Flight (7 page)

‘Does it work the same with people?'

‘I'm talking about the laws of physics. It's all about what has to be done to maintain balance.'

‘I want to talk about people. What might be the outside force that spoils the equilibrium?'

‘You tell me, darling.'

‘The outside world? Too-high expectations? A third person coming in and causing jealousy?'

‘OK,' said Martagon. ‘In physics, it's friction that makes it all go wrong. Friction dissipates energy. Like when I change pounds into francs, a bit is creamed off in commission every time.'

They were sitting in the warm dark, swinging in the cushioned swing-seat, their bare arms and legs and feet touching.

‘We're in equilibrium now, you and I,' said Marina. ‘At this moment.'

‘Not really. We are swinging.'

‘In French we say
se balancer
for swinging. Balancing. Balanced.'

‘That's just semantic chance.'

‘Don't words mean anything, then?'

‘Words mean anything you want. Words can lie. The truth is what actually happens. The results of kinetic energy,' and Martagon dug his bare heels hard into the grass, so that they swung higher. Overhead the stars swung too and Martagon felt a bit sick. I've had too much to drink, he thought. The stars went on swinging.

Astronomers call a star ‘perturbed' when it loses its equilibrium because of the gravitational pull of something else. Perturbation is interesting because it can lead to the discovery of a new celestial body. Martagon was too tired to put this into words for Marina. He just said, ‘Can we go to bed now?'

*   *   *

Martagon and Marina did live in perfect equilibrium for long hours during their early days at the farmhouse. It was a simple house with tiled floors and only the basics when it came to furniture and equipment.

‘Minimalist,' said Martagon, when he looked around for the first time. ‘Suits me.'

He wanted to protect and care for Marina – a new feeling, for him. She did not seem to need or want much looking after. He did, however, impress on her the need for better security. She left outside doors standing open, and only rarely locked the place up. It was only her fear of unannounced visits from her brother Jean-Louis that reconciled her to Martagon's insistence that she closed and locked the spiked metal gates across the drive at night, when she was alone in the house.

When he asked if there were any other ways into the property, she led him across the garden to a high wall. It was immensely thick, built in the Roman way, she explained, which was still the Provençal way: two ‘skins', or separate walls, of large irregular rocks and stones, with the gap between them filled in with rubble and topped with more rocks.

She opened the door in this garden wall and showed him a small dark cavity, empty except for a couple of spades, and beyond it another door set into the further side. This opened on to a track across the fields.

‘You should keep both these doors locked all the time,' said Martagon, ‘and we'll hang the key on a nail the garden side.'

Thus he perfected and protected their privacy. In the hot afternoons Marina read film scripts in bed while he worked on his laptop calculating loads and stresses, quantities and costs, at a table in the small shuttered room. Marina turned her pages silently. They breathed and moved silently. The stillness was like a trance, because they were together though apart.

On one of those hot, still afternoons Martagon saw that she had fallen asleep. He slipped into the bed beside her. She half woke and wound her legs – those loved legs – around his. Beneath the stillness and silence was agitation, because lying with her in this way made Martagon's heart beat fast. The submerged agitation was quite enough for now. It was good that Marina did not find his liking for stillness and suspension a threat. There was always the certainty that in the end, or quite soon, or in the next second, the storm of longing would prove too strong and they would be overwhelmed, again. Passion was implicit in the stillness and silence.

He said, when she opened her great eyes, ‘You are the only person in all my life with whom I can be for hours at a time without getting frazzled.'

‘What is frazzled?'

Martagon's French was not up to finding a translation. ‘It's everything I'm not right now, so it doesn't matter. But I must get up. I must ring Giles. He thinks I'm neglecting the work.'

‘And are you?'

‘Not really.'

‘Tell me more about Giles.'

‘I'll make the call, and then we'll go for a drink and I'll tell you about Giles, and Arthur, and the merger. It was all a long time ago, but I still think about it.'

