Flight (20 page)

He was put through to Lin straight away. Lin was not ignoring him now. Lin had an exciting proposition to put to him about Aviaplus.

Aviaplus is a consortium of architects and consulting engineers based in Copenhagen, which specializes in the design and building of airports from inception to completion. They provide a multi-disciplinary package, from design to site-management, including avionics, construction, finishes, landscaping, noise-management, everything.

Lin didn't have to explain much about Aviaplus to Martagon. He had been tracking their success, having noted with professional and personal interest that this idea of multi-disciplinary practices, providing a neat one-stop-shopping solution for clients, was the way the industry seemed to be moving. It suited his own ideas and his own way of working very well.

Aviaplus, Lin said, were expanding, and had approached him – through his friend in the firm, one of the partners – with a view to his joining them for work on special projects. ‘It's something that would be right for me, and now I'm coming to the point,' said Lin. ‘I think it would be right for you too. Sven says they want me to bring a small team of my own people with me, and I'm hoping you might be interested. I like working with you, we make a good team.'

Martagon's first reaction was one of pleasure, and relief that his dereliction of duty over the Bonplaisir specification had not discredited him with Lin. It struck him that perhaps Lin didn't know all the details. Giles was loyal, a good professional and a good friend, and not a blame-thrower. Thank God for Giles.

‘Well, thank you very much for thinking of me. It's certainly an attractive idea.'

‘It needn't be full-time if you didn't want, but it would be regular work and a good base-line of regular income. You'd be able to take or leave other projects that come up for you with some sense of security. It would mean basing ourselves in Copenhagen for a while, but that wouldn't hurt. We'd probably open our own studio there.'

‘The thing is, Lin, that unfortunately I don't think I can do that.'

‘Obviously you can't say yes straight off. You'll want to think about it.'

‘I can't even think about it. I have another contract.'

‘Oh, yes? May I ask…?'

‘It's under wraps at the moment, I'm sorry to be so difficult.'

‘Give it some thought anyway, and come back to me. It's so obviously a terrific opportunity, it could be a turning-point for both of us. With the experience I'll get there, I might think of a launching a “package” practice of my own in a few years, and then the sky's the limit. Literally, since we are talking airports. I'm convinced that the multi-hub mega-monsters like Chicago, getting bigger and bigger, will soon be a thing of the past. Dinosaurs … Are you listening to me, Martagon?'

‘Course I am. I'm thinking. You may be right, but what about these bigger and bigger planes? Like the Airbus triple-decker superjumbo?'

‘The Concorde story all over again. It's an eleven-billion-dollar gamble, and it won't even get off the ground if the Pacific Rim goes into recession. They won't get the traffic. Boeing are going the other way, into smaller planes, smaller than the 747. The mega-airports are already becoming unmanageable. Everyone's rebelling against airport hassle. It'll be back to small is beautiful. I just know it.'

‘Well, me too,' said Martagon. ‘For a start, the security is rubbish at the moment. The hassle can only get worse. Or something really bad will happen, sooner or later.'

‘What do you mean exactly?'

‘How would I know? It's just a feeling I have.'

‘All the more reason for you coming on board. We'll be security mavens, if that's what turns you on. Look, Bonplaisir's been a good experience. We could be on the cutting edge of the new concept, the new twenty-first-century generation of airports.'

‘Lin, I can't come in with you on this. I'd like nothing better than to work with you again. I've really got a lot out of it. But I'm … I'm committed elsewhere. Long-term.'

‘Nothing's all that long-term, Martagon. Can't be. Not in our business. But if you aren't convinced, we can hedge our bets. We do Aviaplus-plus. We get involved with the mega-stuff as well, while it lasts. There's a big development study coming up on Hong Kong International, they'll be inviting consultants to tender later in the summer. Contract to be awarded in the autumn. Might be something for you and me there, working together. And then there's all the new possibilities for off-shore airports. That may be the way to go, for any location that's not landlocked, not only for East Asia.'

‘Are you thinking of Kansai International? Renzo Piano and Ove Arup. Stunning. But it's sinking into the sea, apparently, now. BA have pulled out, haven't they?'

‘Kansai was too big, too early for the technology, and they went for some cheap solutions. It'll get put right in the end. I was really thinking about Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. A new floating airport built on massive steel platforms, they're testing them now.'

Martagon was engaging with Lin against his will. He could not help being interested. He would love spending time in the Far East again. He would love the challenge of creating floating glass palaces, heavy as hell but apparently weightless, poised between air and water. He could see his dream of a glass bridge becoming a reality. The problems and the solutions. His mind raced.

He took a grip.

‘I'll have to take a rain-check, Lin. Count me in for small projects, Europe-based. But I'm not in the market for the long haul.'

‘You undersell yourself. Chances like Aviaplus don't come along often, not yet. It may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, for us. Everything's in flux in the profession right now, it's a marvellous time to be working. We're at our peak, you and me, you're the leader in your field now, Martagon. The good time doesn't last. There's new people coming up all the time. You have to catch the tide. But I guess you must know what you are doing, my dear.'

‘Thank you again, Lin. I shan't forget it.'

*   *   *

‘There is a tide in the affairs of men…'

How does that go on? Martagon, in his house, turned to his bookshelves and looked it up in the dictionary of quotations.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Shallows and miseries. Bloody Shakespeare. Martagon shivered.

He had committed himself to catching a different tide, towards a different shore. The primacy of private life. He had passed the first test. He had kept faith with the transforming love on which he was staking everything. He had kept faith with Marina.

