Amazing Disgrace (19 page)

‘On the contrary. The more you despise them the easier it becomes, especially when you realize they’re even more venal than you are. Then you start to feel a slight affection, in a superior sort of way.’ I give Nick a thumbnail sketch of
Millie
’s overweening vanity, ambition and ruthlessness.  

‘The thing is,’ he says thoughtfully at the end, ‘I know all about her ruining that EAGIS survey, and I know exactly what most of my colleagues think about the Deep Blues and these Neptune idiots, and as a scientist I’m a hundred per cent with them. But had we thought she might actually turn out to be the ill wind that blows some good?’

‘Radical, you see?’ says Adrian to me. ‘Our pontiff here is radical. In a moment he’ll bore you with the story about how his name comes from the Latin for the hill in Rome where the popes live. Mons vaticinius: the hill of prophecies. I do have that right, pontiff?’

‘Correct, my son. It is for my God-given abilities as a seer that Adrian here invited me to have lunch with you today. When he told me you were Millie’s biographer it made me give her some thought. After all, what she’s doing and saying impinges directly on our lives and work as marine scientists, and I guess we oughtn’t to become too knee-jerk about her. Granted, so far she’s been a bloody nuisance. But I’m just
about old enough to remember the beginnings of those social movements back in the late Sixties, early Seventies: black power, gay lib, women’s lib – stuff like that. The thing they all relied on initially was consciousness-raising. Getting the inert mass of people to recognize the problem. It was in-your-face, it was embarrassing, it was humiliating. But in its messy, provocative way it worked, even though it was often on the very edge of causing a backlash. My point here is simply to wonder whether Millie mightn’t have her uses as a
consciousness
-raiser about the sea. We don’t necessarily have to approve her methods, but they may turn out to be effective.’  

‘But isn’t the parlous state of the oceans already a daily bleat in the world’s media?’  

‘Yes,’ Nick agrees, ‘and daily bleats are no more effective than a nagging spouse. You switch off, don’t you? Besides, what we’re actually doing to the oceans is disastrous and
brutal
beyond anything the media say. Unfortunately, though, it’s really only scientists like us who can give chapter and verse, and people tend not to listen to scientists unless we come with our hands full of miracle obesity cures or pills that will increase the human lifespan by sixty years.
Then
they’ll listen. But not to yet more bad news from inaccessible parts of the planet they think have nothing to do with them. Really, we’re in an impossible position: we get savaged for thinking we know too much, or we get dismissed for claiming we know too little. The fact is, we know a lot more accurately about a lot more things than most people wish to hear. Believe me, it’s hardly a pleasure for us each day to view from close up the steady decline of the oceans’ larger biota.’  

Nick takes a deep gulp of beer and wipes his mouth on his tie. ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t a rant. I suppose I just wanted you to know that I’m not some wacky lone voice in this business. Adrian will bear me out when I say that virtually all marine scientists who study living things are environmentalists. And improbable as it may seem to animal-rightists, most of us come to love the creatures we study. I thought it might be
worth suggesting that, even though they’re nutty, Millie and these Neptunies could still help spread the idea among
ordinary
landlubbers that we shouldn’t go on savaging the oceans. God knows we scientists haven’t yet got the message across. Now I’ll stop. But I will have another pint if Adrian’s paying.’

By the end of the week Samper is feeling emotionally unkempt, if not frankly despondent. He is sitting in one of those
pointlessly
expensive patisserie-cum-coffee shops that abound in Marylebone High Street, wondering how it is that espresso coffee made in England with an Italian coffee machine and using Italian coffee manages not to taste Italian. The machine’s settings? The water? One of those trivial mysteries that so often displace weightier problems.  

