The Closed Circle (16 page)

“I haven't
disgraced
myself.”

“Well, that all depends on how it's presented in the media, nowadays, doesn't it? Everything seems to depend on that.”

Paul ignored his enigmatic teasing, for the time being, and mused aloud: “Tony likes me. I'm pretty confident of that. Always smiles at me in the corridor or the tea-room. And he sent me a very nice note after the question I asked a few weeks ago.”

“The one about British chocolate and the European union?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that's good, Paul, but I wouldn't say that you've quite put yourself into the ‘indispensable' bracket yet. Not only is it widely known, these days, that you and your minister don't get on—” (Paul started to deny this, but Doug kept talking) “—but even apart from that, one profoundly unmemorable appearance on a TV quiz show, a short-lived column on cycling for a freebie newspaper and a blatant piece of public arse-licking disguised as a question about cocoa solids isn't going to do the trick, I'm afraid. If any of this comes out, you may be for the chop.”

“I'm a rising star, though. It said so last week in the
Independent.
”

“Words, words, words,” said Doug, dismissively. “Words mean fuck all in a scenario like this. People are still judged by their actions, just about: which is the only thing that gives me any hope, actually. Anyway . . .” He was starting to feel almost sorry for Paul, who already had the look of a condemned man. “What I was going to suggest—which I'm sure will appeal to a man as firmly attached to traditional values as yourself—was a good old-fashioned piece of blackmail. Are you up for it?”

Paul eyed him warily, although there were also traces of relief on his face. “What's your price?”

“Well, I've no intention of spending any more time on the books pages, thank you very much, so in a few days' time I'm going to start offering my services to other newspapers as a political editor. And if I can offer them this story as part of the package, then I reckon they're not going to be able to resist.”

“You'd do that, would you?” said Paul, his voice pulsing with contempt. “You'd sink to that level? Common . . .
decency
means that little to you?”

“Ah—now I'm glad you've brought up the subject of decency. Because, actually, that unassuming, much-maligned little word means a lot to me. Which is why I'm prepared to keep this whole thing to myself. On condition that
you,
Paul, do the decent thing.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that you put Malvina out of her misery. And Susan, while you're about it. I mean, I don't
know
that Susan's miserable too, but I would have thought it was a fair guess.”

This was not at all what Paul had been expecting to hear. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Up to you.”

“You think I should break it off with her?”

“That's one option. Probably the best option. What would
you
like to happen, Paul? What are your . . . feelings in this matter?”

Paul drained the last of his wine, rested his chin in his hands and stared thoughtfully ahead of him. Now that Doug had posed this question, it seemed ridiculous that he had never tried to answer it before. He had been content for the relationship with Malvina to proceed as it did, unresolved, directionless; little more, really, than a titillating adjunct to his marriage, one which didn't impinge on his work or disrupt his career in any drastic way. Even the lack of sex, he realized now, had been part of the attraction: it had stopped things from ever getting too intense, too real. How was he supposed to know that Malvina, meanwhile, had been starting to take it all so seriously?

“I'm not sure,” he said at last, mutedly. “I'm going to have to think about this for a little while.”

“She's in love with you, Paul: that's all I'm saying. Do something about it. Fix the problem. The message I'm picking up from her at the moment is that she's had a pretty shitty life. She's looking to you for a way out, into something better. Don't become one more thing that she has to survive.”

Paul stood up. He felt suddenly claustrophobic. “OK. Point taken, Doug. I'll do something about it.” He reached for his overcoat. “Can we get out of here, now? I could do with some fresh air.”

“I'm giving you two weeks. After that I go public.”

Paul thought about this, weighed up his options. “That's fair,” he said, and made for the staircase.

They walked together up towards the Strand. Doug wondered what Paul was thinking. He had just presented him with a potentially momentous decision: either he was engaged in profound contemplation, or the implications of it hadn't sunk in yet, or there really was an emotional vacuum where his heart should have been. Could anyone be that unfeeling?

In the time they had been sitting in Gordon's, the demonstration had clearly moved on. All the roads into Trafalgar Square were now blocked by rows of riot police. There seemed to be several thousand protesters hemmed into the square, with no apparent means of exit. Elsewhere, gangs of protesters ran through the streets, dodging the police batons and shouting abuse at anyone who got in their way. Small-scale fights and scuffles were breaking out all over the place. There were rancorous arguments taking place between the environmentally minded protesters and the more confrontational ones. “Plant your fucking veggies, fucking hippies, see what good that'll do,” Doug heard somebody shouting.

“What sort of country are we living in?” Paul muttered bitterly, as they surveyed the mayhem from the relative safety of a shop doorway. “Who
are
these people? What do they want?”

“They probably don't know. Nor do you, it would seem. Nor do any of us, when it comes to the crunch.”

