Flight (5 page)

‘It's very like you,' she said. ‘You look as if there's nothing you need from anyone. You look good in that hat – Giles shouldn't wear big hats, they make him look like a mushroom, they don't suit him.'

There was no contempt or offence in what she said. Giles was flesh of her flesh, she could have been talking about what looked good, or didn't look good, on herself.

Martagon enjoyed being there with them, in the kitchen, in their warmth, quietly.

He'd liked and wanted and even loved a lot of girls in his thirty-eight years, but he'd never been passionately ‘in love'. Or not for long. He feared and distrusted ‘in love' as a hysterical frenzy, and hated the brief periods when he was overwhelmed by it.

‘It makes me tired just thinking about your life,' said Giles.

‘What's your problem?'

It was Martagon's private opinion that Giles did not have a strong sexual drive. He was sensual rather than sexual, and his sensuality was expressed in his material possessions and love of home and what he thought of as the good life. He liked women; he liked to touch them when he was talking. He had a way of draping his arm around the back of a woman's chair at table if he found her attractive. He often behaved in a way that with any other man would have been a preliminary to a private encounter. Martagon was pretty sure no such thought ever entered Giles's head. So he could give himself a long rope.

Amanda was enough for Giles, more than enough. Her parents were both dentists, up in Wakefield. She had good teeth. She had studied social sciences at Leeds, and currently had a job in the human-resources department of a merchant bank. She rarely talked about it.

Amanda was what is called a ‘big girl', pleasant-looking, blonde, deeply conventional. Martagon liked her intelligence and her forthright manner. He thought of her as the perfect example of a certain sort of quite good-looking, quite good-tempered, competent Englishwoman. She drove a car well, she cooked well, she was no doubt good at her job. Her tastes were ordinary, while Giles had the tastes of an oil-rich sheikh. His Jaguars, which he changed every year, were always top of the range and always burgundy-red. He had had the small Fulham house decorated with thick, patterned carpets, elaborately draped brocade curtains, chandeliers, everything that people like Tom Scree despised. Martagon disliked the drapes and the chandeliers, but he was moved by the verve and innocence of Giles's taste.

Only the kitchen was pure Amanda, with Shaker-style fittings painted blue, oiled wood work-surfaces, a soft old sofa against one wall, and the big, battered pine table.

Martagon happened to be sitting at that table when Giles came home with an oddly shaped parcel, which he unwrapped to reveal what he said was an
épergne.
That was what the man in the shop in Kensington Church Street had told him it was called. It was a heavy ornamental table-centre in the form of a chariot attached to six rearing horses, in gilded metal. Martagon and Amanda stared at it.

‘It's the sort of thing the Duke of Wellington would have had on his dining-table. Very imposing,' said Martagon at last.

‘Great,' said Amanda.

‘But do you really like it?' Giles looked at her anxiously.

‘I don't mind it.'

‘You don't mind it? Does that mean you're only pretending to like it?'

‘I'm not pretending anything. I don't mind it. I don't mind if it goes on the dining-room table or not. I know that you like it, and that's just fine by me.'

Giles bore the object away into the dining room. For him, Amanda was still all mystery.

‘She means what she says, she really doesn't mind,' said Martagon, when Giles came back to the kitchen. ‘She's happy for you that you like it.'

Martagon liked the way she and Giles behaved together. He was attracted by their marriage, though not by her. He found no glamour in her, and no mystery. Lin Perry, the high-profile Chinese-American architect whom they were to work with on the new airport, was more sophisticated and more cruel: ‘Oh, my dear, she's one of these typical blonde English girls. If they're sexy it's without knowing it, in that overweight, singlet-and-shorts kind of way, waving around their big unembarrassed bottoms.'

Martagon was amused by Lin Perry and enjoyed his company.

‘Not singlet-and-shorts,' he said. ‘If we're talking English girls, it's vest-and-knickers, though I know that means something different where you come from.'

He wasn't particularly conscious of Amanda's bottom. But he did like the look of her soft boobs under the fawn or blue cashmere sweaters she usually wore. He liked her altogether, in fact, rather more than she liked him.

