Whirligig (2 page)

The grown-ups were sitting at a table on the thistly and mossy lawn, with a white tablecloth pinned down by many empty bottles. Present, besides Gordon's mother, were Gordon's grandmother, engaged in conversation with an old man with a white moustache, Coky's grandmother, looking as if she needed a nap, and a couple that Gordon took to be Harry's parents. His mother greeted him.

‘Everything all right, darling?' she asked, and began automatically to make him a cheese sandwich.

Gordon muttered a ‘yeah', but he squirmed when she tried to put her arm around him, aware of the gaze from the other adults.

‘Can I have the Lotus Esprit?' he said, and slunk behind his mother's chair.

‘All right, lovey. Here we are,' said his mother, dipping into her handbag and presenting Gordon with a white model car, the numberplate ‘007'. Gordon could feel, as he dipped below the tabletop, that he was being discussed with silent looks, and possibly with words being mouthed. He didn't care. He was acting shy because he did not want to be quizzed about why he was on his own. Not yet, anyway.

When Gordon had been there for a few minutes, his father and a dark-haired woman arrived at the table. He watched them carefully from underneath the table, examining his father for signs of injury or distress, but there appeared to be none. Gordon's father usually got a bit red in the face after lunch, and even more so when he went for a walk. The dark-haired woman sat breezily at the table. Gordon had never seen such hair: a mass of raven-black corkscrews that slunk gracefully about her neck and shoulders like seaweed in the tide. She gave a symposium on her views about the imminent
demise of the Thatcher government in the upcoming election; a lecture on how the Soviets were going to invade West Germany; and news of her flirtation with Elton John at a social engagement the previous month, and the fact that she was, as a result, contemplating marriage to the long-haired pop star.

Gordon had not seen the children approaching. Harry and Coky were suddenly at the table. Coky had Gordon's yellow cagoule in her arms, and placed it on a chair.

‘Who wants a 7-Up?' said Gordon's mother to the newcomers.

When the exotic fizzy drink had been distributed to all three children, Gordon's grandmother beckoned him over and whispered in his ear. He could feel the hairs on her upper lip and smell the sweet beige powder she put on her wrinkly face.

‘Hello, piglet. Did the other children let you join in?'

Gordon looked at Coky across the table. She caught his eye and gave a tentative smile. He calculated that she could not have heard his grandmother's question and would not be able to hear the reply. Still, he hesitated to answer.

‘I won't tell,' added Gordon's grandmother conspiratorially. ‘I just want to know whether you got left out of the games again.'

He took a moment, looking reluctant, and calculating. Then he answered.

‘It was both of them,' Gordon whispered to his grandmother. ‘The boy tied me up and the girl kicked me.'

In the car, it wasn't long before Gordon's father began the lecture. Gordon was told that he shouldn't tell tales. He was also told that he shouldn't lie, which Gordon's father clearly suspected. And yet – and Gordon really couldn't understand this instruction because it struck him as such an inherent contradiction – he was also told to ‘stick up for himself' and that he needed to ‘toughen up a bit'. Gordon could never get the hang of the difference – and apparently there was one – between ‘sticking up for yourself' and retaliation. Surely, if you wished to exact revenge, you had to use whatever means were available to you? Gordon decided silently to absorb the lecture, even though he did not regret his actions and had in fact achieved what he wanted to achieve extremely efficiently. Hadn't he?

He replayed what had occurred in his head.

Gordon's grandmother had immediately and utterly betrayed an explicit confidence by publicly accusing Harry and Coky of bullying. Appalled, Harry's parents had immediately weighed in with a series of questions for their son. Harry, nonplussed, had ably defended himself and Coky. But during Harry's defence of himself Coky had started to cry, making both her and Harry appear guilty. Gordon's father had then asked Gordon whether he was telling the truth. Gordon stuck to his lie, even embellishing a little by explaining where it still hurt. As a result of the pressure he was under, it was no great acting feat for him also to cry. All the adults then waded in with their opinions as to what had happened. When impasse had been reached, and both Harry and Gordon were red with indignation, Gordon's father had diffused the situation by saying it was getting late and that perhaps they should leave. While the adults were apologising
to each other tensely, saying ‘it was nothing', and ‘please don't worry yourself', the children had stood glowering at each other. The dark-haired woman had prolonged the embarrassment by insisting on taking a group photograph.

Gordon now sat in the back seat of the Hillman Hunter, computing his victory while he watched the quickening rain. This hiatus was broken only when his mother silently smuggled him a boiled sweet. By the time the sweet was over, he decided that it was now time to clear up the other matter that had been niggling at him.

‘Dad, why were you fighting that woman?'

Instantly, Gordon's mother looked not at Gordon, but at her husband. Gordon's father did not take his eyes off the road, and said nothing. Gordon was pleased to have gauged the mood correctly. They had clearly forgiven him for his misdemeanour enough to have a different conversation.

‘How do you mean, Gordon?' asked his mother in a voice even higher than her usual one.

‘I don't think the boy knows what –' began his father.

‘Oh for goodness' sake, shut up, Geoffrey!' barked his mother with sudden and uncharacteristic viciousness. After a short silence, Gordon's mother encouraged Gordon to continue.

‘Well,' said Gordon, sensing now that he was completely off the hook. ‘You were in that barn with the red tractor, and she was fighting you. The woman with the dark hair. Had you had an argument?'

But there was no response from his father.

‘Did you stick up for yourself?' asked Gordon.

That seemed to do the trick. His parents were silent again, and remained so for the rest of the journey.

With Death comes honesty.