“The
Guardian
have given me a slot on their op-ed page this Friday. Twelve hundred words, about anything I want. I'm going to write about this. Say what a disgrace it is. That ought to go down well, don't you think?”

“With your constituents? What do they care? They're a hundred miles away.”

“No: I meant with Tony.”

Doug turned to him and said, with some impatience: “Paul, just because I've let you off the hook, it doesn't mean that other people are going to. I told you, something about this business with you and Malvina is going to come out in the next week or two. It won't be much—it'll just be some offhand, anonymous comment in a gossip column or something—but after that it's going to be out there, and it's going to snowball, and you're going to have to deal with it. And sucking up to Tony isn't going to be enough. I told you—only the indispensable survive this kind of thing.”

“You keep saying that,” Paul protested. “I can hardly make myself indispensable in a week or two, can I?”

“No. Of course not,” said Doug; and decided not to labour the point any more. “Write something about Longbridge, anyway. Your silence on that subject has been positively deafening. It's more than a local issue, you know. Fifty thousand people's lives are hanging in the balance.”

Paul nodded: “Maybe I will,” he said, without much obvious conviction. At which point, a wine bottle was hurled forcefully in their direction, shattering against the shop door just above their heads, and they made a run for it.

Back in his Kennington flat, Paul sat in an armchair, quite unmoving, for several hours.

When the daylight faded he sat in the dark. He sat in the dark and thought about Susan, and how she would react when the story started to leak out.

He thought about Malvina, too, how thoroughly he had come to depend on her. How fond of her he had grown, in the last few weeks. More than fond, in fact. Much more.

These thoughts were only interrupted by the periodic ringing of the telephone. There were messages from all the usual people: his minister, journalists, lobbyists, Susan, his friend Ronald Culpepper, the Whips. In the middle of these came a call from Benjamin, which was fairly unusual. But Paul still didn't pick up the phone.

At ten o'clock he turned the lights on and phoned for a pizza. He ate about half, threw the rest away, and drank most of a bottle of Chablis to wash it down. All at once he felt incredibly tired. He stripped off down to his underpants and sat on the bed, running his hands through his hair.

He got into bed and was about to turn off the light when he suddenly asked himself: “Why did my brother phone?”

He went to the answering machine, scrolled without curiosity through the first nine messages, and then heard Benjamin's voice.

“Hi Paul, it's big brother here. I was just calling to . . . well, to find out how you were, and also to ask if you'd seen the
Telegraph
today. Have a look at the picture on page seven. If you don't recognize the face, read the caption underneath. Might jog a memory or two, you never know. Small world, isn't it? Take care, and send my . . . send my best to Malvina.”

Paul could scarcely be bothered to go into the kitchen and look at his unread copy of the
Telegraph.
What arcane fragment of their shared history was his nostalgia-prone brother getting excited about now? Some long-forgotten schoolfriend, maybe. Some relative last glimpsed at a dismal family Christmas party . . .

Reluctantly, annoyed that he was falling for this one, Paul opened the paper at page seven, saw the picture, and indeed—just as his brother had predicted—failed to recognize the face. At first, he didn't even know which face he was supposed to be recognizing. There were four men in business suits, standing outside the main offices of BMW in Munich. None of them looked remotely familiar.

Then he read the caption; and when he saw one of the names, he stared again at the photograph in wonder. Could that be him? That balding man of about forty, holding a pipe, with a thick, well-trimmed beard and a clearly discernible paunch?

The caption identified him as Rolf Baumann, and gave his job description as “Head of Corporate Strategy, BMW.”

Paul took the newspaper into his sitting room, collapsed back into the armchair where he had already sat for so many hours that day, and let a tidal wave of remembrance break over him. That holiday in Denmark—the only foreign holiday his parents had ever taken them on . . . The beach house at Gammel Skagen . . . The two feral Danish boys, Jorgen and Stefan . . . The two ungainly sisters Ulrike and Ursula, and clumsy, floundering Rolf, who had almost drowned trying to swim out to sea at the point where the waters collided . . .

And then, feeling that he, too, was almost about to drown in this whirlpool of memory, Paul resurfaced blinkingly into the present as the full meaning of tonight's discovery broke upon him. Rolf was a powerful man, now. He sat on the board of BMW—the same firm where his father Gunther used to work. BMW was on the point of selling Rover. The destiny of the Longbridge factory lay in its hands.

And it was here: it was Paul's for the taking. He had found a way to make himself indispensable, and not even in a week or two: it could be done in a matter of days. Salvation—his own salvation—was waiting for him at the other end of a telephone line.

It was time to call in a twenty-three-year-old favour.

17

Finally, it felt to Paul as though he were driving through a lunar landscape. Sandy flatness stretched out on either side of him. The intervals between the trim, unassuming villages became longer and longer. He passed a sign saying that Skagen itself was only seven kilometres away.

