The Buddha of Brewer Street (31 page)

‘I’m hosting a party, or hadn’t you noticed?’

The noise from downstairs was clearly audible through the open door.

‘Seems to be managing very well without you.’

He advanced into the darkened room. ‘It couldn’t manage for too long.’ The door swung shut behind him.

‘Long enough, I think.’

He chuckled softly. ‘You really are incredible.’

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ And she began to move everything from the top of the desk, the red box, lamp, telephone. All the papers she simply swept to one side. By the time he reached her side the desk was bare and he had already removed his tie.

‘No,’ she whispered, ‘let me.’ And slowly she began to remove every piece of his clothing.

A battle ensued. War was waged, matching his male appetites, every fragment of which wanted to rip his clothes off and devour her, against her feminine wiles. She teased him, aroused his impatience and ardour, turning every button into a detonator that exploded inside him one by one. Carefully she folded every item of clothing, leaving him standing by the desk like a naughty schoolboy, until he stood completely naked. Then it was her turn, his senses stretched to extremes as he tried to make out every inch of her body, but it was dark and the only light came from the street lamps outside.

Then she was lying on the desk top, adjusting her body to its unforgiving outline, and he was upon her. Even for a man with his unusual drive, his enthusiasm was remarkable. All the time he kept demanding to know which of the men in the room downstairs had propositioned her. And she continued to tantalize him, giving him first one name, then another, and on each he vowed vengeance with growing passion until he was no longer able to speak. For him it was nerve-jangling. Explosive. He drove ever deeper inside her, possessing her in a way he vowed no other man ever would. He never wanted to forget this moment. He felt he had total power over her. It was as near perfection as he was ever likely to reach.

When he was finished it took him several minutes to regain his composure. At last he raised himself. ‘Come on, they’ll be missing us.’

‘No,’ she whispered, not stirring. ‘I need a little more time to recover. You go on. I’ll see you downstairs. In a little while.’

He dressed in silence. Then he kissed her, more tenderly than he had ever done, and departed.

She did not stir for some moments. Silent tears trickled down her cheek. She hated herself. At this moment she particularly hated Goodfellowe. Still she could not bring herself to hate the man who had just left her.

She hated herself all the more when she picked up the keys she had taken from his trouser pocket and began rifling through his private papers.

It wasn’t enough that Jiang should have received an unannounced visit that morning from the Environmental Health Officer demanding to inspect the premises. ‘Reports of kitchen refuse being left around in unsanitary conditions outside the premises, sir. And a suggestion that perhaps your kitchen equipment may not be up to regulations.’ Three hours of scratching around behind cookers, under hotplates, in the back of refrigerators. Endless notes being scribbled. Then all he would say was ‘We’ll be in touch.’ Like some medieval torturer heating the irons.

Jiang had just sat down with a cigarette to calm his nerves before getting back to wrestling with his cash flow when the telephone rang. Customs & Excise. And not just its stationery department but its Investigation Division. The swindle squad. Not a routine VAT enquiry but an implication of irregularity and urgency. Demanding to come round to inspect the books and paperwork.

His fists beat down upon the table in terrible temper. This wasn’t just fate or coincidence, not just a casual and uncomfortable fall of the fortune sticks. Someone was trying to screw him, which made life bad enough. And they were succeeding. But what made it far, far worse was that Jiang hadn’t the slightest idea who it was.

Goodfellowe had a favoured place within the Palace where, late at night, he would go to be alone with his thoughts. That’s where Mickey found him.

The Great Hall at Westminster was the oldest fragment of the Palace, built six hundred years before with an ancient oak roof that had drawn admiration and imitation from all corners of theworld. He regarded this as the place of great survival, the niche of the palace that had defied fire and republic and world war and had stood as witness to so much of Man’s tribulation, and even a few of his triumphs. Goodfellowe would stand high on the stone steps that led to the Grand Committee Room, staring down upon the scene and trying to be part of it.

‘Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.’

‘You feeling all right, Tom?’

‘Shakespeare.
Richard II
,’ Goodfellowe explained. ‘Richard built this hall, you know. It was his finest achievement. Something to hand on, something that would survive him. Mind you, a ripe plum would have been enough for that.’