As summer turned to autumn Martagon saw a lot of Amanda, with Giles, during and after the merger negotiations, since her kitchen table became the unofficial forum for the structuring of Harper Cox, and the nearest thing to a family life that Martagon had ever had. Julie was there too, from time to time.

*   *   *

Neither Giles nor Martagon had done management courses, or business studies.

They had worked with people who had and, like magpies, picked up on nuggets of theory and practice. They both had years of experience behind them already, and were heading up successful companies. With the confidence of their comparative youth, they had few qualms about doubling their capacity. Over numerous bottles of wine, mostly consumed by Martagon, they constructed their own mock-models.

‘Look how it all begins,' said Martagon, already drunker – again – than he had meant to be. ‘In a business, like in any group. Number-one caveman has power over number-two caveman because he's nastier or stronger, so he makes number-two caveman shift the rocks for him. But number-two caveman creates a dependency in number-one caveman, who gets so soft and lazy he can't shift his own rocks any more. Besides, he'd lose face if he did. So he becomes the manager – get it? – and number-two caveman shifts the rocks. Number-two caveman can suddenly turn round and say, “NO,” like any employee can. If number-one caveman loses his grip, or his nerve, and if number-one caveman is hungry enough, there's a revolution.'

‘Then what?' Giles asked.

‘Boring. It just starts again. Number-two caveman takes on the managerial role and gets number-three caveman to shift the rocks. Someone always has to shift the rocks, and there's always someone else sitting on his butt to see that he does it. He's the manager. But maybe he's not really top caveman. There's another one, with even more clout, who tells the managers where the different rocks are to be shifted to. He's the chief executive. He's the man with the big desk and the sexy secretaries in the movies you saw.'

‘You haven't said what happens to a top caveman after the revolution,' said Giles. ‘But I'll tell you. He can't shift rocks. No one wants his opinion about where they should be shifted to. He's finished. He's dogmeat.'

A silence.

‘Management has four prongs,' announced Giles. ‘The first is goals. You've got to have goals. Then, motivation. Then, facilitation. Then, evaluation.'

‘That's terrible,' said Martagon. ‘I hope you didn't think that up for yourself.'

‘No, I read it in a book.'

‘In a book?' Martagon affected incredulity.

‘Oh, ha ha.'

‘Let's talk about goals, then.'

‘Power. That's my goal. I told you, before.'

‘You just want to make people do what you want them to.'

‘That's not what I want,' said Amanda. They had forgotten her. ‘That's not power. There might be a revolution, anyway, and then you'd be dogmeat. I'll tell you my idea of power. I want to be free to do, by myself, for myself, anything that I want to do. That's power.'

‘What's the relation between power and responsibility?' asked Martagon. ‘Is power the same as control?'

‘There's lots of ways of controlling people,' said Giles. ‘You've no idea of the power of compliance. Women get control over men through sex and domesticity and the niceness of everyday, making men dependent, making them soft, like number-one caveman who can't shift his own rocks. Women are like crack-dealers creating an addict. It gets so he doesn't feel good without regular fixes of what she supplies. Amanda's got me that way…'

‘Don't be daft,' said Amanda flatly. ‘Goodnight, I'm going to bed.' And she went.

‘It's true, though,' said Giles. ‘It's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a good woman.'

‘I should be so lucky,' said Martagon.

He hadn't yet fallen into the pale, seductive hands of Marina de Cabrières. Women like Marina were much more to Lin Perry's taste than Amanda was, and he knew Marina before Martagon did. ‘Marina is to die for,' he said.

TWO

Martagon's first impression of Bonplaisir was unexpected. He stepped into the shade of the gatehouse arch, looking forward to seeing the famous façade for the first time. What met his eye was a row of pristine white lavatory bowls, ranged tidily against the stone wall, gleaming in the sun, beneath the open ground-floor windows. From within the château came the noises of drilling and sawing and, further away, the thrumming of a cement-mixer.