It was getting on for six o'clock in the evening: but there were still many hours of daylight left, and the sky was an extraordinary, pellucid grey-blue. It was this light, this gentle but somehow overpowering light that he remembered best, better than the dunes and the low-roofed houses painted fawn and lemon-yellow. He knew that it was created, in part, by the reflection of sunlight off the waters of the two seas that rushed together at the tip of the peninsula. It filled him with an indescribable admixture of excitement and serenity. It made him realize that in London there was no light to speak of. Not like this. You had to come here to discover what light was really made of. He hugged this knowledge to himself and felt that he was the keeper of a proud secret.

It seemed to Paul that in the space of a few hours he had made a journey not just to a different country, but to a different consciousness, a new condition of the heart. His was the only car on the road. There was no sound, other than the almost inaudible purr of the engine as he cruised along in fifth gear. The smooth brush of the tyres against the tarmac. A soundless wind was blowing, driving the turbines dotted in groups of three and four all over the countryside, their huge propellers rotating in stately unanimity. The whole world seemed hushed, utterly placid and self-contained, as if there had been no news here for a thousand years, and no more was ever expected.

He passed the sign to the sand-filled church, and remembered having cycled there one day with Rolf. It was the first landmark he recognized. They must have travelled this road dozens of times, then, and yet this evening it all seemed uncannily new; it was impossible to imagine his twelve-year-old self in these surroundings, pedalling along behind the German boy, red-faced and struggling for breath; or was it Paul who had made all the running, in fact? Now that he thought of it, he could remember being pretty fit in those days—he must have been, to have pulled Rolf out of the water on that last afternoon. And hadn't he taken a bullworker to Denmark with him, packed carefully into their suitcase alongside Benjamin's A-level set texts? It was astonishing how little thought he had given to the past in recent years—to any part of it, let alone an episode as fateful as this one now seemed. He had lived by discontinuities.

After a few more kilometres, the sharp left-hand turn to Gammel Skagen presented itself. Paul swung the car around and as he drove down the long, straight approach road, he slowed to little more than the speed of the three elderly cyclists who shadowed his progress in the bicycle lane. In a minute or two he would be arriving at the very house they had shared with the Baumanns. Nine of them, there must have been altogether. Or had Lois come with them? No, of course not: she had been hospitalized, that summer. That had been one of her worst times. It had taken her years—three, was it, or could it even have been four?—to recover fully from the shock of seeing Malcolm die. Sheila hadn't wanted to leave her behind: there had been several arguments about it. And it had, he supposed, been a long time to go away without her, two whole weeks, but there had been no question of Lois coming—she wouldn't even have been able to get on the plane—and her grandparents were there, the whole time, just a few miles from the hospital. But Sheila had been anxious, and preoccupied. She hadn't really enjoyed the holiday, because of worrying about Lois. He remembered that now. It was all coming back.

The road brought him at last to the tiny hamlet of Gammel Skagen, and he followed its last, unexpected coils as it wound past some tourist shops and a hotel before depositing him in the car park above the beach. There were only two other cars there, and the little hut selling coffee and snacks was already closing down for the evening. Paul had more than an hour to wait. He had flown to Aarhus that morning on a low-cost flight, and allowed himself four hours for the drive up to the very tip of Denmark: in the event it had taken less than two and a half. He had forgotten that this was a small country.

Before getting out and walking down to the sea he took one more look at yesterday's fax from Rolf Baumann's assistant.

3 May 2000

Dear Mr. Trotter,

Mr. Baumann asks me to tell you that he was both delighted and astounded to receive your telephone message.

He notes with pleasure your request to visit him in Munich later this week, but he has an alternative suggestion to make. He asks if it would be convenient for you to meet him in Denmark tomorrow evening (4 May). He proposes that you meet on the beach at Gammel Skagen at 19:30 hours local time.

Please let me know if this is convenient for you. If your answer is affirmative, I will make a booking for both yourself and Mr. Baumann to stay at an hotel locally tomorrow night, for one night.

Mr. Baumann hopes that you will agree to his suggestion and tells me that he is looking forward very much to meeting you again.

Sincerely.

Paul locked the car and walked the sandy path down to the beach. His mind should have been racing with thoughts of what he was going to say to Rolf that evening, how exactly he was going to phrase his request, but all the concerns he had left behind in London—even though they were his pretext for coming here—had begun to seem irrelevant. His eyes were drawn, instead, to the distant trawlers he could see silhouetted on the horizon, while he listened only to the wash of waves against the shore. Walking north along the beach, Paul could already discern the outline of the house where they had once stayed. It pulled him up short, and he stopped in his tracks, rendered suddenly breathless by memory. Wanting more than anything else to savour this moment, he swore under his breath when the double beeping of his mobile announced the arrival of a text message. But habit got the better of him, and he could not resist taking the phone out of his pocket.