‘What happened?’

‘They dragged him off his throne and killed him.’

‘Terrific.’

‘When I come up here at night I think I can feel some of it. You know, this is where they sentenced King Charles. They hauled him away, too. Cromwell chopped his head off and promised an end to all miseries – just like an election campaign. But did it change anything? Hell no. Another of history’s over-ripe plums. When it came to Cromwell’s turn to die, they couldn’t wait to bring back a new king and stuck old Ollie’s head on a stick for twenty years, just over there.’ He waved vaguely into the gloom.

‘There must be a moral to this tale.’

‘A pox on Parliament! At the end of it all, this place doesn’t make a damned bit of difference,’ he muttered, disconsolate.

‘That’s your job, Tom. To make the difference.’

‘But can I? Can anyone? Sometimes I think I can hear their voices, all the great men of the past, and they do nothing but scream and contradict and cancel each other out. What does any of it matter?’

‘A little heavy for this time of day, isn’t it?’

‘I wander through my life convincing myself I’m saving the world from stupidity and bureaucracy. Then I realize that, while I’m out there saving the world, I seem to do nothing but hurt those I love. Like Sam. She’s appearing in her play tonight. Cleopatra. She’ll be beautiful. And I’ll be missing, as always. As I’m always missing for Elizabeth. And somehow I’ve managed to hurt you, too. Never meant to, never intended it, but it happened and it was my fault.’

She was silent for a moment. Up here, when it was quiet and where dusty shadows fell beneath these great oak hammerbeams, she too could feel the atmosphere. Not understand it, not be in touch in the way that he was, but perhaps that nonsense he had of ley lines and energy channels had something in it after all.

‘You know, Mickey, they used this hall not only as a place of execution but also for entertainment. Henry VIII used to play tennis here. A little while ago when they were working on the roof they found tennis balls stuck in the rafters. So that’s it.’

‘What is?’

‘This whole place. Nothing but a load of old balls.’

‘Truly profound, Goodfellowe,’ she offered caustically, recognizing one of his Black Dog days when it felt as if the whole world was pissing against his trouser leg. ‘So you get this far and then start wondering whether it’s all worth it, eh? Let me tell you it’s too bloody late for that. You don’t do what you’ve done to me – we don’t do what we’ve done to each other – simply to wash our hands of it all. Oh no.’

‘But what’s the point?’

‘The point is you try. Why do you think I can forgive your appalling manners and intolerable tempers that would make me disembowel any other man with my fingernails? Because you try. You make mistakes that are many and sometimes grotesque, but you make them for all the right reasons. The right motivations.’

He heard another voice. Hadn’t the Dalai Lama said much the same thing to him all those years ago, that it was his motivation that mattered?

‘I think Shakespeare said in the same play that all men are but gilded loam or painted clay,’ Mickey continued.

He looked at her sharply.

‘Don’t do that to me, Goodfellowe. Don’t go underestimating me again, thinking you’re the only one who can quote sodding Shakespeare. I got my English GCSE, you know.’

He hung his head in remorse.

‘So you prove my point. You’re not like most men. No one could claim you’ve much gilding. More a gentle creasing. And you’re not painted clay like so many of the rest in this place. That’s why I understand. And why I can forgive.’

‘I keep giving you things to forgive.’

‘Don’t ever expect me to forget what I’ve had to do with Paddy. There will always be a part of me that feels unclean. That will hate you for making me try to hate him.’

The light cast mournful shadows on his face, like a gargoyle on the buttresses meant to frighten the children. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

‘You said it was necessary. Well, it was.’

‘You mean …?’

‘Oh, yes. I nearly broke my back on his bloody desk. Then I think I found what you need to break him. Damn you, Goodfellowe!’

He couldn’t bring himself to smile in the face of her distress. So he shook his trouser leg. The Black Dog ran off.

Mickey’s news had instilled a new mood of determination within Goodfellowe, but it didn’t appear to be infectious. When he arrived for the council of war at the small Buddhist shrine in Bloomsbury, late, trousers tucked into his socks, and breathless, he found troubled eyes turned towards him. The enthusiasms of the band of Tibetan warriors had been ground down by contact with reality. They had survived so long on hope and faith, but the facts kept getting in their way. Particularly the fact that they had no means of finding the Chinese child.

