‘Hang on a sec.’ Richard tapped the keyboard again. ‘Shit, New York’s going bananas.’
Archie looked round anxiously, then back at Sam, clearly tempted to go and see for himself but thinking better of it. Only Andreas showed no concern; he sat staring ahead, sipping his wine and smiling a cold, contented smile. Maybe Swiss bankers knew it all long
before everyone else? Considered English money men to be their puppets?
‘Bid 124 5/8. Offer 125 7/8,’ Richard shouted out, then looked quizically at Andreas. Andreas gave him a brief nod of reassurance.
Sam got up from the table, conscious of the eyes on her, and walked over to Richard. ‘Turn it off,’ she hissed. ‘At once.’
‘I want to see if we’re pushing the stock.’
‘I don’t care. I want it off. Now.’
She marched back to the table, all smiles, and started to clear away the pudding bowls.
‘Can you get the cheese, please, Richard?’ she said, carrying a stack out to the kitchen and putting it by the dishwasher. She switched the coffee percolator on. Richard followed her out with the rest. ‘Brilliant bouillabaisse,’ he said. ‘That was seriously moreish.’
‘It was dreadful. The venison was a complete disaster. Why’s that man Andreas wearing a glove?’
‘Always wears it.’
‘It’s creepy.’
‘It’s all right. I think he’s had some accident – got an ugly scar on it, or something.’ He put his hands on her shoulders. ‘You’re very uptight, Bugs. Relax.’
She shook herself free and tinned to face him. ‘You’re very drunk.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘You’re behaving appallingly. Embarrassing everyone. We’ve had to put up with you wittering on about gerbils up bottoms, with your lecture on how Catherine the Great died being screwed by a horse, and with your going off and sitting down to work.’
‘And you’ve been like a stuffed dummy all evening. You’re not chatting; you’re sitting at the end of the table staring into space. Don’t you feel well?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look bloody awful. You’ve been looking white as a sheet all evening. I think you should see the quack.’
‘I told you, I’m very spooked by that air disaster.’
‘Oh come on, Bugs, you haven’t turned into a fucking oracle.’
She glared back at him. Strangers. Two complete strangers. She could no more talk to him about anything important these days than talk to someone she met on a bus. It would be easier to talk to a stranger on a bus. She turned and went back into the room. Richard sat back in his place, and the blonde immediately oozed towards him. ‘Have you ever tried it with a gerbil?’ she said.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled loudly. ‘No. Sam doesn’t go in for kinky sex too much.’ He saw Sam’s face and looked away hastily. ‘Actually, she’s too busy dreaming these days.’
‘Wildly erotic ones?’
‘No – all about aeroplanes crashing. Reckons she dreamed about the one that went down in Bulgaria today.’
Sam caught Andreas’s eye again; caught the cold, almost knowing smirk.
‘I reckon she was dreaming of my penis. Hey, Bamford,’ Richard shouted. ‘Didn’t Freud think aeroplanes were schlonkers?’
‘Aren’t you going to offer any port, Richard?’ she said, trying to articulate clearly, hoping they couldn’t hear the quavering in her voice.
Bamford O’Connell turned to her, and smiled a sympathetic smile that told her not to worry, not to be upset, that Richard was a fine chap really, and was just a bit sozzled.
‘Port, ah, yes. Got some really good stuff. Warres ’63. Archie?’
‘Delicious cheese, this creamy one,’ said the banker’s wife in an equally creamy voice.
It comes from the breasts of fat blonde women
she heard a voice in her head saying, and had to bite her lip to avoid blurting it out. ‘Cambozola,’ she said tartly, then remembered who she was, why she was here, and put on her forced smile again. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’
‘How’s the stately home coming along, Sam?’ said O’Connell.
‘It’s hardly a stately home. It’s just an old farmhouse.’
‘I thought it was quite historic, with a ghost or something?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Moving, are you?’ said Archie, his sudden interest startling her.
‘We used to have a little weekend cottage and we bought something a bit bigger, but it got quite badly damaged in the hurricane.’
‘’Tis a good idea to get away from London,’ said O’Connell. ‘Have a break from the muggers.’
‘The country’s full of muggers, too,’ said Richard. ‘They drive around on tractors.’
Sam fetched the coffee and began pouring it out. O’Connell passed the cups down for her.
‘Thanks,’ she said, when he had finished.
