Barbuda any more. She wants to be called – wait for it – Angelica.’
‘It’s my middle name.’
‘Your middle name is Angela, not Angelica. Barbuda Angela Jane Bull. What’s wrong with Jane, eh, Lorimer? I ask you.’
Jane Bull, Lorimer thought, bad idea.
‘The girls at school all call me Angelica. I hate being called Barbuda.’
‘Rubbish. It’s a beautiful name, isn’t it, Lorimer?’
‘It’s the name of an island not a person,’ Barbuda/Angelica said with passionate loathing.
‘I’ve been calling you Barbuda for fifteen years, I can’t suddenly change to Angelica.’
‘Why not? More people call me Angelica than Barbuda.’
‘Well, you’ll always be Barbuda to me, young lady’ She turned to Lorimer for support. ‘Tell her she’s being silly and stupid, Lorimer.’
‘Well, actually’ Lorimer said, carefully. ‘You know, I sort of understand where she’s coming from. Excuse me, I must make a phone call.’
As he rose from the table he caught Barbuda/Angelica’s stare of candid astonishment. If only you knew, girl, he thought.
At the payphone by the stairs he punched out Alan’s number at the university.
‘Alan, it’s Lorimer… yeah. I need a favour. Do you know anyone at the BBC?’
‘I know them all, darling.’
‘I need to find out the telephone number of an actress who was in Playboy of the Western World the other night. BBC2, I think.’
‘It was Channel Four, actually. Fear not, I have my sources. An actress, eh? Who’s she sleeping with?’
Lorimer was inspired. ‘It’s the girl in the dream. From the ad. Turns out she was in this play. I think I may be on to something, Alan, dreamwise. If I could see her, meet her, talk to her, even. I think I could lucid dream all night.’
And I thought you were going to say you’d fallen in love.’
They both laughed at this.
‘I just have a hunch. She’s called Flavia Malinverno.’
‘I shall “procure” her for you. In a jiffy’
Lorimer hung up the phone suffused by a strange feeling of confidence, confident that if there were one motive force likely to galvanize Alan Kenbarry it was the prospect of a spouting silver fountain of lucid dreams.
381. Market Forces. This evening Marlobe said to me, pointing the wet stem of his pipe at my chest, ‘It’s dog eat fucking dog, my friend. Market forces. You cannot buck the market. I mean, face it, we are all, like it or not, capitalists. And the amount I pay in fucking taxes justifies me, personally, in saying to those whingeing fucking scroungers – PISS OFF. And you, matey, fuck right off to your own sad fucking stinking country, wherever it is.’ Two old women waiting for a bus moved huffily away, saying loudly they were going to a nicer bus stop. Marlobe appeared not to hear this. ‘You understand these matters,’ he said. ‘You in your business, just like me in mine. We got no choice. Market fucking forces rules. If you go to the wall, you go to the wall.’ So I decided to ask him what he felt about the recently installed flower stand in the ShoppaSava. ‘Load of fucking rubbish,’ he said, although his grin looked a little sick. ‘Who wants to buy a flower from a checkout girl? You want personal service. Someone who knows flora, the fluctuations of the seasons, the proper nurture and attention of the flower. I’ll give it a month. They’ll lose a fortune.’ I made a worried face and said, I thought, bravely, ‘Well… Market forces?… He laughed and showed me his surprisingly strong – looking white teeth (are they false?). ‘I’ll give them market forces,’ he said. ‘You wait.
The Book of Transfiguration
Chapter 7
His mother passed him a small circular tray of piled white bread sandwiches.
‘Here, Milo, take this down to Lobby, darling, will you?’
He thought there were probably twenty or thirty sandwiches, cut into triangles, with various fillings of meat and all neatly laid out in concentric circles as if to be handed round at an office party or working lunch.
‘They’re not all for him, surely?’
‘He’s a growing young boy,’ his grandmother said.
‘He’s nearly forty years old, Gran, for heaven’s sake.’
His grandmother spoke to his mother in their language, saying something that made them both chuckle.
‘What’s that?’ Lorimer asked.
‘She say: if a man eat too much fish he don’t got enough meat.’
‘Go on, go on, Milo. Lobby don’t like to wait for his lunch.’
From the hall he could see his father being walked gently along the angled walls of the living room by Komelia, her hands carefully supporting an elbow. His father was wearing a blue blazer