‘If only we knew where to search,’ Kunga muttered, barely able to conceal his frustration.

‘It’s like trying to catch a swallow on a summer’s night,’ Phuntsog complained.

‘What can we do but wait,’ Wangyal asked, ‘until they find the child themselves? By which time it will be too late.’

Frasi simply sat dejectedly and shook his head.

A darkness surrounded them, which the glow of butter lamps and the deep brilliance of the temple colours could do nothing to relieve. They faced Goodfellowe. Not all of their expressions were generous.

‘We need you more than ever, Tummo,’ Kunga declared. ‘I believe you are the only one who can help us now.’

‘Be bold, it’s not as bad as that,’ he encouraged. ‘After all, they haven’t found the child either. And they’re spending most of their time fighting each other.’ He told them of the rumours he had planted around Chinatown. And Jiang’s troubles. And what was still to come. ‘Tomorrow the fire department will be calling. They’ve had reports of blocked exits. And suggestions that internal fire partitions were removed during renovations.’ He made no effort to hide his satisfaction. ‘Jiang’s not the only one who can spit in the soup.’

‘The Himalaya passed every inspection without difficulty,’ Wangyal commented gloomily, as if in sympathy with his fellow proprietor.

‘And how does that help us find the child?’ Phuntsog complained. He always seemed to be the one to complain. Their faith needed to be rekindled. They’d spent too long sitting around, waiting.

‘It causes confusion in their ranks,’ Goodfellowe argued. ‘Distracts them. It buys us a little time. And time may buy us better fortune.’ Yet he was all too aware that in their view his words amounted to nothing. A big fat zero. He had to give them something more. He was beginning to find the smell of stale incense oppressive. ‘If we were in Tibet, what would we do now, Kunga Tashi?’ Goodfellowe asked.

‘We would look for a sign, an omen. Listen for the voices that are with us all. In the mountains there are voices on the wind and in the meltwaters as they trickle over the rocks. But we are a long way from Tibet. This is a vast and bustling city, where the voices of the mountains are drowned out. This is your place, Tummo. You must listen for the voices.’

‘I’ve been trying.’

‘And what do they tell you?’

‘That nothing is ever as it seems.’

‘We shall make a Buddhist of you yet. His Holiness used to argue that the facts should never be allowed to get in the way of the truth.’

‘But facts are the only means I have of getting to the truth.’

‘Your facts haven’t helped us get to the child,’ Phuntsog offered ungraciously.

‘Perhaps because we’ve been dealing with the wrong facts.’

‘What wrong facts?’

‘I keep asking myself why we are searching for a boy with a Chinese face.’

‘Because you told us to!’ Phuntsog exploded in irritation.

‘You miss my point. The Dalai Lama’s instructions clearly said a Chinese face. But why not simply a Chinese?’

‘Chinese? Chinese face? What’s the difference?’

‘Phuntsog, there is wisdom also in silence,’ Kunga interjected, his softness lending the rebuke all the more majesty.

‘When the moon in Tibet shines on the mountains, it sometimes appears as light as day. Even though it’s not day,’ Goodfellowe continued.

‘So the Chinese face …?’

‘Doesn’t necessarily make the boy Chinese. At least, perhaps not fully Chinese. I keep thinking that he may only look Chinese.’

‘But not be Chinese?’

‘Perhaps part-Chinese. And possibly part-Tibetan.’

‘The reconciliation,’ Kunga whispered. ‘Not Tibetan. Not Chinese. But both?’

‘Is there any chance? You keep telling me you know everyone in the Tibetan community but, over the years, could it be that someone has gone missing? Lost contact? Perhaps precisely because they got tangled up with a Chinese?’

The suggestion was greeted in awed silence.

Phuntsog in particular seemed agitated, bracing his shoulders as though forcing his way against a gale, his impatience doing battle with his reason. His long nose twitched violently. Finally he spoke. ‘It is possible,’ he said bluntly. ‘Most Tibetans came to this country in the 1970s. It took us some time to organize … It is possible.’

‘Someone might have slipped away?’

‘Possible.’

‘Forgotten?’