A Fool's Alphabet (30 page)

Pietro normally read the paper in his room for a few minutes after he had got in, and drank some coffee from the machine. It was from these tastes and details of repeated daily life that the flavour of office life was established: the dusty coffee, the steel-tipped stairs, the dense cigarette smoke that gathered as the morning meeting in Coleman's room
progressed. All of them were tolerable, but it took time for Pietro to grow used to the idea that more of his time was to be spent amongst strangers than with his family. The strip-lit world of battered desks and filing cabinets, pigeonholes and piled reference books, takeaway sandwich cartons and transferred telephone calls: day after day the time there mounted, yet the longer people did it, the more they seemed able to bear it.

Hannah had given him a Toulouse-Lautrec poster and a reproduction of a coloured sixteenth-century map of the Pacific Ocean to pin to the walls of his office, which was fitted with an orange sofa and blue curtains in addition to the usual desk, chairs and shelves. Chris Mitre had the equivalent office on the other side of the building, but with the addition of an armchair. Brian Anderson, who was the financial director, had a smaller office but a full-time secretary called Deborah with whom, according to Simon Levy, the deputy sales director, he copulated athletically throughout the lunch hour. Pietro and Chris Mitre shared a secretary called Annabel. She was a very tall woman who had previously worked for the civil service in a department in Curzon Street, which she coyly but forcefully hinted had been connected with MI5. She was the recipient of Chris Mitre's unwanted advances and rewarded Pietro's self-control with a steady supply of information, some of it from Simon Levy, but most of it from the other secretaries, particularly Deborah in Brian Anderson's office and Barbara in Accounts.

Meetings in Coleman's room were regarded with anxiety by those who attended. He fostered, or at least did nothing to discourage, the rumours that moved around the office. ‘I take pleasure,' he told Pietro, ‘in starting an impossible rumour in the strictest confidence and then seeing how long it will take to come back to me, also, of course, in the strictest confidence.' The choice of confidants varied, however; and to be singled out for advice over a period of time was a doubtful privilege: it could be a mark of Coleman's favour or it could be the sign of an extended trial. ‘This is not the
soft-toy business, you know,' Coleman was fond of concluding when he was on the point of exposing or demoting someone.

Ahmed, the sales director, was by general consent the person with most to worry about. A heavily built man glistening under gold bracelets and watches with multiple functions, he wore choking aftershave and had a loud, self-confident air which Coleman enjoyed deflating. ‘Tell us the underwater temperature at noon in the Bay of Bengal,' Coleman once invited him when Ahmed had appeared with a spectacular new chronometer. Usually Coleman was more subtle. He would wait for Ahmed's contribution to come almost to an end before suddenly redirecting the conversation. ‘I expect you all know the story about Winston Churchill and the Russian envoy,' Ahmed began one morning. ‘Forgive me for telling it again, but these reports reminded me irresistibly. Apparently the Russian ambassador was concerned that Churchill had not fully understood the importance of the Allied attacks on the Eastern front and . . .' Everyone waited as Ahmed neared the end of his story. ‘So finally Churchill wrote back, saying –'

‘Brian, would you mind giving us the latest costings on the A to Z project?' said Coleman.

Coleman's room was significantly larger than anyone else's with a long built-in walnut unit against one wall. This held framed photographs of his wife and two daughters, and several volumes of company reports. It was alleged that there was an extensive drinks collection in the lower part of it, though no one had had first-hand evidence.

Coleman was powerfully relaxed in his room, with Sheila on the red sofa, her shorthand notebook folded over on her round thighs, and the half-dozen men perched either on three hard seats that lived in the office or on chairs they had had to bring in. Coleman's air of being slightly out of place, which Pietro had noticed when he first met him in Evanston, was quite gone when he tipped back the black leather desk chair, and rested his feet on the edge of the
blotter. He, like the walnut cabinet, might have been designed for the office.

Pietro, awkward on the backless chair he had dragged in from the corridor, watched the bemused faces. Only Sheila looked content. Brian Anderson sucked deep on Embassy kingsize cigarettes and devotedly realigned a slim gold lighter with the edge of the packet on the table as though searching for some geometrical absolute. Simon Levy tapped his foot and swivelled one of the office pens round in his fingers like a drumstick. Chris Mitre seldom raised his head, which some saurian reflex caused to sink into his body when Coleman spoke; his unblinking eyes would gaze down at the sheet of paper on his lap which he covered with drawings of gibbets and three-dimensional boxes.

That evening Pietro lay on the bed of his hotel room in Belgrade drinking whisky from the half-bottle he had bought at Heathrow. Various bits of paper, estimates and draft contracts from the printers at Vladimirci, were fanned out on the purple tartan bedspread. He looked over to where his case lay open on the slatted holder. The cheap fixed wardrobe and single chair were the only other items of furniture; the narrow room seemed to have been conjured from the alcove of a former dispensation. A fan roared in the sealed bathroom when he pulled on the light.

When I die, he thought, I will go to a hell that is entirely composed of hotel bathrooms. My tired face flaring into view in the mirror under the grey flicker of the strip light; the clammy embrace and uncertain smell of the plastic shower curtain; the lavatory roll, half finished, the next sheet folded into a genteel V; the tightly wrapped miniature soap; the towels that don't meet around the waist; the feeling of displacement unassuaged by false economies, dubious hygiene and cheap corporate tricks.