*   *   *

What had happened was that the board of Cox & Co. had to decide formally whether or not they wished to proceed with merger negotiations. Martagon was in a quandary. He wanted to do the right thing. He was pretty sure that the right thing for the firm, and for himself, was to go ahead with Harpers. But that meant going against Arthur Cox's wishes. He'd been playing Arthur along. He hadn't been candid with him. That was a tactical and moral mistake. A compass error.

The only right thing to do now was to see Arthur before the meeting and confess that he was going to vote in favour of the merger. He dreaded Arthur's disappointment and disillusion. He dreaded Arthur's sadness, and anger, and accusations of ingratitude. But he had to do it.

He put it off and put it off. Finally, the day before the meeting, Martagon went to Arthur's office after lunch, sweating. The tottering stacks of files had all been cleared away. Arthur was stuffing papers into his briefcase, clearly preparing to leave.

‘Can you spare me half an hour?' said Martagon.

‘Sorry, old man. Family party. The grandson's tenth birthday. Got to be there. Got to get an early train.'

‘Arthur, it's really important.'

‘I'll give you fifty seconds, then. Good training. As I've often told you, you should be able to articulate anything important within fifty seconds.'

That was rich, coming from Arthur.

‘It's about tomorrow's meeting—'

Arthur interrupted, snapping closed the catches of his briefcase, looking round for his overcoat, ‘I don't want to hear it. Not another word. You know where I stand, and I know where you stand. Shoulder to shoulder, as we always have been.'

And he was gone, pushing past Martagon in the doorway, patting Martagon's arm as he lumbered past.

Martagon did not try to follow him.

Next morning, as everyone herded into the first-floor boardroom at Caxton Street, Martagon put his head round Arthur's office door. The room looked stark, as if it belonged to no one. ‘You all right?' asked Martagon.

‘Bit of a cloud … bit of a cloud,' said Arthur, his bulky body slumped in the chair. ‘I'm just coming.' Then he raised his head and looked at Martagon. ‘Look here – I know you've got your way to make, I know you get ideas in your head, but I can rely on you when it comes to the crunch. If it comes to a vote, you won't vote against me, Martagon, will you?'

Martagon opened his mouth to speak. Arthur cut in before he had got out a word, ‘Knew I could trust you. When it came to the crunch. I'm just coming. You go on in.'

Lacerated by his longing to save Arthur from humiliation and defeat, Martagon prayed for a miracle.

*   *   *

It was a long meeting. They sat down at nine thirty in the morning, and emerged, exhausted, at half past five. Arthur chaired it badly. He hardly chaired it at all.

Martagon, as managing director, kicked off. He was well prepared, and ran over all the now familiar ground, setting out evenly the pros and cons, without explicitly indicating his own preference. But knowing that the only thing that would bring about the desired miracle – Arthur's change of heart – was his own persuasive eloquence, he suspected that everyone else in the room could guess where his own hopes lay. He spoke for about twenty-five minutes.

After that, everyone around the table had a say, some at considerable length. There were questions, most of which could be answered by reference to some portion of the stack of papers in front of each board member. Mirabel Plunket voiced the anxiety all shared, but which none of the men would have come out with directly, or not yet, for fear of betraying their insecurity. So Martagon spoke again, to reassure the board that the continuing employment of the Cox & Co. staff would be, so far as possible, guaranteed under the terms of any merger. If – and at this stage it was still only if – negotiations went ahead, this would be his own first priority.

Dawn wheeled in a trolley with chocolate biscuits, cups and saucers, a milk-jug, and a big brown teapot. Everyone shifted and relaxed, welcoming the interruption.

‘Ah, rosy-fingered Dawn!' Arthur said, essaying a smile.

Dawn, who was Ghanaian, looked up at him sharply from the trolley, mystified, suspecting a racist joke from where she least expected it. She loved Arthur. Martagon caught her in the passage when he went for a pee, and tried to explain that ‘rosy-fingered dawn' was poetry about the sunrise, a quotation from Homer – ‘like “wine-dark sea”,' he said, floundering.

‘Oh, right,' said Dawn.