‘Are you all right, Sam?’ he asked.
‘Yes – I—’ her voice trailed away.
‘You’re looking a bit peaky. Are you working hard?’
‘No more than usual. I had a bit of a shock today, that’s all.’
‘What was that?’
‘I—’ She felt her face reddening. ‘I . . . do you – do you know much about dreams, Bamford?’
‘Dreams? Anyone who’d tell you they know a lot
about dreams would be lying. I probably know as much as anybody. Who do you ask?’
‘Do you use them in your work?’
‘Sure I do. They’re very important – but there’s still an awful lot we don’t understand about them.’
‘Adam’s penis – the forbidden fruit,’ Richard expounded. ‘It’s obvious. The serpent. Classic Freud. It was Adam’s schlonker.’
‘How clever,’ cooed the blonde. ‘I’ve never thought of that.’
Sam sipped her Perrier, then turned the glass around in her hands and looked at the psychiatrist. ‘Do you think it’s possible to – dream the future?’ she said, feeling slightly self-conscious.
‘Precognition?’
‘Is that what it’s called?’
‘Do you mean dream events that actually happen?’
‘Yes.’
He picked up his glass and sipped his port with such an expression of pleasure she wondered if she was missing out not having any. ‘Fine stuff, this,’ he said. ‘Fine port. I’m going to have one hell of a headache tomorrow. Is that precognition?’
She tilted her head: ‘I’m being serious, Bamford.’
He smiled, then frowned. ‘Is this to do with the air disaster on the news this evening? What Richard was just talking about?’
She nodded.
He studied her. ‘I have patients that see the future all the time.’
‘Really?’
‘They think so.’
‘And do they?’
‘I’d be a rich man, wouldn’t I? I’d get them to tell me
the winners of horse races. I could sell investment tips to Richard. We’d clean up on the Market.’
There was a loud pop above her and Sam felt a sharp pain in her hand. She let out a shriek, and stared down. Slivers of glass littered the table all around her. A large shard stuck out of her Perrier water. A small stain of blood spread across her index finger. She looked around, disoriented. Everyone was staring up at the chandelier.
‘How odd,’ someone said.
‘Must have been some paint on it; paint can do that,’ said another voice.
‘Must be one of those current surges,’ someone else said. ‘You know, in the commercial breaks everyone rushes to the loo. It overloads the electrical circuits.’
‘But it’s after midnight.’
Sam stared up at the chandelier. One of the bulbs had exploded; there was a solitary jagged shard left sticking out of the socket.
A cold prickle of fear swept through her. The pop echoed around her head, faded then came back louder, carrying with it a dim memory from the past that was fuzzy and unclear.
She frowned and looked down: at the grapes on the cheeseboard, at the tiny slivers of broken glass that glinted in the candlelight, at the knuckleduster jewels on the blonde’s podgy fingers, at the dark empty silence of the flat beyond the table. The memory pricked through her mind like the pain of the prick in her finger. Then, once more, she caught Andreas’s eye; he curled his gloved fingers around his glass and smiled at her.
Sam heard the sound of a tap and the vigorous brushing of teeth, and turned over in bed with the uncomfortable realisation that a new day had arrived without the previous one having departed. She opened her eyes slowly; they felt raw, bound with wire. A shaft of light spilled out of the bathroom door and was mopped up by the grey darkness, the lingering, theatrical darkness of early morning in winter. She could almost feel someone’s hand on the dimmer lever, slowly moving it.
Cue daylight!
Enter Richard, stage right, from bathroom. He wears a navy towelling dressing gown from which his legs stick out, white and hairy. His blond hair is wet and slicked back, and there is a spot of blood on his chin where he has nicked a zit. He stretches back his lips to reveal shining white teeth.
Cut to product shot.
ZING! The toothpaste that more and more dentists are recommending.
ZING! The ecologically sound way to brush your teeth. Yes, folks! Because when you’ve finished the paste, you can eat the tube!
Yet another Personal Nourishment System brought to you by the manufacturers of Napalm. Plaque removed. Foliage decimated. Faces peeled away.
Sam jumped, shivering.
Someone walking over your grave, her aunt used to say grimly.
She tried to switch off the weird commercial that was playing in her mind in her twilight half-awake state. The hypnopompic state, she had read in an article once.
Hypnogogic and hypnopompic, when you saw weird things as you drifted off to sleep or woke up.
