“I thought,” replied Christmas in English, “it was your dog.
Do
, I mean to say,
please
pass on my apologies to your valise, that is to say, to whit and so
forth—” he paused to flurry his hand like a composer with something on the end of his baton “—in said action the court finds in favour of the plaintiff, if it pleases your
honour, humble regards, deep, prodigious bows and bowels. Case!” he stiffened like a drill sergeant, “Dis-missed!” and off he marched.

Christmas strode past the vast windows and took in the planes taxiing into position. This was the first time he had been in Spain since he and his wife Emily had given up their house in
Benhavis.

They had spent their holidays there, driving out from Malaga airport, bleach green golf courses slicking through the burnt hills, rows of spotless time-shares staring out to sea. Their place
looked down into the village and they would lie in bed getting pissed, a breeze coming in from the balcony carrying sounds of children and their neighbours arguing. Scottish couple. What were they
called? Tarrant? Tavish? Tavistock? Emily fell out with the wife. Something to do with the free English class they both used to give the kids there. Always helping someone, old Emmy.
Except
me
, thought Christmas with a smile,
always telling me to get off my arse
.