the man said, raising his deep voice, a lazy patrician drawl, to compete with the babble around them. Lorimer noticed that his lips barely moved, he spoke through his teeth, like an inept ventriloquist.
‘Yes.’
‘Stalk hilly virgin.’ His mouth had opened a slit and these sounds had issued forth. These were the words Lorimer aurally registered. He proffered a hand. Lorimer juggled glasses, slopped wine, managed a brisk, damp shake.
‘What?’
The man looked at him fixedly and the insincere smile grew marginally wider, marginally more insincere. He spoke again.
‘Thought we’ll heave the gin.’
Lorimer paused for the briefest of moments. ‘Excuse me. What exactly do you mean?’
‘Torn, we’ll lever chain.’
‘Look, I don’t know what –’
‘TALK, OR WE’LL LEAVE HER, JANE.’
‘Jane who, for God’s sake?’
The man looked about him in angry incredulity. Lorimer heard him say – this time quite distinctly – Jesus fucking Christ.’ He fished in his pocket and produced a business card which he offered to Lorimer. It read: Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, Executive Director, Fortress Sure PLC.
‘Tor-quil-hell-voyre-jayne,’ Lorimer read out loud, as if barely literate, realizing. ‘I’m so sorry, the ambient noise, I couldn’t –’
‘It’s pronounced “heever”,’ the man said contemptuously. ‘Not “hellvoyre”. Heever.’
‘Ah. I get it now. Torquil Helvoir-Jayne. Very pleased to –’
‘I’m your new director.’
Lorimer handed Dymphna her glass, thinking only that he had to leave this place now, pronto. Dymphna did not look drunk but he knew she was, knew in his bones that she was deadly drunk.
‘Where’ve you been, mein Liebchen?’ she said.
Shane Ashgable leered over at him. ‘Hogg was here looking for you.’
There was the sound of a gavel being beaten vigorously on a wooden block and a stertorous voice bellowed. ‘A-ladies and a-gentlemen, pray silence for Sir Simon Sherriffmuir.’ Genuinely enthusiastic applause appeared to break out from those crowded round the dais. Lorimer glimpsed Sir Simon stepping up to the podium, slipping on his heavy tortoiseshell half-moons and peering over them as he held up one hand for silence, the other producing a tiny slip of notepaper from a breast pocket.
‘Well…’ he said – pause, pause, theatrical pause – ‘It’s not going to be the same old place without Torquil.’ Energetic laughter greeted this modest sally. Beneath its reverberations Lorimer edged towards the twin doors of the Portcullis Suite only to have his arm gripped at the elbow for the second time that evening.
‘Lorimer?’
‘Dymphna. I’m off. Must dash.’
‘D’you fancy supper? Just the two of us. You and me.’
‘I’m dining with my family,’ he lied quickly, still moving. ‘Another time.’
‘And I’m going to Cairo tomorrow.’ She smiled and raised her eyebrows as if she had just provided the answer to a ridiculously easy question.
Sir Simon started talking about Torquil Helvoir-Jayne’s contribution to Fortress Sure, his years of tireless service. Lorimer, filled with despair, gave Dymphna what he hoped was a forlorn, hey-life’s-like-that smile and shrug.
‘Sorry’
‘Yeah, another time,’ Dymphna said, flatly, and turned away.
Lorimer requested that the taxi-driver actually raise the booming volume of the football match that was being broadcast on his radio and was thus driven – thunderously, stridently – through an icy and deserted City, over the black, surging, tide-turning Thames, south of the river, his head echoing and resonant with the commentator’s raucous tenor voice detailing the angled crosses, the silky skills of the foreigners, the scything tackles, the grip on the game loosening, the lads giving it one hundred and ten per cent all the same. He felt alarmed, worried, stupid, embarrassed, surprised and achingly hungry. And he realized he hadn’t drunk nearly enough. In such a state, he knew from past experience, the melancholy silent cell of a black cab is not the best place to be. Then a new and welcome sensation stealthily infiltrated itself into his being – as the sands of time drew to a close and the final whistle beckoned – drowsiness, lassitude, languor. Perhaps it would work tonight, perhaps it really would. Perhaps he would sleep.
II4. Sleep. What was his name, that Portuguese poet who slept so badly? He called his insomnia, if I remember correctly, ‘indigestion of the soul’. Perhaps this is my problem – indigestion of the soul – even though I’m not a true insomniac? Gérard de Nerval said, ‘Sleep takes up a third of our lives. It consoles the sorrows of our days and the sorrow of their pleasures; but I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that