She relaxed for a moment, but then felt a sense of gloom creeping around her, enveloping her. Something bad. Like waking up after you got drunk and knowing you’d done something you regretted. Only it wasn’t that. It was something worse, this time. She tried to think but it eluded her. Her index finger was hurting like hell. She freed it from under the sheet and peeled off the thin strip of Elastoplast bound around it. There was a crash which shook the room.
‘Bugger.’
She looked up, blinking against the brightness of the bedside lamp which Richard had switched on, and saw him lying on his face on the floor, his legs pinioned together inside his trousers. He hauled himself up onto his hands and stared around the room, with a puzzled expression.
‘Are you OK?’ She glanced at the clock. 0544. He was late.
‘Think I’m still a bit pissed.’ He rolled over, sat on the floor, tugged his trousers off, then pulled them on again slowly, getting each foot down the correct leg this time.
‘I’m not surprised, the way you and Bamford were carrying on.’
He rubbed his head and screwed up his eyes. ‘We drank nearly two bottles of that port.’
‘Why don’t you have a lie-in?’
‘Japan’s going bananas.’
‘It can probably go bananas without you.’
‘Could be up four hundred points by now.’ He sat down on the bed, screwed up his eyes and wiped his face with his hands. ‘I’ve got a mega hangover,’ he said. ‘A serious wipe-out.’
He stumbled into his shoes, kissed her and she smelled the fumes on his breath.
‘I wouldn’t drive,’ she said. Take a taxi.’
‘I’ll be all right. Fucking good evening,’ he said. ‘Great scoff.’
There was a click, and then the room went dark. She lay back and closed her eyes again. She heard the front door slam and the room was very silent, suddenly. So quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Or a light bulb explode.
She fell into a deep sleep.
She was woken by the roar of a bulldozer outside. A launch travelling fast up-river, crunching through the water. Someone was whistling ‘Colonel Bogey’. She slipped her feet out onto the thick carpet and sat on the edge of the bed staring at them; the varnish on her toenails was chipped. A few traces of hairs showed on her calves; time for another waxing; she smelled the foul smell of the wax, and still had the small yellowy mark on the front of her shin where the idiot girl had burnt her last time.
There was the sound of a pneumatic drill, then a louder noise, from above: an aeroplane coming into the City Airport a few hundred yards up the river.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the wall, and sat up straighter.
Deportment, young lady.
She ran her hands into her long brown hair and squeezed it tightly; she lifted it up and let it flop back down, giving herself a sideways glance in the mirror. Nice hair, rich, brown, chic.
Chic.
She could smile about it now, because it no longer mattered. But the sting had stayed with her for years.
That morning in London thirteen – fourteen – years
ago, when her aunt had taken her, under silent protest, to the Lucy Clayton modelling school.
‘It’ll do you good,’ her aunt had said. ‘Give you confidence.’
She could still see the withering scorn on the reedy interviewer’s face. ‘You’re too small,’ she had said. ‘Much too small. Five-foot five, are you? We need five-foot seven here. At least five-foot seven, I’m afraid.’ She had pushed Sam’s face around as if she were a horse. ‘Quite a nice face dear, very English Rose. You’re really quite pretty, dear, quite chic.’ The woman had said the word disdainfully, as if it were a deformity, not a compliment. ‘Chic, but not
beautiful
.’ Then the woman had turned to her aunt. ‘Nice legs. Probably her best feature. Not long enough, of course, to be a leg model.’
Sam padded across the carpet and pulled the curtain open a fraction. It was a flat grey morning out there, a good hour yet from full light. She stared out at the brown water of the Thames, stretching out into the distance like a grubby tarpaulin. A grimy black and white police launch droned through it, rocking sharply, cutting it like a blunt knife. An empty lighter shifted about restlessly, moored to an enormous rusting black buoy. She heard the cry of a gull and saw the shadow of a bird, swooping low, slamming the surface of the water for an instant. The cold seeped through the glass and through her skin, and she hugged herself with her arms, rubbing her hands up and down them.
A duet of drills hammered in the building site below. A workman in a donkey jacket and orange hard hat walked slowly across the site, through the stark glare of the floodlighting, carefully picking his path, heading towards a fire burning in a black oil drum. Another workman somewhere out of sight was still whistling, this time ragged strains of ‘Waltzing Matilda’.