He could have been enjoying this expedition; in fact he had been enjoying it when they drank a bottle of slivovitz with the men at the printing works to celebrate the agreement
of terms. There were only minimal guarantees of quality, but the price was spectacular. Their offer was half that made by a London printer and considerably lower than Korea's. Coleman had been pleased; perhaps that was why he had drunk freely and then, in the steamy canteen at the printers', made his move.

His thick glasses could not conceal the feral look in his eyes as he leaned over to Pietro and said, ‘I want your help.'

‘Help?'

‘Yes. Let's talk about the business first.' Coleman was wearing a dark-blue tie with a huge knot that pushed at the sides of his striped shirt. ‘Once we get this printing contract signed then we're away. They've got Japanese typefaces, the lot. Your cartographer's nearly through London isn't he?'

‘He's done the grids. Now it's over to design.'

‘Good. And your share of the business. Remind me.'

Pietro swallowed the last of his drink. ‘What do you mean, remind you? You can't have forgotten.'

‘Just spell it out for me.'

Pietro shrugged. ‘The salary for two years, the percentage of profits and then the pay-off so I can return to running my own business.'

‘And the share options. Don't forget them.' Coleman had a waggish tone to his voice that Pietro had never heard before.

‘Sure. The share options.'

‘And then when the company floats . . .' Coleman opened the palms of his hands wide. ‘If it works well, we could renegotiate. I might be able to make some more options available. I'd have to consult the other directors, naturally. Would you like that?'

‘Of course.' Pietro watched Coleman light a cigarette. Although he was obviously scheming something, he seemed agitated, unable to come to the point. He poured himself some more slivovitz.

He said, ‘Tell me about Martha Freeman.'

‘Martha? What about her? You've met her a few times, haven't you?'

‘Yes. But you must know her well. Harry's your . . . best friend, isn't he?'

‘Yes. But what do you want to know about Martha?'

‘Come on, Pietro, you'd think I was asking for classified information.' Coleman laughed. ‘What's she like? What makes her tick? What sort of girl is she?'

Pietro took what he thought was a completely straight line. ‘Early thirties, American, brought up in New England somewhere, capable, friendly –'

‘Yes, I know all that. I could see that for myself when you all came to dinner that time. What I mean is, what is she like deep down? Is she passionate, is she . . . cold, is she romantic?'

Pietro looked closely at Coleman's eyes, which looked bloodshot behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He felt the need to respond very precisely. ‘I'd say she was naturally an affectionate person, pretty well balanced. You sense that she loves Harry a lot, but she's not uncritical. She has that kind of ebullience, you know, a sort of naturalness which is checked by her manners. You'd guess her parents had spent a lot on her education.'

‘Christ, you make her sound like a case history.'

‘What do you want me to make her sound like?'

Coleman leaned forward, much as he had done in the rosy darkness of the restaurant in Evanston. ‘I want you to tell me how to get to her, how to win her. I'm in love with her. Completely, utterly in love with her.'

He had a triumphant smile as he sat back, as though he were pleased at the daring of his declaration.

Pietro's face did not respond. ‘When did this happen?'

‘Over a period of months. They asked us to dinner. We asked them back. Then when Harry pulled out of the project I took her to lunch to try to get her to talk him back into it. We went to the American bar at the Savoy for a drink. Do you know it? She was so neat, so elegant. That laugh, those eyes.'

Pietro felt sick. He wasn't sure if Coleman talked in this
way because he was inventing this folly or because that was the way his mind truly worked.

He said, ‘I don't think you'd better tell me any more.'

Coleman put a large hand on Pietro's. ‘I understand. I don't want to put you in an embarrassing position. Just give me a little clue. Just one tip. The sudden weekend in Paris? Letters? A charity ball? Would she respond to that kind of thing? Good works and so on?'

‘For Christ's sake, Coleman.'

Pietro felt his hand being squeezed tighter. Coleman leaned across the table and from this range Pietro could sense how drunk he was. There was nothing in the colouring of his swarthy, closely shaved face or the obscured eyes that gave it away; just a sense of blurring at the edges of his speech and the pressure of his hand. He said, ‘This business is going to be a humdinger. We're going to be rich. You're going to be rich. And with those extra options –'

‘Forget the options. Let's go and –'

‘No. You don't understand. This is not some game with me. This is the greatest passion of my life. I don't suppose you've ever felt anything like it. It's overpowering. I'm prepared to sacrifice anything, anything I own to have that woman.'

Pietro thought of Hannah, and of Laura. Coleman said, ‘I'm not asking you to betray your friend. I just need some help. I need a way in. Once I've got that, I can do the rest for myself. But I've never met anyone like Martha before. I just can't get a grip, a toehold . . .'

‘You're drunk. I'm going back to the hotel.' Pietro pushed his chair back, but Coleman hung on to his arm.

He spoke angrily. ‘Don't spoil it for yourself now. This is your one and only chance. You know that, don't you? You miss this and it's back to being a journeyman snapper, a beach bum. Or a cuckold, like your friend Harry.'

‘What?'

‘You heard.'

‘Fuck off, Coleman. You'll get my resignation tomorrow.'
Pietro pulled his arm free, so that Coleman overbalanced, sprawling forward across the table, sending the bottle and the glasses rolling on to the floor.

The day he got back to his house in London, Pietro received a letter from Laura.