How I yearn to be home in Le Roccie. I think. Or maybe I just long to be free of my toad, of earning a living by such
stupid
means. How much more sense must life make in Africa or some place where the work you do is directly related to your survival. But nobody’s working in this laid-back metropolis, not really
working
. Everyone’s having coffee or shopping or just walking around in the glittery late-October air. Of course there are the huddled masses in their offices, but they’re not working either. They’re not planting potatoes or setting rabbit traps. They’re gossiping as they process local authority forms, or dreaming up slogans to sell a new range of the same old chewing gum or hair lacquer, or writing drivelling speeches for the CEOs of drivelling companies. Supposedly it runs an
economy
but it makes no visceral sense. Deep down, we know our work is vacuous and unrelated to our survival. If we carry on we might get a small pension. If we stop we won’t come close to starving. We’ve done nothing to deserve it but here we all are, drowning in food and goodies as though to the manna born. And one morning we’re having overpriced coffee in Marylebone High Street, gazing unseeingly out at the frozen commotion of it all, and are suddenly overwhelmed by a
disgusted
urge to emigrate from the planet. At the same time we
note the urge is not quite powerful enough to make us emigrate to Africa.  

Even if I can argue myself into conceding that maybe the fatuous Millie might have her uses as a consciousness-raiser for the state of the oceans, do I really care? Of course I don’t. It merely makes her all the sillier, vapouring on about spirits on the seabed as a sort of ballsaching metaphor for our
commonplace
awareness of consumer-led environmental ruin. We are the tribe with machetes. We will only stop when we run out of things to hack. The changes we’ve made are already irreversible. Fine. So let us concern ourselves with serious
matters
, like the horn parts in the 1841 version of Schumann’s Fourth Symphony or the authenticity of the harmonium included in the posthumous edition of
L’uomo magro
.  

What I’m really doing this morning is recovering from last night: another bizarre episode in what has come to feel like a lifetime of bizarre episodes. No sooner had I returned to
London
after visiting Adrian and his colleague in their scientific lair than I was summoned straight back to Southampton the next evening to see Millie and meet her Aussie mentor, the
elusive
Lew Buschfeuer. So wearily off I went again from
Waterloo
on yet another late-afternoon rail journey that gave me the opportunity to view at first hand Britons coming to terms with their chronic starvation, a sight by no means devoid of pathos. Once more I held myself aloof from the travelling rabble. It was only the second outing for my Blaise Prévert suit of
chocolate
corduroy and I preferred to stand and survey from a safe distance. As we set off I noticed my fellow travellers had to raise their voices to hear each other above the sudden storm of packaging being ripped frenziedly open and the tinny gunfire of ring-pulls.  

Attentive readers who also take life’s little ironies in their stride may remember that Millie had bought a house near Chichester, so they won’t be amazed to learn that I was received on the very yacht we had seen at anchor from Pegleg Dandy’s the previous day, the one we had assumed belonged to
a Saudi princeling. I was met at the jetty by a cutter and whisked to the sugar daddy’s personal ship, which grew in size as we approached until it towered overhead like the
Titanic
, although its lines were modern and so hideously unnautical it resembled nothing so much as a gigantic training shoe sitting on the water. As I trotted up the companionway of the
Vvizz
I was reminded of Jack Lemmon disguised as Daphne coming aboard Joe E. Brown’s yacht in
Some Like It Hot
. The thought made me smile in anticipation. A steward in a white mess
jacket
escorted me to a lounge the size of a tennis court, wood
panelled
and carpeted in green. What
is
it about chandeliers?
Titanic
again. But my attention was drawn to the twenty or so people standing around at the far end of the room in clumps. They were holding drinks and desultory conversation. I noticed some familiar faces, including that of the pop-eyed girl who had read out Brilov and Tammeri’s inspired ‘translation’ the other night and had beadily noticed my involuntary
tumescence
. Sandra? Debra? Barbra? Then I caught sight of Millie, who this evening was clearly regnant aboard her own royal yacht in her now established persona as Queen Neptunia.  