SEVEN

If England, seen from the Brenner Pass, was not Europe, then what was it? One sunny Saturday in early May, Martagon drove down to Dorset for a last site visit at the house where he was doing the covered swimming-pool. His clients were successful, sociable types with a clutch of student-aged children. Gregory worked in advertising, Jane was a partner in a TV production company. Clump House, on the seaward side of Beaminster in Dorset, was for their holidays and weekends. The rest of the time they lived in London. Martagon got on well with them; they had been ideal clients, receptive to his design ideas and willing to afford the best materials and finishes. He felt they were probably decent, worthwhile people, making the best of their lives.

Driving west through Wiltshire and into the relaxing emptiness of Dorset, he felt an unfamiliar relief at being out of London.

I am in England now. London is not England. London is an international trading-post. The romance of commerce. There is everything and everyone from everywhere in congested London, and at the same time there is nothing and no one. Or not for me.

Off the A303 now, winding down lanes into stone-built villages intersected by streams, and up again on to ridges, framed by the arcs of the downs. Martagon responded to the architectural minimalism of the landscape and its three clean colours – the pale green of the bare hills, the light blue of the intermittently glimpsed ocean, and the creamy stone of the farms and cottages.

If England has a native architectural genius it is – or was – for small-scale domestic building. And for gardens.

There wasn't much for Martagon to do in his professional capacity at Clump House – just signing-off the contractor's work, checking the settings of the pump, and the air-seals and fixings of the glass, and general ‘snagging'. Jane did not much like the pool's door furniture, Gregory was not absolutely happy with the blue-green of the exterior woodwork. Neither problem was really his responsibility, but he discussed alternatives at length and proposed suppliers with better ranges.

Afterwards they sat in the garden with drinks. He had been asked to stay to lunch. It was a good garden, with white tulips in tubs where they sat, primroses clotted under the boundary hedges, and bluebells in the shade of chestnut trees at the far end of the lawn. The planting around the house was relaxed and opulent, the colours delicate. There was a pond, with flag-irises and lily-pads. The spring-flowering shrubs were not showy, but they bore comparison for beauty with the lotus and orchids he knew from the Far East, the jacarandas of Africa, even the lavender of Provence.

My mother would have loved this garden. What would Marina make of it all? If everything goes according to plan, she will probably never even see it.

Martagon felt a pang. Now that the job was over, he himself might not see these people or this place any more, either. Solitary himself, he had a weakness for happy families. He sometimes met couples in England whom he would like to have as friends. And, quite often, he never saw them again. It was as if every couple already had their long-established, close, familiar circle, and although they were interested in meeting strangers, there was really no need, or no room, in their lives for extra people. It was not an active or a hostile exclusion; it was as if it just did not enter their heads to enlarge the group.

Because of the circumstances of his life, Martagon had no close group of his own apart from the Harpers and the people he worked with. He had friends, but he still had no tribe of his own. When on occasion he followed up a new acquaintanceship with a telephone call and the suggestion of another meeting, he never felt rebuffed. But he had sometimes sensed not only pleasure but surprise, and an anxiety, in the voice on the line. There were plenty of exceptions, of course, especially in London. Women on their own were generally all too pleased to hear from him.

They had lunch outside – the first time this year that it had been warm enough, said Jane. Feeling contented and expansive, Martagon surprised himself by saying into a moment of quiet, ‘I love England.'

He didn't know what response he expected. Pleased smiles perhaps, placid agreement. Instead there was a silence, as if he had said something a bit shocking. Then Gregory spoke. ‘Well, one doesn't often hear
that
said.'

‘Why not? The Scots love Scotland, the Welsh love Wales, the Irish love Ireland, and have no trouble saying so.' He remembered his conversations with Marina: ‘The French certainly love France, and say so. Likewise Americans, Italians, everyone. It's natural to love your country, isn't it? You love this place, that's quite obvious.'

‘This place, yes,' said Gregory. ‘We do. There is not much beauty around in this country. Not in the towns, not in the daily behaviour, not in the laddish beeriness. There's no beauty now even in English football. This is our safe haven, our world which we have made. Do you have somewhere special like that?'

‘I suppose I do … An old farmhouse among lavender fields and vineyards in France, in Provence.'

‘There you are!
Not
England.'

They began to talk at him rather than to him, in fluent marital counterpoint. They knew he had been born abroad, had worked abroad, was always on the move. He was like all expats, with a sentimental dream of an England that had long gone even if it ever existed. Patriotism and nationalism were in any case petty and dangerous. They led to the social exclusion of minorities. They led to fascism. They led to war. So much was wrong in this country – the class system, the gulf between rich and poor, corruption in the police, racism, homelessness, greed, materialism, underfunded schools and universities, failing health service, disastrous public transport, congested roads, hopeless rail system, insensitive planning, agribusiness, the arms trade, the tabloid press, political spin, the drug culture, teenage pregnancies, family breakdown, dumbing-down of the BBC, craven sycophancy towards Europe – or else towards the US (they argued between themselves over that one).

Martagon was not altogether surprised. He had heard most of this before, with different emphases depending on whether the speakers leaned to the left or to the right. He couldn't guess which way Gregory and Jane voted, since their dissatisfactions seemed to cover the whole political waterfront. He thought they probably belonged to what Marina called
la gauche caviar
– they were ‘champagne socialists'. The difference this time was that he had never said, ‘I love England,' before, because he had never before felt that he did.

And why did he now? Because he was planning to make his permanent home elsewhere, and knew he was burning his boats, and needed to honour the country he was abandoning? Because his mother had loved England, and since her death he was seeing with her eyes as well as his own?

He let them have their say. The parting shots were the same as the first: as a habitual expat, he had no right to make judgements about England. To hear him say, ‘I love England,' was – well, it was just a bit embarrassing, Jane said.