Martagon went back into the boardroom and sat down with a sense of dread. His hands, though he had washed them, were clammy again.

Tom Scree, who so far had slumped in his chair and said nothing, sat up very straight, as if indicating that he had a major contribution to make. As usual, he looked like an old hippie, and as usual, he spoke like an archbishop. He referred to Arthur throughout as ‘Sir Arthur', which gave what he said added weight and formality.

It was not until Scree reached his peroration that Martagon really understood what was going on. For the last twenty minutes Scree had been subtly building up a strong case against merger negotiations, and what he was now saying constituted a personal attack on Martagon himself: ‘Martagon has told us that Sir Arthur holds traditional values with which the Harpers' ethos may be incompatible. And yet it appears, from what he tells us, that Martagon sees merit in a merger. Martagon, we do not have to be told, has the interests of Cox & Co., and of Sir Arthur, at heart. Martagon has also implied that Sir Arthur's values and attitudes do not, altogether, tally with those of the modern world, to the detriment of the modern world. It is, nevertheless, as he made clear, the world we have to live in and in which Cox & Co. must survive and grow, without – hopefully – abandoning its high standards and business integrity. Martagon's standards and integrity are not, of course, in question. It is, as he has said, up to each one of us to make a decision based on the information which has been placed at our disposal. Some of this is, to my mind, disquieting. Board members may feel we should obtain further and better particulars than those with which we have been supplied, about Harpers' operations and practice and their financial credibility. Board members may feel that we should commission a report from a major and independent firm of accountants. Be that as it may, I should like on behalf of the board to thank Martagon for his admirable presentation of the situation – as he sees it.'

Scree sat back and squared up the papers in front of him, banging the base of the stack decisively on the table. Arthur was looking more chipper.

Fuck you, Scree, thought Martagon. You're banking on the board being swayed by your speech into rejecting the merger. Then you'll make Arthur believe you ‘saved' the firm. Then I'll be screwed. And you'll probably get my job.

Arthur grabbed at the idea of buying time by calling in outside accountants – until he realized that by doing so he would be admitting the possibility of negotiations.

‘If we proceed, and I profoundly hope we do not, we shall need them for the due diligence. And we'll need to be very thorough about that, with Harpers. Men of straw, you'll find they are. Men of straw … But, no, no, on second thoughts, let us rather save the money. Obviously we are not going on with this. Really, we should bring this meeting to an end. There's nothing more to be said, gentlemen.'

‘Chairman, I'm not a gentleman,' said Mirabel.

‘Ah, Miss Plunket,' said Arthur, thinking to put things right and making them worse, ‘I assure you that, in some platonic sense which I cannot quite define, you are, most definitely, a gentleman.'

‘I don't think so,' said Mirabel.

The meeting was falling apart. Martagon, with a stony heart, made an effort to pull it together again. ‘As Arthur rightly reminds us, this meeting has to be brought to a conclusion – in both senses. I'm sure we would all prefer consensus, without taking a formal vote. But maybe, Chairman, an indicative vote at this stage might be helpful? Nothing binding – just to give us an idea of where we all stand.'

Arthur made a noncommittal gesture with his hand and turned his head to stare out of the window. It was already getting dark outside. ‘As you like,' he said.

Martagon pressed on. There was a desultory, embarrassed, inconclusive show of hands both for and against, with some abstentions. Muttered conversations rose and fell around the table. Dawn came back into the room and whispered to Tom Scree that there was an urgent telephone call for him in the outside office.

Scree pushed back his chair. ‘I'd better take it. If you'll excuse me a moment, Sir Arthur.'

While Scree was out of the room Martagon said that as there was obviously no consensus forthcoming, the matter would unfortunately have to be put to a formal vote, if the Chairman was in agreement.

Arthur went on looking out of the window. ‘If that is the feeling of the meeting,' he said.

They all sat waiting for Tom Scree to come back. Everyone was tired, and looked it.

*   *   *

‘We'll go round the table,' said Arthur, with an abrupt show of energy. ‘Starting with you, Tom. This time it's “yes” or “no”. Nothing else.'