Gone was the black rubber dress. Tonight she was sheathed in an evening gown of bridal white lurex – or anyway some material woven with a sparkly thread. This time her mozzetta cape was gold satin. From under it her transparent right arm emerged, its water now tinted blue and full of some small white nektonic larvae that twisted like corkscrews as they swam, giving an impression of twizzling activity. She was
surrounded
by acolytes, including several thickset trousered ladies with gin-and-fo’c’sle complexions. I noticed one of them was going bald. Millie harpooned me with a look as I approached.  

‘Gerry!’ she cried in the unnecessarily declamatory voice that people at cocktail parties affect. ‘Too good of you to come all this way.’  

Instead of only halfway, for instance? I shook her left hand rather than kiss the air beside her weatherbeaten old cheeks
with their riot of burst capillaries like a toper’s nose. She
indicated
the balding lady.  

‘May I introduce Lew Buschfeuer? Lew, this is the famous Gerry Samper at last. I can hardly believe you two haven’t already met.’  

‘Gerry.’ His smile was friendly enough, at any rate. My
having
mistaken him for a moulting lesbian was explained by his being one of those men with fluffy cheeks who seem never to have shaved. Also, his way of going bald was not the
traditional
male pattern but an all-over thinning of wispy hair through which his sunbrowned scalp gleamed in the light of his own chandeliers. He was a stocky figure wearing plaid slacks and a blazer. For a magnate of his calibre Lew was tastefully free of gold rings and hand-crafted chronometers waterproofed to nine thousand fathoms. In fact, he looked plausibly like the captain of a victorious women’s golf team in the 1950s:
confident
and no-nonsense. ‘Welcome aboard.’ He gripped my hand as though trying to wring oil out of shale. ‘
Congratulations
, mate. Jist finished yer book. I don’t pretend to have much literary taste but I reckon you’ve done the old girl proud.’  

The old girl, far from acidly putting her oar in to claim joint authorship as before, just stood there beaming while the spirochaetes milled in her arm. I made an effort to blush
prettily
and lie gamely.  

‘Thank you, Mr Buschfeuer. It was an honour to have the opportunity.’  

The lady golfer frowned. ‘That’s Lew, mate. There’s no Mr Buschfeuer on
this
ship. And there’s just one Lew.’  

Resisting an opening like that is a mature skill and I returned his compliment by praising his yacht. If ever I become super-rich I can’t imagine what I would spend my fortune on, other than ensuring that I never again write a book about
anyone
remotely connected with sport or popular culture. I really think it would never occur to me to own a private ship. Even a private aircraft would be less unlikely because at least that
would mean my never again having to mix with the travelling public. Social emulsions are not for Gerald Samper, who is a niche creature par excellence. All the same, wealth of that sort presumably does lay one open to the envy and attention of criminals. I am still haunted by the image of poor Nanty Riah lying on the floor of his Lear jet, riddled about the rump by small-calibre bullets, watching thieves unscrew his Van Goghs. To own a private ship, though, would surely make one feel even more idiotically self-conscious. Imagine the sheer number of people needed to run it: the crew and staff whose sole duty would be to drive one person at whim about the world’s oceans. I assume that is why wealthy yacht owners always seem to travel with a retinue of admiring guests, many of whom constitute a harem. At least these sycophants must dilute the embarrassment of being all alone on the ocean in a large ship, moodily looking for pleasure. Still, fundamentally silly as these playthings are, I couldn’t help finding the
Vvizz
remarkable. Its flamboyant immensity and sports-shoe design somehow seemed at odds with its owner’s unimpressive
physical
presence.  

‘I don’t know how much Millie has told you about me,’ Lew was saying, ‘but the sea’s in my blood. I was born to have my hand on my own tiller.’  

‘She never mentioned that,’ I murmured.  

‘It’s true, though. Like a lot of Aussies I was in and out of boats as soon as I could swim and I always wanted my own command. But I went into business and had some luck and you know how it is. The wealthier you become the less your time’s your own, and it was getting so that months were going by without me even being able to take a day off to go for a sail round Sydney harbour. People think being rich opens all the world’s doors, Gerry, but let me tell you it closes off just as many, especially the simple pleasures.’  