The Satanic Verses,
Salman Rushdie

P
ink's, like many of the white-stuccoed buildings of St James's, is a private members' club. Some regard these clubs as not so much ‘private' as ‘secret', and certainly there are only two facts about Pink's which appear in the public domain. The first is that the club has recently inherited the bulk of the estate of the artist James Hoogstratten, R.A. This ran into millions, and the club's members have voted not to take the £30,000 each that they were due by the club's constitution. Instead, they ploughed the entire windfall into boosting the quality and size of Pink's wine cellar, and in acquiring van Gogh's
The Beech Tree
, which now hangs modestly at the bottom of the main staircase. The second fact that is known about Pink's is its strict dress code.

Wearing a suit and tie, in most lines of work these days, is a clear sign of a lack of seniority. But few men make the mistake of turning up at Pink's without the
requisite garb. If they did they would be subjected to the special torture of being forced to wear something the club provided. This would be a jacket that bordered on fancy dress, and a tie of such luridness and unfashionability that it could only be worn by a fringe comedian, or a castaway looking to be seen from 35,000 feet.

There are many rules in Pink's. Many similar clubs have banned the use of mobile telephones, but Pink's also bans trousers without a crease, soft shoes, collarless shirts, children, personal computers, and the wearing of hats and swords beyond the cloakroom. Pink's considers itself rather
avant-garde
for having lifted
–
over ten years ago
–
its 240-year ban on women becoming members. But judging by the members present on the average hazy August afternoon, this happy news seems not yet to have been passed on to any actual women.

Peregrine MacGilp of MacGilp, one such member on one such afternoon, was perpetually irritated to have to smoke his cigarettes while standing in the street. But he used his time in the smoggy sunshine productively by simultaneously puffing and conducting an exchange of text messages with his niece. They had business to discuss.

‘Lawyer phoned,' said the first incoming text. ‘We only have a week. GC is realistically our last chance.'

Peregrine replied, thumbing the buttons on his phone with hesitancy, hindered by long-sightedness and lack of expertise. ‘WILCO. REMINT ME WHAT WE NKOW OF GC?'

A minute later, his phone buzzed with another message. ‘Rumour is he sold biz for big ££. Some sort of tech/media thing.'

Peregrine decided to tease his niece.
‘GOLD-LOOKING, IS HE? ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE. TALL TOO, I SUPPORT.'

‘Haven't seen him since we were kids,' replied the niece, ignoring the predictive text problems. ‘Might be Scottish?'

Peregrine texted back. ‘SOUND LIKE A MATTER OF THE UNIVERSE TYPE. BUSINESSMEN LIKE STRAIGHT TANKING. SHALL JUST BE MYSELF.'

It was just twenty seconds before the final communication.

‘Strongly advise you not to.'

Smiling, but with a wrinkled brow, Peregrine tucked his phone away in a well-tailored pocket. He did not generally meet high-powered entrepreneurs, and was unaccustomed to business meetings in which he was not the one being sold to. He inhaled deeply on the remainder of his cigarette. But Peregrine would deal with this challenge as he did all others in life, by assuming that things would probably work out for the best. They always did. So he went back inside his club, there to order a pot of Russian Caravan, and put to the back of his mind the feeling that he would rather his niece were joining him for this meeting on which his fate, and the fate of many others, would be determined.

As Peregrine waited patiently for his tea, the man he was due to meet was standing just a hundred yards away on Piccadilly, sweating at his reflection in the broad window of an expensive shop.

Gordon Claypole was tubby, and only in the thorax. His short legs and arms, over which he had only limited control, were thin and weak. He was not ‘a large man'. He was a fat man. This saddened him not just because of its genetic inevitability and the echo
of his long-dead father, but because, having been a fat child, he had briefly been a normal-shaped young adult. At thirty-five, he was once again an egg with tentacles, and wished that he had never known what it was like to look anything other than odd. There was always something in his reflection to admonish, and inflict the persistent pain that, he supposed, dogs all people who are physically inadequate. He stared more closely at his reflection. Sometimes it was the beetroot bags under his eyes that struck him as ugly, sometimes the reddening bulb of a nose, or the collection of grey-green chins that hung from his jaw like stuffed shopping bags. Today, though, it was his oyster eyes and their network of scarlet veins that disgusted him. He also found time to loathe the dyed black hair that was losing the battle for influence over his huge potato of a head. And in these clothes – black suit, white shirt, black tie – he thought the entire ensemble gave him the appearance of a ghoulish and hard-living undertaker.

‘Fuck it,' he burbled idly to his reflection as he stumbled on from the shop front and felt an ache in his chest.

Claypole was familiar with the other kind of private members' club. The sort that spring up like dandelions, and very often disappear again as quickly, from the streets of Soho. A short stroll from St James's, but a world away, the most octane-fuelled of the capital's media workers and their hangers-on collide in these other haunts on weeknights, bitching, bragging, gossiping and flirting, getting quickly drunk and lording it shrilly over the waiting staff. The older ones are tired and lonely, with the resources to destroy careers, egos or emotions as they choose. The younger ones fight among themselves for position, or fame, or
money, and possess the joint characteristics of overconfidence and desperation, a combination only otherwise found in lesser-league football. Only the lucky few, for all the talk, find a decent price for their souls.

So, like Lewis Carroll's Alice trying to adjust to a new world, Claypole rubbed his eyes as he stepped through the small eighteenth-century door to Pink's. The size of the entrance belied the club's vast interior. It was stunning, too, in a faded sort of way. Like an ancient screen actress, it had former glory as an all-pervading memory, and it could not but impress even if it gave the impression that it no longer cared to do so. Shifting silently about, the members were, like the cool dark interior, old and rich. These men, in their fine suits, had never doubted their position and never wanted for anything. If these souls were for sale at all, they would be very expensive.