Then she appeared round the corner from the gardens. As she came nearer he realized with a jolt that it was the woman he had seen in the café, even though this time she was wearing a white shirt and jeans, and her red hair was loose, hanging in tendrils round her neck. He could tell from the way she met his eyes that she remembered too.

Martagon smiled at her. She smiled back. They shook hands. She made a gesture towards the lavatory bowls and the din from inside the building, and shrugged. ‘An army of occupation,' she said.

His heart was lurching.

It was a relief to turn away and recover his equilibrium walking beside her round the gardens, doing the business he had come to do. He had a feeling of dread. There was no reason for it. Nothing had happened.

But something was going to happen.

He was a single man. His relationship with Jutta, his German girlfriend, had come to an end. So what was he dreading?

There's a lightness in stalking on your own through the world, not caring immeasurably about anyone, open to adventure, in no danger of being betrayed or of becoming a betrayer. Once you step with someone else hand in hand into the dark forest, one of you risks getting lost or abandoned or slaughtered.

Marina carried her height well, walking with her head erect, looking straight ahead. Martagon began to do the same, realizing how most of the time he walked with his neck bent, his eyes on the ground a few feet in front of him. He lifted his chin and walked tall, beside this gorgeous woman who was nearly as tall as he was.

Her voice was deep for a woman's, with a catch in it. There was something tentative, uncertain, about that voice, even though she seemed assured as she talked about the money still due to her from the airport consortium. Martagon took scrupulous notes.

She gave him lunch on the terrace. They sat opposite one another. The chair she sat in was high-backed, carved and gilded, with sphinx heads for armrests and great claw feet. Her pale, long-fingered hands caressed the sphinx heads as she talked. Martagon was riveted. He could not take his eyes off her hands, her face.

The château had fallen silent. The workmen, too, were taking their lunch-break. Looking out beyond the gardens they could see five yellow cranes rising above the trees, and hear the whinings and clatterings from the airport construction site.

‘How much do you mind all this?' he asked.

‘I mind a great deal and I don't mind at all. I'm taking the important things – memories, and money.' She laughed a wicked, sexy laugh. ‘And this,' she added, patting the arms of her great chair. ‘It's very old, my mother found it in Alexandria. She always sat here, in this chair. I fought my brother, Jean-Louis, like a tiger for it. I'll have it taken back to my place tonight.'

Marina was no longer living at the château. She had moved into a farmhouse ten kilometres away that belonged to the family property and was not part of the sale.

A cheerful, meaty American girl in shorts who was introduced as ‘Billie, my assistant', brought out their picnic lunch and arranged it on the table.

‘You know Nancy Mulhouse? Billie's her niece.'

‘Ah. No, no, I don't know Nancy Mulhouse, I'm afraid.'

‘You don't know Nancy? How can that be? Anyone who spends time in these parts knows Nancy.'

‘Well, I've never met her,' Martagon said.

People in Provence – expats – were always asking him if he was going to Nancy's big party, or whether he liked Nancy's makeover of her garden, or whatever. It was beginning to irritate him.

‘I know Auntie Nancy's keen to meet you,' said Billie. ‘I heard her say so to Lin Perry the other night. You remember, you were sitting with him, Marina.'

Billie disappeared back into the château.

The architect of the airport, Lin Perry, being famous and exotic, was obviously a natural as one of Nancy's regular house-guests.

‘How can it be that you don't know Nancy Mulhouse?' Marina could not let it go.

‘I don't move in those circles, I suppose. I know she has a house round here somewhere, and I know she's from Texas, but I wouldn't recognize her if I was standing next to her at the supermarket checkout.'

‘You'd be most unlikely to meet her at the supermarket checkout. If you did, you'd remember her. But you haven't told me how you like the wine?'

‘I know it well, I've been drinking Domaine de Bonplaisir for years. It's always been a nice, big, fruity wine.'

‘The fields are being ploughed up. It's finished … But this is the very best. Nineteen eighty-nine. It must be drunk now before it goes over the top. I liberated the last dozen cases of it before I moved out of here – my brother would kill me if he knew.'