Ah, the poor wee plutocrat. My odious stepmother Laura, who worships God with a fervour worthy of a better cause, once informed me that it is easier for a camel to enter a rich
man than it is for a needle to go through an eye, although it puzzled me at the time. I think she was quoting the Bible, a considerably opaque document whose text has always struck me as containing a high percentage of outpimpling and torrential ciderpresses. But she had definitely left me with the impression that life wasn’t entirely a bed of roses for the rich, and here was Lew confirming it in a way that gladdened the heart.  

‘I guess it was Millie changed all that for me,’ he said. ‘We were two of a kind anyway, but just seeing what that lady could do with one hand made me ashamed at how much I couldn’t pull off with two.’  

‘She’s certainly remarkably monodextrous,’ I agreed dutifully. ‘Although no matter how plucky and capable, she never could have done what she did without you, Lew. There was no way she could have afforded to build her own oceangoing yacht.’  

‘The least I could do for her. As far as I was concerned we were shipmates from the start. Right from the moment I clapped eyes on her I wanted her hand on my tiller for the rest of my natural.’  

I couldn’t have borne much more of this but there was
suddenly
a welcome distraction. A mess-jacketed steward had ushered in a late arrival: a small, egg-bald young man who was advancing across the acres of green carpet with a slight limp.  

‘
Nanty!
’ I cried involuntarily. Talk of the devil. ‘What on
earth
are you doing here?’  

‘I invited him, what else?’ came Millie’s frosty voice from behind me. ‘But I didn’t realize you two knew each other.’  

‘Hi, Mills! Hi, Gerry, long time no see! Hi, Lew mate!’ Nanty’s greetings had the extravagant familiarity of someone far too famous to be socially rebuffed, or to care if he were. I noticed that although everyone in the room had glanced around, few appeared to recognize him since tonight he had come wearing nature’s own disguise of total alopecia. Had he been wearing the blond wig he wore onstage most of those
present
would have known him at once as Brill, the lead singer of the boy band Alien Pie. To my certain knowledge Nanty was over
thirty; but when nature takes away with one hand she
sometimes
gives back with the other, to the irritation of the majority from whom she only ever takes away with both. From enough feet away his face could pass for that of a teenager. Without his wig he looked for all the world like any other college kid who had shaved all his hair to piss off his parents. His exuberance and bonhomie were, I assumed, chemically induced. ‘So remind me: what’s this you’ve got going here?’ he asked, having been issued with a glass of something from a tray and raising it to Queen Neptunia. ‘A launch party?’  

‘That’s just what it is,’ said Millie. ‘My book’s out tomorrow and I shall be sitting all day in a London bookshop signing copies. The publisher says it will be a runaway bestseller. They’re not usually wrong.’  

‘Let’s hope John Q. Public agrees. And it’ll help keep old Gerry here in that stuff he was drinking up in that house of his in Italy. Fernet-Branca, wasn’t it? Let me tell you,’ Nanty said unnecessarily, given that nobody was trying to stop him, ‘that was just about the weirdest experience of my life. I mean, wacky or what? Blimey. UFOs disguised as helicopters, right out in the sticks up a mountain in Italy with a neighbour who was being porked by spacemen. I’ve never been so shit-scared in my life.’  

‘Come on, Nanty, it was just a simple misunderstanding. There was a perfectly rational explanation for it all,’ I said, addressing Millie and Lew as much as my former house guest. I had never mentioned the episode to Millie and until a few minutes earlier I hadn’t the slightest idea she and Nanty even knew each other. It was not obvious to me what a one-armed yachtsperson had in common with a hairless boy-band leader other than celebrity. Maybe these days that is common denominator enough.  

‘Nanty has turned out to be one of our most devoted
supporters
,’ Millie explained.