The message was from Malvina.

Sorry if went OTT last nite-u have this effect on me. Missing u badly, dont think ill of me txt when u can. M xxx

He sat down awkwardly on a rock a few feet away from the breaking waves and, without thinking too hard about what he was doing, keyed in a quick reply.

Will never think ill of you P xxx

He continued his walk towards the house.

Paul had never read Benjamin's account of their Danish holiday; the account that had won him King William's Marshall Prize for creative writing in 1976. He'd felt no curiosity about his brother's writing as a teenager, and felt even less now. Benjamin had written about the “silver breakers which pounded the length of the seemingly endless strand,” and had described the “angry roar” of the waves. Paul, a stickler for detail, might have taken issue with this. As he made his way across the yielding sand, he could feel no anger, either in the ocean or in himself. All had subsided into calm, into a sense of rightness, into a gladness that he had found himself in this place, on this day. There were lights coming from the windows of the house, so he didn't approach too close. It had been painted pink: or had it been pink before? He couldn't remember. The smaller house next door—the one where Jorgen and Stefan had been staying with their grandmother Marie— seemed to be unoccupied. He trudged up to it and tried to peer through the windows, shading his eyes with his hands; but the glass would show him nothing, merely reflected back to him the undulating, sun-speckled water. He walked around the back, looked at the sandy patch of grass where he had played so many games of football with the other boys. All of them, had it been? No, Benjamin had almost never joined in. He had sat in the window seat, reading his novels, having his great thoughts, occasionally glancing out at them with that annoying, fey, unguessable look in his eye. It had taken them all in, that mysterious-genius act of his. And now look at him! Fifteen years, or something, working for the same firm, and not so much as a haiku to show for it. It was sad, really: the way he kept up this pretence, the way he took so many people in, all convinced that he was one day going to fulfil his promise—Emily, Lois, their parents. Sad, too, the way he drooled over Malvina still, refused to accept defeat gracefully . . .

Paul walked back to the edge of the glimmering ocean and thought again about Malvina. Had he been right to say what he'd said to her last night? The question skimmed across his consciousness, barely impacting, barely sending out a ripple. These things could not be rationalized. He had spoken from the heart, that was the only thing that mattered. God, it was a long time since he'd done that, after all. It was about time his heart was allowed a voice, for a change—managed to catch the Speaker's eye, as it were. And it was not as if he had
promised
her anything. He hadn't really committed himself in any way. He had simply told her—honestly—what he felt for her, and in the process, he had made her happy: transcendentally happy, it seemed. That in itself was an achievement, wasn't it? When was the last time he had made anybody happy? When was the last time he had seen a look on anyone's face like the one he had seen on Malvina's last night, and known that he was responsible for it?—a look of gratitude, and love, so penetrating and so powerful that it had burned itself on to his memory, lingering there even now with a clarity that made him scarcely able to believe she was not standing next to him on the beach, her hand reaching out to touch his. That was something. Whatever else happened, he had the memory of that look, to carry with him. Surely that meant that he had done the right thing?

Paul continued to walk north along the beach, away from the houses he had come to revisit. He had been alone with his thoughts, now, for seven or eight hours—on the taxi ride to Stansted, the flight to Aarhus, the drive to Jutland—and they were beginning to exhaust him. He tried to let his mind go blank.

At exactly half past seven, he returned to the car park and found that his was the only car there. He waited there for a few minutes, half-sitting on the bonnet, looking out at the approach road. Seagulls swooped low over the beach, alighting on the rocks, keening. Only a few yards of the road were visible to Paul before it curved away out of sight, so any car that arrived would appear quite suddenly. But nothing came. A quarter of an hour passed.

Finally he heard a noise. It was not the engine noise that he had been expecting. In fact it came from the sky, not from the road. It was a distant buzz that rapidly grew louder. Looking up, Paul saw a winking light against the pale blueness, and a black, amorphous, moving object which, as it came closer, assumed the shape of a helicopter. Within seconds the noise was overwhelming, and the long grass behind him was flattened by the helicopter's air-stream as it hovered over the dunes, looking for a place to land. Even before it touched the ground a door was flung open, and a middle-aged man in a dark business suit stepped out, bent double against the force generated by the whirring blades, a lightweight attaché case his only baggage. He saw Paul approaching him from the car park, and when they had reached each other and were shaking hands, the first words he shouted, above the scream of the engine, were: “I'm so sorry, Paul. Seventeen minutes late. A nasty spot of turbulence over Lübeck.”

Then the helicopter rose into the air again and was gone. And Rolf Baumann laughed delightedly to find himself in the presence of the man he had not seen for twenty-three years, and clapped him on the shoulder and said: “I take it you've got a car?”